Paul Duncan
Be Careful What You Call Home

Just as I was settling down comfortably into this album, Paul Duncan surprised me by piping down into introspective sonic exploration. The melody had promised a hummable chorus and instead I got a heinous stuck-CD-player noise. And then it just stopped altogether. There’s nothing wrong with snippety idea-led albums, but when some of the simpler tracks are so beautiful – in a lo-fi Nick Drake kind of way – the unexpected and sudden forays into experimentalism are frankly rather frustrating. What he’s got is lovely; when he tries to mix it with electronics, it sounds half-baked. Beautiful artwork, mind.

Appeared in Plan B April 2006

Tilly and the Wall
Live at The Old Blue Last, Shoreditch, 15 February 2006

The latest band to emerge from the burgeoning Omaha folk scene are sun-drenched quintet Tilly and the Wall. Fully endorsed by luminary hallmark of credibility Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, himself in attendance tonight, the band’s UK tour was sold out weeks in advance. Upstairs at the Old Blue Last, perhaps Shoreditch’s smallest gig venue, two hundred expectant fans are tripping over the stage with anticipation.

Not reliant upon their credentials however, the band are a remarkably convincing and musically tight outfit from the outset. Tap dancing on specially created sound boxes acts as a replacement for more conventional percussion, often dismissed by critics as a gimmick. However as the set moves on, it’s clear that the dancing can only add depth to what is already a unique sound, and more entertainment than any drummer could ever provide. A mix between contemporaries Rilo Kiley and Bright Eyes themselves, Tilly charge through a set filled with what can only be described as kitsch genius, effervescent stage presence fizzing off the stage as the girls invite us into their endearing world of amateurish yet infectious pop.

Charming and unassuming, with style oozing from their tap shoes, it’s only a matter of time before Tilly and the Wall’s bittersweet pop rockets to the top of our indie charts.

Mogwai
Mr. Beast

Mogwai’s hotly anticipated fifth studio album is finally due to hit the shelves in March, much to the delight of the band’s worldwide army of fans. Mr Beast is a concerted effort to move away from the loud/soft dynamic of earlier albums which has since been emulated time and again by the burgeoning post-rock troops to become a tired formula. Instead, it’s a return to the impenetrable barrage of distortion that made Mogwai a name to remember in the first place.

That said, however, they haven’t left behind their melodic sensibilities. This is an album of understated beauty and dissonant hope; an unprovoked attack on the soul, which paints an austere and bleak landscape and then malevolently and relentlessly assaults it with overwrought guitars and keyboards.

A highlight is the forthcoming single Friend of the Night. Debussy-esque pianos lead us through this intricate gem of a track, which evolves majestically from the tentative through to the ultimately triumphant. The melancholy and sparkling Team Handed slides into a delicious melting pot of sonic mastery, while the haunting lullaby Travel Is Dangerous, with its clandestine melodic guitars that come rolling off the fret boards leaves us in no doubt that discord has never sounded so appealing.

(Appeared in Record Collector March 2006)

Interview with Mew
Shepherd's Bush Empire, 9 February 2006

It’s rather fitting for a band who met at school while making a video about the end of the world that having a conversation with Mew’s vocalist Jonas Bjerre is rather like listening to a eulogy. It’s long, it’s depressing and it verges on morbid. But it is engaging. Softly spoken, and wrapped up warm against England’s cruel winter in a rustic Scandinavian knitted jumper, Bjerre is the epitomy of propriety. Listlessly pacing the backstage dressing room at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, he speaks so quietly it’s sometimes difficult to hear what he’s saying. “Can I offer you a glass of Perrier?” he asks earnestly, before stacking a myriad of Mew CDs that are scattered on the table in front of him.
Mew’s recent successes have been innumerable. 2003’s critically acclaimed Frengers, certified platinum in Denmark, was unleashed on an unsuspecting world as a result of a lucrative partnership with luminary manager Alan McGee and industry cohorts Sony BMG. They relinquished the auspicious role of touring with rock veterans R.E.M. last summer to release their most recent opus, Mew And The Glass Handed Kites, which has since commanded reams of column inches analyzing its status as a ‘concept’ album. You’d think all the attention would go to their heads, but commenting on these accomplishments, Bjerre is measured and guarded. Of R.E.M., he succinctly states, “With Michael Stipe we talked about politics and music. He’s really nice.”

Somehow miles from the beaten track and yet protected under the wing of some of pop’s most important management teams, Bjerre reflects on Mew’s fortunate position of being permitted to retain their artistic integrity. “I think we’re very lucky that we’ve been able to do things completely our own way,” he admits. “We’ve had very few battles with how we should do things, and I think it’s amazing that a major label like Sony have let us make a whole album that’s just one long song.” Surely an ambitious move for a band so early in their career, And The Glass Handed Kites moves almost seamlessly from track to track. “We intended the album to be one long stream,” explains Bjerre. “I don’t know what the concept would be if there is a concept. We wanted to do it because we looked at the last record and found that we changed direction a lot in the middle of songs. It’s so boring when you hear a song and you already know after 20 seconds what’s going to happen. So that’s what we wanted to avoid. And then we just thought, why not make a whole album like that”

Talking about McGee’s other success stories, there’s a momentary and only just discernible note of disdain in Bjerre’s voice, which disappears almost as soon as it arrives. “Oasis are not really my cup of tea,” he says. “I think it’s a little too derivative and straightforward.” Luckily the feeling appears to be mutual. “I read in a Danish newspaper that Liam Gallagher was interviewed and he was played different Danish music and they played him one of our tracks,” he chuckles. “At first he thought it was a girl singing and when he found out it was a guy he gave us zero stars out of six. Which I thought was fair enough,” he adds gracefully. Not that he cares what Oasis think, what with one of the world’s most infamous rock bands championing Mew at the moment. “We just saw an interview where Bono said some very nice stuff about us,” he says. “I think U2 have proven to be a very long-lasting and creative and Bono as a singer really strikes a nerve and has a lot of soul.” Which is presumably more than can be said of the Gallagher brothers.

Putting small talk aside, the dressing room we’re in is stifling and oppressive, and hardly conducive to forging a mutual understanding of one another. It’s clear that frivolity is firmly off the agenda, yet attempting to unravel the Kafka-esque surrealism of Bjerre’s psyche is a tall order. He dreams about death, illness and mortality and expresses his fears through lyrics and profoundly unsettling graphics that accompany Mew’s live performances. “It’s amazing how you can have a dream,” he muses, “and even though it’s not something particularly happy, you just wake up and feel that you can reach back into something that you once had and that you’ve lost, or forgotten about. I think it’s very important.”

“I have a lot of nightmares,” he whispers, uncomfortably shifting in his seat, eyes to the ground. “They’re often about bodily malfunction. I had a dream a couple of days ago about how the skin on the right side of my ribcage was so thin that I could look through it in the mirror and see all my organs. I think it comes from a fear of death and getting old and dying in a car crash.” He pauses, tentatively, before adding, “This album in particular is about fear. I have a lot of fears. I think most people do.” And of ‘Seething Rain Weeps For You’, a bleak representation of inevitable goodbyes, he adds, “It’s about the negative aspect of the future and how no matter what you do you’re always going to end up probably suffering quite a bit in a hospital bed and then dying, or losing the love of your life.” You might say Bjerre’s a bit of a worrier.

But it’s more than that. Words are proving to be an inadequate medium through which to decipher Bjerre’s nightmares, but his helium-voiced stage persona, lost amidst his many surrealist graphical creations – gnashing wolves, deformed skulls with grotesque faces – is a disturbing allusion to his own mental anguish. “I do all the backdrop visuals for our live shows and I put a lot of work into that. We all do different stuff in the band, we all draw and paint.”

One thing’s for sure: rock n roll isn’t Mew’s thing. Questioned about whether the band has ever been involved with drugs, he quickly answers in the negative. “I think the reason some bands do is more to do with the hardship of living this life. Being away from home all the time. I think some people feel like they have to make every night a party, and we’re not really like that. We don’t party every night. I guess maybe people get numb from touring a lot. It’s a stimulant.” Very quietly and sadly he implores, “it’s very hard to have a relationship when you’re touring all the time.” Mew don’t make time for their numerous groupies either. “I think we have those if we want to at some places. But we’re not really into that either.” Do they engage in crazy rock n roll antics? “Every so often, but it’s personal.”

But it doesn’t look as though Mew are ready to surrender themselves to the inevitable demise of the world just yet. “I think we’re probably going to tour for the rest of the year,” Bjerre says, brightly. “Our album’s coming out in America in the Summer and there are a lot of places in Europe we haven’t toured yet.” And then? “Hopefully we’ll make another record. Sony have signed us up for another album.”

(Appeared in Disorder online, February 2006)

http://www.disordermagazine.com/article.php?id=247

Fell City Girl
Live at The WaterRats Theatre, King's Cross, 8 Nov 2005

Fell City Girl’s vocalist is gloriously disconcerting to watch. His diminutive figure stands enveloping the mic stand, his whole body tense with emotion as he howls, “these are the heart attacks.” I corner him. Are the psychoses he touches on in his songs real? Affirmative. Splendid. He chokes himself into a wailing stupor onstage; we stand open-mouthed, unable to clear our skulls of the beautifully intrepid and haunting songs they treat us to a full thirty minutes of.

I don’t want to hear about Yorke or Buckley. This is a band that will itself become a clichéd influence to cite. They are tight as nails, they have a fistful of mesmerising songs and they have a singer whose soaring falsettos cut right through the whole bloody racket. Their set-closer, Rudolph Valentino, Star of the Big Screen is my favourite. They blow us away with a wall of noise and then, just as suddenly, command a silence of the venue that makes you afraid you’ll be the one whose phone goes off.

They’re a band of contrasts. They like brevity; they like 6-minute assaults on their audience’s tender ears. They like loud; they like quiet. They like sensitivity; they like rage. And this reviewer likes Fell City Girl.

Top 6 of 2005

Bright Eyes
I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (album)
From the man who made Saddle Creek famous comes one half of a double album release that sets him poles apart from his prosaic contemporaries. Oberst’s is the epitomy of alluring angst, his wavering voice apparently about to topple over the edge into an abyss of depression at any moment.

Four Tet/Explosions in the Sky/Kid Koala
Hammersmith Palais (concert)
The best line-up of the year in one of London’s most intimate venues: scratch genius Kid Koala leading us through an eclectic mix of jazz and breakbeat, Explosions in the Sky hammering home their effervescent post-rock presence and Four Tet paving the way for their disciples in the burgeoning avant garde electronica scene.

Bloc Party
Silent Alarm (album)
2005’s darlings of the music industry, art rockers Bloc Party have stormed the charts the year through, and Silent Alarm is the glorious souvenir of their first year in the limelight. Urgent and tender at the same time, this album is both infectious and honest. Long may the Party continue.

Fell City Girl
Weaker Light (single)
It’s been a big year for Oxford’s Fell City Girl. Reading festival and a support slot on tour with Long-view has culminated in the A&R vultures circling hungrily at their shows. Mixing Buckley with Mogwai, Weaker Light includes the loudest 10 seconds you’ll hear this year followed by the quietest. Watch this space.

Jack Johnson
In Between Dreams (album)
Hawaiian singer-songwriter Jack Johnson is more used to strumming away on a lonely beach between catching waves than playing to stadium audiences, but he’s created quite a name for himself of late. Championed by the likes of Ben Harper, this blues-infused album of understated depth has placed him firmly on the folk map.

Squarepusher
Glastonbury (festival)
More mind-bendingly nimble bass lines, the likes of which are yet to be matched by his rock contemporaries, Squarepusher, aka Thomas Jenkinson, wowed a discerning crowd at Glastonbury this year. One man, a laptop and his bass guitar, Jenkinson’s beats remain the pinnacle of intelligent electronica.

Richard Walters
Umbrella Songs EP

Richard Walters has none of the screaming machismo of his rock contemporaries, but his achingly pure voice mesmerises me from start to finish of his debut EP, Umbrella Songs. He reminds me of Nick Drake, but with a bucket load more fervour: an impassioned young Jeff Buckley. Recent collaborations with The Cranberries’ Noel Hogan have meant that he might finally be making a name for himself.

His songs are delicate yet powerful. He sings love songs; he’s hardly NME fodder, but you certainly won’t find any whining self-indulgence à la Dashboard Confessional on this five-song offering either. His EP starts with a cover of John Denver’s I’m Sorry, stripped down to the bare bones, with a single acoustic guitar accompanying Walters’ beautiful falsettos. “I’m sorry for all the lies I told you,” he pleads, beseechingly. It makes me want to forgive him, and all I’ve ever done is love his music. The singer-songwriter is a much maligned genre, but Walters is a shining beacon of an ambassador among the plentiful Dylan wannabes.

His self-penned songs are just as accomplished. His haunting vocals are highlighted by the sparse arrangements, not least on October. “I don’t know why I ever thought you could be the one to save me,” he wails, firmly tugging at the heart strings.

It’s difficult to believe that this is Walters’ first EP, so engaging it is. He is a master of beautiful simplicity, and Noel Hogan might just have the undeniable pleasure of making Walters famous.