Indiepop for free - Saturday 16th May

I'll use the hundredth post on my blog for blatant spamming.

If you come down to Sumac on Gladstone Street tomorrow night (Saturday) you'll get to see Northern Portrait, Red Shoe Diaries, Horowitz and Electric Pop Group for free. Well, I might ask you quietly for a donation at some point during the night so that our Scandinavian friends can keep themselves in crispbread, but apart from that you can take advantage of the heroically cheap bar at Sumac, and generally revel in the altogether friendly atmosphere the place emits.

Hope to see you there.
x

Cats on Fire - Our Temperance Movement (Matinee)

There haven't been many more bands that have quite captured the indiepop zeitgeist as much as Cats on Fire over the last couple of years. Scandinvian? Check. Ridiculous good looks? Oh, yes. A million packed out London gigs over the space of two weeks? Of course. And so why haven't they grabbed my imagination so much? I'm not so sure...
It maybe comes down to the fact that I've never really tried listening to their songs enough, because one and half listens into Our Temperance Movement and I'm beginning to see what all the fuss is all about. Sure, a lot of what Cats on Fire is style and is stylised, but you can say that about a lot of indiepop at the moment. I won't mention names, of course, because I'm a good boy, but if you're going to do something obvious, make sure you do it well. And that's what Cats on Fire do.
And so when they sound like Felt on Lay Down Your Arms, at least they do it really well, rather than just putting on the voice, or the guitar part or the production.
If there's one thing missing, its humour. Apart from the fact that sometimes Matthias Bjorkas tries so hard to sound like Morrissey that he ends of sounding like Euros Childs. But that'll be the accent, I suppose. He probably thinks I sound like... ooh, I dunno... Duncan Norvelle.
Still, that is a minor gripe. Because there's songs here like Never Sell the House, which is so beautiful that you can do without the knowing nods and just pretend to be lonely and misunderstood again. And if you really, really are lonely and misunderstood then you're in for a treat.
Or, if you really fancy a piece of Marr-ish nostalgia, dance around your handbag to Steady Pace. I know I will later on. Or, if you're feeling really saucy, do that bendy-knee dance to the Housemartins-esque Tears in Your Cup, which really does it for me.
And so I think, eventually, I've fallen for Cats on Fire. I'm sure we'll make a lovely couple.

The Lucksmiths split!

Northern Portrait + Electric Pop Group + Horowitz + Red Shoe Diaries, 16th May
Originally uploaded by a layer of chips

It seems so. This just in from Mark Monnone. Maybe it's for the best...

Dear close friend of the Lucksmiths,

We're really sad to have this news to tell and sad to tell it to you like this, but the Lucksmiths have had a beautiful run, and we're putting them to bed for the last time. It's not you, it's us, so please don't feel too bad. We're playing some shows in Europe in July which were already booked, and then we're doing a victory lap of Australia in August.

We love you all, and hopefully we'll see you soon.

This is all coming out in a press release in a couple of days, but we thought we'd mention it to you personally... in a group email.

Much love,

Marty, Marky, Tali and Louis

In other news, I implore you to come and see Northern Portrait and The Electronic Pop Group and Red Shoe Diaries and Horowitz on Saturday. There's a poster up there all about it. It's what The Lucksmiths would've wanted.

The Seven Inches - Openness and Honesty ep (Indie-mp3 Records)

That other half of Lost Music, Tom Bartlett, has also now started up his own label, and Leeds indiefop stalwarts The Seven Inches are on its first release. I've not seen this band for some years now, but this fantastic ep has made me want to seek them out all over again.
The title track takes me back to early Comet Gain with Ian Cockburn's rough growl tempered by Emily Clavering's matter-of-fact vocals, and a cheery background. It's a proper little strumpet of a song.
The Rowing Song reminds me why The Seven Inches are sometimes unfairly derided as some kind of comedy band, in the fact that it's about a minute long and shouldn't be taken too seriously at all. But it's closer To Boldy Go which steals the show. To Boldly Go is to The Seven Inches what The Foolishness We Create... was and is to Airport Girl; a sort of indiepop epic. It's beautiful, and bittersweet and longing and funny and sad all at the same time and I love it.
It's good to have The Seven Inches back. It really is.

The Kick Inside - Oh Vanity! (Oddbox Records)

This is the first release on Trev from Lost Music's new label, and it's a particularly perky way to start. The Kick Inside make a very spikey, sophisticated pop noise, and Oh, Vanity, whilst suffering from an overlong, somewhat clumsy middle eight (or whatever its called - I'm not Brian May) still manages to charm the pants of you by time it fades away.
Meanwhile, It's Always the Quiet Ones sounds a bit like Duran Duran. Honestly. There's something very early 80s Top of the Pops about it. All it needs is brass. That's not something to be ashamed of, of course. Could it be Haircut 100 I'm hearing through the deliberately stripped-back production? Maybe...
Whatever - there are far worse ways in which to launch a new label. And whilst maybe The Kick Inside won't quite win you over just yet with this single, there's enough here to keep me interested.

Songs that saved your life, part 4

The end of school couldn't come quick enough for me. I'd somehow managed to pass my 11+ and had ended up at Caistor Grammar School - a place that, save for a few exceptions, parents bought their kids into by giving them extra-curricular private lessons from the age of 3 months.

I very soon found myself at the bottom of the academic pile, and on my way out of school at the age of 16 with just three other people from my year. But the last year at school was bearable because of a teacher there called Chris Pulford, who was about a million times youger than anyone of the other decrepit specimens. Pulford liked good music. He introduced me and some friends to bands like Throwing Muses and James and Bradford and The Wedding Present, and he took to us Rock City in faraway Nottingham to see Jesus and Mary Chain and James, and it all seemed thrilling for a very short time.

Of course, it was a load of shite.

Anyway, Pulford made me a tape that had James' hard-to-find-even-then live album, One Man Clapping, and then on the few minutes that were left on the b-side, he put some Wedding Present tracks on. One of them was 'You Should Always Keep in Touch with Your Friends'.

I'm not all the biggest Wedding Present fan - far from it, in fact. But this song was so perfect for a time when I truly thought that I'd never see my far cleverer, more dedicated friends ever again. I still shake the bastards off 20 years later.

When I left school in the early summer of 1990 I spent an awful lot of time in Grimsby getting drunk on Thunderbird (blue label only - I wasn't hard enough for the red label stuff) and dyeing my hair black. And I didn't keep in touch with my friends for a good eight months, because I thought they'd be doing all that cool stuff that sixth formers do, and I'd just got a job as an apprentice plumber, and why would they want to speak to me, eh? But they did, and that was nice. And that's why this song will always be quite important to me. So there.

Horowitz - Drop the Hat

There's a new track on the Horowitz myspace page which everyone must hear immediately. It's called Drop the Hat. Horowitz never fail to come up with something completely different from their last completely different sound, and this time is no different. Drop the Hat sounds like something Beulah might be singing if they weren't so disappointingly extinct by now.

I've really no idea why Horowitz aren't mentioned in the same breathy way as POBPAH are at the moment - maybe they're just not pretty enough. But I can assure you Pete has tight buttocks and Ian likes jazz and does a fine line in jumpers.

NB. This is not a dating agency. Letters of marriage proposals to the band, please.