The Hermit Crabs - Correspondence Course (Matinee)

There's a general consensus that this new ep isn't as good as The Hermit Crabs' debut record, Feelgood Factor. But I can't say I really agree.

As ever, the band's songs are immaculately produced, and the exquisite opener About You Before is crystal clear. It also reminds me a little bit of Lush's later stuff, which is nice.

The title track is a complete joy, and explodes at the end in a way that reminds me of The Windmills at their most powerful.

Turn the Clock Back - I'm sure the band won't mind me saying - is very Camera Obscura, and is therefore extremely pretty indeed. It's also (as the title reveals) a bit of a weepy old thing.

Things are pepped up again with the Housemartins-esque I Don't Know How, which, it seems to me, would be a good track to do the washing up to.

It's good that The Hermit Crabs are around. In the absence of Monkey Swallows the Universe they've filled a gap in my record collection that was in danger of becoming very dusty indeed. Correspondence Course is a tiny triumph.

Pocketbooks and The Loves on tour

Pocketbooks are set to go on tour with The Loves in April, it seems. Liz from The School is booking dates for an indiepop double-header, which should result in some ace shows. Pocketbooks will be releasing their debut album in April; The Loves their third.

I love Pocketbooks very much. As a band and as people. There'll be an interview up here soon, but first make do with this wonderful live version of Falling Leaves.

Days spent wandering

Yesterday I had to go to Leicester for work. But the meetings I had were four hours apart, so I had loads of time to have a very slow wander around the city centre, and meet a friend for a pint during his dinner hour. I like days like this.

After I'd rummaged through Leicester's excellent open air market (stopping only to buy some old badges), I carried on through the Lanes district and found myself a bit lost. That was until I realised that I just around the corner from The Princess Charlotte, which is sadly closing down.

The Charlotte is one of those provincial UK venues that every little touring band stopped off at a few years back (see also The Narrowboat in Nottingham or the Northampton Racehorse). It was a complete and utter shit hole, but it had a soul that none of the venues sponsored by lager brand have today. People used to virtually live in these places, and you could always go in and see someone you vaguely knew, or at least get chatting to someone about music or footy or stuff. Maybe it's because I'm getting old and curmudgeonly, but that doesn't seem to happen much these days.

My most fond memory of The Charlotte is going to see Prolapse play there with Leicester's ace Kooky Monster (Julie Fairgreave from The Mai '68s was their singer) and The Council, which were Mark Hibbett's old band. I suppose it was 1993 or 1994. Anyway, it was such a thrilling night. Prolapse were my favourite band at the time, and remain a favourite. I get goosebumps just thinking about how good they were live, and how good they were that night. They were pretty amazing the next night at the Narrowboat in Nottingham, too.

I must stop whittering on about The Past, but when so much of it is disappearing it's hard not to get all misty-eyed sometimes, isn't it?

Here's Autocade by Prolapse. Ignore the homemade video, and just listen to the music. The bit where Linda sings, "Say I'm weak, and say I'm greedy" makes me shiver. This reminds me of long nights out in Nottingham and being on the dole and somehow managing not only survive on £35 a week, but also have an amazing time.

May goes POP!

May's gig has taken an unexpected turn for the excellent, and Electric Pop Group are now going to be playing with Northern Portrait, Red Shoe Diaries, and Horowitz. I'm gonna change the venue, too, 'cos I really don't want to mess this one up.

Anyway, what a way to go out!

The Family Cat

The Family Cat were pretty much typical of a lot of British indie bands at the arse end of the 80s and early 90s, in the fact they just weren't sexy enough to emulate the likes of Lush or Curve or - heaven forbid - The Stone Roses, yet had a live following every bit as fanatical.

Going to a Family Cat gig between 1990 and 1992 was one of the most exhilerating things a teenager could do. Indeed, they might have been like a lot of indie bands around in that way that they sold loads more t-shirts than they did records, but in many ways they were completely different; they weren't shoegazers and they weren't baggy. And they weren't The bloody Senseless Things.

I first heard The Family Cat whilst listening to John Peel's 1989 Festive Fifty. Numbers 50 and 49 were Inspiral Carpet tracks. Then came The Family Cat's mesmerising Tom Verlaine, which sounded like The Field Mice playing a Spaceman 3 song. It still gives me shivers and transports me back to a horrible period of my life where I lived with my Dad on a tiny house next to by-pass in North East Lincolnshire. I was earning £1.50 an hour at the time, all my friends were still at school, my Dad was drinking rather heavily, and so I sort emersed myself in listening to late night radio and buying indie records from Andy's Records in Grimsby.

Tom Verlaine isn't the greatest song ever written, but it reminds me so much of those days that I can hardly bring myself to listen to it now. But every time I do, I'm still struck by its power.

Anyway, I immediately repaired to Andy's Records and bought the band's mini-album Tell 'Em We're Surfin. It's still fresh today, despite sounding like it was recorded in the middle of cow pat.

The band's run of singles after the mini-album firmly pinned them to my heart forever. Remember What it is That You Love had a very fashionable quite verse/noisy chorus thing going on; Place With a Name is probably as near to indiepop as they came and had the beautiful Concrete and Pass Away on the b-side; Colour Me Grey was my 'feeling fed-up' teenage anthem for a few good months and featured a pre-superstardom PJ Harvey on backing vocals; and Steamroller - the band's biggest hit - was about their love for Southampton FC, and was a massive in provincial indie discos, as I remember.

After that, I moved to Nottingham, and I think I sort of left The Family Cat behind in Grimsby. The band's second album, Furthest From the Sun, got played to death, but it wasn't really the same, and by the time of the last lp, Magic Happens (ironically their most successful), I was still buying every single, but only really out of duty.

But for the adventures of going to down to London to bounce around at sweaty gigs in the early 90s, I'll always love The Family Cat dearly. As their t-shirts said: All other bands are dogshite.
Well, that's not strictly true, of course...

Camera Obscura interview

Camera Obscura, you might have noticed, have signed a big fat worldwide deal with 4AD. Hurrah! The band were good enough to answer some questions in the run-up to releasing their long-awaited new album.

What's it like being part of a new fashionable music genre after being together for such a long time?

I don't think we've ever really felt part of anything fashionable. We've always just got on with it and made the music we make, but i think thats helped us to keep going, cause we've never been seen as part of a fad that fades away or goes out of fashion.

How's the Glasgow scene at the moment? Any new favourites?

Its always a bit of a hotbed really. Theres not really been a particular Glasgow sound of late, but theres always loads of bands starting up and doing their thing, frequently with a lot of the same folks popping up in the new bands. Dananananackroyd seem to be doing really well. The Just Joans and The Second Hand Marching Band are worth a listen.

How have you found recording the new album? Does it get easier with every release?

I think after the last album, which was the first time we'd used a producer rather than doing it ourselves, it has become a lot easier. We can put our trust in Jari and we know he'll push us to make the best record we can make. The last time was a bit of an eye opener, and it really helped us up our game as players, cause we'd never had anyone pushing us in the studio before. That translated into playing live too, which we were really happy about.

Does it frustrate you that you appear to be more popular overseas than you are in the UK?

It would be nice to sell as many records here as we do in the States, obviously being from here we'd like to do well here.

How do you think this will ever change?

The recent change of label will hopefully see us moving up a gear in the UK, which we're really excited about. Number 39 with a bullet. The last two albums have come out on Elefant in the UK, and whilst we love the folks at Elefant, and its been quite a nice feeling to be a scottish band on a spanish record label, making records in sweden and then playing to people all over the place, we've effectively not had a UK label, so this is a massive change for us.

Who would you say has helped you the most in your time together as a band?

If it hadn't been for John Peel, a lot of people would never have heard of us way back. So from that point of view, he was our biggest supporter from the word go. Doing the sessions for him too was a massive boost to us, especially the challenge of the Burn's Night session, when we went off and wrote new music for some Robert Burn's poems. Nothing like a deadline to actually get you into a creative panic.

How did the Tesco advert music come about? Did you have a big decision to make as to whether you said "yes", or wasn't that your decision in the first place?

The Tesco ad was down to the ad company approaching us to use Country Mile as they really liked it and thought it fitted the advert. Theres a lot of companies we really wouldn't be happy using our music, but everyone needs shopping, right. It got our music across to loads of new people in a way that releasing a single never would. At the end of the day, after investing so much in the music we make, we want as many people as possible to hear it.

What's the best thing about being in Camera Obscura?

Just getting to make the music we make and travelling all over the world playing it. It makes all the hours of hanging around waiting for things to happen at soundchecks and the tedium of flights and long van drives worthwhile.

And what does the next year hold for you all? Anything new and exciting on the horizon?

We've just been working on the new album and getting ready for it to come out. We're very excited to be working with 4AD, they have such a great reputation, and it feels like ages since Lets Get Out Of This Country came out, so we're all raring to get going and get playing again, and have this new album out for people to hear.

Mascot Fight - Pantomime Hearse (Cassette County)

It's so easy to misjudge Mascot Fight if you've only seen them live. I'm no musician, but their songs can often be quite complex, and they have to have perfect sound at their gigs to make them sound right.
Take the simply gorgeous opener here, Terry is the Chicago Sun. Live it's often completely hamstrung by the bass being too high in the mix - here, it's heartbreaking.
Pantomime Hearse starts at a canter. Danger Man buzzes around like a sort of flowery Buzzcocks pop shock, and ends with a wonderful Pavement-esque guitar solo, before falling apart completely.
I've mentioned That's a Photocopier... here before, and I still love it's tale of 9-5 woe. But it's City Bones that's the real treasure of this album. It starts quietly before Sean Dodds' plaintive, fragile vocal comes in. Then prepare to weep buckets as the most melancholy chorus in pop hits you straight in the goolies. Tragedy has rarely sounded so good.
That they follow it up with the jazzy throwaway pop Thinking in French makes me smile. Also, it's a bit sexy. Blush.
They're showing off now, and even manage to get a sea shanty during an 'interval' two thirds of the way through the album. Which leads nicely in the darkness of Diego Barnes, with its tense verses and underlying atmosphere of violence. It's like the soundtrack to a night in a Wetherspoons in Doncaster town centre. That's right.
I moaned in an earlier post about the demise or disappearance of three great Derby bands as we entered the new year. The one that makes up such a fine quartet has written an album that fills me full of joy and makes the loss just that little bit easier.
If I were you, I'd download the whole of Pantomime Hearse here.