album review. weezer. hurley. 14 sept 2010. epitaph records

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album review: summer camp. young ep. 6 oct 2010. moshi moshi

i’ve bleated on about summer camp a lot over the two incarnations of this blog. it all started when i first heard their cover of ‘i only have eyes for you’ and fell in love. i can’t access the old blog anymore, but i described the sound as something along the lines of “music you want to listen to when walking through an empty adsa car park in the rain, on the way home from a great date.” i stand by this and in a little way i am a bit proud of this description. it really summed up the way you feel when you listen to it well i feel.

i saw them a few times in the next couple of months, including the ‘ghost train’ single launch at the lexington and a great support slot for the equally awesome slow club at koko. i was lucky enough to meet them (elizabeth sankey and jeremy warmsley) at the latter and not only are they producing wonderful music they are also a genuinely nice and funny couple (they are a couple, right?). they continue to be two of my favourite people to follow on twitter and i only didn’t include them in my twitter recommendations a few weeks ago because i don’t want them to think i am actually a stalker. although i am. a bad one. that’s another story though.

so, onto the ep (i’ve counted it as an album because i haven’t got an ep category) i was meant to be writing about. it includes two older tracks, the aforementioned ‘ghost train’ along with ‘was it worth it’. both fit nicely on here and i have previously written about them and how they continue the theme of young love. the difference with summer camp is that there is always a reference point that you can relate to in the lyrics. whether talking about boys wanting to be teen wolf or boys and girls kissing on a dirty blue duvet in ‘veronica sawyer’, you can always picture the scene in your mind.

the real stand out track, not just on this ep but from their entire output so far, is ’round the moon’. from the bent accent of the opening bars to the jeremy’s lazy somewhat closed-mouth vocals it just begs to be put on repeat and listened to all day. when elizabeth comes in with soft support, once again she invokes memories of teenage love. in addition, never has a video been so apt for a single. the visuals are from a swedish love film and i’m so pleased that somebody in the summer camp, erm, camp had stumbled across this movie at some point. josh was right with his fondness of it.

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album review: scott pilgrim vs the world ost. various artists. 10 aug 2010. abkco music & records

first off, full disclosure. i love broken social scene. i love beck. i really want to see scott pilgrim vs the world. this was never going to get a negative review from me. add to the fact that i also love blood red shoes, the rolling stones and metric, all of whom also appear on the soundtrack and you have made a soundtrack you’re going to have to work hard for me not to love.

having said that, this isn’t as perfect for me as the contributors involved would suggest. the reason is broken social scene’s appearance. i first fell for the collective a few years back and, as i may have mentioned before, ‘you forgot it in people’ is one of my top five albums of all time. what’s gone wrong with their contribution here then? three tracks. one re-release (albeit the fantastic ‘anthems for a seventeen-year-old girl’) and two under the guise of crash & the boys that come in at less than a minute each. they are deliberately playing an arty-farty rival band, and i am sure this is relevant to the film, but it still left me a little disappointed.

beck ups the ante with some superb work as both himself and scott’s own band, sex bob-omb, and all other tracks fit the soundtrack nicely – especially metric. i think this may well get to the route of the problem. the soundtrack sounds very much like a soundtrack, not an album. does that make sense? i probably need to see the film to appreciate it properly, and i am fairly confident that i will listen to it many times once i have. that’s the beauty of proper soundtracks though. they don’t just act as music, they also send you back into the cinema.

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i’m really sorry about the amazingly unoriginal post title by the way. it’s been a long day.

single review: vic goddard. blackpool ep. 11 oct 2010. gnu records

i got sent this track over the weekend and thought i’d post it for three reasons… firstly, i’ve been a bit shit recently due to my laptop situation, so thought it might be nice to give you some free music. secondly, the track is all about blackpool and being a spurs fan i need to post it as a show of solidarity with them as arsenal turned them over at the weekend. or something. finally, this is really a bit different. i don’t think i’ve posted anything like this on either incarnation of sockformation.

the track, from vic godard, was written for a musical by irvine welsh called ‘blackpool’. the musical wasn’t going to be your usual west end type all singing all dancing affair, and the ‘trainspotting’ had something very different in mind. things went a bit wrong and welsh wasn’t involved in the end and the musical didn’t follow his plans. it flopped by all accounts, but godard wanted to release the music anyway. i’m pleased he has because this track is fucking genius.

download the song and see what you think, but expect a sort of fun, old time sing along about blackpool. take that theo walcott. that’ll show him.

vic godard. blackpool (mp3)

single review: tricky. murder weapon. 30 aug 2010. domino records

next month tricky releases his first studio album in two years. two years? is that right? it amazes me because i can’t remember anything from him for ages. there were a few singles that flitted about at the turn of the century i think, and i’ve been aware that he’s still been recording stuff, but it still seems like years and years since his last serious assault on my eardrums. i remember ‘the hell ep’ taking over my life in the summer of ’95. it would still have a prime position on my cd rack many years later.

he’s back anyway (although it seems he’s never been away) with a new album and this is the first single from it. he has reworked a dance-hall track form the era i remember and adore tricky from. for me this still works. it’s a mixed up and confused track moving from one sound to another throughout, but in a way that make you want to listen again and again. from a quick flick through reviews of his more recent records i get the feeling that he hasn’t lived up to his early nineties promise, but to me ‘murder weapon’ can hold its head up high. it is dark. it is moody. that’s how i like my tricky. bring on the album.

live review: i dream in colour. 93 feet east, london. 28 july 2010

in the midst of the great british festival season it’s easy to forget that we, the new-music-chasing public should be out there on these fine summer’s evenings discovering bands trying to climb the musical ladder. with festivals showcasing what feels like seven million bands every weekend, we’d be forgiven during these warmer months for failing to get out to the dark and dingy gigs that turn these bands from underdogs to summer festival regulars. wanting to move away from the “festivals have everyone i want to see” mindset, last night i headed to london’s brick lane to see i dream in colour, a young london outfit playing songs from their recently released ep ‘the boiler room’ (available on itunes, produced by iain gore – mystery jets, glasvegas, libertines). i’d heard a lot about them through a guitar tech mate of mine (tech is short for technician but i’m not sure what guitar is short for*). this techie geek has worked with some big names like maximo park, the maccabees and morcheeba (he prefers bands beginning with ‘m’), so when a few months ago he described richard judge (idic’s frontman/guitarist) as the best songwriter he’d ever come across, i was intrigued and keen to catch them live.

i dream in colour are a classic indie band, a lazy summation i know, but they are and it’s not a bad thing, with all the usual suspects as influences – the beatles et al. they began with ‘ready to go’, a strong opener with a moody intro and memorable riff. second up was the one song that i and most of the crowd already knew, ‘get along’. it had all the elements of a well crafted indie pop song, evidencing the songwriting prowess i’d heard all about. a couple of tracks came and went in the middle, perhaps not quite up to the high standards on show earlier in the gig, but things picked up again towards the end of the set. ‘fourteen’ is a great song, well structured, well layered, good chorus and propelled to another level by richard’s mature and key changing vocals – think matt bellamy minus the opera rubbish. such strong vocals highlight that this is his band and these are his songs. the last song ‘finding the courage’ was my favourite. when it got going i was hoping the outro would last for ages, the kind of song that could have had a six minute ego stroking ending (the fact that it didn’t again shows there’s thought behind the writing), but with an abrupt finish their set was over and it was time to head into the night…

all in all it was good to get back to the midweek grass roots of music with a band i knew little about. during the set i felt slightly disappointed with the rest of the band – happy to just provide the backdrop for richard to shine, but on reflection that’s all they needed to do. shine richard does. extremely impressive vocals, catchy songs and the ability to veer nicely between languid and energetic. for i dream in colour to progress and climb that musical ladder where the big shot guitar techs jump onboard, they know what they need; a name change to something beginning with ‘m’… so while they consider new band names, i’ll try and work out what ‘guitar’ is short for.

(*copyright of mat horne & alex oakley. jokers.)

words by jamie day (twitter, blog)

live review: the hundred in the hands. the old blue last, shoreditch. 15 july 2010

last thursday evening i attended a vice magazine party at the old blue last in shoreditch. the people at vice promised us “beautiful people and bands”, but after a brief scout there was only one person that caught my eye – the only person in the room who seemed natural, not over dressed in her dead granny’s clothes, and not competing for queen of quirky amongst her fellow hoxton heroes. step forward eleanore everdell, singer, synths and all things electric and exciting in the two piece band the hundred in the hands.

eleanore, the female half of the hundred in the hands first caught my eye last year when i saw them warm up for the maccabees at the brighton great escape festival. they were pretty good back then, so i had high expectations of them a year of growth on. they’re from new yooik, and play an easy on the ear minimal avant poppy dubby electro, think the basics of crystal castles minus the screams and urge to take a load of pills and rave. more tap your foot stuff, or casually shake your hair about (as eleanore does so well). despite a few technical hitches, their set was laden with catchy pop songs from their new lp out in september such as ‘ghosts’, ‘tom tom’ and a heavier than usual version of their most popular song ‘dressed in dresden’. everdell seductively propels the songs with an ease that seems effortless and natural. in complete contrast to her minimal yet perfect effort is guitarist jason friedman who crashes around his million or so effects pedals like a moody emo teenager creating a sound that bares little resemblance to what would naturally amplify from his collection of guitars. some might say the contrast compliments their on stage sound, but i found the actions of jason a bit much. for some reason mid-set he adorned one of those silly caps that a lot of the early 20-somethings tilt on the back of their boy-in-a-band-hair these day. memories of harry enfield and kevin the teenager came flashing back. occasionally the sound created by jason was too wall-of-noise for everdell’s soft tones and any hooks or melodies seemed lost in his blaze of effects.

i liked the delivery from eleanore, i also enjoyed the knee jerking beats of their songs, but found myself increasingly aggravated by jason’s on stage, back to the crowd performance. but with a little tweak in their live sound and stage presence here, a removal of a cap there, the hundred in the hands will soon find themselves propelled to the bigger gigs and due to the law of averages, should ensure an increase in the beautiful people as wrongfully promised tonight…

words by jamie day (twitter, blog)

album review: mount kimbie. crooks & lovers. 19 july 2010. hotflush recordings

when we went off the see the xx the other day, i think i mentioned in my comments on emma’s review that mount kimbie supported and were pretty fucking awesome. they first came to my attention with some remix work for the big pink and foals earlier in the year. now they are set to release their debut album tomorrow after a couple of excellent eps.

it is good. fucking good. i know that isn’t the most in depth review you’ll ever read, but it is simply the best way to describe it. apparently the sound is called post-dubstep. if you say so. i don’t really know what it means but i don’t like to miss a good bandwagon to jump on if i get the chance, so post-dubstep it is. on the rare occasions that discernible vocals enter the record the sound is soft and dreamy in an air france type way, but it is when the electronic sounds and samples hit that the tracks come to life. i’m in love with the album at the moment and i can only hope that this is the route that dubstep takes, rather than where other acts like magnetic man are going.

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live review: the xx. somerset house. 13 july 2010

i’m indifferent to the xx. to me, their main purpose is to provide the bbc with background music. and for this, they serve their purpose spectacularly, particularly on bbc3 red button festival coverage. a live performance, however, is beyond them. i didn’t notice them enter the stage, nor did I see them leave. the first 20 minutes of the set was alright, i almost enjoyed their haunting, melodic, trademark sound. however, this became fucking dull. they lack charisma and stage presence. i sometimes wonder if this is a contrived move on their part to ensure they remain enigmatic and mysterious. it doesn’t work. i don’t even think (warning: in-joke) a pint of wine could have saved me! oh, and one more thing – you cannot count a pre-recorded cover of ‘you got the love’ as an encore. rip off. mind you, i thought they were on stage at this time… shows how much attention i paid.

words by emma salter

single review: thee single spy. ok corral. 9 aug 2010. robot elephant records

thee single spy is the brainchild of alex mattinson, which has turned into a proper band with a proper album and everything. not just that but it is produced by a man who has done some engineering for sockformation favourites, the maccabees. i would love to come across all knowledgable and tell you exactly what he’s done for them, but a wikipedia search of luke joyce only brought up an accrington stanley footballer. i don’t think he’s the same one. anyway, the link to the maccabees was enough for me to give it a listen and i’m pleased to report back i like it. don’t go expecting anything resembling the maccabees. we’re talking more lo-fi type folk, but with a certain indie pop element.

fantastically, i’ve been given permission to share the b-side with you. if you like this, you’ll love ‘ok corral’. download this one, then wait patiently until august the 9th and pop over to your local record shop, hand over the cash and walk home with your new 7inch. alternatively it’ll be available on itunes as well no doubt.

thee single spy. in clay, in cloud (mp3)