Archive for August, 2007
The good Hold days
Friday, August 31st, 2007
It’s hard to feel an affinity for a band when their musical influence is so one-dimensional. Not only is there no room for doubt about who they’ve been brazenly stealing from, but you can’t help but wonder what is to be gained from subjecting yourself to a watered down version of the real thing.
Nevertheless there are a few acts who, with shocking defiance to our opening paragraph, have a rare class for recreating the sound of another without making you want to reminisce about the good old days like grandpa.
Midlake somehow manage to make you think Fleetwood Mac were cool, Mika could have been Freddie Mercury’s alter-ego, while Vampire Weekend aren’t influenced by a band but a specific album, namely Paul Simon’s Graceland.
And so this brings us conveniently to THE HOLD STEADY and their faithful devotion to the gospel according to Bruce Springsteen.
The Brooklyn-based group’s latest album Boys And Girls In America has already been hailed as a classic rock classic. However, it’s like a print of a priceless painting – it may look the same but only the original will ever be untouchable.
MP3:
The Hold Steady – Stuck Between Stations
LIVE:
September 1, Connect Music Festival, Inverary
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Read them like a book
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
When MY LATEST NOVEL first appeared on the Scottish music scene, their name was bandied around so often that most folk knew what to expect before they’d even had a chance to hear them first-hand. Or at least they thought they did.
Reports of the Greenock quintet’s fondness for instrument swapping, multiple harmonies and a liberal use of strings came at a time when no other band had been burdened with the ‘new Arcade Fire’ tag.
So when English label Bella Union won the race to sign My Latest Novel, it simply became a matter of counting down the days until they inevitably failed to live up to the most impossible of expectations. And so it proved.
Their debut album Wolves eschewed Arcade Fire’s sex and violins approach in favour of something altogether more dark and experimental. Most frustratingly, it left The Pop Cop wondering what might have been, especially when their one stab at a bite-sized singalong, The Reputation Of Ross Francis, ends the record on such a high. We can only hope it’s a taste of the direction they’re headed in.
MP3:
My Latest Novel – The Reputation Of Ross Francis
LIVE:
September 2, Connect Music Festival, Inverary
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Split personality
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
Tenderness and noise, strings and screams, mild-mannered yet angry… AEREOGRAMME have always come across as a band of beautiful contradiction.
The nice guys of post-rock have been a fixture of the Glasgow music scene for nearly a decade and the realisation that they will be playing their last-ever gig on Friday makes us genuinely sad.
While most bands fail to exhibit any hint of possessing more than one string to their bow, Aereogramme really did offer the best of both worlds. Assuming, that is, the first world is filled with delicate ballads while the second one spins to the sound of thrash metal.
With three albums released on Chemikal Underground to remember them by, the bearded quartet’s contribution to the rich tapestry of Scotland’s recent musical landscape will not be forgotten by us nor, indeed, their curiously large following in the Netherlands. Like we said, Aereogramme are full of surprises.
MP3:
Aereogramme – The Art Of Belief
LIVE:
August 31, Connect Music Festival, Inverary
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