American Indie Vs British Indie

I watched a program last night called 'Later Live' which for any non UK readers is a live music show with a pretty eclectic range of guests. Well, it's about as eclectic as you would expect from the BBC.

There were two bands playing last night who would both be considered 'Indie' yet are very different.
The first was The Kooks who are an English band on Virgin records. The second was Yeasayer, a New York band on We Are Free records. The Kooks are typical of a lot of British Indie bands. They went to stage school and probably spend more time picking their outfits than writing songs. That's perhaps a little unfair, their songs are actually fun and catchy but they aren't exactly anything new. Their sound is boringly retro and they bring nothing new or unique. (This isn't something which only British bands are guilty of. Jet for example do exactly the same thing. Their biggest hit 'Are you gonna be my girl' is just a cover of 'Lust for life' with different lyrics). Johnny Borrell, who is no innovator himself, summed up The Kooks sound "It sounds like the band are literally rolling over, sticking their arse in the air and begging Radio 1 to fuck them."

Yeasayer on the other hand have an interesting almost tribal sound in a similar vein to Animal Collective. They use electronic sounds and are influenced by 'world' music (please excuse that awful phrase). Basically Yeasayer are inventive and dynamic whereas The Kooks sound like a band doing covers at a wedding. This serves to demonstrate the fact that what passes for 'Indie' over here is boring rubbish for NME reading students.

Yeasayer - 2080 Live

Biffy Clyro

I can't stop listening to Puzzle by Biffy Clyro. I had pretty much ignored the album when it came out for two reasons. Firstly the album artwork is awful. (The artwork from their second album was great, if a little bit rude). Secondly I tend to hate it when bands mellow out (I still haven't forgiven Idlewild).
The first track I heard of the album was 'Saturday Superhouse' which has a great video:



My favourite track however is 'Who's got a match'. How can any song with the lyrics "The midget is frigid I put it to you" in a strong Scottish accent be bad?


'Who's got a match' live 19-05-07

As I mentioned before, this album is a lot more mellow than Biffy's previous efforts. On paper I prefer their early sound which featured a lot of contrast between calm songs and manic shouting in a similar manor to Aereogramme. But this album is so catchy that I just can't resist. Maybe i'm getting old :)

Marnie Stern

If you liked my last post, you should check out Marnie Stern. Her guitar style is similar to Mick Barr's: full-on, layered noise as fast as possible. She also reminds me of another Barr due to her use of spoken-word passages and meta-narratives. “Nothing I do is esoteric,” She says. “I have constant references in mind for everything. Everything’s intentional.” This, combined with a guitar technique which can only be described as 'shredding' makes for quite a mix.

Stern's last album 'In Advance of the Broken Arm'
features Hella's Zach Hill on drums and production. Her sound reminds me of the bass and drums duo lightning Bolt although it is perhaps a bit more accessible as you can actually comprehend the lyrics which are looped and layered. As Brandon Stosuy put it in his review for Pitchfork.com:

"she sets up her own call-and-response (musically and lyrically), her sing-talk style cutting across the strings like a rogue auctioneer or cheerleader."

Here is the video for the single 'Every Single Line Means Something'



More songs and information can be found at Marnie Stern's Myspace page.

The Crimea - 'Secrets of the Witching Hour' free album download

I discovered The Crimea via a television advert. Not the best place to find new music I grant you but it worked well this time. You might have seen the advert, it features a man going on a magical adventure through a world populated by bunny rabbits, clouds etc. This strange journey is bought about by a piece of chewing gum. I'm not sure if the gum was spiked with some kind of psychedelic drug or not but either way the music stands out from all the rubbish normally featured on adverts (with a few exceptions).




It turns out that the band who created the song, The Crimea were formed from the ashes of the first ever rock band I saw, many moons ago. Back then they were called The Crocketts and were fronted by a man named Davey Crockett, who, to my young mind at least, was a complete lunatic. I saw them supporting The Levellers and they blew me away. I soon stopped listening to The Levellers (in my defense) but always kept an ear out for The Crocketts.
After The Crocketts were dropped by V2 Davey "Crockett" MacManus and Owen Hopkin went on to form The Crimea who were dropped from Warner Bros after one album. Their latest album 'Secrets of the Witching Hour' is available to download for free from their website. This seems like a good approach for them at this point. It should result in a lot more people getting to hear, and love, the album. People have nothing to lose in giving it a try after all!

I read an interesting article on Wired.com entitled 'Free! why $0.00 is the future of business' which puts forward a very compelling argument for big businesses giving away products (and regaining the loss elsewhere). This is reliant on the low costs of production and distribution, particularly online. I would guess that the costs involved in releasing an album for free online are minimal even if recording time is not. With physical album sales falling drastically and illegal downloading becoming so prevalent even your nan is doing it, this looks to be a trend that will grow and grow. I only hope that the band can recoup the costs elsewhere. Not having to give a cut of the profits to a record company must help (although The Crimea have also released a CD for the hardcore fans.)

As fans of music I think we should try to support the artists we listen to, particularly those who are not living in a mansion somewhere moaning about people stealing their music. Maybe the lack of money spent on albums will mean an increase in gig goers or more money spent on merchandise.

Check out the video below to save me trying to describe the band's sound because I can only think of hackey, cliched ways of putting it and this isn't the NME, so we will have none of that here thankyou-very-much.

MGMT - Time to pretend - Live on Letterman.

I can't get this song out of my head. I recommend you check out the video here (The Youtube version is not embeddable, just in case, heaven-forbid, somebody decides to distribute the video on their blog. Record labels seem to have forgotten that videos are PROMOTIONAL material.) Just listening to the rest of the album now. Its much more guitar orientated than I expected from this song. It's sort of funky and spaced-out. Reminds me of AIR, prog and The Flaming Lips. As beatlawrence notes the album is created with traditional instruments more than electronics. This seems a bit of a shame to me but it is defiantly worth a listen and sounds like it will stand up to repeated spins.