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 :)

Muxtape

Muxtape is a new site, created by Jstn which allows users to share mixtapes via a rather nice flash interface. The site is very simple. It allows you to upload up to 12 songs of up to 10mb each. To share your mix you just send somebody the link to your profile i.e yournickname.muxtape.com



The simplicity of the interface reminds me of a lot of cool sites like instapaper (which lets you save articles to read later in a newspaper format) and writer (the internet typewriter).
To try out the service I've uploaded a mix. This was a pain free exercise which is great especially when you consider that it was launched today.
My mix is similar to the one I posted previously via lastfm in that it is more of a mix tape than a DJ mix. In fact the main overriding theme is that the songs are all great but don't necessarily go together.
Listen here Thomaz.muxtape.com

1. Biffy Clyro - Now I'm Everyone
2. The Crimea - Loop A Loop
3. 3 Inches Of Blood - Goat Riders Horde
4. Jens Lekman - A Postcard To Nina
5. Burial - Archangel
6. Hot Chip - Don't Dance
7. Antipop Consortium Ghostlawns - (Original Version)
8. Le Tigre - Deceptacon
9. Lil' Wayne - Seat Down Low

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.

The Klaxons and Rihanna Live at the Brits

I was planning on trying not to post about big mainstream music events. It seems silly everyone in the blogosphere (I promise to never use that word again here) posting about the same things all the time. It’s always good to break your self-imposed rules however, even if it is in the first proper post. And thus, I present, The Klaxons and Rihanna Live at the Brits.



I've posted this because I like both Rihanna and The Klaxons. When I was younger I went through stages (didn't we all) of being fiercely loyal to the genre of music I was listening to at the time. This was normally rock music of some description. Any other type of music, especially, god-forbid, pop music was considered artistically redundant toss aimed at the hard-of-thinking. Now that I’ve grown up a bit and I'm not searching for some kind of identity in opposition to others I’m much more free and easy in what music I listen to.

This also may be down to factors other than just growing older. These days genre cross-pollination seems to be much more prevalent. Bands and DJs and listeners move between rock, grime, electro, pop, world and anything else you care to mention without a care in the world. The music available is much richer because of this. This idea, along with hundreds of other interesting developments in the world of music is covered in Paul Morley's wonderful book Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City which I fully recommend.

The performance was the first time The Klaxons met Rihanna, they explained to Radio 1:

“It’s been a bit of a funny one because obviously she’s in America and they’ve got this funny idea of what our band sounds like.
We've done three of four different versions of the track. I think we have found something we're both happy with. It's good!”