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.

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.

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!”