RANDOLPH'S LEAP The Curse Of The Haunted Headphones

Listen to any of the songs on this 15 track release and it is no surprise to discover it was recorded in singer Adam Ross’s bedroom. It has a casual, no-frills feel: the drums (when they feature) are tinny and up-close-loud with the sweetly fragile vocals placed shyly further back. You cannot help but picture the band cosily huddled around a single microphone (and probably an unmade single bed too). What does come as a surprise is discovering that Ross’s band Randolph’s Leap actually numbers eight members in total - for the stripped-bare acoustic folk-pop on “The Curse Of The Haunted Headphones” sounds more a solo turn accompanied by occasional recorder. And it turns out many are: “the rest of the band don't feature much, but at least I don't have to share the profits with that miserable rabble".


There’s a curious decade-spanning feeling to these homespun tunes. Sometimes, a trad Scots folk take on 60s coffee-house folk revivalism permeates the broken spirit laments of ‘Deep Blue Sea’ or ‘Cassie O’Tone’ with quietly strummed guitar and mournfully triumphant fiddle. At other times, a 30s comic ballad whimsy takes hold, like when Woody Guthrie dropped the politics and anger and penned childish rhyming ditties, in songs like ’Dying In My Sleep’ or ‘The Will To Shave’ – the former about “my long term plans....a distant goal but one I’ll share / I’m dying in my sleep / at the age of 103”. Elsewhere there’s a happy-go-lucky naiveté and unspoiled simplicity to ‘The Nonsense In My Soul’ like King Creosote at his most spartan and softly melodic. To wrong foot the listener there’s also the console game sound effect interludes ‘Level One’ and ‘Level Two’ plus the neon cover artwork to interject some garish 80s references. ‘Bile’ is the moment when you feel there really is eight people crammed into that bedroom and the frugal alt-folk switches to distorted casio-fuzz pop.

For all its rudimentary recording properties and suggestions of whimsy or simplicity, “The Curse Of The Haunted Headphones” is a direct and deeply affecting record. The emotions – whether playful or serious – are honest and open and engaging. The closing song ‘Suitable’ softly asserts “you make me feel wonderful”. This is a heart-lifting and off-the-cuff collection of songs that has the same effect. It’s available now digitally or on limited edition cassette tape on Peenko Records.

 Randolph's Leap - The Nonsense In My Soul by peenko

Randolph’s Leap The Curse Of The Haunted Headphones [BUY]

SEX HANDS Season 1

The ‘zine quality, single colour cover with grinning skulls pasted on to heads of the cast of “Friends” suggests diehard DIY movement. Then the music of Sex Hands confirms it or rather screams it: clanging guitars, sludgy drums, distorted, shouted vocals are all lost in the murky, head-pummelling noise. Everything about “Season 1” suggests hastily assembled cassette release home recording. It was in fact “recorded by Patrick Crane in 2011” - but clearly with the aim of capturing raw abrasiveness rather than nuanced sonic clarity - and is released at name-your-price via Bandcamp (“it’s fine to put zero in there - we won’t judge ya”). There is melody and jangle and more here too – plus a cover of New Zealand’s The Clean – but all lies shrouded in various shades of no-fi murk.

‘Parker’ yokes a hippy-trippy 60s freak-beat swing to garage-rock bludgeon. In ‘Janice’ math-rock churn with a hint of warped Beefheart blues sits under barked tannoy announcement vocals - but sludgy no-fi wins out again. There is a melodic chug to ‘Jingle Bitch’ despite the wailing vocal despair but again more of that sludgy no-fi. The band claim “these are songs about Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Monica and Phoebe”. ‘Rembrandts’ with its “I’ll be there for you” vocal refrain is the most explicit reference despite sounding filled with bleak desperation rather than the cosy unity of the show’s theme music but other than these fleeting references or character names as song titles I really can’t hear this. But the angry, head-pounding caterwaul of Sex Hands is exactly the reaction I have to the smugness of that long-running TV series so maybe there’s a deeper truth at work here.

The latter half of this eight track mini-album has less impact as the rickety punk flail becomes familiar or when the instrumental shredding guitar duelling of ‘Jam Sandwich’ stretches itself too thin. It finishes with the surprisingly almost-triumphant, quasi-indie-rock swagger (still buried in no-fi murk) of ‘The Moist Maker’. It’s a closing statement that makes you want to punch the air rather than say punch the faces of the cast of a US TV show. “Season 1” is over in 27 minutes but is one series that has episodes definitely worth re-running. The next live outing for Sex Hands is Sunday 19 February on a seven band bill of fellow-travellers from Manchester and beyond with Pheromoans headlining. Kicks off at 5pm with tickets just £4 in advance.


Parker by SEX HANDS

Sex Hands Season 1 [BUY]

ROB ST JOHN Weald

Rob St John is one quarter of Edinburgh’s anti-drum core (but wavering) post-folk ensemble eagleowl. But his own music is a very different strain of alt-folk to that of the full group. “Weald”, his debut album for Song By Toad Records, is eight songs of darkly atmospheric and steady-paced freak-folk exploring the “imagined contour between the bleak Lancastrian moors and the cobbled wynds of Edinburgh”. Like David Thomas Broughton fronting Mount Eerie or Alexander Tucker conducting a psycho-geographical field study.

Songs vary from 2.5 minutes to over 7 minutes but all conform to a similar pattern: opening with roving, liquid golden electric guitar notes, gently droning harmonium and St John’s deep booming voice before adding in denser layers of sound and instruments – bowed saw in ‘Vanishing Points’, haunted, distant piano in ‘An Empty House’, violin in ‘Stainforth Force’ and even underwater hydrophone in the same song. Picking out individual instruments doesn’t convey the combined effect of layered textures that swell and contract, making the album sound cavernous despite a lingering intimacy.



Throughout Rob St John’s voice is peculiarly astonishing: blunt Lancastrian tones that spill and surprise and waver like his guitar, sometimes a deep bottomless pit boom as forceful as granite, other times a darkly forgiving sigh. It’s a voice that speaks of years of experience ruminating on eternal mysteries – extraordinary then that Rob St John is in his early twenties. The graceful beauty of the seven-minute ‘Stainforth Force’ is the epic midpoint of the album (or opener of side two if you buy the vinyl) but ‘Domino’ that follows usurps its centrality by notching up the intensity with a bleak prison-irons clanking tale of guilt, cross words and cold beds. It’s so anguished and intense, ‘Emma’s Dance’ the sprightly Bert Jansch-like instrumental that follows is blessed relief. “Weald” is an album rich with a thick, marshy atmosphere but proves a rewarding and uplifting journey. The record came out last November and I paid it scant attention until earlier this year. What a terrible disservice to an exceptional recording.

Rob St. John - Sargasso Sea by Song, by Toad

Rob St John Weald [BUY]

WHISTLE PEAK Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls

The emerald green waters upon which the couple float on the front of ‘Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls’ reminds me of a copper sulphate-saturated lake in North Wales I saw as a child: a welcoming, brightly coloured pool of mineral-enriched balminess. The Louisville electro-folk of Whistle Peak is a similarly buoyant and luxuriant experience: eleven tracks of melancholy-tinged Vaudevillian alt-pop floating on banjos, xylophone and egg-shaker with washes of electronic flutter and mechanical scrape that soothes and surprises.

At the gentler end of the album’s spectrum ‘Sleepy Pants’ is an unhurried early morning stretch of the arms, a mellow half-asleep, half-awake lullaby. ‘In A Boat On A Lake’ chimes and bobs with carefree calypso-flavoured contentment on strummed ukulele, wobble-board and brushed drums. Elsewhere ‘Us Two At Play’ is darker and more ponderous, with metallic twanging guitars over mysterious rasps and rattles, like a poppier version of Califone. ‘Hurry Hurry’ is infectiously downbeat, the sound of a troupe of sad-faced sideshow barkers who know no-one is listening but persevere with their morose melodies and pots-and-pans percussive beats regardless.


This is the sophomore release from the Kentucky quintet (David Boston, Billy Petot, Mike Snowden, Jeremy Irvin and – missing from the above photo - Garrett Crabtree) coming four years on from their debut and being my first introduction to the band. But what a delightful introduction. At first listen these “children’s stories told by grown men” appear almost unremarkable but the album’s curious combination of old and modern, of acoustic and electronic, of dreamy and dark provides a deep tug on the head and the heart-strings. It’s subtle but sure-footed, introspectively glum but also strangely celebratory and at various points reminds me of Panda Bear, Beirut, Joe Henry, Eels and Tuung. ‘The Laws’ closes the album, a gorgeous undertow of deep soul melancholia combined with a suppressed sense of triumph, all in a lo-fi happy-sad shuffle. And it only makes we want to float off on another boat-trip around Echo Falls.

Hurry Hurry - Whistle Peak by FollyOfYouth

In A Boat On A Lake - Whistle Peak by FollyOfYouth

Whistle Peak Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls [BUY]

TOWN HALL Sticky Notes and Paper Scraps

Town Hall declare they are "not your run-of-the-mill Brooklyn folk group" and claim kinship with Woods, Beirut and The Middle East. The core three-piece – multi-instrumentalists Stefan Weiner, Phoebe Ryan and Jesse Kranzler – recall from that list a miniature The Middle East, smaller in numbers and less expansive than the now defunct Australian chamber-folk six-piece but just as intricate and precise in their gently orchestrated alt-folk musings.


Supported by a host of string and woodwind players and a respectfully-in-the-background rhythm section, their second EP release is a name-your-price digital five track EP. The quiet simplicity of ‘Just Watching My Breath’ opens “Sticky Notes and Paper Scraps” with gently picked mandolin, breathy, sweet harmonies and understated string arrangements and clarinet; it’s as fresh as the morning air it sings of. ‘Alright’ is more complex affair: Weiner's flat-toned rendition of more obtuse lyrics over subtly undulating backdrop of shifting time signatures, clicks and whirrs and the softest hint of campfire-psychedelic guitars. ‘Pandora’ has a more straightforwardly enjoyable bluegrass-and-banjo jauntiness. It is the band at their liveliest but briefest with Phoebe Ryan's alluring but cutesy yodel undercutting any darkness of the genre. ‘Mary A Longden’ is a more muscular and intriguing track, a quasi-historical biography in song of a mysteriously ageless woman. The EP finishes with the contrasting ‘Charlie’, a gentle, meandering piece that is so frail it can fade away from attention if the listener isn’t fully attentive.

The EP title suggests a messiness and random approach that just isn’t present. If anything the five varied tracks are a little too meticulous, a little too studied in their delicate preciousness. The You Tube covers of Jimmy Eat World and a 1930s blues song discovered via 78rpm recording maintain the intricate acoustic arrangements but being played live lends them a slightly more playful looseness. Despite these minor gripes, it is clear Town Hall are indeed not “run-of-the-mill” and there is plenty here to stoke anticipation for the band’s debut album due this March.

Just Watching My Breath by TownHall

Pandora by TownHall

Town Hall Sticky Notes and Paper Scraps [BUY]

BAPTISTS AND BOOTLEGGERS ...Of The Wolves

The first release on new record label and publishing enterprise Baptists and Bootleggers is a limited edition, five track, white 12” vinyl (or CD) EP. But “...Of The Wolves” is part of a larger and very impressive assemblage – two short stories, four pieces of art, a CD EP from one of the musicians Vei plus a cloth checklist-cum-credits for all involved. And the price to own this handsome collection? Zilch. Because on Baptists and Bootleggers “everything released will be completely free. We are strong believers in the idea of free music and free art and feel it’s a fair way to give back to the people who support your work.”


The music on ““...Of The Wolves” is five instrumental pieces from different musicians sound-tracking an extract of a 1930s film of “Dante’s Inferno” (the stories and artwork are a response to this too). Sounds arcane but it makes for a cohesive listen: the five tracks are near-identical in length and though varied not dramatically so. Many of the pieces are largely digital creations but possess depth and richness; and although a creepy mood pervades the EP it never tips over into full-blown spook-out.

Borland’s ‘Nightmares’ alternates passages of tense, dark throbbing beats with drifting whirrs and whistles that effectively flips the mood of the piece at uniform intervals. The live improvisation ‘Decaying Bodice’ by Vei creates a more consistent and reflective mood: slowly drawn-out phrases with echoing string-like plucks that mimic gentle drops of water in an ornamental temple bowl. As it progresses the layers thicken and intensify but it remains serenely haunting.

A low droning foghorn creates an eerie undertow to Stagger’s ‘And The Flaw’ over which kettle drum-like beats and eerie swooshes of sound appear. ‘When The Game Is Over, The King And The Pawn Go Back In The Same Box’ by Daffyd Jones is not as ornate as its title – a distant female voice recites instructions just out of ear-shot over mechanical churning, like a looped air safety demonstration announcement stuck at the bottom of a ventilation shaft.

I’ve seen one live version of changing musical collective Go Lebanon indulge in noisy math-rock workout. Here with ‘Ishtar y Tammuz’ the nine musicians are all restraint for the first half before frantic distorted guitar is introduced but as quiet background texture rather than in the foreground. The guitar(s) build into louder, regular pulses which coalesce with anguished saxophone into an intense squawking conclusion.

Normally I’d link to where you can buy this release. But “...Of The Wolves” cannot be bought – it will be shared amongst these collaborators and their communities of supporters and fellow artists to distribute free of charge - and it will be given away at the label’s launch event at Islington Mill next week. Four illustrators, five bands and two writers plus the label all collaborated on this: a free physical release launched at a free-entry gig enabled by support from Umbro Industries. Great exposure but I hope that all the artists find financial reward for their creative endeavours at some point down the road. The political model behind the label’s name helps give an extra insight into this seemly contradictory stance for a publisher. I hope it pays dividends for all concerned – it richly deserves to.

Decaying Bodice - Vei by FollyOfYouth

MANCHESTER GIGS IN MUSIC: February 2012 Pt.1

A couple of record launches nestle discreetly amongst this leap month’s gigs. Nova Scotia’s Gabriel Minnikin’s launches his new album “Parakeets with Parasols” with a gig (or rather a 'Record Release Concert') at the Martin Harris Centre. The ex-Guthries member has been making solo country-rock records in Manchester since 2004, with this latest a collection of piano songs recorded in a Whalley Range church. The concert will be “the new record live, in its entirety, from start to finish. I will be playing the piano, accompanied by a chamber orchestra consisting of strings, woodwind, brass and singers.” Sounds lush.

In a grittier part of a different city two days before, Salford’s Islington Mill hosts the launch party for new label Baptists and Bootleggers. Three of the bands from their debut release. “...Of The Wolves” (more on this later this week) play: Go Lebanon, Borland and Vei. A free entry night of glitch, noise and experimentation plus - get this – a free copy of the EP too.

As ever a mixtape [56 mins/64 MB] of bands playing Manchester this month to help inform your gig-going decision-making - link in the post below this one.

Mcr Gigs in Music Mixtape: February 2012 - download/stream here.

My Sad Captains The Homefront Pt. II [4.21] (3 Feb Kraak BUY TICKETS)
Allo Darlin’ If Loneliness Was Art [7.50] (23 Feb Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Standard Fare Suitcase [10.53] (23 Feb Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Hanni El Khatib Build. Destroy. Rebuild. [13.50] (1 Feb The Castle BUY TICKETS)
Gentle Friendly Ride Around Shining [16.35] (4 Feb Kraak BUY TICKETS)
Blouse Videotapes [19.31] (6 Feb The Castle BUY TICKETS)
Butchers Promise To The Act [22.41] (3 Feb Fuel FREE)
Withered Hand New Dawn [25.17] (6 Feb St Ann’s Church BUY TICKETS)
Still Corners Into The Trees [29.14] (3 Feb Kraak BUY TICKETS)
The War on Drugs Baby Missiles [32.44] (27 Feb Sound Control BUY TICKETS)
Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr Morning Thought [36.16] (16 Feb The Castle BUY TICKETS)
Dawes When My Time Comes [40.19] (18 Feb Academy BUY TICKETS)
The Deep Dark Woods Westside Street [45.23] (20 Feb The Castle BUY TICKETS)
The Unthanks Lucky Gilchrist [50.13] (10 Feb Band on the Wall BUY TICKETS)
Vei Decaying Bodice [56.15] (9 Feb Islington Mill FREE)

And not forgetting:

1 Feb Jonathan Wilson Ruby Lounge / 1 Feb Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry Band on the Wall / 1 Feb Laura Veirs The Lowry / 2 Feb Everything Everything Islington Mill / 2 Feb Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! Academy 3 / 2 Feb Lindi Ortega The Castle / 3 Feb Janice Graham Band The Ritz / 3 Feb Golden Glow Fuel / 4 Feb Way Through Kraak / 4 Feb Jesca Hoop Cornerhouse / 6 Feb King Creosote & Jon Hopkins St Ann’s Church / 6 Feb Friends Deaf Institute / 6 Feb The Black Keys Apollo / 7 Feb Dead Wolf Club Night & Day / 8 Feb Niki and the Dove Islington Mill / 8 Feb Ren Harvieu + Dry The River The Ritz / 9 Feb Go Lebanon + Borland Islington Mill / 9 Feb Holly Throsby The Castle / 9 Feb Totally Extinct Enormous Dinosaurs Deaf Institute / 9 Feb La Femme + Great Waves Kraak / 10 Feb The Twilight Sad Ruby Lounge / 10 Feb Errors Islington Mill / 10 Feb The Electronic Exchange Kraak / 10 Feb Runaround Kids The Roadhouse / 11 Feb Molly Nilsson The Ape & Apple / 11 Feb Novella The Castle / 11 Feb Mozart Parties + Daniel Land and the Modern Painters The Roadhouse / 11 Feb Gabriel Minnikin Martin Harris Centre / 12 Feb Quiet Loner Briton’s Protection / 12 Feb Kobo Town Ruby Lounge / 12 Feb Deadbeat Darling The Castle / 13 Feb Rachael Sermanni The Castle / 13 Feb Louis Barabbas & The Bedlam Six Band on the Wall / 13 Feb Casiokids Deaf Institute / 14 Feb Midnight Lion The Castle / 14 Feb Vieux Farka Toure Band on the Wall / 14 Feb The Family Elan Kraak / 16 Feb Driver Drive Faster Dulcimer / 17 Feb We Have Band Ruby Lounge / 17 Feb Real Estate + Outfit Deaf Institute / 17 Feb Pulled Apart By Horses Academy / 18 Feb Ghostpoet Sound Control / 18 Feb Spector Deaf Institute / 19 Feb Grouplove Ruby Lounge / 19 Feb The Pheromoans Kraak / 19 Feb Field Music Deaf Institute / 20 Feb Michael Kiwanuka Ruby Lounge / 20 Feb Django Django Deaf Institute / 21 Feb Joe Pug The Castle / 22 Feb Ron Pope Night & Day / 22 Feb Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves of Destiny Deaf Institute / 23 Feb SBTRKT The Ritz / 23 Feb Lights Sound Control / 23 Feb Benjamin Francis Leftwich Academy / 23 Feb Deaf Club Trof Fallowfield / 23 Feb Heart-Ships + Douga The Castle / 24 Feb Dead To Me Night & Day / 24 Feb The Longcut + Victories At Sea The Roadhouse / 24 Feb First Aid Kit Academy / 25 Feb Cold Specks Deaf Institute / 26 Feb Kathleen Edwards Ruby Lounge / 26 Feb Funeral Suits Night & Day / 26 Feb The Minutes Sound Control / 27 Feb To Kill A King Deaf Institute / 28 Feb Jamie N Commons Sacred Trinity Church / 28 Feb This Is The Kit Band on the Wall / 29 Feb Rod Jones & The Birthday Suit Ruby Lounge / 29 Feb Hooray For Earth Night & Day / 29 Feb The Whip Manchester Academy

MANCHESTER GIGS IN MUSIC: February 2012 Pt.2

Manchester Gigs in Music Mixtape: February 2012

Manchester Gigs In Music - February 2012 by Follyofyouth on Mixcloud

Or download mixtape [56 mins / 64 MB] here.

FRANCOIS AND THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS @ THE CASTLE 29 January 2012

Tonight’s gig was not a planned outing. Meeting an old friend for a drink turned into seeing a sold out gig thanks to a kindly promoter who secured me the only returned ticket. The fact it was sold out appeared at first to be down to the local support for Butcher The Bar. The five piece led by Joel Nicholson play a mellow Americana-tinged folk-pop, gentle strums and plaintive grooves with soft, mild-mannered vocals. Touches of clarinet, miniature xylophone, some fantastic drumming and a song based on a William Blake poem all sound more interesting than it was. Very pleasant on the ear but I found it all a bit too mild-mannered and forgettable on first encounter.



Lead guitar was played by Matt from Walton Hesse who to me are a much more interesting proposition. Which shows how much I know. Butcher the Bar have just finished a European jaunt supporting Death Cab For Cutie and Walton Hesse remain unsigned and without an official release. A damn shame.


The start to the set by French four-piece Fránçois and the Atlas Mountains was delayed by the rigging up of the copious amounts of kit. The five-piece were dressed in outfits lost somewhere between beach casual and prison scrubs. As another lost moment passes chasing faulty leads, things do not look promising. Following the gentle palate-teasing opening of ‘Azrou Tune’ however things swiftly pick up. The band - two drummers, two banks of keyboards and Monsieur F. Marry on vocals and guitar (although several instrument changes occur) - deliver waves of shimmering polyrhythmic joy in their “songs of the seaside and the desert” accompanied by a vast array of exotic percussion.



As the set progresses programmed beats are added into the mix, locking the band into hypnotic and steadily more intense grooves. For ‘La Vie Dure’ Fránçois goes walk about in the crowd, at other times the (shifting) frontline of players indulge in synchronised arm lifts and dance moves. It is both heavily choreographed but also loose-limbed and spontaneous, Fránçois at times adopting an intense Ian Curtis stare, at others swaying with double-jointed robotic abandon. The slinky Gallic grooves, with hints of North and West African rhythms, were subtle but deeply infectious.



After a seven song set the band dispense with the ritual of walking off stage and returning to play a three song encore. Still entrancing it didn't match the rapture of the second half of the main set but I’m converted. Vive la République.

The Set List:

Azrou Tune
Les Plus Beaux
Edge of Town
City Kiss
Royan
La Vie Dure
Way To Forget
Slow Love
Piscine
---
Do You Want To Dance
Be Water
Buried Treasures

CHRIS DEVOTION AND THE EXPECTATIONS Amalgamation and Capital

This year BBC4 are repeating, week by week, Top of the Pops from 1977. Next January when they get to 1978 I wouldn't blink an eye to see Chris Devotion and the Expectations on screen. The music of the Scots four-piece fast-forwards from lively new wave guitar pop of that era (‘Tell The Girl’) to the ferocious garage revivalism of The Hives (‘I’m Already Home’ ) and the rapid, righteous rock ‘n’ roll of Rocket From The Crypt (‘Pinhole Suit’, ‘You’ve Got It All’). Along the way there’s some variety – the brief ballad ‘Eyes Open Now’, a Woody Guthrie cover plus the strummed acoustic and double-tracked lead guitar of ‘Blister’ wouldn’t sound out of place on Sugar’s “Copper Blue” – but most of these sixteen short songs (two have the impertinence to break three minutes) tend to fired-up feistiness.



Despite an album title that sounds like an Economic Studies primer, the band’s loud drainpipe-jeans pop majors on girlfriends and failed relationships rather than fiscal policy. Chris Devotion does link the two (“relationships (amalgamation) on a subconscious level are a matter of what we want from the other person (their capital); what they offer us”) but relationships – starting them, leaving them, wanting them – prevail with the political bite being left to the caustic ‘Surveying the Young Professionals’ and the rowdy folk-protest anger of Woody Guthrie cover ‘I Ain’t Got No Home’.

Full-bodied and fiery, "Amalgamation and Capital" packs a potent punch for 38 break-neck minutes even if not all of its many hooks stick in the mind once it’s over. But at its best, caught in the (two minute) moment of punky exuberance and pop hooks, it is a refreshingly off-trend and fine place to be.



Chris Devotion and the Expectations Amalgamation and Capital [BUY]

LAURA J MARTIN @ DULCIMER 22 January 2012

Tonight’s gig opened with Jo Gillot playing finger picked acoustic folk-blues that sang of red and grey squirrels, travelling rafts and the stealing rich in sweet and crystal clear tones. She may have been using a borrowed guitar (“mine’s in Preston”) but if she hadn’t told us, I don’t think anyone would have been the wiser. Lovely stuff played to a sold out crowd at this Imploding Inevitable Festival Night.


By the time Emily and the Faves took the stage, things were definitely cosy if not imploding. The four-piece play a punchy psyche-pop – a limber and funky rhythm section given an added emphatic thump from a single band member dedicated to percussion and backing vocals. Over the top, Emily Lansley (one third of Stealing Sheep in a different life) plays guitar that alternated between rapid pop strumming and languid psychedelic twang, all delivered with precision and confidence. It was odd then that Emily was less confident between songs – checking the sound levels, apologising for consulting a hand-written set-list and confessing to have forgotten to bring any of their CDs to sell (a shame because I had cash in hand). A beat group for Liverpool to be proud of.



Tonight was part of a short tour marking the release of Laura J Martin’s debut album “The Hangman Tree”. Having repeatedly missed her at Green Man festival for the last two years it was a delight to catch her in somewhere as intimate as the packed upstairs room of Dulcimer. Also having not seen her live I wasn’t sure what to expect – solo performance or large backing band? Laura was accompanied by Pete Williams on drums but only for three songs. For the remainder she played on flute, mandolin or keyboards expanding the sound through live looping or pre-programmed backing tracks. The effect – with projected backdrop – was nothing less than stunning.





Opening with instrumental ‘Doki Doki’, Martin showed off both her skills on the flute and the looping stations, adding in layers of sound with a stockinged foot whilst hardly pausing for breath during highly animated playing. Following songs saw her seated at the keyboard or switching between mandolin and flute – often in the same song. She may be a diminutive figure but alone on stage she is a powerful presence. Songs were given an extra theatricality through hand gestures, rolled shoulders and hip shimmies, or wielding the flute like a Kendo baton, repeatedly punching it towards the audiences. Nine songs including an encore sounds a slender set but it felt rich given the variety of instrumentation and the swing from the quiet (‘Tom’) to loud (‘Spy’) plus a new song too in ‘Sour Grapes’.



The final song of the main set was ‘Salamander’ which on the album is sung with Euros Childs – I can think of no higher compliment than to say tonight he was not missed. The song finished with solitary repeated notes on the mandolin and a dramatic flourish and then silence – spell-binding. The encore was a Kathy Smith cover (“discovered thanks to Andy Votel’s ‘Folk is a Four Letter Word’ compilation”). I don’t know the original but Laura J Martin made it sound convincingly like her own. A very talented woman. Her album alone is worth chasing down. But finally based on experience I can say that seeing Laura J Martin live is equally essential.



The Set List:

Doki Doki
The Lesson
Fire Horse
Tom
Jesse
Sour Grapes
Spy
Salamander
---
It’s Taking So Long

LAURA J MARTIN The Hangman Tree

In June 2010 I wrote about Laura J Martin for this esteemed organ when she only had one single to her name. By the end of 2011 that had risen to three singles. Now, on possibly one of the most depressing days of the year, comes her debut album on Static Caravan. “The Hangman Tree” bundles three songs from those singles - the title track being one of them - into this sixteen-song flighty folk odyssey that is the perfect antidote for lifting spirits flagging with the January blues.

If you are familiar with the singles you will know to expect: intricately arranged, jaunty folk-jazz excursions, mixing eastern vibes and a percussive, soulful swing, all powered by flute, mandolin, xylophone or piano with Martin’s vocals switching from child-like (but never infantile) innocence to breathy sultriness. What you might not expect is how far-ranging these excursions go in their allusive, magical story-telling – from deserts to Morecombe Bay to Japan – and aided by some curious collaborations and pairings.


‘Spy’ is a delightful blend of Lalo Schifrin espionage soundtrack with savage Ted Hughes bird of prey imagery in a tale about a careless ninja. The sparse mandolin and girly-voiced folk whimsy of ‘Tom’ sounds as though it was plucked from a Trunk reissue of an obscure 70s children's TV show music if a lyrical reference to “Superman 3” didn’t give it away. ‘Silent Maria’ turns harpsichord elegance and clockwork winding noises into a one-Mississippi counting song. ‘Jesse’, a song about a murderer, alternates clip-clop rhythms and piano with a serene string passage; the equally rhythmic ‘Fire Horse’ tells the tale of 17th century Japanese arsonist Yaoya Oshichi complete with hand-claps and more of that exceptional flute-playing. These odd-couple/inventive collisions are followed through with her guest collaborators. A duet with Euros Childs on the dusty ‘Salamander’, all quivering tension, halting piano and a kazoo solo, may not be a surprise but sparring with granite-voiced Canadian rapper Buck 65 on ‘Kissbye Goodnight’ is.



In its scope and strange story-telling, “The Hangman Tree” reminds me of a richly illustrated book of fairy stories, exotic and slightly magical, blending innocence with darkness hidden in corners and unexpected places - and is utterly beguiling. This time last year Static Caravan released Hannah Peel’s “The Broken Wave”, another inventive album by a solo female multi-instrumentalist with Liverpool connections and an impressive address book. Twelve months on, Laura J Martin trumps that excellent record with her debut and may just provide the Birmingham label with a commercial as well as critical success.

Spy by Laura J Martin

Laura J Martin The Hangman Tree [BUY]

DAN HAYWOOD'S NEW HAWKS @ DULCIMER 19 January 2012

Mikey Kenney aka Ottersgear, here performing solo, opened tonight’s Now Then Manc evening. He played an intense acoustic folk that felt quite traditional in many ways – songs about snowbells, phantoms of the fog, huntsmen and nature's armies – but he could also up the tempo to lost-in-the-moment thrash or shift his voice from deep burr and off-mic yodel to a crisp falsetto on a song about frozen Michigan (a cover I thought but later discovered was an original composition). He finished with a celebratory fiddle reel that was neither Christian rock nor about paedophilia (as had unkindly been suggested). Captivating stuff.


“We’re Samson and Delilah and we’ve come all the way from....Whalley Range”. Somehow I’ve managed never to see Manchester-based Samson and Delilah (or hear their two albums) and, duped by the name, I expected a duo. Here they performed as a five-piece: upright bass, keys, drums, acoustic guitar and accordion with flute thrown in too. They played dark, dramatic folk which from quiet beginnings took off to a steady processional marching beat. A little too earnest at times (“this is about genocide in Africa”) they deserved better than the disrespectful and overly chatty crowd gave them.



For tonight’s headliners, the nine-piece Dan Haywood’s New Hawks, the distracting chatter seemed to vanish. They weren’t a particularly intimidating group but as the roll call of names and home towns showed they were an eclectic ensemble and not, it has to be said, looking like they were all in the same band. Opening song ‘David in Cedars’, all Eastern shimmer and mystery punctured with the barked name “David!”, however showed just how cohesive they were from the off. There was a loose jam-band vibe to proceedings, not the least from a Korg synthesiser player sat cross legged on the floor rug and bongo drums throughout, all overseen by the loose-limbed band leader signalling changes with a nod or a waved hand, even consulting the crowd (“shall we finish here or go round again?”).





Players often doubled-up instruments during a song - Paddy Steer on both lap-steel and bass pedals - or swapped them swiftly – the mandolin alternated for electric bass. The set-list appeared to be decided on the hoof and songs were often preceded by a leisurely tune-up that almost casually ushered in songs. But what songs. And what lush delivery. If you were over-awed by a triple-vinyl 32-track debut album, this 11 song set was a fine introduction that added a fiery spontaneity to the album tracks. Dan Haywood’s odd tales of the incidents and characters encountered during a year living in rural Scotland can be a curious and expansive listening experience on first encounter – as well as epic - but in a packed upstairs pub room it made perfect sense whether gentle country ballad or folky hoedown or any of the many points in between. The final two songs – a space-jam ‘Smiley Patch’ into dance-along ‘Superquarry’ may have been the two best closing songs I’ll hear all year. Shame not to get an encore but what a way to go out on a high.



The Set List:

David In Cedars
Spate River
John’s Shoes
Farewell Comeback
New Wool
Fear of Lightning
My Heart Was Set On Xmas Eve
Killer Of Men
Jackaroos
Smiley Patch
Superquarry

PORCELAIN RAFT Strange Weekend

There has been a raft (ouch) of one-man, two-word band name outfits surfing the spreading tail-end of chillwave in different directions: Washed Out, Memory Tapes, Neon Indian, even extending to the retro sythn-pop revivalism of Twin Shadow. The opening track on the debut Porcelain Raft album, ‘Drifting In And Out’ (followed by ‘Shapeless and Gone’ and later ‘Put Me To Sleep’) suggests another fellow traveller tracking this curve. Mauro Remiddi aka Porcelain Raft distances himself however from a reductive re-run of blissed-out balminess even on the first song. ‘Drifting In And Out’ is built on frail voiced melodies and compressed tinny bedroom-pop beefed up with crisply churning electronic textures - more The War On Drugs than Washed Out - and given the (post-)rock propulsion and epic sweep of say Sigur Ros with some darkly spluttering electric guitar and ecstatic yelps to boot. It sets the template for the album: melodic pop nuggets created on a laptop, draped in electronic effects and instrumentation and then projected on to a vast panoramic canvas.

“Strange Weekend” also does deliver blissed-out drift (‘If You Had A Wish’) and icy romance (‘Backwords’) but for most part feels as though it is turning the wistful into the epic and widescreen whether in the campfire-psychedelia of ‘Shapeless and Gone’, the catchy soul-pop shuffle of ‘Put Me To Sleep’ or the squeaky disco pleas of ‘Unless You Speak From Your Heart’ . The New York-via-London, Italian native’s voice is tiny amongst such surroundings but is never lost or dwarfed, instead it is the quiet core of the grandeur and scale around it.



The bedroom epics of “Strange Weekend” are not universally successfully: ‘Picture’ is a stripped back Lennon-esque strumalong that is too drippy and cloying, both lyrically and sonically, for its own good. A late whoosh of surging electronic crackle comes too late to rescue it. Remiddi shows he can do quiet effectively on the final track ‘The Way In’, a cosmic, heart-searching torch song closer. Here and where the dynamic between the lone performer and his large-scale panoramas is maintained, is where the expansive dream-pop rush tastes sweetest. “Strange Weekend” is out next week on Secretly Canadian and Porcelain Raft is supporting M83 on all UK dates this week.

Unless You Speak From Your Heart by Porcelain Raft

Porcelain Raft Strange Weekend [BUY]

A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN @ ACADEMY 3, 14 January 2012

There’s a video on You Tube of A Winged Victory For The Sullen playing at Unsound Festival in Krakow. The venue is uncredited but it appears to be a 18th century church, candlelit with rich burnt-orange colours. A hallowed and serene setting for the post-classical soundscapes of the musical collaboration between the composer Dustin O’Halloran and ex-Stars of the Lid man Adam Wiltzie. What to make then of the first calling station for A Winged Victory For The Sullen’s debut UK tour being Manchester Academy 3: a typically characterless and scuzzy student union venue with black drapes, dark concrete walls and a sticky floor (next booking the two day Academy Metal Festival)? Luckily neither support nor headliner seemed to find the venue a distraction from their entrancing music.

Belgium’s sleepingdog also features Adam Wiltzie in a separate musical collaboration with Chantal Acda. However their support slot makes musical not just practical sense: their “glacial moving, dark cough syrup pop music” providing the perfect warm-up (as with last year’s slot supporting Low). Acda alternates between piano or acoustic guitar accompanied by the carefully controlled drones of Wiltzie. For the second half of their six song set they are joined by two percussionists: one on brushed snare drum, the other on a variety of hand instruments plus ankle bracket chimes. Even performing as a four-piece they kept it all hushed and contained, allowing the songs to unwind around Acda’s serenely cool but warming tones. Delicious medicine indeed.

“And my name is Adam. And we're going to play you seven songs of death and heartbreak" came the declaration after each player had been introduced. The two core collaborators in A Winged Victory For The Sullen faced each other across the stage: O’Halloran on electric piano and Wiltzie on guitar and drones, the former the more serious looking, upright and dressed in black, the latter bent over, often turning his back to the audience in loose fitting cardigan and jeans. Between them sat an inner circle of the three piece string section – cello, viola and violin. The set started in near darkness with the main source of illumination being the reading light reflection off the string section’s musical scores. What followed was a richly evocative playing of the duo’s eponymous album in which the drones and strings create slow moving surges and swells, deep and majestic, interwoven with the reflective piano motifs and repetitions. It was mysterious and moving in equal parts. Each song was punctuated by fervid applause from one of the most attentive and appreciative audiences I’ve been part of. And further lightening the mood was the occasional footballing comment from American Wiltzie: “How come Man City got so good?”.


As the set progressed, the illumination increased - and so did the animation of the duo, each rising and surging as the music did. The extra lighting started to make the raw surroundings more evident but the concrete pillar-box framing of the ensemble actually worked to create a beautiful tableau effect. Finishing with a final new song that added a subtle layer of grit to its glacial progression, the five musicians left the stage to more of that rapturous applause. And all the house lights were flicked suddenly on to reveal the prosaic setting. For sixty absorbing minutes we could have easily been in Krakow. And realising we weren’t, we still had the sounds of A Winged Victory For The Sullen in our heads, which like death and heartbreak, take time to fade.

FREE SWIM Dennis

On last year’s two (free download) EPs, Free Swim tackled a man who decides to have two extra hands grafted on to this chest and the Himalayan adventures of a Giant Panda named Yolanda. Two more EPs are promised this year and today the first of those (not ‘officially’ released until “20 February 2012”?) is up for download on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Although Free Swim are now a four-piece live band (visual evidence here) the “Dennis” EP was written, recorded and produced solely by Free Swim mastermind Paul Coltofeanu. And like the previous EPs it has a concept “A budding bromance is inadvertently derailed by an undeniably lovely girl called Sophie Buttercup”. If the concept doesn’t sound too promising (a PG Wodehouse short story? A rejected Divine Comedy B-side?), rest assured the delivery is.

Opener ‘Oh Dennis’ tells of the budding friendship-cum-infatuation with Dennis (“I met you one day in the park / playing tennis..”), all sweetness and yearning admiration over a chunky guitar riff and stylophone squiggles, like The Monochrome Set meets Momus. The relationship is cemented in the stomping ‘Croydon Fernandes’, in which The Monkees go laddish new wave and take on beat poetry. References to The Human Centipede, Geoff Capes, Ken Bates, air cello and then complaining about the shell in a Morrison’s Scotch egg come thick and fast and I have to confess to not being entirely sure what is going on in the rough-and-tumble of this song but at its climax our hero is informed - by text - that Dennis has met and fallen in love with Sophie (“I dropped my phone / left all alone”).

The nimble, even jazzy ‘The Smell of Pregnancy’, all dainty brushed drum tip-toe alternating with more churning guitar riffs, comes complete with the return of Quirrence the narrator and an extended spacey slap bass outro as the expulsion of our leading man is made complete. It also features references to Vienetta and National Trust properties. An air of soft-voiced resignation hangs over the mournful piano-framed ‘Cycling in the Ardeche’, set several years later, until Dennis gets back in touch (“we hugged like men”). And Dennis has a request for our would-be romantic.... Will it be a happy ending? I won’t spoil it – you know what you have to do to find out for yourself.

Not as immediately addictive or as off-the-scale surreal as “Yolanda The Panda”, this EP is still a nonconformist treat, delightfully swimming against the tide of current trends and mixing a fine English whimsy with muscular DIY pop. Highly recommended.

Free Swim - Oh Dennis by Free Swim

Free Swim - Croydon Fernandes by Free Swim

Free Swim Dennis [FREE]

STANDARD FARE Out of Sight, Out of Town

What’s in a release date? The sophomore release from Standard Fare was originally slated for 12 December release last year. A home (base) town launch on 2 December followed, it was available digitally direct or via iTunes later that month and reached number 9 in Sweeping The Nation's Top Fifty albums of 2011. But later press announcements gave a more review/consumer friendly release date of 16 January for “Out of Sight, Out of Town”. Or is it 23 January? It matters little and it’s probably no more than a second bite at the promotional apple, but maybe Standard Fare now have the opportunity – deservedly - of finding themselves in two years' worth of End of Year Charts?


Many songs here remain full of escape and leave-takings but “Out of Sight, Out of Town” is no musical departure from 2009's debut "The Noyelle Beat": again punchy indie-pop guitar tunes with a hint of brittle vulnerability behind their formidable feistiness and boy/girl vocals win the day. The settings maybe cafe bars, quiet parks and the dance floor but the real territory mapped out here is the space between people: infatuation, fooling around, emotional turmoil and lust. And in a neat reversal of the dalliances with younger bedfellows on ‘Fifteen’, here we have Emma taunting someone on their age preferences “I hear you’re into older women / do you know what you’re doing?”. The dynamic and mood of each song is often led by the guitars: poppy and carnival-like on ‘Half Sister’, full of chiming regret on ‘Darth Vader’ or languid reflection on ‘Early That Night’. But what sticks in the mind on these first listens are the majority where the guitars buzz angrily (much more angrily than on the debut?) with a serrated-edge rawness.



It’s all delivered with a confident and finely buffered sheen. Many of the titles read like captions from the Jeremy Kyle Show and there’s a lyrical bleakness or at best ambivalence to some songs “you can struggle all you like but we’re destined to die unknown / but the future’s bright, the future’s dead”. Last year’s infectious single ‘Suitcase’ even relates to the Holocaust. However “Out of Sight, Out of Town” overflows with a rambunctious, sexy optimism and a paints a more substantial, detailed and deep picture of modern relationships than the cover’s cartoon town illustration suggests. A power-pop pep-up for whatever winter month it was/is released.

 Standard Fare - Suitcase by Melodic Records

Standard Fare Out of Sight, Out of Town [BUY]

MANCHESTER GIGS IN MUSIC: January 2012 Pt.1

Definitely thinner pickings in the first month of the year but still some choice gigs this January; mainly a selection of mid-weight, mid-tempo US guitar bands, lots of local talent plus the odd alt-folkie. Definitely not mid-anything is Wild Flag, the heavyweight indie super-group made up of members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium and The Minders cruising into Manchester on the last day of the month. And prior to that the pick of the local bands is American guitar rock-leaning Easter ("firing out like Neil Young versus Pavement and Sonic Youth" says Manchester Music). Their 'Something American' (featured below) was just crowned Number One in Song by Toad's Top Fifty Records of 2011 - not too shabby.

As ever a mixtape [54 mins / 62 MB] of bands playing Manchester this December to help inform your gig-going decision-making - link in the post below this one.

Mcr Gigs in Music Mixtape: January 2012

Wild Flag Romance [3.51] (31 Jan Sound Control BUY TICKETS)
Howler Back Of Your Neck [7.00] (30 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Milagres Here To Stay [10.08] (7 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Cymbals Eat Guitars Definite Darkness [15.01] (7 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Easter Something American [19.28](12 Jan Dulcimer BUY TICKETS)
Burning Buildings Wandering Bear [23.57] (6 Jan Fuel FREE)
Porcelain Raft Put Me To Sleep [27.47] (18 Jan The Ritz BUY TICKETS)
Trailer Trash Tracys Dies in 55 [30.36] (14 Jan Kraak BUY TICKETS)
The Early Years Like A Suicide [36.07] (31 Jan Kraak BUY TICKETS)
Casiokids Golden Years [40.06] (20 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Francois and the Atlas Mountains Royan [44.19] (29 Jan The Castle BUY TICKETS)
Dan Haywood's New Hawks David in Cedars [50.25] (19 Jan Dulcimer BUY TICKETS)
A Winged Victory For The Sullen Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears [54.46] (14 Jan Academy 3 BUY TICKETS)

And not forgetting:
6 Jan Well Wisher Fuel / 7 Jan Maria and the Mirrors + Corpsekisser Kraak / 9 Jan Purson + Gnod Gullivers / 12 Jan Henry Rollins Bridgewater Hall / 13 Jan Shmoo + The Narrows Ruby Lounge / 14 Jan Brown Brogues + Great Waves Roadhouse / 18 Jan M83 The Ritz / 19 Jan Binary The Castle / 21 Jan Gary J Armstrong Night & Day / 21 Jan Denis Jones Band on the Wall / 22 Jan Foe The Castle / 22 Jan Laura J Martin Dulcimer / 23 Jan The Louche FC Band on the Wall / 26 Jan fin The Castle / 27 Jan The Secret Sisters Ruby Lounge / 27 Jan Baby Bird Band on the Wall / 30 Jan The Jon Cohen Experimental The Castle / 31 Jan Alejandro Toledo & The Magic Tombolinos Ruby Lounge / 31 Jan Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry Band on the Wall

MANCHESTER GIGS IN MUSIC: January 2012 Pt.2

Manchester Gigs in Music Mixtape: December 2011

Manchester Gigs in Music - January 2012 by Follyofyouth on Mixcloud

Or download mixtape [54 mins / 62 MB] here.

BENJAMIN SHAW There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet

I succumbed to the croaky cabaret songs of Benjamin Shaw (“Born in hate and raised in Blackpool”) earlier this year upon hearing his 2010 EP “I Got the Pox, the Pox is What I Got” and slapped lead song ‘Thanks For All The Biscuits’ on this Cloud Sounds podcast back in March. Now at the tail-end of this year comes “There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet”. And somehow the despondency is even more epic and the Mark Linkous-on-Mogadon vocals even more anguished. His self-penned bio sets the scene beautifully: “Lurching from one disastrous Customer Service job to the next, and each day turning to nought but filth, there was one of two paths Shaw could take to escape: either write the next great British novel, boldly staking claim to all that is good and pure in the land; or buy a pushbike and pedal himself into oncoming traffic. Luckily, Shaw had neither talent nor bicycle clips, and instead sat in pubs and wrote songs”.


Most of these pub-written songs are five to six minute studies of dusty, domestic despair layering crackle and interference over spidery Sparklehorse sparseness played out on mournful guitars, frail piano or lurching organ. Some of the incidents are astonishingly mundane – dreading a job interview the next morning (‘Interview’), regretting leaving the house because it means being alone for seven hours (‘Home’) or the simple domestic bliss of “something nice for supper, a house, then a dog” – but they are turned into widescreen, (anti-)heroic dramas of wretchedness that wring out the despair for all it's worth. Less tolerant listeners may be tempted just to shout “get over it!” at the speakers. Or like me you may luxuriate in wallowing face down in the deep end of self-pity.

As well as the intense despair (that word again), there’s also a bleak but wicked anti-climactic humour at play here. The drawn-out horror at the ordeal of recruitment and the crushing boredom of the work place at the beginning of ‘Interview’ cracks me up. The faux positivity of ’The Birds Chirp and the Sun Shines’ (“I never wanted to stare into the abyss / celebrate good times come on” sung as though on suicide watch) has a similar effect. The depressive even creates a bitter joke out of an instrumental passage: 'An Exciting Opportunity' is 2.5 minutes of unrealised crackle and hum and aimless plucked notes that never materialises into anything but musique concrète. But let’s not kid ourselves. For the most part “There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet” is a mordant slo-mo belly-crawl through the mire of depression.

‘Hulk’ suggests these desolate feelings are uncontrollable: “maybe it won’t / maybe it don’t / maybe it won’t take me over tonight”. Such feelings took the life of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous. Let’s hope for Benjamin Shaw this is a more cathartic process and that the only self-slaughter associated with this record is the slogan of Shaw’s record label Audio Antihero: “Specialists in Commercial Suicide”. And you could help avert this form of hara-kiri through purchasing your own set of these anthems for doomed losers. A wise investment but let’s hope any success doesn’t take Benjamin Shaw too far from the pub and his winning ways with failure and desolation.

BENJAMIN SHAW // How To Test The Depth Of A Well by TheArtOf...

Benjamin Shaw There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet [BUY]