Foreplay

This weekend past was something of the foreplay to next weekend’s orgiastic meltdown of Dublin’s gig overload. With Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, Fleet Foxes, Beach House, White Williams, Jape, High Places and some lad who ripped off that Jack L song “Hallelujah” all vying for attention on Saturday alone. Last weekend was a gentle stroke on the leg and coy look in comparison to this forthcoming veritable laneway ride. But as any glossy mag will tell you, sometimes the build-up’s the best part.

Providing the aforementioned coy looks on Friday evening in the soon-to-be-a-pile-of-cement Andrew’s Lane were five Swedish ladies that, rather frighteningly, are actually younger than me. Those Dancing Days is a particularly suitable band name for the Scandavian troupe, as they ply their trade in the nostalgia-steeped shiny-happy-people songs that one can dance like a camp badger to. And indeed a frenzy of camp-badger-dancing was on show as the girls tore through their simplistic, though instantly memorable catalogue of killer choruses and melancholy lyrics. You’ve seen this all before, and certainly prominently from Sweden (see Shout Out Louds and PBJ for reference points), though possibly never pulled off with such charming exuberance as guitarist Cissi Edraimsson (who receives an extra cheer upon leaving the stage) and keyboardist Mimmi Evrell seep. The band are visibly thrilled with each song they complete, as if the whole show might fall apart any second. Given the rough edges shown live that aren’t on show in their super-smooth single releases to date perhaps they’re right to be so worried. The band ooze potential, and will no doubt enjoy swooning previews with words such as “twee”, “uplifting” and “please let me elope with you” upon their second Irish visit (whereupon they may realize they’re not in Scotland. Bless.)

Saturday night is more serious business. Given that the Notwist are commonly referred to as the “German Radiohead”, their Button Factory gig coinciding with their Oxford counterparts is somewhat problematic calendar-wise. Nevertheless, the venue was nigh-on filled out with Neon Golden-devotees. The Radiohead comparison, it must be said, isn’t a lazily-made one. The Notwist’s balance of intelligent beats and attention to texture, combined with their tendency to rip three shreds of shite out of their guitar at the most spontaneous moments is their calling-card. The gulf between older, more guitar driven noise attacks sit somewhat awkwardly with newer, IDM/ambient tracks is stark at times, though within songs the melding of synth, sampler, guitar, drums and vocals fold together as organically as imaginable. Their set is surprisingly bare of tracks from latest album “The Devil You + Me”, though Boneless is a highlight. The band mined Neon Golden dry, and also dug up some gems from earlier albums. These were the ones that lasted two minutes and left one with a mild headache when finished. A fluid and funky version of Pilot saw the band at their darkly glorious best in a somewhat toploaded set that meant interest may well have dropped off for the non-ardent fans of the band towards the end. There was something detached and somewhat personality-free about the band, communicating as little as possible (although electronics man Console’s use of a Nintendo Wii remote to trigger his pedals and samplers clearly makes him too cool to have to talk to anybody, ever.)

Impersonality is not an accusation that can be levied at Evangelicals, who brought their fucked up psychadelia to an almost-empty Whelans on Sunday night. With a singer that could well be Rich Hall‘s acutely camp twin brother, a guitarist with a sparkly cape and seriously intriguing altered trousers, a bassist who is Johnny Borrell (is), a drummer who might just well be their dad and some well-placed soft porn on their equipment, the Oklahoma-based band wear their singularity on their sleeve. I found their recent album, The Evening Descends, esoteric at first, enthralling after a second listen, and an entertaining, though not always attractive experience thereafter. Their live show was much the same, minus the “first listen” part. Clearly not phased by the fact the crowd was tiny, or that their equipment was banjaxed (“D strings are for pussies!” quoth frontman Josh Jones) bounced through their spasmodic, disorientating and often downright delirious songs with all the excitement of a caffeine-fuelled guinea pig. The melody that sometimes has to be searched for on record came through more clearly live, and the raw power even more potent. Proof as if we needed any, that oddballs are always the most entertaining

One final thought from a certain Tripod gig on Monday night: How in the name of Guus Hiddink does Stephen Malkmus know who the fuck Ruud Van Nistelrooy is?

Photos courtesy of the lovely Cait Fahey, Turgidson and Loreana Rushe respectively.

America’s Most Haunted

In my inbox this morning was a heartwarming Monday-morning surprise. Analogue under-rated indie favourites The Antlers are free-releasing a new EP, New York Hospitals to coincide with the NY-based After The Jump Fest this 21st of June. In ringleader Pete Silberman’s own press-released words the EP consists of “Two covers from New York-ish bands from around 1999 surround an original, entitled “Sylvia (An Introduction)”, intended to introduce the focus of the soon to be completed Hospice LP.” Last time we talked, Silberman chatted about his burgeoning My Bloody Valentine affections, and their influence can be heard seeping through the EP, as the three songs absolutely drip with reverb and ethereal vocals. Yet the New Yorker’s high-frequency vocals and increasingly orchestral compositions lend a particularly singular sound to a record with more cover material than original.

“Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing”, from the Magnetic Fields seminal 69 Lovesongs filters the song through some Mazzy Star aesthetics to spectral effect (get used to thesaurus-ized versions of the word “haunted” for this blog entry… comes up quite a bit). It is a deceivingly hopeful opener, and one look at the lyrics set the song up for an impending darkness. Silberman’s lyrics complete the Herculean challenge of matching the haunted chill Merritt’s own words invoke with second song “Sylvia (Introduction)”. He sings in his Elliot Smith-like vibrato ostensibly about Sylvia Plath (It made you crawl under that house/And stick your head under the stove), possibly from the point of view of Ted Hughes. Rather though, it seems like a personal allegory for a Plath-like person in his own life, and the spectres they carry through their lives. Their inability to cope with mortality at an early age “makes you sting/…makes you want to kill“, and Silberman, or Silberman’s character struggles to understand his Sylvia’s morose pain. Set against the same sea of reverb “Sylvia (Introduction)” is otherworldly enough to keep Yvette Fielding in business.

The closing Yo La Tengo cover, “Tears In Your Eyes” from And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out acts as a sort of desperate attempt to save the aforementioned Sylvia, with it’s assurances that “Darkness always turns into the Dawn.” A beautiful rendition, if not somewhat unmemorable, rounds a short EP off with the commendable feat of actually engaging with the source material of the songs Silberman has produced here, and is a promising opening salvo from forthcoming sixth album Hospice. Mind you, if it’s this macabre in the New York Hospital, I’ll be needing a much bigger thesaurus for the Hospice…

Get the EP here.

Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math

In Rainbows: However much you want (read: free)
Radiohead ticket: €70.70
Ticket charge: €3.50
Transport to Malahide Castle: €1.05—> €25
Merchandise (incl. “Yorkie: Not For Girls” t-shirt and ironically empty “In Rainbows” wallet ): €10—-> €100
“Chips” and “Cheeseburger”: €9
Inflatable sofa (for the less able-bodied fan): €20
Token Bat For Lashes headband so you fit in: €7.50 (try Claire’s Accessories)
Booze: €Whatever’s left in your wallet x however many times you want to use a portaloo.

Free Jape instore gig in Tower Records at 6 o clock: Fucking priceless.

Crayonsmith

Ciaran Smith, chief of Dublin-based three-piece Crayonsmith, is an excitable man. His tongue trips over itself as he tries to relate all his ideas and his answers, and he worries sometimes if he’s said the right thing. His thoughts can be seen effervescing like a roughly-shaken can of Club Orange after each question and he answers everything insightfully and sharply, referencing Gaudi as easily as Les Savy Fav while not coming across like, well, a wanker. He has reason to be excited of course. His sophomore effort, White Wonder, does not suffer from a slump but an upsurge of refreshing ideas and masterful execution, and the band are about to set off on a transatlantic flight to tour with Islands in America. We recently talked about the upcoming tour, anticon, inspiration, Out On A Limb and that album cover.

You’re supporting Why? this week and Islands on their American tour, which are pretty big coups- How do you feel supporting bands that influence your own sound?

It’s an honour, I guess. You’re delighted that somebody out there, either somebody in the band, or their promoter, recognizes the similarities between the music and thinks “Yeah, these guys would fit.” With Why? it’s Foggy Notions that picked us, and we’re totally grateful for that, and with Islands it was Nick Thorburn, we kinda know each other from the last time they played here. We hung out in Whelans afterwards, and stayed drinking at the bar all night, and he said he’d love to do a tour. We talked about different producers we liked, and different filmmakers, and records we loved and stuff and found we’d similar interests.

And is that the same thing that happened before with the other bands you’ve supported in America?

Yeah. It’s like, if you like somebody’s music, get in touch with them and tell them you love their music, say thanks for the positive influences, and ask if it’s OK for you to send an album, as a thank you or whatever. That’s what happened with Sparklehorse, and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. It’s great with the whole Myspace thing that there’s no entourage between you and another artist, it’s just human-to-human.

Regarding Why?, anticon’s influence is all over your new music. What is it about anticon that you like, that you want to carry over into your music?

Between the last album and the new album, when it came to doing the beats, the guy I worked with is George Brennan, who’s in Deep Burial. He had this AKAI MPC sampler. We’d seen this DVD, this anticon tour DVD with cLOUDDEAD and he’s just hitting out beats with his fingers. It’s great if you’re into making drums sound different, or detuning things, giving it a different texture. It goes back to Beck with Mellow Gold. If you’re into that kinda stuff there’s a whole label making that music, and that’s where the template for the album came from.

The first album was quite slacker rock-influenced, did you feel sick of that kind of music in between, or did feel like you had to make yourself move on?

I think what it is, right, is you have your first album and all the bands that have influenced you up to and during the last album come out, and you kind of purge it. You’ve got all of that out of you. There’re certain bits that stay with you. In my case I’ll always veer towards melody and an interesting beat. So then when you move on to the second album and you listen to bands like Why? and Of Montreal, and Mice Parade and think “wow, this is influencing me on top of all the old influences”, and because it’s fresher you absorb all those in, and they’re there when you go to make your next album. I’m sure it’ll be the same way with album 3 or 4. It’s like Bruce Springsteen and Nebraska. He comes to the band with the songs, and they’re like “we’re not going to play on that. There’s no room, there’s no need for us to play.” You just go with the feeling at the time, and the circumstances. Also, you look back to what you’ve done before, and you don’t want to repeat yourself so you’re always trying to do something new. You have to keep yourself interested as well as everybody else.

Do you take inspiration from outside of music as well?

Yeah. I’m mad about nature, about movement. Gaudi said “Everything comes from the book of nature”, and it’s true. Whatever has been produced has occurred in nature, now it’s just documented. The Microphones use the studio so that you hear things like wind going through the music, it’s anything to represent what’s around you, what turns you on in the world.
Socializing is another one. Going out and drinking. But, that’s not in a… not in a…

Not in an Arctic Monkey’s way?

No, exactly. More like the idea of people releasing, they get their lives back at the end of the week and there’s a giddiness with people within this free time, they get to be fully themselves. There’s a certain energy when people get together. It’s how bands happen. People want to do something with their free time. I’m into how people integrate, and bounce off one another.

Is there any difference between Irish and American audiences, do you find, from having played extensively over there?

On the American tour with Mt. Eerie and Casiotone it was 14 dates from Vancouver down to LA, and the gigs were everywhere. In a house, in a clothing store, in venues. From my experience from there compared to here, there’s more of a can-do attitude there. Whereas here people associate quality with a certain established venue. We’ve played house gigs here in Ireland and I thought they were great, and they don’t happen enough. Ireland is so small that we’ve played pretty much every venue, and we don’t get offered house shows. Whereas in America you get offered to play and the gig can happen anywhere. That’s why we’re going to do these shows with Islands, and if we weren’t doing them, we’d be going back ourselves. I guess it’s because America’s so much bigger that you can have houses big enough in different towns along the coast. Here you’ll be lucky to get a house show every few months. There’s that whole scene in Kilcoole though they have house shows all the time.

The DIY hardcore punk scene?

Yeah, so I don’t know that our music exactly fits that. But I’m amazed by it. 16 and 17 year olds are putting on these gigs, and it’s totally independent of Dublin. They won’t pay more than 10 quid for a show in Dublin, which is how it should be I suppose.

Steve Shannon produced the album, what was it like working with him?

Very good, very good. Before we even recorded the album we’d been playing the songs for a year, just to make sure everything was ready to go, everybody was happy with their pieces. So we brought the beat tracks that we’d made with George to Steve, put them on the computer, and he tracked them. He’d make suggestions then, like to play certain things an octave higher. He helped us realize our ideas. He’d know if something should be put through a certain filter or whatever. He had the know-how we needed, and suggestions that we brought into our songs. You can definitely hear touches of Steve on the album. There was always room for criticism both ways. It was a great experience.

You don’t seem to get an awful lot of press in Ireland considering the success you’ve amassed, I think. Do you agree?

With this album we’ve got good reviews, wherever it’s gone. We’re going to do our thing anyway, and if people are coming to our gigs that what matters. Press can help and all, but if they’re not into it we still have the Myspace and stuff. Since we told people about the Islands support our profile views have jumped double, we’re getting comments from Americans and there’s no press there. It’s hands-on, DIY work, like sending bulletins to fans of Islands and stuff. You do your thing, and if the press want to get on board, cool, if not, if it’s not their cup of tea and that’s cool. If both the press and the people aren’t into you, then you have to ask yourself questions, you know?

You’re on Out On A Limb, what’s that like as a label to be on?

It’s great. In terms of our band dynamic, they’re like the business band-members. It’s totally candid, nothing is not said. If something has to be dealt with, it’s dealt with. Nothing’s put on the backburner. It’s always moving, it’s like a 24 hour shop, somebody’s always chipping away.

Do you ever feel like if you wanted to get bigger you’d have to move on from the label?

We’re totally happy where we are at the moment. If the time comes when we’re asked to make a jump, we’ll ask how we can keep Out On A Limb onboard, how can money go to them, because we love their way of working. That’s probably totally idealistic, but I’ve heard too many horror stories of bigger labels where the person who signs them loves them, but then when they’re moved on the person who takes their place doesn’t like the band. It fluctuates. Whereas with Out On A Limb the lads love every band that’s on the label. Grassroots is all we know for the moment, we seek refuge in that because it’s workmanlike. A needs to be done, B needs to be done. Has it been done and has it been done? If you call somebody you get an answer straight away, there’s no waiting on emails or anything in between.

Was the helmet D.A.D.D.Y’s idea?

Yeah! The day before the photo-shoot the guy who was doing it, Mike, told me he had this idea to do a lo-fi version of a high-brow painting, like a goofy version of Joan of Arc. So they brought me into the prop room of D.A.D.D.Y. and they had this white kind of bunny suit, and it had been made from bathmats. Mike had just been in Smyths and he brought back a rubber sword and helmet and breastplate and stuff. I didn’t even question it. I said he could do whatever he wanted, as long as it’s not a standard Irish album cover. It’s one of those things that sticks, I suppose. So at the album launch I wore the suit and helmet and it was a pain in the whole. It’s so sweaty. These things flap all over the place and hit you and… But it adds a mania to the gig. If you’re just about holding the whole thing together it adds excitement. Pavement were famous for it.

Are you going to continue wearing it?

We’re debating whether to bring it to America with us or not. The other lads aren’t in costumes so it’s a bit like the Super Furry Animals or the Flaming Lips. Or maybe it can be like Les Savy Fav, where the lead singer Tim Harrington can just do whatever he wants and the other bandmembers are just in their shirt and jeans, it could work from that angle. So I’ll keep you posted about that.

We could do a tour diary from the helmet…

Exactly, that’d be great.

So where to from here?

We’re working our jobs for the next month to get money together for America, for the tour with Islands. Then we’re going to try and focus on America for the next year or so. We’ve been given this golden opportunity. We’ll be playing to over 12000 people over those 14 dates and hopefully we’ll get offers from other bands to do tours with them. We’ll do a tour in between in Ireland to bolster the profile. People will be coming on board hopefully having heard the album since the launch, around September or October.

Do you feel like you do need to break internationally? Is Ireland too small?

It is, yeah. You do your first year or two of gigs here, and see how that goes, and you might get offered Oxegen or Electric Picnic. But at the same time, I don’t see what the point is to just be big in Ireland. Nobody makes music for exclusively one country, it’s meant to be universal, international. You have to push yourself. Each country is a new challenge. We use Ireland like our base, do our tours here, but try to play in other countries as much as here.

Do you think it’s a case that Irish acts are too comfortable being successful in their little clique, or is it just genuinely so difficult to establish a foothold in Europe or America?

I don’t know. Jape is doing well. He’s broken out in Europe. It’s the whole “who-you-know” thing I suppose, in a sense. But some acts are just satisfied to fill out Whelan’s every couple of months, and that’s all cool and all, but don’t you want to go somewhere else? Look at the Redneck Manifesto. They cut their teeth here, and then went off and did an amazing tour of America, and I think they’re going off to Japan next year. You have to see yourself as an export, that you can compete, or that you’re music is as good, as other bands out there. It’s not about you being the big fish in the small pond.

Jump into the ocean?

Yeah. You have to push yourself forward, or you get complacent. You can make loads of money and yet nobody in Europe or America will know you. You push and push and your music gets better, since you have more to play for.

Crayonsmith play their last Irish gig before embarking on their American tour on the 26th of May in Crawdaddy, with Mae Shi. White Wonder is available from yer usual outlets now.
Check them out at: www.myspace.com/crayonsmith

May Contain Traces Of Pitchfork

This will in no way alleviate the suggestions that Analogue writers do nothing all day but tug their chains to Pitchfork (now made easier with the porn-like indulgences the TV stations allows us), but OMGZ, have you read El Guincho‘s ‘Guestlist‘ feature? Observe:

“I played in a place called CrawDaddy yesterday in the Antics, a night run by a super nice guy called Dave in Dublin. There was a super-good energy in the place, you could tell the kids were there just to get really into whatever sort of music just because it was played live, and the crowd went nuts at the end of the show. I think we all had a really good time. And then we went into this house party at 3 a.m.”

Not quite as big a scoop as the mention of our Radiohead article, but isn’t a bit obscure that hip Americans (they do exist, you know) will henceforth think that next time they’re in Dublin this “The Antics” place is brimming with uber-cool El Guincho loving types and they must pop along to see how the Dublin scene rolls? But then, for all it’s tired Kings Of Leon fests and NME overindulgences, I suppose Antics is as close to an all-inclusive indie night as we have to offer. One room for the Topshop/man fiends, one for the electro-inclined, and the smoking area for the rest. And of course, the odd coup like El Guincho to remind the disillusioned why everybody else in their entire stratosphere end up going back to Crawdaddy every Wednesday night.

Carly Sings

Not your typical whingey singer-songwriter shit

Sitting in the corridors of Trinity College, listening to Carly Sings debut album The Glove Thief on a dodgy Discman, and watching the artist herself waltz about in time to the music, I scribble a note and wave it at her.

‘If you were reviewing your album what would you say about it?’

She holds a pen to her lips in a moment’s contemplation before scrawling “I’d say it’s retro, but refreshing. And maybe that it’s boldly putting the emphasis back on lyrics (without it being whingey singer-songwriter shit)”. She has the ability, it seems, to read minds as well as make music.

For the Carly Sings project is as far from whingey singer-songwriter shit as one can imagine in a world where Glen Hansard is on the television as frequently as our recently departed Taoiseach. Lyrically, she focuses on relationships, enough to set the CLICHÉ ALERT alarm bells ringing in an instant. Yet she filters her subject matter through a haze of classical allusions, inventive imagery and a knowing smirk to make flicking through the sleevenotes almost as fun as listening to the album itself. Opening with the line ‘You live over Mount Olympus in America, and I, I live behind green trenches of ammonia’, The Glove Thief immediately reassures that it’s no O or Living.

Rather Carly Sings’ debut album bears more resmblance to last year’s Choice Music Prize tip, Adrien Crowley’s slow-burning Long Distance Swimmer. Hardly surprising given the session musicians and production they share, there is however one most notable difference between the two albums: Immediacy. Like a more pop-minded St. Vincent (or a less pop-minded Feist, for that matter), the 70′s French pop fidelity and minor orchestral backing covers what are essentially out-and-out pop songs. Knowingly retro, there is nevertheless, as she puts it herself, a refreshingness about The Glove Thief arising from the fact nothing on the airwaves or the interweb sound quite like it at the moment. A hodge-podge of the neglected style of bossa nova, 60′s sensibilities and 50′s production values makes this possible.

Her art is not without ambition either. Arising, most probably, from her bilingual upbringing, living between France and Ireland most of her life, she has international pretensions for the album. Self-releasing it in Ireland and iTunes, she aims to see it on French, American and Swedish shelves as soon as possible. She talks of touring Japan not as a pondering of some flighty dream, but that she really ought to pick up a Japanese phrasebook next time she’s in town. Deploring the unmotivated, insular outlook of most Irish bands, she refuses to make Irish success her end-goal. Judging by the press already garnered here though, she’s going to achieve it regardless.

The album is written from the point of view of a contrived character, who is aware of her own heightened sense of drama, seductive ability, and playfulness. Carly explains a “glove thief” as “somebody who goes around stealing people’s hearts”. In the avoidance of an epic (read: cheesy) closing statement in the vein of ‘and the album might just steal yours’, I’ll opt for ‘it might just steal somebody’s Choice Music Prize 2009 and all’.

The Glove Thief is available from Road Records on the 18th of April
www.myspace.com/carlysings

Los Campesinos!

Neil Campesinos!, the guitarist in this year’s most hyped indie-pop band, chats about their debut album, their all-ages shows and the impending egomania.

A line on We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison runs “four sweaty boys with guitars say nothing about my life”. Do you think Los Campesinos! provide a healthy alternative to that traditional British indie outfit?

I really hope so. When we first started we were completely sure that we didn’t want to be that standard lad-rock post-Libertines, boring, stale…

The View!

Yeah! There are bands like that coming out every single week. We didn’t know what we wanted to sound like, we only had ideas of what we didn’t want to sound like.

You associate a lot more with North American acts. Are you complete anglophobes? Are there any British bands or scenes that do interest you?

Oh yeah, there’s still lots of awesome British bands. On the tour we’re doing we’re playing with Johnny Foreigner from Birmingham, and 4 Or 5 Magicians, which are bands that we all know. So we’re not anglophobes at all. British bands that get press attention aren’t particularly good. And all our favourite bands are American anyway.

Have you found your reception in North America has been more welcoming?

The North American reception has been quite surreal. They read the British press in a different way. I can’t fathom the fact that we can go to gigs in America and play to people who are singing all the words along. I guess the internet has done so much for us. It’s really amazing.

You’re signed to Arts and Crafts over there which is fairly prestigious. You have a similar sound and ethos to other bands on that label. Did that play a big part in you choosing to sign with them?

I think the A+C thing was down to a lot of bands on that label. We got to work with David Newfield who’s connected with Broken Social Scene. It all just came about without us looking for it. We never really considered getting on a record label in America. When the Wichita thing happened they were like “We’ll get someone to put it out in North America too. How about Arts and Crafts?”, those two labels have a connection. So we were like “Why the hell not!” It was very flattering. A year ago we were huge fans of that label, and now they’re asking us to be part of their roster.

Have you met any of the bands you like off the label yet?

Yeah! Several times. I bumped into Kevin Drew in Toronto at a gig. Well, he bumped into me, I didn’t even notice him at first! We’ve met them all now, they’re all really nice. David Newfield especially so.

Do you think he’s made a contribution to your sound?

Yeah without a doubt! He’s such more musically advanced than us in so many ways. He’s older than us, he’s got more experience. He has ideas that we’ve never even thought of, and this vast array of instruments, mics, compressors, everything. He’s exactly… a mad scientist, but he’d be like “Let’s try this through a 1940s vintage amp.” And it would work.

A lot of your influences, like Pavement, are distinctly lo-fi, but the Los Campesinos! sound is quite clean. Was that conscious?

We didn’t necessarily want to go for a clean record, but somewhere in between… I don’t think we could have gotten away with releasing a lo-fi record, although it would have been amazing. I don’t think it’s a super-clean mix, but I guess it is essentially a pop record. I think our first record almost has to be a pop record. It’s meant to be fun. Not mainstream pop, that American type of indie pop.

Is Los Campesinos! the dayjob now?

Yeah. We just graduated in June. To be able to walk out of university straight into this is a bit ridiculous.

I know it’s a bit into the future, but do you think you’ll be a quick-fire releaser of albums, or will you take your time over them? You haven’t been together that long, and your first album is already finished.

Well, Hold On Now, Youngster comes out in February, and we’ll pretty much tour this year out. The longer you drag it out, the longer you get to be in a band for, so I think we’ll take our time!

Milk it for all it’s worth! Release You! Me! Dancing! four times!

No! No! That is a no-no. It’s so frustrating when bands re-release their songs… If you’ve not made it by now, stop trying! If that first single you released three years ago isn’t popular now, it’s not going to get popular. Just go away and quit! If you’re not in a band where you want to release material because it excites you, why are you in one? Just to get famous.

Most of your gigs on the upcoming tour are all ages gigs, is it a fight with venues to allow this?

It has been, some venues make a big deal of it. I don’t know why, I’ve been to plenty of gigs where it’s not over 18s. Some people just don’t like it. Gareth (singer and lyricist) is quite active in getting our gigs all ages. I like it, it makes the crowd more exciting. When I was 14 or 15 at a gig I’d go mental, whereas if I go to a gig now I’ll probably just stand there, move my head and say “Yeah, this is good”.

Have you noticed at your gigs whether people are like that? Static, with some head-nodding thrown in, or have you been getting a more excitable reaction?

Actually, really amazingly, we’ve been getting really excited reactions. During our UK tour we had stage invasions. Generally we do get an exciting crowd. We find it weird, because when we go to gigs we’re not like that. We’ll just enjoy the music and not go mental. Maybe they actually HATE the music, that’s why they’re going mental.

That’s a fucked up way to look at it! Last time you played some of the band seemed quite nervous. I suppose it was the first time you’d been on tour. Do you think next time you’ll be more comfortable on stage?

Yeah I hope so anyway. That was pretty much one of the first gigs of a big tour. We’ll be much more comfortable now. We’ve much more songs to play. We’ve not even started learning them yet. They’re songs we played for the album but haven’t actually played live on the album yet, as a band proper. When we recorded the album we didn’t really play the songs together, as a band. We’ll see what happens in a few weeks, how that goes. When we realize we probably should have started practicing about two weeks ago. I think we’ll still be nervous, if a little bit more confident. But still nervous, and still excited.

Is Los Campesinos! a democracy?

Yeah, I guess it is. Everyone has differences at times, but most of the time it’s all positive. We do try and always agree on, say support acts, and tracklisting and album names. Gareth writes all the lyrics, Tom writes a lot of the lead lines and hooks, and we’ll all structure and arrange it and add our own parts into it.

Speaking of tracklistings, you left International Tweexcore Underground, It Started With A Mixx, and We Throw Parties! You Throw Knives! off the album. Did you want an album of mainly new material or were you just bored of the older songs?

We just really wanted to get a mix of newer material and material that had been released, and then songs people new anyway. So we left International Tweexcore Underground off the album because it didn’t fit in terms of the mix of the album and sonically… also we just liked the idea of a standalone concept single. We left It Started With A Mixx off because it’s an old song, and we’ve played it for a long time. Perhaps it wouldn’t fit on the album. And the same goes for We Throw Parties!. We still really like it, we’ll still play it live, but it was time to move on. I think we made the right choice.

How easily did the songs come together for the album, it doesn’t seem like you had a lot of time to make it?

I guess a lot of them, even the new ones had already been totally written, practised and demoed. We had more songs that we didn’t pick to go on the album. It didn’t feel particularly stressful at the time, even though we didn’t have a lot of time. We approached it quite sensibly. We knew how much we had to get done, so we focused and did it. Also, we were staying in a town where there was nothing at all to do, it was very dull, which meant we didn’t get distracted at all.

It is a “big” album, are you ready for the inevitable backlash against it? The band gets so much positive press, do you think it’ll be difficult when negative comments start appearing?

Probably. But so what? However it balances out, it doesn’t really matter anyway. We’ll do what we want to do. It all depends on how seriously you take yourself, and how seriously you take other people’s comments, and one thing we really don’t want to do is take ourselves too seriously. We’re well aware this bubble could break, in a year’s time people might not give a shit about us, and if that’s the case it’ll be sad. But we’ve had this opportunity, and none of us ever expected to do this, none of us aimed to do this. Every day on tour, I know it sounds really cheesy, but every day is exciting.

You’ve been getting an awful lot of press for a young band, how’ve you been dealing with it?

Just not thinking about it too much, not taking it too seriously… When you see yourself in magazines you like, say Pitchfork or Plan B that’s cool. If people ask to do an interview with us it’s really flattering that somebody cares that much, whether it’s national press, university press, or fanzines. It’s so surreal that people care at all what we have to say.

Do you think the ego will come eventually?

Oh yeah, hopefully. We’re practising it now… Not really, though, we never meant for this to happen, and it wouldn’t be fair to get too carried away with it.

Ugly Megan

Ugly Megan may be moving to Canada.

There is no bigger bombshell the Waterford-based duo could have dropped on our first meeting. As Orlando (guitars, vocals, and newly-bought MicroKorg) relayed the couple’s plans to move abroad for art college this summer I felt a distinct tearing pain in my chest. It’s akin to your fourth-class first crush moving to the school down the road as soon as you’d plucked up the courage to carry her bag home for her. Sure, she’ll have a better standard of education and she’ll be wearing a prettier school uniform but you can no longer gaze at her longingly across the maths book you share every friday. I have fallen head-over-heels in puppy love with Ugly Megan. I sleep with their songs rotating in my brain, I dream of each dreamy melody they’ve concocted, and sometimes I bring their photographs into the bath with me.

Being as addictive as Pokemon Silver, twee as a tea party, and wide-eyed as a coke-fuelled Bambi it would be all too easy to cast aspersions on the artistic viability of the Megans. Quite frankly, artistic viability can go fuck itself. Covering Snoop Dogg on nothing but an acoustic guitar and a Yamaha transcends art; it is, rather, utter genius. I can only imagine Ugly Megan pulling it off with such aplomb. Their hallmark breathy boy-girl vocals and simple melodies rework D Oh Double G to an undiscovered level of tweeness, though an unconscious tweeness at that. Being so prettily dressed, stumbling over their words onstage, and decking their tables out with plastic dinosaurs, toy cameras and fairy lights would be slightly nauseating if it were not so uncontrived. It helps that they spin off into bad-mouthed choruses in their songs. For every “I love you” there’s a “shake that ass bitch and let me see what you got”.

Having only known each other about a year, it’s compelling to watch how in-tune they are onstage. My first Ugly Megan experience was in the Back Loft, playing at a book launch for Oisin Byrne. The hall filled with new-age hippies and art fashionistas in equal measure, it was difficult to know how their set was going to go down. However, three songs in the dynamic had been established: a white-robed chorus of Mother Nature’s children danced around the band’s humble table, while the well-dressed kept a little more distance, but smiled and bopped heads appreciatively. It was overwhelmingly obvious that both Kathi and Orlando were crippilingly nervous, but somehow this only added to their charm. While they share indiscernable mutterings and shaky smiles in between songs, the actual tracks exude a confidence by contrast. Karl Mac used the Moldy Peaches as a touchstone for UM comparisons, and it’s an apt one. There is a Beat Happening simplicity and ramshackleness to their songs that they marry with an Arts & Crafts copyrighted dynamic that intermingles with their Kimya-and-Adam straight-up sincerity, however, that makes them that little more distinctive.

The second show was this week’s Casiotone For The Painfully Alone support slot. Having played Whelans on New Years night, supporting Jape (they chatter excitedly about meeting Richie Egan’s mum backstage) one might have expected a higher level of confidence returning to familiar territory. Not so. Kathi’s legs shake under the table, and Orlando avoids the gaze of the crowd, staring at his guitar throughout. Nevertheless, the reception is even more rapturous than before. Their “Fresh Prince Of Bel Air” cover is punctuated by whoops, and every song cheered swellingly immediately afterwards. Humbleness, said Margot Asquith, is the first element of greatness. It’s easy to understand then, what makes Ugly Megan so fucking fantastic.

But it’s all going to end soon. “Hopefully we’re leaving Ireland, but we’re definitely leaving Waterford.” Despite what they describe as “some amazing bands” cohabiting the county with them (such as Dae Kim, and Kathi’s own classmate’s Megan rap-dance project You’re Only Massive) there is as much merit in “playing in an alley with a few cans” as in their venues, populated by Stairway to Zeppelin the last time Orlando visited, and they are cursed to never play Cork thanks to over-zealous over-18s rule enforcement. If Canada does indeed call when the CAO results come out, I’ll be at the airport bidding a tearfilled goodbye.

Myspace

Too Clever By Half

We’re all about the legit here at Analogue, but Sergeant McGuirk will have to forgive me this one breach of code. I can barely contain my excitement about the new Long Blondes’ album “Couples” to wait until its release to wax lyrical about. In fact, I haven’t even finished listening to the album.

I first fell into infatuation with the LBs two years ago, and have begun a downward descent into fanboyishness since the release of debut album “Somebody To Drive You Home”. Admittedly opening salvo of the new release, “Century”, took a while to unveil it’s synthy charms to me. Usually all about the promienent trebly guitars and confessional (well, lyricist Dorian Cox has the tendency to adopt female personas in his songs, but those female personas are confessional) lyrics warbled by Oxfam-chic goddess Kate Jackson, the band have taken on a new, decidedly more experimental direction since entering Erol Alkan’s studio. Last year’s B-side “Fulwood Babylon” was probably the best they’ve written to date- controlled, clever, and catchy in equal measures.

Kate tells off 15,000 fans for not waiting til the release date

But my first listen to the album is now officially over. On first reactions, which I will no doubt soon retract in a flurry of revisionism (Lester Bangs made a career of it), it is quite brilliant. Far more varied than their first offering, it shies away from out-and-out poppiness, hiding hooks and often leaving Kate Jackson‘s voice against a bare background. The lyrics are in the same vein (“I could be a shoulder to cry on, I could be a body to lie on, but don’t ask me for more than that”), and familiar drumbeats keeping a sense of continuity, but it’s obvious the Blondes are branching out. There’s an 80′s anthem (Here Comes The Serious Bit), a disco hit (Guilt), a minimalist soul song (Too Clever By Half) and a Germanic no-wave opus (Round the Hairpin), and, most noticably there’s a lot more synths and a lot more spoken-word samples. And there’s one song that nicks the bassline from Jesus and Mary Chain’s “The Living End”, which has already been ripped off by Autolux. Erol Alkan’s contributions are manifold, cleaning up the sound and sellotaping on some age-old effects like backwards vocals to augment that Vintage First attitude the Long Blondes wear so proudly.

Here’s hoping they’ve rethought the artwork too…

Cap Pas Cap

I’ve seen Cap Pas Cap live four times in the last twelve months, thrice in support slot capacity, and they never fail to strike me as a band extremely assured in their own sound. Often shy and retracted onstage, the band stand in contrast to their confident, carefully-constructed clamour. The Not Not Is Fine EP, their sole release to date, exhibited the early stage of a sound that’s rapidly developing into something more complex. However, things have been all quiet on the Cap Pas Cap front since its release in December 2006. I caught up with the band before their recent These New Puritans’ support slot to see how 2008 is shaping up.

“Not Not Is Fine” EP has been doing the rounds for a while now, and you seem to have a lot of realized songs in your live arsenal- Will there be a new release soon?

Ed : We’ve already begun recording and we’re really happy with the results, it’s taken us a while to figure out exactly what songs work well as a set but it’s really taking shape now, completely new stuff and some older songs from the live sets that we really want to document. We’ve been recording with Al O’Connell who’s worked with Klaxons and The Rapture among others…The EP was released in December 2006 and the hope would be to release our first album later this year, probably Autumn. In the meantime we have a split 7” with Marnie Stern coming out on Hidden Hive Records in the next month or so.

Full details here..

Does having the band signed to your own label offer a lot of artistic freedom, or is there more pressure on you to be successful?

Ed : Only one member of Cap Pas Cap is involved with the Skinny Wolves label, so I wouldn’t describe it as ‘our label’, plus, as far as I can tell, they are actually just as busy working with other bands (Indian Jewelry, Luftkluster/Luftfluks amongst others), since Skinny Wolves released our EP we’ve been talking to a number of other labels who are interested in working with Cap Pas Cap, we’ve also managed to have the EP released in Japan on the Rallye/Klee label. The only pressure comes from ourselves, we’re quite self critical and cautious about what we release, but outside of our own circle we’re certainly not aware of any expectations.

You’ve played a lot of high-profile support slots- Have you learned anything or gained new ideas from any of the headline acts?

Ed : Definitely, playing shows with Errase Errata, Crystal Castles, Gossip, No Age have been so important for us, mainly because it informs us on where we want to go with Cap Pas Cap, which is outside of Ireland, and it defines for us how we want to work, we feel more comfortable placing ourselves in an international context. The biggest eye opener was probably The Go! Team tour, those venues were much bigger than anything we had been used to so that was very exciting and a learning experience I guess.

Who would your dream support slot be for?

Ed : Speaking for myself? This week it would be HEALTH, I couldn’t even guess what the others would be..

You’ve garnered some international recognition, like in Dazed And Confused. Is it an ambition for you to break out of Ireland?

Ed : Yeah, it really is, it’s hard to point to very much that we identify with musically and visually in an Irish context, nearly all our references points are international, the few shows we’ve played abroad has only confirmed that for us, particularly the gigs we played in Malmo last year, we met some amazing people and played to new audiences. Our EP has just been released in Japan too; we would LOVE to go there!

Are there any frustrations with being an Irish band, such as the smaller audience?

Ed : It’s not frustrating, it’s just a fact, there is a limited audience for what we do in Ireland, but we’re quite realistic about that. Again, it’s just another reason to explore the UK and Europe and further..

Do you pay attention to lyric-writing or are you more interested with providing vocal hooks, using the voice as another instrument?

Gavin : I think both lyrics and delivery are equally important in a song and we try to combine these to make every song as imaginative, engaging and unconventional as it can and should be.

Your sound seems quite informed by post-punk and krautrock- Have you always been interested in this type of music? Was it a conscious direction you wanted to take?

Gavin : We all listen to different types of music individually and Cap Pas Cap is music that happens when the four of us meet up. We didn’t sit down and decide to make a certain type of music; there
is definitely no blueprint for what we do.

Official Website
Myspace

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