Free Matador sampler

Matador have kindly made an autumn label sampler called Intended Play available. Seven of the songs haven’t been released as MP3 before. Read their original post here. If you like a song, support the artists and buy the album.

The Fucked Up song is a beast, their album The Chemistry of Common Life is one of my favourite albums of the year. Can’t wait to see what’s on the Brighten Corners reissue too so I’m looking forward to that in December.

Download the Intended Play sampler.

Track listing:

1. A.C. Newman – There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve (from Get Guilty, due out January 20)
2. Belle and Sebastian – The State I Am In (BBC Version) (from The BBC Sessions, due out November 18)
3. Jennifer O’Connor – Here With Me (from Here With Me, released August 19)
4. Shearwater – The Snow Leopard (Remastered) from Rook, released June 3)
5. Lou Reed – Caroline Says, Pt. II (Live) (from Berlin: Live At St. Ann’s Warehouse, due out November 4)
6. Mogwai – The Sun Smells Too Loud (from The Hawk Is Howling, released September 23)
7. Fucked Up – No Epiphany (from The Chemistry Of Common Life, released October 7)
8. Jay Reatard – An Ugly Death (from Matador Singles ‘08, released October 7)
9. Jaguar Love – Humans Evolve Into Skyscrapers (from Take Me To The Sea, released August 19)
10. Pavement – Cataracts (from Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed., due out December 9)
11. Brightblack Morning Light – Oppressions Each (from Motion To Rejoin, released September 23)
12. Times New Viking – Call & Respond (from the Stay Awake EP, released October 14)
13. Condo Fucks – What’cha Gonna Do About It? (from Fuckbook, due out March 2009)

Amazing what a bit of scrubbing up can do…

The announcement that Times New Viking, No Age and Los! Campesinos will be playing in Whelans this October 17th for the ridonculously cheap price of €15.45, is causing no end of excitement over on On The Record. And rightly so. Let’s just look at price tag again…€15.45. The best bit about it is the 45 cent. I love that 45 cent.

Okay we all know that the aforementioned ‘Viking specialize in a very abrasive sound. But have you ever wondered what it sounds like all cleaned up? Here is a clip from their recent appearance at the Pitchfork Festival playing the stonking ‘Teen Drama’. The scrubbed off fuzz reveals a melody I barely knew existed when Beth sings “get in line you pretty people/ we are coming in for the kill.” It still rocks nicely but, hopefully, in Dublin it will be wearing a fresh coat of rust and limescale ‘cos that’s why we love ‘em.

Times New Viking: Andrew’s Lane Theatre May 26th

Pic by Loreana Rushe

Noise is great. Hands up who likes noise? And I mean proper, loud noise. Like the dizzying, distorted blast of chart techno you hear every time you hurl toward the centre of a trashy fairground ride, or the endless thunder of a waterfall up close. It quickens the blood; its powerful and cathartic. Times New Viking know this. The American three-piece (one girl, two guys) are all about noise, and tonight they bring it to Andrew’s Lane Theatre.

Before the onslaught all is quiet. When the band take the stage there is a funny muted feeling in the air. Its a Monday evening and, frankly, not many people have turned up. People stand around in clusters. The band tune up quietly. In fact they are so unassuming in doing this that there isn’t a clap or holler until they actually start to play, making me wonder if people initially thought they were sound technicians or some such. I fear the worst; a damp squib of a gig to a half empty venue. But then they play, and the torrential sound they make is so raw, so electrifying, that any such doubts are rinsed away in minutes, and replaced by a euphoric blood-rush brought on by this scuzzy, fucked up, yet utterly melodic pop.

Times New Viking don’t just do noise. They also do brevity. Tonight, the songs come ridiculously hard and fast. Tunes pile violently into each other like a twenty-car pile up on the M50, and the audience gape on like thrilled rubberneckers. Throughout, drummer Adam Elliot and Keyboardist Beth Murphy share vocals, most excitingly on (My Head) which ends on the demented chant “we need more money/ ‘cos we need more drugs”. His voice is viciously distorted, a ragged howl to match the mangled interplay between Murphy’s keyboard and Jared Philip’s guitar, both of which manage to sound like an entire army of banjaxed instruments. In fact, what is most impressive about the band tonight is how they manage to coax such a great wall of sound from a keyboard, a guitar and a drum-kit.

At around forty minutes the gig is aptly short and intense, but it satisfies. I’m left with a bigger shit-eating grin than a Cheshire cat and the conviction that Times New Viking are one of the most thrilling bands going. If they come back and play again, I hope its to a bigger crowd. They deserve it.

Times New Viking – Rip It Off

Coming straight out of art school, Times New Viking have been surfing a wave of “critical acclaim” big enough to drown Holland this year. Part of their selling-point seems to have been their intentionally poor recording technique. Because of their methods, ‘Rip It Off’ sounds quite a bit like it’s been fed through a distortion pedal and a phone speaker. Of course, many other bands have used home-recording to make albums nowhere this abjectly noisy, so the question must be asked – is the DIY thing affected? It’s hard to see another way of explaining it off. The fuzz acts like a built-in excuse, a buffer between the band and the listener. It even makes listening to them slightly painful.So it can get annoying.

Luckily, there is an excellent album somewhere underneath. They make a very American brand of guitar-driven indie pop, as it sounded circa 1994. Names like Yo La Tengo and Guided By Voices spring to mind throughout, and while Times New Viking aren’t necessarily breaking new ground, they’ve made a really endearing album here. Every song is short and to the point, with unschooled male and female vocals bellowing hooks and unpretentious everything else backing them up. It would be eminently listenable, if it wasn’t for the dense layer of obfuscating fuzz.

Songs like My Head and Drop-Out are insistently catchy, and they can switch gears with more sprawled (though still short) tracks such as The Wait. The highlight overall, however, is probably the last twenty seconds of End Of All Things. Fourteen tracks into the album and two minutes into the song, the fuzz drops for the first and only time, leaving two voices and a guitar. It’s like a revelation, a first glimpse of something that’s been on the cusp of appearing for forty minutes. It may take a little more time to get to the rest of the music, but it’s worth it.

Some songs on MySpace. Out now on Matador Records in a record store near you.