David, Kate and Rose, Kid Canaveral

Ahead of Sunday night’s gig at the Westport in Dundee, Kate from  Kid Canaveral is the first to respond to the MPT Inquisition:

The Phantom Band

Last night’s Chemikal Underground showcase in Aberdeen proved to be a wonderful evening’s entertainment. Given that neither Lord Cut-glass nor Zoey van Goey were performing it says a lot about the label’s rosta.

First up was ex-De Rosa main man Martin John Henry. This was the first time I’d seen Martin perform since the band’s demise and although afterwards he was a little bit self critical it wasn’t obvious why that should be the case from the front of the stage. The set was a mixture of De Rosa tunes, new solo numbers and his ‘Army Dreamers’ cover.

Unlike the Dunfermline acoustic performance, Martin played with an electric guitar and even some laptop backing on a couple of newer solo songs. Unfortunately the laptop didn’t want to play ‘Span’, the most ambitious of the MJH solo demoes to date but we did get a solo ‘Love Economy’ instead. The use of backing suggests that Martin is wanting to make a bigger noise on stage so it will be interesting where he takes this in the New Year.

Martin played:

1. Cathkin Braes  2. New Lanark  3. Pest  4. Army Dreamers  5. I Love Map  6. Only Colour  7. A Love Economy

Martin John Henry

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from Aidan Moffat, but it’s fair to say I wasn’t expecting a discussion on quantum mechanics. But we got that as an introduction to the highlight of his set a love song about Multiverses.

At times I got the impression that some of the tunes are a bit slight musically but his force of personality, really important in the solo context, carried the day. Roaming from stand-up to spoken word via a variety of unusual instruments it was a brilliantly entertaining 40 minutes or so.

Aidan played quite a lot of songs including  ‘Oh Men!’, new single ‘Knock On The Wall of Your Womb’, ‘Double Justice’, a Cyndi Lauper cover ‘Money Changes Everything’, and ‘The Lavender Blue Dress’ .

Aidan Moffat

Another revelation, Emma Pollock wishes she sounds more like Lemmy. No seriously! Emma was the first artist backed by a band and she successfully mixed songs from her forthcoming album (on Chemikal) with highlights from her debut LP ‘Watch The Fireworks’.

The mix worked more successfully than her downbeat Homegame set which had been dominated by the newer songs. Which isn’t to undermine the quality of the new songs in any way. In fact the highlight was probably her solo rendition of new tune, ‘The Child In Me’, a song I had only heard the once before in Anstruther, yet it already sounds like a classic.

But the WTF material fared very well giving the whole thing a nice up tempo feel although the best of this bunch may well have been a version of ‘Limbs’ backed only by Jamie on piano.

Emma played:

1. New Land  2. If  Silence Means That Much  3. Adrenaline  4. I Would Be A Saint  5. Green (?)  6. Hug The Harbour  7. Fortune  8. Limbs  9. The Child In Me  10. New untitled  11. Paper & Glue  12. The Optimist

(Despite repeated requests) Emma didn’t play ‘Ace  of  Spades’.

Emma Pollock

I’ll be honest, partly because I’ll see them supporting Frightened Rabbit in a couple of weeks, and partly because bits of the album don’t do much for me I wasn’t too excited about seeing the Phantom Band again. Big mistake.

For whatever reason, this was far and away the best gig I’ve seen them play. The first half of the set was simply stunning – a brilliant ‘Throwing Bones’ and a thunderous ‘Crocodile’ were the highlights as was The New Song. ‘Island’ though saw the intensity drop off a bit and ‘The Howling’ suffered a little in its wake But they managed to pick things up again after that and set closer ‘The Whole In My Side’, a song I’ve never really taken to on record was immense.

An encore of ‘Half Hound’ and they were done and I’m now really looking forward to the FR gig.

The Phantom Band

The Phantom Band played:

1. Throwing Bones  2. Burial Sounds  3. Folk Song Oblivion  4. Crocodile  5. The New Song  6. Island  7. The Howling  8. Left Hand Wave  9. The Whole Is On My Side

Encore
10. Halfhound

With Stewart Henderson giving way the Chem087 CD + DVD package on the way out, it was a great night. Roll on the next one.

Kid Canaveral’s new EP ‘Left and Right’ bears all the hallmarks of their run of excellent singles to date. On one listen you may be prepared to dismiss it as ‘ok’ but give it a second chance and the tune will squat in your head and simply refuse to leave.

For ‘Left & Right’ is another brilliant, infectious guitar pop song from a band who seem to increasingly dispense such tunes with ridiculous ease.

Where ‘Left and Right’ differs from previous releases is that the other tracks on the EP are stylistic departures from their previous material. ‘Stretching The Line’ is a much more contemplative number with electronic percussion whilst ‘Long In The Tooth’ is effectively an Arab Strap tribute with very Aidan Moffat like spoken vocals set against a gorgeous melody with strings and vocals.

‘Left and Right’ is the latest release to pursue the current bizarre fad for cassette singles, although thankfully it is also available on download (and that’s not something I say often!) If you want the cassette though you’ll have to get along to one of their gigs, including their appearance at the Manic Pop Thrills presents event on Sunday 29th November at the Westport Bar, Dundee when Kid Canaveral will be playing with Saint Jude’s Infirmary, Panda Su and Hookers for Jesus

Tickets for the event can be purchased online here or in Groucho’s whilst you can download the EP here.

Being adventurous in purchasing new music is sometimes easier said than done. Sometimes I find it difficult to spend my emusic credits on new stuff. (And then find it even harder to listen to anything I do download!).

A new site though could be a way of sorting some of the wheat from the emusic chaff.

Any Decent Music? is kind of an aggregator of music reviews, created by a team including  Ally from TV21. Individual reviews are rounded up, summarised and, perhaps the USP of the site, rated out of 10. Yep, even the ones without numerical ratings are awarded a value and included, although the creators are at pains to point out that this aspect is done by real humans rather than web-bots. And of course there are links to the reviews, song snippets and You Tube tunes.

What emerges is some sort of critical consensus on the hottest LPs around. Given that my Christmas music spend often has some relation to end of year charts, then ADM? seems like a good way of flagging up possible avenues for investigation on a more regular basis.

Now the site as it stands isn’t going to throw much light on, say the current Scottish underground scene, nor on more obscure artists. To illustrate this, my favourite three records of the year are under- represented. Only De Rosa’s ‘Prevention’ gets a mention whilst Lord Cut-glass and Lucas Renney don’t appear at all.

Nonetheless it has to be said that the site appeals to the musical geek in me and I can easily imagine myself losing hours and hours in here. In fact I’ve already started.

Have a look here and see what you think.

Been meaning to write a wee piece on  for a few weeks on 17 Seconds Records since Ed of that parish sent me some songs to listen to.

17 Seconds Records grew from Ed’s blog of the same name and I’ve always kept a wee eye on it since our two blogs originated around about the same time (although I suspect that Ed must have posted about 5 times as often as I’ve managed).

It’s fair to say that the expanding 17 Seconds roster is a varied one. On the basis of their ‘Neon Lights’ EP, X-Lion Tamer are very 80’s influenced electro pop whilst Chris Bradley seems to have a nice line in country-esque pop.

But it’s Escape Act’s single ‘Cabin Fever’ which has really grabbed my attention. Their second for the label, ‘Cabin Fever’ musically reminds me very much of the grandeur of Hope of the States in their hey-day a feeling not in anyway diminished by its refrain of ‘I want to shout it out, I still believe in you’ .Meanwhile b-side, the bizarrely titled ‘Sullied Behave For The Moon’is more poppy.

There’s another EP which I haven’t had the time to check out yet, but Escape Act are certainly a band to look out for.

Also worth looking out for in the New Year on 17 Seconds is the new LP from MPT favourites The Wildhouse. They were signed a few weeks back  and “Jackson56” will be out in the New Year together with digital re-releases for previous LPs ‘Hyenas’ and ‘Poet:saint’.

The Escape Act single:

Anyone still expecting a genuine renaissance from Echo & the Bunnymen will surely be left disappointed by new LP ‘The Fountain’. Frankly it’s the Bunnymen for fans of Coldplay. The darkness and the mystery are long gone and, on the evidence of the last 5 Lps, never likely to return.

McCulloch has stated that he has never sounded better but if the majority of the material is this uninspired then it really doesn’t matter how it’s sung. The big problem is that most of the tunes are Bunnymen on auto-pilot – they’re simply not memorable.

To be fair the record is not entirely without merit as there are a handful of decent tunes on here. The fact that three of these are the opening 3 songs briefly, but ultimately misleadingly, raises hopes. But the rest of the record is a struggle with only the atypically piano led ‘Proxy’ any sort of highlight.

From anyone else ‘The Fountain’ may just about be acceptable, but this is the Bunnymen and it adds nothing to their legacy.

Here’s a live performance of lead single, ‘I Think I Need It Too’, one of the bettere songs on the album:

Tickets on sale from Ticketweb now. Also available in town in Groucho’s. First 50 purchased get an EP on the night.

Hear the bands:

Saint Jude’s Infirmary

Kid Canaveral

Panda Su

The evening got off to a surprising start when it turned out that the gig was taking place in Level 2 at Fat Sam’s rather than in the larger Fat Sam’s Live. It’s a real trip down memory lane for me because it must be the first time I’ve been in this part of the venue since the early 90s.

The venue switch is perhaps another indication that more and more these days Idlewild seem to be taken for granted. They’ve been around for more than a decade now and on the evidence of this show at least their audience has grown up with them. Perhaps also they tour so regularly (and intensively) in Scotland that people reckon that there will be another chance to see them soon. But with the transition from a major to a smaller label complete there’s an unmistakeable air that, at the moment, Idlewild just aren’t cool.

Why this should be the case is hard to fathom. They are a far superior band to many more successful outfits but it may just be the case that being good simply isn’t enough. And Monday’s set illustrated perfectly the amount of strong material they have because it was almost as notable for the stuff they didn’t play as what they did.

There is maybe a view forming within the band that the audience are more interested in past glories than the band’s newer material. Whilst new LP ‘Post-Electric Blues’ doesn’t feature such obvious crowd pleasers as their other LPs, it is nonetheless a strong collection and it’s disappointing therefore that the set features just 4 songs from the record. 

So the public gets what the public wants? Maybe, but as a creative endeavour it is surely less satisfying for all concerned.

And yet whilst the set draws largely on the older material (with a definitely crowd pleasing 6 songs from ‘100 Broken Windows’), there’s still an unpredictability as to what will get played as they close with ‘Blame It On The Obvious Ways’ and ‘Too Long Awake’ (the only tracks from  ‘Warnings/Promises’.) It’s hardly an obvious way to close the set and yet they’re about the highlights of the evening.

And, without any question whatsoever, Idlewild remain a cracking live band. The only real gripe about the show is that Rod’s guitars could certainly bear to be higher in the mix. At one point I thought that this was going to be the best show I’d seen them do but the guitar shortage definitely dropped it a notch below that.

Surprisingly it’s also a very short show – although it certainly didn’t feel that way. I remember looking down after 10 songs and being quite astonished that little more than half an hour had passed since they’d taken the stage. All in all they were on stage for little more than an hour but the only disappointment was that there wasn’t a second encore.

Despite this you wonder what it’s like being in Idlewild these days. They’re such a hard working band yet they haven’t made the significant breakthrough many once predicted. Whilst in recent LPs, they have introduced a folk element to their sound, there’s a definite feeling that you know what the LPs are going to sound like.

You know they’re going to be good but you also know that the mix of faster and slower songs is going to be the same and that the extent of experimentation is going to be limited.

Maybe when the promotion is done for this record, they need to take a break and come up with something different. Because, much as I like this band, and I really do, I just don’t get as excited by them as I used to.

Setlist

1. City Hall  2. Younger Than America  3. Little Discourage  4. I Don’t Have The Map  5. These Wooden Ideas  6. Roseability  7. Idea Track  8. No Emotion  9. A Ghost In The Arcade  10. Actually, It’s Darkness  11. When I Argue I See Shapes  12. Post Electric  13. Annihilate Now!  14. You Held The World In Your Arms  15. Blame It On The Obvious Ways  16. Too Long Awake

Encore
17. Readers & Writers  18. A Modern Way Of Letting Go

Tickets are available in Groucho’s now. Or drop me a line.