101 search results for ‘jed’

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM - DRUNK GIRLS

OK, we know it’s been a while but we’re all very busy people. Normal service should be resumed soon (I’m dissertating at the moment) but for now here’s “DRUNK GIRLS” the first taste of the forthcoming LCD Soundsystem album. Predictably, it’s a slice of pure sonic awesomeness, and while it’s no “Someone Great” or “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” it’s still damn catchy. Check it out.

Jed. x

LIVE REVIEW: FIELD MUSIC AT FUSION, SHEFFIELD

I just got back from seeing FIELD MUSIC at Sheffield University’s Fusion and they were bloody brilliant! Opening with Give It, Lose It, Take It (my favourite Field Music track, fact fans!) they played an amazing set, turning the initially unresponsive crowd into one calling for an encore at the end.

New album “Field Music (Measure)” got the strongest showing, with the title track and Clear Water particular highlights. Tracks from the Brewis brothers’ solo offerings also got an airing, including the excellent Rockist Part 1, alongside plenty of tracks from the band’s first two albums.

The band’s performance was super-tight, even on unscheduled encore track Let’s Write A Book, which they claimed never to have played live before. Similarly impressive were the group harmonies on A Gap Has Appeared and on excellent closer Tell Me, Keep Me.

Overall, a phenomenal performance from a hugely underrated band. If you haven’t done so already, check them out.

Click “Read More” for the full setlist…

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In Praise of BBC 6 Music

David Bowie: “6 Music keeps the spirit of broadcasters like John Peel alive and for new artists to lose this station would be a great shame”

Bear with me as I give my opinion about the threatened closure of BBC 6 MUSIC. I can’t (and don’t intend to) speak for the rest of the AGCS writers but this is something I personally feel strongly about.

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“With this record you’re going to be interfacing with your soul in ways that have never happened before” - THE RAPTURE

FINALLY, some news from the Rapture camp regarding their third album. Aside from the GTA IV-soundtracking “No Sex For Ben” the band have been awfully quiet since 2006’s “Pieces of the People We Love”, so it’s good to know that despite losing bassist Mattie Safer new material will be released soon.

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REVIEW: HOT CLUB DE PARIS - With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work? EP

I’m a big fan of Hot Club De Paris, and I still play their greatly under-appreciated second album “Live At Dead Lake” on a regular basis. I’m pretty pleased then that 2010 promises not only a new record from the band but two stand-alone EPs, the first of which comes out tomorrow on 10” and download.

Entitled “With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work?”, the six new tracks show the band trying new things with mostly successful results. Opener Dance A Ragged Dance is the exception to the rule, deviating little from the band’s earlier sound, and perhaps as a result of this it’s the weakest song here. However, following track Fuck You, The Truth!, ushered in with a minute of percussive chimes and glockenspiel, is amongst the band’s best work to date with it’s catchy guitar line and infectious chants of “the carpet, the street, these hands and these knees”.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? sounds unlike anything the band have done before, with it’s simplistic ascending riff and stripped back percussion, and is another great addition to the band’s catalogue. It’s closing track Extra Time, Sudden Death which is the real star here though. Clocking in at six minutes it’s Hot Club’s longest song yet and, to my mind, their finest. A marching drumbeat, glockenspiel chimes, group harmonies and more catchy riffs combine to create a song which just oozes perfection. The closing refrain of “We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death” may not look that special written down but it’s been stuck in my head for the past four hours.

Not everything on this EP works but when the band succeed they do it in style, as shown on Extra Time, Sudden Death which is surely their best song to date. That alone makes this a record worth buying.

Altogether now: “We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death” (etc.)

8/10

Jed. x

TRACK BY TRACK: LOS CAMPESINOS! - ROMANCE IS BORING

I’ve made no secret of my Los Campesinos! obsession in the past on this blog and with the release of the excellent Romance Is Boring today it’s only gonna get worse. Safe to say it was worth the wait - the second album proper from Los Campesinos! is everything I hoped for and more, so here’s a detailed track-by-track review of an album I’m already earmarking as potentially the year’s best.

1. In Medias Res - “On the back seat of your car because it wasn’t safe to start it, you were ‘far too fucked to drive’ were the words that you imparted”

The album starts off simply enough, with acoustic guitar and some background organ noise ushering in the first of many great vocal performances from Gareth, but with a creepy electronic midsection ushering in clattering drums, distorted vocals and a blaring trumpet outro it quickly becomes apparent that Los Campesinos! have “grown up”. It’s a great opener which segues seamlessly into…

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ALBUM REVIEW - NO HOPE, NO FUTURE

“Think Before You Speak”, the début album from Morden four-piece Good Shoes, may not have been an original record but it was nonetheless an enthralling one. With the yelped vocals of frontman Rhys Jones and the memorable hooks of songs such as Sophia and Ice Age the band showed they had more to offer than many of their contemporaries. Three years later the band are back with “No Hope, No Future”, but after a long absence do the band still have the same power?

The answer, in short, is no. Rhys’ vocals sound for the most part flat and the songs here are nowhere near as catchy as those on the band’s first record. On a ten track album only half an hour long there is no room for filler - yet almost half the tracks here sound like b-side material.

On the positive side, Under Control and The Way My Heart Beats, both released as singles before the album came out, are as infectious as anything on their début, and the riff on Then She Walks Away is sure to burrow it’s way into your consciousness. However amongst these genuinely good songs and the merely average ones there are a couple of genuine stinkers. Everything You Do is a turgid mess, with Rhys’ languid vocals likely to induce a coma. I Know, meanwhile, is bogged down by overly earnest (an pretty awful) lyrics: “I think that if there’s a day of judgement then our leaders will be first against the wall”.

There’s some good ideas here, but considering how long the group have spent on this album it’s a shame that it sounds so rushed and unfinished. Hopefully Good Shoes will be able to release another album as good as their début, and they remain a great live band, but this is a pretty disappointing effort from a group which once seemed so promising.

5/10

Jed. x