Eaten by Monsters

This is a joint album and live review, as I managed to get see Alex Cornish live at St-Giles-in-the-Fields church (just behind Denmark St, for those of you in the know) within a day of receiving my copy of his album, Until the Traffic Stops.

The venue itself made quite the impression; I wasn’t even aware that it hosted music events at all, but it appears that they regularly put on classical recitals there.  Being as Alex and his band were being joined by a string quartet for this gig it certainly seemed an apt setting, as the excessive reverb afforded by churches is rather flattering to strings.  Add to this the gaudy gilding of the god-fearing in the subdued light of a nicely-dressed stage (complete with desk lamps and fairylights) and a distinctly partisan crowd, and my expectations for the evening were rather high.

The story behind Alex’s album is also quite a nice one.  Fed up of being a city-bound desk-jockey, he upped-sticks and moved to an Edinburgh bedsit where he recorded the record all on his lonesome.  Following a low key release the record generated far more attention than was expected, including plaudits from Radio 2, XFM and 6 Music, and now Alex’s found some management and is re-releasing Until the Traffic Stops.

Sadly I have to report that the gig itself didn’t quite live up to the hype.  To my ears the mix in the venue was somewhat “off”; what with the string quartet and the nature of the songs it should have been an epic anthem-fest, but for some reason the music always seemed to lack the necessary punch, even when all the performers were properly “rocking out”.  The muddiness of the mix was to be expected from such an echoic venue, and is ultimately a minor quibble, but I just couldn’t escape the fact that the music’s full potential wasn’t being reached.  Coupled with the uncomfortable pews on which we all sat I ended up with rather a dim opinion of the gig.  In retrospect it did have its moments, though.  The highlight of the show for me was when Alex himself took up a violin and displayed an unexpected aptitude for the thing, and once the band had warmed up the final songs of the set were actually rather engaging.

As for the record, the production values are very high considering it’s a bedroom job done by Alex’s own hand.  Here the more anthemic songs are given full reign to fulfil their potential far more effectively than they managed to at the gig.  In fact hearing them in this form leaves me hoping to catch Alex again at a more acoustically flattering venue.  Ultimately I think the songs, delivery and production are too polished and MOR than regular readers of this site (and I myself) have a taste for, but I can see him going far.  The record’s already received a fair amount of attention from Radio 2 (which is in my opinion this album’s spiritual home), but if they pick it up properly then I can easily imagine Alex Cornish comfortably gracing coffee tables accross the nation.

Alex Cornish – My Word What a Mess

Alex Cornish – The King of Hearts

Young people with talent; don’t you just hate them? This week’s Wednesday Top Five is in honour of those snot-nosed brats who managed to make meaningful contributions to the word before leaving their teens.  Damn their eyes.  According to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin it takes ten thousand hours work to make someone a “master” of any particular skill, so this is essentially a list of kids who should really have got out more…

5. Jenny Lewis, from Rilo Kiley.  Not a true musical prodigy, but she was kicking up a fuss as a child actress by the time she was ten.

Rilo Kiley – Paint’s Peeling

4. Buddy Holly. The ultimate live-fast-die-young idol.  He wrote awesome songs, got shafted by his manager, played with Elvis, and died in an plane crash; all at the tender age of twenty two.

Buddy Holly – Oh Boy

3. Laura Marling.  Last year’s darling of the London indie set, Marling wrote all the songs on her debut Alas, I Cannot Swim before she was eighteen.

Laura Marling – Night Terror

2. Conor Oberst, from Bright Eyes. This precocious scamp has been writing and recording music since he was ten.  His first EP, Water was the inaugural release for Saddle Creek Records (then called Lumberjack Records), and was recorded when he was just thirteen.  Admittedly most of his early stuff was absolute rubbish, but there were the odd sparks of genius.

Bright Eyes – Falling Out of Love at This Volume

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  This cheeky bugger was composing by the age of five, allegedly wrote his first fugue aged six, and was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg aged only seventeen, where he performed before the Austrian royal family.  For the record, his full name is Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart (Amadeus is Latin for Theiophilus, and not actually his name at all, even though his signed all his manuscripts Wolfgang Amadeus)

W. A. Mozart – Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

I’m really not sure about this one.  Upon first listen this eponymous release from Texans The Steps sounded alarmingly “pub rock”.  You know, the sort of generic, “spiky” indie that characterized the early naughties UK charts.

Having thus summarily dismissed them, a week later I made a conscious effort to give them a second chance; a tactic that has saved me from missing out on some really rather good records lately.  And still it failed to impress.  Under normal circumstances this would simple mean that the record wouldn’t get a review on these pages.  As a rule I try to avoid slagging off “unknown” bands (unless they’re truly, chronically bad), owing to a certain amount of sympathy for their plight on my part.  New bands have enough to worry about without some blogger’s half-baked negative review spoiling their Google kudos.

And thus we come to the crux of the matter… The Steps aren’t terrible, and I actually quite like a couple of their songs (check out their video for Dagger: see what I mean? It’s okay).  The problem is that they’ve got nothing new to offer.  Who needs another band who want to sound like The Strokes and The Hives? These guys are a little too late for the party (by about eight years) and are quite frankly just a little too boring.  They wear their influences on their sleeves and are sadly less than the sum of their parts.

The Steps – Dagger

The Steps – Cold Floors

Here it is, as promised: Part “B” of Bearfaced Podcast 06.  Last week, in Part “A”, I was talking about the up-coming releases that have piqued our interest here at Bearfaced Towers, and this week I had the honour to be joined in the studio by Tom Stephens and the Retreat.

The whole band came in and recorded a couple of “live” tracks for us, and the next day Tom Stephens (lead vocals and guitar) and Tom Cornish (lead guitar and backing vocals) came in for an interview, where they deigned to play us an acoustic version of their new song Olivia.  The interview stayed surprisingly on-topic (especially given Bearfaced interviews’ past form) and as a result you can hear the guys regaling us with tales about being an independent band out-and-about on the mean streets of London, as well as enlightening us with regard to their songwriting process.  All lovely stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The band has undergone a bit of a line-up change since I reviewed their EP last year, and their “sound” has also evolved quite a bit too.  As always you can find the Bearfaced Podcast in iTunes, but if you’d rather just download the individual episode then you can do that from the Bearfaced Website here.

Tom Stephens and the Retreat – Olivia (Bearfaced Session)

Tom Stephens and the Retreat – This Town (Bearfaced Session)

Every now and then an album comes out that is truly unique; completely fresh and totally unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.  Everyone All At Once by Canadian band The Rest is certainly not one of those records.  It’s full of sounds and textures that have already been made by a plethora of other bands (I shan’t be so crass as to list them here: the joy of being an mp3 blog is that you can hear the music for yourselves).  What this record is, however, is very, very good indeed.

While Everyone All At Once does sound like any number of different albums, the key point is that they’re all albums that I’ve been enjoying a lot lately.  The Rest may be somewhat derivative, but they make their music with style, finesse and an obvious passion.  The performances captured on this record are excellent and the production is of a very high standard while still being appropriate for the genre (North American Indie, if I had to pigeonhole it…).

It also appears that this record came about as a result of a Gabriel García Márquez style creative exile which seems to be so in-vogue at the moment (courtesy of Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon).  Coupled with the quality of the songs themselves this confirms my suspicion that, despite similarities to other records, this is a very “pure” album.

The Rest – Sheep in Wolve’s [sic] Clothing

The Rest – Walk on Water (Auspicious Beginnings)

When I first hear this record I was immediately struck by the expanse of the sound.  Not an epic U2-style expanse, but more a breadth of instrumentation reminiscent of early Arcade Fire and current favourites Broken Records.  In short, I was sure there must be at least seven band members.  It turns out the band consists of only two guys…

Hailing from Sweden, Friska Viljor were formed when two friends, Daniel and Joakim, both broke up with their girlfriends, got drunk, and wrote some songs.  So far, so Bon Iver, but this isn’t the kind of record you’d expect to come from two broken-hearted Swedes; it’s phenomenally cheerful.

I must come clean and admit that I usually find “cheerful” music to be a little sickly-sweet and lacking in emotional scope, and yes, this LP does occasionally get a little cheesy.  Yet thankfully it still manages to retain some bite, and there’s certainly some very good songs on display here.  On a couple of tracks they dabble with some generic synthesizer action (which sounds hopelessly European) but when they stick to real instruments they make for a highly engaging and satisfying listen.

Friska Viljor – Taste of her Lips

Friska Viljor – On and On

I’m sure you’ll all be overjoyed to hear that I’ve finally found the time to record another episode of the Bearfaced Podcast, and what’s more I had so much to talk about that it had to be split into two parts.  Next week I’ll release Part “B” which will be a live session and interview with Tom Stephens and the Retreat, but this week I’ve concerned myself with the up-coming releases that are getting all of us at Bearfaced Towers hot under the collar.

A lot of the songs I play in this ‘cast are mostly from recent blog posts (as they’re the ones I’m most excited about at the moment) but there’s a few other treats in there for your listening pleasure.

You can download the ‘cast directly from its page on the Bearfaced website, or if you’d rather subscribe (as I do) you can easily find it in iTunes by searching for “Bearfaced Podcast”.