Another great low-budget video for your delectation today. This one’s been sitting in my inbox for over a month now, which means I’m coming a little late to the Cosmo Jarvis party. People who got there before I did include Brian Eno and Jarvis Cocker, and while I’m never sure if celebrity endorsements actually help launch an artist, accolades from names like those can’t do any harm (although I seem to remember hearing something recently about the ‘curse’ of an endorsement from Morrissey…). Anyway, late or not, this video for Love This is fantastic and the song’s of equal quality. It came out at the start of July, and was quickly followed by a full-length release, Think Bigger.
If you ignore the nipples, this is actually rather good. Not being particularly familiar with Ms. Palmer, I assumed she was just, you know, yet another breathy, girly, away-with-the-fairies singer-songwriter. Having heard this, and having made the connection between her name and the fantastic Map Of Tasmania I heard a while back, I wish I’d jumped on the million-dollar-plus Kickstarter campaign bandwagon. The album from that massive influx of funds is called Theatre Is Evil, and will get it’s uk release through Cooking Vinyl.
Great typography in the video, and a great song to go with it. I guess people will call her brave and a feminist and other silly things, but inside I’m still about ten years old and find boobs scary and intimidating…
(If you haven’t guessed by now, the video is a little NSFW).
Town Hall, who impressed me recently with their Sticky Notes & Paper Scraps EP, have a new single out in support of their upcoming album. The track is called Good Boy, and will released as a free download on the their Bandcamp page soon, but for now you can get your kicks from the music video they’ve made for the song (another sterling Mason Jar Music production).
It’s great to see a band that can so consistently keep up such high standards – I often find little videos like the one that alerted me to Town Hall’s existence, but rarely does my further exploration reveal more stuff of a similar quality, let alone better stuff, as is the case here. The Town Hall album, Roots and Bells, comes out on the 15th of this month, and now I’m even more eager to hear it than I already was.
If you ask me, Newton Faulkner suffered at the hands of his producer. Sure, his songs might not be all that great, but he was a powerful live performer with charm and talent aplenty; on record, however, he merely comes across as Mr. Bland from Bland City. I mention Faulkner here to highlight the delicate and mystical alchemy that goes into capturing a great live performer ‘on tape’ and how such a process can easily miss its mark. My first exposure to Emily And The Woods – the nom de guerre of singer/songwriter Emily Wood – was the session she did for Location Music TV back in November, and while I’ve never seen her play live, this ‘live’ session (along with the many others she’s recorded for a whole host of people) shows an adept and assured solo performer.
So what, then, of her recordings? Fleshed out with a full line-up, the songs hold up remarkably well. Perhaps that the extra instrumentation meshes so well with Emily’s hushed and delicate vocal stylings is the result of the band being something of a family affair – with a Benjamin Wood on electric guitar and a Patrick Wood handling acoustic guitar, bass and piano along with the production duties. All in all the Woods production seems to be something of a self-made affair, with no visible signs of label support or any of the trappings of the industry at large. The only people visibly backing her are OMG Music, a fledgling production company based in Surrey (who, ironically, represent a certain Mr. Faulkner) but despite the apparent lack of resources, her Eye To Eye EP sounds remarkably professional. If I’m honest, this ‘professional’ sheen could be as much a curse as a blessing: the traditional word to use in these circumstances is ‘slick’, and that’s not a charge that sits well with the delightfully ramshackle performances that come across in her live videos. That said, the only real flaw that I can detect in the record is the slightly overzealous percussion that’s been slapped all over Steal His Heart, which is a shame, as it’s my favourite song of hers. But then my opinion of the song was forged watching the YouTube clip I’ve included above, so maybe I’m just predisposed to prefer a stripped back version. I’ll pop a stream of the EP cut at the bottom of this post so you can make your own mind up.
The EP certainly seems to be going down well in the blogosphere, and it was only after a whole slew of favourable reviews over at Breaking More Waves that I finally got around to buying Eye To Eye (which can be found, along with a few other things, at her Big Cartel shop page). It’s been a few months since the EP was launched, but Emily And The Woods are still releasing a steady stream of impressive performances through YouTube, and with the growing groundswell of blog-based support I’ll bet it won’t be long before they hit the big time. This is one band wagon I’ll be proud to say I jumped on as soon as I was able.
I finally got round to seeing Withered Hand recently, and when asked by a friend to describe what it was like I must admit I struggled. After wrestling with expressions like ‘deliberately lo-fi’ and ‘artfully artless’ – which apply to the early recordings and not the live sound – the only thing I felt comfortable setting in stone was ‘game changer’. As someone who attempts to write my own songs from time to time, every so often I come across tracks that as well as simply liking I actually wish I’d written myself. Hearing these songs can either be an inspiration – causing me to stop the track before it’s finished and run off and try to write something of my own – or (and this is more often the case) herald a fit of despair and self-pity – ‘I’ll never write anything that good’ and so on and so forth… Listening to Withered Hand, however, makes me want to unlearn everything I think I know about songwriting and start all over from the beginning again.
I say this, of course, with reference to recording by Withered Hand (the nom de’guerre of singer/songwriter Dan Wilson) that I’ve had time to get to know fairly intimately: 2009’s Good Newsalbum, and the smattering of EPs and single mp3s I’ve been able to get my hands on. This new record, the Heart Heart EP, comes courtesy of the Fence Collective‘s Chart Ruse subscription scheme (although it can still be bought separately), and will probably take a little while to grow on me. The lead track, Heart Heart, is fast becoming a favourite even though on first listen it struck me as something of a departure from the usual WH sound (although there are distinct parallels with the Religious Songs EP version of New Dawn). The rest of the tracks (not counting the vinyl-only King Creosote remix) are in more familiar territory but have yet to stamp their identity on my ears in the way many of WH’s older songs already have.
Whether they do or not, there’s no getting round the fact that this EP is – music aside – quite simple a lovely object to own. To those who question the value of music in physical form I recommend feasting your eyes on this exquisitely designed sleeve, with its die-cut hole and beautiful illustrations.
Withered Hand – Heart Heart [audio http://www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WitheredHand/WitheredHand_HeartHeart.mp3]
And for those of you who are new to WH, here’s a couple of the ‘hits’:
When a video of a band covering Jimmy Eat World’s The Middle landed in my inbox a month or so ago, the first thing that struck me was that it was really, really slick. It purported to be a ‘live’ session, but the production values for both the sound and the visuals were far above what one normally expects from a hitherto unknown band (Brooklyn-based indie-folk outfit Town Hall may have released their debut, Tour EP, at least a year ago, but I’d certainly never heard of them before). The impressive video – and it’s equally impressive collection of microphones and instruments – makes more sense upon learning that the Tour EP made its way into the hands of the prodigiously talented (or at the very least prodigiously dedicated) people at Mason Jar Music.
This self-styled collective of creative types specialize in both video work and sound production, with instrumental arrangement being their speciality. They’ve teamed up with Town Hall to re-record and re-release their EP, which is now called Sticky Notes & Paper Scraps and boasts the work of a deft and accomplished sonic touch. I’m often disparaging of bands using covers to help break themselves into the mainstream, but perhaps I ought to re-evaluate my stance; in this instance the cover served as an effective gateway drug into a band with a genuinely beautiful aesthetic and some cracking songs to match it.
As promised, here’s the shortlist for the Blog Sound of 2012. While the BBC’s poll, which inspired this alternative list, will be announced by a suspense-inducing day-by-day countdown, us humble bloggers are releasing our top five all in one go. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say now that none of these five acts were voted for by me, and I hadn’t even heard of Daughter or Theme Park before the longlist announcement. Nevertheless, I have been doing my homework on behalf of the blog – tirelessly and giving no quarter – and shall be reporting back soon with posts on all the best acts from the longlist. Until then, here’s the Blog Sound of 2012 shortlist:
Geographically speaking, I don’t think I could be further from Scotland and still be in the UK. You’d never guess that from reading this blog however, as Scottish acts seem to be dominating my tastes for the last few years. 2011 has been no exception, and four albums on this list have their roots firmly planted north of the borders. As well as being a year for Scots, 2011 appears to be the year of the Return To Form. In itself this is a good thing, as recent years have seen more disappointing highly-hyped albums than good ones, but it means there’s a higher than normal percentage of ‘old pros’ in this year’s list: amazingly, only one album on this list is a debut.
At this point an honourable mention ought to go Chris Thile and Michael Daves for their album Sleep With One Eye Open. The Hype Machine’s widget for compiling their annual Zietgeist list didn’t recognize the Jonnie Common record, so albums 9 and 10 got bumped up a place, meaning Thile and Daves were promoted to the number ten spot on my Hype Machine list, but didn’t make the top ten proper.
So without further ado, here is the moment you’ve all been waiting for since January; the official Eaten by Monsters blog Top Ten of 2010:
10. Making Mirrors by Gotye. I umm-ed and ah-ed about whether this one would make the cut or not, as it isn’t a perfect record by any standards, and at times it strays far from what I would normally consider to be tasteful. For all it’s occasional flaws however, when it’s good it’s very, very good. His duet with Kimbra on Somebody That I Used To Know is a particular highlight, and the album is worth owning purely on the strength of that track alone.
9. Mine Is Yours by Cold War Kids. This one is simply fantastic right from the very first seconds. Robbers and Coward, from back in 2006 (and particularly the track We Used To Vacation), earned Cold War Kids a fairly unassailable position of prestige in casa EbM, but 2008’s Loyalty to Loyalty didn’t quite live up to expectation. As a result, the return to form displayed in Mine Is Yours is all the more satisfying.
8. Master of None by Jonnie Common. Despite my taste for singer-songwriter-style songwriting with esoteric electronic noises, it seems to be a micro-genre that is very infrequently mastered. Many try and fail to marry the two almost-mutually-exclusive textures, so when it’s pulled off successfully I’m over the moon, and rarely will you hear it achieved with such aplomb and deftness of touch that’s displayed on Master of None. 7. The People’s Key by Bright Eyes. Even more than Cold War Kids, the team behind Bright Eyes – Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis et al – have been slipping off their game of late. As much as their early efforts number among my favourite albums of all time, Cassadaga just doesn’t sit well with me. By all accounts The People’s Key will be the last album to bear the ‘Bright Eyes’ label, and I’m sincerely relieved that they managed to get all cylinders firing for their swan song.
6. Virtue by Emmy the Great. The trouble with Emmy’s debut album, First Love, was that all the best songs had been floating around for ages before the album was conceived. What drew me to the early demos was the almost brutal juxtaposition of Emmy’s voice and her lyrical content, thrown into sharp relief by the decidedly amateurish nature of the recordings. The pristine album cuts, shorn of all their grit and viciousness, left the album itself sounding weak by comparison. With Virtue – her second full-length – the production is even slicker, but this time it’s a blessing and not a curse.
5. Codes and Keys by Death Cab For Cutie. The last of the returns-to-form in this list, and by now the story’s a familiar one: astounding early albums, a disappointing last record, and finally the triumph that we’ve been waiting for. Codes and Keys marks a return to the more studio-based recording approach that made the band’s best albums such complete joys to listen to and, surprise, surprise, it’s led to yet another fantastic album.
4. Diamond Mine by King Creosote & Jon Hopkins. The Mercury Prize nominations are always interesting from an academic viewpoint, but rarely – if ever – do they include an album that I’d include if I was compiling the list. Imagine my surprise, then, upon discovering that this year’s shortlist that included this KC gem. It’s not Kenny’s best record by a long way, but it’s testament to the strength of his other work that this sub-par effort nevertheless warrants a fourth place on this list.
3. Boots Met My Face by Admiral Fallow. I only discovered this album recently, having grown to love the track Squealing Pigs over a period of a few months, and it’s fast moved up the ranks of this year’s best albums. While technically this record had its first release last year, it was re-released back in March, so I’m claiming it as a 2011 record (if only because I’m ashamed to have missed it the first time around).
2. New Blood by Peter Gabriel. Last year’s Scratch My Back project saw Gabriel record orchestral covers of a host of popular songs, and while on paper that sounds like a heinous cringe-fest not fit for human consumption, it was actually rather impressive (although a few of the covers were as awful as the premise suggested, far more were haunting, effecting, moving and surprisingly powerful renditions). This year he gave the same treatment to his own back-catalogue and had even greater success. An assured and overwhelmingly impressive album, New Blood is a truly remarkable feat, especially coming from someone that I’d written off as having his best days long behind him.
1. Factorycraft by FOUND. For a long time now I’ve liked the idea of FOUND much more than I’ve liked their actual music. Heralded by reviewers far more familiar with the band than I as their most accessible record to date, they’re not wrong as I finally find myself loving FOUND’s music. Maybe my taste is more predictable and mainstream than I’d like to admit, but the only thing that really matters is that this is a simply super record.
[There’s plenty of great Christmas songs out there, but most suffer terribly from over-exposure. To remedy that, EbM presents a selection of alternative Christmas songs.]
Well we’ve finally made it to the end, and it turns out these little single-song showcase posts have been quite popular; I’ll have to do it again sometime. Since Christmas is practically upon us now, I thought I’d better post what I consider to be the best Christmas song ever. In fact, this little number from The Very Foundation (courtesy of XO for the Holidays 2009 comp.) is a song that ought to be an all-time-top-song of mine, but it’s just so Christmasy that to listen to it outside of December would just feel wrong. As it is, I savour the short time that I can get away with playing it on almost constant repeat. Witty and at times ridiculous, yet always displaying a proper Christmas spirit (without ever descending into schmaltz), this is, in my view, the very best that Christmas music has to offer.
I hope all your day’s are merry and bright, and merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
[There’s plenty of great Christmas songs out there, but most suffer terribly from over-exposure. To remedy that, EbM presents a selection of alternative Christmas songs.]
Long and slow, yet haunting and atmospheric, this track is one of Jim White‘s best. In fact, No Such Place – the album this song was taken from – is a genuine classic, the overall strength of which means Christmas Day is often pushed into the shadows, and it’s only at this time of year that it gets the attention it so richly deserves.
Eaten by Monsters 