We’re knee deep in festival season. We’re up to the tops of our wellies in terrible beer in cardboard cups, dodgy burgers, stinking port-a-loos, great music, ok music, crap music (wherever the Kaiser Chiefs are turning up) and peering over those stupid fucking multicoloured hats that people think are funny to wear at the only place people might want to look over your head. Fortunately, they’re highly flammable. (NB: don’t set fire to them when they’re on someone’s head unless they’re really really fucking irritating and have refused to take it off).
It’s Monday, it’s TOTW, the semi regular weekly best tracks we’ve heard recently. Stick them in your ears whilst you hang your tent out to dry. Soggy.
Dancer – Baby Blue
Why we love it: because there’s a bit too much perfect out there. Perfect vocals, perfect wistful introspection. Perfect clean guitar. Perfect sheen and gloss production. Even some wonk is produced to an inch of its life. Where’s the DIY? Where’s the imperfection? Here, that’s where! Or rather, Glasgow. Which does seem to be where a hell of a lot of the best stuff is coming from.
Dancer aren’t actually from Glasgow originally but they seem to have absorbed everything that makes it a great artistic city. There’s angular guitars like Orange Juice and Franz Ferdinand having a wrestle or a cuddle in a tenement loft. Gemma Fleet’s off kilter vocals echo like they’re emanating from the basement. The drums dissipate and boogie all over the shop.
Coming from the new LP More or Less which is out on 12 September through Meritorio Records, this is the third single taken from it after the also excellent ‘Just Say Yes’ and ‘Happy Halloween’ . The new record comes hot on the heels of their debut album,10 Songs I Hate About You only last year.
The video gives off Holly from Red Dwarf vibes. A disembodied head floating in space and over an Amstrad 464 computer game. (Jim Auton)
Mike Taylor Quartet – Pendulum
Why we love it: because the name of Mike Taylor should be more widely known. It need not necessarily be recalled as the man who co-wrote three songs with Ginger Baker that would eventually appear on the British rock band Cream’s third studio album, Wheels of Fire or his subsequent descent into drugs, mental illness, and a premature death in 1969 at the age of 30.
The British jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader should be remembered for the two albums he released during his lifetime, Pendulum in 1966 and Trio the following year. The former was recorded with his Quartet of drummer Jon Hiseman, bassist Tony Reeves and saxophonist Dave Tomlin and the latter with the Trio of Hiseman and bassists Jack Bruce (who was in Cream alongside Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton) and Ron Rubin.
Both records were finally given a first time vinyl reissue on July 25 as part of the excellent British Jazz Explosion Series.
Pendulum contains some of the most innovative and challenging music in the British jazz canon. The title track may start life as a wistful rondo but once liberated it quickly oscillates between the avant garde and free jazz, illustrating as it does so both the enigma and genius of the man. (Simon Godley)
The Sha Sha Shanimals – Dumb Contortion
Why we love it: because with a name like The Sha Sha Shanimals you aren’t going to go too far wrong, are you? And when one of the comments on the video that accompanyies ‘Dumb Contortion,’ one half of the band’s debut double A-side single tells you that the song is “sick” – which I believe may well be modern parlance for being cool or excellent – your ears start to prick up and take notice.
Formed last year, The Sha Sha Shanimals are a four-piece band led by writer and musician Siân Pattenden (ex-100% Ponies) who is joined by Louis Jones (ex-Warm Jets), Dan Farrow (ex-Oslo) and Argentine drumming powerhouse Camila de la Viga. ‘Dumb Contortion’ coupled to ‘Best Dressed Chicken In Town’ – no, not that one – will be released on September 2nd this year via Agent Anonyme Records, an independent label founded by Daphne Guinness. (Simon Godley)
The Cords – Fabulist
Why we love it: The Cords are a bright new indiepop band from Scotland. Comprising sisters Eva and Grace Tedeschi, they started playing drums when they were little kids. They found that they liked 80s and 90s indie music more than their peers did, and so formed a band, just the two of them, with Grace on drums and Eva on guitar – and the songs started to flow. Their new single ‘Fabulist’ is a jangly hook-laden pop song that skips along with bittersweet melodies and brisk drumming, with echoes of The Shop Assistants, and The Primitives and the C86 era. It’s so upbeat and shiny with brisk drumming and that you could miss the fact that it’s a wholehearted take-down of people who lie for a living.
With only a cassette and a flexi single released so far (both of which sold out in a matter of hours), Eva and Grace honed their skills by playing a whole series of gigs with some of the biggest names in Scottish pop. Their first show was with The Vaselines, and since then they have played with Camera Obscura, Belle and Sebastian, BMX Bandits and others, while also sharing stages with the new generation of indiepop stars: the Umbrellas, Chime School.
They have now recorded their eagerly-awaited debut album, which will be co-released by Skep Wax (in the UK and Europe) and Slumberland Records (in America). Produced by Jonny Scott and Simon Liddel, and it respects the band’s stripped down DIY approach. the real stars of this record are Eva’s sinuous guitar and silky vocals, and Grace’s clattering, expressive sing-song drums. It’s the sound of two sisters having an intense musical conversation with each other. (Bill Cummings)
Evidence – Outta Bounds
Why we love it: LA rapper Evidence delivers a contemplative slice of magnetic hip hop over a stinging guitar loop, the Dilated Peoples emcee is “flowing without exertion, for deceptively sharp introspection”, His llanguid, dexterous rhymes, are both contemplative and introspective, yet have a swagger forged of experience “if it’s lonely at the top – I need that lonely feeling” – he emotes as he strides through backstreets above a loping guitar loop, fusing together the new and old school under Evidence’s inventive boom bap under grey skies.
Ahead of next month’s ‘Unlearning vol.2’ album, Evidence once again shows there’s no room for error while staying on the right side of the tracks with ‘Outta Bounds’, following the previous singles ‘Different Phases’ and ‘Nothing to See Here’. (Bill Cummings)
PUNCHBAG – I Love This!
Why we love it: PUNCHBAG are the sibling duo Clara and Anders Bach their new single ‘I Love This!‘ is an insane riot in a good way and out now via Mute. ‘I Love This!’ captures what Londers PUNCHBAG describe as “the extreme sport of everyday life” – celebrating the dizzying highs and dragging lows, and refusing to separate one from the other. With a nagging club beat, scurrying ravey synths it sounds like someone has swallowed ten bags of skittles in the early hours and headed to the dancefloor for a breakneck jive, dancing away the crap in your head.
Written in Berlin at 3am in a burst of chaotic energy, Clara’s brain-rush lyrics (“fleas, drugstores, tea leaves, dopamine dreams”) spiral over Anders’ banging production. Playful, madcap and like its going to fall apart at any second, with echoes the future pop of Magdelena Bay, the rave induced sounds of Confidence Man, aided to the inventive pop of SOPHIE or Charli XCX but doesn’t actually trapped in its own orbiting glitter ball. It’s absolutely insane but totally unstoppable!
“I guess you could see this song as an anti-depression anthem! You can hear the highest highs and the lowest lows – almost like it’s soundtracking the extreme sport of everyday life. Because sometimes it really is an extreme sport, so the highs should be celebrated. Getting through a shit phase should be danced about! With synths, a dance tempo, and something to shout! All that positive stuff.” – Clara says.
The track follows their acclaimed debut EP ‘I’m Not Your Punchbag’ (released in May), and lands ahead of key festival slots at Reeperbahn and Iceland Airwaves later this year. (Bill Cummings)
Case Oats – Nora
Why we love it: Case Oats, the Chicago-based band led by Casey Gomez Walker (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), recently shared their new single ‘Nora’, from their debut album Last Missouri Exit, out August 22nd via Merge Records. An unlikely and charming anthem, ‘Nora’ is twangy, bouncy and 60s and country flecked with lyrics that are just ever so slightly off-kilter and playful track that houses a more brooding theme. The song’s unexpected refrain “I’m glad you are here now / I can see now” is the revelation that the person you are with still loves their ex, what a gutpunch but also making peace with that and letting them go. A break up anthem it may be but it’s charming and delightful, nevertheless.
On the single, Gomez Walker says, “Sometimes you find yourself in a relationship with someone who clearly loves their ex. You kid yourself, thinking it might not be true, or that they might start loving you. You stick around. But in the end they won’t. So this song is a love letter to my ex’s once and future lover. If they’re meant to be together there’s no use in being mad. I’m genuinely thanking her for releasing me from that situation and celebrating her love. I don’t see why anyone should be mad at real love. It should be honoured. So in this song I’m saying I love you to her, I’m glad you’re here now, I can see now.”
Last Missouri Exit longs to be listened to while one watches the sun set from their porch swing. But the record’s wistful, idyllic take on the Midwest isn’t nostalgia for the past – it is what Casey and the band, Spencer Tweedy (drums), Max Subar (guitar, pedal steel), Jason Ashworth (bass), Scott Daniel (fiddle), and Nolan Chin (piano, organ) – conjured “Big Pink-style” in the basement one summer on an ad-hoc rig. What they’ve made is warm and inviting, an album that reveals itself on first spin and grows deeper with each listen. (Bill Cummings)
HONK – Last Order
Why we love it: because Manchester’s finest trashcan country outfit HONK have gone and done it again. Last weekend they were taking The Lodge Stage at Deer Shed Festival by storm and now they are now bringing latest single ‘Last Order’ to Tracks of the Week.
‘Last Order’ is the second single to be taken from HONK’s upcoming EP Closing Down Sale which is due out later this month.
They say of the song: “’Last Order’ is a murder ballad with a twist in which our hero is sent to hell by a punter after hours. Remember to respect your server, as revenge is a dish best served at 666 degrees from the bar stool down in hell reserved for you.”
We say it arrives at a crossroads where The Cramps and Exile on Main Street-period Rolling Stones meet and that is a good place to be. And as if that isn’t quite enough, HONK are off out on the road again soon. Get all your HONK info right here. (Simon Godley)
