Thursday 27 September 2012

PEACE - DELICIOUS (EP)

       For fans of Vampire Weekend or foals. There's a new band on the bill and they're more local than you thought. Their musical style doesn't reflect a band from the centre of Birmingham. But they are. As a guardian journalist wrote, it's 'as though Wu Lyf's frontman had suddenly hijacked Vampire Weekend'. Alternative is not a label, it's a true fact about this band.



      On the 9th September they released the fantastic extended play named Delicious, funnily enough if this band were a food, delicious would be a good adjective to describe them by. The first of the four tracks on the EP is Ocean's Eye, which involves a gentle verse with the delicate tones from Harrison Koisser being backed up by the industrious instrument playing before launching into the almost ballad like chorus in comparison to the rest of their music. Next comes the remastered Bloodshake, a song that early fans of the band will know as 'Bblood'. Personally I enjoy the tribal sounding drumming in this song, as well as the fascinating lyrics with the main chorus lines of 'We spit blood at the sun, we spit blood in ocean. This song holds a fair bit of emotion in which you can enravell yourself into after a few listens and start to understand the sheer brilliance of what this band are about. California Daze again holds a lot of emotion within vocals, bass and lyrics. This is before it launches into a relaxing, funky sound as the song evolves. ''Forget and forgive there's a place you can live' is a truly spine-tingling line in the context of this masterpiece. Finally 1998 (Delicious), a 9 minute epic, 'an interesting take on a trance classic' says a BBC 6Radio presenter. This classic being Binary Finary's 1998. Now in all lazy honesty, I've only became familiar of this original through Peace, but hey I'm not complaining, not a song to liven you up in the morning, but that's not what this band aim to do. 




      With the decline of any sort of guitar music being in the mainstream in modern culture, something needs to happen. I'm not saying this band are the answer as screaming, brainwashed 12 year old girls will rather listen to specially written pop trash from 5 chino w******. However, this band can be part of a rebellion. Sticking two fingers up to the majority, maybe, just maybe this band can be part of the indie revolution. Give them a listen and see what your mind tells you...


Free Download of California Daze:  http://peaceforeverever.co.uk/MUSIC


Most like: Vampire Weekend, Foals, WU LYF


Friday 14 September 2012

Noel Gallagher in Nottingham 10/09/2012

       As I walked out of the Capital FM arena on Monday night a man, who had clearly sampled the venues alcoholic drinks many times throughout the night, thrust his arms around me and said "That was f*cking incredible". He was most certainly correct. Despite being a massive fan of Noel I was slightly disappointed after the gig I had previously seen him at this year at the NIA. The Oasis legend seemed not quite at his magnificent best and this was matched by the reaction of the crowd. However there were no problems this time around.
   
       Support came in the shape of old Blur foe Graham Coxon. Clearly some of the past times had been forgotten between Noel and the Axeman from Colchester. However, this wasn't transferred into the crowd. Only a handful of the capacity seemed to enjoy Mr Coxon, who tore away heavily and energetically at his guitar but as often said, he never quite mastered the frontman role usually taken by Damon Albarn. As well as this the sound in the arena was atrocious, leaving me fairly concerned that this would occur for the Noel.

     
       And so to the main man himself, cheered onto the stage by the raucous crowd, he soon sprung into the now synonymous opening number of 'It's good to be free'. The first really spine-tingling moment of the night came next though with 'Everybody's on the run', the line "You can't fight the feeeeeeeeeeeeeling" is a personal favourite from the album and really gets the crowd going live. That mixed with the impressive Crouch End chorus choir led to a real spectacle with the choir being fantastic all night. Crowd favourites from the new album proved to be 'If I had a gun' and 'What a life' with the former getting a massive singalong, another pair of classic songs produced by the Chief. It was also fantastic to hear some old Oasis favourites as well 'D'yer wanna be a spaceman' especially. By the time the encore came around the place was in raptures and the final pair of songs, arguably Noel's most well known of his own vocals, 'little by little' and 'Dont look back in anger' almost blew the roof off with everybody singing along, arms aloft. The banter Noel had with the now notorious man with the hat also added to the brilliance of the night, which overall was fantastic. Mr Gallagher, you are a genius.

Setlist: (Its good) To be free, Everybody's on the Run, Dream On, If I Had a Gun, The Good Rebel, The Death of You and Me, Freaky Teeth, Supersonic, D'yer Wanna be a Spaceman, Record Machine, What a Life, Talk Tonight, Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks, Broken Arrow, Half the World Away, (Stranded on) The Wrong Beach, Let the Lord Shine a Light on Me, Whatever, Little by Little, Dont Look Back in Anger.

Wednesday 5 September 2012

The Heartbreaks

      This week The Heartbreaks have released their latest single called Polly. It is at this stage I see as appropriate to review this stunning band from the western reaches of Lancashire in the seaside town of Morecambe.
     
          The four piece indie band were formed in 2009 consisting of vocalist Matthew Whitehouse, lead guitarist Ryan Wallace, bassist Chris Deakin and drummer Joseph Kondras. With the look of the Smiths and a familiar indie pop sound this band are very easy to listen to and also display a high level of energy in their music, something distinctly lacking in modern British Indie music, take the Vaccines and Spector for example. The band are something of a household name when it comes to supporting more well known bands and you may have caught them supporting Hurts, Carl Barat, the View and Morrissey, who is said to be a very big fan.
        After releasing several EP's the band finally released their debut album Fun Times on May 7th of this year. The album is based around stories of their home town, something that works well in debut albums, as seen famously in the Stereophonics debut album; 'Word Gets Around'. This is embodied in the first verse of the first track on the album Liar, My Dear:  'the rainfall in Morecambe embitters me, it fucks my hair and stings my cheeks'. In the business this would be known as keeping it real. My favourite song on the album is the extremely catchy track Delay, Delay. Fast and enthusiastic this song is very friendly on the ears and the mind and deserves to be the lead single on the album. Many bands have been accused of creating many 'filler' songs for albums, no such problems here, each of the ten songs included on the album are incredibly well written and performed by the band and you get the indication that they know what they're doing when it comes to producing high-quality tunes. And then we come to the latest single Polly. A frustrated local love story, probably, a brilliant song, most definetly. If there was any justice in the world, this band would be huge. But as we know musical talent doesn't get recognised as much this day and age. Had this of been 2002, when the indie music boom occurred, this album would've received a lot more attention. It is the sort of album to restore your pride that excellent bands are still out there when it comes to producing guitar music. For now, I'm sure the people of Morecambe are very proud to have their own hometown band flying the flag for them, as I'm sure the band are vice-versa. The Heartbreaks are definetly a band for the future.


Tracks to download: Polly, Delay Delay, Save Our Souls