Walletsnatchers of the World RE-Unite!!

We are all drowning. Drowning in a sea of yesteryear, populated by the sharks (that were jumped) and tired old fools of bands long since passed on from this mortal coil. Suddenly, we are beseiged by the soft spongy flesh on clammy hands of resurrected bands desperate to reclaim their abdicated thrones. What are we to do, fair citizens of the planet?
It seems another attempt at breaking down our defences has arisen. A band known as The Verve have set aside their differences (or rather the differences between one slightly skeletal ego-maniac with a failing solo career and one arrogant, proud overrated guitarist who has done nothing since Urban Hymns) for a short tour of these isles.
Where will it end? The Police, The Stooges, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, Gang of Four, Pixies - all with their own wave of rancid hype and expectation, soon to come crashing down on us poor, originality-starved saps so willing to endure the sounds and ways of the past. How we mutilate our bank accounts to see these fallen bands attempt to relive past glories! How we suffer the bleatings of 'long-term' fans who claim that they were indeed there first! How we skewer and garotte the hopes and dreams of brand new, exciting young bands willing to play anywhere for no money in order to be heard, by supporting these bloated has-beens!
When will the revolution start dear brothers and sisters? When will it come to pass that the people of Earth stop asking for the ability to download Beatles songs onto their itunes or for their favourite band when they were 12 to reform for a few forty-quid-per-ticket shows? When will sneering nay-sayers cease the endless chattering in defence of these actions, such as: "Why deny new fans the chance to see a band before their time?" Why? Because they have their own future has-beens to cling to, bands that mean more to them than life itself. If we deprive these kids of their right to a modern musical journey, could it be that they lose interest in music altogether? Maybe they will start disowning bands with the disheartening slight: "I've heard it all before." What will become of music?
I implore those who have the ability to stop reformations of these kinds - use your powers, your will and your strength to save music and stop it becoming this endless quagmire of underachievers and glory-hunters.
Do the right thing. Kull the old guard and restore the balance.

The 'Next Album' Dilemma

More and more this question keeps popping up: I have Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. What do I buy next?

You could apply this to any artist with huge kudos and critical acclaim with a massive back catalogue. However, Sonic Youth really ARE a problem.

So you've got their most fawned over, commercially viable release....where the hell do you go from there? Well let's try and come up with a scientific formula shall we?

There are twelve tracks on DN. For simplicities sake though lets take just four of them. 'Teen Age Riot', 'Silver Rocket', 'Kissability' and 'The Sprawl'.
Now these tracks are going to determine where to head in your SY journey next. It's simple. Giving them a rating one through four with 4 being your favourite and 1 being your least favourite (there are no bad tracks on Daydream Nation) you can then decide which way your heart is telling you to turn. It's like one of those adventure books where you choose which door to take and turn the page it tells you to go, only less fun and more rewarding.

So say 'Silver Rocket' is 4 and 'Kissability' is 1. I determine from this that you prefer their more direct approaches, with punk sensibility and the occasional noisy interlude, whereas 'Kissability' has Kim Gordon's vocals on it.
So, I'd say Rather Ripped (despite having Kim on it) is easily your next choice. However, if it is reversed I would probably head towards Goo - simply because it has 'Kool Thing' on it.
Now, if you enjoyed 'The Sprawl' and it's extended noise passage, this is a VERY good thing because this is probably 7/10ths of the whole of their output. I would point you towards Sister or any of the 'New York' triology (NYC Ghosts & Flowers, Murray Street and Sonic Nurse).
If you're well into 'Teen Age Riot' head towards Dirty or Evol.
Now if you find yourself awarding 'TAR' and 'SR' a 4 and 3 respectively - definitely hit A Thousand Leaves and Washing Machine while giving 'The Sprawl' and 'Kissability' the same marks will leave you in the corner of the more noisy and experimental Bad Moon Rising, S/T debut or Confusion Is Sex.
For the record, the hardest LP to listen to is NYC Ghosts and Flowers. Both Goo and Dirty have 'pop' hits as does A Thousand Leaves. Their most complete albums are Murray Street, Rather Ripped and Sister.

So this is how it goes.
TAR - Teen Age Riot SR - Silver Rocket TS - The Sprawl K - Kissability
The only ones used in an equation are the two highest marked albums:

TAR + SR = ATL / WM
TS + K = BMR/SY/CIS
TAR + K = G/BMR
TS + TAR = MS/SN
K + SR = E/RR

and so on...
Of course what complicates matters is that there is one more major SY album (namely Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star) to be heard. So let's just say this - buy something by Sonic Youth, give it three weeks of your precious listening time and, if you never listen to it again, you are a Sonic Youth fan and should proceed to buy all the albums in any order you like so you can fill up your CD rack and show off your collection to your mates.

Review: Reuben - In Nothing We Trust

Out today Reuben's third album In Nothing We Trust is quite simply one of the most surprising releases of 2007. From the opening strains of 'Cities On Fire' you have no idea what to expect. It's loose, clear guitar clashes seem to waver on the brink of falling apart. Suddenly Jamie's fiercest venom is hacked up with some volcanic chord shapes. The track exhumes some long forgotten art of tearing your face off. An opener to be reckoned with. Within a couple of minutes it's changed tack to a solid, chilling singalong, something you'd never have thought Reuben were capable of if you'd only listened to second album, and rather laboured anchor record, Very Fast, Very Dangerous. "Where are your books and your memories?" Jamie asks while his guitar spins out a web of triplet notes, as if firing hundreds of tiny barbs toward your ears. "We BURNED them all......We BURRRRRRRNNEEEEEEDDDD!!!!!" It's all shockingly good. And that's only the first four minutes of the album.
We then get the unassailable 'We're All Going Home In An Ambulance'. I guess you could call this typical Reuben from 'Blamethrower' or 'Freddy Kreuger' era singles. Except it's close to six minutes long. Screams, violent kick drums, disjointed chord stabs all break out into a riff that sounds like a juggernaut about to flatten your house. A terrace chant to rival the skull crushing thuggery of a Millwall gang jeers before a heavy metal, palm-muted breakdown defies any time signature. At this point we're barely three minutes in. A quick drum flourish leaves the bass grinding away while Jamie's pained arpeggios slip over the top. Before long we're back into a singalong that establishes itself into an outro of gobsmacking adrenaline.
These two songs are indicitive of what you should expect - Racecar Is Racecar Backwards on synapse wrecking steroids. And yet so much more. It is the best Reuben album by a long way. The other surprise on the album is the beautiful acoustic lament 'Good Luck'. With a lyrical approach that references itself as childish and "not progressive", it's left all that more poignant. If you've ever been sacked or dumped or just plain disappointed (that's all of us then), this will have you chanting the pay off line "If you hurt me, I will hate you, If you hurt me, I will erase you."
There are songs here which sound utterly ridiculous at first: 'Deadly Lethal Ninja Assassin' initially sounds like an Offspring song, but it's undeniably catchy and has YET another excellent outro. Frank Turner joins in seamlessly with the final lines and it's another triumph for the British underground rock troupe.
'Crushed Under the Weight of the Enormous Bullshit' starts as a horror movie stabbing (listen and see what I mean) while namechecking Everytime I Die and Glassjaw's Worship & Tribute while Jamie points out that your initial excitement about music is so hard to recapture.
Agony/Agatha has Jamie explaining the song as the band play, bit by bit. "Just a big bass line and drums, got guitarists sucking their thumbs for a bar or two that's how to do it...." It's almost like some sort of post-modern songwriting course for rock fiends. It's brilliant.
Perhaps the highlight, paradoxically, is the very Reuben-esque 'An Act of Kindness'. It propels itself along familiar lines and rhythms but with all the confidence and learned approach of a band who've been doing this for more than long enough. A final mention must go to 'Suffocation Of The Soul', Reuben's 'Kashmir'. An epic seven minute track that suffuses drum machines, molten guitars, blended vocals and an intense final rock out to match, and thump into the ground, pretty much any American metal band you can mention.
So, what we have is Reuben finally delivering an album that can encompass all we thought Racecar... promised and the fury of their I-can't-believe-there's-only-three-of-them live show. It's been a long time coming but we can finally embrace them as we always should have.
What's surprising is that we ever doubted them at all.

Why I'm Not Bothered About Glastonbury

I'm just not. 'Nuff said.

Live Review: Silversun Pickups - Water Rats Theatre

*this was their first ever show outside of North America*
It's only about halfway through the show when a companion whispers to me: "I don't like the way his eyes cross." I nod my head with a vague smile on my lips which suggests that I know exactly what she is talking about. It's only then that I look deep into those visual receptors. Goddamn, he's eyes ARE crossed! Brian Aubert is blindly flailing at his guitar and grinning as his band practically burst into flames in trying to anchor the smothering fuzz crawling through the speakers.
Clamping a vice around our ears and heads with a noise so vibrant and penetrating that we can forgive oncoming deafness, it's clear this highly textural experiment in popmusic is reliant on noise and volume as much as melody and harmonies.
Gobsmacking use of brief recycled feedback and tremelo effects threaten to subsume the songs but they are always saved once Brian and bassist Nikki Monninger's disarming vocals are glued together in some kind of beautiful siren song. This band have been playing for a loooooooooong time now and it shows.
Treated to album cuts such as the resplendent 'Well Thought Out Twinkles', the audience here all leave once SSPUs are finished, leaving headline band Windmill with a half empty venue to play to. I guess the eyes have it.......................(sorry).

Billy Corgan 'Adore's the dollar: foregos credibility and fans

Zeitgeist will be released in four different versions through major corporate outlets. There are specific editions for Best Buy, Target and itunes and a normal boring version for everyone else. Each of the three special editions will have a specific bonus track on each one. Excellent. Now THAT's value-for-Billy's-wallet right there. I cannot enthuse enough about how disgusting this is. It's hard enough for poor, struggling music fans without a new Smashing Pumpkins album being released. I mean, we were already devoid of originality and talent being pushed by major labels, and what with independent record stores closing down, our choice is becoming ever, ever limited.
So this is what we do - don't buy Zeitgeist. It'll teach baldy a lesson. Instead buy Handsome Furs, Silversun Pickups, Shellac, Asobi Seksu, Girls Aloud ...anything but this. This goes double for fans in the UK (because of the exchange rate - it's like depriving him of the average weekly wage of a New Orleans waitress per album). Of course no one is reading this, but it'd be funny if they were.

Review: Dog Day - "Night Group"

Oh how I've missed Pavement. It took me until Brighten the Corners before I understood Malkmus and co's entwining American threads but once I followed them, I appreciated the warmth and comfort their skewed pop afforded me.
Now, you are more than likely hearing the tinpot, lo fi buzzing, wiry guitars and half-spoken American drawl almost regularly. This is testament to Pavement's gargantuan efforts, originally perceived as laziness.
Arguably the same could be said of Dog Day's new effort. Jangling and jiving like the Pixies and Husker Du crossing swords with Dinosaur Jr, it's all very familiar. Still, when it's familiar in a way that makes you want to listen to this alongside Doolittle or Bug then that's not necessarily a negative.
'End of the World' is rightfully placed in the front of the record meshing harmonies, scathing guitars and a simple three note bass line - it's like a welcome home party. It's an album that warns you exactly how it's going to go and then follows that path rigidly and never stumbles off the edge. Safe? Undoubtedly. Unexciting? That's in the ear of the beholder. Personally, the little thrill I get from a well placed melody upon a clever little chord sequence maybe shows me up for the easily-pleased music critic charlatan I really am. Pfft. As if I care what you think.