Silly Moths.

GUILLEMOTS LIVE IN WHELANS - 26.02.06



With their debut single currently being offered (and willingly bought) for sums in excess of €150 on an online auction house (I'm being vague to avoid giving eBay free advertising), it doesn't take a weatherman to realise that Guillemots will be huge.

Waiting for them to appear onstage, we hear the clashing of percussion in time with the song being played over the P.A, so we turn around...ah! It's Guillemots! They make their way through the crowd and take their places. A man in African tribal dress (who's probably in his late 30's) begins to frantically drum a crazed pattern over frontman Fyfe Dangerfield's gentle piano melody whilst the silently cool and pretty double bassist stand to either side. Yes, they go to the bother of hiring a double bass in each city they visit where, logically, a bass guitar would probably suffice. Because Guillemots really like to do things differently and often dramatically. Sometimes this approach works prefectly (when it results in a beautiful fusion of pop melodies and jazz experimentarion) but sometimes it drags (when it gets too caught up in "experimentation" or resorts to lovey James Blunt-type lyrics). But they can be excused because songs like their near-breakthrough single Trains To Brazil (Shout Out Louds with trumpets, although live, the bassist's "ba-dum-ba"s are substituted for a brass section) and the great Made Up Love Song #43 could save even the worst of bands.

But Guillemots aren't the worst of bands. They're far from it (and with Dangerfied, they have a born entertainer) and will surely be a breath of fresh air on Top of the Pops and on our airwaves during the summer months.

Many are tipping them as "this year's Arcade Fire" which may be a little too generous but they've got the character, smiles and a handful of tunes in the right places to - at least - replace the Magic Numbers for the time being.




It should be noted that support was provided by the fantastic The Immediate who upstaged the main act, for me. On the 24th of this month, they'll be releasing their Make Our Devils Flow EP and the A-side Don't You Ever is currently on rotation on MTV2. To watch/listen/learn, use your right to vote. Check out this post for some mp3s.

Trains To Brazil

Made Up Love Song #43

Who Left The Lights Off Baby

Trains To Brazil Video

Official website

Their myspace

Oh! You Pretty Things.

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS



I went, I saw, they conquered. Their album is sure to be one of 2006's best. Playing live in front of a sold-out crowd of 200, the highlights were the fabulously dynamic The Enemy, the early-Libs-style Bang Bang You're Dead and the anarchic punk mess of Deadwood. In between, they slipped in 3 Libertines' songs to retain familiarity (Death on the Stairs, France and the stage invasion-inducing I Get Along). So not only did we feel extremely lucky to finally watch (more than half) of our heroes perform some (now legendary) songs from their massive repetoire live, but we did so in one of the smallest venues they'll ever play in.

But little did we know that we were about to get a whole lot luckier. Happily mingling with the fanatics post-gig, up arose an invitation to a relatively smaller venue - one which will go down in history amongst 20 amazed followers as "Phelo's 18 Whitecastle". Anthony of the Rossamundos and Carlos of the Barats - along with Carl's bodyguard - roamed the streets for half an hour in search of a cab to whisk(ey) them away to student accomodation where they proceeded to laugh, joke and smoke their cares away and play over 2 hours of Libertines' classics. Every song was met with a singalong (whether it be a b-side or a sessions track) and every end-of-song was met with an obscure request. The amazing (amazing isn't a strong enough word) night came to a close at approximately 5.30am when the tourbus came to help share these things with the British fans.

Fortunately, we all managed to capture little pieces of evidence which nicely provide alibis, proving that it wasn't actually a dream.

What follows are 6 video clips (taken on my phone, so excuse me!) that make me quite fuzzy.

Tell The King
Horrorshow
The Last Post On The Bugle
The Delaney
What A Waster
Time For Heroes


Bang Bang You're Dead
Rapidshare link to the rather amazing debut single. It's blowing me away. The horn intro is delicious.

Bang Bang You're Dead
Flash video of their debut single. The audio used is actually the song's demo, so we can eagerly await the single version which was produced in L.A by Dave Sardy (Supergrass, The Thrills). EDIT: It's now right above this link...marvellous!

Deadwood
Flash video of Deadwood's demo.

Deadwood
Video of their performance at the NME Awards on February 23rd.

Re-Inkarnation.

PHILIP E KARNATS


Philip E Karnats is the man who helped beef up Tripping Daisy's Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb - probably my favourite album ever made - with some trumpets and guitars. Whilst his bandmates ventured off to form the Polyphonic Spree and the Secret Machines, he went solo and is soon to release his new album Pleasesuite.

Two streaming songs have just been put on to his official website and they're fantastic! Learn Defeat is a delicious slow-burner which comes across as a more condensed Secret Machines and Early Bird Cartoons is a thumping psychedelic pop gem in the vein of Grandaddy or - perhaps more obvious - his former group.

Annnnd a lovely twist: Joseph Kyle of Mundane Sounds has discovered that - a la Zaireeka - if his song Learn Defeat is started at the same time as Hammer Parade Falls From The Sky by This Quiet Army, on their myspace, the result is really quite glorious!

Try this trick.

PIXIES AND BOB DYLAN


Blowin' In My Mind
Totom - quite obviously a French genius - has laid Blowin' In The Wind on top of Where Is My Mind. It's amazing!

I'd also recommend Grandaddy/Britney, Dylan/Bowie, Gorillaz/QOTSA/Love and NERD/The Beatles/Television.

VERY good stuff!

Going down in flames?

THE FRAMES



Why wasn't this a brilliant concert? The 2nd night of 3 entirely sold-out nights in Vicar Street and going by the Frames' reputation as an amazing live force (their most popular album is a live CD and they filled the 7,000 capacity Point Theatre just over a month ago), it really should've been. Well, I was here on false pretences because I (and pretty much everyone else) didn't realise that this string of shows was to be a set of litmus tests for their new material.

And my impressions of the album they'll soon record are not good. Not once do any of the new songs stray from their tried and tested formula - each one starts off as a gentle strumalong before it hits the chorus where guitars and violins wail, as does the horrible irritating lead singer Glen Hansard. Yes, EVERY song! Every single one of their new songs does that!

Whilst the adoring crowd hang on Hansard's every word with all of their worshipping attention and laugh at every desperate between-song story or movement (like a significantly older, seated version of Peter Doherty's fanatics), I must admit that the only humour in my night was when he sung about "riding some horses". Apologies..

At one stage, Hansard pauses to denounce bands who become a parody of themselves. Well, after hearing their rigid song structures and listening to him tell his much-impersonated stories, I may need to question him about how he avoids becoming a joke.

And when he refuses to stand for a bored fan (preferring to be a red-haired man in his forties fixed to a purple chair whilst shaking his guitar at his amp looking for feedback), that's just the final straw! Don't listen to The Frames.

Good News, Puss Pickers.

DANIELSON FAMILE


I don't know why they're wearing nurses' uniforms. They're a family of oddballs and that should be explanation enough. Coming on May 9th, Ships is their 7th album. It features appearances from Steve Albini, Deerhoof and regular contributor/part-time adopted Famile member Sufjan Stevens. First impressions of the LP suggest that the collaborative touch has been well and truly added.

I'll let the music speak for music's self, but here's what you need to know...

-he has a fantastic voice. Yelping and squeaking...fantastic!

-the female backing vocals are often hilarious (see Rallying The Dominoes).

-they are considered a Christian band because of their religious lyrics. But they're just spiritual songs..don't dismiss!

Danielson: A Family Movie
Official site for their upcoming docu-movie, which will be shown in selected theatres and released on DVD later this year.

Trailer
The promo for the movie. Looks skud!

Did I Step On Your Trumpet
Lead single from their forthcoming album and soundtrack for the movie trailer, this is one of their best songs yet. Slightly Arcade-Fiery (I know, I know...apparantly EVERYTHING is these days. But this really is...a little). Could easily be normal enough for universal appeal. "I put your name on the ballot, thought you should run, though you don't want to."

The Wheel Made Man
From 1997's Tell Another Joke at the Ol' Choppin' Block (my personal favourite), the rolling piano melody and chorus manifesto make this a classic.

Their myspace

Official site

Black. Black as the night.

JIM NOIR LIVE IN CRAWDADDY - 03.02.06


It's a little past 3pm in Tower Records, Dublin on a Friday afternoon. A tall man who closlely resembles Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy takes his seat alongside a friend to either side. To a crowd of around 50 stunned people, he acoustically plays a handful of tracks from his debut album 'Tower of Love' (an LP consisting of his 3 debut EPs, with a few newbies to keep longtime fans satisfied). Given the breathtakingly beautiful performance, amazing harmonies from his cronies and humourous stage presence, it's a shock to later learn that this is only the third concert that Jim has played.

His genre is a breath of fresh air, quite literally. Blending together every happy melody you've ever heard, Monsieur Noir sounds like a cross between Badly Drawn Boy at his best and Sufjan Stevens at his most recent. Perhaps this is the sound that would be created if the Beta Band were to read a Polyphonic Spree biography before being put into a room and told to cluelessly make an album's worth of Polyphonic Spree songs. Innocent, carefree and breezy, this is everything you want and need from music. Whether you want to brighten a cold day or soundtrack a nice day, this man has created the perfect companion.

Critically, Noir is a marvel. If words were everything, Jim would have everything...and everything would be fantastic...or something. In reviews, he has been given full marks from The Times, The Fly, iDJ, Stuff, DMC Update, The Sun, DJ, Record Collector and Hi-Fi Popcorn. But it's Hi-Fi Popcorn who really seem to love him.

A few hours later, Jim is taking to the stage with his 4 fellow bandmembers (labelmates Jack Cooper and the Beep Seals) for the full electric set in Dublin's Crawdaddy. The main reason for the lack of a live show up until now is because for a solo artist, Jim has a HUGE sound. Harmonies flowing out of every word, riffs to his chords and with every instrument built-in to his keyboard getting an airing at some stage or another, it'd be impossible to guess that there's only one man behind all of this. Well, he's Mike Skinner for us dreamers with hallucinogenic skulls. Presumably, he assembled the entire record on his computer, going by the lyrics to the hilariously innocent Computer Song in which he breaks down crying when his recording software crashes mid-song. We've had a wink to the taping process and it's left to the wondrous current single In The Key Of C for a nod to composition. "I want to be in the key of C, it's easier to play", he moans happily to a hymnal Doves-like melody.

Other highlights include the brilliantly unthreatening My Patch ("if you ever step on my patch, I'll bring you down"), the Beatlesy ditsy delight of I Me You I'm Your and the simply AMAZING A Quiet Man. Trucking along for its first couple of minutes with a tuneful - if inactive - verse, you know it can't be long 'til something big happens. And when it does, it's one of those choruses that is so unbelievably terrific that it's difficult to comprehend how it came to being. Shouldn't this type of thing be restricted? Live, it's one of those cherished moments. The kind that you should be required to experience every single morning upon awakening. What a wonderful world that would be!

When they leave the stage after what seems like a horrifically short set (although I'm sure it was just the "time flies..." theory), the house lights remained turned off for at least five minutes during which the crowd cheers, yells, whistles and applauds, wanting more...NEEDING more. But they don't return. They leave us on the most painful tenterhooks ever to exist. As they continue on the road for their UK tour, selling out as they go, we know that we've seen a genius at work. One of those true great minds. If everybody takes the media's advice - just this once - Jim will be a very rich and famous man, and in a nice change, he'll deserve it all.

A Quiet Man
Please download this!

In The Key Of C
His delicious latest single.

A Quiet Man (Video)
This fantastically quirky video is what first turned me on to him, during the early hours of a musically televisual morning around a year ago. It'll warm you up.

His myspace

Official site

X1 Of The Ball.

BELL X1 LIVE IN THE RDS - 31.01.06




NOTE: This review is highly exaggerated. Bell X1 are an extremely overrated band and the follow recommendations should be taken with a pinch of salt. Their set was largely mind-numbingly boring. Actually, don't read this article.

Waiting Room are a prog rock group from Cork. They play loudly and are quite pleasing to the ears, but their sound is often lost whilst wandering for minutes on end as they doodle. But I digress. I'll save my breath for José Gonzalez, the second support act.

Wow. Somebody get this man some playing cards. I presume he's only playing because he's bored. He badly needs to be enticed away from fingerplucking that poor guitar. Think Devendra Banhart, except obscenely bad. If you're actually a fan, you're (mentally) safe enough because there were many of your type in attendance, but his music is monotonous "contemplative" strewn-together rubbish. The one highlight of the set was midway through when he played the song widely known as "the one from the ad". Sure, it's nice, but when his only attention-grabbing melody of the night was pinched from the throats of a Swedish electronica duo, you know there's a problem.

Thankfully, we had Bell X1 to resurrect our weary legs and numb brains. A huge white curtain was draped across the front of the stage by Spiderman himself, and to rapturous applause, the bellies and bodies of the Bellies took to the limelight. Coming across as a slightly cheaper and slightly more Irish version of Gorillaz during opening track Reacharound, their hugely enlargened silhouttes bounded gloriously across the curtain as the strobe effects flashed across the sold-out venue. When the curtain dropped as the tune kicked in, it marked the beginning of a hit-flooded 2 hour long set. The jitter-punk antics of Bigger Than Me lit the spark in the eyes of the adoring crowd and when 'Next To You' segued into a cover of Outkast's Miss Jackson, the entire place was completely won over, won under and won all about.

Throughout the evening, there was a plentiful supply of slow songs for the crowd to stare sadly - or yell loudly - during. Eve, The Apple Of My Eye (their "biggest" song, due to crafty product placement on The OC) and Lampposts shone in particular.

However, the hightlight of the concert had to be the fantastic "if the Flaming Lips wrote a Coldplay song" Rocky Took A Lover. Breaking every so often for a ridiculously lovely stadium singalong moment ("I'll shine for you.."), it had the crowd in hysterics. The word "hysterics" NOT implying that the audience was made up entirely of women with an illness of the womb.

The night's rockier moments were definitely amongst the most cherished, with Tongue, Alphabet Soup, Bigger Than Me and He Said She Said prompting singing en masse and dancing on glass.

You can't help notice that frontman Paul Noonan really is THE MAN in charge. Other bandmembers are largely muted and static while he dances and shakes like a Talking Head and cracks witticisms during the song gaps. He is bemused by the arrival of Starbucks to Ireland, wondering "what's wrong with a nice cup of tea?" and tries to deny the fanatics any knowledge of their rare debut album, just to get one over on them. And when he whipped out a Fisher Price recorder as a substitute for a megaphone, well that was just cool.

Two encores later and there you have it. A few thousand fans well satisfied in one fall swoop!

And with the international tour and release of 3rd album Flock upcoming in the next few months, and with them about to really give it everything abroad for the first time, you can expect to be hearing a lot about them very soon. Plus they have the authoritarian tag of "Irish number one" to slap on every press release. Just think of the luminaries they're amongst and you can have some idea of the success they'll be expecting.

Rocky Took A Lover (Acoustic)
Their latest single, except acoustic and on the radio to make it slightly more legal.

Like I Love You
Eh, a Justin Timberlake cover.

KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic (RealMedia file)
From last year, live on the greatest radio station...ever?

Bootlegs Upload
A site of live shows and rarities and things, uploaded by fans. You'll also find some stuff by Juniper, which is Bell X1 except with Damien Rice as their frontman, from when they were little!

Official site


The Knife - 'Heartbeats'
The original version of "the song from the ad".

Waiting Room Official Site
With 3 mp3s.