Dec 04 2007 5:42 pm,
Check out that logo. It took ages to make.
Welcome, Welcome to The Fly’s first ever Festive 30.
If you think it’s a load of bollocks then please say so via the comments function.
JJ Dunning
4 or 5 Magicians – ‘Forever On The Edge’
MySpace.
Listen to this. It’s a delicious mixture of slacker lyrics ("I wasted my youth playing cricket/pinned all my hopes on a lottery ticket"), quintessential Englishness and early 90’s American alt.rock muckiness. Basically it’s a bit like Hefner would have been if they weren’t so fucking rubbish at being cool.
The Airborne Toxic Event – ‘Does This Mean You’re Moving On?’
MySpace.
It’s always the same. You get a wee bit of something successful and people wanna copy it. Take Alien. Some cigar-chomper in Hollywood says to himself "How about Jaws... In Space?!" et voila: Shithorney Beaver gets in her space suit and everyone thinks Mr. Cigar-chomper is a genius. It’s a bit like that with The Airborne Toxic Event. Some square has transplanted the Glaswegian art-pop of Franz Ferdinand and rendered it in Californian flesh and... oh... you know what? Bugger. We think they’re a genius. ‘Does This Mean You’re Moving On?’ is catchier than Malaria. Just don’t let the sequels get out of hand.
Arctic Monkeys – ‘Teddy Picker’
MySpace.
I dunno, maybe it’s the inescapable hype, but on any normal day for me, Arctic Monkeys = Whatever Trevor. However, Trevor, (and your foolish cohorts) this ‘ere song ain’t too bad at all. Typically, it sounds like everything else in the world of the Monkeys, but it’s easily the most stomporific thing on ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’, and the bit where Alex goes "Tobilobby thingy was a Teddy Picker, jum jigger bomb jigger jooly-bob quicker" is ace. Even though I can’t be arsed to learn the words proper.
Asobi Seksu – ‘Thursday’
MySpace.
Chill out kids, and put down your Marakami paperbacks, Asobi Seksu are only a bit Japanesey (their singer Yuki Chikudate comes from Tokyo, and the rest of the band hail from New York) and pack a euphoric meld of dream pop, shoegaze and all that other crap that died in the early nineties. ‘Thursday’ starts like it’s gonna be dreary all the way through before tumbling into a really-not-bad-at-all saccharine-sweet middle bit. Heady, dreamy, and pop. Not enough stuff ticks those boxes these days.
Babyshambles – ‘Delivery’
MySpace.
Eh? Babyshambles? Good? Shit the bed! ‘Delivery’ actually exists independently of Doherty and the drug/media/hype merry-go-round as a pretty decent song in its own right. In fact this album was surprisingly not-shit. It’s still far too annoying to listen to all the way through though.
Battles – ‘Atlas’
MySpace.
Altogether now: "Doo-die doo-die doo-die doo-die doo-doo doo-doo". Run for the hills! It’s the sound of Alvin Chipmunk being nobbled by the electro-indie Feds! Arrgh!!
Bear Hands – ‘Long Lean Queen’
MySpace.
They dress like Green Day, but Bear Hands are an unsigned bunch from Brooklyn, NY who’ve got three ace songs, which is three more than Green Day’s whole career.
Beirut – ‘Cliquot’
Dailymotion.com Video
Quite what the bloody hell a song sung by a gypsy about missing his gay lover that features an accordion is doing in my ‘songs of the year’ list I’ve no idea. If Liam Gallagher knew I liked this he’d probably turn up at my house, reclaim all my Oasis albums and punch me square in the face. "What melody will see him in my arms again?" parps the heart-breaking croon of Zach Condon. A stunning track from a stunning album.
The Big Sleep – ‘Murder’
MySpace.
This record plopped onto my doormat some time early in 2007, having been out in the USA since last year, but for some reason it’s only just been released officially in the UK. Quite how nobody’s getting a boner for this in the national press is beyond me. It’s like an incredibly bass-heavy Sonic Youth with fiddly keyboards and more-desolate-than-the-inside-of-a-WAG’s head shoegazey bits.
Blitzen Trapper – ‘Wild Mountain Nation’
MySpace.
Crammed with early Wilco country guitars, woozy, shabby Pavement aesthetics and belching forth a guitar line that sounds like it’s just sprung from Neil Young’s wrinkled, crusty bumcrack ‘Wild Mountain Nation’ is a shower of alt.country splendour-poo. Wonderful.
Blonde Redhead – ‘23’
MySpace.
Liking this track brought a very disdainful sneer from our resident Palladium fan in the Dep Ed’s chair. Fuck knows why cos it’s amazing. Yes, there’s something inescapably ‘Goal of the Month’ about it, but from the moment those big keys ring out, you know you’re about to be dragged by the balls out into the middle of the night sky by Peter Petrelli and get a chance to simultaneously gawp at 23’s beauty whilst fearing that something as panoramic as this could easily kill you with its’ awesome massiveness. Blimey.
Built To Spill – ‘Goin’ Against Your Mind’
MySpace.
Doug Martsch and co bounce back onto the scene with nigh-on-9-minutes of guitar wankery. Admissible only because it’s so bloody good. For the uninitiated, Martsch has used any opportunity available since 1994’s ‘There’s Nothing Wrong With Love’ album to show off to everyone how long he can play guitar for without needing to break for a nap/toilet/meals etc. Painfully Pitchfork follow-up records have often involved Martsch trying to play all the instruments a la Billy Corgan and basically going a bit power crazy. This year their sixth record actually included someone else sharing guitar duties with Doug’s ego, and this amazing first track off their new album made me a do a tiny poo in my pants when first I heard it. So it’s on the list.
The Changes – ‘Her, You and I’
MySpace.
Errrm…… The last 1/3rd of this song is like Jamiroquai but good.
Fog – ‘You Did What You Thought’
MySpace.
This is like Johnny Cash, Grandaddy and Beirut all bundled up in a washing machine, going round and round and round really fast until Johnny is a bit sick and Jason Lytle starts crying… with the whole thing angled at the beguiling refrain "You got what you paid for". Eerie and seasick.
Johnny Foreigner – ‘Yes! You Talk Too Fast’
MySpace.
Every track on this band’s debut EP is a headless, ripsnorting calamity. Hurtling about all over the place at twice the speed of light, yet somehow harnessing the twin energies of pop and fuzz. ‘Yes! You Talk Too Fast’ is the stand out only because frontman Alexei’s guitar-work is 1% more sensational than on the rest of the CD, and the boy-girl yelpiness makes me frenziedly bounce up and down so quickly that the woman upstairs thinks we’ve got a pneumatic drill in the office. FACT.
Kings of Leon – 'Charmer'
Sad Fan Video on YouTube
From the moment that Pixies bish-bosh drumming starts, to the last ear-splitting yelp, this is an absolute destroyer. Since 2003’s ‘Youth and Young Manhood’ planted them on the map the Kings have been getting steadily better… a stark contrast to the coordinated collapse of their Strokesian counterparts. ‘Because of the Times’ just sounds like confirmation that they’ll be around for the next 100 years.
Klaxons – ‘It’s Not Over Yet’
MySpace.
If we made one big boo-boo this year at Fly Towers, it was deigning not to put these Sarf Landan fellas on the cover of our mag. Admittedly, this decision was taken out of our hands a little bit because it was so fucking awkward to listen to promos of the album, as Polydor insisted on streaming the album through their website. This meant every time a track finished you had to head back to the webpage and press play on the next song… This isn’t a ballache until whoever’s playing it through their PC nips out for a fag/poo. Thus when we eventually got finished copies of the album and listened through on a proper stereo, The Fly uttered the collective expletive: "Fuckbollocksbums, this is quite good isn’t it?". Rather fittingly, this little rant was supposed to be a review of the song? Missed the boat again…
Kotki Dwa – ‘Little Flags’
MySpace.
The beginning bit sounds like Roxy Music’s ‘2HB’ sung by a super-drunk Ed Harcourt and backed by a monkey on a fisher price piano, before the cranky-Figurines-guitar chorus dolloped right smack in the middle turns the whole thing upside down. Splendid.
Land Of Talk – ‘Speak To Me Bones’
See the very dull video on YouTube.
Land Of Talk reckon they owe the heavily surveillanced Montreal scene a big ‘TA!’ for their rapid success... while we’d be more likely to pin it on their brilliant fuzzy girl-vox sex-rock.
LCD Soundsystem – ‘All My Friends’
YouTube.
Fatty bum-bum James Murphy is a clever old stick. This very-nearly-top-40-fodder boots off with flittery keyboards that shatter the glass-hearts of us romantics who remember the good old days when dance music and indie were divided nations. Like a crossover Kofi Annan, he expertly unites the twin houses of skinny jeans and beats, making us ponder the ultimate question: Is he fat Jesus?
Los Campesinos! – ‘You! Me! Dancing!’
MySpace.
Los Campesinos! have a fiddler. Not a resident paedo, but a person who plays the fiddle. And not in a Levellers sense, either. No. A fiddler who fiddles in a good way. Without making you want to strangle them. ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ quite simply commands you to get off your lardy muffin-topped arsecheeks and bounce around like a demented 3 year old after too many blue ice pops.
M.I.A. – ‘Paper Planes’
MySpace.
"All I wanna do is BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!" When she’s not doing her bit to stem gun crime, M.I.A. is quite probably a full-time spokesperson for the voiceless Sri Lankan and British underprivileged street kids. I say ‘probably’ cos I’m just guessing at this really. Firearms crime where I grew up involved bullies and spud guns. Anyway, this is ace.
My Psychoanalyst – ‘We Disagree’
YouTube Vid.
My Psych bathe themselves in wibbly-wobbly guitars, whale-honk vocals and the kind of preposterous sprawling soundscapes it took Radiohead two whole records and an EP to even attempt. This was probably recorded in a shed on a budget of 8p and it still sounds amazing.
Pete & The Pirates – ‘Come On Feet’
YouTube Video.
Back in the day, bouncy mutton-chopped pop heroes (Supergrass), jaunty tracksuit-topped pop heroes (Blur) and big black-rimmed spectacle pop heroes (Pulp) coexisted peacefully. Nobody ever tried to be too clever (this was an era when Oasis were on top, remember) and all indie pop music was derived from a sense of wistful "This-is-a-bit-tacky-isn’t-it-really?" charm. Then came Franz Ferdinand and suddenly everything got VERY VERY DULL. And since Kaiser Chiefs disappeared up their own crevices with their woefully ‘serious’ second album, it’s fallen to the likes of Young Knives, The Wombats and Pete & The Pirates to bump the indie-pop jolly-go-round back on its’ rails. Of course, they’re too nice to manage anything more than a polite nudge … but in a parallel HMV somewhere, the revolution has chosen ‘Come On Feet’ as its’ anthem.
Radiohead – 'House of Cards'
YouTube.
A cousin of 'Bulletproof… I Wish I Was', the downbeat mastery of 'House Of Cards' is in its’ haunting desolateness. It sounds like it was recorded in the middle of the night somewhere in the bowels of a colossal super-cathedral. Thom’s found his melody again… ok, you won’t be whistling it in the shower, but this is a fucking long way off ‘Kid A’ or ‘Life in a Glasshouse’.
Rumble Strips – 'Girls And Boys In Love'
YouTube Vic.
Ok, this isn’t the finest track on ‘Girls and Weather’, that honour belongs to ‘Alarm Clock’ but… it gets itself on this muggy longlist for the simple fact that ‘Girls And Boys In Love’ is so jolly, Shakin’ Stephens-y, Dexys Midnight Runners-y and Stray Cats-y that it completely negates the need for Jack Penate to ever take another breath of precious air. And there’s really no higher accolade than that, is there?
The Teenagers – ‘Homecoming’
YouTube Vic.
Equal parts brilliant and absurd. Who knows or cares whether there’s mileage in this band, cos ‘Homecoming’ is a genius navigation of the territory between Frank Zappa nonsense lyrics and blander-than-bland Europop. How no-one thought of mixing the two before is a mystery. "I fuck my American cunt". Indeed! How frightfully silly.
The Twilight Sad – ‘That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy’
MySpace.
Ah, the warm comforting bliss of an embittered Scotsman drawling over the drone of a Fender jazzmaster with someone sat on a synthesizer in the background, moaning about the dreariness of being Scottish, the dreariness of being constantly compared to Aereogramme or Arab Strap and… of course… the dreariness of being an embittered Scotsman drawling over the drone of a Fender jazzmaster with someone sat on a synthesizer in the background. Makes you proud to be English.
Wolf & Cub – ‘This Mess’
YouTube.
Try getting all the way through one listen to this without springing diagonally upwards and dry-humping the nearest piece of furniture with all the fervour of a demented sex maniac. We bloody dare you.
Young Knives – ‘Terra Firma’
YouTube.
"Fake Rabbit, Real Snake" shouts Young Knives frontman Henry Dartnall like a man with gibberish tourettes. ‘Terra Firma’ is the best song this band have ever written and adds more weight to the idea that they’re the new Supergrass, melding genius nonsense with sparky, upbeat pop so infectious that it might – just might – send you completely and totally insane. Think ‘Sun Hits The Sky’ welded to ‘Pumping On Your Stereo’s bouncy-castleness. This isn’t just solid ground, it’s solid gold.
