Wire - Pink flag

Like other punk bands Wire strived to re-focus rock from it's growing excesses, but they took that aesthetic a step further. Unlike other artists Wire's aim wasn't a return to rock's roots, but minimalism. Wire didn't approach music as a rock band, but as an art experiment. On Pink Flag, Wire eliminate every extraneous element resulting pure, angular music. While not musically accomplished (in fact, the band members admit they were barely competent technically), Pink Flag contains an astounding variety and depth of creative ideas.

While other punk bands (The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, etc.) acheived notoriety with genuine angst and shock, Wire distinguished themselves through unpredictabilty and vocalist Colin Newman's sly, oft acerbic wit (while oft incomprehensible, he's always compelling). In a sense it seems Wire's limited musicianship actually works to their advantage; since they have limited tools the band is forced to rely soley on ideas and chemistry. The 21 songs on Pink Flag rarely exceed three minutes (most are 1-2 min in duration) and rarely conform to any standard notions of song structure.

With titles like "Field Day for the Sundays", "Three Girl Rhumba", "Ex Lion Tamer", and "Mannequin", many understandably view the songs as minimalist paintings tranformed into music. Arty as Wire can be at times, they're anything but pretentious. Pithy and snobbish as Wire might seem, Pink Flag is remarkably entertaining; it's intense, wryly witty, and at times undeniably funny. Wire's breadth of ideas is remarkable; they cover ground which includes proto-hardcore ("106 Beats That", "Different to Me"), tweaked power-pop ("Reuters", "Champs"), power-blues ("Lowdown"), and even spare texture experiments ("Strange"). "Mr. Suit" is the only marginal track... and it's still pretty enjoyable.

Some have argued that Pink Flag's songs are only fragments, but close analysis reveals Wire's brilliance; each song serves to convey it's ideas as expediently as possible and once this objective is reached it ends immediately. In his Rollingstone review Greil Marcus remarked about the lack of personality on Pink Flag ("You hear cleverness, wit, irony, but not personality."). While this might be accurate the lack of intimacy isn't a problem in the musical context and actually coincides well with Wire's aesthetic . One of the many things that makes Pink Flag unique is it's combination of emotional intensity and vaguely arty distance (which eventually became dominant in their later work). Wire's somewhat impersonal approach also makes Pink Flag transcendent; unlike many late 70s punk bands who focused on the sociopolitical climate, Pink Flag's more esoteric themes (both musical and lyrical) make it vital and relevant 25 years after it's release.

Pink Flag is proudly touted as a profound influence by artists as diverse as Big Black, Sonic Youth, The Minutemen, Elastica ...and REM (who covered a more straight-forward version of "Strange" on their album Document). Wire would later make other ambitious and noteworthy albums (most notably "Chairs Missing" and "154"), but never made another as seminal, ageless, and visionary as Pink Flag.

Reuters

Field Day For The Sundays

Three Girl Rhumba

Ex Lion Tamer

Lowdown

Start To Move

Brazil

It's So Obvious

Surgeon's Girl

Pink Flag

The Commercial

Straight Line

106 Beats That

Mr. Suit

Strange

Fragile

Mannequin

Different To Me

Champs

Feeling Called Love

1 2 X U

Options R

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MC Tunes - The North At Its Heights

MC Tunes.....or Nicholas Lockett to his mum!!

 A genre-defining, time-defining album. Brought to everyone's attention by the synonymous track The Only Rhyme That Bites, listeners to the album were confronted with what can only be described as a blistering assault of hip-hop/rap and gritty reality.

Drugs, death, hard times, politics... all were given vicious-yet-poetic treatment, and all tracks leave such an impression at the time, that each will be forever embedded in your memory. The stark and brutal depiction that is My Own Worst Enemy might be the track that lives longest, though. Even more so than the popular and brilliant chart single tracks (T.O.R.T.B and Tunes Splits The Atom). The depth of feeling in his vocal performances are more than equalled by the song-writing and lyricism. 808 State provided the beats in their trademark understated brilliant fashion.

The Only Rhyme That Bites

This Ain’t No Fantasy

Dance Yourself To Death

Own Worst Enemy

The North At Its Heights

Tunes Splits The Atom

Mancunian Blues

The Sequel

Primary Rhyming

Dub At Its Heights

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Lowgold - Just Backward Of Square

Few debut albums sound as lived-in as Lowgold's Just Backward Of Square, which has a depth of thought, a wealth of experience and an aching that most acts take decades to find. 

As it is, the four--who sound like they are straight out of America's Midwest but come from Poole, St Albans and South London--got it just-so first time round. By rights, their sombre road movie rock should be both demoralising and depressing; certainly, there's very little to smile about in lyrics like "make the most of today/for beauty dies young" ("Beauty Dies Young") and "my lungs may be bleeding/so I breathe in mercury/decay" ("Mercury"). But there's also a hint of hope and a glint of optimism in Darren Ford's voice as he sings these songs of introspection, and a positive and reassuring power to the dragging guitars and plodding bass. 

That there is hope in the darkest tunes is where the maturity and magic of Just Backward Of Square lies. 

Golden Ratio

Beauty Dies Young

Mercury

Out Of Reach

Back Here Again

Counterfeit

Never Alone

In Amber

Open The Airwaves

Less I Offer

Into The Void

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Thousand Yard stare - Live Bootleg EP

I don't often post up singles and EP's but il make an exception here.... This was a 10" 'bootleg' EP by Thousand Yard Stare,Recorded at London's ULU it given away free with the LP Hands On. Never quite understood how it was classed as a bootleg given it was an official release but hey its a treat as live the band were fantastic...  

Anyway lets get to the point

You think Blur invented britpop...... you are wrong my friends. Thousand Yard Stare were forerunners of the britpop scene by at least 3 years.... TYS as im going to call them were lumped in with the shoe gaze scene primarily because they came from the Thames Valley and supported bands such as Ride and Chapterhouse however listen to the debut album Hands On and see where the band were heading... its pure pop heaven strewn with English references, if they had come along 4 years later and drank in the good mixer its a fair bet you would have heard more than 2 albums. As mentioned earlier live the band were amazing so enjoy this, I still do and Buttermouth remains one of my all time top 10 singles.

Twice Times

Village End

Three Doors Down

Buttermouth

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Cake - Fashion Nugget

"Fashion Nugget is the second album by Cake, here's a review , I actually was going to write my own review but its a Tuesday night and im watching football.... you know how it yea ?

This Album is purely sensational, although sensational's probably not the right word. It's great anyhow and you should buy it, here are some reasons why:

1. It's like nothing you've heard before.

2. It's Rock, Funk, Latin, Country, and bits of other flavours all rolled into one.

3. You'll like it too and you'll tell all your friends about it and then write an on-line review of it like this saying how I was right.

4. The lyrics are amazing. It could take years to fully understand what they really mean. There are so many metaphors and complicated words that if John McCrea (Lead Singer) came up to you and said "hello" you'd spend half an hour trying to think about it.

5. You won't put it down. It won't fall to the back of your CD collecion. It'll always be there for you.

6. I haven't seen a single bad review of it.

7. You should read the Amazon.com reviews. The Americans can't get enough of it.

8. I'm sick of commercial bands and although you wouldn't usually associate this with Indie bands like Stereophonics etc. because their music is so different, that's just what it is.

9. It's only rock and roll but I like it.

10. Admit it you can afford it. You never know, it might become you're desert island disc.

Your birthday cake's usually gone within a week but this will last for a long long time.

LISTEN NOW!

Frank Sinatra

The Distance

Friend Is A Four Letter Word

Open Book

Daria

Race Car Ya-Yas

I Will Survive [Cover]

Stickshifts and Safetybelts

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps [Cover]

It's Coming Down

Nugget

She'll Come Back To Me

Italian Leather Sofa

Sad Songs and Waltzes

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Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See

People tend to confuse the band Mazzy Star with it's singer Hope Sandoval. Truth be told, they've been right all along. Sandoval's languid, weeping willow voice is Mazzy Star; the name is a mere formality. With nods to Nico and the Velvet Underground, So Tonight that I Might See is vintage Mazzy. Remarkably, the recording produced a strikingly undanceable single, "Fade into You". The rest of the album sticks close to the single's plaintive, retro balladry. Though Sandoval rarely raises her voice above a sultry whisper, it's bright enough to hold your attention all night

There is absolutely no point in beating about the bush over the fact that Mazzy Star’s second record includes – nay commences with – what must stand as dream-pop’s crowning moment. Fade Into You is a song that has been described many times, forced into romantic context in many a big or small screen venture, yet somehow defies any real attempt to bind it with words.

“I look to you and I see nothing / I look to you to see the truth”; if this really is a love song – and a lot of people have taken that view over the years – then Hope Sandoval’s haunting lyrics posit love as a black, coma-like obliteration. This isn’t a fade into one perfect whole; it’s erasure of the self. Truthfully, though, it’s not clear what Fade Into You is about: Sandoval’s words are cryptic, speaking of emptiness and shadows, some grand psychological disappearing act. It's enigmatic, but almost unutterably beautiful, a languorously uplifting piano figure played over and over, shimmering under lambent slide guitars, something close to yearning in Sandoval’s oft dissonant voice.

It does, of course, unbalance the album, and has certainly given enormous numbers of people the wrong idea about Mazzy Star. Though woozy country trappings and soporific tempos characterise all Sandoval and David Roback’s work, they’re a far artier, more abrasive prospect than the totemic track suggests. So Tonight That I Might See may have less of a bad acid trip Doors vibe than debut She Hangs Brightly, but still: skip to the seven-and-a-half minute title song’s menacing guitar motif, erratic beds of feedback, and Sandoval’s diffuse mumble, and you’re got something more suited to soundtracking Apocalypse Now than The OC.

A cover of Love’s Five String Serenade is the only hooky moment to speak of beyond Fade Into You; this record’s heart lies with the foggy American gothic of Mary of Silence and Blue Light, the woozy, half-asleep country of Bells Ring and Blue Light. It’s an obtuse, atmospheric record, and if it’s inescapably overshadowed by its opening song, then that’s fair enough: nobody writes two of those in a lifetime

Oh and by the way i absolutely hate the words "dream Pop". Thanks :)

Fade into you

Bells ring

Mary of silence

Five string serenade

Blue light

She's my baby

Unreflected

Wasted

Into dust

So tonight that i might see

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Kitchens Of Distinction - Strange Free World

The forerunners of shoegaze????

This is one where persistence really pays off. The thick, swirling, dreamy waves of guitar are prominent on each of Strange Free World's 10 songs and this can be extremely overwhelming on the first listen. However, there are a selection of more immediate, striking numbers within the haze such as Railwayed, Quick As Rainbows and Drive That Fast that will keep drawing you back in and you gradually fall under the spell of the album's remaining tracks. 

Each massive swirl of the oceanic Hypnogogic and Aspray and the sharper, angrier edges of Polaroids will all become the best kind of ear candy, as well as the soundtrack to a perfect summer afternoon view Under The Sky, Inside The Sea. Matures like a good wine and there are no poor or uninspired tracks. For me, this is their best record. (followed by The Death Of Cool which is probably even more of a grower!) If you love to hear how the electric guitar can re-invent itself and tear up the rulebook then give this a go. 

A great record.

Railwayed

Quick as Rainbows

Hypnogogic

He Holds Her, He Needs Her

Polaroids

Gorgeous Love

Aspray

Drive That Fast

Within the Daze of Passion

Under the Sky, Inside the Sea

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