Hey Everyone!

Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone!
released 6 April 2009 on Best Before

When growing up, we all had phrases that were drummed into us with the intent of turning us into safer, healthier, more-rounded and just plain better people. “Don’t talk to strangers” looks after the safety aspect, “eat your greens” has been repeated so many times that some of us turn to doughnuts as adults just because we can and “never judge a book by its cover” should ensure that we’re all able to get on with our fellow man. Ah, yes, “never judge a book by its cover;” a well-meaning mantra that doesn’t hold much weight in the literal sense seeing as book covers are often tailored to appeal to the target market of said book. Anyway, however non-judgemental you may be, we’re all only human and susceptible to preconceptions. On which note, take a look at the picture above this article - what in the name of Saint and Greavsie is that?!

First off, the cover art looks like it’s been designed by a primate with bloodlust and rudimentary MS Paint skills. Secondly, the typeface for the band name is plain horrible and resembles the kind of thing you’d find in a Wiccan graphic novel. But then lastly, and most importantly is the band name itself. It’s clunky, it’s unfunny and it prevents ‘naykroyd (as the band refer to themselves) from being taken entirely seriously. It must have been thought of as a stop-gap after a particularly heavy night out on the tiles and they’ve never got round to changing it. It’s from the same school of thought that sees you trying to take on the world with a band called Dogs Die In Hot Cars.

Right, that’s the book judged completely by the cover - what’s it actually like? The short answer is an unfocused mess, albeit a divertingly entertaining one. Imagine Los Campesinos! and Architecture in Helsinki had spent their formative years locked in a cupboard under the stairs listening to nothing but crunching metal riffs played at 45rpm and drinking Red Bull. That’s about as close as mere words can come to describing the frankly bizarre sound of Dananananaykroyd. This is an album stuffed with more crazy ideas than Willy Wonka’s factory, where songs change time signature and pace twice a minute with reckless abandon and can veer from unlistenable cacophonous noise to measured balladry to laugh-out-loud hilarity within the confines of the same track.

Hey Everyone! opens with the vocal-less title track which manages to pack catchy riffs, bounce and a no-holds barred prog wig-out into its ninety seconds. This then gives way to Watch This!, beginning with tribal chanting and a Los Campesinos! style vocal imploring “Hiya - watch this! Watch this!” And watch - or rather, listen - is what you need to do; take your eye - or rather, ear - off this song for a second and it’ll turn around and lose you completely, which is a theme prevalent throughout the whole album.

When Hey Everyone! is calm and considered, it can be a thing of beauty. It’s just a shame Dananananaykroyd don’t let anything bed in before rewriting the rule book. Progressive rock influences run deep through The Greater Than Symbol and The Hash whilst a copy of Black Wax should be sent to all bands aspiring to be My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco to should how it should be done. Oddly, the principal lyrics to the chorus of Pink Sabbath appear to be “Dimitar Berbatov - hey!” and really, they might as well be for all the difference it makes.

The singing is all but indecipherable practically the whole way through Hey Everyone! as well as being extremely grating to endure. Sure, it has a passion and a rabid intensity but the vocals are so irritating (Totally Bone being a case in point) that it would be no exaggeration to say they’re on a par with the half-yelp half-scream that furnished The Automatic’s début album.

And this describes the contradiction that is Hey Everyone! - a record that’s never dull but you don’t want to listen to it, a record that’s full of bluster and played at break-neck speed but excels only when it’s restrained, and a record that seeks to combine the unlikely bedfellows of metal and twee pop. Everyone will find something appealing about Dananananaykroyd, no matter how small, but it’s difficult to imagine anyone truly loving this record, regardless of whether they judge it by its cover.

Wall Of Arms

The Maccabees - Wall Of Arms
released 4 May 2009 on Fiction

The Maccabees’ début album, 2007’s Colour It In, closed with the track Toothpaste Kisses - a gorgeous, tender pop song that deserved huge success. Unfortunately, it didn’t even chart and so joined the legions of great lost singles.

Undeterred, The Maccabees are back and have roped in Midas-fingered producer Markus Dravs (Bjork, Coldplay, Arcade Fire) for Wall of Arms. Dravs’ influence is all over the record, specifically the touches he brought to Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible; in fact, frontman Orlando Weeks has more than a touch of Win Butler in his startled yelp of a voice.

As well as Arcade Fire flourishes, The Maccabees draw their influences from far and wide. It’s just unfortunate that each band member has a completely different influence and that leads to a rather confused band identity. The drums are straight out of the Bloc Party school of hi-hat battering, basslines appear to have been lifted from Franz Ferdinand’s first album, there are Shins-style guitar licks all over the show and as well as Win Butler, Weeks seems to be doing his best to channel the spirit of Justin Vernon and - at times - Antony Hegarty too (unsuccessfully, it must be said).

So, sounds like you won’t be getting Toothpaste Kisses II then. Actually, what you will get is an overwhelming sensation that you’ve heard everything here before. For the majority of Wall of Arms, The Maccabees resolutely stick to the guitar/bass/drums/vocals template, which may not be headline news but it’d be nice to let them loose on a high-school musical instrument trolley now and again. Keeping it simple is a trick that only works if you’re really, really good - remember you’re up against early Lennon and McCartney if that’s the route you pursue. Just ask Weezer, who got the simple stuff spot-on for a while but have faltered since 2002’s confused Maladroit. The Maccabees do not possess a McCartney, a Lennon or even a Cuomo and it’s all too obvious.

Wall of Arms certainly has its moments though: the harmonies of opening track and recent single Love You Better being the most obvious example. Their plain approach pays dividends on Can You Give It but it’s on the title track that The Maccabees really shine. Wall of Arms begins with a funk bassline before a wall of crunching guitars is introduced which is given room to breathe thanks to joyful trumpet stabs. This sets the scene for a near-perfect future radio classic before the bass, layer upon layer of guitar and horns close the whole thing out, leaving you exhausted.

It’s a shame that these high points are so few and far between because so often, The Maccabees seem content to settle for mediocrity. Even Weeks himself sounds bored as the album begins its stagger to the finishing line, his voice only has two setting: impassioned longing and “can’t be bothered.” Closing track Bag of Bones is so lethargic it needs a litre of Red Bull just to get out of bed in the morning.

There have been so many great artists and albums in the past that it’s far too much to expect a quintet of early-twenties London kids to reinvent the wheel, but is it really too much to ask that they try doing something interesting? Each track in its own right has nothing inherently wrong with it, but put eleven of them together and it’s all a little one-dimensional. It’s difficult to fathom how a producer who has worked with an artists as diverse and inventive as Bjork could put his name to something so vanilla, yet there are enough flashes of inspiration here to suggest The Maccabees could have a bright future. If only they stop trying to be everybody else for a while and learn to be content to be themselves.

Lost Classics

My final contribution to the NR10 feature was a collaborative piece on overlooked albums of the last ten years. For some reason, my three choices were all released in a two-year period. The last of these three short articles was not published on the site.

The Dears - No Cities Left
The Dears so nearly broke through in the UK in 2003. Critics fell for their swooning soundscapes reminiscent of the best bits of Blur and Morrissey and column inches were duly filled. But then it seems someone realised head Dear Murray Lightburn was black and from that point on, that’s all the Dears-related articles could talk about. It was the UK’s loss really, as No Cities Left is as close to perfect as a sprawling rock odyssey can get. The attention to detail in how every note is sung or played, the arrangements and production is simply astonishing. Twelve killer tunes treated with the love and care they deserve, but always willing to experiment and be innovative, whether it be the squall of jazz and feedback that opens Pinned Together, Falling Apart or the barked vocals that close Never Destroy Us. Ignore the fact that The Dears now have the kind of revolving door approach to band members that would shame Mark E Smith, No Cities Left is simply essential.

Kings of Convenience - Riot On an Empty Street
We’re well into 2009 now, yet my favourite album of the year so far is one that was released almost five years ago. Riot on an Empty Street bubbles with intrigue; something which is immediately obvious from the front cover where Erlend Øye is eyed-up by his bandmate’s girlfriend. This album is understated and sparse, yet utterly, utterly gorgeous. Comprised of mostly just acoustic guitar, piano and minimal percussion, it’s 45 minutes where you can get completely lost and just absorb the music. From the perky single I’d Rather Dance with You to the lingering The Build-Up, Kings of Convenience perfect the trick of keeping it simple whilst always remaining compelling.


Tindersticks - Waiting For the Moon
Tindersticks may have been the critics’ darlings in the early 90s, but by the time Waiting for the Moon was released in 2003 they’d largely slipped off the radar. It’s fair to say you know what you’re going to get with a Tindersticks album but that doesn’t mean Waiting for the Moon is any less stellar. Stuart A Staples’ trademark croon frames every track and they revisit the formula of their first three albums (two entitled Tindersticks, the other, Curtains) by including a spoken-word track (the harrowing and claustrophobic 4.48 Psychosis) and a male-female duet (the oddly uplifting Sometimes It Hurts). It may be slightly over-long – you wouldn’t miss the last two tracks if they weren’t there – but if you like your music melancholy, your bars smoky, your drinks served on the rocks in a tumbler and your relationships twisted and complicated, Waiting for the Moon is exactly what you need.

The Contradictions of Footballing Rivalries

For a change of pace - and to try and extend the number of categories of topics I write about to... er, two - I've written an article examining the curious relationship between rival clubs.

It was Morrissey who first said “we hate it when our friends become successful.” As true as this may be, there is an alternate maxim that also holds some weight: “We hate it when our enemies become failures.”

This may not make much sense at first glance, but this is the realm of football fans we’re talking about: a world where little makes sense initially. It’s a state of mind where intelligent, educated men (it’s nearly always men, though they‘re often far from intelligent) are prepared to spend thousands of pounds and invest hours and hours of their time each year to follow their team around the country. In most civilised quarters, if you drove 400 miles to Wigan on a rainy Tuesday in December to watch eleven obscenely overpaid athletes - a fair few of whom had never even heard of your beloved club until their agent called and the pound signs flashed before their eyes - essentially chase a leather ball around a field. Yes, there’s the ecstasy of the last minute winner that guarantees promotion or safety, the sublime goal conjured from nothing, the thrill of an end-to-end 4-3 victory, but these occurrences are all too rare and fleeting. When was the last time you saw a football fan actually happy while watching their team? For the most part, it’s a painful, unrequited relationship, full of disappointment and resentment.

Football fans really do love their clubs though; often talking about the club as if they were part of it. “We were brilliant on Saturday,” “the referee didn’t give us anything” and so on. In fact, the only feeling or loyalty in football that even comes close to the love of the fan for their club is the hatred of that same fan towards their club’s local rivals. A small confession - I’m little better. While “hatred” is far too strong a word in my case, (I’m probably not classed as a “real” fan anyway; I’ve been to one game in the last five seasons) the result I look out for immediately after my own club (another example, calling them my club) is that of the local rivals in the hope that they’ve lost.

In mid-April, Ipswich Town beat Norwich City 3-2 in a Coca-Cola Championship match at Portman Road. Little was at stake for Ipswich other than local bragging rights, their season dissolved into mid-table nothingness not long after Christmas, but the result left Norwich in serious danger of relegation to League One. The next day, the independent Ipswich Town website, Those Were The Days (www.twtd.co.uk) held an online poll: “Do you want Norwich City to be relegated?” That same day, a look at the results would have told you that 30% of people voted ‘No.’

Just to get this out of the way at the earliest possible opportunity, this is hardly the most scientific or rigorous of surveys - perhaps a disgruntled Delia Smith felt the need to spend all of Monday morning vigorously attacking her left mouse button with an egg whisk while the cursor hovered over the ‘No’ option - but it still raises an interesting question: If Norwich are Ipswich’s bitterest and most-despised rivals, why are there any fans who wouldn’t want them to be relegated?

Just to put it into context, relegation to the third tier of English football would be little short of a disaster for Norwich City. As recently as 1993 they played in the UEFA Cup where they became the first and only English side to defeat Bayern Munich in Germany in a competitive match. Rivalry between Ipswich and Norwich has been fierce since their first meeting in 1902 and has maintained ferocity despite the fact that League One side Colchester United play less than twenty miles from Ipswich whereas Norwich is over forty miles away.

This is the thing about bitter football rivalries; although they are usually formed due to geographical proximity, it is historical factors that keep them on the boil. Ipswich and Norwich are both moderately successful clubs and have played in the same level of the Football League system many times. Colchester, on the other hand, are a relatively new club and have spent only two of the last forty years in the same league as their more famous cousins. Colchester fans hold a bitter grudge against Ipswich (although their main rivals are arguably fellow Essex-dwellers Southend United), possibly borne from envy, but Ipswich fans are generally dismissive of their lower-league neighbours. The history explains why clubs that have fairly recently become successful after decades in the wilderness, such as Hull City, Wigan Athletic and Fulham, don’t really have derby games. The clubs that they would see as their rivals are still languishing divisions below and whilst the media may try to create the perception of a derby around Wigan versus Blackburn or Fulham versus Chelsea, the truth is Chelsea and Blackburn are likely to not even care.

But why even create a media frenzy? Well, it sells more papers for a start but the clubs want the revenue. Ipswich’s average attendance for league games this season is somewhere around the 20000 mark, but for the Norwich game, the gate was up to 28274. At £29 for a ticket, that’s nearly £250000 more for the football club. Next season, no Norwich means no local derby, means no sell-out game. Leicester City and Peterborough United have been promoted from League One for next season; no disrespect meant, but they’re unlikely to bring in the fans in the same way.

So, they’re the teams we love to hate and the teams we hate to love. For the record, a 4-2 defeat to already relegated Charlton Athletic means that Norwich City will be spending the 2009/10 season in League One. Long trips to Exeter, Hartlepool and Carlisle await for those loyal enough to follow their club through thick and thin while they look with envy at Ipswich with their new, high-profile manager and aspirations of bigger things. Ipswich are amongst the favourites to win promotion to the Premiership next season; there will be a lot of people hoping that Norwich aren’t too far behind.

My Maudlin Career

Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
released 20 April 2009 on 4AD

There’s an awful lot of music out there; too much music in fact. Seeing as albums are currently released at a rate roughly equivalent to three a day, it’s impossible to listen to and digest them all. This is clearly a shame as it means that the album that could change your life will never reach you or what you would deem an absolute, undisputed masterpiece will forever be consigned to the bargain bin. So, it’s important to start your album well, to have something that will grab the listener’s attention and make them want to revisit your set of songs again and again until they’re fully embedded in the consciousness.

On My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura set out to achieve this in the best possible fashion. It takes around three seconds to be utterly transfixed by opening track, French Navy: a song built on irresistible hooks and perfectly complimented by a gorgeous string section. Producer Jari Haapalainen is clearly picking up where he left off on Camera Obscura’s last long player, 2006’s Let’s Get Out Of This Country.

Repeated listens to My Maudlin Career reveal that Camera Obscura completely inhabit their own universe. Despite their Glaswegian origins, their sound is so packed full of vintage Hollywood glamour that you’d think they were from California were it not for Tracyanne Campbell’s Scottish burr that occasionally creeps in undetected.

The high standard set by French Navy is maintained throughout the album; Careless Love has a sweeping key change and a beautiful middle eight, while The Sweetest Thing is just as catchy as Let’s Get Out Of This Country’s title track. Camera Obscura - and lead singer Tracyanne Campbell in particular - are a sensitive bunch and have clearly loved and lost. The lyrical content of My Maudlin Career heavily reflects this whilst also hinting at a vulnerable naivety and an optimistic streak that suggest that they’ll always believe in true love, no matter what.

While French Navy is all pomp and vigour, subsequent tracks gradually become more steeped in the painful side of love, best symbolised in the title track. Delicate piano octaves frame Campbell’s laments: “I’m not a child, I know we’re not going steady” and “They say I’m too kind and sentimental, like you can catch affection.” Following track Forests and Sands would be whiny and indulgent in the wrong hands, but Campbell’s heartfelt vocal transforms it into something genuinely affecting.

Unfortunately, all this heartbreak does become kind of wearing. Individually, each track is musically superb (although Swans sails pretty close to the wind with its twee guitar and glockenspiel twin assault), but a continuing feeling of despondency means My Maudlin Career can sometimes be difficult listening. Album closer Honey in the Sun is fantastic, but a case in point; its outwardly cheery demeanour and horn stabs recall ABC at their peak. However, its refrain (“I wish my heart was a cold as the morning dew / But it’s as warm as saxophones and honey in the sun for you”) which would be a paean to love on any other album, sounds tinged with forlornness and regret thanks to the theme of the preceding ten tracks.

Whilst we’re being critical (as is the record critic’s lot), a change of pace here and there wouldn’t go amiss either. Whilst Let’s Get Out of this Country featured the zip and bombast of If Looks Could Kill and the languid Country Mile, everything on My Maudlin Career remains frustratingly mid-tempo. There’s nothing wrong with this on a track-by-track basis, but it means the album lacks a certain something.

These are minor quibbles though, as My Maudlin Career is a wonderful set of songs and can deservedly sit alongside Let’s Get Out Of This Country while showcasing how far Camera Obscura have come since their patchy yet charming début, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi. Album making isn’t a precise science (it’s not really a science at all, for that matter), but a couple of slower ones, a couple of faster ones and a couple of happier ones would elevate My Maudlin Career from a good album to a sensational one.

Art Brut vs. Satan

Art Brut - Art Brut vs. Satan
released 20 April 2009 on Cooking Vinyl

Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos must be sick to the back teeth of Lily Allen. She cooks up half-baked rhymes about what it’s like to be in your twenties in the UK and thanks to a wave of patronage and suspicions of nepotism, she’s on magazine covers the length and breadth of the country and sells albums by the bucketload. Argos performs the same trick with more wit, insight and humility and could barely get arrested in his homeland.

Strangely for a man whose lyrics, singing style and arsenal of cultural references are so utterly British, Art Brut have had a fair amount of success in Germany. There, Argos is revered as an intellectual; so much so that a lecture was once given at Berlin University entitled The Depressive Dandy: The Lyrics of Eddie Argos.

When there’s one part of the world that holds you in such high regard, it must be hard to take when another part doesn’t. Art Brut left EMI just over a year ago and the fallout from that split is evident in the lyrical content of the Black Francis-produced Art Brut vs. Satan.

It all starts out so well. With Lily Allen misfiring, Jamie T AWOL, The Streets seemingly too successful to maintain the position as “geezer poet” and Kate Nash just plain irritating, the stage is set for Argos to become to lead voice of 21st Century Britain. On the first five tracks, he does this with aplomb. Only perhaps Jarvis Cocker in his Britpop heyday could tackle these subjects so well: the joy of childhood memories on DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake ("DC Comics and chocolate milkshake/Some things will always be great/DC Comics and chocolate milkshake/Even though I’m 28!"), one-night stands on What a Rush ("Under the covers, both naked/I hate to see an opportunity wasted") and the morning after the night before on Alcoholics Unanimous ("So many people I might have upset/I apologise to them all with the same group text").

Unfortunately, Argos and Art Brut can’t keep up this level of quality for long. If the first five tracks represent the beginning of a happy relationship, the next three are the messy break-up replete with insults, squabbling and name-calling and the final three tracks are the reconciliation; while everything is fine from the outside, the memories of the break-up linger, souring the relationship forever and meaning it will never be as good as it was.

Admittedly, this is an unusual analogy and one that clearly needs expanding upon. Track six, Demons Out!, is a vicious attack on the state of the music industry. We’ve all heard songs where artists moan that, believe it or not, record labels are just money-making machines run by ruthless businessmen with no scruples - quelle surprise. However, the refrain of “The record buying public - we hate them/This is Art Brut versus Satan” means this may the first instance of an artist directly insulting the listener in verse. As a member of said record-buying public, it’s hard to feel any compassion or warmth towards Argos after that. He doesn’t do himself any favours with the next two tracks either (Slap Dash for No Cash and The Replacements) where Argos’ primary concern seems to be to prove he’s more indie than you and has a better taste in music too. It all smacks of immaturity and pettiness; after all, it’s only rock n’ roll.

The last three songs bear the hallmarks of something good, but there’s an unshakeable feeling that something’s missing. In theory, they should be just as enjoyable as the beginning of the album, but are overshadowed by preceding events. The joy and energy that was so evident at the beginning of the album has turned into cynicism and sluggishness. Plus, for a band who are suited to little more than the three-minute verse-chorus-verse pop song, closing the album with a track that clocks in at over seven minutes (Mysterious Bruises) signifies a dearth of ideas (despite the inspired line of “I can’t remember anything I’ve done/I fought the floor and the floor won”).

As yet, nothing has been mentioned here about the music itself and that’s with good reason. Art Brut the band are nothing more than an average pub-rock band straddling the divide between pop-punk and Oi!. They’re nothing without their leader but despite their limitations, their sub-Green Day power chords are the perfect foil for Argos’ arch, ironic delivery. There’s little more to write about them than that, other to say that after three albums, you’d think it wouldn’t be too much to ask for at least some ambition or a sign of progress.

Début record Bang Bang Rock & Roll fizzed with glee; the sound of a band barely believing they’ve been given the opportunity to make a record while follow-up It’s a Bit Complicated was - with a couple of notable exceptions - a deflating disappointment. Art Brut vs. Satan is somewhere in the middle; good enough to be worth a couple of listens but enough bad at times to frustrate and make you wonder what might have been.

Dark Days/Light Years

Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
released 13 April 2009 on Rough Trade

It’s rare to find a critic who doesn’t like Super Furry Animals and it’s easy to see why. Since their first release in 1995 (the Welsh-language Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (In Space) EP), they’ve given us eight studio albums full of invention, hooks, catchy melodies, experimentation and downright weirdness. Not for nothing are they sometimes referred to as “the Welsh Beatles,” although giving SFA such a title is setting them up for a fall somewhat.

With the release of album number 9, Dark Days/Light Years, SFA look to follow the road well travelled. For most artists this would be a criticism, but since fashioning genre-hopping, innovative pop songs is SFA’s raison d’être, more of the same is by no means a bad thing.

So, it seems if you’re a fan of Super Furry Animals, Dark Days/Light Years will be right up your street and if you’re not, it’s hardly likely to win you over. Perhaps mindful of this, the album opens with Crazy Naked Girls, a six-minute psyche wig-out with two false starts, heavy prog leanings, manic guitar solos and a chorus of "Crazy, crazy naked girls/With nothing on.” To be honest, it’s unlikely to get playlisted on Radio 2 any time soon and fantastic fun as it is, it’s a peculiar choice for a first track.

Just to confuse the casual listener even further, the second offering is completely different in every way. It’s a bass-heavy glam stomp of a track entitled Mt and is the cousin of 2003 single Golden Retriever. It also has an opening verse that straddles the fine line between genius and idiocy ("I wasn’t looking for a mountain/There was a mountain/It was a big fucking mountain/So I climbed the mountain").

As if to prove their acumen at as many distinct genres of pop music, SFA next throw in some swaggering funk (Moped Eyes) and follow it with some tight Krautrock featuring some spoken German (Inaugural Trams). Around this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Dark Days/Light Years is simply a collection of disparate songs, rather than a cohesive album. In the age of single-track downloads and the iPod Shuffle, whether that’s a good thing or not is down to you but essentially, Dark Days/Light Years is far more than that.

Things begin to make more sense and fall into place as the album progresses and repeated listens reinforce that further. The eight-minute epic, Cardiff in the Sun, begins with guitar horribly reminiscent of The Edge at his most clichéd, but evolves into a gorgeous, shimmering, hazy dream, full of sha-la-las and warmth. White Socks/Flip Flops is elevated by beautiful harmonies and the irresistible sunshine pop of Helium Hearts is among the best songs SFA have ever recorded. Penultimate track Lliwiau Llachar is so catchy you’ll be trying to sing along despite the fact all the lyrics are in Welsh (good luck with that, by the way).

Due to awkward, clunky sequencing, Dark Days/Light Years takes longer to reveal its charms than maybe it should. Despite this, it’s still a marvellous record and evidence that despite their increasing years, Super Furry Animals are a long way from being out of ideas. Most bands would do well to create something this accomplished on their second album, let alone their ninth. Yet again, Super Furry Animals have raised the bar and shown the young upstarts how it’s done.