Rex Records

To celebrate Record Store Day, No Ripcord ran a piece where contributors wrote about their favourite indie record stores. I wrote about Ipswich's much-loved and much-missed Rex Records...

As a teenager at the turn of the century, there were only two oases of salvation amongst the cultural abyss of Ipswich: Vagabonds Café and Rex Records. Vagabonds was a relaxed haven and a perfect meeting place and happily, Rex was opposite. In those days when iTunes, Amazon and their ilk were still yet to make their mark, a store where you could discover new music and people had conversations about the latest Sparklehorse record seemed impossibly exotic. This shop was listed in the back of Mojo and everything!

The assistants occasionally strayed onto the arrogant side of hipster cool, but their knowledge of music and their shop could only be described as encyclopaedic. Take any empty album case to the till and the guy behind the till would turn to a wall consisting of a seemingly infinite number of - to the untrained eye - identical blank cardboard CD holders and find your chosen disc almost instantly.

They’d play obscure indie releases, spoken word albums, forgotten classics, local demos, anything. They sold older albums for £6 when you couldn’t buy anything in the high street chains for under a tenner. It was the kind of place in which you could lose an afternoon poring over racks and racks of discs, the kind of place every town centre would benefit from.

Vagabonds is now named Central Canteen and is run with a soulless, military efficiency and Rex Records is now Urban Vintage and sells derivative T-shirts for around £70 a pop. Ain’t that always the way though?

Kingdom of Rust

Doves - Kingdom of Rust
released 6 April 2009 on Heavenly

There’s an unwritten rule in this business that we call show, that once you’ve released a couple of albums, you fit into some form of “rock hierarchy” where climbing the ladder can prove almost impossible. At the top are your million-selling stadium rockers: a select band of artists whose every move is reported and could release an album consisting entirely of guitar feedback and the mating call of the sperm whale and would still sell millions. We’re talking U2, REM, Bruce Springsteen. Below that, there’s the widely-popular bands who practically everyone has heard of, followed by your cult concerns with their devoted fanbase and slot halfway through the day at the summer festivals. Below that, your indies and your unsigneds make up the structure and once you’ve found your level, you’re pretty much stuck.

What it takes to move up is a fantastic album, a huge slice of luck and serendipity or most likely, both. The last band to obviously make the move is Elbow, whose most recent long player, The Seldom Seen Kid, launched them from a band who sell around 100,000 albums to household names and Mercury Prize winners. As good as the album is, being in the right place at the right time was also vitally important for Elbow. Releasing their album in March 2008 meant there was enough time for it to creep into the public consciousness before heavy promotion across the festivals took them into the big time.

It’s a neat trick, and on this evidence, one that Doves are keen to repeat. Unfortunately for them, it looks unlikely on this showing. Whereas The Seldom Seen Kid was inventive, gripping and featured the superb lyrics of Guy Garvey, Kingdom of Rust is simply drab in comparison.

Take opening track, Jetstream, for example. It builds and builds nicely; it races along on a steady beat and expert guitar licks, but that’s all - it’s functional rather than extraordinary. It’s also devoid of any detectable chorus; the track seems like it’s heading towards an almighty climax and is just crying out for a crunching riff or all hell breaking loose, but it never does. It’s the equivalent of a football team putting together a fantastic multi-pass move and every time they close in on goal, they pass back to midfield and eventually the referee just blows for full time. So, rather than be impressed at the technical ability and build-up, you’re just left feeling disappointed that the satisfying ending never came.

Current single, Kingdom of Rust, however, is better. Chiming guitars and racing percussion reminiscent of a locomotive engine make it a joy to listen to, yet this proves to be the exception rather than the rule. As the album progresses, Kingdom of Rust resembles second-rate, dour bands such as Embrace and Snow Patrol. It suffers from the same disease that affects far too large a proportion of 21st Century music; the belief that sincerity is everything. Thus, Jimi Goodwin pulls the right poses and emotes as he feels he should, but it’s just empty gestures. It seems Doves have been listening to commercial radio too much and have lost sight of what sold them records in the first place; there’s nothing here to rival classic singles like There Goes The Fear or Black And White Town.

Perhaps this approach, where the tracks bleed into one another and sound as if they were recorded underwater, is just a cunning ploy to deter the casual listener. After two thirds of Kingdom of Rust, Doves loosen up and really hit their stride. Spellbound is a soaring epic of the quality Doves have failed to attain on the previous tracks. Compulsion is a revelation; a funky, disco bassline gives way into a swaggering track which sounds, fantastically, like a re-write of Blondie’s Rapture. Closing track, Lifelines, is by far the most uplifting and ends the album on such a positive note, you’d be forgiven for forgetting what went before and proclaiming this as a great album.

Make no mistake though, this clearly isn’t a great album. However, following the model that Elbow and several others before them have used, this will probably be a success. Doves are hitting the festivals in 2009 (including Latitude and a second-stage headlining slot at Glastonbury) where a decent performance will have Kingdom of Rust flying off the shelves. For the most part though, it adds little to a genre that’s already saturated and is disappointing from a band whose past evidence has shown can do better.

Top Ten UK #1 Singles of the Last Ten Years

This is the second of the two list articles to celebrate No Ripcord's tenth birthday...

When No Ripcord first launched in April 1999, sitting at the top of the pile in the singles chart was the début release by Westlife, Swear It Again. Well, here we are ten years later, No Ripcord is thriving and Westlife... well, unfortunately they’re still going too, and the talentless Irish chancers have in fact had 14 UK #1 singles to date. We all know that the singles charts aren’t what they used to be (especially since the demise of Top of the Pops) and that the best songs never make it to the summit. However, over the past decade, there have been enough diamonds in the rough to ensure that the charts are worth checking out of a Sunday evening. So, here are the best ten:

10. Michael Andrews feat. Gary Jules: Mad World (2003)

Haunting, ethereal, sparse; a song like this would barely get in the charts these days, let alone make it to number one. Taken from the soundtrack to the film Donnie Darko, this song was a complete word-of-mouth hit. It took the much-coveted Christmas Number One title in 2003 following various campaigns in the media. It also represented a sea change for the UK charts, as this was the last Christmas Number One not affiliated with a charity or television talent show. This was the last occurrence of when being at the head of the charts over the festive season still held some prestige. Since this hit, both Andrews and Jules have faded back into obscurity, with neither making it into the UK charts since.

9. Eminem feat. Dido: Stan (2000)

If we can conveniently forget the fact that this song lead directly to Dido’s brand of aural wallpaper being an enormous success, we can begin to appreciate this track. An obsessive fan who kills himself and his girlfriend in a car crash is not a typical subject for a hit single but then again, Eminem was never your typical pop star. His latter efforts may have simply been either cartoon hip-hop-lite or angry, bitter diatribes, but Stan is his masterpiece. A genuinely harrowing tale that was never intrusive, insensitive or sought to gain humour inappropriately from its dark subject matter, it’s a story more than a song and remains far and away his best work. It was deposed from top slot on the charts by Bob the Builder with Can We Fix It? It didn’t seem right, really.

8. Beyoncé: Crazy In Love (2003)

This isn’t really a song, it’s more of a riff – that riff. The pounding drums are the perfect foil for the brass hook that makes Crazy In Love so memorable. The riff in question isn’t even original; it’s taken from Are You My Woman (Tell Me So) by The Chi-Lites. Whoever spotted that and came up with the idea is a genius. It’s easy to forget that before this song, Beyoncé wasn’t quite the all-conquering star she is today and her first single (Work It Out) had under-performed. This transformed her and it’s easy to see why. We don’t care about the lyrics, the melody, the sentiment, hell, even Jay-Z’s rap is fairly lacklustre in comparison. You just need the “oh-oh oh-oh” part before each verse and the riff... that riff.

7. Robyn with Kleerup: With Every Heartbeat (2007)

Robyn was actually around making records in the 1990s, and she was rubbish. That may seem a tad harsh, but her songs were anodyne, ‘nothing’ songs that left your head as soon as they’d entered your ear. For those of us with long memories (and a slightly unhealthy interest in pop music), it was a surprise to have her back a couple of years ago. The real surprise though, was that she was capable of a shimmering pop classic such as this. It has electronic bleeps and exudes a certain cool that only the Scandinavians seem to be able to pull off. It appears restrained, but repeated listens reveal the yearning behind each word. With Every Heartbeat may have not been a worldwide smash, but it showed that the UK record-buying public do occasionally know what they’re doing.

6. The Streets: Dry Your Eyes (2004)

Before the release of Dry Your Eyes, Mike Skinner was just a Brummie chronicling the life of a geezer. The release of his second album, A Grand Don’t Come For Free, had garnered much critical acclaim but the masses remained resistant to his charms and he seemed destined to remain that bloke who talked over music. This all changed over the summer of 2004 – after England were dumped out of the European Football Championships, Dry Your Eyes played over the closing credits and gave football fans a soundtrack to their anguish. (For those of you reading outside the UK, this really happens. Twenty stone men with tattoos on their neck break down and weep when England lose at football). A poignant lament to a lost love, what really makes this track is the keen observation of the minutiae and the sense of loss and despair. It proved to be the tipping point for The Streets, as Skinner has struggled to repeat the success of his defining moment, but it could be worse... c’mon, dry your eyes, mate.

5. Gnarls Barkley: Crazy (2006)

Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo made chart history with Crazy, their début release and the biggest selling song of 2006 in the UK. It became the first single to reach the top of the charts on downloads alone and still remained number one even after having been physically deleted. However, such feats are no guarantee of quality, as the successes of singles by Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet prove. Luckily, Gnarls Barkley had produced a cracker. Cee-Lo had been a moderately successful solo artist and Danger Mouse was producer du jour but still, no-one could have predicted this. Built around a sample of Last Man Standing by Gian Franco and Gian Piero Reverberi, Crazy is everything a good pop song should be: direct, energetic, catchy and not too long. Simultaneously haunting and invigorating, Crazy was pretty much universally adored and like several others in this list, the authors have been victims of their own success, with Gnarls Barkley struggling to repeat the sales or levels of critical acclaim since.

4. Girls Aloud: The Promise (2008)

At the risk of alienating the entire readership of No Ripcord, this song fully deserves it place on the list. Girls Aloud have proved since their inception that their songs are a cut above other girl groups (who wrote the songs themselves is a moot point) and this is the best of the lot. Now, unless you grew up in a hippie household where your parents played Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica over Sunday lunch, the chances are the first music you loved as a child was what is known as manufactured pop. However much your tastes change and develop, there’s always a part of your brain susceptible to the pull of this sort of music. Admittedly, it’s normally more prevalent with the influence of alcohol, but there should be no shame in holding your hands up and proclaiming you like this song. And really, what’s not to like? There’s shimmering harmonies, shades of 60s girl-groups, touches of Spector and a chorus that sounds like the theme tune to Blankety Blank. Go on, treat yourself.

3. Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris and Chrome: Dance Wiv Me (2008)

It would appear that despite the flagging singles industry, last year was a pretty good one for chart-toppers. Like The Streets, Dizzee had always been more popular with the critics than the public, and had struggled to convert his Mercury win (for début Boy in Da Corner) into actual sales. This is his finest moment so far though, effortlessly providing a perfect mix of grime and laid-back dance that it’s hard to resist. Maybe Dizzee’s gritty rhymes about urban life were too unpalatable for the music-buying public at large, but on Dance Wiv Me, it’s fun-time Dizzee as he just focuses on having a good time. Trying to chat up a girl in front of her boyfriend has never seemed so attractive or enjoyable.

2. Manic Street Preachers: The Masses Against the Classes (2000)

Hey, remember when MSP were angry and overtly-political? Well, poster-boy of that era, Richey Edwards, may have disappeared in 1995 but The Masses Against the Classes proved that MSP still had the edge that made 1994’s The Holy Bible so brutal and compelling. The whole story behind the song is trademark Manics: no promotion and deletion of the single on the day of release, yet it was the first #1 single of the new millennium. As for the track itself, it starts with a quotation by Noam Chomsky and ends with one from Camus. It’s abrasive punk rock, it’s thrilling, it’s exciting and it reminds you of the sheer power and influence that popular music can have. In retrospect, this may have been simply a token gesture, as MSP have never released anything like this as a single since, and have slowly transformed into a fairly sedate AOR band. But these three and a half minutes are a clear indicator of how important the Manic Street Preachers have been over the last twenty years.

1. Arctic Monkeys: I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (2005)

A cursory glance at the singles chart will tell you that – with a few notable exceptions – pop music is a young person’s game. Artists can never quite recapture that moment when they burst onto the scene, and that “shock of the new” is none more clear than on this single. Regardless of your age, this song can instantly transport you back to being 16 and full of hormones and let’s face it, regardless of your age, your memory will tell you that the best pop music was made when you were in your teens. This song is dripping with yearning and lust and beneath it all hides the promise of something more sinister. There hadn’t been regional accents in successful pop for a while, but Alex Turner’s rich Sheffield brogue changed all that. The sub-3 minutes of pop heaven is best described by the 21st Century’s most exciting lyricist himself: “There ain’t no love, no Montagues or Capulets/Just banging tunes and DJ sets and/Dirty dancefloors and dreams of naughtiness.” That is all that’s good about pop music encapsulated in just a few simple lines – will a number one single ever be as good as this again?

Top Ten Musical Fantasy Partnerships

The following is an article written as part of a series to celebrate the 10th birthday of No Ripcord magazine...

Here’s a game everyone can play. Take two bands or artists with a common word or syllable, mix the names together and hey presto! – you’ve made a brand new fantasy band. Think something along the lines of Faith No Doubt or perhaps, more ambitiously, Sly and the Family Stone Temple Pilots. Somewhere in a parallel universe, these collaborations could well exist. Here, in no particular order, is the No Ripcord Fantasy Musical Partnerships Top 10 (with thanks to Patrick Crowther at www.patrickcrowtherphotography.co.uk for the inspiration).

10. Death Cab for Q-Tip

Q-Tip released his album, The Renaissance, to widespread critical acclaim last year. Known for his versatility and ambition, working with one of the music scene’s most inventive pop groups could lead to a match made in heaven. Hot Chip and Wiley came together to make one of the singles of 2008 with Wearing My Rolex – probably the best indicator of what Death Cab for Q-Tip would sound like. Who wouldn’t want more tracks like that?

Runners-up:Death Cab for CuT.I., Q-Chicory-Tip

9. Tori Amos Def

Is there a precedent for this sort of thing? Bonkers singer-songwriter with fairy preoccupation and ground-breaking hip-hop star may not be the most obvious of bedfellows. Mind you, once you’ve breastfed a pig in the name of your art (Tori, not Mos Def), you can probably take anything else in your stride. It’s difficult to see the middle ground where these two would meet; would we get rhymes over Cornflake Girl or pianos and pixies over hip-hop beats?

Runners-up: A New Found Tori, Mos Def Leppard

8. Adele La Soul

Continuing the female vocalist/hip-hop theme comes this collaboration. Stage-school alumnus Adele has a touch of R&B and soul in her voice as it is, but tends to be more successful on slower tracks. An injection of female attitude could work wonders, assuming she didn’t tread on their laid-back, breezy toes. Let’s face it, a vast number of hip-hop tracks have ‘proper’ singers guesting in the chorus as it is, so maybe this isn’t a ridiculous idea.

Runners-up: Adele Amitri, De La Soul II Soul

7. Smogwai

Probably not too likely to trouble the charts this one. Bill Callahan and his band could benefit from some livening up at times and the Scottish rock troupe could provide that. Certainly, the Zinedine Zidane film would have a different mood if Smog had provided the soundtrack rather than Mogwai. Maybe Smogwai (it’s not a band name for a band, actually) could rope in Callahan’s better half, Joanna Newsom, as well. Fancy a bit of harp on top with child-like idiosyncratic vocals? No, thought not.

Runners-up: Bonzo Smog Doo-Dah Band, Mogwiley

6. Yo La TenGo! Team

Now this would be interesting. Brighton-based cut-and-paste merchants meet New York alt. rockers in a tantalising collision. Seeing as Yo La Tengo hop from genre to genre laughing in the face of those who can barely master one, a smattering of cartoon hip-hop and dance should be a walk in the park. A Yo La Tengo release is always something worth listening to, and adding a DJ and the rapping of Ninja would add an extra dollop of intrigue to the mix.

Runners-up: Yo La Tengotan Project, Go! Team Waterpolo

5. The Barry White Stripes

Again, two artistes who you wouldn’t traditionally expect to record together (due to mortality issues, if nothing else). The laid-back, soulful croon of The Walrus of Love may not sit too well on something like Seven Nation Army, but perhaps Jack and Meg could add some garage blues to Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe. It wouldn’t be the first time Jack White’s worked with a soul star (though the theme from Quantum of Solace with Alicia Keys wasn’t exactly what you’d call a success), so perhaps this partnership is the dark horse of the lot and would produce the best work over time.

Runners-up: Barry White and the 2 Unlimited Orchestra, The Whitest Boy Alive Stripes

4. The Norah Jonestown Massacre

This could well be a disaster waiting to happen. Daughter of Ravi Shankar and creator of incredibly wistful and chilled-out music paired with Anton Newcombe’s motley crew of unpredictable, self-destructing rockers. While anybody who’s seen DiG! can testify that BJM could clearly do with a calming influence, a petite jazz pianist is probably not the best course of action. Mind you, with Newcombe’s revolving door band member policy, it’s debatable whether he’d actually notice some extra personnel.

Runners-up: Norah ‘Jones’ Jones and the Joneses, The Mick Jonestown Massacre

3. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Yeah Yeahs

An all-New York affair and a clash of indie rock and sleek electro-pop. Some CYHSY tunes with Karen O’s frenetic yelp rather than Alec Ounsworth’s thin and reedy voice would certainly preferable, and YYYs would finally get round to having a bassist (not that they really miss having one in truth). In fact, this could be a step too far, as YYYs make enough of a racket for eight people already, without there actually being eight of them.

Runners-up: Clap Your Hands Say Air, Polar Bear Yeah Yeahs

2. The Last Shadow Pipettes

Alex Turner’s 60s revivalists get some much needed sass into their line-up with the addition of the Brighton pop-punks. This collision would quite possibly be too retro for its own good, and does bubblegum pop really need James Bond-style strings all over it? One thing’s for sure, it’d certainly be entertaining to hear Turner’s Sheffield burr telling stories of useless boys and school uniforms.

Runners-up: The Last Shadow Be Your Own PupPETs, The Pipet Shop Boys

1. TV On The Radiohead

Arguably the most popular alternative band in the world join forces with the young pretenders - who would be the lead vocalist is anyone’s guess. A mixture of OK Computer and Return to Cookie Mountain would certainly be intriguing; it really could go either way. It’s debatable what this band would sound like, but knowing how Thom Yorke runs the good ship Radiohead, it’s most likely the TVOTR guys would just end up learning new instruments and working on his vision for the follow-up to In Rainbows.

Runners-up: TV on the RadiOMD, Radiohead Automatica

Fuckbook

Condo Fucks - Fuckbook
released 23 March 2009 on Matador

There you go, it’s official: sweary band names are cool. Hot on the heels of Fucked Up and Fuck Buttons - both of whom made No Ripcord’s Top 50 Albums of 2008 list - come Condo Fucks. But despite the name, they’re not Satanic grindcore merchants or day-glo nu-rave upstarts from Leeds, they are in fact the band we all know as Yo La Tengo.

Back in 1997, Yo La Tengo released I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One which inside, featured references to back catalogues of various fictional bands, supposedly on Matador. As well as G.I. Joe Extreme and The Shitheels, there was the Condo Fucks. They’ve invented a back story and given themselves new noms de plume: Georgia Condo, Kid Condo and James McNew. Oh, guys, stop it, our aching sides. Seriously, did these guys learn nothing from Garth Brooks? Yo La Tengo’s last album, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, proved they were adept at myriad musical genres and they released a semi-covers album in 1990 entitled Fakebook, so why the need for the new identity?

Although it remains a fairly unimaginative stunt, the pseudonym makes more sense once you actually listen to the record. While Yo La Tengo are full of imagination and style, Condo Fucks are akin to a high school garage band. In fact, forget that, they’re the best high school garage band you’ve ever heard and one you’ll wish you were in. Fuckbook is the sound of a band with a quarter of a century’s experience really getting back to basics and rediscovering why they fell in love with music in the first place. There’s no studio polish and no second takes; everything is recorded as live (each track starts with a count in, just to reinforce that point) and the vocals sit so low in the mix, they’re all but indecipherable.

While as a general rule albums with little production where you can’t hear the words aren’t to be recommended, to hold that against Fuckbook would be kind of missing the point. Condo Fucks take their cue from the pantheon of garage punk greats, all the way from The Stooges and MC5 right up to The White Stripes and The Black Keys. However, the choice of songs (all the tracks are covers) is more indebted to classic pop of the 1960s, such as The Kinks and The Beach Boys.

Make no mistake, this is a rollercoaster thrill ride of an album, but the line between distortion and feedback heavy garage band and unlistenable wall of noise is a thin one, and one they very nearly cross on Accident. Happily, that’s the exception rather than the rule, and Condo Fucks rip through the rest of the set with the zip and vim of teenagers, adding a surf and bubblegum twist to each number as they go.

Opening track What’cha Gonna Do About It (originally by The Small Faces) races along on a buzzsaw riff reminiscent of The White Stripes’ Black Math. A cover of The Kinks’ This Is Where I Belong is so steeped in drone it’s practically no-wave and their version of The Beach Boys’ Shut Down (parts 1 and 2) is full of life and a treat for the ears. The real highlight, however, is Condo Fucks’ take on With A Girl Like You by The Troggs. Georgia Hubley (sorry, Georgia Condo) takes lead vocals and her restraint twinned with the ‘ba ba bahs’ of the backing vocals turns the song into an understated pop gem.

Not very subtly attempting to re-launch your band may be a fairly questionable idea but it’s all academic in the end; no matter what the name on the front is, there’s no doubt that this is a great album. It’s brave to attempt a whole album in a style you’re not known for so long into your career - it’s not something you can see U2 doing any time soon. Fuckbook is a fantastic, energy-fuelled riot of an album and - if you wish to view it as such - yet another brilliant addition to the embarrassment of riches that is the collected works of Yo La Tengo.

Grace/Wastelands

Peter Doherty - Grace/Wastelands
released 16 March 2009 on EMI

For the most part of the 21st Century, Pete(r) Doherty has been seen as something of a joke in the UK. He’s better known for his various misdemeanours than his recorded output, he spends time with people who are a negative influence, drugs are involved and he’s always wearing that stupid thing on top of his head. So far, so Winehouse, but the comparison only stretches so far. Whereas Amy Winehouse has had commercial success in spades, Doherty’s main trading commodity remains the car-crash that is his life. Winehouse’s last album, Back to Black, has sold nearly 3 million copies in the UK and has gone 9-times platinum. Doherty’s most recent effort as frontman of Babyshambles, Shotter’s Nation, managed a paltry five weeks on the album charts. Clearly, something needs to change.

There have been enough bright spots throughout his career to suggest that there is a genuine creative talent at work, if only he could rein himself in enough to let it stand out. On Grace/Wastelands, Doherty aims to shake off his reputation and let the music do the talking. In his own mind, he’s a wandering troubadour chronicling the tales of England and this is the persona he’s looking to burn into the nation’s collective psyche. In order to assist, he’s roped in Graham Coxon, another whose view of England is seemingly taken at times exclusively from The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society.

Opening track Arcady follows a well-trodden Doherty pattern; it’s a love letter to England, but an excessively romanticised England; the kind where girls are more likely to be found poring over a well-thumbed paperback than downing neon alcopops. Over jaunty acoustic guitar strumming and restrained percussion, Doherty sings “In Arcady life trips along/Pure and simple as the shepherd’s song.” It’s here that a peculiar quirk of Doherty’s voice comes to the fore, that while he can hold a tune, he often sounds like he’s singing with his tongue sticking out.

For Libertines die-hards, the most anticipated track would be A Little Death Around the Eyes, which was written with old bandmate Carl Barât. It’s a fairly dull song with a terrible opening line to the opening verse (“Your boyfriend’s name was Dave/I was bold and brave”) that producer Stephen Street does his best to rescue by swamping it with 1960s-style strings until it sounds like a Last Shadow Puppets B-side.

In fact, the first half of the album in general is fairly dull. Recent single, Last of the English Roses, is mildly diverting, but ultimately it’s lacking in any real substance. Just as you’re about to completely write off the entire album, Doherty throws something in from leftfield. Sweet By and By sounds as if it came from the 1920s jazz and swing era and although it’s not a perfectly executed pastiche, it’s sufficient to re-grab your attention. From that point onwards the album regains focus. Palace of Bone breaks into a Stranglers style bassline halfway through, and that’s before the best track of the lot, Sheepskin Tearaway. It’s a bluesy, heartfelt ballad, sparse and delicate and perfectly complemented by the vocals of trip-hop star Dot Allison. While the album may not be a total triumph, this song alone makes it worth hearing.

The phrase “return to form” is much overused in journalism circles and it would be little more than hyperbole to suggest that a return to form is what Grace/Wastelands is. It can’t touch the Libertines’ début, Up the Bracket, with its excitement, immediacy and production values that sound like it was recorded in a biscuit tin. However, it’s far superior to Babyshambles’ wretched first album, Down in Albion. Consider Grace/Wastelands more of a step in the right direction, a sign that maybe all is not lost and he can turn things around yet.

The Law of the Playground

The Boy Least Likely To - The Law of the Playground
released 9 March 2009 on Too Young to Die

When The Boy Least Likely To released their début in 2005, you’d be forgiven for dismissing them as a couple of indie milksops with less cojones than a castrato. The album was called The Best Party Ever, the cover art featured crudely-drawn cartoon animals and balloons on a dazzlingly-bright yellow background, there was more glockenspiel than a primary school music class and a song about old-fashioned fizzy drinks (Warm Panda Cola). However, given a bit of time to bed in, it had more substance than you would have initially thought. Fun and bouncy on the outside maybe, but songs on the fear of growing up (Monsters) and woozy, lurching pop tunes (Sleeping with a Gun Under My Pillow) marked The Boy Least Likely To as potential successors to Belle and Sebastian’s crown.

Like Belle and Sebastian in recent years, The Boy Least Likely To have beefed up their sound somewhat, with more thought given to the production nudging them towards the mainstream and away from their lo-fi roots. However, that’s where the similarities end, because where Belle and Sebastian have managed to keep sight of what marked them out in the first place, The Boy Least Likely To, well, haven’t. It’s as if they looked at their last album, reduced it into three key ideas (namely childlike innocence, catchy hooks and a sprinkling of school music box instruments) and forgot about the subtleties and nuances that made the first album more than just disposable pop.

In fact, disposable pop is precisely what this album is. Now, there’s nothing wrong with something throwaway now and again, but it’s difficult to stomach over the course of eleven tracks. Each song may be perfectly fine in isolation, but put them all together and the relentless chirpiness of it will have you banging your head against the wall and reaching for the vodka. Whereas the first album had a ramshackle charm, The Law of the Playground appears calculated and oddly soulless. The sparingly-used childhood references in The Best Party Ever were interesting and made you smile, but here you are completely bombarded with them. The non-stop cutesy imagery and saccharine melodies comprise something which could lead a psychiatrist to a fairly damning diagnosis.

So, in the interests of balance and subjectivity, the positive points. Well, the second half of the album is slightly less grating. In fact, the middle track, The Boy Least Likely To is a Machine, is pretty good - it ditches the juvenilia and provides a bit of much-welcomed paranoia and gives hope that the band do actually have some grip on reality. For the first time, the band hit on a revolutionary idea which most musicians know as ‘minor chords.‘ Unfortunately, the next song is all about a cat and is entitled Whiskers. Enough said.

The full list of nostalgic references would be extremely long, but as a brief snapshot, this album mentions: conkers, balloons, marbles, pea shooters, rainbows and more besides. Most heinous of all is Every Goliath Has Its David which brings up that most irritating of cartoon characters, Scrappy-Doo (“I’m not a coward/I’ve got puppy powers”). That sound you can now hear is your own teeth gnashing as you cringe.

The world view that runs through the album can be summed up by the title of one of the songs: When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade. Now, that’s not a bad philosophy on life to have in all honesty, but for music to resonate it needs a bit more substance. At its best, The Law of the Playground is a bit of light relief on a cloudy day. At it’s worst, it’s irritating and infuriating and sounds like a Toploader album written for ten-year-olds. If The Boy Least Likely To concentrated more on writing music they want to write rather than what they think other people want them to write, they could have their day in the sun once more.