As has become annual now, I’ve gotten bored again and have been casting around like an idiot to see if there’s anything else besides bourbon that can keep my idiot little mind from chattering away like a team of ranger monkeys. All this blogging crap’s done the trick for some years now, taking over from actual – non-internet – music writing (I’m that old, yes) and before that, from scribbling reams and reams of crap into notebooks by hand. Usually, I just go away and get smashed for a month, and come back with another badly-executed version of what’s gone before, but I suspect I’m out of turns in that particular game. I have a horrid feeling I’m going to have to come up with something actually productive this time. Last year I came up with Off The Beaten Tracks which has kept me roundly amused for over a year now, and I’m not stopping doing that anytime soon, but I’ll need to find something else to do with this thing. The SXSW stuff’s been fun, but as the technology’s caught up, it’s just a pain in the arse now, if I’m honest, and even the major publications are starting to do more on it, muscling in on the amateurs. More power to them, but I can’t be bothered to compete with that. Call me lazy if you like, you’d be dead right.

So anyway, with less than six hours before my cab comes to get me to go to Austin, I’m going to finally push out the three remaining SXSW previews I wanted to do with Strait Laces, The Crookes and the absolutely dreamy Standard Fare. Even if only because I said I would, and they all put the time in to do it, and I haven’t gotten round to it, and I feel really bad about that, even if it was mainly due to the universe screwing around with me, and not just because I’m a lazy arse.

But once those three are out, that’s it, I’ve had it with blogging. I’m no good at it, if I’m honest, and that’s as good a reason as any to pack it in. I’ll think of some other way to publish crap on the internet, but just avoid the blog part as the focus. Hell, I don’t know.

Anyway, once I’m back from SXSW, I may or may not stick up some notes on what awesome bands I ran into (or more likely, a series of moans on what awesome bands I managed to miss but everyone else saw), and then I’ll close the doors here for a bit. I’ll be back in the summertime I reckon, so for anyone who cares, thanks for coming by, and emailing, and saying hello, and generally being kind, I’ve appreciated it. Thanks.

Jesus, this must have taken FOREVER. Over at the very excellent The Pop Cop, there have clearly been some late nights and some square eyes as they’ve gone through Google and listed all the Scottish bands they could find on Bandcamp. I’d taken my eye off Bandcamp, but on the back of this list it looks like it’s getting some traction from bands (Frightened Rabbit, Meursault,  Amanda Palmer for example), and I’ve got all my fingers and toes tied up in knots this continues, because – just like everyone else – I’m flat-out sick of linking to them simply by default. The Pop Cop’s got the scoop though, so have a nose around, tell bands about it, tell your friends about it and encourage it. It’s just better that way.

It’s becoming weird, reviewing Come On Gang! shows. I stumbled across them by total accident a while back, and since I really, really liked them back then, I think I might now be getting a bit snow-blind and maternal when it comes to trying to be objective and all that guff. Essentially, I’m worried I might have completely crossed the line between “Hey, here’s a band I like, and here are the reasons why” over into “I’m a total slavering fanboy and they can do no wrong anymore”. That said, I’d been in an absolutely towering fucking temper all day long ahead of this gig, with less tolerance than normal for dumbness, inconvenience or, in particular, people not living up to expectations. So, if something were to cheer me up today, there’s probably an awful lot good about it – and by the time I get back from the Come On Gang! show at Sneaky Pete’s I’m grinning like a bit of an idiot.

It’s been some time since I saw them last, a good six months, and I’m pretty sure I bitched and whined like a child about a lack of new material in the set back then. This, as was grimly inevitable, comes back to bite me tonight, as they play nine songs, five of which are completely new to me, and only one of which I remember of old with any clarity. The good news though, is that they are almost uniformly immediate and energising, just like the earlier songs that got me twitching about them in the first place.

The even better news is that they’re not just the same tunes idly rehashed a year later, they’re actually better songs. While I still adore “Start The Sound”‘s artrock-in-a-stadium bigness, or I still can’t help the nervous shoulder twitch that’s brought on by “Wheels” (and I’m a bit gutted that neither get played tonight) I’m pretty chuffed to see them getting on with things, developing and growing and all that.

In particular tonight, the boys in the band seem to be much more than “just” the two other boys in a band with singer Sarah. Since she sings like she should be on Opera Star, the boys often almost seemed out of place – an angular rock counterpoint to Sarah’s choral trilling, but somehow still a bit separate. But that’s with hindsight – I’ve no idea what’s gone on over the last few months, but tonight Mikey (guitars) and Rob (bass) seem much more integral, and Sarah herself seems less alien to them.

Openers “Red Thread” and “Santa Maria” have been on the setlist before and tonight seem to be the comfortable openers, but it’s three tracks in when the eyes get truly widened, with new one “Need To Run”. For the first time I can remember, there’s two vocals going on, with Rob and Sarah sharing mic duties, and it’s a quantum leap for them, all call-and-answer and blood-quickening harmonies. To be fair, I’ve long been a sucker for the whole boy-girl vocal thing, but the contrast of the vocal styles, coupled with the usual daft energy and with a whole layer of top pop skills spread liberally over all of it makes it – for me – the highlight of the whole night. Usually it takes bands made up of six or seven folk to make a noise like this, and they’ve done it with three, and it’s moments like this which give fair warning about what they’re capable of. Making the same joyful racket as Los Campesinos! with half the band members is quite an achievement – by my maths, that makes them twice as talented, and holy hell, that should worry all of us. Although not as worried as you should be by Sarah’s clear penchant for the fucking cowbell, an instrument I personally think should be punishable by death, along with the bongo and the digeri-bastard-d0. But that’s just me.

Elsewhere tonight on the new tune front though, we get “This Familiar Road” which is almost George Formby in its clean-guitared jauntiness, and the fairly monumental “Fan The Flame”, again featuring some just-right boy shouting action, as well as “Awake” (not “The Rake” as I cloth-earedly first thought), where they get a little bit darker, before bursting into a preposterously huge chorus.

“Fortune Favours The Brave” pops up to reassure the veterans among us, but that’s it in terms of comfort, as yet another new one “In The City” ends it all, a suitably high-speed romp – as guitarist Mikey later puts it to me, “really just an exercise in how many hooks I could get in one song” – which puts a sweaty and cheerful full-stop to a show that was just as much a statement of intent as a demonstration of ability.

Either they’ve been eating their spinach, or paying attention in lessons or something, but tonight they’re almost a whole new band, recently out of a cocoon, with new muscles and big fuck-off wings and teeth. They say there’s the possibility that a lot of tonight’s new stuff might not end up on the album due later this year, and while I will be distraught if I don’t ever get a recorded version of “Need To Run”, the possibility that there’s even better stuff out there than tonight’s set makes me slightly weak at the knees. Plus, the prospect of them recording with ex-Delgados drummer and Phantom-Band-producer Paul Savage seems like a match made in whatever heaven is usually inhabited by intelligent, euphoric pop monsters.

I went along tonight with the nagging doubt that my critical faculties might not be firing on all cylinders, that I might be blinded to the fact that they’re another indie artrock band that are simply there to fill a hole until the next Franz Ferdinand arrive. I left knowing differently – yes, I’m a slavering fanboy; but also, yes – I’m absolutely fucking right to be.

Here’s something I didn’t know – all those “I Was Amazed!” quotes you get on posters advertising films or shows or whatever that are attributed to reviewers and critics should – apparently – be paid for. I had no idea – and according to the Guardian piece that spelled it out to me, clearly neither do lots of other writers either.

I suppose it’s not that peculiar, it’s intellectual copyright and all that, but I’m surprised to learn of it all the same, plus there’s something funny in content creators whining about their copyrights getting pinched and downloaded when they’ve clearly been doing the same thing to journalists for bloody years. Still, since no-one is ever going to put up their posters with my quotes on it – “Guff!”, “Lethargic!”, or “Spacker!” probably won’t get bums on seats, after all – it’s probably not something I’ll ever need to worry about that deeply.

Lightspeed Champion – Devil In Disguise

Because – obviously – it’s the most important day in all of music history, Lightspeed Champion’s gone and done a cover of Elvis’ “Devil In Disguise”, to mark what would have been his 75th birthday earlier this month. I prefer Jarvis’ comment on the whole affair – “he’d have been on his second hip replacement by now” – but everyone’s got their own relationship with The King, right?

Maps – Die Happy, Die Smiling

There was an original version of this up a few months ago, but now there’s a new fuller-length version in which you will still die happy, and you will still die smiling, so no change there.

Adam Green – Give Them A Token

The third in the four-part mini-soap opera of Adam Green kitchen-sink music videos. In this exciting episode, Adam takes his painting for a walk.

Julian Casablancas – The 11th Dimension

Despite the fact that (as of right now, after four days) Rough Trade have uploaded a music video with no sound, this is actually worth watching. I’ve never watched a music video with the sound off, and fuck me – they’re ridiculous. Seriously, Julian Casablanccas weilding a tricorner hat? Er.

After the opening challenge of the 33-second field hymnal of “The Clap” (no smirking at the back, Jenkins), with its fists-raised refrain of “If this is how you want it, ok ok“, the album veers between the hip-shaking soul-tinged stomp of “When We Swam” to the Ben Folds-y indie piano pop of “Cool Yourself” to the folky and wryly self-aware pluckings of the title track, which features a mean fiddle appearance from Anderw Bird.

Thao’s voice is a whole story on its own, with its apparent frailties telling sad tales of wounds to the heart, but with an unmistakeable undercurrent hinting at a solid steel core. On “But What Of The Strangers” she almost whispers some of the lines as if a stiff breeze could shatter it all in an instant, but on “When We Swam” she’s back with “Bring your hips to me”, in charge and indomitable.

All that guff aside though, what truly makes this a bit of an event for me is that you can – and believe me, you will – sit down and listen to it over and over again, and it will take some considerable measure of time before you stop taking new things from it. It’s just not predictable – it doesn’t start off on one path and stick to it, it reacts, and gets knocked off course, and has to get itself straight again, mirroring the themes that went into the album itself. It makes it feel human.

Pitchfork described the closing track “Easy” as ‘boogie-shoegaze’ (no, me neither), and it’s here where the punchline to the album comes – surely there isn’t another line anywhere else as evocative, using as few a number of words as “Sad people dance, too“?

Erland And The Carnival – Erland And The Carnival

In hindsight, it makes you wonder why no-one’s not done it before. While there have been plenty of acts – and it’s all Beirut’s fault – who take a chunk of East European folk rhythms and sounds as their inspiration, I can’t think of any who take it via the carnival sounds that also started there, all tremolo organs and House Of Fun. Since I’ve spent the last few years banging on and on and on about Fanfarlo, perhaps it’s no surprise that this slightly creepier 60s-tinged version of their rich and literate pop appeals so much to me. Tingling, in many ways.

VIDEO: ERLAND & THE CARNIVAL – WAS YOU EVER SEE

Neon Indian – Psychic Chasm

I’ve only become tolerant of 80s-sounding electronics in recent years, since X Lion Tamer’s been beating me over the head with DX7s, but I think that even without him, I’d have been digging on this anyway. What I like most is that Neon Indian could have taken these songs and so easily have been an acceptably oddball guitar band – but the buttons and the retro bloops and the Casiotone drums make it sound – bizarrely – much fresher, as if Buggles had secretly always wanted to be in Mercury Rev. Best of all, they manage to do it without making you feel stupid, so often the pratfall of bands trying to be too clever. A recommend, then – even if the title is enough to turn milk sour at twenty paces.

The Irrepressibles – Mirror Mirror

Performace art and music should only ever be attempted if you are a) Bill Drummond, or b) extraordinarily daft. The KLF they may not be, but this group of semi-orchestral nutbars have got daftness in spades, as well as singer Jamie McDermott’s killer soprano . If only for “Splish! Splash! Sploo!”- simultaneously the most preposterous song title and lyric in the history of music – this record should be purchased immediately.

THE ALBUMS SCRAPING THE SLUSH OFF THEIR BOOTS THIS WEEK:
A Grave With No Name – Mountain Debris
Adam Green – Minor Love
Cocoon – My Friends All Died In A Place Crash
Delphic – Acolyte
Erland And The Carnival – Erland And The Carnival
Major Stars – Return To Form
Malory – Pearl Diver
Mariachi El Bronx – Mariachi El Bronx
Mustasch – Mustasch
Neon Indian – Psychic Chasm
OK Go – Colour Of The Sky
Rhys Chatham – Finishing Line
Sonja Kristina – Harmonics Of Love
Thao with The Get Down Stay Down – Know Better Learn Faster
The Amazing – Code 2 / To Ska And Back
The Irrepressibles – Mirror Mirror
These New Puritans – Hidden
Vampire Weekend – Contra
You Me At Six – Hold Me Down

What made the younger Plan B (real name Ben Drew) stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the scene though, was his clear delight in and skill with instruments as well as the microphone and its accompanying electronics – there were proper and muscular songs in there, as well as razor-sharp verbals and the beats from a knife-fight. This was a British Eminem who could also comfortably play a solo acoustic session. That was the Noughties though, and (skipping past his appearance in Harry Brown alongside Michael Caine) we open the new decade with “Stay Too Long” – and if you’ve ever wondered what Justin Timberlake would sound like if he a) was a fucking hardnut from Forest Gate and b) possessed by Satan, then your sleepless nights are over.

With a fizzing jazz organ, gospel backing singers, tubthumping drums and Plan B’s surprisingly soulful and high-pitched vocal, it opens like a glorious wedding finale, a pure slice of Illinois soul – “Cuz I always stay too long / Long enough for something to go wrong“, he almost croons, and twenty seconds in, it’s still innocent, joyful, slicker than the ice on the roads and – you’re thinking – probably about some kind of relationship guff. But then reality bursts into the room, Plan B’s scarred and throaty delivery of old kicks in, and from then on it’s another riot of drinking, violence, sex and assorted other slices of inner-city mayhem, all set to a soundtrack Berry Gordy would slap a seal of approval on. It’s an uncomfortable mix, musically and thematically, but Plan B’s never really been interested in making the listening easy.

When Dizzee started going all proper pop, I got bored and wandered off somewhere else. Plan B’s gone pop and I’m still fucking terrifed of him. It’s straight from the top shelf, a brutal, brilliant start to the decade’s roster of singles, and a whopping great signpost to the flavour of the new album. Will someone please, please just make sure Calvin Harris doesn’t get within ten feet of the man.

Standard Fare – Fifteen

A biscuit off being Single Of The Week this one. This Sheffield three-piece have been together for a while now, although this is the first time I’ve come across them, and with a single “Dancing” out last year (video below) on Thee Sheffield Recording Company and an album due later in 2010 following this single, it looks like they’re finally getting busy. Normally, indiepop can just all blend together in a twitching great pile of steaming vintage clothing. Standard Fare seem somehow to make it all seem a bit more… well, grown up. It’s like a band with years under their belt who have decided to have a bit of fun for a change – there are some astute songwriting chops in here, and no mistake. This single relates an infatuation with a no-doubt pale and pretty teenage indie boy, with short, choppy Housemartins-y guitars, and Emma’s vocal veering between spoken-with-a-raised-eyebrow and a banshee wail, it’s just one of those records that’s fucking right-now immediate. Charming, charming stuff. The album’s called The Noyelle Beat, and it’s out in March – brilliantly for me, they’re also playing SXSW, so you can guarantee we’ll be trailing this lot around like baby bloody ducks.

VIDEO: STANDARD FARE – DANCING

The Fresh And Onlys – Second One To Know

From Sheffield indiepop to San Francisco garage psych, with The Fresh And Onlys. Taking a whopping cue from the 60s – specifically, and to an almost bonkers level, The Who – The Fresh And Only nevertheless still manage to come up with a song that’s catchy enough to cut through the rigidly fashionable wave of ‘cooler’ records this week., despite sounding like it genuinely was recorded forty-plus years ago. I always find bands that ape such an old sound to such a huge degree to be a bit weird – in this case though, it’s actually just plain old refreshing.

Campfires – Stormy Late Fall

Thought I’d listened to a taster of this but – in fact – it genuinely is only one minute and eighteen seconds long. Admittedly, it’s 78 seconds of booming and crashing drums, clanging and vastly distorted guitars and vocals being beamed in by phone filtered through a plane crash, so it’s not exactly light on substance. It is also deeply, deeply addictive. I must have listened to it twenty times today, and it’s genuinely made me question why all songs aren’t this short. Their lo-fi shoegaze (honestly, it’s a good idea),  all comes together like My Bloody Valentine channeling Japanther, which I think you’ll agree is pretty a tasty proposition. The only thing that’ll get annoying is getting up every minute to get the needle back to the start.

THE SINGLES THAT’RE WARDING OFF THE COLD THIS WEEK:
Campfires – Stormy Late Fall
Fresh And Onlys – Second One To Know
Fyfe Dangerfield – She Needs Me
Good Shoes – Under Control
Lyrebirds – Closer
Plan B – Stay Too Long
Standard Fare – Fifteen
Voice Of The Seven Thunders – The Burning Mountain
White Rabbits – Percussion Gun

Adam Green – Buddy Bradley

It’s been a while since Adam Green popped up with an album proper, way back in March of 2008. So if your anti-folk tastebuds haven’t been whetted enough by Jeff Lewis during 2009, Green’s back with two videos from the new album, that’s due out next Mon 11th Jan, and to accompany the whole hipster shindig, here’s one of four videos that have been done for it (two released so far), for “Buddy Bradley”. It’s one part rollick, one part lackadaisic, and the video’s suitably non-directed. Tatty shoes, far-off gaze, tight jeans, acerbic lyrics all over your face… you know the score by now.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – The Sound

I really like this guy, despite myself. I think it’s the earnest rock thing going on the background, only just drowned out by the Brooklyn cool, the puppy enthusiasm and the swagger that only youth can bring to this sort of tune. I really like his voice though, all Bowie and Neil Young all at the same time. Not going to get his name tattooed on my arm or anything – my arms aren’t that long for one thing – but you can tick me off as a bit of a fan, I reckon.

The Rural Alberta Advantage – Drain The Blood

I’ll happily confess my ignorance on this Canadian outfit, but since they’re signed to the usually-reliable Saddle Creek, and this video’s a little gem, I’ll be exploring these hills for the next little while, I reckon. It’s a bit ragged, a bit upset but a bit hacked off, and all sorts of glorious, really. One of those bands you’ll be happy you crossed paths with. Unless of course, you already have, and I’m the last one to do so, which is fairly likely. In which case, you’ve all made fine choices. Well done.

Blood Red Shoes – Colours Fade

Blimey, BRS seem to be developing musical muscles in all sorts of places, and this (also available as a free mp3, folks), bodes well for the upcoming long-player that’s due out this year. For the elderly amongst you, in parts they sound to me uncannily like my old Edinburgh faves Annie Christian.

Tindersticks – Falling Down A Mountain (Trailer)

Can’t find a full version of this anywhere, with this instead being a short and unnervingly Guy Ritchie-esque trailer for the tune and the new album, due later this month.

Turbo Fruits – Naked With You

Turbo Fruits are playing SXSW this year, and as part of SXSW’s ongoing plan of shouting about bands they like ahead of the event, this week sees the dirty, groovy, Redd-Kross-vs-Dinosaur-Jr fuzzpop of “Naked With You” get another airing, as it plainly deserves. It might be possible that I’ll be at this show in March. Possibly.