Music Vidz – Think I Wanna Die by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Cute band.

Music Vidz – Old White Lincoln by The Gaslight Anthem

These guys totally rocked a tent at Glastonbury. Springsteen even made an appearance on stage with ‘em.

Music Vidz – The Vague Archive by Grammatics

Summer afternoons in a wild meadow – lush.

Music Vidz – Roll Up Your Sleeves by We Were Promised Jetpacks

This band are gonna be huge, I reckon.

Music Scene News – 24th July Round-Up

Alex James has confirmed that it is unlikely Blur will get back together. Probably best, I’d say. Great in their time but things have moved on now.

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are planning a new album release in September. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there will be a follow-up to the movie, Once.

Ian Brown, former Stone Roses frontman, is lined up to play the main stages at Reading/Leeds festivals. His new album, My Way, is out soon and, according to Brown, it is based on albums like Michael Jackson’s Thriller – i.e. all killer, no filler *cough*

I’d recommend getting along to see The Boxer Rebellion if you are in the UK. Dates are:

SEPTEMBER
22 Cardiff Barfly
23 Southampton Joiners
26 Bristol Thekla
27 Birmingham Hare & Hounds
28 Liverpool Masque
29 Dublin Whelan’s
30 Belfast Auntie Annie’s

OCTOBER
1 Glasgow O2 ABC 2
2 Newcastle Other Rooms
3 Manchester Roadhouse
5 Leeds Faversham
6 London Relentless Garage

Music Scene News – 23rd July round-up

Apparently Thom Yorke and Bon Iver have written songs for the Twilight follow-up, New Moon. Still won’t make me watch it though

The excellent Voxtrot are releasing Berlin Without Return as their next single.

Another EP due out in September for The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. 2009 should be a great year for this band.

Flight Of The Conchords have an album planned for October release on the Sub Pop label. Title is I Told You I Was Freaky.

Monsters of Folk (Conor Oberst and M.Ward etc) are planning to tour North America and Europe. Much as though I like these guys individually, I can’t help but think this is gonna be a circle-jerk.

2009 Mercury Music Prize nominees

The 2009 nominees were announced a couple of days ago so I know I’m hardly providing cutting-edge news here. However, I wanted to step back a little from the knee-jerk reactions these nominations always generate. Partly to ponder my own reaction and partly to watch others foam at the mouth.

I’ve observed a lot of doom and gloom attached to the list. The weakest list ever, according to some. An indication of the poor state of music today, according to others.

Personally, I think it is no weaker than some previous years and, although arguments could be made for a few that didn’t get shortlisted, it’s not exactly a bizarre line-up to represent this year’s album releases.

Early bookmaker odds suggest Kasabian and Florence & The Machine are front runners with Bat For Lashes, Glasvegas and La Roux not far behind. Other nominees are:

Friendly Fires
Led Bib
Lisa Hannigan
Speech Debelle
Sweet Billy Pilgrim
The Horrors
The Invisible

I was pleased that Seldom Seen Kid secured the win for Elbow last year. I remember being very smitten with the album when it was first released and I felt they ‘deserved’ critical acclaim for the impact they had on the UK, and particularly the Manchester, music scene over the years. This year I reckon Kasabian and Bat For Lashes would be getting my money if I was a gambling man.

A glance through previous winners shows that this is rarely an award that has predictable winners. After all, Gomez beat Pulp and The Verve in 1998 and M People snatched it from The Prodigy and Blur in 1994.

The prize money attached to the award is £20,000 – may the most deserving artist(s) win.

Thom Yorke performs new song at Latitude festival

It’s called The Present Tense, apparently. Kinda nice, I’d say.

Freddie Mercury’s Queen reborn as Muse?

Much debate over this new track. Are they ‘ripping off’ Queen or is it a tongue-in-cheek pastiche or a respectful homage? Will it end the accusations that it is Radiohead who Muse mostly rip-off? I’ll let you decide – I’ve used up my allowance of French words.

Album Review – Welcome To The Walkalone by The Rumble Strips

Welcome to the Walkalone by The Rumble Strips

2007 was a good year for The Rumble Strips. They were hailed by the UK music press as the next big thing (usually a curse) and their debut offerings were generally very well received. I remember them being termed as modern-day Dexy’s Midnight Runners and found that a little strange. I guess their style was kinda ska – a lot of the instrumentation and tempo reminded me of two-tone.

Fast forward to 2009 and I eagerly settle down to listen to the nemesis of many a promising band – the difficult second album. I notice that Mark Ronson has produced it and groan inwardly. Sure, it worked out for him and Amy Winehouse but it seems to me that he has already tried to replicate that sixties vibe too many times already. Anyway, I tried to keep an open mind and hit ‘play’. The first couple of tracks washed over me mostly but then I really got into track 3, Not The Only Person. It took me until track 9, Dem Girls, before I mustered up any further enthusiasm.

All the way throughout the album, something was bothering me. How the hell had they ended up sounding like The Last Shadow Puppets? A little research provided me with the answer. TLSPs arranger Owen Pallett was involved. This time my sigh wasn’t so inward. And here’s where I have a pet rant. Why is there such a clamber to sound like Scott Walker? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Scott Walker albums but it’s been done and, whilst people were quite forgiving of Last Shadow Puppets due to the novelty factor, it’s becoming tiresome already with so many bands queuing up to capture that string-laden orchestral soundscape of the sixties.

By the end of the album I began to wonder whether I had imagined how The Rumble Strips sounded two years earlier so I threw on a couple of their old tracks and, thankfully, my memory seems to be working well enough. I’ve already been accused of being stuck in the past by saying I prefer the work of The Smiths to Morrissey’s recent solo efforts and I know I am giving further ammunition to this charge by saying that 2009 Rumble Strips are a pale shadow of what that 2007 potential could have morphed into but that is exactly how I see it.

A disappointing 6/10 from me.