Corn From The Cobb

This is the sort of thing I love to write & hope you enjoy reading. It's unusual to find reviews of go-nowhere unsigned musicians, unless they're in some sort of hellish local paper/school yearbook love-in, from which critical appraisal has been ousted in favour of some threadbare community spirit. Of course, the best compliment anyone can pay a musician is to actually listen to them, and have the courage to mention things that are shit - that's why I love my editors, they apreciate this is important.

Reviewing The Fall is fun and confirming your understanding of their greatness (or antagonising your woefully misguided opinion of their awfulness, I guess), but it's stuff like this, that anyone who has any experience of the fun and frustration, the excitement and excrutiation of low-level music production will understand, that makes things worthwhile. I would honestly rather be writing about this nobody for free than knocking out 60 words about The Killers for The Sunday Times for a fat cheque. Thanks for reading.

REPORTER, TRANSMISSION & TRUE RUMOUR Demos


Mark Cobb is that most awkward of beasts, a prolific artist. Constantly gigging and recording with a wealth of different projects, Mark simultaneously raises a feeling of marvel at his energy and dedication, and a wish that he’d stop messing about and just settle down to work on something substantial. Because, with some honing of the musical attentions, Mark has the talent to turn out some quality music, but at the moment his output is often saddeningly mediocre. Being mediocre is no crime, of course, but being mediocre with a different band every night of the week probably should be.

Let’s start at the bottom. True Rumour feels something like an acoustic version of Kohoutek (nee Tsunami), probably Mark’s best known endeavour, with guitars jangling and sax bleating away merrily in the background. Said sax ought to be just the foil to Mark’s voice - and it is a great voice, keening and swooping around the melody with a heavy vibrato in a way that recalls such idiosyncratic singers as Michael Stipe and Julian Cope - but as sonic seasoning it falls very flat, tootling aimlessly around the demo like a lost dog. Take “I’m At Zombie” (sic), which mires a powerful vocal performance in a flabby meander of a song. Interest is piqued slightly by some sprightly violin playing and what sounds like it might be mbira on “Rocks & Sunflowers”, but ultimately True Rumour’s demo stands up for itself about as well as damp toast.

Just to show that he can do the hazy campfire bit pretty well at times is a one track demo from Reporter, a recent project with members of The Hank Dogs and Perfect Disaster (both new names to us, we’re ashamed to admit). Featherlight and brief it may be, but this one take acoustic ramble captures the ear immediately. It’s early days yet, but there could be something here worth embellishing.

This crop of demos confirms what we’ve always felt to be the case, that Transmission is definitely Mark’s most successful endeavour. Admittedly the nasal twin guitar solos can piss off back to whatever Lynyrd Skynyrd hole they crawled from, but for the most part the lightly Arabic flourishes and the guitar curlicues suit Mark’s quavering voice more than the clumping indie rhythms of Kohoutek, coaxing an urgent Morroccan wail on “Kings” that outdoes anything else on these recordings. It also occasionally tugs a little string in the back of our minds labelled “Chamfer”, which is no terrible accusation.

Ultimately we’d like Mark to try pushing things a bit more. Of course, we don’t expect Autechre rhythms and Melt Banana guitars to be turning up anytime soon (though we’ll be first in the queue if they do), but the music should have the courage of its convictions: if it’s pop music, write some stellar hooks; if it’s rock music, put some balls into it; if it’s jazzy acoustica, try to get the saxophonist vaguely in tune. When all the intros sound something like “Street Spirit” and all the fortes sound like bad Rolling Stones, you just know there’s an autopilot light flashing in the cockpit. Like the teacher who is harshest on their brightest pupil, this is meant to be loving criticism, but we’ve been waiting a long time for Mark to knuckle down and make the great, soaring music he has in him somewhere. Maybe that will happen someday, or maybe in a few months there’ll be another clutch of perfectly passable and mostly forgettable little demos to chuck into the expanding Cobb file. Maybe Mark doesn’t give a shit about some jumped up little prick on the internet. Yes that seems most likely. But we’re still right.