Something different today, my favourite Oxford records of 2009, as published with other selections on Oxfordbands. The text style of the first line refers ot the fact that Alphabet Backwards' bassist, Josh, was smothered all over billboards, buses and TVs in 2009 as part of one of those infuriating mobile phone ads, in which he talked guff about starting a "super-band", or something equally facile. He is actually a very good musician, but from the ads you'd assume he was just a twat who clumps along to "Smoke On The Water" in his Mum's attic. Hopefully the phone company paid him handsomely for his time, but sadly I imagine he did it for free, the starry-eyed pop flump.
Alphabet Backwards: Alphabet Backwards
gr8 bnd v g pop lol [send to entire address book]
A Scholar & A Physician: She's A Witch
The funnest ball of funny electro fun anywhere in the world this year, from Truck's production go-to boys.
Borderville: Joy Through Work
"A band's reach should exceed its grasp/ Or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning (nearly)
Les Clochards: Sweet Tableaux
Oxford's wry Gallic cafe indie children deliver a blinder. Sounds like fat Elvis twatted on creme de menthe and blearily stumbling round the Postcard Records' bordello.
Hretha: Minnows/ Dead Horses
Orthographically frustrating upstarts produce clinical post-rock excellence.
Mephisto Grande: Seahorse Vs The Shrew
A revivalist hymn meeting seen through Lewis Carroll's mescaline kaleidoscope.
The Relationships: Space
Beuatiful chiming indie pop coupled with the most articulate lyricist ever to have flaneured the Cowley Road; think R.E.M.'s Reckoning crossed with Betjeman's Banana Blush, record collectors!
Mr Shaodow: R U Stoopid?
Serious messages, approachable humour, lyrical dexterity. His best yet, and that's some benchmark.
Stornoway: Unfaithful
The startled bunnies of lit-pop had a meteoric year. Let's be honest, you won't get long odds on their debut LP featuring in this list next year...
Vileswarm: Sun Swallows The Stars
An experimental dreamteam of Frampton & Euhedral, offering "doom drone": does exactly what it says on the tombstone.
Showing posts with label Relationships The. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Relationships The. Show all posts
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Pint O' Stella Overdrive
I realised recently that "musketeer" means "soldier with a musket". Kind of blindingly obvious, right? But I'd never made the connection before. Speaking of an interest in words, here's a review of Oxford's top rockingest librarian, Richard Ramage's last vinyl outing.
THE RELATIONSHIPS – SPACE (Big Red Sky)
“We grew weary of boutiques…”
It’s not often we make much mention of lyrics in our reviews - mostly because there are hardly any good lyricists, in Oxfordshire or beyond – but The Relationships’ Richard Ramage is a truly outstanding writer, and this LP is his best batch yet, as Captain Beefheart might observe. All you need to know about Ramage’s poetic incision is present in the record’s opening line: yes, it’s a wry summation of mood changes at the end of the 60s, but it’s the immaculately affected tone of the word that makes “grew weary” infinitely better than “got tired”, revealing just how well honed the writing is. The song it introduces, “Space Race”, is an odd image of an “alternate present”, as SF aficionados would have it, a quick sketch of a Britain that diverged from our history at that very moment of “weariness”, and beat the Yanks to the moon. “We were singing Rule Britannia as we conquered space”, declaims the chorus, but despite this huge difference in our pasts, the UK of “Space Race” feels remarkably similar to our own, a floundering nation buoyed up by misty celebrations of past achievement:
The flag and the flower
Designs on a dishcloth
The Post Office Tower
Is ready for liftoff
It’s a golden age
This is roughly “This Is A Low”, Blur’s gorgeous realisation that the Britain they and so many others have celebrated is nothing but a fumble of nostalgia and faded souvenirs, with a sci fi twist. Or, perhaps it’s Philip K Dick’s Man In The High Castle redrafted by Philip Larkin.
Astronautical subject matter aside, “Space Race” is a wonderful opener to the album, because it introduces the record’s themes of imagined pasts, escapism and secret worlds. It is swiftly followed by “Soft Rock Canyon”, a more earthbound tale of a bored suburban girl dreaming of a mythical America, with its imagined freedoms and its balmy summer nights. Tim Turan’s drums on this are lovely, incredibly busy and jazzy and – amusingly – a fair few leagues away from a soft rock pulse.
“Her Constituency” is another standout track, featuring another hazily created utopian England and a hustings romance that sees the narrator seemingly as in love with his political paramour as he is with his conception of democracy. The love interest MP (whom we can’t help imagining as Barbara Castle…though of course she could easily be Maggie) enters the song “stately as a galleon, my lady all in jewels and shells” making her seem like some rural seat version of Boticelli’s Venus. Later we hear of “Spices from the New World/ A fanfare from the morning sun”, which continues the lush Renaissance imagery, although the ironic reality at this election meal would probably some coronation chicken sandwiches on a church hall trestle table.
The romance – albeit a quiet drawing room romance built on respect and companionship, rather than passion – seems inextricably bound up with national feeling, and again we have an image of a lost world, a Britain in which politics is always fair, humane and egalitarian, and the best woman wins.
“Victorian Seance” (featuring the best use of the word “antimacassars” in pop history) makes the other worlds theme literal, and “Time In The World” begins with the line, “We lived in the garden”, wafting up images of Cottingley fairies and childhood hideaways. It’s a song about growing up, and could be a rewrite of “Hide And Seek”, from the last LP, as told from the inside, a realisation that childhood can never be regained as explained by the kids who “moved to London”. The claim that they “put up a map of Middle Earth” in the hidey hole is doubly distancing – a fictional land as worshipped by a long lost innocent hippy breed.
Throughout these wonderful songs a series of paeans for lost nations are created, countries of jeeps and melodic rock, countries of crumpets and curates unfurling the bunting, countries of Empire pink starcharts tacked up in studies. They’re all presented with the mixture of melancholy and national pride that suffuse tales of King Arthur or Robin Hood, and are all delivered in an understated poetic hush. Stipe meets Betjeman, if you will.
Even by The Relationships’ standards, the music is mostly unadventurous, a mixture of classic indie winsomeness and 60s simplicity. This doesn’t mean it’s unpleasant, and there are some notably lovely chiming guitar parts from Angus Stevenson, but anybody who’s heard previous Relationships records should find themselves on very common ground. Also, perhaps “Clockwork Toy” and “Astrological Hotel” are somewhat forgettable. However, as the record finishes with “The Eternal Colonel”, an upwardly surging bundle of psychedelic pop which is essentially a comfy Oxford remake of The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (and should therefore have been called “Five Mile Drive”), perhaps The Relationships shall have some musical surprises for us next time. So long as they keep writing pop songs as gorgeous and intelligent as these, any exciting arrangements are just a bonus. We shall never grow weary of them.
THE RELATIONSHIPS – SPACE (Big Red Sky)
“We grew weary of boutiques…”
It’s not often we make much mention of lyrics in our reviews - mostly because there are hardly any good lyricists, in Oxfordshire or beyond – but The Relationships’ Richard Ramage is a truly outstanding writer, and this LP is his best batch yet, as Captain Beefheart might observe. All you need to know about Ramage’s poetic incision is present in the record’s opening line: yes, it’s a wry summation of mood changes at the end of the 60s, but it’s the immaculately affected tone of the word that makes “grew weary” infinitely better than “got tired”, revealing just how well honed the writing is. The song it introduces, “Space Race”, is an odd image of an “alternate present”, as SF aficionados would have it, a quick sketch of a Britain that diverged from our history at that very moment of “weariness”, and beat the Yanks to the moon. “We were singing Rule Britannia as we conquered space”, declaims the chorus, but despite this huge difference in our pasts, the UK of “Space Race” feels remarkably similar to our own, a floundering nation buoyed up by misty celebrations of past achievement:
The flag and the flower
Designs on a dishcloth
The Post Office Tower
Is ready for liftoff
It’s a golden age
This is roughly “This Is A Low”, Blur’s gorgeous realisation that the Britain they and so many others have celebrated is nothing but a fumble of nostalgia and faded souvenirs, with a sci fi twist. Or, perhaps it’s Philip K Dick’s Man In The High Castle redrafted by Philip Larkin.
Astronautical subject matter aside, “Space Race” is a wonderful opener to the album, because it introduces the record’s themes of imagined pasts, escapism and secret worlds. It is swiftly followed by “Soft Rock Canyon”, a more earthbound tale of a bored suburban girl dreaming of a mythical America, with its imagined freedoms and its balmy summer nights. Tim Turan’s drums on this are lovely, incredibly busy and jazzy and – amusingly – a fair few leagues away from a soft rock pulse.
“Her Constituency” is another standout track, featuring another hazily created utopian England and a hustings romance that sees the narrator seemingly as in love with his political paramour as he is with his conception of democracy. The love interest MP (whom we can’t help imagining as Barbara Castle…though of course she could easily be Maggie) enters the song “stately as a galleon, my lady all in jewels and shells” making her seem like some rural seat version of Boticelli’s Venus. Later we hear of “Spices from the New World/ A fanfare from the morning sun”, which continues the lush Renaissance imagery, although the ironic reality at this election meal would probably some coronation chicken sandwiches on a church hall trestle table.
The romance – albeit a quiet drawing room romance built on respect and companionship, rather than passion – seems inextricably bound up with national feeling, and again we have an image of a lost world, a Britain in which politics is always fair, humane and egalitarian, and the best woman wins.
“Victorian Seance” (featuring the best use of the word “antimacassars” in pop history) makes the other worlds theme literal, and “Time In The World” begins with the line, “We lived in the garden”, wafting up images of Cottingley fairies and childhood hideaways. It’s a song about growing up, and could be a rewrite of “Hide And Seek”, from the last LP, as told from the inside, a realisation that childhood can never be regained as explained by the kids who “moved to London”. The claim that they “put up a map of Middle Earth” in the hidey hole is doubly distancing – a fictional land as worshipped by a long lost innocent hippy breed.
Throughout these wonderful songs a series of paeans for lost nations are created, countries of jeeps and melodic rock, countries of crumpets and curates unfurling the bunting, countries of Empire pink starcharts tacked up in studies. They’re all presented with the mixture of melancholy and national pride that suffuse tales of King Arthur or Robin Hood, and are all delivered in an understated poetic hush. Stipe meets Betjeman, if you will.
Even by The Relationships’ standards, the music is mostly unadventurous, a mixture of classic indie winsomeness and 60s simplicity. This doesn’t mean it’s unpleasant, and there are some notably lovely chiming guitar parts from Angus Stevenson, but anybody who’s heard previous Relationships records should find themselves on very common ground. Also, perhaps “Clockwork Toy” and “Astrological Hotel” are somewhat forgettable. However, as the record finishes with “The Eternal Colonel”, an upwardly surging bundle of psychedelic pop which is essentially a comfy Oxford remake of The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (and should therefore have been called “Five Mile Drive”), perhaps The Relationships shall have some musical surprises for us next time. So long as they keep writing pop songs as gorgeous and intelligent as these, any exciting arrangements are just a bonus. We shall never grow weary of them.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
The Prong Remains The Same
Do you know, when I looked at this review, I had no recollection of writing it. None whatever. Although wierdly I recall the actual gig quite well. Funny how the old mind works, eh? This, if I remember correctly (and we've proved there's no guarantee of that) was the last time I saw Fork, as they split up soon after. Pity, they were just beginning to get good. Still, all together now: This could be the last tine...
FORK/ SHIRLEY/ EMERALD SKY/ THE RELATIONSHIPS – THE X 17/11/06
Exquisitely English indie janglers The Relationships write the most perfect pop songs in Oxford. They look like they presented schools’ science programmes in 1983, but they create the sort of elegant chiming little anthems that may have sprung up if The Byrds, R.E.M.and Noel Coward had all been signed to Postcard Records. Their inherent politeness does risk being as rock and roll as crustless cucumber sarnies, but is salvaged by the fine balance between the writing’s crafted melancholy and the barely controlled rock beast that is drummer Tim Turan. OK, they’re not as good on stage as they are on record, but very few in this town are likely ever to be.
Emerald Sky are a Cambridge-based female cock rock trio (notebooks out, anatomists) who seem to play Oxford every twenty minutes. Clearly certain promoters hear more in their AC/DC Zepellin approximations than we. Their full fat hammer-on rocking is amusing enough, but palls after repeated hearings. Emerald Sky are admittedly fun, but so is drunken Twister, and we wouldn’t give that a good review.
We’ve been fairly lukewarm in our reception of Shirley in the past, and we’d just like to say this: we were wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Shirley are a brilliant party band. Whilst it’s tough for demi-Gods like us to admit mistakes, the blow is softened by some of the most infectiously euphoric cod-latin pop-rock on the planet. Replete with piercing snare stabs and helium-light acoustic riffing, Shirley’s songs are tight, bouncy and compact enough to make Buddy Holly look like King Crimson. Admittedly the vocals don’t quite gel tonight, but the rhythm section sounds crisper than ever. We even tapped our feet for a bit, readers, it was that enjoyable.
Fork have been confusing audiences for a while now, by fusing six-string funk basslines onto tinny little punk frames. If this sounds like a recipe for a huge mess, for a while it was, but Fork have been improving steadily over the past year. This is partly due to the addition of Tim from Junkie Brush on drums, who adds not only a much needed sense of structure, but also cheeky roto-tom action. Also, leader James Serjeant has seemingly realised that he has a negligible range and changed his vocals to a malevolent hiss that works remarkably well. Yes, they could do with more like the abstract lounge-jazz of “How Do I Get Out Of Here?”, but Fork are moving in the right direction: if they aren’t quite there yet, we’re at least enjoying the ride.
FORK/ SHIRLEY/ EMERALD SKY/ THE RELATIONSHIPS – THE X 17/11/06
Exquisitely English indie janglers The Relationships write the most perfect pop songs in Oxford. They look like they presented schools’ science programmes in 1983, but they create the sort of elegant chiming little anthems that may have sprung up if The Byrds, R.E.M.and Noel Coward had all been signed to Postcard Records. Their inherent politeness does risk being as rock and roll as crustless cucumber sarnies, but is salvaged by the fine balance between the writing’s crafted melancholy and the barely controlled rock beast that is drummer Tim Turan. OK, they’re not as good on stage as they are on record, but very few in this town are likely ever to be.
Emerald Sky are a Cambridge-based female cock rock trio (notebooks out, anatomists) who seem to play Oxford every twenty minutes. Clearly certain promoters hear more in their AC/DC Zepellin approximations than we. Their full fat hammer-on rocking is amusing enough, but palls after repeated hearings. Emerald Sky are admittedly fun, but so is drunken Twister, and we wouldn’t give that a good review.
We’ve been fairly lukewarm in our reception of Shirley in the past, and we’d just like to say this: we were wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Shirley are a brilliant party band. Whilst it’s tough for demi-Gods like us to admit mistakes, the blow is softened by some of the most infectiously euphoric cod-latin pop-rock on the planet. Replete with piercing snare stabs and helium-light acoustic riffing, Shirley’s songs are tight, bouncy and compact enough to make Buddy Holly look like King Crimson. Admittedly the vocals don’t quite gel tonight, but the rhythm section sounds crisper than ever. We even tapped our feet for a bit, readers, it was that enjoyable.
Fork have been confusing audiences for a while now, by fusing six-string funk basslines onto tinny little punk frames. If this sounds like a recipe for a huge mess, for a while it was, but Fork have been improving steadily over the past year. This is partly due to the addition of Tim from Junkie Brush on drums, who adds not only a much needed sense of structure, but also cheeky roto-tom action. Also, leader James Serjeant has seemingly realised that he has a negligible range and changed his vocals to a malevolent hiss that works remarkably well. Yes, they could do with more like the abstract lounge-jazz of “How Do I Get Out Of Here?”, but Fork are moving in the right direction: if they aren’t quite there yet, we’re at least enjoying the ride.
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