23 April 2008

Tokyo Police Club – Tessellate
If you could compress Placebo into a firework and then set it off in sealed warehouse then the resulting whiff would equate to the sound of Tokyo Police Club, who are essentially a diluted version with whimpering vocals but a certain spirit all the same.

Cajun Dance Party – The Race
Even an award winning cynic would applaud a band that, in between doing their A Levels, produce such towering singles as this. Featuring a delightful middle section that sounds like a castle of falling synthesisers rubbing each others keyboards on the way to earth.

Captain – Keep An Open Mind
Even after a session of mind altering electrolysis it was nigh on impossible to remove the spectre of Snow Patrol from this jaunty chord structure that wouldn’t offend a permanently outraged pensioner. When the second mix starts you just want to kick a bin into the street.

iLikeTrains – We Go Hunting
Similar to a pantomime villain trying to inject his 40th performance with some bathos but realising that the RADA training amounts to nothing and a transient life of entertaining blank faced audiences is ultimately an existence that could be erased at a moments noticed. Like Tindersticks.

4 or 5 Magicians – Change The Record
Terrible name, like the fourth line on the entertainment menu for a low budget cruise, but a low fuzzy garage that sounds like it was recorded in a slum in Detroit or in an alleyway beside a dripping gutter and a tramp honking of skips. For fans of slacker lo-slung indie.

Cut Copy – Lights & Music
Did Cut Copy record this in a box in the 1980’s and then post it to some remote island until it was picked up by a panicking label chief at record label Modular who decided to release it for want of anything better to do? Like an unexplainable blip on the Cut Copy radar.

Parka – Better Anyway
If this had a chorus that didn’t sound like someone with their jaw wired up trying to order a pie at a incredibly loud football match then the blokey spirit might be just about palatable. As it is the relentless momentum begins to feel like being stuck in a Pitcher and Piano with a group of braying estate agents.

Dorp – Rollercoaster
What kind of name is Dorp? It sounds like a fizzy can of pop from Hong Kong or something you smother over a welt to make it heal. Or some Iranian mayonnaise. Or a table lamp at IKEA. Or some dumb head rock and roll with emotionless vocals.

Cats In Paris – Foxes
Imagine the Klaxons with a girl roped in to provide counterpoint vocals and some Muse like prog rock doodling on the keyboards and that’s what you’re left with is a soundtrack to a coma computer game.

Grant-Lee Phillips – Soft Asylum
He’s been toiling around the world for what seems like decades projecting his faintly sandpapered vocal chords upon legions of grateful audiences that lap up the medium of acoustic storytelling with the odd break for a dry ice guitar solo. Perfectly acceptable.

The Envy Corps – Story Problem
You might think that they’ve stole the cover design from Penguin classics and a bass riff from a Stereophonics song but once you’ve dealt with the potential plagiarism then you can concentrate on a Americana infused Polyphonic Spree orgy that just about keeps the pecker up.

Lost Tricks – Keep It Together
Earnest mewling is a very underrated and complicated emotion except when projecting through song when it can sound like a wine bore talking about certain grapes. An indie band who probably say they play live to their friends but their friends are always busy.