Blogs

As the first night of Club Uncut’s annual seaside trip to Brighton’s Great Escape festival comes to an end, a girl passes me yelling “My ears! My ears!”. New York’s Gang Gang Dance have just come off stage at the Pavilion Theatre, where they’ve cranked up the decibels to ear-splitting levels. Really, it was loud. Earlier this week, I’d been listening to their latest album, Eye Contact, recorded in relaxed circumstances near rural Woodstock, and been impressed by the ambient textures of tracks like “Glass Jar”. Live, they’re clearly a very different proposition: the sheer intense forcefulness of their sound physically impacts on the body. It had all been so very different three hours earlier…

The new Black Lips album – produced by Mark Ronson, weirdly – arrived yesterday, and reminded me of a couple of things. First, that I always feel unaccountably guilty for not liking Black Lips records as much as I think I should. And second, I actually have a bunch of good garage records that need writing about.

As with Metronomy on Monday, I’m going to have to confess general ignorance of the Danish band WhoMadeWho. Along with “The English Riviera”, though, I’ve been playing this one a lot for the past week or so. Not least because, in a world without LCD Soundsystem, “Knee Deep” works as a pretty useful substitute.

As some of you have probably deduced, I’ve had a copy of Bill Callahan’s excellent “Apocalypse” for a couple of months or so now. It’s a lovely perk of the job, getting an album like this so early, compromised a little by Drag City insisting I didn’t mention its existence on the blog for what seemed like an age.

I believe this new album by Metronomy, “The English Riviera”, may well be out today, which means I’m pretty late at getting round to it. Truth be told, I didn’t pick it up for a while; not having hugely positive, or even particularly clear, memories of their previous records.

Apologies for not posting much new stuff over the past few days; we’ve been wrapping up the next issue of Uncut. One thing I have written, though, is this piece about, sort of, Raphael Saadiq, which was destined to be my Wild Mercury Sound column in the mag until various advertising movements rendered it, perhaps fortunately, surplus to requirements. A pretty convoluted path to “Stone Rollin’”, but just about worth posting, I think…

This month, I’ve been listening a lot to a band (or solo project; it’s not entirely clear) called Purling Hiss. It’s been fun but, at times, quite a challenge, even for those of us who can deal with lo-fidelity music that’s disseminated through several thick coats of distortion.

A certain grouchy state of mind this morning almost compelled me to break my own if-you-can’t-say-anything-nice-don’t-say-anything-at-all rule for the blog and post a list of disappointing albums of 2011. Instead, though, I figured it’d be much more constructive to round up a few things worth investing in.

I’ve never played guitar, so may not be the best person to judge, and I’m generally averse to wild comparatives and superlatives in music reviews. Watching Arbouretum last night, though – it was somewhere in the last quarter of “Song Of The Nile”, to be specific – I started to think that, just maybe, Dave Heumann might be one of the best guitarists I’ve seen play in years.

Strange to think that, when the first UK White Denim single turned up, they seemed to be more or less like a garage rock band. I was just re-reading my blog on their UK debut, “Workout Holiday”, and was amused to see some discussion in the comments about their relationship or otherwise with The Hives. Not much chance of that happening nowadays, especially with “D”.