This is the writing I've been focussed on lately, short reviews that are meant to describe and promote bands, rather than to assess them from scratch. So no, don't expect any amusing demolition jobs. The links take you to the artist pages at Live Unsigned, a site I can't recommend highly enough as a place to promote your band, or find something to do in the evening.
Rich, warm harmony, and melodies that have comfy sofas rather than hooks make Ellen and the Escapades’ accomplished alt-country rock often easier on the ear than their influences, like Neil Young or Bob Dylan. Their chord sequences have moments of epic bigness, but mostly take us down familiar roads, showing us stuff we know from new angles. Vocals that sit midway between ethereal and earthy are full of character but never distract from the songs.
Flaming June
Tremulous yet powerful vocals sometimes reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan are married to an urgent folk rock strumming with the angry intensity of The Levellers, garnished with fiddle obbligatos from a player that sounds as though they could stand more of the limelight. This is drinking music, dancing music and listening music.
Healthy Minds Collapse
Rock solid melodicism supported by textural but hard grooving guitarscapes showcase some serious performance chops, from a band whose range extends from the considered and lyrical to the intensely energetic. Effectively combining the virtues of grunge and pop-punk, Healthy Minds Collapse have the attitude, and the skills to back it up.
Erland and The Carnival
There’s a distinctly 60s vibe to this mostly electric, mostly guitar folk rock band, although Simon Tong’s history of involvement with well known acts such as The Verve, The Good, the Bad & the Queen, and Gorillaz is sometimes audible. At times there are flashes of vintage Steeleye Span or Pentangle, but for the most part Erland and The Carnival sound very much like themselves, which is nearly but not quite like anything you’ve heard before…
The Voodoo Trombone Quartet
Wide and fat big-beat grooves anchor this outfit’s excursions into reggae, bossa and the grooviest 60s grooves, sometimes ornamented with light hearted vocals that make the whole thing reminiscent of Jeb Loy Nichols’ Fellow Travellers. Imagine Norman Cook was commissioned to write the theme music for The Saint, and the Stan Kenton Band was hired to perform it, and you are getting close to forming an idea that can be utterly blown away when you actually hear The Voodoo Trombone Quartet.
The Amorettes
The title of the top tune in their MySpace player gives you a clue: Hot and Heavy. These three girls are both: guitarist Gill gives Angus Young a run for his money, and she don’t need no schoolboy outfit! There is nothing fancy, there are no frills, there is just pedal-to-the-metal flat out rock in a style that hasn’t needed to evolve since the 70s, performed loud, tight and in your face.
The Good News
Wistfully quirky vocals extoll the joys of the ordinary, while the expertly played rhythm section parts groove hard in an irrepressibly happy manner, that puts me in mind of Talking Heads’ 77 and Little Creatures eras. The Good News strike just enough irony in their attitude to make their sincerely happy music highly digestible. I challenge you to leave their gig without a smile on your face!
Sniffin Flowers
With a nod in their name to the iconic zine of the punk era, and to the nature loving dippyness of the 60s, Sniffin Flowers do exactly what it says on the tin. High energy, attitude filled guitar pop-rock with lo-fi vocals, and plaintively overdriven upper register Jazzmaster twang that all sits somewhere between 1967 and 1977. Think The Kingsmen, The Small Faces, The Troggs, but harsher and edgier.
Pinknruby
Impeccably performed floaty vocal folk, with a traditional feel but modern guitar harmonies. Their website includes ‘a guide to picking and preparing wild herbs, including making teas, tinctures and flower essences’: I think you can hear the ‘flower essences’ in Pinknruby’s ethereal songs, which mine a rich vein exposed by acts like Capercaillie, Pentangle and Clannad. Don’t expect fiery reels: do expect to be taken somewhere otherworldly.
The Black & Reds
This is soulful classic rock with a deep, right on the money rhythm section feel, which puts me in mind of Ocean Colour Scene, but digs deeper into the past to find the swagger and dirt of the golden age of British Heavy Metal, with all the bluesy electrified devil worship of early Sabbath or Deep Purple. This is a band that come across like they could f*** up a hotel room pretty good, given half a chance, and still deliver a faultless show every night of the week.
Fuzzy Lights
Folky strings, warbling analogue sounding synths, haunting melodies in atmospheric soundscapes, occasional moments of metal-esque drama, all blended into a seamless psychedelic fusion that wears its influences on its sleeve without being a slave to them. Neither folk nor rock, and not what I’d call folk-rock, but something very distinctive and very accomplished.
Action Beat
Instrumental music needs a feature as human as a voice to engage our sympathies, and something as content rich as lyrics to keep our attention: it’s a brave group of musicians that would attempt it in a style as anti-noodly as punk, but Action Beat succeed while eschewing the virtuoso guitar melodics you might expect. They name check Black Flag as an influence, and their very musical use of texture comes across like BF without Henry Rollins, always keeping the energy level high, and taking enough side turnings to keep the journey interesting.
Mar Shy Sun
Avante-garde industrial rock with grinding electronic and bass/ guitar/ drums grooves that sound something like early Revolting Cocks, or Skinny Puppy, and anti vocals staggering drunkenly across the whole shebang like Elvis channeling John Lydon’s work on Flowers Of Romance. There is a very old school 80s industrial feel to this stuff so don’t expect industrial floor fillers à la Faderhead or Suicide Commando: expect restless experimentation and an uncompromising artistic vision.
Savon Tranchand
Quirkily rhythmic electronica with spoken word or chanted vocals (in French so I can’t say much about the lyrical content), and sparingly used guitar textures. Their beats are designed more for the art gallery than for clubland, and imaginatively sprinkled with punctuating noises: I find the whole process of not quite understanding Savon Tranchand very enjoyable!
Proud Proud People
Gentle music with an uplifting shuffle and contemplative moments supports a vulnerable and self-effacing vocal delivery: this unpretentious folk-pop is not going to make your ears bleed, but it will hopefully charm you as it did this reviewer.
Lina Paul
Desolate, lonely scenarios, like aural Edward Hopper paintings, are described in songs and poems that float above minimal washes of pale, haunted guitar chords. This reflective, introspective music occasionally brings to mind Portishead, and Björk’s vocal delivery, but it would be doing Lina Paul a disservice to say it was like anything much else.
JukeSome
Shapely melodies sung in appealing close harmony characterise this German accoustic duo’s well crafted songs. To my ear these are pop rock songs, but performed simply (and very well) on acoustic guitar and fiddle. I have no clue what they’re singing about, but I would happily sit and listen to them for an hour or two.
The Telescopes
Sometimes playing recognisable song structures that at their best are reminiscent of The Jesus And Mary Chain or The Velvet Underground’s psychedelic droning, and sometimes performing noise sculptures with the fire-and-forget self-generative qualities of minimalist music, this post-shoegaze outfit is in full command of the sonic potential of the electric guitar. If you let them, they will take you to interesting places.
The Fauns
Sounding not unlike their stated influence Slowdive, but with the vocals even more awash with reverb, and even further back in the mix, these latter day shoegazers show us once again how a brutally distorted guitar can be a thing of warm comforting mellowness. If this is self-celebration, it’s a very welcoming, inviting kind.
Totally Stressed
Self-identifying as Art Rock, these six women from Berlin perform music with a core of moderately heavy post-punk inflected rock, which they layer with folk and classical instruments and themes to create a powerful, complex and well integrated fusion. I find it very hard to imagine walking away from a Totally Stressed gig without a spring in my step...
The Skellies
Angry, attitude filled lyrics declaimed in the manner of Mark E. Smith and energetic, insistent punk riffing, sometimes sounding like The Clash or The Buzzcocks, sometimes more like The Dead Kennedys, always fraying at the edges just like punk should. The Skellies have their moments of experimental weirdness too, but mostly this is straightahead sweaty mosh fodder, which is always pleasing.
De Shamonix
This is red blooded rock ’n’ roll, with un-finessed graunch that makes you take a step back and brace yourself. The bass and drums could be straight out of Steppenwolf, while the guitars have a drug infused Detroit garage feel, and the rapid fire vocals are a masterclass in classic rock singing. De Shamonix pull no punches, and believe me, you don’t want them to!
Mary And The Baby Cheeses
Touching bases as diverse as Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, Freezepop, and The Velvet Underground, this is an experimental band that is unlikely to ever leave you feeling you know what’s coming next. With an idiosyncratic but varied approach to vocal delivery, there’s clearly some serious artistic intention here, but also a good deal of humour, and an end result that is highly entertaining.
Ange Da Costa
Reggae bubbling with funky clavinet recalls The Wailers, and guitar led afrobeat has more than a hint of Fela Kuti to it, but much of Ange Da Costa’s output is jazzy, funky soul, reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield or Brazilian artists such as Max De Castro and Jair Oliveira. Impeccable rhythm section work and great polyglot singing, make this slick, groove filled music eminently listenable.
