OK here we go - this is my top ten for 2012. All of these records improved my year immeasurably and are well worth a detour if you've not already had the pleasure.
Enjoy and stay tuned for new adventures in 2013!!
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| 10. PAWS - Cokefloat! |
Last year's rush of trad-rock revivalism (Arctic Monkeys, Beady Eye, Noel Gallagher) provided some great tunes but we all knew it was only a short term distraction from how turgid modern indie rock was in danger of becoming - even the Vaccines' stellar debut only managed to distract attention from the distinctly average competition for a brief period but there was always a void there to be filled. Most of my picks this year are indie guitar records and in truth there's very little risk of any of them troubling the upper reaches of the charts but it is becoming obvious that there's a wealth of under-promoted guitar music out there hiding some rough gems for the discerning explorer. PAWS are one such treasure, a bunch of US-leaning Scots on their first album of lo-fi indie fuzz rock leaning firmly in the direction of Dinosaur Jr, The Posies and Superchunk for a satisfying blend of college rock congeniality and a potent dose of punk rock vitriol lurking beneath the layer of frosting. As I have opined before on this blog, the Jocks seem to have a much easier relationship with American rock influences than their English neighbours and will happily embrace blatant Big Star/Byrds worship alongside the quintessentially American sounds of REM, Lemonheads and the host of college rock staples that fed into the alternative boom of the late 80s and early 90s - the resulting mix is often the best of both worlds, taking the sunshine and optimism from the feel- good Yank records and fusing it with the dour worldview and savage humour of your average group of young Scots to brew up a potent cocktail of love hearts and broken noses. 'Cokefloat!' runs on springboard indie dynamics, all sweet bursts of guitar scuzz and vocals that veer between twee and plaintive and paint-strippingly vitriolic although the band never tip over into melodrama and bitterness - despite the venom laced into the lyrics you still suspect that cheeky grins were sported throughout the recording process and even the title and artwork seem to be infused with an impish sense of fun (as I recall, a 'Cokefloat' was an improvised dessert incorporating a scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream dumped into a glass of Coke - probably a breakfast staple for your average Scottish schoolkid). Song titles like 'Boregasm' and 'Get Bent' don't do anything to detract from the good natured fun of the business at hand and the potent mix of melodic sugar fuzz and indie rock ballistics sounds tailor made for some killer live shows when they finally come through town. Those of you who remember Dananananakroyd from a couple of years back will recall that they didn't disappoint in that department and whilst PAWS lack the 'ten dudes on stage' frenetic charm of the Dans, they are probably more likely to stay together long enough to pen a decent follow up. There's plenty of fun to be had here and a whole host of anthemic indie rock and sugar-coated cynicism that'll lighten up any car journey or metro commute you've got coming up. Trust me, this shit is so catchy that hitting 'PAWS' will be the last thing on your mind (Ho ho ho!!).
Check out : the promo for 'Jellyfish', spliced together from some seriously lo-fi tour footage.
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| 9. Goat - World Music |
Psychedelia seems to be back in with a fluffy bullet at the moment, a development that I for one have absolutely no problem with. The relative demise of the single format (in rock terms at least) may be nudging people in the direction of cranking out albums' worth of material as opposed to just filling the gaps between radio hits or it may just be pure coincidence - either way there's a surfeit of trippy guitar rock to get your teeth into right now and if that sounds appealing then I can heartily recommend a big old slice of Goat to whet your appetite. Tame Impala have nabbed most of the accolades in the end of year polls with their zoned-out second instalment and while I can appreciate the lysergic charms of 'Bonerism' it does lack the punch of their catchy-as-fuck debut from a couple of years back and can easily blur into one long rehash of the Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows' if you stop paying attention. 'World Music' suffers from no such flaws, circling around one single theme (in this case that of the Goat itself) over nine tracks but each time comes at it strapped with some killer hooks and deft psychedelic chops to produce a string of memorable Woodstock-titled hippie rock. They're also blessed with a decent female vocalist who in my imagined-version of the band is a blond pothead decked out in love beads and flowing skirts who is into mushroom orgies with her male groupies (I'm going to avoid any press info on them to preserve this image) and her impressive pipes take this from a half-decent basement jam session record to a proper hedonistic rave-up tailor made for festival sunshine and late in the day hippie parties. I'm going to make a very lazy Jefferson Airplane comparison here but that doesn't do them justice, this is more like what Grace Slick would have sounded like going head to head with Santana back in the day. Organ-led trip outs like 'Disco Fever' are perfect for ceiling-staring sessions but you'll be up on your feet for riff-heavy slabs of psych rock like 'Let it Bleed' and 'Run to your Mama' as they bust out the tablas and wild solo wig-outs and bowl strikes with howling crescendos like the stunning 'Let it Bleed'. The Eastern influences come to the fore on their trio of eponymous offerings ('Goatman', 'Goathead' and later 'Goatlord' for good measure) and the swirling mantra 'Diarabi' opens the record before being brought back for a cataclysmic reprise at the close of proceedings. These guys have a real buzz to them and not even the disappointing revelation that they are all Swedish was enough to put me off their music (God I hate the fucking Swedes. Those BASTARDS) so I can't think of higher praise to offer up to the Altar of Goat to entice potential acolytes. These guys may be hippies but they're not afraid of hard work so I say get your Goat on without further ado.
Check out : 'Let it Bleed' complete with a weird landscape video and some gratuitous sax!
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| 8. Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold |
Forming an indie guitar band these days seems like a really dumb thing to do, basically a great way of getting yourself into huge amounts of debt whilst producing music that most of the industry has pretty much decided is no longer commercially palatable. You have to find it encouraging that any new bands even bother to pick up the torch - thankfully many still do and Parquet Courts are possibly the most promising of this year's crop, easing out 'Light Up Gold' to general indifference but suggesting that they have enough in the tank to climb the ladder pretty bloody quickly. Their music is basically Peel-friendly indie guitar rock - there's a spot of Pavement-esque idiosyncrasy in there but the riffs are as catchy as anything on the first Strokes record and their laidback delivery kinda reminds me of 90s uberdorks Papas Fritas. They've basically nailed the template for infectious discordant garage rock without having to resort to 'Wooo!! Look at me!!' screaming and atonal bluster - the delivery remains pretty steady throughout but they throw in enough choppy riffs, stop/start dynamics and My-God-that's-catchy choruses to keep you coming back for repeated listens. I didn't fall for this one straightaway, it took me a couple of sideways glances on E-music before I downloaded the whole thing and another week or two before I gave it my full attention but once it got under my skin there was absolutely no shaking the bastard off. If my attempt to transcribe their sound has so far failed to convince you then basically imagine the first Futureheads LP if a bunch of Yanks had made it (with Texans relocated to NYC replacing Mackems trying to conquer Leeds and London). They come armed with a stack of oddball ideas and manage to cram everything into 15 tracks over 34 minutes, varying the tempo between tracks and making every riff and well-placed pause matter with the dynamics of a well-drilled punk band and the mischievous wit of an art-school indie outfit. Opener 'Master of my Craft' bangs out a riff that sounds like the Fall circa 'Hey Student!' bent into a tighter arc and augmented with slack-jawed 'Fuggedaboutit' vocals - it's catchy as fuck and the best bit is when it runs straight into the even more infectious 'Borrowed Time', two and a half minutes of where the Strokes should have headed after 'Reptilia'. They keep it trimmed throughout the LP and at least half the tracks come in under two minutes - the two-part title track clocks in at an economical 1 minute 31 seconds - but it's always time well spent and they cram in enough pop hooks and rampaging discordant punk riffs to leave you satisfied at the end of every noise burst. 'Careers in Combat' bounces around job ideas for the macho over a minute of dozed-out 90s college indie and the frantic stomp of 'Disney Pt' sounds like a nerd raging at his online date whilst the comparably epic 'Stoned and Starving' ekes out a streamlined indie riff over five minutes of lo-fi narrative to combustibly potent effect (think The Cribs' 'Be Safe' with less poetry). If these guys had come out with an album like this back in 2004 then their wire-tight indie riffs would have blown up like the Godfather (although it probably wouldn't have hurt if they'd also been British and reasonably good looking). In today's less-amenable climate who knows what kind of a dent 'Light up Gold' will make but for the time being I reckon it's probably better suited to touring the indie circuits to crowds of enthusiastic die-hards before they end up on a shampoo advert or something like that. This is a well-crafted slice of time well spent and one that I heartily recommend if you're yearning for a spot of scuzzball indie brilliance to take you into the New Year.
Check out : 'Borrowed Time', an irresistible blend of skinny-tie indie and US slacker rock.
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| 7. DIIV - Oshin |
Shoegaze, Dream Pop, whatever you want to call it, has been back in vogue now for longer than it was actually big in the first place - if you trace things back to the emergence of House of Love in 1988 through to Adorable's 'Against Perfection' in 1993 (arguably the genre's last classic) then you're still only looking at five years end to end and the delay pedal theatrics that came back in with Asobi Seksu and a Place to Bury Strangers in 2006/07 have yet to drift out of fashion leaving us with just as many (if not more) decent bands as the first wave. DIIV are just another notch on the bedpost in that respect but that doesn't make them any less appealing - I'm reluctant to shell out new cash on stuff that sounds like old vinyl I picked up in the 90s but 'Oshin' is like the cutesy little puppy dog that you pass by in the pet shop and fall in love with (even if your flat is already full of dusty old puppies released on Creation back in 1991). These dudes sound very much like fellow bleached-out retro merchants Wild Nothing but have a touch more guitar reverb to contend with and 'Oshin' will wash over you in the nicest way possible leaving a nice warm fuzz in its wake. However the album's strength is that it's actually a bit of a grower - this set functions as a blissed out uninterrupted swathe but there are a few genuine highlights that you'll want to come back to for repeated listens as it slowly dawns on you that these guys are actually the subtlest of hit makers. Trippy gems like 'Sometime', 'Doused' and 'How Long Have You known?' won't jump out and bite you on the butt or anything but you'll find yourself coming back to them again and again as 'Oshin' ends up on heavy rotation without you even noticing. Elsewhere they drift nicely into a sea of reverb for drone-outs like the two part '(Druun)' and the luscious 'Air Conditioning' giving the album a gorgeous cloud cushion as its foundation onto which the band discreetly stack up the hooks for a subtly intoxicating mix. This record wasn't love at first sight for me but I found that the more I listened to it the less I wanted to live without it - one to keep at hand for train journeys, hangovers and mood-softeners and one you won't burn out through repeated listens. DIIV look like a bunch of dorks and could potentially be very boring live but they have succeeded in laying down one of the most luscious soundscapes of the year and bagged themselves a real slow-burning classic - the world doesn't need another shoegaze album or another of hipster delay pedal revivalists but even with all that in mind there's still no reason for not bagging yourself a copy of 'Oshin' and playing it as often as possible. The world of dream pop continues to evolve and right now DIIV are right at the top of the food chain.
Check out : 'Doused', another paradise island in a sea of reverb.
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| 6. Bear In Heaven - I Love You, It's Cool |
Given my combined dislike for hippies, electro and stupid band names it's a surprise that this record even crossed my path in the first place but upon reflection I'm very glad that it did. If I'd compiled this list based purely on the number of times I'd listen to each of the albums on it then 'I love you, it's cool' would have probably come out on top - the fact that it came out quite early in the year may have influenced that particular stat but then again I've also had longer to get sick of it and that's still yet to happen despite me having played the arse off it since I first bought it several months ago. Bear in Heaven fall into the Yank hipster electronics bracket, an umbrella category grouping together a few great bands (Animal Collective, Holy Fuck, Health, Crystal Castles - yes I know they're Canadian) and a lot of crap made by bearded blokes on laptops but thankfully they're on the right side of that particular divide thanks to a talent for writing pop hooks and a reluctance to disappear up the creative arsehole of self-indulgent flights of fancy. When I checked out their earlier stuff I found it equally fascinating and frustrating, swathes of art house electro with the occasional gem that nevertheless seemed destined to get lost down the back of the couch. 'I love you...' dispenses with the chin-stroking exhibitionism and locks down for ten tracks of sinfully infectious and effortlessly cool electronica which is all killer no filler, stacking up gems of soft-focus euphoric pop bathed in waves of warm reverb. The album title sounds like the kind of comment some drugged-up soap-dodger would come out with at 3am in the chill out room but it does sum the mood of the record up nicely, as do tracks titles like 'Cool Light', 'Warm Water' and 'Kiss Me Crazy', all ushering in a loved-up mood of cloud-hopping delirium the likes of which tends to be reserved to floor-filling rave anthems - indie bands like Friendly Fires and Hot Chip have been trying to bottle that very essence for years now with little success but the Bear have managed better than most to mainline the warm glow of classic house through their own setlist without descending into gimmickry. In a weird way this kinda reminds me of the Pet Shop Boys at their most danceable pointy-hatted peak circa 'Very' when they gracefully straddled the fence between radio-friendly pop and clubland subculture to impressive effect and considerable commercial success. The boys aren't a lightweight proposal though, you can hear them drumkit on most of the tracks here and they use synths to flesh out their sound rather than as a strobe-lit assault on the senses to give the record a lush feel that you can relax into like a big old comfy chair. There's crossover hits too in the shape of singles 'Sinful Nature' and 'Reflection of You' which will snuggle up to you on first listen and refuse to let go whilst the more upbeat zig-zag electronics of 'Space Remains' provide the potential for a raved-up set closer to fry brains and win over neutrals. With the abundance of indie bands reclaiming dance music as their own there are still precious few who seem to fully appreciate the crowd energy and pumped-up euphoria of classic rave and fewer still who can reproduce those vibes on an indie record - Bear in Heaven have succeeded in glorious fashion on 'I love you, it's cool' and though their aversion to quick-thrill theatrics may ensure that they continue to fly under the radar for many, they will nevertheless retain a special place in my heart for this cool as fuck corker of an album. Line this one up alongside the rockier Goat album from earlier in this list and you have one blissed out trip through the woods to look forward to.
Check out : 'Cool Light', the younger cousin to this old school slice of lush pop perfection.
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| 5. Baroness - Yellow and Green |
I catalogued my Terrorizer magazine collection recently (this is how a record geek cleans up his flat people!) and it dawned on me how many killer metal records I've totally missed the boat on over the last few years (Watain, Enslaved, the Celtic Frost comeback record to name but a few). The problem metal has always suffered from is that it tends to get marginalised by huge sections of the mainstream press - I remember being somewhat unsurprised to read in The Guardian's music section that they were forced to admit during an article on the best albums of the noughties that they didn't have one single journalist capable of naming any contenders in the metal bracket. Whilst I can understand the reluctance amongst certain pundits to review bands like Necrosadistic Goat Torture, their shameless snobbery does lead to a good deal of bands with a slightly broader appeal getting overlooked - then again the enterprising metal fan is used to having to do a spot of digging so the prize is there for anyone willing to work for it. Baroness were one of the many bands to have passed me by until now but fortunately I may have latched onto them at the peak of their powers - a couple of colour themed albums have already surfaced but they appear to have been building up a head of steam before unleashing this colossal double LP on an unsuspecting audience. The band belong more in the heavy rock bracket that the outright metal category - there's no blastbeats or screeching solos on here, more a full-bodied mix of pulpy riff-driven motor rock with a touch of prog to widen the frame and allow the band free range to elaborate over 18 individual chapters as part of a volcanic twinset. Prog has often been a byword for wanton self-indulgence and navel-gazing muso noodling in my book so let me state for the record that there's none of that going on here - the band make good use of their time and push the boundaries back to let their music breathe rather than over-embellishing just for the sake of it, allowing a pulpy organic sound to flourish over two separate suites without becoming repetitive or resorting to shock tactics and gimmicks to retain the listener's attention. Their sound carries over the space-gazing prog of hairy granddads like Hawkwind and King Crimson into the weighty Southern rock of modern bands like Clutch to cover both ends of the spectrum without sacrificing elaborate ideas or satisfying low-end rock propulsion. Cuts like 'Take My Bones Away' and 'Back Where I Belong' sound like they're being played from a stage in the middle of nowhere and pumped out into the empty night in the hope that someone out there might prick up their ears and each track seems to disappear further into the previous one until first suite highlight 'Cocainium' locks into a lunging groove somewhere beneath the Earth's crust and bursts back into glorious life. The retreat into hidden realms of the psyche reminds me of Floyd's 'The Wall', as does the decision to split proceedings over two discs which allows the listener to sink into the vision and forget the edges of the screen ever existed - I'm not sure whether Baroness are trying to substitute rock opera for ten years of therapy but in any case their trip into the cinematic is an altogether successful one. 'Yellow and Green' is in turn glorious and hypnotic, devastating and dreamlike in equal measure and a totally unmissable trip into the outer reaches of rock music for those willing to book a ticket. If you've got a late session that needs a soundtrack for disappearing into the endless night then 'Yellow and Green' might just be the discovery you've been waiting for - whether you dabble in heavier tones or not, do not miss out on this bumper pack of grizzly goodies.
Check out : 'Cocainium', their very own 'Comfortably Numb'.
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| 4. Tribes - Baby |
Decent indie debuts have become the modern day equivalent of a White Christmas - in the past we expected them to roll around without fail and pretty much took them for granted but these days with the proliferation of neo-folk, poshboy electro and the tuneless art school flailings of the current crop of new bands we've learnt to be thankful every time a half-decent indie guitar record turns up for fear that we might have seen the last of them for good. There's no risk of that of course, bands will carry on making these records but in the face of a faltering music industry and a widespread media lack of interest in chart-friendly indie guitar rock there's every chance that their records won't see the light of day which is why Tribes are such a pleasant surprise - five or six years ago these guys would have cleaned the fuck up with a debut this strong and would have carved a good half dozen hit singles from 'Baby' in the days when the format still meant anything. They may have been born too late (or maybe not - lead single 'We Were Children' highlights their childhood in the mid 1990s which still meant that they'd have been teenagers during the indie boom of the mid 00s and that didn't stop folks like The View and Arctic Monkeys coining it in) or just surfaced in a particularly harsh climate for their sort of music - the fact that there was no Glastonbury in 2012 deprived them of a priceless opportunity to play a career-changing blinder that would have been duly televised and viewed by zillions of potential fans. As things stand 'Baby' may remain a well-appreciated footnote in history - it still gained plenty of plaudits and featured in many of the mainstream press best of 2012 rundowns - or it could provide the springboard for the band to go on to bigger and better things but for now I'll just stick to appreciating it as the year's brightest hope. If you haven't heard them by now then basically Tribes play mid-tempo indie anthems in the vein of glam rock-influenced 90s stalwarts like Mansun and Heavy Stereo but with way more hooks - the first thought to cross my mind when reviewing them early in 2012 was that they were the year's answer to the Vaccines but in truth they're a different proposal on a number of levels. Whilst 'What did you expect....' was crammed to the rafters with smash 'n' grab pop punk hooks, Tribes take their time but come up with something equally as satisfying. Rollicking dance floor anthems like early single 'Until my day comes' will get crowds bouncing but they're not the band's stock trade and they sound at their most natural navigating the three beers deep woozy vibe of late afternoon festival slots on hands in the air singalongs like 'Corner of an English Field', 'Sappho' and the aforementioned 'We Were Children', all pillars of a singles trilogy that should have been their 'Oh My God', 'I Predict a Riot' and 'Everyday I love you less and less' had they surfaced in kinder times. Mellower gems like 'Halfway Home' and 'Himalaya' temper the set list in the same way as the slower psychedelic parts of the debut offerings from Supergrass and The Vines and even album tracks like opener 'Whenever' and the euphoric 'Walking in the Street' see them bowl strikes at every attempt - these dudes have so many anthems up their sleeves that you start to suspect they've nicked them from other bands whilst they weren't looking. 'Baby' isn't just a promising debut, it's the sound of that promise being fulfilled and the only potential downside is that you fear the band may have shot their bolt too soon and cleared out their arsenal before building any momentum - I personally don't think there's too much risk of that, after all The Vaccines managed to crack out another corker this year and only time will tell how much Tribes have in the tank but for the moment they've given us a platinum-clad classic by way of introduction.
Check out : 'Sappho', 'We Were Children'.....I can't pick highlights, just check out the lot.
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| 3. Jesca Hoop - The House That Jack Built |
2012 was a pretty good year for the weird girls with oddball gems from Laurel Halo, Holly Herndon and Frankie Rose providing enticing trips into the minds of some of music's most fascinating females in the face of the industry-sponsored rise of Lana Del Rey and a host of identikit diet coke soul acts hoping to ape the astronomical record sales of Adele. My discovery of the year was ex-Mormon and Tom Waits protege Jesca Hoop who'd been hovering around in the background for a few years on the back of impressive touring credits with the likes of Mark Knopfler, Elbow and Peter Gabriel - those guys are all cool enough but there's not much chance of a guy like me shelling out plenty to go see them live which is pretty much the only excuse I've got for not having heard her stellar material until now. 'The House....' is her third album and takes in deep forays into incidental emotion and elaborate fantasy to craft something genuinely different, avoiding the standard 'I'm in love'/'I've been dumped' template and instead chewing over individual moments like a novelist and flinging herself into enthusiastic flights of fancy. Her closest parallel is probably Bat for Lashes and there are moments here that I'll keep aside for times when I can really concentrate to fully appreciate the tone and space in her music - stuff for the evening walk home rather than the caffeine-buzz route to work if you catch my drift. Jesca's take on events is slightly more playful and knockabout than Natasha Khan's though and packs more promise for the long term - I loved Lashes' debut but her star has faded slightly over three LPs whereas the Hoop appears to be moving in the opposite direction. I could chuck in lazy Kate Bush and Bjork comparisons here too but that'd be too general to give you a proper idea of what's going on - let's just say her skill in capturing concepts mirrors Bjork's on stuff like 'Hyperballad' where she seizes a seemingly ludicrous idea and sculpts a universe around it for context - Jesca's contribution is the equally fabulous 'Hospital (To Win Your Love)' which revolves around the merits of an impromptu trip to the Emergency Ward to curry favour with relatives, elicit sympathy from friends and maybe even tap into some sympathy booty along the way. She expounds on this theory over music so unfeasibly cheerful that you can't help but break out into a massive Cheshire Cat grin and I had little hesitation in picking it as my track of the year in my rundown a few days back. Her talent doesn't just lie in the crafting of undiscovered global megahits though - the stoic electronica of 'Peacemaker' and 'Dig This Record' echo some of PJ Harvey's colder, more robotic moments whilst the clear-cut acoustic guitar and vocal overdubs on 'Pack Animal' bring to mind Suzanne Vega at her most radio friendly. Her most intimate material even drops back to her folk roots for some truly evocative tributes to her late father on 'DNR' and the positively heart-breaking title track which prove that she's not too self-consciously kooky to pitch it straight from the heart. This is the sort of record that could so easily be ruined by a Scrubs montage or some over-zealous marketing to the wrong audience but the alternative is that it risks going completely undiscovered and that would be even more of a tragedy so do yourself a favour and look up this lady for a glimpse into the mind of an artist surely on the cusp of something wonderful.
Check out : Opener 'Born To', an effective mission statement if ever there was one.
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| 2. Toy - s/t |
With indie it often isn't about the music, it's all about the moment. The Stone Roses spent years toiling as shambolic no-hopers until the Madchester scene gave them a springboard to success, Blur popped up with a novelty hit in the baggy era but didn't show what they were truly capable of until Britpop came into bloom, the faceless post-Britpop outfit Runston Parva didn't turn any heads until they renamed themselves the Kaiser Chiefs and started writing for the radio and the Black Keys managed an entire decade under the radar before the demise of the White Stripes allowed them to ascend to global majesty. When the massive guitar-based indie boom of the mid-noughties reached its commercial zenith you could pretty much bag an instant no.1 hit with your debut but it wasn't too long before the bubble burst and bands were forced to change or die - shambolic garage indie crew the Horrors did just that, ditching their sixth-form diet psychobilly shtick and reinventing themselves as a super-potent cocktail of shoegaze and Krautrock and their proteges Toy followed suit, casting aside their previous incarnation as 60% of skinny-jeaned also rans Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong to morph into a similarly stellar tripadelic indie sensation. But let's be clear, Toy are no baby Horrors - there's a whole lot more to them than that. Whilst Faris Badwan and co make amazing records, they do tend to sound like they're skilled in the art of studio twiddling rather than a fully functioning rock ensemble and often look like they're been dragged onstage against their will when they play live - Toy on the other hand are a brutally efficient guitar band with a wealth of ideas first and foremost and have a decent producer behind them to turn it all into a polished end product. They're not overly riff-reliant and tend to rely more on their engine room and coast along nicely on a wave of guitar fuzz - the seven minute 'Dead and Gone' builds momentum gradually as it grows into a groundswell of noise and the aptly-titled 'Motoring' sucks you into its slipstream as it hurtles on into the night. Best of all is the manic set-closer 'Kopter' which whirrs and hums as the band explode into a maelstrom of psychedelic guitar rock. But they're not just a jam band flexing their muscles - synths and string samples litter the album's other tracks to add a layer of polished pop appeal, 'Lose My Way' ushering in wurlitzer synths like the younger cousin of the Horrors' 'Who Can Say' whilst 'Reasons Why' bends a distorted string riff into all kinds of new and wonderful shapes. Best of all is the Burt Bacharach-esque 'My Hearts Skips A Beat' which surfs in on a gorgeous orchestral string sample like the sun coming up after a wild night out, cruising smoothly to its conclusion as it ascends gracefully through the spheres. These guys (and girl) clearly have a treasure trove of sonic treats at their fingertips but have succeeded in forging their own sound from the ground up before embellishing it with trinkets and the result is a record that packs enough punch to satiate the needs of your average guitar fan whilst maintaining a widescreen cinematic quality to keep curious pop fans interested. 'Toy' is so good it's almost unsettling - where were this lot hiding while they were cooking up this little gem? This is a debut brimming with musical invention, psychedelic rock dynamics and deft songwriting chops - as someone from the NME pointed out upon its release, it took the Horrors three albums to get this good so who knows what this lot will come up with next?
Check out : 'Dead and Gone', seven minutes and forty seconds put to very good use indeed.
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| 1. The Men - Open Your Heart |
Picking favourites is always tough but once I'd sat down and thought about it there was little doubt in my mind that 'Open Your Heart' was my pick of the year for the simple reason that it encapsulates everything I love about music at the moment. The band are just another bunch of Brooklyn scenesters living on the breadline and piling gear into the van but they play raw, hooky garage punk with plenty of venom, oodles of enthusiasm and a dose of humour for good measure. Ten years ago any band playing this kind of stuff with a 'The' in front of their name would have been snapped up by eager industry execs and had a massive record deal shoved under their noses before they had time to catch their breath - these days you'll be lucky if you can squeeze a cheaply recorded album between monotonous day jobs and poorly attended live shows. But this sort of music was never meant for the bigtime and when even the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster are turning up on Nike advert soundtracks you just know it's the right time for garage rock to return to the underground. 'Open Your Heart' is a classic indie record - it should be sold cheap as should the tickets for their live shows but that's no statement on the quality on offer, it's a lifestyle choice. This record rips from the very beginning but already bears the hallmarks of a band who have outgrown their post-adolescent volume junkie phase and are ready to expand and explore with their own palette of sounds. Opener 'Turn it Around' will rip your head off before the even more savage follow-up 'Animal' proceeds to shit right down your neck but it's not all about who can riff the loudest - the slide guitar vibration of of 'Country Song' and late gem 'Presence' edge closer to drawn out psychedelia and the breezily melodic 'Please don't go away' sees them warm their sound up for a subtle spot of romance. The title track sees them at their most violently sincere, inviting the listener into their uncompromising yet irresistible headspace and the seven minutes spent gradually winding up the throbbing pulse of 'Oscillation' show that slow-release dynamics are as much part of their canon as two-minute blasts of shit-kicking punk rock. The Vines tried to do this a decade ago and achieved some measure of success but the effortless juxtaposition of the blissed out acoustic thrum of 'Candy' against the yowling thrash of 'Cube' seems organic in comparison, practically second nature for a band whose nature is to flit between joyous celebration and wanton destruction in the same way those themes often interlink in everyday life. Closer 'Ex-Dreams' tips its hat in both directions, spinning off into realms of wa-wa distortion and thunderous percussion interspersed with lucid waves of lo-fi vocals and understated 'Daydream Nation' guitar fuzz as the proceedings clatter to a deepy satisfying finale and the noise fades into gorgeous oblivion. 'Open Your Heart' is the sort of guitar record I thought they didn't make anymore, although truth be told it's the sort of record that bands never stopped making when it ceased to be fashionable - this is a sound to get lost in when you're four beers deep at your local indie toilet venue taking a chance on a weeknight live show because deep down you know how life-affirming this kind of shit can be when it's done well. It's a tribute to that scene and the lifestyle that goes with it, a truly underground web of bands that move outside of trends and zeitgeist shifts and simply play from the heart and knock you flat on your arse every fucking night out there. I didn't realise it until I checked how often I'd come back to this album but ultimately 'Open Your Heart' made my year and I could even go as far as to say that it rekindled my faith in garage punk. But there's no need to be melodramatic - this is just as badass slab of scuzzy indie rock 'n' roll music with a potent dose of psychedelia mixed in and if that don't get your heart pounding then you and I were just never meant to be friends.
Check out : the band tearing the shuddering fuck out of 'Ex-Dreams' live at Bro-Fest.
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