VT’s Music Chat

[chrisp65]

5 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

I have always been anti them. Just don’t trust them. 

No, that’s the wrong response.

You say ‘what was that thing that caused you to have a monumental change of heart?’

and then my response is: ‘I was kicked in the head by a horse’.

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Seat68 said:

You get the advanced badge. I have demanded a resit. 

I am now working on the education of their children, with their full approval. 

[mjmooney]

57 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

One has a full drum kit and can play motorik and hits the big ol’ drum at the back of a samba band.

One has a piano and plays a lot of OST movie score

Similar. Elder one plays the the mandolin, younger one drums. What with the missus and her Irish folk whistle, we're nothing if not eclectic. 

Edited May 26, 2021 by mjmooney

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Similar. Elder one plays the the mandolin, younger one drums. What with the missus and her Irish folk whistle, we're nothing if not eclectic. 

That has all the makings of a new Mumford and Sons. Mooney and daughters, run for the frickin hills

[sidcow]

8 minutes ago, bickster said:

That has all the makings of a new Mumford and Sons. Mooney and daughters, run for the frickin hills

I won't wait.

[mjmooney]

Don't worry, we have no such intentions. 

 

Edited May 26, 2021 by mjmooney

[Mark Albrighton]

The earlier talk of the vaccines and the wombats reminded me of this article/Q&A from Vice about what would later be known as “landfill indie”.

I’m not a fan of Johnny Borrell or Razorlight but I did find this a fairly entertaining read where he gives an honest (re)appraisal of some of the indie scene at the time, including his own band.

Quote

What started as The Strokes spearheading a magnificent renaissance in the idea of “the band” quickly descended into the pits of what became known as “Landfill Indie.” As a genre, the name is self-explanatory. A&Rs had seen the success of The Strokes and with a sizeable wedge of money left over from an era where people still bought CDs, they went about signing enough shit indie music to overfill a rotting landfill, trampolining supply way over the heads of demand. By the end, indie music was practically buried underneath forlorn copies of the NME, Topman branded winklepickers, and flyers for an all ages night in Vauxhall.

From The Wombats and The Fratellis to One Night Only and The Ting Tings, the gamut of landfill indie runs long and deep. Yet if there was one figure who came to symbolize this decline, one pantomime villain into whom the great British public—or at least the media—projected all their self-loathing and contempt, it was Johnny Borrell: the white-trousered, turbo-mouthed singer of Razorlight.

Link

In my opinion, I think Hard Fi can consider themselves very fortunate they escaped a kicking.

[chrisp65]

I’ve never knowingly heard the Vaccines or The Wombats.

Didn’t press play on that youtube clip.

I bailed out the moment people started taking Ocean Colour Scene seriously.

 

[villa4europe]

1 hour ago, Mark Albrighton said:

The earlier talk of the vaccines and the wombats reminded me of this article/Q&A from Vice about what would later be known as “landfill indie”.

I’m not a fan of Johnny Borrell or Razorlight but I did find this a fairly entertaining read where he gives an honest (re)appraisal of some of the indie scene at the time, including his own band.

Link

In my opinion, I think Hard Fi can consider themselves very fortunate they escaped a kicking.

"From the wombats and the fratellis to one night only and the ting tings" 

I've seen all 4 of those bands, 2 of them were utter shite... Tings tings was supporting the cribs to be fair, fratellis were brilliant in the wulfrun, one night only not a clue what I was thinking but those were the days of £10 gigs in places like bar fly and little civic, bands like Joe lean and the jing jang Jong, saw the enemy 4th on the bill in the barfly and saw them 10+ times on the first album at various festivals and NME tours, best I saw was bloc party in Manchester supported by cribs and foals, there were so many bands 

Never saw hard fi though or Razorlight

Started listening to a podcast called 22 grand pod which is OK, he's interviewing guys from that era like Kyle Falconer (I loved the view) and the lead singer from forward russia

[Seat68]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

"From the wombats and the fratellis to one night only and the ting tings" 

I've seen all 4 of those bands, 2 of them were utter shite... Tings tings was supporting the cribs to be fair, fratellis were brilliant in the wulfrun, one night only not a clue what I was thinking but those were the days of £10 gigs in places like bar fly and little civic, bands like Joe lean and the jing jang Jong, saw the enemy 4th on the bill in the barfly and saw them 10+ times on the first album at various festivals and NME tours, best I saw was bloc party in Manchester supported by cribs and foals, there were so many bands 

Never saw hard fi though or Razorlight

Started listening to a podcast called 22 grand pod which is OK, he's interviewing guys from that era like Kyle Falconer (I loved the view) and the lead singer from forward russia

I have seen all of the people mentioned. Bloc Party were a phenomenal live band. Hard Fi were the utter worst, see also The View. Cribs gig was the one where one of them hospitalised themselves. I was drinking pints of wine that night. 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Seat68 said:

I was drinking pints of wine that night.

I have a Cribs album on CD, don't know which one off the top of my head. Every now and again I spot and think "hmmm don't really remember that" and make the mistake of putting it on. As much as I really like to give everything a chance, it never makes it to the end.

The pint of Wine was probably neccessary

I have a stack of CDs in a pile earmarked for Oxfam. The Cribs didn't quite make that pile (which shows how loathed I am to throw anything out). The Ting Tings and Razorlight very much did as did The Stereophonics. Before anyone asks, they were all freebies

[villa4europe]

The views interview on that podcast was good, I was in to them, reading that article though they say the same thing, young kids who had a bit of energy about them, the A&R team just plied them with drugs in order to be compliant and then by the time it started to wear off and they had to do some proper actual music they had nothing to say

That article is also right about sex on fire / dakota, I hate those songs despite liking both bands, absolute karaoke songs 

The one thing that article doesn't do is go on to talk about the sheer number of bands that came and went, somehow got a record deal, maybe had one big song, there's a **** tonne of them Franz ferdinand, the bravery, kaiser chiefs, the rapture, klaxons, maximo Park

Bloc party and foals were the ones for me, loved them, saw an interview last year about foals saying its mad how they're the only band really still going at a high level from that whole scene (Arctic monkeys not being a part of that scene as they went huge straight away, they weren't doing NME awards tours) 

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

The views interview on that podcast was good, I was in to them, reading that article though they say the same thing, young kids who had a bit of energy about them, the A&R team just plied them with drugs in order to be compliant and then by the time it started to wear off and they had to do some proper actual music they had nothing to say

That article is also right about sex on fire / dakota, I hate those songs despite liking both bands, absolute karaoke songs 

The one thing that article doesn't do is go on to talk about the sheer number of bands that came and went, somehow got a record deal, maybe had one big song, there's a **** tonne of them Franz ferdinand, the bravery, kaiser chiefs, the rapture, klaxons, maximo Park

Bloc party and foals were the ones for me, loved them, saw an interview last year about foals saying its mad how they're the only band really still going at a high level from that whole scene (Arctic monkeys not being a part of that scene as they went huge straight away, they weren't doing NME awards tours) 

Maximo Park and Franz Ferdinand are still going 20 years later, no ideas about the others. 20 years hasn't made them any more or less average than they were then

[Rugeley Villa]

This is from 1970. War Pigs by Black Sabbath but with alternative lyrics. The power from this song is immense. Infact the whole concert is brilliant, but this song showcases the power of sabbath when they were on their A game. Ozzy is absolutely killing it and the origins of head banging are for all to see. Iommi is hitting you with sledgehammers. No one was playing like this on the guitar in 1970. Geezer is all over the bass. The standout is Bill Ward on drums. If anyone has time and interest just watch him play for the whole song. Very powerful drumming with great fills and footwork. Young and hungry before the fame and drugs took over .

[GarethRDR]

8 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

In my opinion, I think Hard Fi can consider themselves very fortunate they escaped a kicking.

Probably as it's such low-hanging fruit, it doesn't even need to be said.  Funnily enough, the old joke of any band called "The [insert word]/s" being the absolute pits when re-appraising the landfill-indie era tends to hold true for the most part. 

Of the ones mentioned on this page; Foals material of that era wouldn't/shouldn't really get lumped in with it, Antidotes being essentially spun out of the mathier elements of The Edmund Fitzgerald.  Bloc Party get a pass because Silent Alarm was/still is a terrific album, though the follow-up was firmly planted in the middle of the road and I've not heard anything since that's been particularly interesting (though I've a soft spot for Flux as a bit of a cheeky, cheerful, dancey banger).  Klaxons kinda spear-headed that short-lived nu-rave thing, again it's not really stuff you'd need more than one album of but their first album had more than just the one decent track on it, if memory recalls their Not Over Yet cover got all the radio-play but Atlantis To Interzone is absolutely where it's at.  Dig a bit deeper and there were bands doing the Klaxons-thing far better though, like Late Of The Pier and Does It Offend You, Yeah? (particularly the former, Fantasy Black Channel is a joy).  Test Icicles still stands up well - possibly benefiting from almost immediately calling it quits after their debut, no chance of going stale - and Dev Hynes has gone on to have a frankly ludicrous producing career.

I won't start banging on about ¡Forward, Russia!, because I'll be here all night and I really should go to bed.

[mjmooney]

6 hours ago, GarethRDR said:

Probably as it's such low-hanging fruit, it doesn't even need to be said.  Funnily enough, the old joke of any band called "The [insert word]/s" being the absolute pits when re-appraising the landfill-indie era tends to hold true for the most part. 

Of the ones mentioned on this page; Foals material of that era wouldn't/shouldn't really get lumped in with it, Antidotes being essentially spun out of the mathier elements of The Edmund Fitzgerald.  Bloc Party get a pass because Silent Alarm was/still is a terrific album, though the follow-up was firmly planted in the middle of the road and I've not heard anything since that's been particularly interesting (though I've a soft spot for Flux as a bit of a cheeky, cheerful, dancey banger).  Klaxons kinda spear-headed that short-lived nu-rave thing, again it's not really stuff you'd need more than one album of but their first album had more than just the one decent track on it, if memory recalls their Not Over Yet cover got all the radio-play but Atlantis To Interzone is absolutely where it's at.  Dig a bit deeper and there were bands doing the Klaxons-thing far better though, like Late Of The Pier and Does It Offend You, Yeah? (particularly the former, Fantasy Black Channel is a joy).  Test Icicles still stands up well - possibly benefiting from almost immediately calling it quits after their debut, no chance of going stale - and Dev Hynes has gone on to have a frankly ludicrous producing career.

I won't start banging on about ¡Forward, Russia!, because I'll be here all night and I really should go to bed.

 

[villa4europe]

7 hours ago, GarethRDR said:

I won't start banging on about ¡Forward, Russia!, because I'll be here all night and I really should go to bed.

but you will have to at some point...

i was trying to break the CD via repetition at one stage, then it just fell off a cliff and hasn't stood the test of time, now its just shouty noise with a funny voice

but if you like them try and give his interview on 22 grand pod a listen

Edited May 27, 2021 by villa4europe

[Seat68]

8 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

but you will have to at some point...

i was trying to break the CD via repetition at one stage, then it just fell off a cliff and hasn't stood the test of time, now its just shouty noise with a funny voice

but if you like them try and give his interview on 22 grand pod a listen

The Rakes 22 Grand Job, of which thats a pun holds up I think. The Rakes in general were a pretty strong band in an Art Brut fashion. As time went on both The Rakes and Art Brut got watered down in my opinion and both lost their charm. 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by Seat68

[GarethRDR]

8 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

but you will have to at some point...

i was trying to break the CD via repetition at one stage, then it just fell off a cliff and hasn't stood the test of time, now its just shouty noise with a funny voice

I could never offer a truly balanced opinion. They're the band I've seen live the most, street-teamed for them on the MTV New Music Tour back in, I think 2006-ish (bill for that night had, amongst others, The Maccabees who were still going as late as ~2015, somewhat inexplicably to my mind as I'd have absolutely thrown them onto the landfill pile. Wolfmother were headlining), heck as I type this I'm sat next to one of the Give Me A Wall posters from that night. Took a 9-hour National Express coach ride for their reunion show at the Brudenell (was too skint to get a train ticket at the time!) back in 2013 and my wife and I have a fleetingly brief appearance in the mini-doc somebody shot that night (~5:06 mark below).

I would say I didn't particularly get on with the second album so much, in moving to a more expansive sound it seemed to lose a bit of that raw, frenetic energy they had live that was perfectly captured on GMAW. They were always terrific live. To me it all sounded like nothing else I'd heard at that point, I mean not many bands at the time would have been citing both Gang Of Four and Vince DiCola's 1986 Transformers soundtrack as influences. And I do bloody love me some shouty-noise, funny-voice stuff.

What strikes me the most looking back is just how much I kinda owe what I listen to these days (or can at least draw straggly lines back) to ¡Forward, Russia!; I bought At The Drive-In's Relationship Of Command sight-unseen, purely off the back of most articles about GMAW citing it as the album it most sounded like. Relationship has long-since been firmly cemented as my all-time, number #1 album to this day (with suitably ATDI my favourite band). As ¡Forward, Russia! self-released a lot of stuff through through their own label (Dance To The Radio), they'd tend to tour with local Leeds and other Yorkshire bands and put out a series of sampler albums championing local stuff.  This in turn lead to that sort of weird "New Yorkshire" scene-within-a-scene. Your mileage definitely varies on the quality of stuff within it (The Pigeon Detectives being the most heinous offenders), but there were some absolute gems in there that either came and went (sadly buried under the sheer avalanche of stuff) or endured to enjoy crossover success. Of particular note:

Grammatics - released one s/t album that was by orders of magnitude better and more intelligent than any of their chart-bothering indie-pop contemporaries. Bugger all people bought it and they duly split but it was a far more deserving record that I'd happily champion to anyone.

Sky Larkin - enjoyed a decent amount of crossover success with three well-received albums and they knew their way around a catchy tune. Technically inactive rather then having officially split, though the singer has since toured as a part of Wild Beasts and Sleater-Kinney respectively.

Vessels - started life in the Mogwai post-rock mould (though with far more nous than your standard crescendo-core stuff) but have slowly morphed themselves over the years into this hulking, progressive electronica beast. First time I saw them was in a tiny tent in Hyde Park in Leeds in 2006 playing to about 20 people, last saw them a couple years back packing out the second-biggest stage at ArcTanGent.

Chickenhawk - sticking with that tiny tent in Hyde Park that day, Chickenhawk were this screamy sludge metal band with a snare tone that'd make St. Anger blush. I'd challenge you to get through their track from this split EP. Even if "terror-noise" is your bag, it'd be hard work. They'd go on to scale black the mental, tighten things up and rebrand as Hawk Eyes, and I'm fairly certain I've seen them pop up with the odd mention on our AOTY threads on here.

Mother Vulpine - getting a bit niche now but keeping on the Chickenhawk theme; Mother Vulpine I don't think actually put anything out beyond one 7" release, and a track on one of the aforementioned Dance To The Radio samplers. It was good stuff though, all big, fierce riffs and catchy chord progressions. The interest here is more about what followed; after very quickly calling it quits, the guitarist went on to form Pulled Apart By Horses and the singer formed Dinosaur Pile-Up, both of which have since done rather well for themselves and I'm sure I've seen DPU mentioned a few times on our music threads here.

iLiKETRAiNS (back when it was de rigueur to give your band's name a silly stylisation, now it's just "I Like Trains") - very similar to Vessels, coming from more moody, post-rock-leanings at the outset to ultimately arrive at a more krautrock-adjacent destination and build a decent following along the way. Their last album cropped up in a fair few best of 2020 lists. Most amusingly (well, to me anyway) they once had a song feature on the credits of an episode of CSI: Miami.

Won't go into more detailed stuff, but here's a quickfire list of bands I only came across directly because of ¡Forward, Russia!; 65daysofstatic, Three Trapped Tigers, You Slut!, The Blood Brothers. If I sat down and mapped out the whole thing, it'd probably look a bit like this:

As I've now gone full Partridge, I think I'll wrap it up here. Suffice to say I could waffle on about this all day.  One final thought; we're so far removed from that era now that some of those (thankfully better) acts from the period that had called it quits have now started popping back up again; Amusement Parks On Fire and Youthmovies are both working on new material, and Minnaars (who'd have beaten Foals to their spot if they'd gotten their debut out quicker way back when) dropped a new EP earlier this month.

2 hours ago, Seat68 said:

The Rakes in general were a pretty strong band in an Art Brut fashion.

The Rakes were great. Tongue firmly planted in cheek with their stuff, which is what you want really.

[villa4europe]

Maccabees peaked with their last album, I'm guessing it did nothing and they lost interest / couldn't make a living from it anymore 

Pigeon detectives were good in snobs! I would say that's a thing with a lot of these bands, most of them had 1 or 2 good songs for snobs or 5th avenue or cockpit somewhere like that but then when you sat down with the album it fell a bit flat