Rob Evans Hates Your Band.

So over the past day or so, Bandcamp has, with very little fanfare, released its Collection pages for fans. Basically, you sign up with the email address you’ve used to buy music (you can add multiple ones if you’ve used more than one over the years), and it makes you a little online record collection of all the things you’ve ever bought from bandcamp! It also lets you ‘follow’ bands, so you get updates when they have new releases, and other fans, presumably so you get updates when they’ve bought new stuff. Bandcamp pages now feature ‘recommendations’ as a result, meaning you can see how many people have bought a record, and lets you see reviews on the page. You can also have a wishlist for things you want to buy! You can check out mine here and get your own here.

As you may know, especially if you follow my other blog or have me on Facebook, I’m a massive fan of bandcamp as a tool to sell music and really do think it should just be standard at all levels of the industry and all levels of the scene to the point that I get annoyed if people don’t use it. Here’s the reasons why:

• It takes much less money from every sale than itunes and most other services.
• It has a very inoffensive method of streaming to try before you buy (something I mostly hate doing anywhere else). 
• It’s a simple, standard and attractive interface for streaming and selling that gives all bands a level playing field and can be integrated in to other sites or used as a main portal as bands/labels please.
• It allows money to go straight in to the hands of bands and labels and, in return, puts high quality music directly, automatically, and instantly in to the hands of the fans.
• There’s no entrance barriers - there’s no struggle to convince someone to get your music on to Bandcamp, and there’s no cost to the artist.
• It seems fairly easy to use from an artist/label perspective.
• You can still use it to sell physical products too.
• You can pay through Paypal, which is the most convenient thing ever.
• It’s basically managed to make paying for downloads an attractive prospect by making it quick, easy, and beneficial to everyone in a way you can actually notice.

So, yeah, I love Bandcamp, and have been shouting for it to be the biggest thing in the world for a while now. People have embraced it to an extent, but I think the collections thing is what could really take things up a notch.

Social media is so ubiquitous now. You can’t escape it, as much as you might want to. There’s plenty of negatives to social media, but the upside of it, especially when it comes to music, is that it allows people to connect with bands, artists, labels and other fans, and just discover new music. By adding profile pages and letting you follow people, Bandcamp has basically gone from being an external site where you go to from Facebook to purchase the music you’ve discovered somewhere else (Bandcamp already had tools to find new music, yeah, but they were never the greatest…) to being a site where you can actually spend some time. 

You can browse around, check out what other things people who like the same stuff as you do are buying and, as a result, find new music. You can add it to your wishlist, or just buy it straight away, and then you can write a little review of it once you’ve listened to it. You can present yourself through the music you buy in a way that seems a little more in-depth than just instagramming vinyl purchases. You can’t send messages, which is a bit of a shame, although I expect that’s just to avoid abuse of the system and focus on the music. Anwyay, just the fact that I can do all of these things has made me more excited about Bandcamp already. I’ve discovered bands I liked that I had no idea were on there, and I’ve got excited to go and buy some music. I bought seven things this morning, which are all added to my collection, and downloaded a bunch more for free.

Free downloads aren’t added to collections, which is something I was disappointed about originally, but I can see exactly why they’ve done it. This is meant to celebrate the act of actually regularly spending money on music - something that, for many of us, is a distant memory. If you want to show off, or want to hold any sort of influence on this new feature, you’re gonna have to buy music. When I first signed up and it generated my collection, I was a little bit shocked - there was a fair amount of stuff in there, yeah, but not enough. I’ve downloaded a ton of stuff from Bandcamp, but had paid for a small amount. And it made me feel bad. It made me feel guilty for taking so much from the bands I love and a big part of what made me spend money on those seven new downloads was, I’ll admit it, a little bit of shame.

It’s not the most noble reason to pay for music, sure, but when you consider how much damage has been done, and how much the traditional mindset of “if you want music then you have to pay for it” has been destroyed by downloading, this has been exactly the kick I need to buy music. It works for me in a much better way than any other alternative has, post-downloads. I have a blog and I obsessively self-catalogue at times, so having a history of everything I’ve ever bought in chronological order appeals to me massively, too. 

So already it’s doing good things, but it could still do more. Upcoming Shows is a very often-neglected feature of Bandcamp, with bands using it as an afterthought and generally forgetting to recommend it. But if it could start being used in a more expansive way, where bands can have a tab on their page for upcoming shows instead of just a sidebar, and people can add them to a wishlist, or an attending list or something, that also shows in their collection, then fans essentially have a gig calendar and music-buying diary all in one place (which I think is pretty cool), and Bandcamp has finally succeeded MySpace as a one-stop space for music downloads/streaming and live information in a way that Facebook has never really managed to do. Once you’ve got that, and bands can’t afford to not be on Bandcamp, you’ve finally got it as your standard platform, with dedicated music fans buying music from hard-working bands and independent labels who are controlling their own means of digital distribution and taking the lion’s share of the money. 

The only disappointing thing about it so far is that I’ve seen a very small amount of people actually bothering to write little reviews or comments on their purchases. I know it’s only early days, but pretty much the first thing I did was add some comments on the things I’ve bought. I’m a big fan of original content, of people talking and putting forward their own ideas, which is why I hate the ‘repost without thinking’ methodology that has come to dominate tumblr. Unfortunately, though, this mindset has spread to all corners of the internet and I’m concerned that this important feature is going to go neglected. If people don’t use the more social features, bandcamp won’t be encouraged to implement more. The reviews part is, at the moment, how you can get to know someone through bandcamp. It also means you can remove the assumption that you like everything you’ve spent money on. It lets us buy music and then talk about it, and that is something that I feel is very, very important that we keep.

So I wrote about the records already, but I feel like some of my favourite live performances warranted a mention too. I don’t have as grand an introduction as last time, although my increasing apathy towards music did extend in to the live arena too - not that I’ve been stood at shows not enjoying them to any greater extent than I ever have before - just that I’ve not had as much money or time to put in to going to every little gig possible this year, and I’ve kind of not really minded so much. Sometimes it’s sad when I miss something that was probably great, but, I dunno. I’m content with saving it for the very best, and these were this year’s. In chronological order. I’m not including fests, even though 2000 Trees and ManchFESTer 2 were brilliant. This is just my top five shows of the year.

1. Explosions In The Sky at Leeds Academy. I’ve been an EITS fan for years now, but they’re not a band I’ve ever been particularly driven to see live, and I kind of never really get too excited about new records from them either. I mean, they’re good, but very much always more of the same, and The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place will never be topped as their finest. I found out they were playing in Leeds pretty much by accident on the day it was happening, and I remember laying in bed debating whether or not to go pretty much until a couple hours before the gig. It turned out Bizzle was going too, so I met up with him and one of his friends just as Lanterns On The Lake were finishing the opening set. They were okay. Not great. Opening for EITS is always gonna be a rough gig, no one’s really gonna care.

EITS live is really about one person and one person only. Munaf Rayani opened the show with some polite hellos before proving himself to be one of the greatest guitarists I’ve ever seen. Maybe not in technical terms, but still, man, the way that guy plays guitar. It’s like he’s dancing with the thing as his partner. The shapes and the sounds he makes are incredible. When you think about how he apparently learned guitar to join EITS, it kind of makes you sick. Burying Your Hand In Mine mid set was a surprise, but an incredible, mind blowing one, only topped by them closing with The Only Moment We Were Alone. The bass thumps shook my whole body and the guitar tones shook my fuckin’ soul, man. Or something like that. There’s a reason these guys are the kings of the whole traditional post-rock sound. No one does it better.

2. Into It. Over It. at The Castle, Manchester. If you’ve been following my other blog for a while, you’ll probably know that I love Into It. Over It. so much that it occasionally crosses a border in to being a little too creepy. Especially when it comes to harassing him in to playing some of my favourite songs. I’ve seen Evan play a lot of times now, in all different settings, and this is the only time I’ve got to see him play a full length headline set, and it was amazing. He’s doing the whole full band thing now, and has said he probably won’t come back to the UK to play acoustic shows again, so I’m so glad I got this one perfect snapshot of him as an acoustic performer.

When he’s shoved in to opening sets, he’s battling against time constraints and disinterested crowds waiting for the pop punk bands that follow, but when he’s allowed to headline and can play a full set to an attentive crowd, it’s something else entirely. He’s able to pick out the quiet numbers, the longer stories, the more intimate moments, and it makes for the best “one guy with a guitar” show I’ve ever seen. Finally getting to see Can I Buy A Vowel, Pinky Swear and No Good Before Noon live was so great. I’m excited to see him come back and play a whole lot louder, but in some ways he will never be able to top this show for me.

3. Franz Nicolay at The Star and Garter, Manchester. Another great storyteller that I’ve seen a handful of times before, playing the best set I’ve seen from them so far. Standing with his guitar, banjo and accordion laid surrounding him, switching between the three as the mood takes him, he is equal parts imposing and personable. Again, like with Evan, this was the most receptive crowd I’ve seen Franz play to, with everyone hanging on to every word, and lending a hand with singalongs and footstomps where appropriate. The songs from Do The Struggle are something else entirely when stripped down and played live, but the highlight was, without a doubt, This Is Not A Pipe. For some reason he always seems to play it mid set, and kind of disregards it in his own catalogue, but the entire room sang every word back at him and he seemed genuinely taken aback by it all. 

Franz is seriously one of my heroes. Whenever I needed a little extra courage this year, I listened to Do The Struggle, and it was almost an honour to see him play the best songs from it, and to talk to him again after it all. Folk punk has, by and large, played itself out for me, with the label being all too readily applied to any vaguely-alternative-looking/sounding acoustic singer-songwriter, but Franz is true folk punk, and no one does it better.

4. Latterman at The Brudenell Social Club, Leeds. There’s a long story behind this one. I got in to Latterman when I was fourteen or fifteen. Their music resounded with me pretty heavily - songs about positive attitude and community spirit and the importance of bringing strong, solid bonds with the people around you, before that was totally overdone in pop punk to the point of being meaningless - it gave me a lot of strength. I went to see them for my sixteenth birthday and my friend and I were thrown out of the venue for being under 18. They broke up soon after and it seemed like I would never see them, and it made me sad on frequent occasions for many years. I saw all of the members play in other bands - Bridge & Tunnel, RVIVR, Laura Stevenson & The Cans, Iron Chic - but it would never quite be the same, y’know? As years went by, I took other parts of their message closer to heart - as pop punk became increasingly bro-dominated and I read more and more about feminism, it became ever clearer that Latterman always were the most important band in the whole entire universe.

Their reunion didn’t inspire much excitement in me because I assumed I’d never get to see them, but when they announced some UK dates I completely lost my shit and bought tickets immediately. Bear Trade, Caves and The Leif Ericsson played and, even though they were all good and I really like Caves, I couldn’t bring myself to give much of a shit. I was shaking by the time Latterman were setting up their gear. I couldn’t believe I was actually about to see them. I almost wouldn’t let myself believe it until they actually started playing, and I lost my shit even harder. I blew out my voice and was hoarse for days, my fist was rarely out of the air, I stood in the front row and yelled back every word. Seeing Matti Canino get up there and play those songs probably meant more to me than you could ever possibly know. I drew even more strength from it than I had ever found in their music before, and made me make some serious decisions about my own life. And it was the most fun in the world.

Latterman will always be one of my favourite bands in the world, ever, for so many different reasons. I’d given up on seeing them play, and finally getting the chance to after six years was nothing short of miraculous. Canino recognised me from the RVIVR show a couple years ago, too, which was probably like, my ultimate fan moment. This wasn’t just the best show of the year, it was probably one of the best shows of my life.

5. Curtis Eller at the Duck and Drake, Leeds. The last one on the list chronologically, and another banjo player to boot. Curtis has a little bit in common with Franz, sure (there’s banjos and moustaches), but whereas Franz is a punk, Curtis is pure Americana. He’s a yodelling, high kicking banjo player, and I mean that literally. The man practically vomited charm over the crowd as he climbed all over the fuckin’ place, crawled through the crowd, and high-kicked a whole lot. I’ve never quite seen a performer like him.

So that’s it. The best shows of the year, pretty much. Honourable mention to ManchFESTer 2 for being an amazing two days, but otherwise that’s about it. Here’s to some more good’uns in 2013, now I have a job that pays me money to go to them again.

So I’m a bit late for this one, but that’s mostly because I deliberately put it off for two very good reasons. Firstly I put it off because there’s been a lot of expectation and hype around this record due to Tall Ships quickly establishing themselves as one of the best live bands in the UK, but mostly I put it off because BSM were charging too much for the digital download. But their annual Christmas sale has put a stop to that, so I guess I have to listen to it now.

Tall Ships have regularly blown me away. They’re the kind of band that can do that. They blew me away the first time I saw them open for Tubelord to about a dozen people. They blew me away the first time I heard their incredible first two EPs. They continued to blow me away when I saw them live again and again after I knew their material a bit better. These guys just fuckin’ ruled. The loops, the riffs, the instrument swapping, the auxiliary drum shenanigans, all of it was just something else. But then they put out Hit The Floor, which was nothing more than okay, not great, and all of a sudden I put off hearing the album for a few months after it came out because I was worried it would, again, be okay, not great. And unfortunately that’s pretty much what it is.

I never liked Foals much, but I will admit that they did the catchy poppy math thing very well, and they had a handful of great songs in the beginning. It was when they got ideas above their station and went all forced-epic that things really went balls up for them. Tall Ships have done exactly the same thing – the intricate guitar pyrotechnics are less of a focus, and now it’s all about relentlessly building to climaxes with ‘atmosphere’ instead of the much more fun option of ‘shitloads of crazy loops bouncing all over the place’. It’s not bad, by any means – it’s actually an alright, if not great, record. But it’s not what I listened to Tall Ships for in the first place, and I can’t help feeling like there’s not much else for me here.

Gallops was lauded by just about everyone ever when it came out, but it’s just a mess of Animal Collective-lite pounding mixed with yawnsome Foalsy guitars and I just don’t get the fuss at all. Murmurations is only impressive if you didn’t hear the last 65daysofstatic album. The re-recording of Ode To Ancestors is just shite – the intro is too slow and when the plinky percussion kicks in it’s just laughable. The reworking of Books is, too, utterly pointless without the over-the-top keyboards that made the track what it was in the first place. Nothing else really leapt out at me at all. Nothing grabbed me in the way that Plate Tectonics or Beanieandodger or Snow or Words Are Pegs ever did.

It’s not a bad record. Not at all. It’s probably very well crafted and skillfully played and blah and blah and blah. But I can’t quite seem to care about it all that much. Was I looking for reasons to be disappointed before I even listened to the thing? Yeah, maybe. It’s possible that I was. But I thought I’d probably have to actually seek them out first, instead of having them lurching towards me at a fairly pedestrian pace as soon as I hit play. Sorry guys. Maybe it’s a grower.

2012 has been an interesting year for a whole host of reasons, but mostly I think it has just been the year that I got really fucking bored of music. 2011 was a year of twinkly emo, pop punk/hardcore crossovers and ‘The Wave’ bands dominating this extended, interconnected scene we loosely call ‘punk rock’, and it carried over to this year with such an irritatingly self-obsessed determination that it was inescapable once again. But now, in December of 2012, the things that I actually liked from last year (mostly the twinkly emo) has started to stagnate, the things that were tolerable have been destroyed by hype, and the stuff that was shit then has just become so sickeningly played out by now that I can barely stand to scroll through tumblr these days. Basically I’m 22 now and for most of this year I’ve been working full time and feeling like too much like a grown up to really take the same things out of music as I always did. I also didn’t have the time, or the energy a lot of the time, to obsessively track down every new record and listen to it enough to rank it in an ordered list, like I have done in past years, so I’ve missed a lot of things this year. But you know what? I really don’t mind too much. And it is with this feeling firmly in mind that I begin to read the Album Of The Year lists of others, see nothing much that I consider to be worth much listed on them, and sit down to write my own. 

So! My favourite albums of 2012, in no particular order:

1. Franz Nicolay - Do The Struggle (Franz finally taking much more control over the process making a record that lives up to his live shows, an epic of folk punk storytelling.)
2. Apologies, I Have None - London (Long overdue and definitely did not disappoint. Punk rock made for stadiums but crammed in to basements. A perfect blend of scale and heart.)
3. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (It’s a fucking new GY!BE record for fucks sake. So good to finally have properly recorded versions of these pieces, and even better to finally have the band at the end of the world back.)
4. Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind (After ten years in a ‘trying new things’ wilderness, they’ve taken all the best lessons and finally made a record that lives up to Jane Doe.)
5. You Blew It! - Grow Up, Dude (The only ‘emo revival’ album this year that didn’t bore me senseless thanks to a maturity and warmth that the genre seems to have lost thanks to bro-ier tendencies creeping in.)
6. Tyler Daniel Bean - Longing. (It’s like if Bon Iver listened to the Appleseed Cast instead of just watching TV in his cabin. A crushingly bleak winter record.)
7. Tooth Soup - Casting Off Curses (Socially responsible Ex-Fashanu fuzzy pop punk on Plan-It-X. No better way of describing how it sounds.)
8. Cheap Girls - Giant Orange (Best Cheap Girls record yet, summer garage punk at its finest. Laura Jane Grace’s production is spot on for their sound, and this record makes me excited that she is producing next year’s Against Me! album.)
9. Loma Prieta - I.V. (I’ve been listening to hardcore a lot more this year than I have for a long time, and this record coming out in January is the reason why. So good that it renewed my waning interest in a whole genre.)
10. Sam Isaac - When The Lights Went Out (Sam makes a welcome return to music with the full-length he probably should have made in the first place - understated acoustic loveliness instead of attempts at being a rock band that we never liked as much.)

My favourite EPs and singles of 2012, in no particular order:

1. Gnarwolves - Cru (I hate myself for not getting in to Gnarwolves quick enough. RVIVR-style melodic punk done absolutely perfectly, and leaving you craving so much more that it’s easy to listen to it five times in a row without realising.)
2. Driveway - South Ossetia (New emo born more from Mineral etc than from American Football by way of Algernon Cadwallader. Familiar yet refreshing.)
3. Pudge - E.P. (Pudge RIP. At least they left us with this, the trashiest slice of punk rock in existence.)
4. Lemuria - Varoom Allure (New Lemuria songs that sound more like old Lemuria songs in the best possible way. This band can do no wrong.)
5. Kate Nash - Death Proof (Kate Nash goes punk rock, just like we always knew she could and would. It’s pop music infused with more Bratmobile and I can’t wait for the full-length. I wish the average Kinks cover had been replaced with the awesome Cub cover we saw her do live.)
6. A Silver Mt. Zion - Ruined City Birdsong Combos-001 (Totally under the radar tour release, completely overshadowed by the GY!BE album, but nonetheless contains their most direct work to date and hints at the next full length being amazing).
7. Well Wisher - Summer Gangs (Summer jams and a Braid cover from my favourite UK emo band that isn’t Crash Of Rhinos. Less pointless twinkling and more fun than the rest of the scene.)
8. Muncie Girls - Revolution Summer (This band seemed to appear out of nowhere and appealed directly to the parts of me that fucking love Lemuria and The Measure [SA]. They do a great job of it.)
9. Moving Mountains - New Light (Two songs from each MovMou full length re-imagined acoustically. Sparklingly beautiful.)
10. My First Tooth - Past Broadcasts (Put out a new album already.)

So there you have it. No, there’s no Menzingers or The Gaslight Anthem or Dikembe because those albums didn’t really interest me at all, and there’s no Sam Russo because I haven’t got round to listening to it yet. 2012 wasn’t an amazing year for music, but these twenty releases are all great. Well worth checking out, and proof that there’s still life in things yet. 

Converge really are a band whose best work is long behind them. Let’s just be honest with ourselves – they (or, arguably, any other hardcore band) were never gonna make a record better than Jane Doe. Nothing that came before it really matches it, and the immediate followup, You Fail Me, was a disappointment that was more than a little bit limp in comparison. No Heroes was something of a return to form, but it still felt a little bit like Jane Doe-lite. Axe To Fall changed things up a little bit and was a great record, but I personally found their metal influences became a little overly pronounced, with too many squealing riffs and solos. With that in mind, whilst All We Love… is, once again, not better than, or even as good as Jane Doe, it’s easily their best record in the last ten years. Combining the best bits of No Heroes and Axe To Fall, and even managing to recall more than a little of their finest work, this is Converge doing what they do best for the first time in a long while. After three albums that were good, but not really great, this is finally reminding me why I consider Converge to be the best hardcore band in the business. This is nothing new, no frills, no experimentation, no dicking around and, as a result, no missteps (except for one slightly over the top solo early on), and it just fucking rules. They’ve been around for a very long time now, and this feels like an album by a band who are finally settling down after a few years of struggling to match up to the genre-defining work they made when they were a bit younger. I think it may well claim the title of my second favourite Converge album, and has really rekindled my interest in the band, which was beginning to wane somewhat. Beats Loma Prieta for best hardcore album of the year, too.

Although at first it sounds like Dessa Sons are gonna be straight up chug chug chug pop punk, they take a left turn pretty early on and actually come off sounding a lot like 1994!, which is a good thing, because 1994! are amazing. Not enough bands rip off 1994! - short bursts of guitar work that walks the line between mathy virtuoso and thrashy punk, frantic drumming and dual vocal yells - and these guys manage to do it pretty well. It’s a little more easy-listening than their obvious influences, though, with the odd bouncy poppier melodies that actually remind me more of NGOD than anyone else. Basically, if you like 1994! then you’ll probably be in to this band as well. If you don’t like 1994!, then you might still like these guys, but probably not. That’s kind of all there is too it, really. Why dress it up to be something it isn’t?

http://dessasons.bandcamp.com/

Gotta stop listening to recommendations for emo bands – I’m even getting bored of complaining about them all sounding the same. These guys are alright though. Their EP’s cover has a nice drawing of a bird and there was some cool gang screaming on one track. Actually, there’s pretty good screaming throughout – no yelping or throaty shouting, just some full on screamo vocals that manage to be not totally embarrassing. They cross over in to mathy territory a little more willingly (and competently) than most bands are doing these days, with some impressive jazzy guitar twinkles here and there. If I said they sounded like a more frustrated Colossal or Marquette then it wouldn’t be too far off. But then, there’s plenty of moments where they really cut loose and simplify things a little bit, throw on the distortion and manage to sound impressively like Raein or something else like that. Spirit Of Versailles, maybe. Mostly it’s good. Although sometimes it gets maddeningly inconsistent – some of the more complex guitar parts are so clumsily played that it sounds like they changed members half way through recording. And then there’s two bits where they try and get a bit ‘epic’ and post-rocky, Envy style, and one totally falls embarrassingly flat on its face whilst the other is alright. So there’s potential here - Malon clearly know how to make things varied enough to keep things interesting, but probably aren’t quite good enough to nail every influence they want to just yet. One to keep an eye on.

http://malon.bandcamp.com/album/reverie

I’d be lying if I said I checked out this band for any reason other than their name being an Asterix reference. I stumbled across them because they’d had some packaging done by the awesome ACDSleeve, and couldn’t not give them a go. They make the kind of folk music I went through a bit of a phase of listening to a couple of years ago – not really intentionally, just because it was everywhere due to Mumford & Sons blowing up – and haven’t given any time to for ages. Probably because it gets a little bit twee and dull and I’m, like, totally punk rock, y’know? But this is cool, a sleepy and rambling little EP that has a bit of a traditional folk feel in places, specifically on ‘High Gallows’ (probably because it apparently is a traditional folk song), due to the restrained rhythms, almost choral singing, and all kinds of strings and woodwindy bits all over the place. If they’d forced a Scottish accent, it could have been on the Brave soundtrack. Then ‘Old Songs’ kicks in with an accordion and a bit of a sea shanty vibe. It’s nice, cause I’d totally got completely fed up with this kind of music and By Toutatis have reminded me that, whilst it was never the greatest thing in the world, there is some good stuff out there. A sort of ‘turn on the fire and stay wrapped up’ kind of record. Or, at least, it would be if I could figure out how to make the fire in my flat work. They shun the poppier tendencies that the folk genre has had recently, and keep it traditional, to a lovely and pleasant end, whilst the singer manages to sound a little bit like the guy from the National. You could call it chamber folk, if you wanted, but that would likely just make you a bit of a prick.

http://bytoutatis.bandcamp.com/album/three-more-nights-of-the-rough-musick

Ugh. Twinkly emo punk with throaty shouty vocals because no one in the band can sing. They’ve got a song about bikes, too, if their song titles actually match what the songs are about. The noodlin’ is competent, albeit a little bit shaky at times, and there’s a really good bit where they bust out some horns in a very Cap’n Jazz style manner, but other than that there is nothing that sets this band apart enough for me to even give a shit. Like, it’s good, but who cares? There’s a million bands that sound like this and I cannot see why I would listen to this EP again. Still, at least they’ve recorded an EP. That’s more than I’ve done. Well. I’ve recorded a few, actually, but they’ve always been totally unlistenable and gone unreleased. No one was really ready for rapgaze, or minimalist popcore, or noise collages that pay tribute to Les Dennis, and rightly so. But at least those weren’t riding a trend in to the ground, so it’s swings and roundabouts, really. I dunno. Make your own mind up. If you’re not sick of this style yet, you’ll likely find something to enjoy, and I can tell they’re trying to get creative and push themselves (if not any envelopes) in places, which is admirable. It’s just not for me.

http://smallstepssucks.bandcamp.com/

lukeleighfield replied to your post: Sam Isaac – When The Lights Went Out.

Thanks.

Haha, sorry Luke. You still have the best guitar solos in pop music.

I’ve always liked Sam Isaac, from the first time I saw him. This big ginger acoustic singer/songwriter dude with a big deep voice and some really heartfelt songs. He toured with Luke Leighfield a whole lot, which is how I discovered him, but was always way better (Sorry Luke). He had this one really great EP/mini-album thing that I still love to this day, expanded more and more to a full band sound, and put out a full length album that was pretty good, not amazing, but definitely did not deserve the 0 out of 10 it got from the NME that time. He quit doing music as Sam Isaac a couple years ago and it was a major downer, but then, this year, he sneakily put out a new full length record himself out of nowhere, with very little fanfare. And it’s really, really good. Before he quit, he was starting to get pretty well known, mostly from having a few songs in TV shows, getting a fair bit of radio play and touring his balls off, and I think being removed from any kind of spotlight has done a lot of good. It sounds like he’s been feeling less pressure to write big pop rock hits with a full band behind him and, although there’s occasionally bass and drums and backing vocals and that here, it’s mostly a return to the more intimate, stripped back bedroom recording feel that made his best stuff so good. It’s a warm and cosy little record, the sound of someone who tried to make it big in the traditional industry way and didn’t quite get it right, but is now making music with no pressure, no obligation… just purely he wants to. Snowstorm and Hurricane is probably one of my favourite songs that he’s ever written, and it just feels so effortless.

I kind of don’t mind whether Sam Isaac puts out another record or not at this point - I’d rather he left it on this note rather than getting caught up in it and forcing another average one out. But if another emerges, with songs as honest and natural as these, then I will be very happy.

http://samisaac.bandcamp.com/

Driveway are this Irish band I caught opening for Into It. Over It. and Koji last year. The only reason I remember this is because they were giving away free demos, and their demo happens to actually be pretty good. Good enough to make me want to pick up their new EP, anyway, which I did, and I love it. The thing I think I really like about Driveway is… emo music, something I like a lot, has changed in recent years. The revival has meant too much twinkly mathy sounds, or screams, or all sorts of other stuff and everyone sounds like a rip off of a rip off of American Football, and I feel like I’ve been complaining about that a lot lately. Driveway, on the other hand, they sound one hell of a lot like earlier Mineral and Elliott – melodic in places, but with that distorted edge that still links back to the post-hardcore roots of the genre. More mature, too – none of the juvenile attitude that has dominated lately. And the singer can actually sing properly, instead of screaming/growling/yelping tunelessly. He has a right old go, at least – he’s just good enough to suit the sound perfectly. There’s not a lot else to say really. This EP is definitely slicker and better than the demo, and I cannot wait to see what else these guys can do – a full length would be amazing. If you like emo but, like me, are getting a bit fed up of the recent trends and are craving something new that sounds a little… older… then I cannot recommend these guys highly enough, seriously.

http://driveway.bandcamp.com/album/south-ossetia

You know, when I first heard Wegrowbeards, I thought they sounded pretty uninteresting. Gruff and rambling pop punk, blah blah blah, heard it all before. But a closer listen to their lyrics is pretty much essential because I honestly cannot think of any other pop punk band that gives such succinct history lessons in song format. ‘Emmeline’ is about the Women’s Suffrage movement, ‘Conchies’ is about dodging the draft in WWI, and ‘Ponte’ is about a seventeenth century siege in Pontefract. Which, to be honest, makes a really, really nice change from endless fucking songs about being sad over girls. Despite the fact that musically they ain’t all that much that hasn’t been done time and time again, any band that can work the rhyme ‘They were accused of disruption in the quest for state/by the liberal majority of 1908’ are basically the greatest band ever in my book.

Young Attenborough go for more of a melodic 90s style, a little bit Bangers and a little bit Lifetime. Good, but nothing that I’ve not heard a whole bunch of times before. I’m sure if I caught them live (and they have been touring pretty heavily lately) I’d really enjoy them and probably like them a lot more, as often happens with bands like this. That’s not to say that I don’t like them now – their side of the EP is nice and catchy, and pretty upbeat and poppy despite mostly being about sad things, it’s just that there’s not a whole lot to set them apart from the pack at this point. A solid 7/10. Room for improvement. All in all, though, it’s a pretty good EP. Definitely worth a listen or two.

http://catsayerecords.bandcamp.com/album/wegrowbeards-young-attenborough-split

I reviewed T-Shirt Weather’s first EP a while back and I think I basically said that it was a pretty good collection of simple pop-punk, and that I was looking forward to their next release to see if they could up their game at all. The second EP has been out for a while, and I’ve finally got round to listening to it, and I think it’s pretty fair to say that they have upped it a fair bit. The production is still D.I.Y. enough to be cool, but miles ahead of the first EP, and the songs have quite a bit more of a weight to them – you can tell that co-Durham dwellers Martha have had a fair bit of influence on their songwriting, but there’s also shades of the UK’s gruffer punk side. Think a poppier Calvinball and I guess you’re in the right sort of area, although that doesn’t entirely do it justice. Along with the indie punk influence they’ve picked up from Martha, you can still hear the last hints of kids who probably had a pretty heavy Smiths phase in their youth.

I genuinely find listening to T-Shirt Weather exciting, because they’re so clearly a young band that are just starting out, recording whenever they can with whatever they can get their hands on, and slowly finding their feet. This is already a major step up from the first EP and, although they’ve already lost some of the naivete that I enjoyed so much on that one, the songs here are definitely a whole lot better, pack more of a punch, and probably make me more stoked to catch these guys live and see what they do next. Nice one.

http://tshirtweather.bandcamp.com/album/is-this-the-end-for-zombie-shakespeare

So it was kinda tragically funny with Matt Skiba had that big breakdown on stage with the new backing band for his solo stuff, The Sekrets. I’ve never paid much attention to Skiba’s solo work, or Dan Andriano’s, really, for that matter, but I’ve always found that other bands from the main guys in Alk3 have been worth the time. Tuesday are boss, obviously, and Heavens (Skiba’s electronicy collaboration with some other guy) was pretty cool. Now Skiba’s got a new two piece band, and their first EP is pretty great, and has a lot in common with the earlier Alk3 stuff. Which is a very good thing. This Addiction was a disappointing album that only seemed pretty good when compared to the 80% trainwreck of Agony & Irony, and Trio have long lost what made them great, getting caught up in trying to be too much of a gothy bunch of post-punk satanists. It’s just solid, straight up Chicago-style pop punk and these tracks honestly wouldn’t sound out of place stylistically on From Here To Infirmary. It’s really encouraging to know that Skiba can still write great punk rock songs, and I’m certainly more excited for a theHELL album than I am for a new Trio full-length. Definitely worth a listen, especially if you’re like me – someone who loves Alkaline Trio, but cringes far too often for the new records to still be enjoyable.