Crywank - Narcissist On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.

A couple years ago, this guy called James appeared out of nowhere and started posting his album all over the internet for people to hear. It was called James Is Going To Die Soon and it was under the name Crywank and I’m guessing that a lot of people checked it out because the name Crywank made them emit a childish little giggle. What they got when they unzipped that folder they downloaded from Mediafire, though, was probably some of the most startlingly honest music they’d ever heard. Folk punk in its truest form, the guy could barely play his guitar, with a lot of songs being simple repetition of a frantic strumming pattern whilst he sang his lungs out in a cracked voice, laying everything bare, often just losing control and yelling the bleak, desperate lyrics of love, loss and loneliness.

I discovered Crywank at his first show, opening for Andrew Jackson Jihad towards the end of 2010. People were already singing his songs back at him, a testament to the infectious nature and overwhelming, near voyeuristic appeal of James Clayton’s songwriting. I downloaded the album the next day and was hooked. I also met James at that show and kind of got to know him as part of the Manchester scene and was relatively shocked as his music spread, and I would see people in America or Europe talking about him. I guess that’s the benefit of giving your music away for free – you won’t make any money (duh), but if it’s even halfway listenable it’ll spread like crazy. It helps that James has always been reasonably open on his tumblr blog too, allowing listeners to feel even more of a connection to his songs.

Anyway, he’s finally done a new record and it is more of the same. Well. It was recorded in his dining room whereas the first one was (I think) done in his bedroom. He’s singing about different situations this time too – the last one was mostly explicitly about a breakup, and this one deals more generally with themes of overwhelming sadness. And although he’s posted a lengthy monologue on tumblr apologising for not having got better at guitar, I think he actually has – whereas most of the songs on the first album were basically just battering an acoustic guitar as hard as he could, this time things are quieter and more complex. His singing is a bit gentler, too, and the recording is generally a bit cleaner. It seems less pissed off than the first, but certainly a bit sadder and bleaker. It’s called Narcissist On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown because that’s pretty much exactly what you’re getting.

The songwriting is just as frank as it ever was, and perhaps even more literate this time round. It might make some people cringe, but you can’t argue with the frank honesty of ’Roger Ebert said “If you have to ask what it symbolizes then it didn’t”/and I try to work my way around this by being blatant/I’ve got tonnes of wasted metaphors across my writing pad/but the only thing I feel honest in expressing is the fact that I am sad’. If you don’t pay too much attention, then it’s a fairly amateurish lo-fi acoustic album, but if you take a second to look a little closer then it can be a tough listen.

Basically, when you’ve got too many punk songwriters pining for/whining about America regardless of whether they live there or have even actually been or not, writing too many songs about sailors despite living in heavily landlocked towns or cities, spending too much time looking back on decades they weren’t even born in, or diluting their songs with overblown full band arrangements, Crywank is incredibly important, with an approach that drags folk punk crying and wanking back to square one. Authenticity is a big talking point in music. Is this band or that singer authentic? Are they genuine? Well, I can say with absolute certainty that James fuckin’ Clayton is the most authentic and genuine songwriter I have ever heard. You’d do well to listen to him.

9/10

Written for Zest For Life.

Where We Lay Our Heads - Bury You.

It was quite a pleasant surprise to have Where We Lay Our Heads drop unannounced in to the Zest mailbox. I’ll admit that, at first, a band who told us they’d been described as ‘folky rock’ but preferred to just be called pop seemed like the least appealing way to spend three and a half minutes of a Sunday afternoon, though. Would this be another Mumford & Sons-style dirge two summers too late? The probability was rather high. And it was annoying.

Turns out, though, that the only thing these guys are really doing wrong is selling themselves. ‘Bury You’ kicks off with eerie strings, quickly joined by jangly guitar line and a soft Scottish voice. Immediately placing themselves in the middle ground between Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad (because, hey, you’ve got to compare every Scottish indie rock band to at least one), the band’s folksy edge is buried deep beneath a slow moving yet dark and brooding throb that gradually gets fuzzier and fuzzier, swallowing up more and more of the song’s elements in to a noisy haze.

It’s still a little rough around the edges – some better production could really make this song burst at the seams. But there’s a lot of potential here, and I immediately went to their bandcamp to download the tracks they had on offer. I’m excited to hear more from these guys, and look forward to many more deceptively dull-sounding emails from the Glasgow four-piece.

7/10

Written for Zest For Life.

Emma Hallows - Anchors Up!

Well, thanks a lot Chuck Ragan. You wanted a folk revival and you got it and now everyone is doing it. Every bloke with a guitar is getting a little bit sensitive and going solo to play some acoustic songs and it’s all very samey and, let’s face it, completely male-dominated. It’s great, then, to hear the occasional female voice stepping in to the ring. I mean, sure, there’s Helen Chambers with her great traditional folk-stylings, and a never-ending stream of twee Kimya Dawson-imitators, but women playing straight-up folk punk are in the minority. They are out there, though - Zest first encountered Manchester’s Emma Hallows playing Gaslight Anthem covers at an open-mic night in Huddersfield, and in only a few short months, we’ve seen her become a staple of Northern shows, and begin to spread her net further afield to the rest of the UK.

Emma Speakman isn’t as influenced by AFI as her stage name suggests – the cues taken from Brian Fallon are as obvious from the word go in her own songwriting as they are in her choice of live cover songs - the line “I’ll meet you by the river’s edge” appears in ‘Lincoln Inn’, but then, hey, Fallon takes lines from the Counting Crows, so who am I to hold it against anyone? Equally apparent are the Frank Turner leanings, particularly suggested by the nautical-themed opening track (dunno why that dude is so in to sailors. I assume every folk-punk song about the sea is his fault). But Hallows has more than enough to set her apart. She’s far from as abrasive as the more frantic purveyors of the style, though, placing her sound comfortably between Sam Russo’s newer tracks and the indie folk of Jen Wood.

Things are mellow and honest on Anchors Up!, but with a distinct punk edge lingering below the surface that comes out in some of the more aggressive moments, and a troubling world-weariness for such a young songwriter. “If you think that I’m a dreamer then you’ve got it wrong,” she sings on ‘Brian & Jane’, “these scars from old wounds are just part of step one.” Electric guitars swell up in the background to flesh things out, and the closer becomes the EP’s standout track. The songs are generally at their best when there’s more than just voice and guitar going on, with the subtle organ and tambourine that creeps in to ‘I’ll Remember You As A Liar & A Waste Of Time’ being another great moment.

So here’s hoping that Emma Hallows continues to rise up the UK folk punk ranks, continues to flesh out her sound, and continues to develop as a songwriter, because who knows where she could be a year from now at the rate she’s going. Anchors Up! Is a great start and the perfect document of her beginnings, and hopefully it is the indication of big things to come.

7/10

Written for Zest For Life.

65daysofstatic - Silent Running.

So this one kind of snuck by me. Last year, 65daysofstatic did a live soundtrack to the 1970s sci-fi filmSilent Running. It’s basically an environmental ‘what if?’ film, where all plant life on Earth died. Probably because people were a bit silly. I’ve not actually seen it, but if there’s one thing I do well, it’s wikipedia the crap out of things. My degree mark can attest to that. 

Anywho, I think I vaguely remember them touring it a while ago and I seem to remember thinking that I couldn’t be bothered to go if they weren’t playing a proper show. They released a studio version of the soundtrack last November due to popular demand, but there was relatively little fanfare around it. Listening to it now, I feel pretty good about my decision to stay home that time, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad record.

It’s interesting that 65 have finally got in to the film scoring business, as the band supposedly originally got together to do the soundtrack for a Kurt Russell film called Stealth Bomber. The film and the soundtrack never materialised, and it’s one of those things where, even though the band have said it themselves, you’re still never sure if it’s true, like any time anyone asks Chumbawamba where their name comes from. The choice of an environmentally themed film is interesting too – it’s hard for instrumental bands to get vocal about an issue for really obvious reasons, but 65 have often attempted to push some kind of environmental message, with the video for ‘Radio Protector’ coming to mind.

65 have changed a lot since their first album, 2004’s The Fall Of Math. They’ve always been attached to the post-rock genre and have frequently flaunted their electronic influences, but the electronics felt increasingly ignored as they made a couple of much less interesting rock records. Then, on their fourth full length, 2010’s We Were Exploding Anyway, they pretty much just seemed to say “fuck it”, ditching all the post-rock clichés, chucking out a whole load of guitars, and basically making a vaguely post-rock influenced dance record, and you can tell it was the one they’d wanted to make all along. A dense, frantic, pulsating masterpiece, it transformed their live shows from head-nodding affairs to full on dance parties, so how would a live experience where you actually have to stay still mesh with the new sound? Would they be doing something altogether new?

Silent Running is somewhat in the same vein as …Exploding…, with an emphasis on electronics and pianos rather than guitars, but just a little more low-key. It’s made to be background music, and that’s what it does – sinks in to the background in a very relaxing fashion. I can imagine it complemented the film very well, with a seriously eerie mood taking hold for the most part. Tension and restraint is a big part of the record, making the slightly louder parts really stand out and command attention for a few minutes, before settling down in to being creepy again. ‘Finale’ in particular is big and loud, a great crashing ending that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the last record. It’s probably the band’s most ambient record to date though, and it is interesting to see their take on it, as ambience is often an important part of both the post-rock and electronic genres. It’s not a patch on Exploding’s dancey beats, but it’s definitely of more interest than the phoned-in and bored post-rocking of The Destruction Of Small Ideas. Silent Running is yet another different side to 65daysofstatic, and it’s great to know that even after eight years, they’ve still got plenty of tricks hidden away up their sleeves. But I hope this isn’t a direction they’ll head in too often, and I wouldn’t relish the thought of seeing about 90% of this material live, even if I did have the chance to see it with the film. If I’m seeing 65daysofstatic, I want to be dancing until I can’t stand up anymore, please.

6/10

Written for Zest For Life.

A Silver Mt. Zion - Ruined City Birdsong Combos-001.

Efrim Menuck has been busy lately. Since the release of the last Silver Mt. Zion album, his old band has blown minds by reforming, with Godspeed You! Black Emperor touring the world and working on new material for the first time since 2002. He’s also done a solo record, been a father, and stayed on the road with the ol’ S Mt. Z fairly regularly. Menuck and his fellow musicians have an irritating habit of leaving a remarkably small trail behind them, though, seemingly relishing their position as one of the most cryptic bands that actually bothers to let you know what the members’ names are. The only announcement for this new EP, the oddly-named-yet-predictably-odd-for-Mt.-Zion Ruined City Birdsong Combos-001, was a passing comment on the band’s bizarre website that just seemed to mention, as an afterthought, that they’d recorded some new songs themselves, and would be pressing up 500 copies for their upcoming American and Canadian tour.

With no other information existing anywhere else, it’s finally found it’s way online thanks to, y’know, piracy, and the facts are these: it’s certainly a record, and it certainly has some artwork. Pretty sure it’s a double 7”, because of the way the opening song, ‘What We Loved Was Not Enough’, has been somewhat arbitrarily cut in to two parts to make it fit on to one side of a 45. I dunno. Whatever. You kind of get used to just going with it when it comes to this band. 

Anyway, what’s important is that it’s probably some of the band’s boldest and most direct work to date. The last time Mt. Zion made an EP instead of a full-length, it was mostly studio experimentations (read: kind of just dicking around in a way that payed off with something releasable) that seemed to act primarily as a forerunner to Menuck’s solo work. The band generally favour long, sprawling albums, songs reguarly pushing beyond the ten or fifteen minute mark, but backed in to a corner and squeezed on to a seven-inch, they seem to be writing differently. There’s a nervy claustrophobic mood at work here, feeling more panicked than usual. Whilst themes of hope and hopelessness are often explored in the Mt. Zion catalogue, they tend to be sticking to the latter here. It’s fuzzy from the lo-key production and the vinyl rip and, thanks to their continual push towards being a guitar band (their first album was entirely piano based, but not so anymore), it’s noisy and dense as hell. And, weirdly, it’s over and done in twenty three minutes. This lot play extended live versions of their songs that go on for longer than that. 

At the end of the day, it’s another Silver Mt. Zion record. The singer has an off-key yelp that is one of the most divisive acquired tastes in music. Guitars wail and strings screech, and they left post-rock conventions in the dust a long time ago. If you’re a fan, you’ll know exactly what all of this entails, and chances are you don’t need convincing to give this a listen. But despite not shaking the formula up too much, it’s still one of their most surprising releases in quite a while – short and sharp and condensed in to a tiny package that is over in the blink of an eye. It’ll leave you wanting more in a way that their, to be honest, kind of disappointing last record probably didn’t. A firm statement that Mt. Zion are never off track for too long, no matter what else is going on.

Cheap Girls - Giant Orange.

You know how, with some bands, all of their albums are basically interchangeable, and your favourite one really can’t be picked for any kind of quality-based reason, instead just being the one you heard first? It happens to me all the time, and I guess it’s not necessarily always a bad thing. When some bands churn out the same, phoned in record again and again, it can get very tiresome, but there’s always plenty of room in my heart/itunes for bands who know what they’re doing, do it well, and consistently make good, solid records, each one crafted with as much love and passion as the last. I’ve always felt that Explosions In The Sky are the epitome of that approach to making music but, with album number three, Cheap Girls may well be my new go-to example.

The Michigan trio’s first two full lengths, 2008’s Find Me A Drink Home and 2009’s My Roaring 20s, are great, and arguing which is better is largely pointless (even if most people will likely side with the former). Heavily rooted in 90s rock of both the chuggy Jawbreaker punk and poppy Presidents Of The United States Of America indie varieties, but with occasional flashes of southern rock and all sorts of other bits and pieces from here and there, they’re catchy as hell. Perfect drinkin’ records, with a distinctly weighty crunch to them and plenty of potential for singing along. Giant Orange really is no different in style or tone. More of the same, but given that they’ve still not made a record that lasts past the thirty five minute mark, that’s really not a bad thing. If I’m honest, I was still craving more of the same anyway. Much like every new Explosions In The Sky album, whilst offering nothing new, is still perfect for sleepy playlists, the new Cheap Girls is perfect for sunny days with a couple ciders.

What Giant Orange does have over the rest of their output, though, is slightly better production. Things are a little fuller and louder, and the fuzz around the edges from previous releases is gone. Whilst some may mourn the cleaner sound, as some people are often want to do when any band ditches their lo-fi roots, it really benefits Cheap Girls, and these songs pack a lot more of a punch. It’s weird, because the better production has all been done by Against Me!’s Tom Gabel, a band who left lo-fi behind and got slick with utterly disastrous effects. This isn’t New Wave slick, though – ol’ Tommy G hits the mark perfectly to let the songs pop without the production values overshadowing things.

Overall, this is definitely a candidate for Cheap Girls’ best work to date, just not by all that far. Three albums in and they are tighter than ever, more comfortable playing together, and refining their tried and tested sound to perfection. If you like Cheap Girls already, you’ll pretty much love it. If you’re new to the band, this would be a great introduction.

8/10

Written for Zest For Life.

T-Shirt Weather - It’s T-Shirt Weather.

It ain’t big, and it ain’t particularly clever. It’s just T-Shirt Weather, a Durham pop-punk three-piece that play trashy pop-punk with a pretty refreshing naïveté. They’re not getting political, or hopping on current emo revival or orgcore styles – in fact, It’s T-Shirt Weather is probably about as un-trendy as it’s possible to get. Not afraid to wear the influence of Tony Hawk’s soundtracks firmly on their sleeves, or sing songs about pizza, it’s pretty far from the best thing you’ve ever heard, but it might be exactly what you need.

It’s so easy to get bogged down in scene politics and trends. The math rock influence that punk has been feeling lately has made musicianship important again – if you can’t twinkle with the best of ‘em, then it shows these days. But simple, straightforward and honest pop punk is the music we all (probably) grew up with, and it’s great to hear it paid the dues it deserves. That’s why it’s so refreshing to hear these three youngsters managing to stay far away from current trends that are getting done to death, but also from being the sloppy band of teenaged shitheads busting out inefficient Green Day covers in an empty backroom on a weekday night, another (much less fortunate and much more enduring) “punk rock” trend.

There is a lot to like here, particularly the endearing new-wave vibe that the thick Durham accent and echoey production gives the vocals. The irreverent mix of vaguely Morrissey-influenced singing and raw, fun pop punk is great, and complements the occasional indie twinkle in the background of many of the songs perfectly. ‘What More Did You Expect From These Chords?’ in particular is a right tune. It’d be great to hear more from these guys, if only to see what else they’ve got, as things aren’t quite all there just yet. There’s still a few more gaps to fill in, but for now, at least, I am fully behind T-Shirt Weather as they go forth and have some fun, for all of our sakes. 

6/10

Written for Zest For Life.

Martha - Martha.

Made up of most of the members of ONSIND and Fashanu, you could call Martha Durham’s first ever punk rock supergroup if that wasn’t such a ridiculously grandiose term for what’s on offer. In fact, Martha seems, if anything, deliberately non-super and purposefully low-key. Where both Fashanu and ONSIND are perhaps best known for their political rhetoric as much as their catchy tunes, with the former’s vegan and the latter’s feminist beliefs at the core of their message, the coalition’s efforts seem more focused on being a little more subtle and basically just telling some stories.

A good chunk of the five songs are about historical figures or events: ‘1978, Smiling Politely’ is a fictionalized account of poet Audre Lorde’s journey south to her parents’ home in the Caribbean, where she spent her final days, whereas ‘1848, Yawning Discreetly’ is the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the same Seneca Falls convention that The Distillers wrote that song about, an event demanding civil, social and political rights for women. Both of these, particularly ‘1848…’, feel like familiar territory, with the typically privilege-challenging lyrics that ONSIND are known for driving the song’s message. ‘Gretna Green’, on the other hand, is a song about the 1915 Quintinshill Rail Disaster, and while it opens with more patriarchy-smashing lines, things soon determinedly departs from them. “I packed my bags and left my politics in bed,” sings the narrator at the end of the first verse, and with “I waited on the platform with your smile stuck in my head,” it suddenly becomes an utterly tragic love song. 

‘Standing Where It All Began’ namechecks Hemingway, but is mostly focused on introspection, and ‘The Ballad Of Lucy Connor (Part 1)’ appears to be an entirely fictional story that nonetheless hits pretty close to home with the everyperson protagonist struggling under the grind of life in general. It’s a curious mixed bag of topics, less direct and much more subtle than the work in their main bands. It could be because there’s no particular unifying message here, no axe to grind, instead feeling like more personal explorations around a loose theme, perhaps exploring something they felt they couldn’t in the framework of their other bands. It’s certainly interesting to hear a different side to the songwriters, with ONSIND being perhaps a little less serious and Fashanu certainly a little moreso.

Oh, yeah, what does it actually sound like? Well, there’s none of ONSIND’s acoustic folking, instead being closer to Fashanu’s bouncy pop punk stylings, with hints of a Lemonheads-style indie rock sound. The band describe themselves as ‘powerpop’ and, whilst things are catchy, bouncy and poppy, this is far from a slick affair, with D.I.Y. production giving things a distinctly lo-fi fuzz around the edges. Basically if you’re a fan of ONSIND or Fashanu, you’re probably gonna like this too. It’s pretty similar, but different enough to be an interesting listen. However, it also feels unfair to judge Martha solely in the terms of the member’s other bands, no matter how hard it is to disassociate them from previous efforts. Martha’s self-titled debut is certainly a great EP in its own right, with sixteen minutes of thought-provoking storytelling masked behind some infectiously catchy tunes and, given that it’s a free download, you’d be a bit silly not to check it out. So get on it, yeah?

7/10

Written for Zest For Life.