Music RECORDS
INDIE ROCK RINGO DEATHSTARR Colour Trip (Club AC30) ●●●●● Place ‘death’ in your band name and you’ll always risk blood- stained metal connotations, but marry it with a dainty ‘Ringo’ and you’ve immediately eschewed any notion of grinding guitars and guts. Ringo Deathstarr’s debut album Colour Trip
is definitely more ‘Ringo’ than ‘death’, with Beach House-esque nuts’n’bolts lucidity. It’s when they’re doing sprightly, strumming lo-fi rock’n’roll however that these Texans thrive, with ‘Do It Every Time’ and ‘So High’ emulating The Strokes after one too many packets of fluorescent Skittles – a ‘colour trip’ indeed. (Chris Cope)
POST-ROCK MOGWAI Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (Rock Action) ●●●●● Now on their seventh album, Mogwai could be forgiven for taking their feet off the pedal.
LABEL OF LOVE
OLIVE GROVE RECORDS You run two of Scottish music’s top web presences. What do you do next? Why, start your own label, of course. Glasgow PodcART’s Halina Rifai and Peenko blogger Lloyd Meredith launched Olive Grove Records last year and two releases in, they are already more than finding their stride. Meredith tells us more
What is the ‘sound’ of Olive Grove Records? ‘I don’t think we have a “sound” as such – I’d like to think that we’ll release a diverse range of artists. That being said, so far the artists that we’ve worked with have been a bit folky – folk-pop outfit Randolph’s Leap, electronic-folk artist Esperi – and our next release will be with another folk influenced band, The Son(s).’ How relevant are Olive Grove’s releases in age where downloading is all the rage? ‘With the advent of the internet, the whole music industry has pretty much been turned on its head. Our plan is also to make our releases that wee bit different – [designer/ crafter] Iona Bruce from ‘i heart . . .’ has been roped in to help do our merchandise, from hand- knitted sleeves for the Randolph’s Leap EP and handmade snowman covers for Esperi’s Christmas single.’
What do you think is Olive Grove’s shelf life? ‘We’ll keep going for as long as the passion for it is there. Personally, I have always loved music, so I don’t see this dying out. In an ideal world we’ll be doing this for years to come – I’ve already started telling my four-month-old daughter that she’ll be taking over the reins one day. I don’t think she fully understands yet – she’ll learn though.’ (Chris Cope) ■ www.olivergroverecords.com
66 THE LIST 3–17 Feb 2011
pummelling ‘No Hero’ and irrepressibly lovely ‘Toothpaste’ touch on the best bits of The Knife or even Björk. (Malcolm Jack) ■ Harrys Gym play Stereo, Glasgow, Mon 14 Feb. SCI-FI INDIE ROCK BRIGHT EYES The People’s Key (Polydor) ●●●●●
Following musical dalliances with the Mystic Valley Band and Monsters of Folk, Conor Oberst returns to the Bright Eyes fold with a fresh new take on the big life questions, from ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Do I really love you?’ to, ‘Umm, are those scales on my back?’
A science-fiction theme pervades The People’s Key, inspired by the literature of Kurt Vonnegut and Margaret Atwood and driven by apocalyptic psych-rock and compellingly obtuse lyrics – all seamlessly woven together by a theoretical monologue based on the idea that we’re ruled by evil reptiles – yes, really. A staggering effort, and if the rumours are true, Oberst’s final work under his most famous moniker. What a way to say goodbye . . . (Camilla Pia) ■ To win Bright Eyes tickets, see page 69.
INDIE POP ZOEY VAN GOEY Propeller Versus Wings (Chemikal Underground) ●●●●●
This is an assured second album for the Glasgow-based quirk- pop outfit, but while it’s enjoyable enough, it leaves a niggling sensation of being less
than the sum of its parts. The boy-girl vocals work well and the arrangements are inventive, but the band lack the courage of their convictions at times. For every track like the B&S- flecked ‘Mountain on Fire’ there is ‘You Told the Drunks I Knew Karate’, which sounds like a Barenaked Ladies cast-off. Genre-hopping is fine, but when you have a beautiful nu-folk ramble like ‘Extensions’ followed by the irksome punk-pop of ‘Robot Tyrannosaur’, it’s a bit much. (Doug Johnstone) INDIE POP GRUFF RHYS Hotel Shampoo (Turnstile) ●●●●●
Currently on a break from his day job with the mighty Super Furry Animals, the prolific Rhys remains incapable of disappointing. This third solo album is low- key, but plenty of pristine pop moments present themselves: the horn-driven, Latin- tinged ‘Sensations in the Dark’, which riffs on The Temptations’ ‘Get Ready’; ‘Vitamin K’s West Coast country melancholy; the psychedelic Pet Sounds wash of ‘Sophie Softly’; ‘At the Heart of Love’ and particularly ‘If We Were Words (We Would Rhyme)’s kind, romantic heart. Kudos is also due for the brazen saxophone part during ‘Christopher Columbus’ – the mark of a maverick, as if Rhys still needs identifying as such. (David Pollock) GARAGE THE STREETS Computer & Blues (679) ●●●●●
After nearly a year off for family reasons, Mike Skinner turns in an allegedly final LP as The Streets. With the energy more focused than on its disappointing predecessor, Everything is Borrowed, it’s not all perfect. Skinner’s liking
They haven’t. But there is a feeling on Hardcore . . ., despite the occasional foray into the monolithic riffage of their early days, that the band are now more comfortable delving further into soundtrack territory, tracks such as opener ‘White Noise’ and ‘Death Rays’ being consummate canvases of poignancy, melancholy and a strangely futuristic-retro nostalgia. For old- school fans there are still gargantuan slabs of heaviosity such as closer ‘You’re Lionel Richie’, but over all, this is the sound of a band expanding their palette and looking to the future. (Doug Johnstone) DREAM/ELECTRO POP HARRYS GYM What Was Ours Can’t Be Yours (Splendour) ●●●●●
This Norwegian quartet’s dodgy moniker proves surprisingly apt on their second album. Harrys Gym’s ethereal electro- pop is toned and conditioned, with a strong heart. The Oslo band have
worked with rising English producer James Rutledge to beef up their sound, borrowing the bits of dream-pop they can use – glacial synth and guitar washes, singer Anne Lise Frøkedal’s feather- light voice mixed low like an instrument Liz Fraser-style – and integrating them with muscular programmed beats and churning basslines. Shot through with an unmistakable strain of serious Scandic melancholy, save for a healthy dose of bat-shit craziness the
for vocoder-massacred rave vocals, bubblegum chip pop and awkward rhymes manhandled into position come together in the nails-on- a-blackboard ‘Roof of Your Car’ and reappear throughout. Yet there are flashes of old brilliance too, namely the cocksure electronic blues of ‘Going Through Hell’, the 70- second old-school garage banger ‘ABC’ and the upbeat mournfulness of ‘Soldiers’. It’s the sound of an era’s voice wringing out his last words, a good place and a good way to leave it. (David Pollock) DRONE METAL EARTH Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light (Southern Lord) ●●●●●
Citing such musical reference points as Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Saharan groove pioneers Tinariwen, the latest LP from Seattle languid-rock colossi Earth is – as ever – mesmerising. While not as doom-infused as, say, their canonised 1993 long-player, Earth 2, it bears noting that its producer, Stuart Hallerman, is back at the helm for Angels of Darkness. . .. The album’s folk-rock
influence isn’t readily discernable, but there are some stirring cello passages thanks to Lori Goldston (Nirvana, David Byrne) that weave and underscore melodic narratives, especially across ‘Old Black’ and ‘Father Midnight’. Trundling through dark Americana, Angels. . . is leaden, capacious and quite beautiful. (Nicola Meighan)