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SoundsXP Presents

Pictures from some recent gigs we've hosted:

29 March 2013 - Brixton, London

Viv Albertine, VuVuVultures, Left Leg, Mickey Gloss, Big Wave, No Cars, Arthur Gunn, Simon Love (Pictures)

8 March 2013 - Lexington, London

R.Ring, Golden Grrrls, Slushy Guts and Equinox (Pictures)

On Our iPod

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (album)

Antony Harding - Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear (album)

Black Angels - Indigo Meadow (album)

Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (album)

Still Corners - Strange Pleasures (album)

Savages - Silence Yourself (album)

Mikal Cronin - MC II (album)

Can’s Ege Bamyasi played by Stephen Malkmus and Friends(album)

Victoria and Jacob - Festival 7"

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City (album)

Sauna Youth - False Jesii Part II 7”

Lightning Bolt - Oblivion Hunter

Robyn Hitchcock - There Goes The Ice (2x 12")

Latest Forum Posts

Album Review

Scott & Charlene’s Wedding
Para Vista Social Club Critical Heights

Article written by Ged M - Nov 19, 2012

Strike one: the band name is mildly amusing on first hearing, irritating every other time. Strike two: the album title sounds like a bad world music pun, although it’s actually the name of the Adelaide suburb where the artist grew up. Third strike? Ha! To pursue the analogy to its tenuous conclusion, Craig Dermody hits a home run with his debut album, a record in the best traditions of Australian alternative music.

The super lo-fi garage rock with intimations of the Velvet Underground, Radio Birdman and the Stooges accompanies tales of no money, few prospects and lousy relationships but the effect is anything but bleak thanks to the understated skill in these songs located beneath all the fuzz. Dermody might not be a guitar hero but the guitars on this record are heroic and he may not be a great singer but his unpolished voice is perfect here with that downhearted-but-not-defeated tone. And unlike much American slacker-pop, there’s an energy rather than apathy at the heart of the record, which befits someone who hand-painted 200 covers for the album the first time it was released in Oz.

‘Footscray Station’ is his finest moment as Dermody sings dirge-like about his shitty life but the tune itself glints with the sort of spinning melodies that the Go Betweens at their finest would have been proud of. With its commuter-line feelings of doom, ‘Epping Line’ is dark and potentially oppressive but the chiming guitars miraculously lift the mood. The mood shifts between the Stooges-like punky nihilism of ‘Born to Lose’ and ‘Rejected’ to the mutated Beatles-isms of the inspired ‘Foreign Lands’ and the reverby pop of ‘Wiseman At The Station’ but every downbeat lyric is matched by a guitar upstroke and the overall effect is soul-lifting. Dermody is slightly flat-voiced and generally scuffed and scuzzy but his record should be alongside Radios Appear and Before Hollywood, to name but two, in your shelf of great Aussie albums.

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/scottcharlene39swedding
http://scottandcharleneswedding.bandcamp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-Charlenes-Wedding/182775358418770