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Friday 6th April 2012
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Sparrow and the Workshop
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On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

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Album Review

Various Artists
The Young and Lost Club Compilation Young and Lost Club

Article written by Ged M - Aug 26, 2010

To celebrate the label’s fifth birthday and more than 50 releases, the Young and Lost Club has released a mid-price 35 track retrospective. This is the label that released the first warblings of Noah and the Whale and Johnny Flynn, as well as White Lies’ predecessor band Fear of Flying (Joy Division for the pre-pubescent). The girls behind the label clearly have a nose for a scene band.

Pull aside the curtain of cool, however, and you’ll discover that the album is a mixed bag. The problem with being so shamelessly scene-making is that the music you release generally only lives in its tiny bubble of time, dependent on the hype and youthful excitement of that short period. And when the moment passes, the artists and their music stand revealed by heartless time as being just so much piss and wind, another novelty act for the ADHD generation. That makes us slightly complicit and even hypocritical since we reviewed some of these records favourably when they came out, and even saw the bands, but with the benefit of hindsight we won’t make the same mistake twice. Most of these records are like a one night stand that you didn’t want a relationship with, you don’t even like to be reminded of, and occasionally they are so repellent that your bumhole shrinks in terror at the memory evoked.

There are records that were good then but sound a bit fey and dated now (Vincent Vincent and the Villains, take a bow). But there are also records that were never any good, like Cazals’ ‘Comfortable Silence’, which defines “landfill indie”. Even worse, the dreadful Stylofone seem to regurgitate all the worst bits of Queen’s Greatest Hits in one song while, coming closer to the label’s present day releases, I want to hear nothing nothing else by Everything Everything.

A compilation record is Marmite by definition but there’s something about the stage school performances and lack of character/ commitment in the vocals of many of these bands that makes the ‘skip’ facility on your CD player/ iPod a necessity. On the bright side, there are some tracks that give you a reason for buying this record; New Moscow’s ‘Go Rebel Go’ has real depth, Bobby Grindrod shows off his scat singing with Friends of the Bride and Exlovers ‘Photobooth’ is lovely, melancholic indiepop. Good Shoes’ best record is on here (‘Small Town Girl’) and it’s good to be reacquainted with Pull Tiger Tail’s excellent ‘Animator’. There are some individual highlights like these but the later tracks suggest that the label is still trying too hard to be scene setters (on the evidence of the Coldplay-esque rock and 80s electropop at the end of CD2). The record is a nice scrapbook for the label but my own memories of a half-decade of the YALC are ones I’d mostly rather let go.

DISC 1
1. Vincent Vincent and the Villains: Blue Boy
2. Vincent Vincent and the Villains: The Boy Who Killed Time
3. Good Shoes: Small Town Girl
4. Larrikin Love: Six Queens
5. Action Plan: Stendahl
6. New Moscow: Go Rebel Go
7. Vincent Vincent and the Villains: I'm Alive
8. Cazals: Comfortable Silence
9. Fear of Flying: Routemaster
10. Pull Tiger Tail: Animator
11. Stylofone: Nightime
12. Johnny Flynn: Tickle Me Pink
13. Friends of the Bride: The End of Loneliness
14. Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong: Lucio Starts Fires
15. Noah and the Whale: Five Years Time

DISC 2
16. Noah and the Whale: 2 Bodies 1 Heart
17. Naked and the Boys: If You Find Love
18. Semifinalists: Odd Situation
19. Pull Tiger Tail: Mary Jane
20. Golden Silvers: Arrows of Eros
21. Bombay Bicycle Club: Evening/Morning
22. Lord Auch: Mareado
23. The Virgins: One Week of Danger
24 Loverman: Shoot The Pig
25. Planet Earth: What More
26. Arthur Delaney: Darling
27. Exlovers: Photo Booth
28. Oh Minnows: Might
29. Magic Wands: Black Magic
30. Alan Pownall: The Others
31. Ou Est Le Swimming Pool: Dance The Way I Feel
32. Everything Everything: MY KYZ, UR BF
33. Lunar Youth: Misfits
34. Othello Woolf: Stand
35. Noah and the Whale: Blue Skies

Links:
http://www.youngandlostclub.com/