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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")

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Single/Download Review

The Trailer Trash Tracys/ Your Twenties/ Seeland/ Fergus & Geronimo/ The Smith Westerns/ Nat Johnson and the Figureheads
Singles roundup

Article written by Ged M - Oct 19, 2009

The Trailer Trash Tracys have a name that bears no resemblance to the sound they make. You might be expecting some raw garage-rock band but ‘Candy Girl’ (No Pain in Pop 7”, red vinyl) is slow and expectant shoegazing, full of reverb and echoey vocals. It’s like early My Bloody Valentine or the JAMC on high dosage diazepam. It creates a beautifully woozy atmosphere with a very minimal approach to instrumentation (see [the B-side] for evidence), and even if you don’t like the name, you’ll be hearing a lot more of them. Myspace

Your Twenties is a band fronted by an ex-member of Metronomy and debut single ‘Caught Wheel’ was an excellent three minutes of catchy keyboard-led pop. Follow up ‘Billionaires’ (Neon Gold Records 7”) is in the same vein, a fast-paced and catchy Blur-esque piece of Britpop, complete with “wooh-woohs” in the chorus. Blur fans not wishing to contemplate the ravages that time has worked on Alex James’ features or the current circumference of Damon Albarn’s waist may like to move on now to a Blur-inspired, prettier looking and sound band like Your Twenties. Myspace

The second single from Seeland’s Tomorrow Today album is an electropop gem. The ex-Broadcast and Plone boys have created (with the help of remixers) a set of immediate, harmony-laced electronica. The main track ‘Captured’ (LoAF Recordings) suspends guitars and keyboards in a solution that is part Josef K indie-edginess and part Prefab Sprout pop sheen: an odd combo that works. The EP includes a gorgeous “ghost-folk” remix of ‘Call The Incredible’ by The Advisory Circle, the original track still recognisable but given a spooky frosting of tinkling space sounds. It’s all a very polished electronic pleasure. Myspace

I love to death ‘Harder Than It’s Ever Been’ by Fergus & Geronimo (greatest single of 2009, unquestionably) so whatever follows could never be as good. That’s the case with ‘Tell It, In My Ear’, a 7” on London label Transparent Records, but it’s still a fine piece of plastic. The early rock sounding song is a gem of harmony-strewn lo-fi pop, redolent of the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons. ‘Glistening Smiles’ meanwhile saunters into a fine Velvet Underground groove. Denton, Texas is some sort of musical Roswell and their singles have this unworldly way of resurrecting old sounds. Myspace

Another band who are awesome reimaginers of classic sounds are The Smith Westerns. Their ‘Be My Girl’ (Transparent Records 7”) kicks off with a louche T Rexy glam groove before it bursts into a chorus that couldn’t be more explosive if you‘d stubbed out your cigarette into a live box of Standard fireworks. ‘Girl In Love’ mixes the Glitter Band drumbeat (still a classic sound) with a riff straight out of Telegram Sam. It’s a case of Nuggets-plus, another generation of bands inspired by the coolest sounds of the 70s. Myspace

Matt H has only just reviewed the album by Nat Johnson and the Figureheads and the first single taken from that record reflects the album as a whole – Nat has gone a little rockier with the punchy-pop ‘Wonderful Emergency’ (Damaged Goods 7”), but it still has the folky undertones that remind you of her previous much-loved band. The flipside contains a non-album cover of ‘Don’t Worry Baby’. It’s hard to cover something so canonical in the bible of great music without sounding like a Simon Cowell cruise ship performer but Nat and cohorts make a great stab at it; she sings it in an appropriately lovestruck way, the band create a comforting blanket of sound without aping Brian Wilson’s production too much, and the naked honesty in her voice convinces you that this is anything but a throwaway time-filler. Most recommended. Myspace

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