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Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
The Nuns
Singing Adams
Y Niwl
Colours
Dignan Porch
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The Windmill
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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”

Latest Forum Posts

Single/Download Review

Wanda Jackson/ The Black Belles/ The Parties/ First Aid Kit/ Still Flyin’/ Tune-Yards
Singles roundup

Article written by Ged M - Mar 2, 2010

I haven’t seen such a bizarre range of releases as those on Jack White’s label since Alan McGee’s initial output for Creation in the 80s (and McGee didn’t have his own pressing plant or the sort of capital to indulge his fantasies fully). Wanda Jackson covering Amy Winehouse is just wrong. The back cover picture looks like a church magazine portrait but on ‘You Know I’m No Good’ (Third Man Records 7”), she’s singing “I told you I was trouble boy” in a frankly embarrassing way. I know she’s rightly called “the first lady of rockabilly” but making a 72 year old act sultry is the sort of thing that the X Factor does to triallists to get a cheap laugh. Her take on ‘Shakin All Over’ is more her style, and that quivering Southern voice echoes the sharpness it had in the 1950s and 60s but it’s spoiled by some terrible effects. For shame, Mr White. Website

The White Stripes’ red/white concept was a bit of a hoot but applying similar strictures to The Black Belles is a case of style over substance. The four young, photogenic, black-clad girlies making a garage noise might look good in their video but they sound distinctly average. Blogs are speculating that “Olivia Jean” looks a lot like Mrs Jack White and the guitar on ‘What Can I Do’ (Third Man Records 7”) is very White-ian but the rest of it sounds lifted from the Monks and early Horrors. Their cover of ‘Lies’ on the flip (you might remember the Knickerbockers’ version) is a total shocker, with a terrible guitar solo to finish it (it nearly finished me). Jack White’s released a few interesting singles on TMR but a lot more bad ones. Myspace

The ‘Cryin Shame’ EP’ (Rainbow Quartz) by San Francisco’s The Parties is unapologetically retro ‘Children of Nuggets’ pop. The chiming guitars and towering harmonies belong firmly in the 60s, borrowing liberally from the Byrds, Beatles and, on ‘Kensington Avenue’, the Kinks. That’s where the fascination with the 60s almost goes wrong, the song’s catalogue of everyday life sounding so English it’s in danger of tipping over into an Austin Powers pastiche. This EP is a bit more restricted in influence than their previous album ‘Can’t Come Down’ but the quality of songs like the janglesome title track suggest that people who like new music to sound like old music will like this. Myspace

‘I Met Up With The King’ by First Aid Kit (Wichita Recordings) is simple melodic but powerfully sung folk-pop. It’s still surprising that they’re only in their late teens but sisters Johanna and Klara sound even more accomplished than they did on their first mini-album, while they now have a much more defined sound of their own. Myspace

Still Flyin’ are a San Francisco ensemble (“ensemble” seems to be a word we’re using frequently just now) whose new single ‘Runaway Train II’ (Moshi Moshi Records, download only) is brass-sweetened dance-pop with catchy hooks, while the other track ‘All Lips Touch’ has the same repetitive groove but adds hippy lyrics. Their party pop is a little too one-dimensional on record – this is a band who are a wholly different proposition live. Myspace

Tune-yards’ latest single ‘Real Live Flesh’ (4AD)sounds like you’re standing between a dozen radios all tuned to different stations. The effect is simultaneously disorientating and effective. Merrill Garbus’s record is a cut-up of collected sounds, switching between street-noise, hip-hop, African pop and folk, all propelled by a Jah Wobble bass rumble and a human beatbox. The flipside ‘Youth’ is more straightforward but it’s still a set of dirty blues rhythms with advice to match: “don’t let them tell you that your shit isn’t brown”. World music in the truest sense of the world. Myspace

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