Album review: The Revival Hour - Scorpio Little Devil

To make any sense of The Revival Hour’s debut LP Scorpio Little Devil, it’s necessary to understand the commonality that binds its creators. Born either side of the Atlantic, DM Stith and John-Mark Lapham, formerly of Manchester’s The Earlies, are both gay men who were brought up in stern – if very different - religious communities. It’s unsurprising then to find their first full-length collaboration strongly bedded with themes of escapism and alienation.

Despite the deep-seated subject matter a sense of adventurism runs across the record’s spine. Fusing together a kaleidoscope of genres, the duo’s ability to switch skins is absorbing. Opener Control is a skittering, effects-riddled hailstorm; the harrowing Hold Back swoons with brass and gospel choir harmonies; and Run Away’s sunkissed pop skips away like a sugar-rushing Animal Collective. A never-ending treasure trove of ideas, Scorpio Little Devil is the sound of two remarkable minds becoming one.

First published here for The Skinny

INTERVIEW: Over the Wall

For those in need of a little entertainment, today’s music industry is often the wrong place to be. Saturated with po-faced, generic Indie rockers tripping over their mile-long frowns, it’s a climate obsessed with the bottom line. There’s no room for quirky showmanship, audience interaction or, god forbid, rock ‘n’ roll tomfoolery; it’s a wham, bam, thank you for buying our merchandise man era. And, boy, it sure ain’t fun.

What this dawning of banality needs is an antidote, an act to bowl us over with pervasiveness and honesty. A band like Glasgow duo Over the Wall, perhaps? “We just want people to enjoy what they are watching as much as possible and a lot of what we do would be classed as gimmicks,” says co-conspirator Ben Hillman as he discusses the group’s core principles. “We also manage to talk a lot as well. This instantly makes us very un-cool because as soon as you open your mouth on stage you are no longer mysterious.”

But the strong silent type does not constitute esoteric cool (just look at Glasvegas), what Over the Wall have is something that can’t be taught in rock school strategy meetings: Character. After years of scouring alone for the perfect sound, Hillman and cohort Gav Prentice hooked up while putting on shows at Glasgow venue Stereo. As Prentice tells it, the chemistry was immediate: “It was the response to the two of us onstage that made us think we’d obviously stumbled into something really good, plus the freedom afforded by just having the two of us made it really fun.”

The lure is in their ear for arrangement. Bold in both structure and content, the pairing skewer starlit symphonies with cerebral themes to create a thrilling mixture of textured, clued-up pop. “We discuss politics a lot and I was brought up in a house where politics was important,” explains Prentice. “A lot of our lyrics are about finding your place and coming to terms with getting older...so it makes sense to reference the political legacy of the years that immediately followed our births, especially seeing as that legacy is something we’re still paying the price for to a large extent now.”

Yet as refreshing as these intellectual leanings are, Over the Wall seem distinctly out of step with their more docile contemporaries. “I’ve always felt like we’re kind of outsiders and have had to work harder than some” says Prentice. Hillman continues: “It is true that many bands around have a much bigger sound than we do, but then there are ones with a much smaller sound doing very well too. We wouldn't try and change anything simply to sound like a successful band, or an unsuccessful one for that matter.”

Success, however, is there to be grabbed. Recently signed to Motive Sounds, Over the Wall have garnered steady acclaim since their ebullient EP The Rise and Fall of late last year (which sees a re-release this month). “I guess everyone in the media and entertainment industry probably feels like they are beating their head against a wall a lot of the time,” says Hillman, wearily accepting his band’s new status. “More frequently than not, the tables won't turn your way and everything is not hunky dory but sometimes they do. It's great when people take an interest, but nothing lasts forever.”

As for the future, well, it seems to be mapping out perfectly for Over the Wall: “An album before the end of the year will obviously make us worldwide superstars,” half-jests Prentice. “The affairs, coke habits and complete Star Trek: The Next Generation box sets can follow that.”

First published here at The Skinny and the photo was by some chap called Colin MacDonald.

LIVE REVIEW: Noah &The Whale, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 10 Mar

In five years time it's safe to assume Noah & The Whale won't be singing THAT song. You see, the Twickenham quartet fancy themselves as more than chart-breaching pixie-poppers and tonight they make their intentions clear with a pre-show appetiser of short films embracing both monochromatic drama and Pingu-inspired animation. An interesting concept, for sure, but sub-par art-school productions do not a serious band make.

What actually tips it N&TW’s way is the shoals of sombre, infectious melodies exuding from stage. Denser in sound than their brittle-boned debut LP suggests, Charlie Fink's tremulous blow swathes through the orchestral blizzard of Jocasta and Mary with the expertise of someone much longer in tooth. New numbers slot in like quarters to a Vegas fruit machine and although THAT closing totem is wearily treadmilled, N&TW manage to chisel into an enthralling creative avenue. Lord knows where they’ll be in half a decade.

First published here
Photae by David Anderson

Record Round-Up: October

During the wondrous Maple Leaves, jaunty twee-jangler Jens Lekman once mistook a conversation about autumn for Mark E Smith and - overlooking the obvious ‘Fall’ confusion – it’s easy to see why. Both exude bitter Northern blows that send neck quivering chills down the spine whilst drenching you in a storm of aqueous spittle. In fact, perhaps the only difference is that whereas one sheds leaves, the other sheds band members.

It’s fair to say, then, that autumn ain’t The Round Up’s favourite season and it’s even fairer to say The Fall ain’t red-top fawning hipsters The Metros’ favourite band. Not that Smith will be disappointed; the London-spawned quintet’s debut long-player More Money Less Grief [*] is the kind of grubby–pawed "indie" jizz-spurting sure to burst the colons of Pigeon Detective followers everywhere. For the rest of us: it’s a shameful abomination of target-market driven filth.

Fortunately, Woodpigeon’s Songbook [****] is next to enter the Round-up’s battle-hardy airspace and what a delight it is to hear the brittle whisper and fragile strum of one time Edinburgh resident Mark Hamilton. Bulging with Origami-folded laments clustered amidst twinkling, heart-melting harmonies, this is a record imbued with unpolished craft and ethereal dreaminess that recalls the early stool-bound shuffling of Belle & Sebastian and Sufjan Stevens.

Mancunian collective The Travelling Band’s Under The Pavement [***] doesn’t quite hit Woodpigeon’s giddy heights but it’s a cosy, embracive soiree of tenderised simplicity that ranges from country spangled strolling (i.M.E.A.T) to James Yorkston-like understatement (Fragments of Green). Fuller of sound but lesser of interest, French pop-rockers Arther [**] serve up a middling plateful of banal riffage and disinterested rhythms with their eponymously titled debut. Vocalist Juliette’s lingering mew is akin to Beth Gibbons in tone but the lack of imagination in the accompanying strums and strings conjures up a record that fails to break outwith the realms of monotony.

Twinkling all-girl quintet Those Dancing Days have no such issue escaping the mundane. The Swedish ensemble’s inaugural long-player In Our Space Hero Suits [***] is a dashing charge of chest-pounding brass and northern-soul swinging basslines that has The Round Up’s knees-a-knocking to the sound of full-blooded, all-action grrrrll-pop. Aye, it resembles the Pipettes-gone-Blondie but, hey, in these long dark nights everyone needs a little bit of sunshine to warm their cockles, right?

Alas, upon opening the sleeve of Emily Barker’s Despite The Snow [**] The Round Up feels all such thoughts of sunshine slip from mind. A tragic swell of organic folk, the Australian singer-songwriter’s second full-length shares roots with the plaintive storytelling of King Creosote without having the necessary charm to captivate over a stock collection of bleak and often tiresome woodland hymns.

Okay, so are all Emilys handed an acoustic guitar and drip-fed folk music at birth? Perhaps not, but having endured Emily Jane White’s Dark Undercoat [**] the Round Up’s beginning to think so. If you replace ‘King Creosote’ with ‘Beth Orton’ these next few lines of critique would be an almost exact reproduction of the verbiage spouted out about Emily Barker’s record above. So to save you the time, here it is compressed into ten words: organic folk, singer-songwriter, plaintive storytelling, without charm, tiresome woodland hymns.

Feeling like an article reborn, the Round Up decides to have a ‘compressed’ go at reviewing the new Oasis album: Banal Pub Rock Shite. Unfortunately, the ‘pioneering’ Mancs’ new record is yet to land in these grubby paws, so we must make do with the chamber-pop swirling of Ra-Ra-Riot’s The Rhumb Line [****]. Hyped to the hilt they may be but the Syracuse quintet has created a sublime long-player that apes the grandiose melodics of Arcade Fire’s Funeral. Standout number is the frothing Winter ‘05 - a track embedded with wailing viola and a harrowing, soul-plucked vocal - but so full of splendour are each of these 37 minutes it’s almost impossible to dismiss any of the blossoming cuts found spinning here. A contender for album of the year? Most certainly.

Bouyed by the almighty brilliance of Ra Ra Riot The Round Up pitches up at its final record of the month: Uzi & Ari’s Headworms’[****]. A twisting, skewering blend of percussive aplomb, Ben Shepard’s (for it is he who creates all sounds found here) third long-player is blushed with subtle nuances and inventive effect board tweaks that escalate the record from dreary lo-fi limping to elasticised ethereal sprinting. Vocally, Shepard bears an unnerving resemblance to a certain Radiohead luminary, yet so spellbinding are tracks like Patron Saints and the dazed Magpie’s Monologue that listening ears quickly find themselves lost in his hand-stitched patchwork of voluptuous rhythms.

And with that the Round-up ruffles it’s locks, double knots its scarf and braves the cold, cold breeze of Fall. See you next month!

Originally published here

Ballboy - I Worked On The Ships

Ballboy must be sick of living on the edge. Since 2001, the Edinburgh quartet have established a cult-like following – the late John Peel was a staunch advocate of their jaunty twee-isms – without ever striding into the public’s conscience. It’s unsurprising then to find that album number five, I Worked On The Ships, looks set to continue the group’s trend of garnering chin-stroking acclamation. That’s not to say this is a disastrous record, far from it. Cuts like The Guide To The Short Wave Radio and A Relatively Famous Victory are beatific paeans, shivering with introspection and gushing melody. Yet for all the heart fluttered grace We Can Leap Buildings And Rivers' happy-clapping pop brings, this delicious long-player will merely rekindle wanting desire in long-term lovers, never eliciting the advances of fresher faced admirers. One day Ballboy may finally make their move but, for now at least, the periphery’s all they’ve got.

Johnny Foreigner: Jo-Fo No Slow-Mos.

As the old adage goes: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. But try telling that to today’s tykes of indie rock. So quickly have bands like Foals and Black Kids been projected into the upper-echelons of critical and commercial success, it’s difficult to imagine such immediate medal-grabbing resulting in anything other than long-term oblivion. After all, you’ve got to learn how to pace yourself.

With this in mind, it would be easy to cast Johnny Foreigner alongside this new breed of overnight sensations. Having shot from the blocks like a speed-freaking Ben Johnson with last year’s - praised in all quarters - mini-album Arcs Across The City, the Birmingham born trio’s debut LP Waited Up Til’ It Was Light is one of the indie blogosphere's most eagerly anticipated debuts of the year. So in the run-up to their maiden full-length release, I caught up with bassist Kelly to uncover whether the sprightly young group of frantic punk-poppers have the stamina to run the distance.

Pondering the superlatives being thrown in JoFo's direction thus far, the bubbly Brummie takes it all in her stride. “It was just amazing and totally flattering but it’s kind of put a bit of pressure on for the new record,” she confesses. “We were pretty proud of the record, but we didn’t think people would love it enough to give it that much. I mean how do you beat scores like ten out of ten? We’re thinking about bribing music magazines to give us eleven next time.”

Formed just over two years ago when college chums Alexei (guitars/vocals) and Junior (drums) coerced Kelly into enlisting in their pursuit of creating break-neck indie rock, Johnny Foreigner’s trajectory toward the top of the indie rag-pile has been meteoric. However, despite amassing plaudits from critics and bloggers alike in such a short space of time, Kelly struggles to pin down a point where success seemed inevitable.

“I don’t think there really was a moment when we thought: ‘Right that’s it, we can actually make a living out of this’ – it was more of a gradual progression,” she says coyly. “I suppose when we signed to Best Before [small London based label, also home to The Pistolas] it was maybe the time when we started thinking we could make something of it. They wanted us to be touring loads and we’ve always liked to do lots of gigs so it’s worked out well.”

With a blizzard of hype surrounding Waited Up Til It Was Light’s arrival, it would be forgivable if a few primadonna moments had crept into the band’s carefree attitude but Kelly believes change has come only in the form of tour-van spawned professionalism: “I think we’ve been so busy that we don’t have time to put emphasis on what people say,” she explains. “The only difference is that when we first started out we were pretty shambolic and all our gear was falling apart. Now we like to think about ourselves as a professional band; all our equipment works and we get to change our strings now and then.”

With the eyes of the mainstream gazing down on the band, does Kelly believe they'll ever curtail their misdemeanant ways and vitriolic snarl to play ball in the cash-rich courtyard of populism? “God, I dunno. We could turn into REM and sell to the masses before living in big hillside mansions,” she says mischievously before quickly retreading her steps: “Nah, nah. Honestly, we’ll be in wheelchairs playing the same old music before we do that. If not, it would be the end of Johnny Foreigner.”

El Padre: That's Not My Name....

Despite a loving embrace from globe-conquering hip-hoppers, the pseudonym is much derided in today’s bourgeois indie circles. Keeping it real’s all part of the deal and, unless you’re after a one-way ticket to attention-starved oblivion, that tight little package your band earnestly plugs had better not include any weed-induced appellations. So when I chew the fat with El Padre’s entitled guitarist/vocalist Bobby Steve Jacksonson it’s a shock to discover his mammy didn’t christen him so.

“One day, a long, long time ago when the old version of El Padre was falling apart, I renamed everyone and came up with [Bobby Steve Jacksonson] and when the day came to stop using it I thought: ‘na, na I’m keeping that’,” Jacksonson explains. “Now I kind of like the anonymity of it all.”

Completed by the equally well-monikered Beat-á-Maxx [Beats/Vocals] and Papa Flash [Guitar/Vocals], El Padre’s synth-centric furore of jay-walking lyrics and rumbling melodics has been striking a dagger deep in the heart of po-faced fashionistas since the current line-up coagulated just over a year ago. A spate of doom-saying tracks like electro-ballad Monsters In The Blue certainly bely the trio’s playful disposition but Jacksonson is eager to stress that any perceived dolorous moping is unavoidable.

“I want [El Padre] to be fun but it’s very hard to write a happy song with synths,” he says. “When you introduce synths you’re treading into weird territory - you’ve got to do it really well. I guess some of the lyrics are very, very sad but it’s just a bleak way of saying something nice. It really annoys me when you hear that band who wrote that song about dancing to Joy Division (that'll be the Wombats - Ed). I mean, who actually has the audacity to write a song like that. They’re just a terrible, terrible band.”

Having fervently established those not on the group’s hitlist, Jacksonson unveils who tickle their electro-shock fancy: “There’s a huge influence coming from Scotland. The three bands who quite accurately form our sound are Errors, Frightened Rabbit and Twilight Sad. El Padre’s really a combination of different styles: Beat-á-Maxx has a lyricless, electro project whereas Pappa Flash is in many, many strange and wonderful bands. Hopefully, he’ll get a wedding gig soon – that’s where the money is and we could do with some new gear.”

Jacksonson’s own solo work is a skewer of introspection that flickers to the tune of dreamy acoustica, far removed from El Padre’s oceanic depths. So how does his work compare to El Padre’s motorway-rolling sonics? “It’s the kind of thing I do for myself, the things I relate to,” explains Jacksonson. “In [El Padre], Beat-á-Maxx is the one who does the sounds and I’m just an instrument for that. I really like that, I like being able to write lyrics for chords I normally wouldn’t produce myself.”

With fingers buried deep in a multitude of pies, surely it’s time for the trio to refocus as one singular unit? Unsurprisingly, Jacksonson disagrees: “Well, right now, we’re working on one of Beat-á-Maxx’s projects which has something to do with twin peaks – it’s a Dr Dre influenced electro song called ‘The Owls Are Not What They Seem’. As for me, I’ve done a poem called a Πem, where the first word of each line is three letters long, the second one letter long and the third is four letters long – you know, 3.14? It could go on forever.”

Much like that age-old mathematical constant, you get the impression El Padre’s possibilities are endless.

The published version of this feature can be found here