Intervew archives: Dan Deacon

I like Dan Deacon – a lot. His debut full-length, Spiderman of the Rings, tickled my synapses like an electroshocked feather duster and its predecessor Bromst is currently perched atop my provisional 2009 hitlist (I know, it's only May). So, when the opportunity arose to cross conversational swords with the Baltimore-based electroneer I snapped at it, gator-style. What ensued was, for sure, the most intriguing interview I've ever had the pleasure to conduct. The 500 word feature can be found in the latest issue of Tank, but I thought the transcript was so arresting it needed to be aired.

So here you go, my favourite interview ever with one hell of an artist. It's a bit of a long one, mind you, so you might need a brew for company...

Hi Dan how are you?
DD: I’m at home in Baltimore. Things are good.

How are things coming along with the new record?
DD: It’s good and being reproduced and manufactured. It should be out on March 24th.

Have you found there’s been much pressure at all?
DD: Yeah [laughs heartily]. Not in a bad way but on the last record it seemed like no one really knew who I was, so it seemed like there was very little hype round the record before it came out. After the Pitchfork review that was when all the press started happening and I’m finding it a little different having people know who I am now with this record. It’s exciting.

Are you comfortable with that?
DD: The main thing that’s been weighing me down has been interviews to be honest. I feel like every day I have like three or four hours of interviews scheduled. It’s not really what I enjoy doing the most. I’m not a narcissist and trying to explain the record in a unique and innovative way every day can be a bit of tiresome process.

Hmmm...It’s not looking good for my next few questions then!
DD: [Laughs] I mean I understand the importance of it, and I’ve been reading a lot of interviews to see how other artists have handled it. I don’t want to take a hostile approach to the press. I realise that would be selfish, foolish, naive and ignorant. I’m really just looking to being on tour and getting into it.

I’m a big fan of discovery and I guess the press helps people to discover, well most of them. Do you know what I’m trying to say.

Erm...I guess so
DD: I don’t really know what I’m talking about, forget that. [laughs].

Okay, well I’ll just carry on reeling out the questions then.... So how have you approached the release of this record?
DD: The main thing is that I wanted it to be more contrasted than the last record. Spiderman of the rings was one level of intensity and I wanted this record to have more sections that would highlight the intensity. I feel like if something plateaus it loses its initial impact and I wanted this one to have more of a dynamic, with regards to the density and the intensity level in the general feel of the sound.



Is it a dramatic shift?
DD: I don’t think it’s shifted away, it’s more an evolution. I can’t imagine that people will turn this one on and go “I can’t believe this is Dan Deacon. What the fuck?!”. It’s definitely a more mature, more composed album than the last.

So are you more comfortable in a recording environment or a live environment?
DD: I dunno. I mean I used to feel a lot more comfortable in the live environment but since the shows have grown I’ve become more comfortable in the recording environment. For a long period I was just touring and put all my energy into the presentation of work, rather than the creation of work. And, of course, the shows have changed since I first started. Before it was a show with about 100 people but now multiple thousands of people are there.

How does that feel?
DD: It feels weird. It puts it into an entirely different context and it becomes an entirely different show. I have to take a lot of thought and consideration into how to present it that context. I mean, its fun to play to that many people but at the same time I don’t want it to [tails off]. Like, I just did this show in New York that was really aggressive; it just didn’t translate very well.

With such big crowds now are you still able to retain the interaction you previously had with crowds like the last time I saw you in Edinburgh?
DD: Yeah but it’s difficult to interact with a huge crowd. I remember that show in Edinburgh being a really small crowd for that tour. It was really refreshing and fun; you could see the back of the room. It was easy to make eye contact with everyone there and when I play on the floor to 2000 people there’s only like seven people you can see.

You know there are so many contexts in which a show can exist in and I try and take it on a show by show basis, where you have less absolutes. It’s more like one system will work in one setting and another will work better with a different system. So some shows I’ll play on the floor and some shows I’ll play on the stage.

Is that something you’ll assess when you arrive at the venue then?
DD: Yeah, it’s difficult to predict ahead of time unless it’s some big festival then you’ll know what’s right or wrong.

Are you at all bothered that people may find your live shows more alluring than your records?
DD: This is the first record that I’ve made thinking that more people will hear it. With Spiderman of The Rings I wasn’t sure how many people would hear it so I was pretty sure that more people would go to shows than buy records. It was the first record I’d made that was in stores, all the rest I sold at shows. So, clearly by that nature, more people saw the songs live than actually heard them recorded and Spiderman of the Rings was written for a live show format, whereas Bromst was written for both. It’s much more of a balanced record, I think.

I hear you’ll be taking a band on the road to promote Bromst. Is this true?
DD: Yeah, I’ll be going out with the ensemble in the US and Europe.

Do you prefer that to working on your own?
DD: I’d say at this point I definitely prefer it. It’s a lot of fun to jam with people and there’s nothing that can really compete with live instruments. You can have the greatest kick drum sample in the world but you’re emulating a live kickdrum – why not use a live kickdrum? I understand the importance of synthetic bass drums and synthetic snares, those definitely have their application and purpose, but I want to use as many true sound sources as possible. Having a combination of organic and synthetic sounds is something that really excites me.

So are you going to be playing an instrument yourself?
DD: I would consider the effects board an instrument. I will be playing a digital instrument.

So, how musical accomplished are you? I read that you were inspired by Black Flag and Minutemen - did you start of as a “typical” musician?
DD:I was never really into Black Flag or Minutemen really. I’m not sure where you got that from.

Really? Ah fuck.... Wikipedia strikes again.
DD: [laughs] No, they never shaped my musical output... I started writing music at junior High School with a program called Mini-soft which was a mini programmer and I started experimenting with sound in speed. I was in a Ska-band at that time and I was excited by the shows. The shows were energetic and rambunctious and that’s where I fell in love with that theme. I drifted from the music pretty quickly as it was all too similar for my liking but the atmosphere and energy was unparalleled.



I can definitely see similarities in the way you gee a crowd up.
DD: People in the ska scene didn’t give a shit about what other people thought about them. They just wanted to have fun dancing. That was the first time I had ever seen people dance to music that wasn’t techno or club music. That kind of music didn’t appeal to me. Being a dorky trombone player in Junior High and going to a ska show and seeing a band that played loud, energetic music that had an instrument I could relate to made a big impact on me.

Then I guess around that same time I experimented more with sounds and textures. I didn’t know anything about serialism, tonalism, atonalism, dissonance or harmonies, so I taught myself a lot of stuff and then later figured out at college what it actually was. It was fun a fun period and I was into bands like They Might Be Giants and Devo because they were considered serious bands but they had a lighthearted nature to them. And then getting out of ska and getting into more quirky music I definitely felt that was where I wanted to put my focus into; something that was definitely serious but didn’t want to put a crown upon its head.

Is difficult to retain that exuberance to this day, particularly given what you’ve said about the press. Has this become a job to you?
DD: I consider it a job but it’s a job I really enjoy working. I don’t want to play out the record and be just like [puts on a voice that suggests he weighs 400lbs] “ Now go make me some money record, I’m going to lay on the couch and jerk off all day.” I like talking about the record – it’s something I’m immensely proud of - and I hope that people can find something different in it that they can relate to. I think the importance of the press is definitely there, I just wish I could spread it out more. I feel like a jerk speaking to someone and then a half hour later talking to someone else and saying the exact same thing. I guess that’s my own fault for not giving the record label a proper schedule of my time.

On the other foot, it must be quite nice to hear your fans’ take on your material?
DD: I think that’s part of the beauty of music. It certainly conveys an idea and emotion that can’t exist any other way. It only exists as music. Music takes the aspect of language that’s missing and fills that void. Unless it has a lyrical content, you can’t open the door with music to express feelings of love and loss or exuberance that surpasses the written or spoken word can. And it’s interesting to see how people interpret music because everyone understands it differently; they have their own individual mind and thought. So it’s interesting to see how they take something I perceive one way and they see it another. And that’s why art is so important to people. It’s based entirely on how they perceive it.

Are you concerned at all by people’s reactions?
DD: Yeah, I’m looking forward to people hearing it - I just hope people don’t think it’s going to be Spiderman of the rings 2. Ultimately I’m not worried about it, I’m very proud of it and even if people don’t like it , I’m happy with it so that’s alright with me.

Ultimately, it comes down to you being satisfied with your own work?
DD: It could get the worst reviews in the world but that couldn’t take away the enjoyment I had making

I spoke to Ben Curtis [School Of Seven Bells] recently who said he felt sorry for people who are at home making music on a laptop. Should we feel sorry for you?
DD: No. Not at all. I think that that person likes something different. I just think that a laptop has become as equal a composer as sheet music. For me, making music on my own is an important aspect of my every day life: it’s a very meditative and spiritual process. It’s fun to share that process with people but in the end there’s ideas that I know could only be achieved individually and there’s ideas I know that could only be achieved being in a group. I don’t think that being a solo composer is any better than being a composer that being in a band with other individuals. It’s kind of like saying it’s better to live in Europe than to live in the United States – they’re both good and bad.

I read the message on your MySpace after the review by Ryjam Kidwell and you said you felt like you're on your way to accomplishing something. What is that something? Have you achieved it yet?
DD: You know, I feel like I’m getting there – we’re starting to create a unified community and I feel like we’re getting there. It’s to have people feel more connected to their environment, their environment being the earth and the people around them and not just their friends. Its feeling more connected to everything and to have some sense of responsibility in regards to their choices they make. I feel like Western society has made it easy to put those choices aside and not be concerned with “where did the mug I drink my coffee out of every day come from?”. Not like which store it came from but how it got shipped there, was it made in a factory where people are miserable? Like, what was the necessity of buying a hat: How was it manufactured? Where was it made? It’s looking at it as a line, like a fader that can go back and forth.

At the time when I said that, with any material object the greater comfort level it gives someone it seems to take that comfort away from someone else who was attached to it. For your shoes to be cheap it makes someone else’s life miserable, like the person who made it in the sweatshop. But it’s beyond that, it’s like every tangible object: the cell phone I’m talking on, the bed I’m sleeping in, the supermarket that I shop in. All of that stuff bears a reflection and it seems like society could go in any direction and we’re walking on a precipice that gets thinner and thinner every day. One side could be a dark age and the other could be an age of enlightenment. The only way I think it’s not going to be a dark age is if people become more conscious of their role in the world and not just turn the lights off because of global warming or not having the water on when using your toothbrush. It has to go beyond that. We’re way too comfortable at this point to passively save the world.

It should be way more about trying to save the world than saving ourselves. It’s about making the world a better place for everyone and not just the comfortable few. I obviously say that here in my home in Baltimore where I have a nice house and have things that I cherish and there’s people out there that don’t. Living in a place like Baltimore it’s really easy to see that. It’s easy to walk outside a warehouse where friends are living and see the immense poverty that’s about.

I know that as a musician it’s difficult to be taken seriously but I think that by making people feel more connected, if a connection is made, people will start to feel less separated from the earth. The way that people talk about humans and nature we’re like observers looking in and that’s not the case. We’re just as much a part of it of everything as everything else. And I think that’s important, even on a base level. In a community every member of a community is just as important as another. Does that make sense?

Yes, completely. So is your music a part of that connectivity?
DD: Well, I want the album to create a sense of excitement and motivation. I want the listener to feel positive about it when they’re done. I don’t want it to be weighted down upon it. There’s parts of the record that are like that. I think Snookered (verify) is the most self reflective song about making mistakes and how you correct them and how you can’t take it back as much as you’d want to. By the end, I’d want it to be something that’s like ‘I accept that’ and the only way to repair what’s happened is to move forward.

But the show, I want it to be something that takes those ideas but puts it into the context of being a large group of people, trying to get them to do something they wouldn’t necessarily do as a group; getting friends and strangers into a mindset that they might not otherwise have. I think that’s the goal and I’ve been slowly achieving that. Hopefully it will go to another level once the idea becomes more refined and less theoretical.



I know that you’ve complained about speaking to journalists a lot but you speak passionately and assuredly when you’ve spoken to me.
DD: That’s because no-one has asked me about that and I’m really glad you did. I’m pretty excited to talk about that. Usually I get a lot of the same questions but that one was really refreshing. And thanks for letting me go on for a while. Sometimes journalists just cut me off mid-flow when I start talking. IT was fun to get the idea out in its entirety.

To be honest, you don’t seem like normal musician. You seem passionate and full of ideas and zeal.
DD: I feel like a lot of the people I work with share that same passion; I don’t really know that many contemporary musicians, I usually just read about them. I know what you mean though; a lot of people just seem to be going through the motions. Like when you go to a large festival and you see bands hanging out in large trailers back stage rather than walking around the site.

That seems to be the antithesis to your musical ideology?
DD: Yeah, especially in the larger shows. You’re told “here’s the VIP area and here’s the back stage”. I mean, fuck that, I want to be where the audience is. I remember one time at a festival me and Bradford [Deerhunter/Atlas Sound] were walking about on the festival grounds and so many people were telling us how great it was that we were out there. We we’re both thinking “Yeah, what the fuck else are we gonna do?” I remember was some guy from a band I don’t want to name who was so shocked that we were out. I mean why not go out there and see what it’s like. The main thing I wanted to see was the bathrooms – they were disgusting. But that’s why me and my friends started running a festival called Whartscape. We were booking bands that seemed to have a similar outlook and with Whrthscape here’s no backstage, there’s no green room and bands were out in the crowd. It has a completely different atmosphere, there s no star or no celebrity aspect to it. That’s what it should always be. It shouldn’t be a hierarchy that divides people through musical talent. I feel like there’s so many talented people out there, it’s not just like the one or two people who get to lick the gold coin of major record labels any more. There’s no need to put on a facade or division look towards music or community. IT should be very much one for all and all for one and not just the ‘look at me, I’m a star’ infrastructure that I hope is eradicated quickly.

I think the boundaries are breaking now with the rise of the internet . People are able to connect with bands on a whole new level.
DD: I think coming up in the DIY scene in Long Island through the Ska scene helped me a lot. I remember when we were playing with big ska bands in the area and we were like ‘oh my god, I can’t believe we’re playing with you guys’. But we were just dorky kids and they were just older dorks. It was sort of like the glass had gone. It felt more comfortable. It’s nice to have someone to look up to and someone to aspire but it’s silly sitting back stage. It’s nice to have a greater connectivity with the audience.

Right that’s time up for me Dan. It was great to speak to you. I hope it wasn’t too tedious for you.
DD: Nah, this one was a lot of fun. I started walking around and I wasn’t lying in bed pounding my head so it was good.

ALBUM REVIEW: King Creosote - Flick the Vs

Shooting from the hip’s never been Kenny Anderson’s game. Over the breadth of his decade-spanning career, the Fife-born troubadour - better known as King Creosote and the founder of Scotland’s most celebrated label, Fence Records - has always exuded an air of emotive reticence in his music; smothering ardency in romantic soliloquy and creaky melody. Sure, he’s occasionally offered moments of volcanic aplomb, yet they were often lost in a daze of awkward indecision and crippling embarrassment.

But that was then. Today’s Kenny Anderson is a very different proposition.

New LP Flick the Vs may prove he’s still shitting out records like a lactose-intolerant mouse in a creamery but here, instead of ruing life’s tribulations through a slew apologetic mumbles, Anderson’s confronting hurdles with undeterred assertiveness. The proof lies in the record’s title: a provocative statement of intent that’s both jovial and menacing, conjuring images of a youthful dissidence that belies his years. Somewhere along the line, Kenny Anderson’s grown a set of balls - and he likes it.

His persuasive mantra is apparent from the off. Opener ‘No One Had It Better’ (originally presented on last year’s, tour only, They Flock Like Vultures…) begins with a muffled vocoder din that eventually erupts as a spewing of snare and synth, while Anderson bellows “If you want it, you can have it” with scathing, indefatigable purpose. It’s an outstanding battle cry for an album that shifts away from King Creosote of yore. Rather than the staple diet of accordion-swaying balladry, Flick The Vs devours effects boards and washes it down with gulps of ambitious, anathema pop.

‘Camels Swapped for Wives’ epitomises this dogmatic pathway. Here, Anderson spits and cusses across a funeral march of drum that eventually evolves as a purified, deep-cleansing tear-jerker in which Anderson finally achieves emancipation. And it’s this sort of unexpected twist that makes Flick The Vs such a beguiling listen. Frenetic cuts like distorted key-guzzler ‘Coast On By’ or the pulsing heartbeat of ‘Fell An Ox’ rest ornamentally beside ‘Nothing Rings True’’s acoustic strums without ever stepping out of sync; their contradictory nature subtly attuned to the composer’s spiky disposition.

For those coveting the familiar, Anderson’s falsetto crow takes flight over the string-strewn notes of album closer ‘Saw Circular Prowess’ and ‘Curtain Craft’’s creaky waltz. But in the context of an album swilling with insistence, their diffident flutters pale meekly, particularly when compared to the rollicking ‘Rims’. A master class in arrangement, the track begins with Anderson declaring”I am the worst” over gun-slinging skiffle and puffing squeezebox, before transcending as euphoric brass-wielding calypso that culminates in an exhillerating finale of scattergun electronica.

But as ingenious as ‘Rims’ is, ‘No Way She Exists” ska-infused tremor will be what lights Flick the Vs’ blue touch paper with Creosote-ites old and new. More in keeping with KC Rules OK’s bulbous rollicks, Anderson sets sails with a geographical assessment of agreeable females (”Maybe a girl from the West, could be they really are the best”) before a whirlpool of trumpet and guitar writhes in tandem with tumid mandolins. It’s a veracious blast, both in song and lyric, and a track that crowns the most consistent and ambitious King Creosote recording to date.

He may not be shooting from the hip just yet, but Kenny Anderson’s certainly acquired the gift of the gab.

First published here at The Line of Best Fit

ALBUM REVIEW: Now, Now Every Children - Cars

Ah, grammar. Where would the English-writing media be without its pedantic boundaries? Well, if today’s young ‘uns continue to scoff in the face of semantics and profit-sponging moguls decide to ‘relate’, we’ll be riding the crest of a tabloid-talking, SMS-jiving wave very soon. But right now, while the Queen’s English reigns supreme, there’s no rag redder in the eyes of a journalist (or, surely, a reader?) than illogical, ill-conceived sentence construction.

With this in mind, the question has to be asked: just what were Cacie Dalager and Brad Hale thinking? By completely disregarding basic grammatical rules with THAT moniker, the Minneapolis duo have earmarked themselves as fodder for every Lynne Truss-following stickler who puts pen to paper. Then again, perhaps it’s a defiant act of intent; an attention-grabbing fuck you aimed at people like me? Christ knows, we deserve it.

Of course, the irony is Now, Now Every Children [NNEC] does conform to structure - just not in a written sense. Debut long-player Cars is as formulaic as a school-boy’s chemistry set, never once deviating from a blueprint of pensive introduction slowly escalating into a dramatic, skyscraping conclusion. Yet this lack of adventure is not as languid as it seems: NNEC’s cuts are Postal Service-like in hue, heavy on transient atmosphere and buried in layers of digitised effects.

Dalager’s lethargic intone is the centre piece of every tidy number; representing an axis around which percussion and strum chime together during blithe trinket ‘Everyone You Know’ and the cutesy ‘In the City’. Wisping and enchanting, her translucent purr is redolent of Victoria Bergsman as she pines “my head is an empty house when you’re not around” over ‘Sleep Through Summer’’s multi-layered crescendo.

But there’s more than just a smattering of divine vocal to be found in the album’s forecourt. ‘Headlights’ is a deep, introspective chasm built upon Dalager’s sighing couplets and a thick instrumental flurry, while ‘In My Chest’ crackles with guitars that fuzz like a wash of snow on analogue TV. The gorgeous ‘Friends With My Sister’ is the album zenith: a tearstained clang of reflection that finds Dalager’s prescriptive laments seduced into a maniacal haze of guitar and blinking synths.

Sadly, these delectable moments call shotgun on Cars’ front seat, leaving only a mire of whiny Stateside Emo tripe to linger at the rear-end. The woeful ‘Little Brother’ epitomises this vapid descent, with Dalager meekly crowing “so la la la la letting you in and making us sing a song for you” as an ambivalent congregation of key strikes stoop meagrely alongside her, as if aware of the track’s pulseless deficiencies.

It’s a meek finale that contradicts NNEC’s penchant for triumphant climaxes and suggests this is a band destined to linger in the quagmire of America’s college circuit. Considering their grammar, that may not be such a bad thing.

First published here at the Line of Best Fit

INTERVIEW: Passion Pit

Sometimes the folly of youth lies in its blind ambition. As the industry hype-machine buzzed around Passion Pit last year, founding member Michael Angelakos fell prey to the wrath of the dictaphone by decreeing an intention to blend Randy Newman and Stevie Wonder-like song writing with experimental dance pop. The wishful thinking of a starry-eyed young pup, certainly, but in these feral days of bitch-slapping blogs such bravado can fester a sneering resentment that focuses on everything except the music.

Not quite the introduction a fresh faced electro-pop outfit needs, yet the truism of no publicity being bad publicity seems to resonate with the Boston-born ensemble: “We were 21 years-old, you know,” explains drummer Nate Donmoyer before a show at Glasgow’s Captains Rest. “Men don’t physiologically mature until they’re 30 so hopefully the press will go a little bit easy on us. I think Mike would take any criticism as a compliment though because Randy Newman is a major influence on us and has a special influence on Mike’s life.”

So far, it’s been Angelakos alone who has taken Passion Pit to the periphery of success. Recorded in his bedroom over two years ago, debut EP Chunk of Change was a Valentine's Day collage of sun kissed laments intended for a then-girlfriend. But the EP’s mix of personalised lyrics and hook-infused electronica quickly made its way on to the US college radio circuit before exploding wider thanks to a series of commercial tie-ins and, of course, the obligatory Pitchfork commendation.

Now signed to effortlessly cool indie label Frenchkiss Records, Passion Pit has evolved as a full-formed band of five, adding flesh to the bones of Angelakos’s intimately conceived numbers. “It’s almost like method acting,” says Donmoyer of playing someone else’s personal songs. “Even though the person is singing about his experiences you’re still trying to put it into your own context. I don’t really know what the story he’s trying to tell is but I have one for when I’m playing it live that I believe in, so it inspires me to play harder.”

Having drawn comparisons with acts like Hot Chip and The Go! Team while infiltrating a ream of January tip lists (including our very own), the anticipation surrounding the release of debut long-player Manners is almost rapturous. Not that the band notice: “We try and not pay attention to what people say,” claims Donmoyer. “It’s always good to hear the positive things but not so good to hear the expectations are so high. Though, it’s nice to have the opportunity to live up to it some day.”

But with a spectrum of ideas running through the creative veins of Passion Pit, can Manners really mesmerise the lugholes like Chunk of Change did? “It’s still a summertime record but our range of influences can definitely be heard on this one,” Donmoyer states. “There’s live drums running through the whole thing and there’s more guitars and pianos that’s given it a more organic feel. There’s still a shit tonne of synths on it but there’s more of a medium with live instruments now.”

Through the maze of hyperbole, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that Passion Pit are newcomers in an unforgiving industry. Their brazen soundbites disguise an openness that suggests this is a band coming to terms with its new status. Or as Donmoyer says: “It’s been really eye-opening to how the industry works. I’ve done DIY indie rock and dance and DJ kind of things and I’d never seen it on a major label. It’s kind of crazy how it all works but we’ll take it, I guess.”

First published here at The Skinny

ALBUM REVIEW: Butcher Boy - React or Die

There’s a common misconception that Glasgow’s streets are strewn with industrious bands just waiting to be heard. The city’s granite pathways are mooted as a ceaseless indie-pop conveyor belt spawned from the frustrations of foreboding housing schemes and a skyline so low it can fractured the skull. But this myopic romanticism is mere fallacy, contrived by a haggard congregation of luddites (aka the Scottish mainstream media) determined to ride one more wave of self-fabricated glory.

In reality, Glasgow is no different to Manchester, Sheffield, London, L.A, New York or any other city accorded a rose-tinted musical epoch. Sure, its history is speckled with triumphs, but for every Orange Juice there’s a Del Amitri; for every Belle & Sebastian there’s an El Presidente; and for every Jesus & Mary Chain there’s despicable sub-Phil Spector defecation (say hello Glasvegas). To get to the truth about the west coast’s musical subculture you need to wade through the bullshit. And, Christ knows, there’s a lot of that.

But scouring for diamonds often leads to unpolished gems like Butcher Boy being criminally overlooked. Their 2007 debut, Profit In Your Poetry, was a charming cul-de-sac of fey balladry that tingled with the spritely fragrance of New Pop and bore a genial kinship with Stuart Murdoch’s melody-plucking yeomen. Of course, it bombed - those piquant melodies barely registering in a climate diseased by Topshop-ruffled guitar bands - but the recording was infused with a creative grace that earmarked potential greatness, if only the band didn’t jack it all in.

Thankfully (and almost anonymously) then, the septet has returned with the release of follow up long-player React or Die. A brazen title for an act submerged in an ocean of shite with only a straw for air, this beautifully sculpted record gushes with an emotional tenderness more in keeping with the plush green pastures of Fence luminaries Kenny Anderson and James Yorkston than any Byres Road hipsters.

The immaculate wheeze of accordion that tip-toes around John Blain Hunt’s skeletal annunciation on opener ‘When I’m Asleep’ decrees the group’s elegant craft. You see, Butcher Boy are far from purveyors of the ear-clothing noise that escorts suited carcasses through the daily grind; instead, theirs is the sound of delicate, melody-charred vignettes that requires time, space and an attention span stretching beyond Channel Four list-umentaries to truly appreciate.

Here, beatific soirees flow like wine in a monastery and the effects are equally quenching: ‘The Kiss Will Marry Us’ and the brilliant ‘Why I Like Babies’ are astonishing cheek-dampeners that both enliven and oscillate with swooning melody; ‘A Better Ghost’ jangles with a exuberant Americana rhythm that incites the tandem tapping of all twenty digits; while ‘You’re Only Crying For Yourself’ is a bluster of instrumentation that swoops into Hunt’s tender intones.

The only stain on this cushioning twee-pop patchwork is the laboured ‘Sunday Bells’, a clanging, thrashing cut that never quite accelerates with the grace it should, but the title track’s ensuing chimes press so wilfully in the eardrums such banal throbbing is quickly forgotten. And it’s this perseverance that best sums up React Or Die and, perhaps, Butcher Boy themselves: you’ll have to toil through the dregs to find it but, once you have, you’ll never regret it.

First published here at The Line Of Best Fit

INTERVIEW: Storsveit Nix Noltes

It seems the only noise emitting from Iceland right now is that of financial institutions crashing to the ground. But while the white-collared howls of kamikaze bankers may incite wry chortles from those poor enough to have slipped the credit crunch’s grasp, the sound’s not a patch on the ear-pleasing ditties of old-school luminaries like Bjork, Sigur Rós and The Sugarcubes. Fortunately, this baffling sonic deficit is about to change: Stórsveit Nix Noltes [SNN] are set to thrust the country's music scene back into the black.

An 11-piece ensemble conceived five years ago by various factions of the Reykjavik indie establishment, SNN’s collective girth is exceeded only by the sheer scale and depth of their plundering compositions. "[SNN is] really like a cluster of little military groups competing with each other," explains guitarist Vardi. "We just put the guitar section in one corner, the wind instruments in the other, the strings in another and so forth... in the middle sits Óli Björn [Olafsson], the drummer. He is the earth and heaven; the one that keeps these elements from dissolving into complete chaos."

But if SNN is redolent of anything, it’s chaos. The group’s sophomore long-player Royal Family - Divorce is an unvoiced mortar of instrumentation that adjoins brass-punctuated gypsy toils with post-rock malignancy. “The music we play is folk music. Folk music is about storytelling. Storytelling is about insane intensity and aching brittleness…” pronounces trumpet-player Eiríkur Orri Ólafsson. “All that stuff, the gamut of emotions, has a lot to do with the original tunes,” agrees drummer Oli. “It is embedded in the melodies, so we really don’t need to strive in our performance to get them out. It’s all there in the first place.”

Over the years, the sound of the Balkans has been appropriated by a sprawl of American acts keen on fanfaring their Eastern European education. SNN’s motives were less self-congratulatory: “We probably didn't so much infuse [the Balkan sound] with a modern edge rather than play it as honestly as we could,” reveals Eirijur. “We are a group of composers from Iceland. We have not been to Bulgarian weddings, but we absolutely love the music. So playing the songs in a traditional style would be dishonest and probably sound a lot worse than an actual Bulgarian band would sound.” Or, as guitarist Hallvarður Ásgeirsson sees it: “It's not that we have infused [Balkan music], it has infused us. It's a living being that takes over.”

And take over is what SNN is beginning to do. Since releasing their debut album Orkideur Havai on FatCat’s US label Bubble Core in 2006, the band’s blaze of traversing folk has abducted audiences around the globe, particularly after a stint supporting the mighty Animal Collective. Yet accessibility is an afterthought to this organic ‘Big Band’ [the English translation of Storsveit]: “We are the most impractical band in the universe,” decrees Hallvarður bluntly. “When we play shows in Iceland it’s for everybody, the indie kids and their grannies,” continues Oli. “It’s all about the fun of coming together for playing and dancing — although people have had some difficulties finding the steps to some of the tunes.”

Already pondering further line-up additions (“It could be twice as many. Imagine the sound: Boom!” enthuses Oli), SNN’s hopes for the future are as impenetrable as their brilliant squalls of sound. “We'd love to tour in the summertime. It's hard though,” bemoans Eiríkur. “Iceland's economy is having a really, really, big, ghoulish, why-the-fuck-did-I-say-that, drunk-dialling, throwing-up-the-painkillers-on-the-bedroom-floor-while-remembering-you-lost-your-wallet-and-oh-shit-the-wedding-ring-is-gone hangover. Besides that, we'd love a picnic.”

First published here at The Skinny

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Casting Eyes at....Michachu & The Shapes

Ah shit. Well, any kind of uber-cool, hipster hating disposition this blog may previously have exuded is about to dissolve. Yep...Michachu and The Shapes are brilliant. Very brilliant, in fact. But not in the way Animal Collective are brilliant or Liars are brilliant. Nope, this is a band that’s brilliant in that sort of chart-hopping, Topshopping, student-totting way that mesmerises everyone. Ev-ery-one.

Is that a bad thing? Who knows. A small part of me vomits and stabs itself when I see the pictures of the effortlessly (but so effortfully) styled Mica Levi frolicking like a vagina-ised Pete Doherty. But then the itching, effervescent robo-disco brilliance of her debut LP Jewellery hits in and I can’t hate, I just cant. Thing is, this is an album that embraces all sonic dispositions. It kicks cans with lo-fi shufflers; wallops beats with the hippest dub cat; and shits effervescent pop like a laxative sniffing Lilly Allen.

In short, I’m bombastically confident the Matthew Herbert (yep, Matthew fucking Herbert !) produced LP will crack into your cranium with all the velocity of an engine frozen Boeing 777 (WHAT THE FUCK?!?!). Aye, I may be wrong – after all I’m someone who made a bet that Glasvegas would shift less units than Broken Records last year (i.e. I’m a Div Kid) – but this time I doubt it. So, drop your pretensions at the door and give in. You won’t be the only one.

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

Whatever happened to... Morgan?

I loved Morgan. Well, more specifically, I loved Morgan’s Y2K-released debut record Organized. Back then, at the turn of the millennium, I was an undergraduate student perplexed by the beats of Freddy Fresh, the brutality of Wu Tang and the linguistic cuteness of the Kinks. Music felt like a jamboree; a pick ‘n’ mix of sonics that fitted into my not so fitting Mini-disc player when I made those infrequent ventures to campus between the sweat-beaded throb of clubland. It wasn’t that I didn’t know music, it’s that I wanted to know too much; I had to consume every chord, every melody, every sound that ever existed. Ah... to be young, foolish and ambitious.

All in all, I was a bit of a confused monkey in my fledgling years but Morgan Nicholls – he of Senseless Things fame – changed that. Organized was a rainbow-bright swash of all that intrigued me. It took the summer-time pop sloping of the Beach Boys and beaded it together with slithers of Hip-Hop, Soul, Funk, Electro, Synth-tronica and – Christ – even kiddy pop. I can still hear the heavenly chords of opener Flying High that swooshed deliciously through my lugs and into that piece of grey matter that incited the fluttering of a thousand butterfly wings in my malnourished belly. The irrepressible Miss Parker and Fistful of Love were equally magnificent, each blessed with swathes of schoolyard samples and ice-pop melodics. Sure they were flawed, but that was the appeal: who wants prolonged perfection when you can have a few scorching moments of brilliance that’ll remain forever in the mind?

So aye, Organized was my album of a long, arduous summer spent in the belly of the Fringe but, sadly, Morgan Nicholls never followed it up. So where’d he go? Oddly, he’s moved on to bigger and better things: he hooked up with Gorillaz, spent time kicking rhymes with Mike Skinner and The Streets and, perhaps most bizarrely, now play keys for gargantuan, shit-shifting decibel merchants Muse. All well and good, I guess, but it’s disappointing to discover that someone who played such a big part in a rather important window of my life now scurries in the shadows of those I despise. It’s funny how things turn out.

DiScover.... Young Fathers

Edinburgh and Hip-Hop are a little like skinny jeans at Christmas: try as you might, they never seem to fit. But cutting loose from the city's underground with a hype-driven furore normally reserved for West Coast (that's Glasgow, not LA) art-poppers is indelible beat-smiths Young Fathers. Already on the radar of Skins-ogling miscreants, the Auld Reekie ensemble annexes hip-shooting rhymes with skirt-lifting samples that bunny-hop to an 80s flavoured beatbox. By running the gamut of fresh and used, the MC ensemble of Ally Massaquoi, Graham Hastings and Kayus Bankole engulf the ears in a manner The Cool Kids could only dream of. Recent download single 'Straight Back On It' is a prime example of their pliable sonics; sliding up to the floor with the ethereal zing of flower-wielding era De La Soul before exploding into a luminous disco twirl of breaks and brass. Both funny and overtly verbose in delivery (check the brilliant Mr. T inspired diss on the elasticised 'Superpop'), the effervescent triad have slipped away from major label clutches, preferring to stick to their roots by releasing forthcoming long-player Inconceivable Child ... Conceived through Leith-based label Black Sugar. Exhilarating home-boys, you might say; Young Fathers are so tight it hurts.

www.myspace.com/youngfathers

ALBUM REVIEW: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Advance Base Battery Life

It’s difficult not to sympathise with Owen Asbury. Instead of striding, he shuffles; instead of triumphing, he fails; and instead of letting it all go, he bludgeons his confidence with self-doubt and loathing. Yet, when love’s vacuous jaws have gnarled on the heart and spat it out like a compassionless beast, Ashbury’s maudlin trinkets transform as a back-patting sanctuary for the abandoned. Suddenly, this is a man who knows exactly how you feel - a Casiotone for the Painfully Alone [CFTPA], if you will.

But any tortured romantic eagerly anticipating the return of Ashbury and his lovelorn laments is about to be sorely disappointed. His latest LP Advanced Base Battery Life is no spanking new CFTPA release. Rather, it’s a languid assortment of rehashed singles, re-traipsed B-sides and oddly re-jigged Springsteen classics. Nae quite an album for soothing broken souls, then; more a record label’s stroll down memory lane.

The problem with memories is they’re often better left to the past. Dressing up the wonderful ‘Lesley Gore On the T.A.M.I Show’ with a constellation of synth and Jenny Herbinson’s cottoned tones may varnish the familiar, but drop in a frayed entanglement of collector only demos and the record diminishes as a wallet opening compendium. Sure, scratchy renditions of The Boss’s ‘Born In The USA’ and ‘Streets Of Philadelphia’ meddle gamefully alongside a fuzz-drenched [Paul Simon's] ‘Graceland’, yet when pitted against ‘Holly Hobby’’s chime riddled splendour they toil as underdeveloped bedroom jams.

Admittedly, moments of wonderment can be slurped from this well of dissatisfaction: a creaky acoustic melody and crackled vocal trickle like tear droplets down the beatific ‘It’s A Crime’, and the gyrating R&B rhythm of Missy Elliot’s ‘Hot Boyz’ is smothered in Ashbury’s gleefully sardonic rumbling and the lascivious purr of Katy Davidson [Dear Nora]. While ‘White Corrolla‘’s twinkling keys and shoulder slooped mew resonate with a crispness that stretches beyond the original’s scuffled timidity and into a sparkling, cherry-popped glitter of melody

But gleaming parts are few in a sum that equates to just another shoddily contrived dust-racking compilation. Essentially, Advance Base Battery Life is a record that offers little to seasoned CFTPAers and even less to those of unaccustomed lugs. The solitude of narration that seizes Ashbury’s full-length recordings has been reduced to a cluster of underwhelming off-cuts that lack direction or purpose. And that’s a crying shame because, really, this is a man who’s capable of so much more.

Sympathy, once again.

Things I've learned from....

...music journalism:

(1) Radiohead is both a sacred sheep and a cash cow

(2) James Brown is not the Godfather of Soul

(3) Palms are crossed with silver; words are not

(4) The NME is universally slated, yet everyone secretly admires it

(5) No one cares about consistency, style or grammar

(6) The Fall are better than you think

(7) Bands are not as clever as journalists make you believe

(8) Journalists are not as clever as words make you believe

(9) Some people do really wear sunglasses indoors

(10) Every good question has been asked before, as has every bad one.

ALBUM REVIEW: Teitur - The Singer

For some, the voice of Teitur Lassen is a grandiose pleasure that hypnotises the eardrums. Yet, for others, his lavender scented tones are as grating as a hangnail on a blackboard. And once the Faeroese singer-songwriter opens up his well-oiled throat you’ll know exactly why: there’s truly no middle ground when it comes to this man’s piercing pipes. But his music? Well, that’s an entirely different matter.

Rich with tenderised symphonies and dashing yarns, his fourth studio LP The Singer is an angelic, prose-heavy effort that can catch the breath with whispered brilliance, yet readily strikes out with stolid flutters of languid, directionless toils. It’s not a torturous affair; merely a frustrating one, destined to gnaw away at the frayed strands of the patience. If ever a record was made for casting a browsing thumb over the ‘Next’ button this is it.

The title-track’s introductory welcome bear testament to such laboured listening. An operatic plead of fine-tuned a cappella, it’s the type of elitist melodrama Freddie Mercury treadmilled at the bookend of his recording career. Narrated by narcissistic chords and self-aggrandising flashes of brass, there’s simply no give to vicariously whined couplets like “I sing about my loneliness and in return they thank me/ I had never meant to be a singer.”

This penchant for self-indulgence shepherds the record into a cluster of nadirs; be it the spiritless fan-boy reminiscing of ‘The Legendary Afterparty’, ‘Guilt By Association’’s laboured Bright Eyes-aping or the monochromatic dripping of ‘Letter From Alex’. Sure, each is a chest-puffing composition bulging with atmosphere, but these quarrelsome tribulations could only resonate with a hermetic teenager’s persecuted mindset.

Fortunately, Lassen encounters greater success when the tempo turns brisk; infusing a positivist feel through his bleak lyrical undercurrent. The Mexicana parps and deep dwelling bass of ‘Girl I Don’t Know’ carry his inclining crow skyward on a canvas of affective melody, while ‘Catherine The Waitress” boisterous rhythm is supplemented by the sort of jangle-happy toe-tapping Stuart Murdoch regularly dusts down his tweeds for.

A hybrid of Lassen’s dual musical predilections, ‘Start Wasting My Time’ juxtaposes tepid verses with a buoyant chorus section that saunters to the rhythmic sway of cocksure percussion and prickling guitar. It’s an extravagant swoosh that perches above much of the record’s all-consuming dreariness, proving this softly worded balladeer has the dexterity to fabricate something more gratifying than a sprawl of diluted arrangements.

While such sporadic flashes veer brilliantly off-kilter, The Singer’s one-geared nature is the making of a man who’s more than happy to play it safe. His voice may fissure opinion, but when it comes to the music Teitur Lassen takes it straight down the middle of the road.

School Of Seven Bells: Transcripts...

This is the transcript of an interview I recently did with Ben Curtis of the rather magnificent School Of Seven Bells for The Skinny. An amiable, pleasant sort of fella, Ben talked frankly about escaping from old ensemble Secret Machines, his new band’s recent record and the two ladies who’ve put a rather large smile on his face...

Hi Ben, how are you?
Ben Curtis [BC]: I’m very well. I’m at home in Brooklyn right now. We’re on a bit of a break but not really, we’re concentrating on recording right now. There’s not really a break.

Can you tell me how the band initially came about?
BC: The idea was just to make music; it was just a matter of growth and pushing ourselves and appreciating the situation. We met in 2004 when we were all on tour together in other bands and we started chatting about it then. In 2007, I guess, we eventually got round to making music and it was really exciting and had a lot of energy from the beginning.

What is it about Claudia and Alejandra [Deheza] that twirled your head?
BC: I guess it was the different musicality of it really. It’s weird, I don’t feel like I’m working any differently. I feel like I’m making music the same way and it’s really different because our collaboration is really different. They have really strong musical personalities and it’s very different to my ears. It’s weird, chemistry is a really important part of making music with people and their habits are completely different from lots of people I’ve encountered. Making music is all to do with habit: Your here and you need to go here. Other people’s habits are really backwards but with these two it works.

Do you play off each other?
BC: It’s a contrast but it’s complimentary. It’s a conversation that works.

How different is it working with two pruning ladies compared with two sweaty rockers?
BC: [Laughs]: It’s entirely more pleasant, believe me.

Has it been different recording with them?
BC: We’re all together . We start from the top down: With atmosphere and things like that. We record from our studio at home so we’re really immersed in everything we’re doing and it becomes a real part of our lives. We’re all adding different things to the music. Out of these atmospheres so many songs come out of them.

It's been suggested that you have a non-too-typical approach to song writing focusing on lyrics first before the music. Is this true?
BC: At the heart our songs are songs. You can play them any way you want or you can dress them up any way you want, but they’ll still retain the same inherent personality. I guess the production idea and sound is totally informed by what is happening in the vocal. That’s where it starts because we don’t want those ideas to be limited or serve the purpose of just spicing up some music. We write them and they’re free to go where they want – I think that’s different from how a lot of people write music.

I get the impression that the voice is an intricate part of the melody, as if it’s an instrument itself?
BC: That’s true. A lot of vocals and harmonies and they spend a lot of time on that and the vocal is an arrangement in itself. It stands on its own and a lot of the musical ideas come out of that. It’s a cool way to work, starting from a really human point.

Have you found it tough stepping out of the shadows of Secret Machines?
BC: It’s been frustrating doing something new when everyone is referring to another project - I don’t think people realise that. I made two Secret Machines album. When I started that band that was the statement I made and I did it and I feel like it’s done. And they’re there and you can hear it any time. Now I’m doing this and they’re totally different. It’s weird that there’s a comparison but I think that the comparisons have begun to reduce. There are so many people there right now that have no idea what I’ve done before.

Has the release of the album cut off the past?
BC: For me, it was just something that we did. It was a year and half of touring and writing and fans of the other things we were doing weren’t aware of that at the time. But I didn’t really thing about that at all. I’m not worried about it. I know that I can control how people confuse what I do.

It’s quite tough, I guess, when blogging is so prominent.
BC: Yea, it’s so radical. Music Journalists would write something and that was the definitive word but now any kid in any country can write to a blog and say whatever they want. And this is just some kid who hates his life. We’ve been really lucky though and people have responded so well to it. We’re grateful to get that in such a delicate situation.

How's things been for you since the album's release? It's been picking up a lot of praise. Is it something you expected?
BC: In a way you have to expect that but I know you can’t count on it. We think what we’re doing is great and you really have to think that way. But we really had no idea and whether it was going to be out of step. Sometimes people aren’t really feeling a certain kind of music and it’s really arbitrary in this kind of whim-generation. So we’re really lucky because we believe what we’re doing is really current.

You’re not trying to tap into a scene though are you? This is organic...
BC: Yeah, for real. You can’t really do that. You have to do what you do. I think it’s quite obvious when people aren’t genuine about something and people will pick up on it. You can tell when people are really serious about something and are into what they’re doing. I think what we’re doing is a valid statement. There’s so much music out there that doesn’t need to be made, so I feel good about where we’re going.

Psychedelia /Shoegaze seems to litter the reviews up to now... but I get the impression the album's sound was more organic in creation , in that there was no clear direction from the off. Am I way off the mark here?
BC: Specific genres were nowhere near in our minds when we started off. We can just accept that though because I think people are painting it in a positive way but we’re not trying to achieve those sounds. It’s not really where we’re coming from.

You have made a record that doesn’t give any indication of where you’re going...
BC: Yea that’s the kind of band we wanted to be. We were worried about genre definition: we wanted to be open-ended. We don’t really want to make the sort of music that alienated people. But we have no idea what we’re doing next. It’s exciting and terrifying. We’ve been doing some new tracks and remixes for people and it all sounds so different – we really have no idea where we’re going to go.

You’re playing with Bat for Lashes in the UK soon. Is that one of the artists you have an affinity with?
BC: It’s one of the bands that we like. I’m not sure how much affinity we have with them but we’re lucky we can play with so many different bands that are all going to be a little bit relevant. BFL is great she’s really amazing live.

How does the sound transfer in the live environment?
BC: It’s just the three of us. The beats are all electronic and it’s just the three of us playing instruments so it’s great. It’s a little bit more muscle in the live setting so there’s a little more energy. We didn’t write the record with thoughts of live performance at all, it was really playing music and making songs so it’s a great coincidence to be going out and touring the record.

You sound like a content man. Has this given you a new lease of life?
BC: It’s reassuring to know that I can do something like this and it works and it’s going to be a constant. And this collaboration is amazing and really satisfying. I’m totally happy, as you can tell.

So, how far do you think you can take this band? Is it a long term project?
BC: For sure.. .it’s a long term project. It’s very much collaboration however, when we make this music something mysterious happens and it totally works. We have no intention of making metal machine music any time soon. I mean, we write songs and that’s what we do. As many people can experience it and love it – or not. We don’t have a ceiling or anything, we want it to remain open-ended but we’ve really not thought about it though. Maybe we should discuss it...

Finally, what’s the best thing about being in SOSB?
BC: Hmm.. I dunno. I guess it’s great to develop relationships with people, working and living with them. I don’t envy the people who are making music on laptops at home. It’s probably great but doing something and making a piece of music then someone else adding something on is a really great, great feeling for me.

Related feature can be found here