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Pop Musicology - "The Second Drummer Drowned"

Pop Musicology - September 2006

Buy David Gedge's Stuff!

September 30th 2006 12:18
Legendary frontman with The Wedding Present and Cinerama David Gedge is E-Baying his old guitars and amplifiers! One of them was even recommended by notorious grumpy knob-fiddler Steve Albini (explaining the dirge-tastic sound of The Wedding Present's Seamonsters album). If you're feeling flightyand want that trademark clean, bright and pinging guitar twang that Gedge made so distinctive then get bidding - there's only five days left! PM is consdering a flutter on the H-H guitar amp. That's a piece of history. Part of me is loathed to post this, fearing it might increase the bidding war which will inevitably ensue. The Squier Guitar is already up to about £800 - surely the most money anyone will ever pay for a Fender knock-off.


Here's the E-Bay site for Gedge's equipment.

And for an after-dinner treat, why not look here at an interview I did with the great man himself? He's so lovely, y'know...

David Gedge
David Gedge - Needs space in the attic
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Linkin Park Are Back, This Time 'Spreading Their Wings'...

September 28th 2006 14:24
Nobody's favourite purveyors of bottom-of-the-league-faux-credible drudgery Linkin Park are back with a new record! Yay! Sorry, I mean - 'Boo!' Oddly enough, it is being produced by until-now Midas-fondler country-hop legend Rick Rubin. God knows what he'll do with them when they want to sing about 'this pain I feel' or maybe 'the hurt you caused'. Rubin is, of course, used to working with someone who might mean it and who doesn't pander to the age-old pantheon of artists who simply make up their enemies.

One of the songs is called 'QWERTY', for Christ's sake! Come on, Linkin Park, I know you're an easy target, but this sounds like swill. Mike Shinoda from the band said: "I just think the styles we're mixing right now are all over the place. We have really been pushing things outside the box." Pushing things outside the box? You mean not copying and exploiting the good work of other genres, not singing about how much pain you are in incessantly, not slapping some scratchy bits over dull rock songs and calling it a new genre? Well then, we are really in for a treat, aren't we? Can't wait...


Linkin Park's New Cover Art? Here's hoping...
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Evan Dando Performs Lemonheads Classic

September 28th 2006 02:38
The wonderful Evan Dando celebrates the arrival of a brand new bouncing baby self-titled Lemonheads album by playing 'Into Your Arms' in a cheeky gig in the Apple Store in New York. What a guy... Here's the link! And will someone let me in on the secret of how to get YouTube videos embedded into an Orble blog? It'll take up space where I don't have to write stuff, or post unnecessary pictures like this one of PM on a woozy night out:

"Whooooaaaaahhhhaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh...."
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Ringtones And Why They Suck

September 26th 2006 13:34
My new housemate moved in this weekend. His mother rang him on his mobile phone. Guess what tune it played?

John Williams's Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back


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Top Of The Pops Is Back!

September 25th 2006 10:00
And you thought it had been cancelled! Well, it was, appareny. But the BBC have, in their infinite wisdom and adherence to the people's wishes, have re-comissioned TOTP2 in a new format. Apparently there will be archive performances from the BBC vaults as well as new performances from all the top acts at the moment (so an hour's worth of Borrell-porn each week). So basically, it's the exact same formula that caused TOTP to die earlier this year, but now presented by Steve Wright. Good work BBC. With any luck, next year we'll get Ricky Gervais presenting the sixth season of How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria with Ant & Dec fighting Noel Edmonds for the role of the Nazi officer. Hang the DJ, hang the DJ...
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Misty's Big Adventure Bestival Video

September 24th 2006 11:14
I know, I know, stop posting YouTube links it's boring etc etc... but this one is good. Misty's Big Adventure are one of the most engaging live acts PM has had the pleasure of encountering (look at the pictue below - PM was given a private dance by one of their number at the Green Man Festival last month), and people are finally starting to realise what a special ensemble they are. Here is a great video of them at the Bestival a few weeks ago, playing their new single.

That new single, Fashion Parade, will have Bloc Party feeling rather sheepish with themselves. Check it, y'all! And, as a wee treat, here is an interview I conducted with their ringleader, Grandmaster Gareth earlier this year.
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Dananananaykroyd Live Video

September 23rd 2006 15:23
Dananananaykroyd


You know how PM is always telling you about how 'this band is amazing' and 'that band is astonishing' and that 'their live show is crazy-hella-good' and all that sort of thing? Well watch this.
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New Trail Of Dead Album Details

September 22nd 2006 23:52
PM's favourite band to ever name a song after the Richter scale and still top of the list of bands I've yet to see live that I should have, ...And You Will Know Them By The Trail Of Dead, have announced the tracklisting for their new record. It's called 'So Divided'. That's a crap title in my book.

Here's the listing:
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Acid Mothers Temple

September 22nd 2006 10:39
Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers Temple


PM has just been listening to one of the more incendiary Japanese releases of the past twelve months, Acid Mothers Temple's mammoth new album 'Have You Seen The Other Side Of The Sky?'. Simply, it is astonishing. PM is familiar with AMT's previous work, as everyone should be by contractual obligation, but this new one is probably the best for a few years. You know that feeling you get when you're actually excited to put a new record on, not just content to let it play in the backround while you check e-mails? That was it big time. There's something so lovably cult-y about each release they put out, something indefinably scary but attractive at the same time.
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Papa Roach - A Deconstruction

September 19th 2006 11:04
Remember when PM made you laugh by taking Sandi Thom's 'I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker' to pieces? Well, PM didn't think that lyrics could get more predictable and ridiculous, but Papa Roach's new single, 'To Be Loved', appears to have taken care of that with another slingshot of pointless inflammatory hatred in the eyes of fifteen year old Americans. Easy target they may be, but hell. It's fun to mock people. Woop!

Papa Roach
The Roach - Suck
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New Tunng Single Out Today

September 18th 2006 14:31
Overlords of all that is pretty and folky and electronic (but not Folktronica, apparently), Tunng release their new single 'Jenny Again' today. PM first heard it when Tunng played in London in March in a venue that seemed to be built under a bridge... I forget its name. But I do remember the song and what a triumph it is - all the usual Tunng hallmarks are there: weird samples, hushed unisonic vocals, gently brushed guitars and vaguely mythological vocals juxtaposed with the mundanities of British life and love. In short, it's fecking lovely. Not quite the match of their previous Woodcat single, but still as close to classic as one can get. Buy the single and then the album, Comments Of The Inner Chorus. Then buy their first album. I have that one on vinyl, the last one the merch stand had left, as I recall...

Here's their site and MySpace where you can hear the single. But buy it. Don't just record it on tape. That's not the folk way.
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The Low Lows

September 17th 2006 12:41
PM is UNBELIEVABLY SORRY ABOUT THE CURRENT LACK OF POSTING ANYTHING WORTHWHILE! It's because I'm at home at the moment and not in a place with broadband and regular access and where near London and all the post of CDs I'm waiting on. So sorry for being terrible.

That is, until now, when PM concocts another stupidly easy 'listen to this band cos I like them' post! Woop! So listen!
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The Poems - Heritage and Modernity

September 15th 2006 12:31
It's always nice to get a genuine surprise through the post. I recently got sent an album by The Poems from Scotland, a band who PM probably should have heard of due to their immense heritage. With contributions from Isobel Campbell and Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub, it's not hard to imagine what this record will sound like. But the real joy comes in discovering that, thematically, this is as harsh and poignant as anything around. 'Young America' (on Minty Fresh Records) is an album that is preoccupied with the loss of choice, the end of innocence and the end of youth. But because it is so breezy, it complies with that Scottish pop trick of having the most searing and heartbreaking lyrics stuffed into unbearably upbeat tunes. It is a never-failing recipe for excellent pop music, when it is done correctly. If you can find anything by them, give it a whizz...

Here's an MP3:
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F-POP! Article Proper...

September 13th 2006 12:17
Now it's time for the most shameless plug ever. PM has no shame left to butter a crumpet.

Anyway, remember the F-POP! Fest and how I said that there'd be interviews galore? Well there is! If you go to the Tangents website and look on the right, there's a whacking great article PM did after a lot of staring at the TV and wanting to be in bed eating curry (a position I found myself in after the final F-POP! evening... drunken taxi rides are NO fun at all).
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Stupid Things The NME Says #3

September 12th 2006 09:51
The Rapture


In this week's eternal love-letter to the arse of Johnny Borrell, the usually reliable (by NME standards) Tim Jonze proclaims the utterly incorrect to be gospel:
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Butterflies of Love Single Released Today

September 11th 2006 18:04
The Butterflies Of Love release their new single today. It undoubtedly is astonishingly good. PM is yet to hear it, since funds are tight and mummy Amazon is already sending me the new Yo La Tengo, but there is no evidence anywhere on earth to suggest that this latest single won't be utterly desirable. The fact that I can't even tell you the title shows you exactly how well the secret is being kept... or the huge monolith we like to call 'PM's Ineptitude and Laziness'.

After having seen them headline Fortuna POP!'s tenth anniversary shindig a couple of weeks ago, it is clear that the pop majesty and devotion to uncovering new levels of surreal perfection still runs rampant through the Butterfly veins like the diluted Blood of Christ through Bono. Not sure if there's anywhere you can hear the single online, but you should definitely go towards their MySpace. Now. Listen to it… good… now tell me: How can a band who made those songs release a bad single? Eh? Yeah? Yeah!
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Arab Strap Are No More

September 9th 2006 14:30
Notorious Scotch miserablists Arab Strap have called it quits. This can come as no massive surprise, both halves of the duo have been working alone on other projects for a while now. PM recently saw Malcolm Middleton at the Green Man Festival playing a particularly bitter set, so no worries there...

A statement from the website reads:
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Yo La Tengo Are Not Afraind Of You And They Will Beat Your Ass

September 7th 2006 11:57
That's still the best album title ever. And it's not even released yet.

Yo La Tengo have set up a website dedictated to their new album's concept, and in the spirit of it have created a YouTube community full of people filming themsleves saying the album's delicious title. This started a while ago, but PM is very slow with these new-fangled Interweb inventions. So I only heard about it the other day, then forgot about it, and now am posting it. It should also be stated that I lost a good half hour to this website just watching the variety of ways in which people exemplify their defiance.
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The Real Curse Of The Mercury Music Prize

September 6th 2006 11:38
At the outset, it's important to clarify that PM harbours no hostility towards the Arctic Monkeys themselves. Not much at all. And that PM harbours no hostility towards the Mercury Music Prize itself. Not much at all. And that PM harbours no hostility towards the judges who might have utterly erroneously selected the Arctic Monkeys as the 2006 winner of the Mercury Music Prize. Honestly.

That being said, it is entirely evident that this outcome is the most obvious example of pandering to the massive in the Prize's history. A glance at the previous winners highlights M People's 1994 victory as the most comparable situation, a more than blatant stab at pleasing the population. That particular example came at a time when it was very easy to love adult-orientated lounge crooning, with a new British over-class emerging in the wake of Britpop and the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral and all that revelling in being British. So the rebels of Britpop had yet to take full roots and the adults were in control. To reflect this, the Mercurys snubbed Blur and Pulp. Their time was yet to come (Pulp won in 1996, and even Portishead took it in 1995).
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Arctic Monkeys Win Mercury Music Prize

September 6th 2006 00:16
Right, I'm not often one for gloating. But...

LOOK! I GOT IT RIGHT!
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Future of the Left

September 5th 2006 09:21
Notoriously 'perturbed' Welsh punk trio Mclusky were one of the saddest break-ups in recent times. Luckily, Jon Chapple formed Shooting at Unarmed Men to plug the Mclusky-shaped hole in most of us. And now, to seal the cracks in that fixture, the remaining two Mcluskys have formed Future of the Left. From the sounds of it, they're as meaty as any previous projects and just as hilariously hell-bent on ripping down the unworthy. Future of the Left consists of ex-Mcluskys Andy Falkous and Jack William Egglestone, but also ex-Jarcrew bassist Kelson Louis Tregurtha Mathias. Good to see their pretension is still intact.

Go to their MySpace and turn it down a little bit if you're somewhere public.
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Electric Assembly/Silver Springs Split CD

September 4th 2006 11:22
When I was at F-POP! last week, I had the massive fortune and honour to meet Amos, a man who not only drums for Darren Hayman, but also played drums on one of PM's favourite albums of the last few years, Tompaulin's 'The Town And The City'. And other Tompaulin albums too, but you should really get 'The Town and the City'. It rules. Anyway, Amos gave me a CD of two bands he's working with now, and it's freakin' ace. Cheers, Amos!

Electric Assembly

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Fortuna POP! Fest Day Three

September 3rd 2006 11:15
The final day of Fortuna POP!'s tenth birthday celebrations is a healthy reminder of the way in which it, like no other label, celebrates its breadth of influence and the reach of its powers. Last night's headliners The Lucksmiths jetted in from Australia, and tonight's have popped in from New Haven, Connetticut. The Butterflies of Love are an odd bunch, sort of in-character for the whole time I spoke to them, i.e. taking the piss out of the other bands and describing their sound as '100% sex', but oddly honest and praising of Fortuna POP! as well. More to the point, their songs are really ace.

As well as being full of amazing music, the final day is full of new and old faces to PM. It was great to catch up with Finlay again after I interviewed them a few months back, and they have apparently been reliably inactive ever since (one gig, I think). But it doesn't matter when they play a set so astonishingly fresh and pulsating, full of monstrously brutal rock songs with the odd bit of casio grinding in the back somewhere. 'Theme' is fucking fucking fucking brilliant (three fuckings is pretty much unheard of from me, I must admit), and the lolloping swells of nine-minute continuous melting-butter-on-your-forehead tantric blusterer 'Mary IV' are pretty much perfect as well. Singer Adam Straw's hilarious somersaults are also alarmingly well-practised, complementing some formidably aggressive playing from his bandmates. Should've been headlining. Should be signed to EMI or something. Hell, if I was the boss of Matador I'd have them touring with Dead Meadow before you could say 'white schmindie is great isn't it Mr. Malkmus'.
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Fortuna POP! Fest Day Two

September 2nd 2006 11:24
Day two was another warm affair, warm with the spirit of mutual suffering, missing bass drum pedals, financial woes, stand-ins, all that stuff. Arriving early again to try and snag some cheeky interviews, I am immediately approached in the Luminaire by Tali from the Lucksmiths. What a lovely fella! Charming and clever. The Lucksmiths do their soundcheck which sounds utterly flawless, and then we pile downstairs for a beer or two with the rest of the band. Said interview will appear somewhere fairly soon, got to get round to writing it... but it'll be somewhere soon.

First act of the night, though, are slightly avant-pop baby-faced geniuses Fanfarlo, who's set is as perfectly judged as it is snappily written. It's the trumpet that makes it rather special, seeping into most pores of the songwriting and adding a bit of soul and ballast to the fey guitars and drum machine backing. Never anything less than joyous.
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Fortuna POP! Fest Day 1

September 1st 2006 16:21
Yeah, it's another three-day thing... but this one is ace. I had an ace time at every single one of the three nights to celebrate 10 years of one of the best independent record labels in Britain, Fortuna POP! Kilburn's beautiful Luminaire venue played the willing host to this smorgasbord of pop genius...

Day 1:
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