Union Jackals ‘Spaceship Dream’

With the Eighties electro revival doing its best to be the new rock and roll, it’s nice to know some people are well ahead of the curve when it comes to the next revival. Stepping admirably up to the plate are London’s very fine Union Jackals with their bid to make the psych rock, post punk, shoegaze, electronic meanderings, prog stylings, classic guitar pop revival their very own.

It’s always interesting to see the kind of pals people like to pick as their front of house MySpace friends. Try Mark Gardener (the former Ride frontman who they’ve recently recorded a clutch of new songs with), Super Furry Animals, Flaming Lips and The House of Love for this lot, and if that doesn’t build a hatstand to hang the cap of where they’re coming from musically before your very eyes, we know a good optician. He can probably wash your ears out too, but only if you ask nicely. Lap it up, it’s got a dash of everything from XTC to The Charlatans,

There’s a couple of names in the Union Jackals line-up that sad people like me will recognise immediately - Stephen Barnes was mildly well-known at the height of the whole shoegaze thing as frontman of Lamacq’s favourite ever band, Thousand Yard Stare, and Paul Reeves was probably more famous in the NME office during his time as clever internet person than he was a guitar player in Paris Motel. But don’t let that put you off - forget the girth, feel the quality, which perhaps isn’t quite a saying, but it probably should be.

More hear…
- This lot aren’t shy in coming forwards, there’s the industry standard MS, an actual real-life website, a bit more music on the old last.fm and bit of Facebook action just to make sure no one is missing out.
- There’s a debut single featuring two tracks - ‘Analogue Star’ and ‘Out Of Control’ - and you can get that from iTunes, should the mood take you.
- And if you like your bands with pictures, there’s a nice video for ‘Analogue Star’ here too.

The Uncomfortables ‘Levi’s Genes’

Firstly, apologies to The Uncomfortables, there’s a bit of getting stuff off our chest before we get to how much like them, but it was their email that set us off. Hang in there, we will get to them, honest.

As we’ve said before, and more than once, it’s harder to be in band today that at anytime since rock and roll was invented, whenever that was. In the musical olden days, bands just did what bands are supposed to do. They wrote songs, recorded them, took drugs, played shows and chucked TVs out of hotel windows. Other people did the rest, because, well, they were good at doing the rest.

Musicians are good at making music, see. Not saying it’s wrong that today bands are expected to do all the stuff other people are better at, but it is slightly odd. And the internet on its own doesn’t help making the DIY thing any easier. Take the default music site of choice, MySpace. All it does is homogenise bands by serving up samey pages that strip away the single most important quality musicians have - identity. Personally, we love sifting MySpace, but it’s little wonder most bands sink in the goo.

Other sites have come and gone when it comes to trying to bust the MS stranglehold, but we think The Uncomfortables, and a growing band of, erm, bands, are on to something by using our new favourite site bandcamp.com. The thinking is very smart - it’s a breeze to use, crisp, clean pages, lots of ways to share, and the behind-the-scenes stats should prove very useful as should users choosing how much they want to pay for tracks. It’s very, very, smart. And best of all it’s simple.

Of course, it’s just another tool and bands need to learn how to use them much more effectively, but having something as good as bandcamp in your toolbox, it’s a start, right?

Right, feel better for that. The Uncomfortables then. Hailing somehow from Preston and Leeds, there’s more than a dash of early Pulp about this lot. There’s a real Jarvis twang about frontman Matt Gallagher and they wear the same tongue in cheek sense of fun on their sleeves - if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor there. We can’t help hearing a little bit of The Coral in there and, as should be compulsory for a band with a bit of Leeds in them, you can hear the ghost of the almighty Cud.

What makes them stand out though is they are clearly proper musicians, who can play proper and everything. And as my old pal James T points out, you really could do with a lawnmower if you’re going to cut the grass. And if you are brilliant live and getting shows beyond the safety of your hometown mates, that’s when using online tools such as bandcamp really comes into their own.

But don’t get us started, you’ve just read what happens when someone gets us started. And if you have read this whole piece, thanks. It’s nice to know we’ve held your attention.

More hear…
- Did we mention bandcamp.com? You can find The Uncomfortables page here. Especially clap your ears round the fantastically titled ‘Portrait Of A Band In Decline’ EP.
- … but they still have a MS you’ll be pleased to hear.

My Boy/My Girl ‘I Think Of Tron

Having looked at our visitor stats, you will both already know that I live in Norfolk, UK not Virginia, although I imagine they’re not world apart. I moved back here in 2002 and I have to say it’s quite odd returning to live in a place you grew up. You have perceptions that are quite hard to shift. Not least about the music scene. Nowhere is quite as cool as somewhere you’re not. Norwich? Move along please, nothing to see here.

So I was at the very fine Norwich Arts Centre last week to see a friend’s new photo exhibition - the fabulously titled ‘Stills From The Unmade Film Of A Half-Written Novel’. If you live nearby I can recommend a quick squint. Anyway, I do like to pick at piles of listings mags on my way out and always enjoy ‘Burrowing’, the properly old school fanzine by promotion legends Wombat Wombat.

I’m getting to the point now. Honestly I am, hang in there. ‘Burrowing’ is where I discovered Hot City Sounds 09, the second annual outing of a musical extravaganza that’s splattered across the City from July 3-11. Now this may be of no interest to anyone else, but I’ve been working my way through the list of over 130 bands playing the eight venues, and blimey, there is some proper talent coming out Norwich. Proper.

Join me if you will for a few posts where I point in the direction of the festival highlights. IMHO, natch. First up, the rather brilliant, self-proclaimed laziest band in Norwich, My Boy/My Girl. One boy, Nelly, and one girl Nai. They sound like legends already don’t they? You wait until you hear them. They are as rough and ready as it comes, so raw a doctor would prescribe cream for it, but the racket they make is an utterly fabulous one, for proof wrap your flapping ears round the carnagerous ‘Superman’ on their MS. The influence is so obvious so I won’t bother spelling it out, the promise they show is equally obvious to anyone with ears.

What’s best is that underneath all the bluster these two just drip in melody, and as you can hear from ‘I Think Of Tron’, they can clearly clock a tune, effortlessly, at 100 paces. Think how Idlewild gentled up from their spiky debut ‘Captain’ and that’s what we’re staring into the face of with My Boy/My Girl.

Quite possibly the most exciting new band you’ve never heard of? Now, if they can cut it live…

More hear…
- The MySpace, then
- Catch them live at the Hot City Sounds launch party at NAC on July 3. Doors at 8pm, tickets are £5 on the door. I will be buying two.

We Fell To Earth ‘The Double’

Okay, hands up. I really should have mentioned this earlier. I first heard We Fell To Earth last autumn. A good friend has fingers in about as many pies as I do. Mostly, it has to be said, they are real pies with meat and stuff in them, but on occasion he is also known to do some work, which on this occasion lead to getting involved with WFTE.

And so here we are, the following summer, with a very nice head of steam building and, blimey, when you listen you can’t be surprised that record labels are falling over themselves just like they used to in the old days.

Their ‘about’ bit on their website does an extensive job of telling their tale, so I won’t bother rehashing it. Carrying on from my Ambulances post when were were talking about good self-PR, WFTE leave no stone unturned. In among it all there’s mention of musical influnces. Not sure I’d be rushing to listen with influences such as Suicide, Jefferson Airplane and Spaceman 3, but each to their own, and IMHO they’re under-selling themselves.

In very simple terms, and I am as simple as they come, We Fell To Earth are much more straightforward, musicwise. They are astonishingly good. Richard File - who with Wendy Rae Fowler forms the nucleus - stepped into the breach when DJ Shadow left UNKLE. They have also been tangled up with Queens of the Stone Age and Mark Lanegan. All very decent pegs to hang your hat on. It has me all ears in a jif. So then you listen.

Talk Talk and Radiohead? I will have some of that, thank you very much. And yes, it is always, always dangerous to use the ‘R’ word, because everyone wishes they were like them, which no doubt is why WFTE carefully avoid it. But their brooding, swollen, rumbling widescreen sound shares a sensibility, the same sensibility that ver ‘Head hoovered up from the likes of the magnificent Talk Talk. It’s heritage. It is.

We Fell To Earth are staggeringly good. We will be hearing from them again. Mark my words. You know, I should be writing biogs and press releases again. Reasonable rates if anyone’s interested. Imagine.

More hear…
- Their very own, proper, very good site
- The MS, natch
- The ‘Careful What You Wish For’ EP came out at the end of April and there’s an album in the can, which you’d guess will see the light sooner rather than later.

Ambulances ‘How Could You Leave Me Here’

Having just written about Fire Engines on our new little brother site rippingvinyl.co.uk, it was quite odd to find an email in the inbox from a band called Ambulances. It gets odder with both bands hailing from Scottish Scotland, Fire Engines from Edinburgh and Ambulances - a gently charming six-piece - from Fife.

Reading their briefest of blogs on MS raised a smile with the use of a word that only works from the mouths Scots - magic. I digress. But what’s new?

Writing about music these days is often like shooting fish in a barrel. Your mainstream music journo is no different from anyone with a decent pair of ears and a computer, except they get bylines in publications you’ve heard of. Point is bands do a great job of getting their music out there, but they need to make it super-easy for ‘proper’ music journos and bloggers by doing the DIY PR too, something for the lazy hack to hang their hat on.

Take Ambulances. They’re almost there PR-wise. Here’s what I know. They sound great, thrum in all the right places, there’s a touch of Cocteau Twins and a dash of the Beta Band. It’s gentle stuff, think the mellow end of Spiritualized. From their MS I discovered they’re called Sara, Al, Scott, Graham, Chris and Stephen and they come from Fife. I also know, but only because she has a MySpace, that Sara is at art college doing textiles and says her favourite film is ‘Gregory’s Girl’. Good choice. They’ve had a tickle from 6 Music and there’s an album on the way that was made chop chop, eight days in fact, in the hands of legendary producer Kramer. The question a proper journo would ask is how indie royalty came to produce a wee band from Fife. Sigh.

Hat hung? Right, I’m off to find a band called Police Cars to complete the set.

More hear…
- There’s the MS, check out the cracking ‘What I Thought Of’ while you’re there please and thank you.