Man, this album has… charm. Charm and pathos. And it has those things in that ‘first listen, immediately grabbed’ way which so few bands really manage. There are elements of Toad favourites Dolfish and Adam Balbo in here – and if you don’t know who those two are you really, really should – but it has its own personality, which I suppose is pretty crucial, given how much this kind of music relies on the awkward likability of the central character.

The extent to which that character – our narrator, essentially – is a persona or a direct translation of the main singer and songwriter I don’t know, but these things should always come across as being largely unguarded, and this is exactly what Jake McKelvie does. The music is perhaps less halting and tentative than the two bands I name-checked before, but the lyrics seem to have a rather similar stream-of-socially-awkward-consciousness flavour to them. They are

Tunes like Getting Work and Oh the Ghost remind me of that cynical friend we all have, who comes across as a right miserable bastard, but whose cynicism is more indulgent humour than genuine joylessness. At least, you suspect it is. There are elements of the excellent Charles Latham here as well, although perhaps not quite as country, but the same self-deprecating self-analysis and exasperation are definitely present.

It’s hard to analyse music like this, actually. It’s really like being introduced to a friend of a friend, and you just get on, and that’s pretty much it. The music is simple, the songs hummable, the delivery a little nasal, the lyrics excellent and basically you’ll either just like it or you won’t. There’s no pretence, no layers of coy artfulness, nothing much at all really beyond straightforward, to-the-point songwriting, and bare bones production. Easy. It’s pay-what-you-want and it’s excellent.

 I know I write about a lot of undiscovered bands on this site, but honestly, how this lot have five albums out and yet are giving them all away for free when they are this good, and this accessible is beyond me. I mean, this is spiky psych-rock, but it’s not exactly terrifyingly rough, and the hooks are absolutely clear as day, right in front of your nose, and hummable as fuck.

The nature of their website and their label, Flower Power Records, which the band themselves seem to have set up so they could self-release in a slightly more formal manner, suggest to me that one of the reasons these guys are still basically unsigned and giving their music away for free is that instead of worrying about career path stuff, they just decided to make their music and get the fuck on with releasing it. Their statement that they started the label “to enable Black Market Karma to record and release their music as they want it to sound” certainly implies that they didn’t like the look of their options beforehand, anyway.

In any case, five records in, and after a lot of free giveaways, they are now on the verge of their first vinyl release. Annoyingly for the band, it’s not the record I am writing about here, but their latest: Semper Fi.  However Cocoon is the but this is the album I have been listening to so for now this is the one being reviewed, but you can download Semper Fi for free from here if you’d rather check that one out, with a view to purchasing the vinyl.

There is a Strokes-inflected psychedelic rock feel to most of Cocoon, although Hold Me Down has a definite flavour of Just Like Honey by The Jesus and Mary Chain.  Citing The Strokes in a review is always a tricky one, I have to confess. I think a lot of their work is monumentally boring, but First Impressions of Earth is a great album, and one with the bite and aggression that much of their other stuff sorely lacks, and that is the comparison I would make here. Admittedly a tune like Neutral lives up to its name a little too much, and there are one or two others which don’t quite catch fire as they might, but for the most part this is gleefully infectious, scuzzy guitar pop, played with a loose abandon and plenty of snap in the more raucous numbers.

Ultimately, though, this is just cracking pop music. Tunes like Sole Abuser and title track Cocoon can be hummed pretty much from the first listen, and I shall now be off for that free download of Semper Fi, very much hoping that it is as good as this album so I can get my hands on some vinyl!

 Wow, a really late album review on Song, by Toad, whoever would have expected that? Well, pretty much anyone who ever reads this page I suppose, but erm, well why change the habit of a lifetime.

I really like this band, but this album could easily have been a disappointment. Primarily, would being shouted at for forty minutes whilst the drums were enthusiastically spanked by a Mancunian Duracell Bunny having a fit really have been all that much fun to listen to, because that’s easily what Born to Lose could have been. Brown Brogues are a terrific live band, but they’re a whirlwind of delay and energy, and as awesome as seeing them play is, it is still a bit of an assault. For a (barely) full-length record, however, you want something a little more subtle. Sure, blow people’s tits off occasionally, but you can’t just go at it hammer and tongs for forty minutes without wearing people out.

Without diluting their signature sound at all, the band have nevertheless broken this up really well, and it makes for a gleefully boisterous listen. It’s never entirely obvious when these guys are being serious, either, and the West Coast harmonies on tunes like Mike, I Love You serve to not only give the album some sonic nuance.* You’re Not Mine, which follows it, is also more of a growler than a dervish, and spends its three minutes snarling at you, rather than slapping you around the face.

There’s something of the b-movie scumbag about this album, actually. The snippets of movie dialogue emphasise this, and in actual fact, when listening to this I find myself comparing them to Song, by Toad Records’ own Lil Daggers, which is not a comparison I’d have thought to make six months ago. Add a Hammond Organ and I think you’d find a pair of kindred spirits, actually.

When you become friends with a band it can always be a fraught business listening to their debut album, but after a burst of initial listening, a cooling off period and then another burst of listening I think I can safely say that Brown Brogues have nailed this. Subtle it ain’t, but it’s a smart, surprisingly well-judged record and I think the band can be pretty chuffed with themselves, particularly as they aren’t what you’d call an obvious ‘album band’.

You can stream the whole thing on their Soundcloud page if you fancy, and buy a copy here, from Ultracool Records.

*Yes, yes I really did say that. ‘Sonic nuance’ – get it right up ye!

 I have some more excellent stuff from Cathedral City, California for you here. You may remember me really enjoying the Mazes Tape by Younghoon Beats last year, and in fact naming it amongst my top albums of 2012. Well this followed pretty swiftly on its heels, and although I have been rather tardy in writing about it, that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s excellent.

Again, the music has elements of the bands people I went to uni with in the early nineties seemed to be obsessed with, like Bjork and Portishead, as well as some of the new wave of chillout stuff from a decade later, and also a healthy dose of similar stuff from right about now, in the use of stuttering, rough-cut samples and loops, used to build a wonky collage of sound.

It makes the album all very dreamlike, with the more repetitive sample loops giving the impression of turning halfway through bloody Inception without the faintest idea what’s going on. Feeling I Have is a bit like that, but the give-and-take nature of this album is perhaps best embodied by the fact that the recurring cuts of that song are followed immediately by the far more forgiving, even comforting chant of Way Out.

There seems to be a lot less effort to make whole songs here than on the Mazes Tape, but I don’t think that matters. Instead you simply drift through a series of minimally conjured environments, one at a time. I get the impression that once a pleasing sound was created, it was simply left that way before promptly moving onto the next piece. Consequently, this is a little more ambient than its predecessor, but no less enjoyable for being painted with much broader brush strokes.

Oh, and it’s free.

There really ain’t much on the internet about Law Holt, but this really is very, very good.  She shares a manager, I believe, with Anticon’s Young Fathers, who are based here in Edinburgh too. Well, either that, or the fact that he is both their manager and also my friend meant he simply passed something my way he thought I would like – I forgot to ask – but Young Fathers are definitely involved somehow.

Whilst we get on well, and agree about most things when it comes to aimless music industry chatter, Tim and I don’t actually share that much musical taste in common. Bagel Project was one we agreed upon recently, however, with that odd combination of muffled RnB vocals, stumbling samples and fuzzy lo-fi, and I think there is a link between the two – it’s probably how he guessed I might like this stuff anyway.

The assembly of the actual music is woozy and grumbly, with shades of dreampop and lo-fi. The vocals have a slightly glutinous quality, with the enticing impression of someone who could cut loose and warble the shit out of a song if she so chose, but who instead keeps it subtle and restrained. As this is music slightly out of my general area of familiarity I have no idea what I will make of future stuff, beyond the one song there seems to be available on the internet at the moment, but I will most certainly be going along on the 2nd May to the Love Music Hate Racism event at the Voodoo Rooms to find out more.

Yep, two new recommendations from Manchester again. For the last few months I’ve been a little distracted from my Manchester fetish by events somewhat closer to home, but in the last few days I’ve been emailed about two really interesting releases on two of the city’s tiniest record labels.

First up, the tune above is from the debut album by Secret Admirer, which is the solo project of Nick from the fantastic Former Bullies (Bandcamp – Tumblr). This stuff has a little less of the blissfully summery guitar pop which makes Former Bullies so breezily listenable, but I really like the slightly harder edge to the jangle and the fact that the vocal delivery has a little more of a slacker quality to it.

The release is going to be something of a sprawling epic, clocking in at twenty songs long, but if the songwriting has anything in common with Former Bullies then they are unlikely to be all that long, so don’t let that worry you.

The second release I am going to pester you about is on the fantastic Icecapades label, who released the absolutely brilliant Daily Life/Sex Hands Split 7″ last year. This time around they’re releasing a cassette album by a fellow who releases as Lou Breed, and about whom I know nothing at all.

In the days of Soundcloud and Bandcamp that’s easily remedied of course, and you can preview the whole album below, before deciding to buy it on tape from Icecapades here. It’s not quite the jangly guitar pop which I’ve bought from this label before, and instead embraces a woozy, psychedelic sound which is as uncomfortable at times as it is blissful at others.

And, it hardly needs to be said, I am hugely looking forward to getting my hands on both of these. Hooray for Manchester. Again.

 Anyone with the balls to start an album with two minutes worth of tuneless drone tends to arouse my interest. It may not always signpost an excellent record, but it’s surprising how often it does, and it also tells me that someone is trying to build an actual album rather than keeping one eye on the reviewers.

There are two elements on this record which you’ve read a fair bit about on Song, by Toad over the years, although rarely ever in the same review: distorted drones, and demented carnival accordion.

The two elements sit together a little uneasily, but not in a bad way, more in the way that causes an initial furrowing of the brows to break into a broad grin within a song or two.

It’s odd. Is this abrasive grumble, or eccentric flamboyance? It seems to be both, and it becomes pretty clear pretty fast that this is something Lonesome Leash are capable of carrying off with more than a little to spare. In fact, this album is fantastic.  The drone in Riddle is gorgeous, the dancing accordion and flat, pie-tin crash of the drums in Pelican absolutely brilliant, and the vocals manage to be hesitant, harsh, bitter and pleading all at once, particularly on the lovely Fade Away.

Throughout this album the accordion strikes me again and again as odd. Without it, you have a nice, lo-fi album of alternative pop, but with its constantly urgent presence at the forefront of most songs, it’s a bit like being taken on a tour of an empty school at night by a demented banshee hopping about in winklepickers and a top hat.

I’m told there’s a comparison to be made to early Bright Eyes here, and that might possibly be the case, but to my shame I have never listened to much early Bright Eyes so I can’t tell you if there’s any merit in the comparison. What I can tell you is that the chiming reverb on the vocal and the twitching energy of the accordion make this an unusual and nervous listen. There’s something brilliant about it though, something tangentially charismatic, even if you’d rather not look it straight in the eye.

I Am No Captain can be downloaded for $6 or more from Bandcamp, and it is well worth doing so. It took a while to really grow on me, but after sitting in my new music folder long past the point at which I lost the email introducing me to this music, I have just found it better and more gleeful with every listen.

 It’s been a while since I randomly happened across a really good Edinburgh band on the internet – probably Magic Eye or Plastic Animals would be the last ones – but I clicked on this from the Facebook feed of someone I don’t properly remember a couple of days ago. It’s been sitting in an open tab in my browser ever since and it’s really, really good.

Without remembering whose link I clicked on, I honestly can’t tell you much about this lot. Their Facebook page tells me little beyond the nationalities of the two people involved – Portuguese and Greek, as it happens – but precious little else.

All I have to go on is this three-song, pay what you like download from Bandcamp, and as flimsy amounts of information about a band go, it’s pretty impressive.

I have to confess I wasn’t grabbed immediately, however. That happens a lot with me – working on something else, music playing in some tab or other, somewhat distracted, you know the drill – but the obviously infectious hook in the second song Justice is Light (and Blood) grabbed me immediately. The hook itself, as well as a lot of the other elements of this music, are evocative of some of the deep house or dark house stuff I’ve been sent recently, but I wouldn’t quite categorise the overall feel of the music that way.

There are shades of polyrhythmic indie music, sample-heavy electronica and atmospheric soundscapes, and the combination generates a kind of music which could easily not be my thing, but in this case very much is – probably because, for all it embraces all these elements, it doesn’t lean too heavily on any one, which I like. It makes it all seem a little more mysterious and less predictable.

Closer Green Land ends the EP in a wonderfully moody, dreamy fug, and Supersonic Speed Freak opens it with a fantastically insistent ukulele and drum-fuelled romp, and they sandwich the best pure pop hook on the EP.  Three songs, all quite different, but with a real sense of unity and, for a free three-song debut EP by a mystery band, a really impressive piece of work.

 I’ve written about bagelproject before, and with the release of this new EP my confusion remains, but my fascination is equally just as strong as before. Fuck me this music is a total mess, and sometimes it’s barely music at all, but there is something about it which I find absolutely fascinating.

Just about the only other person on the whole internet who seems to have written about Funmi Wittle’s stuff is Joe from A New Band a Day, which is reassuring because of who Joe is, but still a little depressing, because I think this deserves a bit more attention than it seems to be getting. Quite a bit more, in fact.

I agree with Joe, though, in that the difficulty with this music is that for large parts of it there is not the slightest semblance of structure at all. It’s just a messy collage of samples, drum beats, unfathomable vocals and off-mic chatter.

Some of this dissolves completely, and sometimes I like it and sometimes I don’t. Mia Rambling doesn’t do it for me, for example, but the title is entirely literal, so I can’t say I wasn’t warned. This kind of stuff is most prominent on Soundcloud, where more or less every little experiment and half-idea seems to end up, pretty much in no discernible order.

On Bandcamp, however, there are a handful of EPs which, just about, sound like proper collections of (vaguely) proper songs. And you know what, somehow I think it kind of works. It is, as I have said, all over the place, but from this fug of wobbly snippets of vocal and lurching samples there does indeed emerge something which is a pleasure to listen to.

It can be self-conscious and, I suppose, a little overdone here and there, but that’s sort of the way this kind of music works – if it didn’t follow every whim and digression it would lose its charm pretty quickly, I think. On the other hand, if you just sit back and let it take you wherever it’s going, then there are loads of moments of melody and fumbling beauty to be enjoyed.

 I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, not quite knowing what to write about it. I like it. It’s not one hundred percent in tune with my taste, but for a new band releasing a free EP on Bandcamp (unless of course you want to pay more, which would be nice of you) I think there are some good things happening here.

The more upbeat pop tunes on here, like Screens, the highlighted song on the Bandcamp player, are perhaps less my cup of tea.  But the odder ones like Lift and Hard Boiled Wonderland are really good.

Unlike the disinterested mumbling of a lot of the vocals I’ve been listening to recently, here there is a clean, tremulous quality to the singing which can be as boldly pop as it can quaveringly uncertain.

They’re a band who, with the exception of the staccato drumming on Keep Your Eyes Down, make very atmospheric music which seems to be forever suggesting that you’re listening to ambient electronica, but you aren’t. It’s not fuggy, either, like a lot of atmospheric music. There’s no narcotic quality to this, more a sense of anxiety and a constant battle not to let it become overwhelming.

As I said, the pop end of Laces’ spectrum maybe ain’t for me so much, but the tenser and more uncomfortable they get the more I like it.