This self-titled, self-released debut album has made such an immediate positive impact on everyone I’ve played it to that I’ve deliberately held back on writing this review for a bit, just to be sure I didn’t get too swayed by other people’s enthusiasm and could actually react for myself.

Anyhow, Bottle of Evil is a contraction of Evil Hand and Bottle of Steven, the solo projects of the two gentlemen involved, the former of whom used to be in a band called Genaro.

I don’t want to get too side-tracked here, but it is worth mentioning that I really thought Genaro had promise.  Their debut album came out on the now-resting Benbecula Records a couple of years ago, and although I never really clicked with it myself, I thought the band had some cracking songs and loads of potential.  Apparently there was a second album written, but they never recorded it before they split.  As Kurt Vonnegut might say: ah well, so it goes.

I am going to get the term shoegaze out there and out of the way immediately, because there is a lot of shoegaze in this stuff, but that seems to be increasingly popular these days.  I like this kind of music, more based on texture than hook, because even if the song itself is a wall of guitar noise, which it can be here, there is still something dreamy and blissful about it.  This makes me feel like a disturbed child, slowly and relentlessly knocking its head against the wall until it’s brain has been mashed into a bloody pulp, and it may be responsible more than any other kind of music for my preference for the hands-jammed-in-pockets indie head-nod, which is as close as I ever get to dancing.

There’s definitely a touch of the early nineties in Manchester to Bottle of Evil, even a touch of Laid by James about it at times, which is one of my all-time favourite album.  A couple of tunes, such as Holding Up the Bar are less successful, from my perspective, but their acoustic strum serves to break up the album really nicely, meaning the thrum of guitar never gets overbearing.

When the band sent me this through they didn’t tag the mp3 files properly, so I actually listened to the songs in alphabetical order until quite recently, when I went on eMusic and got the proper tracklisting.  It’s an odd experience, but I like the album in the correct order a lot better, and it shows that they’ve put a lot of thought into the sequencing, which always makes me feel good about a band.

Good stuff – I recommend this.  Turns out my friends were right from the start!

Bottle of Evil – Same Old Story

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Bottle of Evil – Conversation

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And just in case you’ve forgotten Genaro, I love this song:

Genaro – Suspicions

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from eMusic

There has been an unprecedented amount of disruption to this site over the last couple of weeks, caused by a hectic release schedule at Song, by Toad Records which prevented me preparing in the slightest for going away to the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival, rattling through two sessions in the day and a half I was back in Edinburgh, and then buggering off to Austin for SXSW. I can only apologise, and thank you for your patience and Dylan for his assistance, otherwise the whole universe might well have imploded.

One of the best things about this site, in my opinion, has always been the sheer consistency.  Any arsehole can write a music blog, and frequently any arsehole does, but it takes a special kind of mental illness to keep it up this constantly for this long with so little disruption.  I haven’t actually been diagnosed with obssessive-compulsive disorder, but it can’t be far away.

Anyhow, after last week’s disgraceful levels of disorder, things will be back to being ship-shape and Bristol fashion around here in no time, starting with today’s Friday Fives.  This is, as per usual, your opportunity to de-lurk, write something trivial and silly and generally say hello to the Toad community.  A tiny proportion of the people who read this site actually comment, and although I am extremely grateful to those who do because it gives me a somewhat illusory air of authority, it would be nice to meet some of the silent majority once in a while.

First some news though.  Ryan Adams and The National have new songs out and about for downloading (horrible and wonderful respectively).  I really wonder about Ryan Adams.  He has a large number of absolutely incredible albums to his name, and yet some utterly unspeakable shite as well.  Mind you, his best work seems to be done during bursts of crazy and largely unfiltered creativity so maybe, if that’s how he works, occasionally he’ll end up down the odd cul-de-sac and we should pretty much just accept it as part of the process which makes him great.

Also, WOXY has closed, giving a great big enormous lie to that BBC weasel who claimed that they were closing BBC 6Music to give the commercial sector some room to breathe.  The commercial sector cannot compete in that space and has little interest in doing so, so stop pretending we’re as stupid as you seem to think and give us our fucking station back you craven old lickspittle.  I heard rumours that WOXY was back on the block when I was out in Austin, but I didn’t quite expect it to be shut down within a week of my getting back.

Anyway, pills taken, here are your five questions for this week, answers don’t need to be inspired or brilliant, it’s just nice when you take part:

1. Favourite artist who is also really erratic (doesn’t have to be just music).
2. Favourite radio DJ or podcaster.
3. When do you listen to radio or podcasts?
4. If you had one free play on prime-time radio (say, in the middle of that fat cunt Chris Moyles’ show, for example) then what would you play?
5. Suggest some background music to the Queen’s speech.

And here are some songs I was enjoying during my first few months of moving my music writing from a static site to a proper blog page, back in 2006:

The Titans of Filth – Morbid Widow’s Portrait Gallery

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Destroyer – European Oils

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The Skygreen Leopards – Disciples

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Genaro – Garp 52

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Abernethy – Everyone Who Knows You

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Hmmm, I really am not sure what to say about the debut album by Genaro, the latest to drop from the conveyor belt of superior Scottish indie, that will help you know what to expect.

Basically, they are simultaneously unsurprising and impossible to pin down. Their sound spans pretty much all of indie history for the last twenty years, but isn’t quite comparable to any one specific group. In modern terms they sound a bit like Interpol or the Killers, but they can be far too electronic for that comparison to hold a lot of the time. There’s plenty of 80s and 90s shoegaze thrown in there as well, and I was even reminded of the Bees at times. So maybe I’d say a slightly less miserable Interpol (mind you, even Interpol are a less miserable Interpol these days) with an echo of indie kids past throughout the record.

It’s not the most consistent of albums, I must say. At their worst they can sound a bit like the recent Killers output – on-message but lifeless – but at their best they manage to evade any attempts to nail them down and produce music that sounds like the best song released this year by a group you know but can’t quite name. I get the impression they’d be excellent live, too – I don’t have any idea why, but I will find out at the soonest possible opportunity and let you know.

Listen to these two songs – truly, truly excellent music. This shows you how good these lads can be when they’re on song. Definitely one to watch for the future – they could lapse into electro-indie-lite which is in evidence towards the tail end of their record, or they could push on with this quality of material and become brilliant. I very much hope for latter!

Genaro – Suspicions
Genaro – Garp 52

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