It’s Fresh Air time again, and once again Ruth and I have a splendid live session.  We might even have Ruth’s voice back, just to make matters even more special.

This week The Pineapple Chunks are going to play live in session for us.  And instead of being sensible and doing it acoustically we are going to end up having the full band in the studio and are going to just have to try and find some way of arranging the mics so that we pick it all up.  Basically, I think we are going to just have to have two room mics and ‘mix’ the sound by having people move closer or further away from them, much like the way everything was recorded in the olden days!

So, for too-many-people-in-a-tiny-little-studio mayhem, tune in from seven and see how we get on.  You can always point and laugh if it goes horribly wrong.

On air 7pm-8.30pm gmt – listen live here.

Here is this week’s tracklisting, which will be updated live as we go along.  Feel free to heckle in the comments section.

1. The Strokes – The Modern Age
2. Interpol – PDA
3. The Pineapple Chunks – Gyroscope + Look Back in Horror (Live in Session)
4. Deerhoof – Snoopy Waves
5. Stephen Malkmus – Walk Into the Mirror
6. Erik Gundel – Lake On My Roof
7. The Pineapple Chunks – The Diagonal (Live in Session)
8. Khaya – Duet (Single Version)
9. Sparrow & the Workshop – Into the Wild
10. The Maxwell Cult – Sound is a Place
11. Trips and Falls – How Do You Do
12. The Pineapple Chunks – Man Love (Live in Session)
13. Huey Lewis & the News – Trouble in Paradise (Live)
14. The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage (Live in Session)

Last week’s session was with the occasionally mental, occasionally hilarious and occasionally joyous Japanese War Effort.  Interview podcast, downloadable session tracks and videos are all after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s annoying, I’m sure, but I find it really hard not to compare this to this year’s other solo release by the front man of an early-noughties arch indie hipster band, Julian Plenti.  Alternatively, I suppose, you could compare it to the Strokes’ last and best album, First Impressions of Earth.

In either comparison Phrazes For the Young fares really rather badly, in my opinion.  It comes across as a light, eighties synth-pop facsimile of the best Strokes stuff with all the bite removed.  And it certainly lacks the invention of Plenti’s inconsistent, but often very good, solo record.

To give Casablancas credit, he clearly has tried to take his music in a new direction, although unless he was intending to do this I suppose there would be little impetus to initiate a solo project in the first place.  Impetus, though, is what this release seems to be rather grievously lacking, unfortunately.  There’s just no zip to it.  No snarl, no bite, not even any pace, it’s just sluggish and lifeless and seems to be in dire need of jump-starting.

How the hell can you call a song 4 Chords of the Apocalypse and then give it no balls at all?

Julian Casablancas – Out of the Blue

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Julian Casablancas – 4 Chords of the Apocalypse

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No, we’re not doing that this week actually, although Five Ways to Leave Your Lover would be a fine Friday Five at some point in the future.  Nothing too insulting, nothing too pedestrian, and points given for believability combined with strangeness.  Nice idea actually but, well, maybe later.

This week’s five were suggested by the excellent Mr. Team Turnip on the Pains of Being Pure at Heart review, I think.  It was all about bands who develop their songwriting and those who simply consolidate once they have found a style with which they and their fans are comfortable.

This is a nice one actually, because it exposes our prejudices.  The sum total of all music criticism pretty much boils down to ‘I like this… and I don’t like that.’  It’s an instinctive decision and as much as we can try and rationalise it afterwards, no amount of good argument can make you like or dislike anything much more than you do instinctively.  I suppose being pointed out that something was ripped off from somewhere or that such and such is a dickhead or so on can make you cool on something, but basically I think we’re mostly left with just a gut reaction, as far as music is concerned.

So for all we praise bands for developing, complain that they are derivative or criticise them for standing still, there are always plenty of groups we love who make total hypocrites of us for doing so. So chip in with yours, please, and take this opportunity not to worry about the fact that 90% of the comments on this site come from the same ten or fifteen people.  Ignore them, they’re harmless, and I’d be delighted to be introduced to a new lurker, should you fancy it.  Take the plunge, the water’s lovely.

1. Band who just knock out the same old shit time after time, but you love them anyway.
2. Band who have impressed you by continuing to develop, despite having a lot to lose.
3. Band who have become better and better with time.
4. Band who are a total rip-off, but you don’t fucking care, thank you very much.
5. Band you love who make you feel like a total hypocrite.

Eels – Sweet Li’l Thing

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The Strokes – Vision of Division

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – We Call Upon the Author

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The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle

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Babyshambles – Delivery

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Here we go folks, here’s the chance to get stuck in and give the blowhard a taste of his own medicine. You probably all know I record podcasts once every ten days or so, and I would imagine most of you don’t listen to them for the obvious practical reasons that a/ they are about an hour and a half long and b/ they are big files which take ages to download and a lot of space to store.

That said, they get plenty of downloads, so some of you must listen, although I have little idea why or what for. So here we go – I’ve been wondering some time quite how or why these things either do or don’t work for you so are there any things about the Toadcasts you either do or don’t like? Anything you’d change? Basically I am wondering about many things, but here are a couple of questions to prompt some thinking:

1/ Drunk or sober?  (Actually, I’m not sure how much say you’ll have in this one.)
2/ Balance of new music to more established stuff – about right or would you prefer more of one or the other?
3/ Would you prefer a fixed length of about an hour, or just see how it goes when I lay out the playlist?
4/ Is the chatter excessive?
5/ Themed/non-themed/do you care?

Erm, anything else? Not sure. Anything you can think of I guess – just throw it all into the comment section.

The Strokes – Ask Me Anything

[Long post alert - much ranting and a full reprint of someone else's article here, so approach with caution. There, um, is a song though, if that helps]

Alternative medicine almost, but not quite entirely, pisses me off. Basically it is a loathsome industry based around selling people meaningless rituals in lieu of real and frequently much-needed medical assistance. It absorbs vast quantities of cash and exploits people’s fear hope and ignorance to make enormous profits for its peddlers. Truly disgusting, disgraceful and possibly one of the only industries in the world capable of making Big Pharma look honourable.

I don’t trust the major pharmaceutical companies any more than the alties, before you get all excited. I have done a lot of work for them and the only thing they care about is indeed money (as a whole) and looking good in front of their superiors (individually, as with any large company). But ultimately, the sheer deceit of the alternative medicine industry makes me sick. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been an utterly dismal year for highly anticipated records by the big groups in 2007, but fortunately the slack has been taken up by loads of smaller acts bringing new things to the table. Except for one thing.

A really big, angry pair of rock ‘n’ roll bollocks.

I got accused, when talking about gratingly affected furry-minged feminist hippy intellectuals as part of my St. Vincent review, of being part of the ‘testosterone-fuelled indie rock blogosphere’. The cheek! But Wendy was right – I have been reviewing sensitive, introspective, subtle and slightly eccentric albums for a depressingly long time now. Not that I don’t like the music, but what my inner Neanderthal is crying out for at the moment is some raging, furious, guitar-battering indie howl. Take the shackles off lads, get your balls out and beat the shit out of your guitars. I mean, seriously, what the fuck am I supposed to listen to when I’m three-quarters of the way through a bottle of gin, it’s three in the morning and I want to play something fucking loud?

So far this year, although there has been the odd really good ‘turn it up fucking loud’ song, it’s always in total isolation, and very few and far between to begin with. Nothing with the snarl of the Von Bondies’ first album, for example. Or the Libs’ first. Or half of The Wedding Present’s early material. Or Yo La Tengo at their most incoherent. Or early Nick Cave when he went all apocalyptic on us. Even Grandaddy have a couple. Grandaddy!

It doesn’t have to be completely mental and just making a lot of noise isn’t enough. ‘Rawk’ is dreadful and need not apply. It has to have an insistent beat, be drenched in pain, and have some real fucking menace to it. Then, at some point it has to get properly fucking loud, with guitars that drive you into spasms of lurching, drunken air guitar, face clenched like a Baptist’s buttocks at Pet Shop Boys concert.

This year’s best examples:

Parts & Labour – Fractured Skies That frenetic beat, when it gets going, is enough by itself, but when the guitar kicks in..
The Twilight Sad – And She Would Darken the Memory It may take its time to get going, but it’s well worth the fucking wait.
Kings of Leon – Charmer Not especially loud, this one, but that insistent beat and the pained screech still do it for me.
The Arcade Fire – Intervention This is a big, angry song – brilliant!
Grinderman – No Pussy Blues If you nee d this exp laining to you, then you will never understand anyway.

Some classics from yesteryear:

The Von Bondies – No Regrets
The Strokes – Juicebox Just listen to that beat – fucking marvellous – and there’s a distinctly prog-tastic guitar solo in the middle as well. Fucking great
The Wedding Present – Blonde The definitive song of wounded indie rage?