The Clamcast is so-called not because of seafood, but because it all of a sudden became rather clammy here this week. An unseasonable warm spell descended and I didn’t personally adjust my clothing habits fast enough, meaning absolutely everywhere I went I ended up being uncomfortably warm.
So there you go, the Clamcast.
Anyhow, I am off to Glasgow to set up the Independent Record Fair, before scooting back through to Edinburgh to get the John Knox Sex Club, Easter and Fuzzystar Ides of Toad night sorted out at Henry’s. Actually, I say sorted out, but it’s not me who sorts things out at this stage, it’s really just down to the bands and the venue. Still, I have to be there and look willing, just in case!
01. Thee Ludds – Parabolic Reflector (00.16)
02. Pregnant- I Wasn’t Getting Paid (05.49)
03. Death Songs – Let This Body Go (10.58)
04. Fat History Month – Gorilla (15.00)
05. Aidan John Moffat – I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher Cover) (21.57)
06. King’s Daughters & Sons – Volunteer (25.42)
07. Sons of Joy – It Was a Dirty Lie (34.32)
08. Ba Babes – Avon (Extended) (44.04)
09. Yalls – Our Place 1 (50.52)
10. Sic Alps – Cambridge Vagina (52.27)
11. Easter – Somethin’ American (57.16)
I first mentioned Thee Ludds a while back when I found their split 12″ on Palmist Records. That was the first I had heard of the Leicester band, but it appears they have a couple of releases knocking around, including a cassette release on Sheffield-based Tye Die Tapes. I am really starting to feel a bit dadrockish with my CDs at the moment!
Incidentally, anyone else finding the fashionable return of Sweater Shop-style nineties knitwear a bit unsettling?
Anyhow, this lot make garage rock/punk/pop/whatever/youknowtheusual, which is given something of a psychedelic flavour by the organ sound. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Lil Daggers on our own label, actually, albeit with slight inflections of ska and mod which make it seem just that little bit more English. More punky than swampy, I suppose you could say.
In any case, from the admittedly fairly scant evidence thus far (try their SoundCloud page to make your own mind up), these guys seem to have a really strong grasp of the basic ingredients of successful garage rock: keep it short, punchy and catchy.
I am starting to see a lot of these garage bands gravitating towards labels who do a lot of tape releases, split releases, and stuff like that. It’s usually small scale and DIY, and quite a few rack up a fair few releases in this manner before going anywhere near an album. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I am not entirely certain where albums even fit in this aesthetic, actually.
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 I don’t normally do pre-release announcements, but this one has tickled my fancy. Palmist Records are run by the intern at Fatcat Records, the last time I heard, but the work they’re doing is excellent. I wish I had an intern like that – I’d be down the fucking pub by noon every day!
Anyhow, so far Palmist have released nothing but a (splendid) series of split 12″s, and their latest is with two Portland bands – it’s like Song, by Toad circa 2009!
I don’t acutally know The Whines or Burning Yellows, the two bands in question, but they play nice, melodic garage indie and I am really looking forward to my copy of this arriving. Like a lot of my favourite music at the moment it has a strong whiff of early-nineties US indie rock, and having largely missed out on this the first time around, I am very much enjoying its resurgence.
I am sure aficionados from the first time round will tell me off for being an ignoramus, but honestly, you trying getting into this shit when you live in Austria and all that’s going on around you is David fucking Hasselhoff, hair metal and risible euro disco.
 Their previous release, which I seem to have managed to miss, is just as garagey, but perhaps edges away from American indie bands in terms of the overall sound, and this time forces early eighties indie-pop through the grinder, particularly the Prize Pets stuff.
This is a kind of music I am a little more familiar with, after all the amazing mixtapes my cousin Steve used to send me to relieve the horror of the pop music I was raised around, and generally I am really liking what’s happening to this stuff when viewed in the rear view mirror and layered in a bit more fuzz, as Beaters have done.
It’s funny actually, I love the Palmist output, but it’s absolutely amazing how beholden it is to revivalism. In essence, most of the music is really quite backward-facing. It’s done in a modern way, but the relationships to music styles past are very strong, and very much on the surface. I am not treating this as a criticism – as I said, I absolutely love the stuff they are releasing – but it’s an interesting style they’ve developed. Between the punk, and the garage and whatnot I think that retro nature is probably the strongest common thread between all the bands they’ve put out.
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 And, as one last treat, I think we have a hint of their sixth release too, if you have a look at the label’s Soundcloud page. Graveyard’s Full by Growlers isn’t paired with any other songs, and the cover art assigned to it is there on the right, and doesn’t correspond to a current Palmist release.
So, given Palmist’s excellent track record so far, I think it would be foolish not to get a little ahead of the game at this point and find out a bit more about both Growlers and Thee Ludds.
This wasn’t particularly supposed to be all fuzzy and noisy, and in actual fact is probably isn’t, except for in bits. I have been listening to the Male Bonding album a lot this week, and then the split single from Thee Ludds and The No-Brainers dropped into my inbox, and then I became fascinated by the splendid mess that is I’llfinishyrfinish and suddenly I realised I had a podcast which was pretty much all over the place.
So I decided to embrace it, go for it and just appreciate the noise. There is some acoustic fuzz too, and a song by Grandaddy who can be fuzzy but often aren’t, but in general if you like your music to be played on a tape recorder down the back of the sofa in the next room, you should like this.
Oh, and we have the new Walkmen track and the new Cotton Jones one and all sorts. Aren’t we clever. Actually, who the fuck am I calling ‘we’, anyway?
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01. The Walkmen – Stranded (02.20)
02. Grandaddy – Fuck the Valley Fudge (09.02)
03. Male Bonding – Your Contact (16.19)
04. Navigator – Headless Horseman (The Microphones cover) (19.44)
05. Grizzly Prospector – Oh! Grizzly Me (Slow) (Live) (21.06)
06. Cotton Jones – Glorylight and Christie (24.09)
07. The Sound of the Ladies – The 40s Never Died (27.35)
08. Thee Ludds – I’m a Moron (34.42)
09. The Walkmen – Thinking of a Dream I Had (42.06)
10. Ace Bushy Striptease – I’llfinishyrfinish (I’ll Finish You) (49.32)
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The Clamcast is so-called not because of seafood, but because it all of a sudden became rather clammy here this week. An unseasonable warm spell descended and I didn’t personally adjust my clothing habits fast enough, meaning absolutely everywhere I went I ended up being uncomfortably warm.
