I have mentioned often enough on this site how much I like EPs, not least for their lack of what I suppose Americans might call a Seventh Inning Stretch – that weary feeling you get about two thirds to three quarters of the way through an album, where your attention starts to wane and you wander off to make a cup of tea.
Anyhow, I have a lot of them in my inbox at the moment, all good for varying reasons, but it seems like I would be excessive to write a separate post for each, so figured I would condense four of my favourites down into a single post for your efficient musical enjoyment, in alphabetical order by band name:
Cheapskate – Knock Knock Knock
This is actually a free download from the Cheapskate website, which appears to be down at the moment, but is also available from last.fm in the meantime. I first found out about this band from Cloud Sounds, and it’s not the kind of music to shock you or make you sit up straight immediately you hear it, but it’s odd, and oddly compelling.
There are times when it sounds like music from children’s TV, times when it sounds like a peculiar advertising jingle, and times when it’s just sinister enough you might be worried about your teenage daughter listening to it.
In fact, this probably comes across a lot like a MySpace groomer, except in musical form: superficially friendly and oh so innocent, but with something oddly out of place and not quite right, but never so strange as to let you put your finger on it entirely.
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My Tiny Robots – Rock Bossa Nova EP
This EP is short and sweet, checking in at a mere four songs, with the first one swerving shy of the two-minute mark.
Stylistically it’s an interesting mish-mash. The first track has rather surprising hints of Maximo Park, of all things, but the rest of the EP tends to embrace seventies alt-pop sung in a voice which sits halfway between new wave and a barroom croon.
It sounds sort of cocky at times, I think, with the guitar played with a stylish swagger and the rhythms feeling kind of suggestive, although not in a way that is too obvious. Good stuff though, and given these guys seemed to be in danger of petering out until quite recently, it’s good to see ‘em back in the game, and back so strongly as well.
The My Tiny Robots site is here, and you can buy Rock Bossa Nova here – the physical copy of the CD really is gorgeous though, so I recommend pestering them about that, rather than settling for mere downloads.
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Randolph’s Leap – Battleships and Kettlechips
When will bloggers learn not to go starting record labels? It’s a natural extension of the instinct to spend all your time writing about your favourite music though I guess, so it should be no surprise really, particularly in the age of the internet where there actually is an audience out there to be reached now that the traditional gatekeepers are floundering about like buffoons in search of their lost customers.
Step forward Olive Grove Records, and debut release, Battleships and Kettlechips by Randolph’s Leap. Randolph’s Leap are clever and sensitive, with a tongue in cheek way with their lyrics, and the ability to combine the sincere with the amusing which few manage this well.
I hate words like quirky, but it’s hard to avoid with bands like this. Not that there’s anything zany or madcap about them, more that there are plenty of moments on this EP where I find myself looking up and actually cocking an eyebrow at the speakers, wondering quite how these guys see the world. They seem like the kind of lunatics who are absolutely convinced that they are sane, and who tolerate the rest of the world’s eccentricities with a genial sympathy.
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Willy Mason – So Long Baby Shoes
There was a time Willy Mason seemed oh so very close to becoming one of my favourite artists. That he didn’t quite owes an unreasonable amount to a disappointing show at the Liquid Rooms about four years ago, where the full band he played with rather smothered the loveliness of his songs, making it all sound less remarkable than it actually is.
Shame on me, I actually stopped really paying attention with anything like the same enthusiasm after that. I suppose it doesn’t help that he seemed to drift back from the verge of a major, permanent breakthrough to the vastly different world of self-release, meaning his new stuff wasn’t as enthusiastically forced on me as it might have been.
This is bloody gorgeous though. The arrangements are really simple, leaving the emphasis on his lovely, lovely voice, and gentle, tender lyrics. It’s sufficiently lovely that I feel like a right disloyal bastard for letting his music drift out of my life for the last couple of years.
The website of his UK fanclub is here, and you can buy So Long Baby Shoes from CDBaby here.
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Welcome to Toadcast number 215. This is called the Kingcast because I have been on a bit of run promoting gigs recently, with three in the last eight days or so. Given almost none of my friends or music associates came to these gigs and that the list of attending guests on the Facebook event pages made for pretty grisly reading, I was grimly expecting the gigs to be absolutely awful – barely attended wastelands of funlessness – but every single one was brilliant.
