What I Listened To - Feb 26
Sopor Joe - Guided By Voices
After several years of being an enthusiastic audience member, I’m playing at this years instalment of London’s premier Pollard-appreciation festival Euroheed Fest in the band “Your Volunteer Fire Department”. Euroheed Fest means a lot to me asides from it being a celebration of one of the greatest living songwriters. It’s the kind of weird hyper-specific niche event that convinced me I was right to move several hundred miles away to a city I had no prior connection with. My earliest happy memories of London are getting as drunk as 20-songs-deep-into-a-set Pollard and shouting along to The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory with my best friends (who are in “Your Volunteer Fire Department” as it happens!).
Anyway, as part of the process for devising the “Your Volunteer Fire Department” setlist we’ve had to listen to hours of Robert Pollard penned (or sung, not to diminish Sprout or Gillard!) material. I’ve been very taken with “King Shit and the Golden Boys”, a collection of demos and outtakes originally recorded at the same time as Bee Thousand. Will “Sopor Joe” make it to the final setlist? Only one way to find out, come along and watch our set!
Numerology - My New Band Believe
Sophistipop is back baby! This time with real instruments (far more revelatory and novel than this pithy remark would make that seem) and an ample dusting of MBP.
Light Night Mountains All That - Ratboys
If I’m being real, this new Ratboys album sounded like sauce-less Hop Along to me on first listen. That was until I got to Light Night Mountains All That or “Six straight minutes of classic indie-rock fireworks”. Sorry but I’m still a total sucker for “Six straight minutes of classic indie-rock fireworks”! The rest of the record has since grown on me, it’s just good, uh, indie rock and roll music.
Pictures of You - Fib
Just an album of unhateable (you know what, I’m about to say it) angular (sorry) post-punk that sounds like a beefier Crazy Rhythms influenced by some classic 2010s (Blue Smiley, Krill, Palm) alt-rock touchstones. My favourite non-TAGABOW Julia’s War release that I’ve heard.
Skeletal Lunacy - Ominous Moon
I went to Life After Death again, after having such a great time last year. Personally, I felt perhaps the line-up was too “arch” this year. The highlights for me were the most indisputably “metal” acts on the bill. Ominous Moon (from Essex) were the most charming of the bands I saw, an extremely earnest take on classic trash metal (down to their duds, demeanour and denominates). The fact that the only dynamism of their set was accidental (the guitar lead cut out) endeared Ominous Moon to me further still. I’m keen to attend Life After Death 4 but I’d like less jazz-fusion (and I like jazz-fusion) and more Skeletal Lunacy.