This year’s line-up features, in no particular order, The Strange Death of Liberal England (will they have room for all those signs?), Monsters Build Mean Robots, Shapes, Evi Vine, The Continuous Battle of Order, Crowns on the Rats Orchestra, Alright the Captain, The Slow Revolt, Juffage, Last Days of Lorca, Nordic Giants, Theo, Kontakte, Orders of the British Empire, Speak Galactic, Crooked Mountain Crooked Sea, Silent Front, These Monsters, Delta Sleep, A Genuine Freakshow, Karhide, Dark Dark Horse, Laish, Sorebones (loeb), Karl-Johan Nilsson, and Lowland Runners.

NWFA are also offering up a bunch of tracks for free download on their FB page, so hit that up if you like free songs. Songs by The Continuous Battle of Order, Orders of the British Empire, Silent Front, Nordic Giants and Last Days of Lorca, for example. Yes?

See you there.

It’s the male band members who don’t take you seriously, and when you get upset with how you’re treated, ask you if you’re menstruating. It’s the promoters and planners who screw you, then call you a diva when you assert yourself.  It’s the kids who don’t talk to you after your set, but talk to your male bandmates because they assume you’re only there for show.  It’s the people who think you’re sleeping with the guitarist, the people who assume you’re queer,  or the journalists who mention your weight in reviews.  It’s every single time a producer has told me I can’t play guitar on my own record because “sweetie, you’re not a studio musician” or “sing it again, but naked.”

Most importantly, it’s the baggage I have to carry that my male bandmates don’t. I have to worry about walking to the car alone to grab my guitar; I have to worry about where we are staying and if the strangers who own the floor I’m sleeping on will assault me in the middle of the night, even though it’s unlikely. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve clung to the side of my male bandmates when we’re sleeping, just to feel safe. I can’t drink too much or take a drink from a stranger at an after-party wherever we are staying, because I can’t be out of control.

I’m quoting this bit because it’s among the most immediate and powerful, but I should emphasise that a big part of this article is about not wanting to present oneself as, or be perceived as, a victim. Read the whole thing here. It’s written by Mariel Loveland, who sings and plays guitar in Candy Hearts (reviewed at the tail end of last year, here).

If you’re new to I live sweat… then you may also be interested in this piece by Lauren Denitzio, ex-The Measure [SA] (I think ex-that band, since I read that they were splitting up – which saddened me. They were one of the first bands I reviewed here, all the way back in March 2009). Here’s an excerpt:

I’ll start off by saying that I’m a white cis-female in her late 20’s who identifies as queer, feminist, radical and punk.  I’m speaking from my experiences being a part of a largely DIY poppunk scene for the majority of my life and in a touring band for over six years. A large part of the time, I feel welcomed, supported and accepted within the “punk” circles that I’m a part of.  However, nothing makes me more angry then hearing someone, men specifically, say that the scene isn’t sexist, “because we’re all punks and obviously that’s not cool.” I am far from the only woman-identified person in the room who would like to call bullshit on that statement.  While yes, most of my friends and the spaces I go to do not tolerate obviously sexist, homophobic, racist, able-ist, etc. speech, saying those concepts do not exist in our community is just flat out wrong.  What offends me is not always just the action itself, but the excuse that if you wear the “punk” label that you’re absolved of having done anything wrong because you “didn’t mean it that way.”  I can’t think of a rationale so unproductive.

Both pieces should be read by every punk, whether you’re an arsehole or an ally. There’s always more to learn, more you can do, to make punk rock better for everyone. You dig?

As with that last release Into It. Over It’s contributions are songs themed around a specific town or city, and they convey simple stories of the singer’s experiences within and memories of these places. ‘Cambridge, MA’ tells of a girl but is not, it appears, a simple and direct love song. Instead, it tells the tale of telling this girl about the woman the narrator loves back home; her habits, hobbies, eccentricities, etcetera. The everyday texture out of which love and shared lives are built. Musically, the song’s a simple one, acoustic finger-picking and soft, slow vocals over rolling drums that loop throughout.

‘Orlando, FL’ is a pacier number, a little more like the band’s presence on the other split, and this one seems to be about shouldering burdens of knowledge, accepting or ignoring what’s going on around the singer, although in what context this is meant to be said I’m not sure – late-night after parties? Infidelity? Secrets between friends? The song itself is pretty catchy and has grown on me over repeated listens.

Sadly I can’t say the same of Pswingset. They offer up two songs here. ‘Everything That Was Tired’ fitting in after ‘Orlando, FL’ nicely and boasting production that is either cheap or an affectation to imitate the recording style of the 90s emo the band adulate. Whatever the reason behind it is, I do like the production, and the song isn’t a bad one – it’s pleasant enough. Unfortunately after half a dozen plays it’s still not resonated with me on any level.

The same is true of acoustic number ‘Thanks For the Record’, a faintly lovelorn tune built of vocals and two acoustic guitars that is competently written, attractively played, stylistically consistent, but about which I have nothing to say because I didn’t find it at all engaging.

It’s a shame that I didn’t get on with Pswingset as it seemed as though all the ingredients for that classic emo/indie sound are in place, but there was no spark. I’ll try them again in the future. Happily, Into It. Over It offer another decent pair of songs, so you may want to pick this up just for those. If you’re a vinyl collector I’d say go for the first, but if you’re acquiring these from Bandcamp then you may as well grab both!

Into It. Over It | Official Site | MySpace | Facebook | Last.fm

Pswingset | MySpace | Tumblr | Last.fm

Count Your Lucky Stars Records

So, this record – TB3LP to give it its official name – is a collection of the band’s early EPs, 7″s and the like that preceded their breakup. I don’t have any of these original releases so I’m not sure which records are collected here and when the various tracks were recorded, so suffice to say that you have 12 tracks which are variably good and average.

Take for example first track ‘Guilt Free Youth’, with a powerful edge of desperation to its sound, a rapid pace and a plaintive screamo-esque edge to the vocals, or ‘Wimpfest’, with its bruising hardcore punk riffs, full-steam-ahead drumming and throaty roars – these remind me of the old ebullition acts I used to love like Bread & Circuits and Torches to Rome. These tunes have a lot of energy to them and stand up well today even given their age. ‘The Message’ adopts a few metal tricks, fusing them to a yelping hardcore structure and liberally peppering the resultant mix with evocative octave chords. Then there is ‘Hate Uniform’ which has much more of an early-00s British alt-rock feel to it – I’m reminded a little of Copperpot Journals and Hell Is For Heroes, or even Hundred Reasons.

On the flipside of the coin there are weaker tracks like ‘Barbie and Me’, a gentler but still fairly rocky tune which does not do a great job of highlighting the band’s vocal strengths. Like ‘Hate Uniform’ this tune is reminescent of those aforementioned British alt-rock bands but unlike ‘Hate Uniform’ it has not aged well.

TB3LP is an uneven record which feels dated in places, but this is only to be expected given its provenance. It’ll be of interest to those who were active gig-goers and record collectors in the era from which these songs date, or to those punk rock archaeologists who love to delve into the past, but its appeal beyond such is limited – although given that it’s a free download there’s certainly no harm in giving it a try!

More interestingly, though, it is a wholly DIY project that hails the return of the band to active duty, and I look forward to seeing where they take their music from here on.

Bandcamp | MySpace |Facebook | Tumblr

A-side ‘Straight Through the Sun’ has the exuberant energy familiar to anyone who has seen …ASIWYFA live; not all of their previous recorded output has managed to capture this energy so it’s a real pleasure to see it coming through so clearly in this song. It also has a real warmth to it, perhaps aided by the more sensitive, moodier moments interspersed throughout the song.

There are actually two versions of the song present here, the radio edit and the original. The latter is about 45 seconds longer and that’s the only real difference; a bit of a pointless inclusion really but if it keeps the 7″ spinning longer then you can’t really complain.

B-side ‘Without A Fucking Scratch’ is a significantly gentler tune, very mellow for modern …ASIWYFA but it hearkens back to the more relaxed songwriting that characterised their debut mini-album. It also boasts a similar warmth to the a-side: STA’s Andrew Ferris helmed the production on this single and has done a bang-up job. He’s hopefully on-hand for the full-length as well. Anyway, this song builds oh-so-slowly to false climaxes where it promises to burst into more aggressive territory, but instead sinks back into pleasant, dreamy languor. This is a bit at odds with the triumphal in-your-face-title but that’s how these guys name their songs. That first mini-album was the confrontationally-titled This Is Our Machine And Nothing Can Stop It, after all.

This is a decent single exemplifying some increasingly skilled use of dynamics and I’m looking forward to what will follow.

MySpace | Facebook | Smalltown America

The video is pretty cool and fits the tone of the song really well in my view. Enjoy! It’s embedded below but you may want to click through for an embiggened version, yes?

That Fucking Tank: ‘Mr Blood’ from JakoMat on Vimeo.

it’s one of those things where you avoid something you take issue with for a while, and then suddenly find yourself in the middle of it, and it catches you off guard, ill-prepared, and you start fuming.
i went to see envy at reggie’s last night (amazing, by the way!). one of the opening bands was trash talk. it was funny, because the first two bands were some instrumental band from belfast and touche amore, and although kids were going nuts and singing along, it was no big deal. then trash talk came out. immediately, a huge pit formed in front of the stage, squishing almost everyone else back against the back wall. and then the familiar scene began.
pacing back and forth, posturing aggressively, stomping, kicking, punching, violently flailing arms. two dudes accidentally knocked into each other and started posturing at each other and shit talking, needing to be separated before a fight. kids crisscrossed the room, performing one of the most extreme versions of macho masculinity ever to dilute the political bases of punk rock. because this violence isn’t even raw and reactionary; it’s planned, staged, practiced. it privileges machismo unquestioningly. it privileges the antiquated notion that dudes can’t control themselves and need to blow off steam violently because men will be men. it’s such an obvious fucking farce.
when i watch this shit happen, i think to myself, of COURSE i felt like a weird outsider a lot during a certain time of my growing up in punk… all of my friends were dudes and we always went to hardcore shows. i couldn’t win, because there was barely any room for a different way to enjoy shows; you either had to perform the type of violent masculinity going on in the pit, or stand in the back and be accused of being a punk rock girlfriend who only holds coats and can’t hang with the big boys (or find a way around that which is still privileged, like taking photos or tabling). and either way you’re pitted in competition with other girls, because the dudes compare you to the other girls involved on a scale of who’s conforming to hardcore dude standards the best, most worthy of being accepted into their group on their level, on their terms. the prevalent thread at hardcore shows is a dichotomy of macho fucking bullshit.
the weird thing is that i love a lot of hardcore music. i love listening to it, and i always have, especially amazing bands like sick fix which subvert these standards as much as possible from within the genre. i just can’t fucking stand how this stuff is often acted out at shows.
pop punk dudes may often be sad misogynists, but at least i can go up to the front where i can actually SEE a band during a pop punk show and sing along and know i’m not going to get punched in the head by some beefy posturing asshole who probably has a tiny dick*, a nike shoe collection and is an aloof jerk to the women he dates. that’s why i got INTO punk, to get away from that mainstream dude mentality of entitlement and privilege and to be critical of that kind of performance. to be faced with it is a slap in the face, literally. and i’m not fucking interested.
i know that people who like going to hardcore shows might read this, and may disagree with me or be super offended. that’s fine. you should think about why exactly that is though. you might think, jen doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she just doesn’t get it. wrong, i do know. i’ve been going to hardcore shows for 10 years and i’ve performed all of these roles at some point, and seen them performed. i’m interested in subversion and revolution, but not the kind that involves dick measuring contests. radical counterculture politics like veganism and straight edge lose meaning when they are performed in such an oppressive environment without questioning it.
*this part was later addended as it was not intended to be a value judgment on actual dick size

This resonated with me a bit. Now, I’m male (and also white and hetero) so in terms of experiencing the raw end of privilege I can only try and imagine living with that and constantly enduring it in a scene that is a major and defining part of my life. But I’m also a small, skinny guy, and now that I’m a bit older I’m not really into the pit any more. And it is a shame that this means I’m relegated to the back of the room at a busy, active gig because there is rarely room, even on the sidelines, to just get a decent view and maybe dance a bit or just enjoy the music in my own way, thanks to over-enthusiastic people who feel the need to try and drag you into the pit, who fling people or are flung into you, or just don’t care where their fist, elbow or foot ends and your body begins. It’s pretty depressing to consider, all the more so when you think of the rare instances where the people enjoying a pit take inordinate care to only involve themselves, or hardcore dancers who have an almost preternatural ability to flail and stomp yet never come into contact with anyone else – people who actually take care to respect personal space.

Anyway, I shouldn’t go on about this too much as there is an element of white whine about it and my experiences are only superficially comparable to those of the author above. But both of us would benefit from more thoughtfulness from all members of the punk and hardcore scene.

Perhaps the answer – outside of wider social change that might significantly alter gender relations for the better –  is simply to both offer and demand respect for each person’s punk rock? No one wants to play the role of the scene police, but equally some people need to understand that what they interpret as being core to the experience of punk rock – whether that’s aggressive, violent moshing and slamdancing or the politically engaged activist aspects of the scene – won’t always be shared by others. But so long as space is given to these mutual and often overlapping spheres, hardcore as a whole will be a stronger, more unified and more welcoming scene – precisely the sort of outsider role hardcore punk initially represented.

One thing about this band that leaps right out at me is that although, given the vocal passion and volume/intensity of the music, it is easy to categorise them as a screamo band, their songs are much simpler and less ornamented than a lot of current screamo bands, who often pride technical virtuosity and musicianship very highly – possibly because that’s the natural place to push frantic playing that only ever seems chaotic and unplanned. In the case of the Saddest Landscape, the music is simpler, constructed out of more basic components in building towards an emotionally intense and violently passionate whole. Whether this is deliberate or not I don’t know, but it’s an approach which meets with mixed success.

There are moments of extraordinary force here, typically driven by Andy Maddox’s desperate vocal style and plaintive, vulnerably exposed lyrics. In opener ‘Declaring War on Nostalgia’ he expresses a desire to go “back to when our drinks didn’t weigh us down” – a sentiment of encroaching adulthood I can relate to. In ‘Eternity is Lost on the Dying’ he cries “we are desperate kids doing extraordinary things”. Then there’s ‘The Shadows I Call Home’, with the repeated refrain “we build walls to feel less alone”. These are good lyrics made great by the passion invested in them. Unfortunately there’s a phlegmy, somewhat salival quality to the vocals that I find occasionally distracting. Still, an imperfect singing style does indicate that this isn’t just forced, fake passion ala. far too many fucking haircut screamo bands.

Musically, as mentioned, the songs are simpler than a lot of contemporary emo/screamo outfits, and do hearken back towards the atmospheric and emotional soundscapes of classic 90s emocore bands (let’s say Maximillian Colby and Indian Summer as not particularly representative examples). I may have mentioned earlier than the band lean away from extreme virtuosity but that’s not to say they lack in talent; the drumming is tight and fast and the strings are hammered with speed and precision. However, the songwriting is a little formulaic at times. There are numerous moments where the music hangs back to allow for plaintive wailed and gasped vocals. It’s an effective trick but overused here. Ditto the repeated refrains; whilst the aforementioned lines in ‘The Shadows I Call Home’ have power, the trick has been heard before on this album. The drums recurrently slip into an almost martial beat – a repetition which might be easy to overlook in itself, but taken as another over-used part it sticks awkwardly in the mind.

You Will Not Survive is a decent album with laudable moments of impressive intensity. It’s also a distinct release: The Saddest Landscape successfully stand apart from their contemporaries as offering something a little bit different. However, this full length should perhaps have been trimmed down to a mini-album or lengthy EP, or perhaps just had a few more ideas introduced to vary its songwriting and structure.

MySpace | WordPress | Facebook | Twitter

Owls opens with ‘Prelude (Owls)’, a vague and somewhat pretentious track that begins with spoken word vocals from the lead female vocalist (Jodie Lowther) backed by piano and some atmospheric effects and samples. I’m not convinced that this prelude sets the tone particularly well. It’s not bad, with the vocals recounting anecdotal tales of past lives as watched by owls in an old dead tree. Possibly this is intended to establish the album thematically but I don’t have access to the album’s lyrics (PRs and bands! Please send these, or a link to them online) so can’t really say. Occasionally the (moodily effective) music buries the vocals as well, rendering some lines a little hard to make out. However, as the prelude builds more of the band’s members and instruments join in and the vocals drop out, resulting in an attractive instrumental piece.

The prelude is followed by ‘Sandman’, a minimalistic track which has a bit of energy in its chorus but drags on a little due to lack of variation. Fortunately it’s followed by ’Ghosting’, a much more catchy tune and one of a number that also features male vocals from Rob Britton. ‘Ghosting’ is the only song where I don’t care for his accent; in every other song I have no such complaint, so it’s a bit odd that I’m not keen on it here. Perhaps it’s just that the backing vocals here don’t sound as well-mixed as the rest of the album.

Still, all three tracks thus far do exhibit the band’s multi-instrumental talents and ability to work them organically into a song as required, without overwhelming it. On and off you’ll pick out violin and viola, cello and trumpet, accordion and baritone guitar, as well as the more usual bass, keyboards and drums. Owls is the product of a maturing band who work well together – I used the phrase deftly constructed earlier and it’s entirely true.

One of my favourite tracks is ‘…And You Dance’, a delicate song about dreams fading with age, built chiefly around bass and strings, with both lead vocalists contributing. It swells and ebbs very nicely. There are a few others that stand out thanks to some nicely observed lyrics: ‘Myth’ with “falling for the myth of love again / a whole new story the same old end”, and ‘Annie Waltz’ which either possesses a sinister black humour or a semi-ironic arrogance. I’m not entirely sure it it’s either, or both. There is also ‘One Great Mind’, with emphasises its fuzzed-up guitar and male lead vocals. It’s a much more orthodox song than most of what is present here, but thanks to its energy and immediacy it’s easy to pick out. ‘Louisiana’ is another fairly pacy number; its verses hop along nicely enough, but the melody and rhythm of the choruses are where it truly shines.

Owls is a solid album produced by a band with plenty of talent and interesting ideas; not every song present entirely works, and sometimes the hooks aren’t as sharp as they might be, or the lyrics and vocals aren’t as enthralling as might be hoped, but it’s a fun and sometimes challenging listen. What more can you ask for from eleven tracks of delectable indie pop?

Official Site | MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | PopArt London

‘I’m Not Thinking of You’ is a preciously delicate piece of indie-pop, composed of soft and gentle vocals from Rósa and enticing dual guitar picking with some piano and faint digital wizardry from “Eberg”.

In my notes I’ve described it as a “pre-love song”, which on repeat listens seems to have a vein of truth to it. It’s about waiting, about the moments while you wait to hear from someone you might be falling for. Then again, it might be about travelling away from someone, or growing up. I think distance is the key, here, whether that distance is emotional or physical.

Whatever the intention it’s a beautiful song, constructed of very simple elements and a deft layering of sounds; small pieces to make a greater whole. If there’s a romantic bone in your body, give this a go. You might find you have to locate it on iTunes manually, though, as I couldn’t find any mention of it on the STA site three weeks after its supposed release.

Official Site | MySpace | Facebook | Smalltown America | I’m Not Think Of You video