It’s the arse-end of May again and that means it’s time for another Nice Weather For Airstrikes Festival, once again here in Brighton, once again at the Druid’s Arms by the Level, and once again playing host to a throng of post-rock, math and shoegaze bands from around the UK. Supposedly the good weather here will hold for the next few weeks, which is good news because it gets goddamn hot in that pub and it’s always a relief to step outside between bands. It’s running between Friday 27th and Monday 30th, with events running from the early afternoon on Monday. Did I mention that it’s free?
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?
A quick Sunday treat for you: in anticipation of their gig here in Brighton on Tuesday I’ve been watching (and re-watching) the video for That Fucking Tank’s ‘Mr. Blood’, a song from an album I reviewed and liked a great deal. That was about a year and a half ago now and was written a month or so after I saw the band for the first time.
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?
I don’t mean to blow my load too early in this here review, but Old Pride may be some of the finest screamo I’ve heard in a while.
As the pastoral, old-timey cover suggests, Pianos Become The Teeth are from the dynamic and distraught school of emo rather than the full-on balls-out self-destructive side of things. Case in point: opening song ‘Filial’ starts with simple clean strums and quickly builds into a huge, epic, tumultuous screamo-slash-alt rock tune with emotion seeping out of its pores. Some of the chord progressions deployed sound more like something moody post-rockers like This Will Destroy You would deploy than a more traditional screamo sound (ala. Saetia, Still Life, whatever reference points you want to use). At over five minutes long the song is quite a journey in itself; it’s very cool indeed and sets the bar high from the outset.
Other highlights for me are ‘Pensive’, a slow-builder which takes time to build to a ferocious crescendo, and the guitar work which opens up ‘Sleepshaker’; deceptively simple, it’s an intro to die for. And then there is ‘Young Fire’, a slightly country-esque post-rock number which wraps up the album.
But above them all is ‘Cripples Can’t Shiver’, which features a heartbreaking spoken story about the decline of the orator’s father, who suffers from multiple sclerosis: “it’s been hard to see him, as a man who loved baseball and golf, to go from standing upright, to walking with a cane, to going to the walker, to the scooter, to the wheelchair, to bedridden.” The song overall is fairly low-key and slower-paced compared to the rest of the record, and is probably one of the moments where Pianos Become the Teeth stray furthest into post-rock territory. Beneath it all, though, there’s the ever-present threat of emotional and musical intensity, that ferocious bombast that the best screamo can deliver. It might be seen as cheap or cruel to use a personal story of suffering and hardship – as a shortcut to powerful emotion – but there’s no cynicism here, just honest, earnest passion and pain. Like all the best screamo and emo music, Old Pride convinces most of all as an act of catharsis. And this is not only true of ‘Cripples Can’t Shiver’; there is not a weak song on this album, not a moment which rings hollow or false or insincere.
I’ve found it really hard to review this album because whenever I listen to it I find it such an intensely emotional and involving experience* that I entirely forget to take notes. I’m sure that fact says more about this album that I could ever have managed: “album too good, too affecting to be reviewed”. Yeah, if you don’t listen to this record I will come to your house and beat / scream / cry on you.
Louisville, Kentucky is a town I know by musical reputation and little else. It’s produced and been home to an impressive roster of bands over the years from Slint to the hardcore/metal acts I’m more familiar with like Black Cross, Breather Resist, Abscise and Sardaukar (okay, I mainly know the latter because of the Dune reference). Whatever it is they put in the water over there clearly works… and so to Frontier(s), a band fronted by ex-Elliott / Falling Forward frontman Chris Higdon and backed by members of Automatic, Mouthpiece and Stay Gold.
I’ve never listened to a great deal of Elliott though they’ve appeared on a few compilations and mixtapes I’ve been sent over the years, and going back to listen to those tracks indicates that Frontier(s) are not pushing far outside Higdon’s comfort zone. This is not inherently a bad thing, though it’s a shame that after 8 years of Elliott there’s no drive to bust open new ground. But hey, I’m a fan of Snuff and their only attempt to do something different produced a terrible trip-hop song so it’s no bad thing to stick with what you’re good at.
So, the two tracks on this here 7″ single are big alt-rock songs with a distinctly Midwestern kinda edge – I can’t pin that down, I guess it’s just got that kind of reminescent sound. The band is occasionally described as post-hardcore and I guess that’s true insofar as “hardcore > emo > this release” provides a rough map of the members’ career paths, but in terms of the music you’ll hear some snatches of riffs and licks that betray roots in the mellower side of emo but nothing more distinct.
So far I’ve spent an awful lot of words on what Frontier(s) are not and that is pretty unfair; no band should be defined by what they are not (unless what they are not is “any good”). So what are Frontier(s)? Well, they’re a band of guys doing what they know how to do well. There’s some quality musicianship and songcrafting on display here, and whilst the first spin of this 7″ didn’t catch me I’ve found myself coming back to it a few times. Both tracks are characterised by pounding drums and strong, melodic bass with interwoven guitar lines and dramatically earnest vocals. ‘The Plains’ is a more upbeat-sounding track than the morose but rocking ‘Radiomine’; that said, I’m pretty sure neither is intended to be a party tune.
It’s a bit of a cheap conclusion to write this, but I would recommend Frontier(s) to fans of Elliott as these two tracks from Frontier(s) are not hugely dissimilar from that band’s output, albeit with a more mainstream alt-rock sound and (dare I say it) more confident and accomplished if less iconic songwriting. It’s also worth a listen by anyone who digs quality rock music although you probably won’t find yourself blown away.
Hailing from London, fulangchangandi (that’s pronounced “foo-lang-chang-and-eye”, and is the name of a Frida Kahlo painting) are one of those bands you wish came along more often… and at the same time find difficult to write about. Why? Well, because they’re inventive and thus resist lazy comparisons.
It’s fortunate – for me, fc&i, and anyone who’s reading this with a piqued curiosity – that over the last few years I’ve finally started getting shoegaze, post-rock and noise-rock. For some reason most of it never really clicked for me before, but there’s now been enough confluence of coincidence and recommendation that things have fallen into place for me. I’m still pretty fuzzy on a bunch of the big names – Slint, Shellac, MBVet al - that fc&i name as influences, but on the strength of what they’ve done with this inspirational fodder I need to pick up my retroactive pace.
So, sonically the band play music that straddles shoegaze and post-rock territory. Their songs and riffs loop lethargically and dreamily, heavy on the distorted chords/clean picking juxtaposition, with prevalent bass lines and minimalist drums. Minimal is a good byword, actually – while the vocals are kept to a minimum here these guys aren’t chasing the textural build-up of post-rockers like This Will Destroy You or the rockier instrumental take of And So I Watch You From Afar. It’s impressionistic, almost, as each element of their songs emerges clearly but is integral to the greater whole. Excuse the slightly pretentious metaphor, readers…
The first track on the EP features jangly, dischordant guitar front-and-centre, with sporadic Enablers-esque spoken word vocals over the top. Lyrically these aren’t exactly on a par with the San Francisco cult favourites, but they’re a nice touch and work well. Next up is ‘Godolphin’, probably my favourite of the three, which is a sort of mournful victory march with great tremolo guitar picking and some soaring melodies that builds to a close awash with noise. Rounding out the trio comes the seven and a half-minute epic ‘Emergency’, a song of several parts, crescendoes and decrescendoes alike, slightly varying its central hooks throughout to great overall effect.
All in all this is a very cool first EP and I’m looking forward to seeing what fulangchangandi do next. Two of the three songs on this EP are up on their MySpace page, so go have a listen.
