Why haven’t you marketed yourselves as a band?
We’re quite happy picking and choosing what gigs we play. We play much better when it’s something a bit rarer. We all work at other things and everyone is creative outwith the band, or at least tries to be, so it can be quite busy. The band is just one outlet. The logistics of getting five people together at one time can be quite difficult but when we do we work quickly and write songs quickly, and we don’t dwell on things.

How are things changing for the band?
We’ve been lucky: we’ve not really put ourselves forward but people have approached us. The Scottish Arts Council gave us a grant to record for two days at Chem19 studios (owned by record label Chemikal Underground). We plan to release something in February. It’s going to be a catalogue of everything we’ve ever done, including a live and studio CD. We’ve been making our own boxsets out of stacked cardboard at the kitchen table; our friend Mike is doing the cover art, which I know involves dead animals and a skip; and another friend is doing us some very phallic t-shirts. It’s all being made by hand as we’re on a very tight budget. We’re also really keen to hit the road and will be touring with Three Blind Wolves in the new year. I guess it would be more productive if we didn’t sleep in till three in the afternoon most days so I’ll make it one of my resolutions to change that.

Scott Hutchison named you as one of his bands to watch for 2010 – who are yours?
We feel very privileged to have been namecheck by Scott. Andy Monaghan from Frightened Rabbit has always mixed our CDs so maybe he heard of us through that. They’re such an awesome band. Collectively we have a really eclectic taste in music and we learn a lot from each other. My favourites right now include Holy Mountain, a drummer and guitarist: it’s a live thing, a real shambles of a gig. Also Wounded Knee – just one guy with a loop pedal – and a friend of ours who I think will be massive once he releases stuff, Andrea Marini. He used to be an acoustic artist but now has celloists and violinists and they’ve really brought out the best in him. The thing that always strikes me at his gigs is the silence and concentration of the crowd.

Do you want the band to make it big?
If I could do this for a living I would. We certainly wouldn’t say no to a record deal but I think we’d get more support from a smaller label. FatCat definitely have the monopoly on good bands. At the moment though we have much stranger ambitions. We want to go to Iceland because they really support their musicians over there. Iceland Air sponsors bands to come across – it doesn’t matter the size of the band, they’ll pay for their flights so that they can tour. That shows a real passion for music.

What does the John Knox Sex Club experience involve?
We get really riled up for our live shows: it’s a big event because we don’t get together that much. We want people to leave either loving it or hating it. You have to work hard to polarise people’s opinions otherwise you’re just another one of those bands stuck in the middle. Sometimes the crowd is wary if they don’t know what they’re in for – at one gig we did recently, two guys stood with their hands over their ears. Sean [Cummings, lead singer] wanders around hugging people, and some people back off because he’s usually quite sweaty by that point. But mostly it’s a positive reaction and the crowd get really engaged. Rory [Anderson] has broken two £600 guitars because he went a bit wild and the crowd joined in and helped him smash it. He got them fixed by a guy known as the Guitar Doctor, who came straight up to us after a show, handed us his card and said “I think you’ll need this”.

The John Knox Sex Club play the 13th Note in Glasgow, 28 December 2009. Visit the tribute website (created by a fan) to listen to demos: www.myspace.com/thejohnknoxsexclubtribute

Picture by Son of Groucho

In a statement released this morning, Owen said:

“Friends,

I began playing solo violin shows in 2004. Although it was essentially a solo project, I named the band Final Fantasy, as the experience–and the tone of the material–was reminiscent of the hours and hours I had spent as an adolescent playing those epic JRPGs.

But the laws of trademark infringement exist for good reason, and so I am voluntarily retiring my band name. In the new year, my record Heartland is coming out, and it is my first to be released in many territories, including Japan. With this in mind, I feel it is in my own best interests to definitively distinguish my music from Square/Enix’s games.

So, I am no longer playing shows as Final Fantasy. Subsequent releases, including Heartland, will be issued under my own name, Owen Pallett. Prior releases will sometime soon be re-packaged and re-issued.

I thank Square/Enix their kindness and support, and I thank you all for your understanding.

Salud!

Owen Pallett”

Makes sense really!

Picture by Regis Andrade

It’s a funny business, all this competing and counting. The best singer with the best song, as validated by judges and festive chart positions, is not really the business of music, the business of creating and performing.

I suppose we can put it down to nature, our instinct for competition. We see it in sport, in business and in partnering all the time, yet music is surely different. There is no empirical ‘better’ in a form that is free of rules and boundaries. Could Never Mind The Bollocks be a greater debut album than Are You Experienced? Who can tell? I know which I prefer, but wouldn’t claim to have a definitive rating to either. Certainly, a chart position or voting poll would do little to convince me of an authoritative answer. Sometimes only a rasp to Anarchy In The UK will do, on other occasion air guitar to Foxy Lady equally irreplaceable.

Nonetheless, it seems there is an urge within us, a pack animal that seeks comfort in the assurance of its peers. We want to know about each other’s preferences and ratings because the answer helps define us, both individually and collectively (one reason the campaign to stop another X Factor Xmas has gained such momentum). Why should we care what tops the charts at Christmas? Because it says something about us, the state of mind of our society and the tastes of our culture.

On a more individual level, I know that by having the record collection I do, I’m hoping to attract like-minded others who will appreciate what I appear to be. We all use our likes and dislikes to join flocks, to separate ourselves from other flocks, and form an image we can present to others. Along with our clothes, our language and our hairstyle, our musical preference is a feather in our tail, to fan at those we hope to impress.

It is reasoned that a true aficionado will care not a jot for record sales or chart positions. The triviality of whether an album has gone platinum can be a turn-off just as a motive to admire. I know myself that I treasure Freddie Hubbard’s Open Sesame much more than its popularity suggests is worth. Part of that admiration, if I’m honest, is that it somehow belongs to me rather than to the world at large. By holding it up above other, more popular works of the genre, I can reinforce my belief that I will not be swayed by public opinion.

Yet however hard any of us try, the desire to look over our shoulder and sort our music into some semblance of order seems to prevail. Facebook now has nearly a million members voting to make Killing In The Name Of the number one single at Christmas. We make crowns for the biggest band in the world, the best live band on the planet, the king of pop or even just the king; hollow titles all to be placed on the heads of our stars. Whether we are categorising by genre, rating with numbers, or short listing our own desert island disks, it seems we are destined to measure and contrast the unique.

It is in part a language thing. I remember the times I used to go to Bramley Road for A&R meetings, with a new song to hand over to my publisher and the next brief to collect. “Gareth is looking for a cross between Will and Robbie”, they’d tell me. I’d tell them I had a new song that might fit, “what does it sound like?” they’d ask.

I never worked out how to answer the question. If I told them I had written a masterpiece that was as creative as Radiohead and as accomplished as Mozart, would that rule it out as inappropriate? What are the distilled qualities of Will and Robbie that would together make Gareth, and the song they were after?

Words cannot describe music. We cannot depict the playing of Eric Clapton, the tone of Louis Armstrong or the dynamic of Beethoven with any satisfactory result. Adjectives like melodious, accomplished, crafted; none of them can give a hint as to what is on the record, the glory of the thing itself. There aren’t the words that can. That’s sort of the point of it. The enigma is in the emotions language cannot describe.

Perhaps it is because there are not the words, because there are not the boundaries for formal assessment, that the numbers become our only way of ordering what is on offer. How else can we satisfy the basic desire to rate the output of our stars? On what other basis can we anoint those at the top of their profession?

In 1741, Johann Sebastian Bach set upon what he called the “ungrateful task” of composing a set of variations for Count von Keyserlingk’s court musician. In poor health, the Count mentioned he would like some pieces for Johann Goldberg to play that would ease his insomnia and uplift his spirits. The resulting Goldberg Variations, created without competition, one eye on the charts or the need to quantify their style with drab words from their maker, are beyond comparison, rating or paltry description from the listener. Together they form a piece that was made for the sake of music and nothing else. A piece judged not in comparison, or by units shifted, but in quality and emotional resonance.

An artistic life is much different today, often filled as it is with self-doubt and unanswerable questions asked by global audiences and investors. But if there is one thing we can hope from Joe McElderry, or indeed from ourselves as we summarise the decade just gone, perhaps it is that we can do the same as J.S. Bach and his audience, and rise above our competitive desire to arrange the incomparable and order the unparalleled.

Having been treated to both début record Hold On Now, Youngster and follow-up-album-that-wasn’t-really-an-album-but-was-still-brilliant We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed in 2008, the wait for new material for over a year has been excruciating.

We’ve been lucky enough to get a very early press copy and our first impressions are that it’s a worthy addition to their wealth of material. It’s a darker record, somehow more retrained than their ramshackle and raw early days, but fear not, it hasn’t been polished and buffed to take all the band’s personality out of it. It’s not an instant classic like their debut was, but we can spot a grower when we see one and we’re already sure Romance Is Boring will be one of our most played albums next year. Here’s a track-by-track:

1. In Media Res: First impressions are that everything is louder. Then there’s a lovely twinkly Christmassy type breakdown part before everything goes dark and Gareth’s vocals take the listener to the depths of despair. Already very evidently a marked departure from WAB, WAD. There’s a lot more going on here, but while that experimentation brings depths to delve into over time, there’s a lack of an immediate hook to grab the listener in. As is LC!’s preference, the song’s end leads into the next track, which is…

2. There Are Listed Buildings: The first proper single from the record is probably the song on the album that sounds most like it would have slotted in on one of their earlier releases. It’s controlled mania, if that makes any sense. Just as things are getting out of control Gareth pulls on the reins, like the police turning up at an impromptu rave. Not one of their best ever singles, but a decent opening into the album and a welcome sign that they haven’t lost their teenage rebellion streak.

3. Romance Is Boring: The title track and next single starts with a fierce guitar line, the instrument that will come to dominate the record. Like the Research did for their sophomore effort, LC! have held back on the keyboards, but haven’t gone as far as to ban them completely. “Romance is boring!” shrieks Gareth in the first of the album’s ‘post-as-your-MSN-screen-name-lyrics’ but the music is pretty much bog-standard LC! fare, a background groove with some shouty vocals from a handful of the band over the top. “We are two ships that pass in the night”, notes Gareth in the album’s best moment so far.

4. We’ve Got Your Back (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #2): After a Flaming Lips-style wig-out opening the album is go. We get a female lead vocal for the first time, with handclap drums in the background. Again though, the vocals seem low in the mix. Previous LC! stuff has always had the emphasis on putting the sharp lyrics to the fore and we’re missing that open-heart honesty already. Gareth comes in a right mood halfway through with a right foul mouth – he needs to wash his mouth out with soap and water. We’re only kidding. We love it. “I’ve learned more from toilet walls than I’ve learned from those words of yours” mumbles Gareth repeatedly as the heartbreak returns. The track is a follow-up to one from from WAB, WAD.

5. Plan A: Wonderful intro with a staggeringly LOUD guitar line, with Gareth shouting something or other in the very dark background. Someone in the band has obviously discovered riffage. Sure to be a live favourite, on record it’s a bit overwhelming and when the guitar dips out for a second or two sporadically throughout the track it’s a huge relief. Fortunately it’s short – not sure if I like the rock LC! as much as I adore the vulnerable emo-pop one.

6. 200-102: Much more like it. A gently woozy opening develops into the album’s first of two interludes. Chance to catch your breath.

7. Straight In At 101: And we’re off again at breakneck pace. It’s tiring just to listen to it, I can’t imagine how knackering it must be to play. We get some rare boy-girl merged vocals here, a pleasure from the previous album we’ve been denied until now. It’s great, a really nice nod back to their older work without being stuck in the past. A wiggly-woo guitar bit hints at their more six-stringed based future and Gareth again controls the pace just right, switching gears effortlessly and dragging the listener along with him. The song finishes with Gareth singing acapella and in truth it doesn’t really work.

8. Who Fell Asleep In: LC! turn their hand to a ballad in this one. It could almost be the track that England inevitably go out of next summer’s World Cup to, but doesn’t quite pull it off. “I don’t mean to be selfish but I think I’d sooner be dead”, deadpans Gareth in his best Morrissey impersonation and you’re not sure if he’s joking or not. There’s a distracting, wailing something-or-other in the midst of it all that spoils it for me. Again it seems like there’s just a bit too much going on, that there’s been a lack of restraint in the studio and the band have just kept on adding layers over the top of the important components: a simple, memorable hook and Gareth’s voice. They’re fighting for space and could learn something from Arcade Fire’s approach. Less is more, even when you have multiple band members to keep occupied. Amazingly we’re only just past the half-way stage. You always get your value for money with LC! albums but they aren’t half a bit of a slog.

9. I Warned You: Do Not Make An Enemy Of Me: Track nine of 15 now and we’re back in rock territory with a ridiculously fast intro guitar line that reminds me of RATM, quickly giving way to more traditional if a little heavier LC! fare. Gareth doesn’t seem to be enunciating clearly. It’s hard to tell what he’s singing at the best of times but it’s impossible throughout this one. Then that riff comes back and frankly, I’m in danger of losing interest. I’m starting to wonder if the reason I love WAB, WAD so much is that at just ten tracks it’s nice and light, an elevenses snack. This is a full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings and a whole Christmas pudding for afters.

10. Heart Swells/100-1: Another short interlude. Sigur Ros type noise with Gareth singing over the top. Nice, but a bit pointless. Sets up for another rocky intro into…

11. I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know: Ooh, some strings making a brief yet welcome appearance. Again, the vocals are buried very deep in the mix with the raft of instruments scrapping more than ever for air time. Very frustrating listen so far. At times brilliant but all too often just too ambitious, if that makes sense. They
‘re trying to run at Usain Bolt speed when I preferred it when they jogged along barely breaking sweat. There’s a great bit near the end when you finally get the chance to listen to Gareth’s voice and lyrics, but it doesn’t last.

12. A Heat Rash In The Shape Of The Show Me State; or, Letters From Me To Charlotte: A typically ridiculous LC! song title (or titles) and the song really lives up to it. Starts with a noise like a Dalek, drums thud in, there’s some organ in the background, then Gareth’s voice. Finally we see some restraint, the instruments are brought in gradually and there’s no haphazard throwing them all in aimlessly. The main riff recalls their early tracks and I suspect that’s why it stands out as an album highlight. Some annoying brass unsuccessfully tries to spoil it. It’s too long though, like most of the tracks on Romance Is Boring.

13. The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future: At this stage the album needs a track to lift it and it gets one at the perfect time. Released as a sneak peek back in September this track shows off LC! at their best. It starts at almost funeral pace and is the first time we really see some reflection in the music on the band’s progress. If I was a betting man I would suggest this is the direction some of the band wanted to take, while others wanted to ramp up the punk-pop, which is why the album seems like such a distorted mess at times. The track tells a story, of a girl, naturally, and the chorus is the first proper singalong of the record. Romance Is Boring should really have had more songs like this and fewer trying but failing to be rocky numbers. It’s really great. Really really great.

14. This Is a Flag. There Is No Wind: We’re warming to a theme now and it’s looking like a strong finish to the album. The first really memorably guitar hook cuts through the song, despite it sitting calmly under the surface. It’s almost like the band recorded Romance Is Boring in track order and had got the hang of it by the end. It’s rare to hear an album that has almost all its better moments in the second half but this is certainly what we get here. The shouted opening line of “Can we all please just CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?” is classic Los Campesinos!

15. Coda: A Burn Scar In The Shape Of The Sooner State: Another excellent track to round off a patchy and confused-sounding record. Perhaps it will all make sense over time but off the first few listens this writer is lost and misses his former favourite new band.

If you are new to LC! they are possibly best described as a wonderful mess. Unfortunately from the first few listens we’ve had of Romance Is Boring it appears less wonderful than usual and more messy. The seven of them make a joyous racket tinged with the kind of teenage angst you might expect from a formed-at-Uni band, but they’re so much more than that. It’s a shame Romance Is Boring doesn’t seem to show off their potency. Lyrically is where LC! come to life. Gareth’s twin couplets are often heartbreaking and delivered at such breathtaking pace that multiple listens are required in order to keep up. But far too often on this album his words are too buried to hear properly and only the most hardened LC! nuts will rewind time and time again to decipher them. It’s not an accessible album to newcomers, but it’s not a successful development of their sound either. The rock tracks don’t work at all and there isn’t much progress on the others from their first two records. The glorious immediacy of their pop EPs seems lost for ever. This new version of LC! will be much harder to love, I fear. But the final third of the album is truly majestic.

As a single, One Life Stand isn’t as instantaneously catchy as Ready For The Floor, but it has infectious 80s drum beats mixed with steel drums, catchy keyboard hooks and the soulful, vulnerable vocals of Alexis Taylor. The clever composition is sure to translate just as well live as it will to the dancefloor – after all that’s what Hot Chip are good at – providing an electropop indie alternative to banal chart dance.

What’s more, if you do a bit of Youtube digging you can also find Take It In, which starts with a brooding bassline and siren-sounding keyboards, before a sing-a-long chorus suddenly breaks through the foreboding.

Made In The Dark brought us One Pure Thought, Shake A Fist and Touch Too Much. The Warning, the band’s second album from 2006, brought us Over And Over and Boy From School. So it’s a fairly safe bet that the tracklist will offer more of that feel-good, soulful and melodic dance, littered with influences from all over the musical spectrum.

Just seconds into the track and you know Horchata is a Vampire Weekend song. Ezra’s distinctive vocals are lay gently over a Kalimba thumb piano smoothly mixed with the melody. Instantly you hear the tropical feel the track emanates. You can just imagine sitting on a deck chair on a sun-swept beach drinking Horchata… in December. It highlights their ability to blur the lines between verse and chorus, with catchy melodies throughout.

The seventh track on the record and lead single is Cousins. Recorded in Mexico City, this gem takes the foundations from the first album and builds upon it a cleverly constructed piece of music that just feels more Contra. Without being able to put your finger on it you can sense that the band have progressed without having to totally reinvent their sound.

It seems, without assuming too much, that Vampire Weekend’s second album may well match the expectations. If these two songs are anything like the other offerings on the album then they’re onto a winner and you can expect Contra to be filling up album of the year lists next December.

Coming tomorrow: Hot Chip – One Life Stand

Tracks including Come Around, and midway mark Holiday, are upfront and thoroughly stripped down to the bare essentials. There is no space passed over to space-filling walls of sound or reverse echo. The message is simple; no frills and one-hundred percent focus. The album is not, however, solely reliant upon hyperspeed fury. Deeper tracks such as You’ve Lost Your Charm, hint at a genuine level of high-ranking musicianship and thoughtfulness during the composition stages.

Vocally, the album is often reminiscent of the earlier sound of New Found Glory, albeit slightly more robust and with less in the way of the nasal whine. The album’s chainsaw guitar tone, which ensures that no chord or riff sounds are lost among the pounding percussion, underpins the vocal stylings to exciting effect. Perhaps the album’s defining statement lies within penultimate track, Again And Again, which strikes the elusive balance between the aural attack and a refined delivery, anchored by well-placed intermittent ‘stop- starts’ of guitar. These elements when coupled together, form the music that disillusioned and confused teenagers the world over thrive off.

Ultimately, All I Have To Offer… is a strong and solid album. Will it redefine the boundaries of its genre and force bands the world over to rethink their styles? No. Will it strike a chord with legions of adolescents? The smart answer would be undoubtedly be yes.

The Singles Collection comes as a reminder of how much impact Spears had on the world of pop. Put simply, she is the biggest female pop star of the modern era. And deservedly so. Her singles are usually finely-crafted nuggets of pop gold, with choruses that lay permanent roots in your brain within seconds. But curiously, The Singles Collection is not as good an album as 2007’s Greatest Hits: My Prerogative.

Spears’ last two albums have seen the singer embrace the ubiquitous auto-tune technology that dominates the American charts. It’s a shame, as Spears has always stood out for her vocal talent, occasionally sickly sweet, but always right on the mark. The over-production on her recent material suggests a lack of confidence in her ability to continue to hold a tune and her consistent miming on tour would seem to back that up. Frankly, her voice could be anyone on the new songs. She’s lost her edge and her individuality.

With any hits collection it’s pretty simple to qualify how good it is. You just count up the great songs against the not so great songs. Perhaps eight of the tracks on this LP would make that mark, with the other ten falling short. That’s not a great ratio when you consider Spears’ six albums over ten years of consistent output. In my opinion My Prerogative has nine great tracks, so somehow Britney has gone backwards over the last few years.

Curiously, a number of Spears’ early, more innocent songs has been ditched. Sometimes and Lucky, two of this writer’s favourite Spears tracks, are dumped, to be replaced by new tracks If You Seek Amy (plodding, dated Euro-pop) and Radar (catchy but annoying). Also dropped is Do Somethin’, which not only sparked Spears’ journey into darker disco territory, but also spawned Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole. It’s odd that Spears has chosen to continue on that path with the brilliant Womanizer and the much less good 3 and at the same time ignore the tune that started it all.

But it’s difficult to argue with the rest of the changes. The dreary Overprotected disappears, as does b-side at best Don’t Let Me Be The Last To Know. The car crash that was I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll is also, thankfully, nowhere to be heard but for some reason the awful duet with Madonna, Me Against The Music, stays. The remastering of the older tracks is minimal, with it just sounding like a lazy producer has, as the kids say, put a donk on it.

But the new tracks that come in are no better. Piece of Me and Gimme More are one and the same, while Circus is totally forgettable. The problem with the new computerised Britney is the soul has gone. It would have been interesting to see her bare her heart after her much-publicised problems and confront them head on. Instead, by ramping up the sex and making the outfits skimpier, Spears is clearly using her sexuality (she’s looking as good as she ever has at the moment) as a defence mechanism to hide behind. The result of that is that Britney no longer stands out in her field and has been overtaken by the likes of Lady Gaga and Rihanna, two truly 21st century performers. Spears seems unable to make herself seem important in this new, scary era.

But there are bright sparks. Everytime is wonderfully half-prescient, poignant and perceptive, with its matching video of Spears rowing with a boyfriend and being taken away in an ambulance having cut her wrists in the bath, the haunting melody twinkling around behind Spears’ most delicate vocal on record. Crazy is still a fantastic tune from the opening seconds shout of “Crrrraaaaaaazzzzzzzeeeee” and Toxic will arguably be the track that Spears is remembered for the longest.

Looking back, Oops, I Did It Again marked the start of Britney 2.0 with her defiantly stating “I’m not that innocent”. It’s almost as if the last few years of her life have been trying to prove the 2000 version of Spears right by taking deliberate wrong turns.

Despite the gusset-flashing, her continued inability to wear a bra that guarantees her regular appearances in the tabloids and the gossip press, the head-shaving, the two failed marriages, the cringeworthy snog with Madonna, the very public breakdown and her subsequent weight battles, The Singles Collection comes as a timely reminder of the talent she was blessed with in the early years of the decade. But, sadly, it also stands as a mark of how Spears has struggled over the last five years or so to keep on the straight and narrow, both personally and professionally.

If the record was to be ordered chronologically, there would be a clear point at which her star began to fade. That’s probably why the record label have got it in this order, actually. Anyway, if you’re a fan, you’ll already the songs on The Singles Collection. Part-time admirers will have the better tracks from buying the previous best of release. Non-fans won’t care and I refuse to believe even young teens will be wholely new to the Spears phenomenon. And both hits albums are on Spotify anyway, so there’s really no need to buy this and line the record label’s pockets further. Save your pennies.

Our original review of the album said:

The Resistance may not be their most cohesive work yet, and certainly not their finest, but it’s not too far off. Any producer in the world would probably have changed so much of this that you’d never recognise it, but it’s Muse’s ability to take risks and do things their own way which has made them one of the greatest bands in the world.

You can read the full thing here.

So, a worthy winner? There was some pretty stiff competition from Bombay Bicycle Club, Grammatics and Arctic Monkeys, but the boys from Devon held firm until the very end to win our first end of year poll.

Stay tuned for the TMM Writers’ Choice Award, which is slightly different to the winner of our public poll.

After the album is released, the band will be heading out to perform the following shows:

FEBRUARY
12 Glasgow O2 Academy
13 Edinburgh Picture House
15 Nottingham Rock City
16 Leeds O2 Academy
18 Newcastle O2 Academy
19 Manchester Academy
20 Birmingham O2 Academy
22 Bournemouth O2 Academy
23 Bristol O2 Academy
24 Norwich UEA
26 London O2 Brixton Academy
27 London O2 Brixton Academy