Narcotic Junk Food Revolution
Joey Eyebank VS the chartfriendlytune-churning machine

Delphic - Counterpoint

The latest from Belgiums’ electronica central: R&S Records.

Counterpoint begins like a beefed-up version of the ‘Skins’ theme tune and marches along with broken snappy beats and ascending electronic trills which pulsate erratically.
The outcome is digital heaven, but the vocals make the song limp. Which sort of spoils the general effect.

…..something great lies beneath the chirpy vox………

7/10

Also, why with electronic music do the band or artist always have a variety of pedantic engineers and production-whatthefucks?

Does it take that much mixing and ’production’ to create computer based music?
www.myspace.com/delphic

Lady GaGa - Pokerface
What the Fuck?

You’ll forget about this by next year anyway.

So it feels like a waste of time.

Not-worth-judging/10

www.don’t-go-on-it-why-would-you-even-want-to.com

Tortuga Bar- Narcotic JunkFood Revolution

Although ’Narcotic JunkFood Revolution’ has a ferocious concoction of noise which in theory, to your garage loving fan, should be good, I feel like I’ve heard this before.

And I think I have. ’Likely To Be Dropped’ is a ’Golden age of grotesque era Marilyn Manson’ sounding, dirty rock song with a QOTSA slack jaw-hallucinogenic tone. And the other songs are different variations of this style, taking other droopy-jawed influences such as (‘blue album’ days) Weezer and even a guest appearance from ’Evan Dando’ on the song ’Storm’ which, by the way, is better than any of the other songs on the album; generally, however, the album feels weak and it's almost as if all your garage rock - childhood heroes have been thrown into a slightly less exciting modern day version.

Tortuga Bar have the potential to reach beautifully-sleazy rock ’n’ roll heights that could capture and enthuse, but sadly, this doesn’t really.

4/10

Ps: there is no lasting point getting Evan Dando to feature on your album when his voice is clearly way better than that of your own singer.

www.myspace.com/tortugabar1

The Maccabees- Wall Of Arms
After being left with a mediocre but bad aftertaste in my mouth from the plain ‘Colour It In’ I am frankly blown away by the shear creativity and beauty that’s embedded in ‘Wall Of Arms’.

‘Wall Of Arms’ is not only an album of fluid excellence but it also has substance, which the Maccabees previously lacked. Each song is personal and huge at the same time, imagine playing ‘Bon Iver’ through a stereo the size of the Winsconsin Woods with ‘Beirut‘ accompanying it. ‘Love You Better’ cries out with a soulful yell and a stadium quality similar to ’Arcade Fire’ and stomps and bounces of the walls in a similar way that Kings Of Leon did with ‘Only By The Night’ (except not shit).This quality continues throughout most of the album. ‘Young Lions’ has a strong driving force and a folksy vocal sound which moves through you like a choir of reverbed yelling owls. The title track emulates the feel of a Fionn Regan esq. tune with a suave style and romantic sound much like ’Belle and Sebastian’. ‘Kiss and Resolve’ is definitely one of the most significant tracks from the album and should be considered as the next single. Its provocative and wondrous in its wooing melody that picks you up and causes your mind to drift over lakes of imagination. ’William Powers’ possesses weaker lyrics than the other tracks but is captivating and sounds like a melody that ’Jose Gonzalez’ could’ve written.Instead of the tame-indie sound that ’The Maccabees’ employed with ’Colour It In’, ’Wall Of Arms’ does not just capture you but it screams out with passion and soul through textures of emotions that make the songs sound like towering seaside anthems.

This album, despite how under-hyped it is, shows that ’The Maccabees’ have progressed and moved away from the cute indie scene they delved into.
10/10
www.themaccabees.co.uk

Alberto Veto- Afraid Of Thieves

Alberto Veto are good.

But their songs are almost lacking something, there’s an empty space in their soulful music.
Alberto Veto have that gritty quality that grabs your attention, a trio that produce fluttery noises with an added emotive tinge to their modest folk. Except its too modest. There’s a missing passion or vibe to their music - whether the vocals need to be turned up - could be the reason.
Without the analysis Alberto Vetos’ songs feel like a model band for a “how to start a folk band” kit, lacking the sound that has the potential to fill your ears or an individual quality.

4/10
www.myspace.com/albertoveto

The Legends- Over and Over

The Legends made me feel what it was like to fall into the abyss.

The Legends make me sick. The sweet little candyfloss melodies encased my trachea with so much sugar that I threw up a better melody!
Most of the songs on here are repulsively shite Jesus and Mary Chain remixes which, if you don’t cringe with disgust at them, then you are on prozac.

A lot of the above is a lie - the legends’ music does not have enough power to actively make me do anything……. apart from maybe - snap their cd in half…

The Scaramanga Six- Songs Of Prey

‘Cabin Fever’ (the ‘sixes’ previous album) featured songs with spark and emotion. A very tame spark: like a sparkler that’s slightly damp and therefore- flickering, and very mellow emotion: like a shrug of the shoulders or a tired sigh. But nethertheless it featured more creativity, wisdom and MUCH better songs than any sound on ‘Songs Of Prey‘. ’Songs Of Prey’ is the older more embarrassing version of ’Cabin Fever’, with songs that are the mid-life crisis equivalent of Kaiser Chiefs featuring hilariously pathetic lyrics like “you don’t make a cake, you don’t make a cake without breaking some eggs”.

“I didn’t get where I am today” is whimsical and awful in equal measures and sounds like the creation of a band of fleecy geography teachers at a secondary school in Leeds.It may be that ‘The Scaramanga Six’ are not being serious, the after effect still lingers with bad odour though.

Hahahah/10
www.myspace.com/thescaramangasix

Sparrow and the Workshop- Devil Song / The Cold-Hearted Twist

Sparrow and the Workshop have done the coy little thing of recording ‘Devil Song’ so that it does not just sound, but it also feels like, it's actually from the 60’s alt/folk “analogue recording-era“. Which in a way is a bit pretentious, but when a song like ‘Devil Song’ captivates you in the way that Sparrow and the Workshop have done, I feel you should ignore the “sounding old cos we can; due to our modern day electrical beasts that swallow up ‘demands’ and spit them back at you: all neat and how you wanted them”. Sparrow and the Workshop are the caveman equivalent of Fairport Convention, a satanic folk version of Led Zeppelin and well, they just sound similar to ‘Last of the Shadow puppets‘.

‘Devil Song’ is a driving ballad with a rolling snare-orientated drum beat and misty tone with a dark devil-worshipping edge. The male and female voices harmonise through heavily reverbed mics, working together to give a ’Stonehenge Festival in the 60’s’ sound, its both mesmerising and magical.‘The cold-hearted twist’ has been recorded with less effects but still has the eerie anti-folk sound that Sparrow and the Workshop seem to be at ease with.

Pic Courtesy Markus Thorsen

Sparrow and the Workshop are a breath of foggy fresh air. And also slightly odd.

7/10
www.myspace.com/sparrowandtheworkshop

Metric- Fantasies
Usually when a press release says that a band, who are not that well known, have recorded songs which are “made for stadiums”, the band doesn’t manage to make it to the stadium. And therefore the music layouts confuse mixing desks in tiny bars and pisses off the tender ears of the public - who are crammed in a close proximity listening to music that should have specifically measured sound levels.

Sadly Metric have that tight little compact formulae that pie-chart faced suit men like:
1. They have made music which could be considered as ‘electro’, and the electro scene is quite big and also probably generating a lot of sales at the moment.
2. Metric have a female singer, so that articles can emphasise that they have a female singer as if there’s a difference- and how come when some female-fronted music gets big, do articles start publicising that there is this whole “femi-rock” scene going on. Get over it, if your weren’t so insecure about sexuality in rock music then you wouldn’t need to emphasise the girl who - due to your perceptions - happens to “have balls”.
3. Metric have that boring chunky guitar sound that tries to sound original with a hell of a load of effects - like ‘the edge’ being grated with Bono's ego into a variety of tiny little delayed howling sounds - put through an amp
4. Metric have squashed every pop hook and “cadence” ever written by a ‘chartfriendlytune-churning machine’, into a bubblegum keyboard sound that pours hot treacle into your neurons so that they become unable to react to any nerves in your body.
5. They use “come on baby” too much
6. They have a song called “Stadium Love”- yuk.

Roll up major labels (only the fickle ones)

2/10
www.myspace.com/metricband

Patrick Wolf- Vulture
After the heart-warming pop songs from ‘Magic Position’ it seems almost inconceivable that Patrick Wolf could then go on to write a song as bad as ‘Vulture’. The Baroque-pop poet days of Patrick Wolf, it seems, are long gone and he has resorted to making music that almost sounds as if its “pretending to be the dance music of ‘Atari Teenage Riot’” (funnily enough this track is in fact a collaboration between Patrick Wolf and Alec Empire- the Atari pioneer),

There is no meaning or life to this song, it feels dull and compact and disgustingly plain- but also forced. The sound is so forced that it fails miserably to penetrate through anything, like a Plasticine rod trying to drill through steel.The verse drags at mid-tempo with a shockingly boring beat, clicking behind Pats’ tune-less voice and then the chorus enters with a breakdown that’s meant to bring the song up to climax but instead hangs like a bag of slate. Patrick has also traded, as well as the music, his signature ’hippy mish-mash’ style for an uber-camp, bleached hair look, with a deliberately kitch-electro style to fit his electro dullness, like a “Bassets Allsort” pretending to be a “Sherbet Fountain“.

This single is essentially an identity-failure. The once loved rugged-dandy eccentric Patrick Wolf has been compacted into a neat formulae and failed- trading the acoustic instruments that once groomed his voice for some “early-learning keyboard” fisher-price wank.Lets hope Patrick that this “oh so experimental” “wonderful”, genre collaboration is not going to be the layout for your album: “The Bachelor”.

1/10
www.myspace.com/officialpatrickwolf

Lissy Trullie - Boy Boy
So often do I hear this clean channel, jingle-jangle style power-chord guitar playing next to a bouncy straight-jacket beat, that your ears become immune to the general anti-climax.But that’s not to say that these songs don’t erupt with ear-pleasure. It may have that fuddy-duddy “indie rock” boogie that is frequently perfected by so many fringey, skinny cardigans but ’Boy Boy’ also has a positive quality, in a way abit like ’the only ones’ managed to do, by making simple music: have soul. With Lissy Trullie however you also feel that this short outburst of good music may not be able to prolong the length of an l.p without making the genre commit suicide.
‘Boy Boy’ is equally as feel-good as it is primitive but it's primitive with a bonus factor - it's pop but its exciting; much like the warm tunes of ‘Born Ruffians’ or ’Bears Repeating’. The b-side ‘You Bleed You’ is the more reflective song, with moaning vocals over a caveman beat; that’s still dressed in the style of Lissy Trullie. I think this is more a temporary bliss, and while she’s around for the summer (whether you discover her or not) it's worth a listen.

7/10
www.myspace.com/lissytrullie

Morrissey- Something Is Squeezing My Skull
I wonder what’s squeezing Morrisseys’ skull? Could it be the reels of tape he’s produced over the past two decades flooding his house? The latest release from ‘Years Of Refusal’ is not the strongest track on the album but still shows that Morrissey is capable of generating contagious pop lyrics, twinned with operatic-hooks, in huge amounts. The song skids along like a ramones-bop with a new poppy overtone that wasn’t present on say; “Vauxhall and I”. As the song collides to a halt, Morrisseys’ voice turns into a tongue-twisting mix as he rolls the words “so gimme more” (or something like that) with ease and transforms into a crossover of Anthony Keidz, in “Give It Away” and Joey Ramone.

7/10

I just can’t wait to see him live (hopefully winks towards the R*E*P*E*A*T Guest list, *thumbs up*?)
www.itsmorriseysworld.com

Yeah Yeah Yeahs- It's Blitz!
The new single ‘Zero’ which opens ‘it’s blitz’ does have a huge sound, but I was disappointed when I found that Yeah Yeah Yeahs had gone for a pumping disco sound, missing that grimey dark NY edge. After the “made for the charts” song supernovas, the dark NY edge erupts into the many reflections of a disco-ball: each glimmer fizzing into spacious spectrums and pulsating like fear; as your ears (no matter how much they refuse) can’t help but get sucked into the black hole.Its still a YYY album; the junky garage sound is just encased in a layer of stardust - my pre-conceived opinion thought this would be a thin layer of shiny glitter-sprinkled cloth, but as usual the ’Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ don’t conform. They said no no no……………..

(and yeah yeah yeah I know its not funny)

8/10

Listen to: (and then buy)Dull Life, Skeletons, Shame And Fortune and Little Shadow

www.yeahyeahyeahs.com

Joe Eyebank