Continuing to fight those accusations of West Coast bias, even though no one has actually made any, let's stay over in Edinburgh for another day shall we? This was meant to be posted Friday, but has slipped to Sunday. Just when I was becoming almost efficient too. It'll be nice if my computer will behave long enough to let me get this posted. Here's hoping.
Jesus H. Foxx are seven piece from Edinburgh, with two drummer, three guitarists and as their bio puts it a partridge in a pear tree (a cornet player who sometimes plays glockenspiel) with a couple of releases to their name, the most recent of which, Matter, was released by Song, By Toad Records at the start of August.
Matthew of the Song, By Toad blog & label was kind enough to send me over a copy to have a listen to. To be honest, I was completely surprised by what I heard. Between the name and the promise of multiple drummers and guitarists I expected something riff laden, mildly chaotic and quite aggressive, instead I got gentle instrumentation, tender vocals and very sweet harmonies. Gentle and mild, rather than chaotic and aggressive. Not at all what I expected then!
Don't get me wrong, I like myself some chaos and love a bit of riffage, but sometimes I like a nice surprise too. The songs on the Matter EP are a very nice surprise indeed. In fact, they are just all round very nice.
I am however at a loss to explain what they sound like, I can't think of any other bands to compare them too and "melodic and pleasant" doesn't really help much. Instead of me trying to describe them, how about you go listen for yourself then? There's songs on MySpace, and a download of one of the EP tracks, I'm Half The Man You Were, below.
(If anyone is counting this post took 3 hours, not including the Friday till Sunday delay, thanks to my computer regularly being a dick. AND my trusty 5 year old MP3 player finally gave up and died today. I hate technology)
Alright, computer deciding to misbehave this weekend, so a few of the posts lined up need to stay as drafts till it decides to work nice again.
The post title is a bit misleading, I don't really intend to say a thing about a certain game that kicks off in a few hours, I just wanted an excuse to post a track. The first line of the song gives me my excuse to do it today.
I'll get back to Julia and the Doogans more another time, but for now I'll just say that Julia has one of the most gorgeous voices I've heard in ages.
They've got a few gigs lined up in October, get down to one if you can. I caught them live a few weeks ago in Pivo Pivo in Glasgow and they were really ace.
Sort of forgot to mention this before now, but after a little prod I'm remembering now. I deliberatly didn't touch on this one until now, saving it as part of my mini "stuff that's happening over in Edinburgh" fest instead. (I don't think I'm going to get away with that...)
Anyway, Kid Canaveral are a two boy, two girl indie pop combo, with a nice little collection of 7" singles to their name so far. This weekend they play a launch gig for their new EP, Left & Right at The Bowery in Edinburgh. If you click on the wee picture up the top there it should open up at a readable size so you can get the info.
Support comes from Cancel The Astronauts and Popup, two other favourites round these parts - do a search and read what I've written about them before if you don't believe me - so it should be a splendid night of sheer indie joy. One I can't go to...
Get yourself along if you can and tell everyone Jim sent you. All but a few people will stare at you blankly, but that's alright, that's how my whole life feels.
I'll be reviewing Left & Right soon, but in the meantime whet your appetite with an interview Kid Canaveral did with Peenko and see what Glasgow PodcART had to say about the EP.
It seems every time I sat down to do this review something or other has cropped up to stop me finishing it. As a result it's been written in stages, so apologies in advance if that makes it a terrible read. Point out any huge flaws and I'll fix them.
The Gothenburg Address are a four piece from Edinburgh, comprising of Chris Bathgate (guitar), Rob Doig (bass) Luke Joyce (guitar) and David Jeans (drums). If any of those names are name to you, give yourself a point, in the past some of the members have played in other bands, including The Complete Stone Roses, Arab Strap and The Zephyrs. The band themselves first came to my attention back in May around the time of their release of A Lesser Coming Home as a single, mostly thanks to Ed over at 17 Seconds.
If you were paying attention a moment ago you'll have noticed that I didn't mention a vocalist. That's because there isn't one. That in itself maked The Gothenburg Address a bit of a hard sell for me right away. I enjoy an instrumental band, but sometimes it feels like you can't move for them. If a band has a charasmatic singer as a front man, if the songs aren't up to scratch and the band isn't on form, they can hide behind that front man. With an instrumental band there's no hiding place, and believe me, during some of those "can't move for them" bands that I've seen and heard, I've really wanted to hide. However, happily, any fears I initially had were blown out the water upon hearing that first single and from then on I've been keeping an eye and ear on The Gothenburg Address.
Which brings us along to this, their debut album. I'll almost never go out my way to ask a band to send me something - it's a confidence thing, I'm always convinced they'll say no - but when their Facebook page said they were inviting promo requests I couldn't hold myself back, and the album dropped through my door last week and has been getting played regularly since.
The album kick off with the grand sounding Leaving The Last Behind, which is lent further gravitas, as if it needed any, by Alan Barr, who pops up to lend cello. From there on, frankly, the album doesn't put a foot wrong. There's no need for a hiding place when your band sounds this tight and your songs are this well crafted. There's no sense of the songs being samey, another trap some instrumental bands can fall into, everything sounds different but distinctive.
You can invite comparisons to the likes of Mogwai, even Aereogramme in places, but although those bands are handy reference points, The Gothenburg Address don't really sound anything like them, they sound like The Gothenburg Address, which is just another reason why I'm so in love with this album.
Quite honestly, there's not a single bad thing I can say about this album. It's already pushed its way through the queue of other albums I've loved this year to announce itself as a likely candidate for one of the year's finest. With that in mind it is hard to pick highlights, but just shading it are the tracks that bookend the album, opener Leaving The Last Behind and finale I Am Made Of Hearts + Fire, along with Its Not A Fjord But A Lake just ever so slightly shade it as my favourite tracks.
The album doesn't just live up to the early promise of May's single release, it exceeds it. On the arbitrary, meaningless star scoring system, it gets a solid Five Stars out of five*.
You can find The Gothenburg Address at the following places - Website - MySpace - Twitter
The band have put together a trailer for the album, you can watch that below.
Also, for a bit more of a taster of the band, you can jump over to their website and download their Shimmer In The City EP, made up of a live recording of the band performing at Nice n Sleazys in Glasgow, for the bargain price of nothing.
*I was asked about the scoring system the other day, so I'll go ahead an explain. I don't put an awful lot of faith in stars/numbers to sum up an album and think it can lead to laziness in just looking to see how an album rated. I'm all about catering to everyone though, so I'll include an out of five stars system on a review to keep those that like them happy, I'll just point out that in the grand scheme of things they don't really matter.
