A joint release between Big Tea and FIFA Records, this debut EP by Irish band Elastic Sleep is a like a vapourous retro-fuelled dream. With layers of fuzz dragging their core sound through a technicolour haze, ‘Leave You’ is first class hybrid of dreampop and shoegaze.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
CHERRY POPPIN’ DADDIES – White Teeth, Black Thoughts
Something unexpected happened in the mid/late 90s. At the peak of ska’s third wave, typified by the likes of Less Than Jake and Mustard Plug, old fashioned swing bands began to appear alongside punk and ska bands on festival bills. Soon, despite having more in common with Tony Bennett than The Specials, some of the kids who were growing bored of the predictable nature of the ska bands took a shine to the swing crowd with their pin-striped suits and retro spatz. Much as he’d been the poster boy for the rockabilly revival over a decade before, Brian Setzer led the wave with his sassy big band, with the likes of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Royal Crown Revue also doing sterling work with this unlikely resurgence of old big band sounds.
DUKE AND THE DARLINGS – Irwellian EP
In the spring of 2013 Manchester alt-rockers Duke And The Darlings unleashed their second EP, ‘Champagne of the People’, a brief work that showed the band to have a lot of energy – an energy they really harnessed when choosing to record that EP live in the studio, thus capturing their core sound in a much welcomed unfussy manner. While their song writing wasn’t always memorable in the long term, the EPs music had moments of great drive and an enthusiasm which guaranteed those lucky enough to hear it would wind up musing on how the band’s sound would develop in the future. Surely in an upwards direction, taking the best parts of their sound, refining them for an even better release…?
FAKE SHARK REAL ZOMBIE – Liar EP
With a name that quickly conjures up feelings of novelty, of lightweight emo trash and of genuine disposability, Vancouver’s Fake Shark – Real Zombie! have, rather unwittingly, saddled themselves with a moniker that’s a quick turn-off. The epitome of just trying that bit too hard, it combines fantasy with punctuation and comes up with utter dross as a result. The young band may think they’re being “well random” (to use a horrible teen vernacular, popular at time of this release), but in truth, all they’ve done is give their project a name that’s going to be of potential hideous embarrassment to them in future years. Hell, maybe they won’t give a fuck – apparently Henry Rollins is a fan, so they’ll be thrilled, whatever. [In some ways, this revelation comes as surprising, given the punk icon’s musical past; in other ways, not so much: Rollins loves music from many genres- loves Beastie Boys, funk and even takes his professional name from a legendary jazz artiste.] Anyway…yes, Canada’s Fake Shark – Real Zombie! What of their music itself?
MICHAEL ADDISON – Resisting Fate
Singer-songwriter Michael Addison’s fourth release – 2012’s ‘Blinding Shadows’ – was a misguided affair. Promoted as an alternative rock album with “raw, hard rock energy”, any potential it had was killed almost instantly by too much studio shine and use of an offensive amount of vocal filters – the very antithesis of the raw energy he was said to create. Two years on, his eight track mini album ‘Resisting Fate’ doesn’t really resemble that previous release. Did Addison himself look back and feel the autotune abuse was a mistake? Maybe he did…but it’s just as likely he used it as a fashion statement since that disc came at a time when autotune was rife among many forms of pop (and indeed rock) music. ‘Resisting Fate’ is a warm and complete sounding release, with the good fortune of having lost the heavy filtering – at least a half-dozen of its numbers happy to stand on their own terms, not swamped by studio tinkering, or too heavily indebted to other artists.