Having started life in 1999 as an offshoot of Okkervil River, Shearwater has grown into something much bigger.  The tipping point came four years ago when Jonathan Meiburg, the band’s helmsman, left Okkervil River to concentrate on his side project – thus making it clear that Shearwater was no longer a mere side project.  His band has burgeoned even more since then and, with Animal Joy, Meiburg is starting to sound as though he has ambitions to fill stadia.  That’s a double edged sword, however: there is a greater energy and far more brunt to Shearwater’s sound, but the more intimate tenderness of their previous work is a casualty of this.  The six-minute centrepiece ‘Insolence’ is not as broodingly moody as it thinks it is, and just feels rather empty.  ‘Pushing The River’, with its rapid fire drumming and its intimations of panic, verges on the territory of The Walkmen: no bad thing by any means.  But the new incarnation of Shearwater truly finds its niche with ‘Animal Life’, and ‘You As You Were’, which both successfully combine real beauty with a sense of drama and pace to create what might be the blueprint for a far more mature sound.

Want More?

1. The Cave Singers & Shearwater @ Union Chapel, London
2. Shearwater confirm they are returning to Europe this summer
3. Jenny And Johnny – ‘Animal’

It’s only a year since Tennis released their nautically inspired debut album Cape Dory, but its follow up is already here.  Young And Old sticks to the same breezy pop template, but crucially, Tennis have developed their sound subtly yet successfully in a relatively short space of time.  There are punchier songs here, with fewer longueurs, and Alaina Moore’s vocal range and the band’s songwriting template have both broadened.  The more acute groove of the piano driven ‘Petition’ serves as a nice interlude from the swirling guitars, while ‘Robin’ has something of a Motown feel with its sultry organ and soaring melody.  Despite the easy going vibe, it’s not all sweetness and light.  The further through the album you listen, the more maudlin the lyrics become.  ‘Paradise is all around, but happiness is never found,’ Moore sings on ‘High Road’; by the penultimate track, ‘Take Me To Heaven’, she’s affirming that ‘So far as I can see, there’s nothing left for me.’  But in spite of the bleakness, these are both top notch songs.  Tennis seem to be presenting themselves as lost souls drifting numbly through the kind of wonderful world imagined by Louis Armstrong, and they drift very well indeed.

Want More?

1. Tennis – ‘Cape Dory’
2. Tennis – ‘Is It True’
3. Tennis announce debut UK live dates in 2011

Thomas Truax’s penchant for inventing peculiar mechanical instruments, such as a bastardised gramophone horn called the ‘Hornicator’, and ‘Mary Poppins’, whose components include spoons and a motorcycle headlight, have played no small part in the fact that he’s regarded as a steampunk musician.  But while this is something that immediately comes across when you can see his creations, it’s much more difficult to pin down a steampunk sound.  Maybe Truax is hoping to distract listeners from attempting to do so by imposing the conceit of Monthly Journal: its twelve songs were written and recorded at the rate of one a month throughout 2011.  Consequently they combine personal feelings with reflections on globally significant events.  As the year advances he seems to get into the swing of the project: early on, the line ‘It’s only January, and maybe things are really just beginning’, is a bit heavy handed, but subtler tracks like ‘Free As Fireflies In May’ work well.  Finally, ‘Family & Friends’ manages the rare trick of acting as a Christmas song that can be enjoyed all year round.  As might be expected of a record that has had such an unusual gestation, Monthly Journal is uneven, but there is charm in its eccentricity.

Want More?

1. Chew Lips Announce Monthly Residency, Free Track Giveaways Beginning In October!
2. Thomas Tantrum – Thomas Tantrum
3. Thomas Tantrum talk about their sophomore album ‘Mad By Moonlight’

On the cover of his seventeenth solo album, Ringo is portrayed with a star-shaped shadow.  This might indicate that he’s trying to reinvent himself, leaving behind the old Ringo Starr and heralding the arrival of the new Ringo 2012, or perhaps turning his back on the stardom he enjoyed with The Beatles.  But even a cursory listen to the album makes it clear that this is not the case.  He’s at his most wistfully retrospective with ‘In Liverpool’, in which he looks back at the heyday of his career.  But the whole album is similarly nostalgic in its tone – and is hardly forward looking in its musical style.  A role call of illustrious collaborators that includes Dave Stewart, Van Dyke Parks and Benmont Tench helps to keep things sounding sleek though, even if there’s no deviation from a standard blueprint.  A couple of covers – of the classic ‘Rock Island Line’ and Buddy Holly’s ‘Think It Over’, and some re-recordings of songs from early on in Ringo’s solo career – pad the album out pleasantly enough, but it’s the new songs that sounds sharper.  Ringo 2012 might not mark the reinvention that its title may imply, but certainly isn’t without its moments.

Want More?

1. Ringo Deathstarr – ‘Shadow’ EP
2. Roots Manuva announce UK tour for 2012
3. Laura Veirs announces UK tour for 2012

Winter must be nearing it’s end, as we have some of the first festival news of the year already.  The Camden Crawl has announced initial details, and are promising the best Crawl ever.  The full line-up, including over 250 acts, will be released soon but, in the meantime, we know this much:

Death In Vegas are headlining an opening night party at the Koko on 4th May, topping a bill that beings with four still to be announced acts, and ends with a special edition of the venue’s long running Club NME night.

Early bird tickets for the Crawl weekend  - 5th and 6th May – have sold out, but weekend passes, and tickets for the opening night party, are now on sale.

As ever, there will be a ridiculous amount of live music, comedy and spoken word, performing arts, and other fun and games.  To name just a few of the curators, visitors can expect to be hosted by the likes of Artrocker, Drowned In Sound, Moshi Moshi, Rockfeedback, Rough Trade Shops and Summer Sundae.

We’ll have more details as and when they are announced, so keep watching this space.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION 

Opening Night Party at KOKO:  Friday 4th May 2012 * 5pm – 4am

Camden Crawl Weekend: Saturday 5th & Sunday 6th May 2012 * 12pm – 4am both days

TICKETS: »  Opening Night Party @ KOKO £20.00

»  Weekend Ticket  £67.50

»  VIP Weekend Ticket £150.00

** ON SALE NOW **

Tickets available from the following outlets: 24 Hr CC Hotline 0871 2200 260 / See Tickets 020 7403 3331 OR buy online: www.thecamdencrawl.com 

VENUES: Abbey Tavern | Barfly | Black Cap | Black Heart | Camden Gardens | Camden Head | Camden Rock | The Cuban | Dingwalls | Earl Of Camden | Electric Ballroom | Enterprise | Grand Union | Heroes | Jazz Café | KOKO | Monarch | Purple Turtle | The Roundhouse | St Michael’s Church | Underworld | The Wheelbarrow

Want More?

1. Early Bird tickets for Camden Crawl 2012 go on sale today!
2. Plan B and Pendulum announced to play Camden Crawl
3. Camden Crawl 2010 – Initial line up announcement

Although nobody with a brain larger than a raisin actually believes that the world will end in 2012, the music press is for some reason full of claims that this year will signal the death of the guitar band.  A wave of new bands dressed in appallingly trendy jumpers are challenging this in a variety of novel ways, but Irish three piece The Minutes take things back to basics with their rugged rock ’n’ roll, and prove that you don’t need to do anything achingly innovative in order to refute rumours of the guitar’s imminent demise.  Their debut album Marcata is defiantly brash and perfectly paced, with nine songs and three Morning Glory style instrumental interludes that demonstrate the clout of six properly handled strings.  The songs are all gloriously potent, but ‘Black Keys’ stands out as an absolute steamroller of a track, while the swagger of ‘Fleetwood’ and the fat feedback-heavy fuzz of ‘I.M.T.O.D.’ – reminiscent of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – are also highlights.  Who gives a shit if guitars are passé?  Rock ‘n’ roll might not be anything new, but it’s impossible to argue with a band who do it this well.

Want More?

1. The Minutes @ The Forum, London
2. The Minutes announce new single and tour with Flogging Molly
3. Egyptian Hip Hop – ‘Some Reptiles Developed Wings’ EP

The Social might be operated by Heavenly Recordings, but tonight’s show is a City Slang double bill, with labelmates Dear Reader and Laura Gibson getting together to launch their new albums, which were both released a week ago.  The place is cosy in the extreme – the kind of place where encores have to follow on from the main set without a break, because the drummer can’t leave the stage without dismantling his kit – and as such it’s an ideal venue for the two singer songwriters to introduce the audience to their latest work.

Dear Reader, the musical project of South African-born Berlin-based Cherilyn MacNeil, is first up.  MacNeil, who performs the whole set from behind her keyboard, is accompanied by a band who struggle to fit all of their instruments on the stage.  They all seem to be multi-instrumentalists: violin, accordion, mandolin and trumpet are all employed, while the bass is passed around between them at various points.

The new Dear Reader album, Idealistic Animals, is a kind of musical bestiary: each track has the name of an animal, which is then used as a jumping off point for exploring more expansive themes and, ultimately, for examining MacNeil’s loss of religious faith.  There are no references to this inverted Damascene conversion tonight, however.  The instrumentation and occasionally baroque style means that an almost Arcade Fire level of grandiosity often seeps into the performance, but MacNeil seems content to focus on the small quirky details.  Thus the songs about animals are presented as nothing more than songs about animals.

Idealistic Animals isn’t the first time that MacNeil has used something drawn from nature as a starting point: this is proved by the highlight of the set, a rousing rendition of ‘Great White Bear’, taken from her 2009 album Replace Why With Funny.  Dear Reader conclude with ‘Monkey’, which climaxes with MacNeil repeating ‘You can go home now’.  But the prospect of Laura Gibson means that few are inclined to do so.

Gibson’s set is very much in the spirit of the album launch.  A couple of older tracks are thrown into the mix, but tonight is all about showcasing her new release, La Grande, and she plays every song from the new album.  She begins with the title track, and then moves onto the more delicate ‘Milk-Heavy, Pollen Eyed’: a superb way of starting the set, but one that left me concerned that she was using up La Grande’s finest tracks rather quickly.  However, her performance of the rest of the album is a reminder that La Grande is comprised almost entirely of songs of equally great strength, and so the quality of songwriting never lets up.

There are a few incidents that make Gibson’s set feel rather shambolic.  Early on, she forgets to move her capo and briefly plays her guitar out of tune.  Then there are lengthy backstories to several songs, and a lengthy hesitation while Dear Reader’s Cherilyn MacNeil is fetched to contribute harmonies to ‘Feather Lungs’.  But Gibson and her band take the minor mishaps in their stride, and ensure that things which might easily be considered annoying are instead almost charming.  But if these accidents must somehow be redeemed, then Gibson’s finer moments, such as her acapella performance of ‘The Rushing Dark’ with backing vocals provided by the audience, suffice in themselves.

Want More?

1. The Back Page: a Q+A with Dear Reader
2. Laura Gibson: new album ‘La Grande’ out Jan 2012 + UK tour
3. Laura Gibson – ‘La Grande’

The trend for mixing a 60s pop vibe with 80s production values takes a darker turn with the release of Trailer Trash Tracys’ debut album.  There is a hazed out sense of unease in Ester’s emulsion of unthreatening melodies and dirty sonic mire that calls to mind Ariel Pink watching David Lynch films.  Indeed, the influence of Lynch’s collaborator Angelo Badalamenti has been widely ascribed to the album, and it’s impossible to refute this: not only because ‘You Wish You Were Red’ sound like a lo-fi version of the Twin Peaks theme, but also because the same bassline resurfaces in closing track ‘Turkish Heights’.  The prominent bass resonates throughout Ester, while flanged guitar notes resound in a weird orbit around the record’s pits and troughs.  This is no doubt the effect of the non-standard solfeggio scale that Trailer Trash Tracys apparently tuned their instruments to.  The resulting atmosphere is compelling; however, there is a dearth of tangible songs: the stronger melodies of ‘Dies In 55’ and ‘Candy Girl’ all too often find themselves buried in excretions of fuzz.  But while a few tighter hooks would be welcome, Trailer Trash Tracys deserve credit for pushing the C86 revival towards its inevitable mutation into shoegaze.

Want More?

1. Download: Trailer Trash Tracys – ‘Engelhardt’s Arizona’ (James Ferraro) remix
2. Trailer Trash Tracys – ‘Wish You Were Red / Engelhardt’s Arizona’
3. Watch: Trailer Trash Tracys – ‘You Wish You Were Red’

Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland married in 2006, so any sense of surprise evoked by their decision to team up as Whitehorse stems not from the fact that they have recorded an album together, but that it’s taken this long for them to do so.  The material they’ve released as solo artists shows them to be artistically well matched – both tend to go in for rootsy songs whose subject matter generally focuses on drugs, alcohol and heartbreak.  They don’t stray far from that territory here; Whitehorse certainly don’t have to worry about succumbing to matrimonial soppiness.  The album’s combination of tenderness and grit is it’s great strength, but the weakness that’s hard to overlook is its brevity.  Only eight tracks are included, and once you’ve discounted the ephemeral bookends ‘Eulogy for Whiskers’ (parts I and II), you’re left with just six.  There is a pleasing diversity to those songs, though: ‘Killing Time Is Murder’ is the bluesiest, while ‘Passenger 24’ deploys a rock’n’roll stomp to great effect, and the folk element is provided by ‘Emerald Isle’ and ‘Night Owls’.  Although it doesn’t feel quite like a full album, this is nonetheless a welcome sampler of what Doucet and McClelland can do when they combine their talents.

Want More?

1. Killing Joke – ‘Absolute Dissent’
2. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – ‘Hysterical’
3. Maps- ‘Turning The Mind’

It was perhaps inevitable that Prinzhorn Dance School’s second album would be more accessible than their prickly debut, a record that consisted entirely of sententious lines being shouted over minimal post-punk instrumentation. But Clay Class goes so far as to offer, in the likes of ‘I Want You’ and ‘Crisis Team’, compositions that can be interpreted as actual songs, with guitar, bass, drums and vocals operating in unison, and to a tenable rhythm. The sound remains sparse, bleak even, but since this is reflected in wintry lyrics – ‘Skinny trees, naked in winter, Britain in bloom’, Tobin Prinz half-sings on ‘The Flora and Fauna of Britain in Bloom’ – the result is a cohesive mood that ensures the album remains engaging throughout. Elsewhere, as in ‘Usurper’, the focus is more existential. Lines like ‘I will replace you, he will replace me; to the vulture it’s agriculture’, show that Prinz and his musical partner Suzi Horn have swapped pretention for piquancy. If Prinzhorn Dance School’s first album was a way of setting the tone, preparing listeners for the challenges that the band pose, then Clay Class marks the point when everything comes together, with skewed humour, idiosyncratic attitude and, most importantly, the music itself interlocking perfectly.

Want More?

1. Prinzhorn Dance School return with second album in 2012 on DFA Records
2. The Back Page: a Q+A with Tobin Prinz of Prinzhorn Dance School
3. Prinzhorn Dance School: Video for ‘Happy In Bits’ + New album