One day I'll flyer way...

The Gutter Twins at The Leadmill

We had a scary twilight drive across the moors from Manchester to Sheffield... It could have been worse - it could have been Saddleworth! But even the Yorkshire moors had an eery feel as you wind your way up into the clouds and back down again...

The Gutter Twins overcame a somewhat dead sound for the first few songs and put in a good performance at The Leadmill. I must admit I hadn't heard anything by them but musically I wasn't surprised that it sounded like Afghan Whigs. Vocally, there is a lot of the Whigs when Greg Dulli sings and his vocals work well with Mark Lanegan. Lanegan's deep vocal sounds like Iggy when it's good but with a voice that deep, there is a fine line between sounding like Iggy Pop and Metallica...

Hunky Dory!

Photo by Iman Kakai

Hunky Dory! at the Nautical Club

Modesty does not prevent me from reviewing my own gig! Hunky Dory! reformed after 10 years for one night only at the Nautical Club, Barrow-in-Furness... After a couple of hours rehearsal HD performed a storming set which rolled back the years in stunning fashion...

The Milky Way
Into the arms of anyone
Big girls blouses
How do you get the girl in real life
Haunted houses
Blind with mascara
Life in technicolor
The golden age of imperfection
Look what loving you has done to me
-
Dogs and pretty young girls

Photos, videos, audio to follow....

We were (and apparently still are!) Hunky Dory! and you were very nice too...

Deer diary...

The Deer Tracks debut cd 'Aurora' is coming out Aug 27th but until then you can preview the tracks on their MySpace page. Hailing from Gävle in Sweden, The Deer Tracks are David Lehnberg and Elin Lindfors. I first heard of them a year or so ago and played a couple of tracks in early episodes of Deconstruction. It sounds like it's going to be a great CD and hopefully this will bring them the success they deserve!

Vinyl solution

The LA Times had a good article today about vinyl records making a comeback...

Vinyl records make a return

Brookline at Detroit Bar

Picked Sean up from 47 Studios and he played me a live version of a new song 'Do So Badly' - great bassline, which at one point went supernova when he looped it and played a harmony... I played him a couple of Hunkydory songs on the guitar and he nailed 'Life in Technicolor' as sounding like Bowie's 'Sound and Vision' after about 5 seconds...

The Detroit wouldn't let us bring in the postcards for the Unknown Theater (which were in a small box) so we went back to the car and put them in our pockets instead. Luckily Sean has deep pockets for a small fellah! Brookline were better than a few weeks ago - better venue and sound... A lot of the songs are starting to sound like Pink Floyd to me, which is probably not a good thing. They have the looks, but need some hooks...

Blurred reality...

The 23 official Blur videos are now up on YouTube...

Some great stuff including the Clockwork Orange flavoured 'The Universal'

Animal Nitrate in mind...

Blog rock was one thing, bands with facial hair - not really my thing, but what's all this naming your band after a wild animal?

Deerhunter
The Deer Tracks (they are ok cos they probably live in a Scandanavian forest...)
Deerhoof
Wolf Parade
Sea Wolf
Fleet Foxes

All this close to nature stuff is just hippy shit in disguise - we are dangerously close to returning to the deep dark days of the 70's in terms of (lack of...) musical creativity and fashion. Just because someone locked themself away in a log cabin in the middle of a forest and wrote an album wearing a lumberjack shirt doesn't mean it's any good...

It feels like 1975 all over again but I doubt they'll be another 1976 to rescue us!

RIP - Isaac Hayes

The Ting Tings at El Rey

The Ting Tings played an entertaining 45 minute set at the El Rey last night. I'm glad it was short - much more and I would have been singing 'shut up and let me go' in all the wrong places...

Musically, it's a average drummer, a poor guitarist and a few too many backing tracks but the dual vocals were strong and the stage show energetic.

Stat of the nation...

Isn't technology a wonderful thing? I get a weekly report of page visits to everybodystalking and unfortunately the stats don't lie... A little sugar-coating would be nice - you know 'your hits this week are between 1-500' or something like that... I'm expecting them to ask if the blog moved to a different url when they report next week...

I'd like to tell you the podcast is doing better. I'd like to, but I'm all about the truth here at everybodystalking... Fact is, numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate despite the fact that I thought episode 18 was the best one for quite a while...

Anyways, I'm still doing it for the kids but you know, sometimes the kids don't listen...

Not amused...

Is it me or is everyone collaborating with someone else these days? A collaboration between Muse and The Streets is wrong on so many levels... 'Who Knows Who' is awful, a half-arsed attempt at 'Walk this way' without a) a good song, b) a good rap and probably c) a good video...

I was a fan of Mike Skinner's original (pirate) material but everything he has done since has become increasingly unlistenable... As for Muse, again they did some good stuff until they sold their souls to nu-rock and disappeared into their own black holes...

Perfect Symmetry...

I want to sincerely apologize to Coldplay Inc. Some of my recent posts may have suggested Mr Paltrow & Co are the worst band on the face of the planet. They are not - at least not any more...

I'm not sure what drugs Keane are on - something stronger than the last aspirin induced rehab stint one feels... Today I downloaded the free teaser for the new album 'Perfect Symmetry' - a song appropriately called 'Spiralling' (downwards very fast!) Appalling is not a strong enough word to describe the 80's influenced slice of over-produced nonsense that lies somewhere between Phil Collins and Go-West...

I must congratulate their stylist though - getting a look that was in symmetry with how bad the music is must have been difficult...

Deconstruction 18

Podcast 18 features:

01 Black Kids - Hit the heartbrakes
02 M83 - Kim & Jessie
03 West Indian Girls - To die in LA
04 Deerhoof - Spirit ditties of no tone
05 New Young Pony Club - Jerk me
06 Ratatat - Dura
07 60 Watt Kid - Every Day
08 Windmill - Fluorescent Lights
09 Innaway - Rise
10 Santogold, Julian Casablancas and Pharell Williams - My drive thru
11 The Sound of Animals Fighting - My Horse must lose
12 My Milky Way Arms - Unbearable Lightness of being
13 Atlas Sound - On guard
14 Dimitri From Paris - Man + Woman = Infinity

For your ears only...

Black Kids - Partie Traumatic

I read on a blog that Black Kids = The Cure + Vampire Weekend + The Go! Team + The Rapture. Now that's my kind of (lazy) journalism - everything reduced into a neat mathematical equation... The calculation is slightly flawed though, I would replace Vampire Weekend with some Pulp! With Moog keyboards throughout, Jarvis style twisted reflections on love (or lack of) in the lyrics, some Russell Senior guitar licks right out of 'Lipgloss' and more epic choruses than you can shake a stick at, Black Kids owe more than a passing doff of the (cloth) cap to Sheffield's (former) favorites sons (and daughter...)

Partie Traumatic is a great debut, full of catchy leftfield pop. Apparently they're only doing it for the kids, and the kids are digging it!