The Daily Growl

It’s been a good eight months since there’s been any mention of The Young Republic on here, which must be some sort of record. So it’s time for an update. They’ve been busy - trying to crack their home country, recording not one, but two albums, changing line-ups (bye Nate and Bob, hello Wes) and moving to somewhere called Sky Mountain in Tennessee. If that all sounds a bit Oh Brother Where Art Thou, just wait till you hear their new ol’ time country and bluegrass album, naturally called Music From Sky Mountain. It’s all good stuff. The other album is Hipster Blues and British Birds and contains the Panda Bear-baiting Hipster Blues and a song all about Abi from the Zutons.

Anyway, enough waffle from me. I’ll leave it to frontman Julian Saporiti himself to fill us in on some more of the happenings in camp YR.

I last saw you on the last night of your UK tour in November. There seems to have been a lot happening since then - what’s been going on?

I suppose that was less than a year ago but it seems ages longer. We’ve really taken the time to make a home up on Sky Mountain here in Tennessee. When we’re not on the road, we’re constantly recording new records for ourselves or other bands in our studio.

How have you been going down across your homeland?

After spending a couple of years mostly concentrating on the UK, we’ve made an effort to try and tour around the states more. We’re starting to see the fruits of our labor pay off I suppose, but like with all things YOUNG REPUBLIC, it’s a slow and steady climb. It sure is good time though.

Two new albums this year - have you hit a purple patch of songwriting and recording form?

No purple patches, just the same ol’, same ol’. I reckon having our own studio and micro-label allows us to record a record (or two or three) when we feel like it and then press it up and sell it online or at shows without waiting three months or a year to time the release. That’s nice.

(more…)

Another artist who’s recently been overdue space on The Daily Growl is Dan Michaelson, former Absentee frontman and all-round East London good guy. It hardly seems any time since the release of his debut album Saltwater with his band The Coastguards, but that was 18 months ago and he’s about to hit us with a whole new long-player - Shakes - due in October. Before then though he’s releasing a limited single Love Lends a Hand on his own Editions label, and it’s another great tune in the classic Michaelson mode, gruff soulful Americana, which along with the fine b-side Without is a tasty taster for the new record. Here’s what Dan had to say about these records and a few other things.

1. I’m very lazy, describe the new single in five words.
Faster-Than-My-Average-Speed.

2. I loved the debut Coastguards album - what should we expect on the new one?
It has a different feel. I felt that I wanted a less smooth sounding record this time so I stripped everything back to its bones, giving each part loads of space. Its resulted in quite an odd sounding record I think. It’s intentional but not necessarily what I intended, which is good. Things should never turn out exactly as you thought; that would be boring. Song-wise, it’s a return to a more band orientated record. With the last album I recorded the songs on my own and we built the Coastguards parts around what I’d done. With the new record Shakes, we wrote everything together and recorded in a more traditional way.

3. You’ve formed your own label for this release - what’s the story behind that? Are there plans for other artists releases on it?
I think I’ve just taken a very long run up to self releasing.. we were recording and paying to make our own records as far back as Absentee’s Victory Shorts album, then licensing them on a label. It’s not a massive jump after that to self release. Not that it doesn’t make me nervous, it does, but I’m having a great time doing it at the moment. Until I have to actually try to sell some records it will probably remain that way. Issuing loads of short run editions of the single and album would probably been impossible on a “proper” label, too many people involved and whatnot.

(more…)

I don’t want to go on about my blogging absence of late and how busy I am elsewhere, but it’s precisely that which has prevented this feature from appearing much earlier. Ideally, it should have appeared at the start of the year, when long-time Daily Growl faves Left With Pictures started their new In Time project, releasing a song every month of this year. It didn’t of course, but here it is now, in the form of a short interview with band leader Stuart Barter.

I’ll leave it for him to explain more about In Time and all that involves, but before that I’d just like to say two things. First, the new material, despite being produced under pressure to a strict timetable, is excellent and any resulting album will probably be the best thing they’ve ever done. And two, the line-up for their Fleeting Fanfares gig on 5 September is one of the best I’ve seen in ages, so London people - get ye down the Queen’s Head that day. Now read on…

Tell us a bit more about the In Time project

In Time is a project in which we release a song and video at the end of every month in 2010. Each new track is debuted on Gideon Coe’s 6Music show on the last Monday of the month, and we email mailing list subscribers a free mp3 the following day, posting the video on our website. So in short, we have to come up with a new song and video every month!

The idea came after we finished and released our album at the end of last year. We already had new material which we wanted to get out, and we didn’t want to disappear for another year working on a new album. Plus we wanted to start a proper band website - which we didn’t have before - so posting a new video every month seemed a good way to get people to visit it!

You’re now up to month 8 of the In Time project - how’s it going so far?

Well. There are always songs you like more than others, but I’m very happy with the material overall. Plus, we’ve now got far more people on our mailing list, which is really important as it’s our main communication tool with our fans. I can’t deny it has been hard work - but I think it’ll prove to be worth it.

(more…)

You know there’s something wrong when there has been one post on this blog since 22 July. I know there’s something wrong when I post this month’s MAP 9 days after it was supposed to go up. All of this is not good, but life is very busy and something has to give for a while. So blogging slips down the priorities, other things slide too, and sorry to anyone who cares about this. I have been listening to new music though, and I have a rash of interviews and other stuff to bring to you once I can get my blogging shit together. For now though, I can thank Jason Pop Cop for the ease of a pre-prepared post containing the top tips from around the words, in which I big up Bear Driver, like I did only a very few posts back.

(more…)

Even in the age of mass digital media, the best music recommendations still come directly from friends’ tip-offs. And sometimes it’s just as well. If I’d never been personally told about the album Cowabungler by Round Ron Virgin, I’d probably have overlooked it, or been put off by the dreadful double pun whammy. But I persevered, buoyed by the promise of “a pleasant kind of shuffling, English acoustic folk”, and even better, a free download, and found myself enticed and entranced by a quaint little album full of heartfelt ballads, sea shanties and jaunty singalongs. One thing led to another and a few weeks later I was sitting outside Rough Trade on Brick Lane, drinking tea on a fine July afternoon with Oli Chance, the man who is Round Ron Virgin.

Before we get started properly, time for some history. Oli’s not some wide-eyed young buck. He’s been involved in making music for a good few years, but things have never quite worked out ideally. A while back he was doing solo stuff and despite spending two years recording an album, it just wasn’t quite getting there. Naturally, he wanted to get it done, he recalls “in the course of getting it finished I spent a horrible two months in a studio mixing it with a manic depressive and a guy who smoked draw constantly to the point where I ended up going completely mad. I walked out of the studio the moment it was finished, binned the CD and never listened to it”

This was followed by a period where he lost interest in music, but there were still a few lingering songs which he managed to salvage. He was plunged back into playing again when he was booked for a gig so he put together a band, including his old mates from Devon, Tom and Henry who were in The Rumble Strips. This was the first incarnation of Oli ‘n’ Clive. The Rumble Strips’ increasing popularity meant a line-up revision, which was the second version of Oli ‘n’ Clive, where Chance gathered “a bunch of people I knew who could play instruments but maybe hadn’t played them in a while but wanted to have a go. We became what I used to call a ‘special needs orchestra’” although he admits that sounds a bit harsh. He remembers that “it was really nice – it developed well together over a two or three years“. But momentum was lost, a Christmas single “caused some weird tensions” after which he stopped writing songs, and by early 2008 it was all over.  Although he says that he doesn’t have many regrets about doing this “it was nice to put an end to it while it was still positive and good rather than just petering it out”, he admits that he “managed to piss of some people in the process. I don’t think everyone in the band got and it’s taken some of them quite a while to forgive me.”

After this ending, he had another period of not doing music, during which he moved to work in Frankfurt. Given that city doesn’t exactly have the reputation as a party town, unsurprisingly he got bored and sure enough, started writing songs again. But time it was working better, probably because he was “writing songs for my sake and not worrying about having to involve a band”. When he left Frankfurt, earlier than planned because it wasn’t working out – “It was quite dull” – he came back to London, and started writing and recording as Round Ron Virgin.

(more…)

Cloud Control from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.

Have you been on the Black Cab Sessions website lately? I drop by regularly and there’s always something brilliant going on. The latest session comes from Cloud Control - an Australian band I’d never heard of before - who bring handclaps and some lovely harmonies to a trip up Brick Lane. Turns out they’re playing for the self-same Black Cab Sessions at The Luminare tonight. I found out too late to be able to go, but if you’re reading this before 8pm today, maybe you can get down. It’s bound to be a good show.

mp3: Cloud Control - Gold Canary

Last year, Bear Driver did well for a band with only one single under their belts, playing both Reading and End of the Road festivals. I missed them at the latter of course, and as has been the case every year of the festival now, bands I missed have a habit of cropping up the next year and pleasantly surprising me. It’s hard not to like Bear Driver’s agreeable, tuneful indie pop. Turns out they’re pretty agreeable people too. To belatedly mark the release of their fine second single Wolves, I asked them my seven questions.

(more…)

The next installment in the ongoing adventures of Gruff Rhys. The last two years have seen him go from sports car-inspired electropop to huge psychedelic rock jams in his day job with Super Furry Animals and now back to teaming up with Brazillian eccentric Tony Da Gatorra playing huge psychedelic rock jams. Sort of. With added Gatorra. And I don’t mean just Tony himself, I mean the Gatorra instrument - part drum machine, part guitar - which he invented. See? It’s interesting already, and that’s even before you’ve heard the track.

The back story is intriuging too. Legend has it that Gruff, a huge Gatorra fan, tracked the man down in Brazil, a trip that was so much fun that they made a film about it. He found Tony of course and they recorded an album live in just over five hours. It’s great, but then it would be. Gruff rarely puts foot wrong. And Tony is the added bonus. The icing on the cake.

In A House With No Mirrors (You’ll Never Get Old) by TurnstileMusic

The Terror Of Cosmic Loneliness will be released on 26th July. Buy from Turnstile Music.

The road movie Separado! is showing at selected cinemas around the country from 30 August. More details here.

Not Squares - Release the Bees from Bright Stem on Vimeo.

Here, Belfast’s premier synth destroyers return, having ditched their guitars, clutching a well-thumbed copy of Let’s Make it RAVE, and a cheap graphics package, and somehow contrive to make it awesome.

mp3: Not Squares - Bi Ki Na (Me Me Wee Wee WeeMix)

This review first appeared on Bearded Magazine.

Glasgow has long been celebrated for its independent music – plenty hot new bands, artists and scenes have come out of there in the past few decades, but you can be sure that no media flurry about music in that city will ever mention the name Richard Youngs.

There a few reasons for this. Despite being hugely prolific, Glasgow-dwelling Youngs is a reclusive sort; live appearances are rare and tours even rarer. Plus his wide ranging experimentation hardly has mass appeal. He’s one of these refreshing free spirits making music unbound by any commercial motives, happily releasing several sets of recordings each year, some of them on CDRs, others on small labels and a few on Jagjaguwar. It’s perhaps no surprise that no British label of any size has taken an interest in Youngs, but gratifying to see that an American record company have seen fit to release at least some of his output.

So I’d like to follow that by saying that this album is the one to introduce him to a wider audience. After all Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits is a bit of a change for Youngs – he’s made a pop album. And it’s not an obtuse or ironic album either – it’s a proper pop record, full of tunes, hooks, gorgeous harmonies and electronic beats. So much so that you’d wonder if Youngs has a secret love for the Pet Shop Boys.

Despite their lack of high-gloss sheen, this is a collection of songs that really will stick in your head. Sure, there are little intricacies and complexities creeping in, as you may expect, but this is mostly a straightforward album, inviting you to appreciate it on its own terms. In fact, Oh Reality, with its easy melody, propulsive rhythm and unexpectedly appropriate guitar solo, may be a candidate for one of the best pop songs of the year.

But it’s no crossover album. There’s no commercial bent behind it, merely the response to a friend’s challenge to ‘make a proper pop record’. Youngs has done that, but he’s primarily done if for himself. There’s no attempt to reach out to new audiences. The original release was a limited-run CDR which only a few hardy souls found. Even the higher profile Jagjaguwar release is vinyl only. Let’s hope there is a download release too, because given his talent, it would be a shame if Richard Youngs remained a prophet without honour in his own city and country.

mp3: Richard Youngs - Love in the Great Outdoors

Beyond the Valley of the Ultrahits is out next week on Jagjajuwar. Buy from Rough Trade.