y’all is fantasy island: with handclaps

if i can be serious for a minute, firstly, let me say that this is quite possibly the gnarliest straight up rock song (and all that entails) i’ve heard in a long long long.  not that this is some simple bonehead threechorder with tuneless throat angst.  it’s what used to get made before the artschool and the unintellectuals came along and polarised the rock world.

consider yourself swallowed:

there’s energy and a firm belief in cranking out songs with gusto and feeling, and frankly what more can you ask for.

born of falkirk (and all that entails); recording faceless towns forever in an abandoned house in one nineteen hour session; touring with zoey van goey and writer alan bissett (whose the incredible adam spark book is worth a read, although i’m not sure about boyracers) in a bit-like-ballad-of-the-books kindof way.  according to wiki anyway.

i’d like to think the sixteen year old me would have loved this just as much as his older, more drunk yet oddly increasingly balanced version.  i recommend everyone gets a cat, a tolerance for all alcohol and a load of vinyl somewhere in their twenties.

having seen them (him) acoustic in brel i thought i’d make an effort to wander along again at some point, which i did, somewhere my buggered brain can’t quite figure but again it was some kindof acoustic thang going on, so this is really my first experience of the cymbal splash (oh those beautiful splashes) distorto rock geetar thang.

with nods to will oldham in his various guises and more recent parallels being the mangled ultra blues of sluts of trust or immortal lee county killers this is wonderful stuff.

fuck anybody that dismisses this as miserabilist.  it sounds a bit like nick drake fed through a boss distortion pedal.  not really.  but totally.

another peerless collection of myspace influences gives the game away.  come on, somebody out themselves with shed fucking seven or 2 unlimited or t’pau.

gaining bonus points for skip james and joe bussard and the continental op and putting the exclamation mark in the correct gy!be place, which takes them (him) up to a level seven mage: blind willie johnson, godspeed you! black emperor, jandek, autechre, earth, lightning bolt, sunn o))), oxbow, phil spector wall-of-sound, joe bussard (www.vintage78.com), ruins, skip james, dr. john (gris-gris period), leonard cohen, albini/electrical drum sound, kool keith, the birthday party, dock boggs, boris, werner herzog, low, nick drake, will oldham etfuckingcetera.

pretty much everything i listen to/view, so i guess there’s no reason for me not to love this (except the mercury rev thing).

so what does all this namedropping mean?  namely acoustic, folk, rock, distorto, pop, bluesbluesblues.  scuffed and bruised and melancholic.  with clarinets.  and cymbal splashes.  jeebus knows i love my cymbal splash.  it’s america by way of scotland.  like the breakfast cereal it snaps crackles and pops.  except my rice crispies always slowly damply kindof go schhhkkrrkrkrrkrkrrrkrkrkr.  not as catchy a slogan i’d imagine.

some choice quotes:

“we played a gig last week that was so loud my face hurt for two days afterwards”

“oh shit, there goes our appearance on the t-mobile music show with lauren laverne and that welsh twat.’

welsh twat indeed.

all in all, another excellent release from winning sperm party.  and it’s free.

maybe all this sozzled gushing is a reaction to the emotionally uninterested guff i’ve been increasingly exposed to at gigs and recorded on disc, vinyl, whatevermp3sarerecordedonto recently.  what used to be new and fresh and exciting is starting to grate now.  i get the feeling there’s more to gain from chucking out three minute pop songs than yet another fifteen minute free dirge nobody seems particularly interested in.

i don’t know where this is going other than to say the permanant seesaw of my musical tastes is gently lowering itself back down to the pop and rock ground away from the staid pomposity of the ‘experimental’ scene.  the bored masturbation masquerading as ‘art’.  the grim onanism of only pleasing yourself or anyone interested in watching some dudes (it’s always dudes) uninterested going through the motions forced release.  as predictable as a pre-oasis album release rant from one of the gallaghers.

maybe it’s just a post-sober pre-drunk friday hissy fit but i get the impression people are increasingly playing music they think they should be playing instead of what they want to play.

i’m old enough to remember hearing sonic youth for the first time and thinking what the fuck is this?

i couldn’t tell you when my last what the fuck is this? moment was. 

when was yours?

some moovies:

well i guess it’s true about what they say, if the folks don’t come then the bands won’t play

y’allspace / winning sperm party