Ah, Metric. Until about 2006 I hadn’t stumbled across them properly, but since then they have gone on to become one of my favourite bands, and they have the honour of being one of five different bands who have their own playlist on my iPod (for fans of completeness, the others are Art Brut, Pavement, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Radiohead). Furthermore I have been to see them on a few occasions and not once have I been disappointed and as such, the chance to see them on a brief stop in London was obviously going to be snapped up, and so I headed down to Koko in Camden for the gig.

It didn’t start off too well though. It is unseasonably hot in London at the moment, with today’s temperature sneaking up to 30 degrees (trust me, this is hot for us in May), and yesterday was not much cooler. Unsurprisingly it was rather warm in the venue, and with my stomach by no means feeling 100% for some reason, this wasn’t great. Even worse was the support band, Baby Monster. I’d read previously that they have been compared to MGMT, and I will not even pretend to be a massive fan of them, but they didn’t sound very similar to me. Mainly because the couple of MGMT songs I know have decent tunes. I have no idea whether Baby Monster have any decent tunes as all I could hear was bass, lots and lots and lots and lots of bass. I’ve read elsewhere that the bass was so substantial that it managed to wobble someone’s drink over and spill it, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Maybe if they turn the bass down from 1000000% then they might be alright, but I guess we’ll never know. And I’m aware that it might not have been their fault, or it might have just been because of where I was standing, but meh. TOO. MUCH. BASS.

Metric had a better balance of bass, and as such were far more enjoyable. The fact they played good songs from start to finish also helped matters too, as a predictably Fantasies (their most recent album) heavy setlist whistled along nicely. Opener Twilight Galaxy got its now customary extended ending, a version which makes it pretty ideal to start a set off with, and this was followed by Satellite Mind, which got singer Emily Haines bouncing around the stage as is pretty much customary when she’s not stuck behind a keyboard or two.

Of the tracks from Fantasies that got an airing (and to be fair, that was pretty much everything), Gimme Sympathy was an inevitable highlight. It’s a truly excellent song on record as it is, but live it’s just that bit more special. Gold Guns Girls is also excellent, what with the usual extended treatment that at least half the songs got benefitting matters, and Emily getting the guitar out for some double guitar hardcore riffing action with regular guitarist Jimmy Shaw (note: maybe a slight exaggeration).

Not much of their pre-Fantasies back catalogue made an appearance sadly, with Live It Out being represented by singles Empty,
unsurprisingly extended and awesome, and Monster Hospital, which was still good but always seems to lack a bit of oomph live I feel. There were just a couple of Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? tracks too, with Metric behemoth Dead Disco (guess what, this was
substantially extended as well, and was suitably awesome) being joined by Combat Baby taking the now-traditional role of acoustic set closer. I don’t think I’ve seem them do Combat Baby whatsoever before, so this was a treat and a half, and the video below gives you a good idea of the singalong vibe that this song had.

Of course, despite this being a rather awesome gig, there is always room for a whinge. This was pretty much song for song the same setlist that they played last year at the Electric Ballroom. Having looked at setlists for other gigs they’ve done in the last year, it seems almost identical to those as well. This was to be expected, what with them being over here to promote the re-release of Fantasies rather than to road-test or promote any new material, but maybe it would have been nice to slip a bit of variation in there, play a non-predictable old song or something.

In the end though this is a minor quibble. Metric delivered a top-notch, energetic show, full of great performances of excellent songs, a performance that had you already looking forward to the next time you’re lucky enough to go see them. Luckily enough, the next time for me just happens to be tonight!

Recently I seem to have been going to see lots of reformed bands. First there was Blur, back together for a few gigs last summer, and then there was Pixies at the back end of last year, who were touring to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Doolittle’s release.

Next on the list was Pavement, who decided to get back together again for a pretty comprehensive world tour. There had often been rumours and calls for them to reform, and these were fairly often dismissed by frontman Stephen Malkmus, who seemed to be (to me anyway) the main one holding back any potential reunion, and obviously it’d be a bit hard to have a reunited Pavement without their main man. And anyway, he had his own solo career going along nicely, so there was no real need to look back.

Obviously something changed last September because the rumours suddenly became fact and Pavement’s website declared that a temporary reformation would take place for some gigs in New York, with others around the world to be announced. Luckily for me, a handful of these dates would be at their old haunt in London, the Brixton Academy. They played they when touring Slanted & Enchanted in 1992, they played their last ever gig (well, until these ones obviously) in 1999 there, so fittingly they stopped by to play four consecutive nights there.

As I’m a bit of a fan, I bought tickets for three of these dates (I was otherwise engaged for the fourth date, seeing a delightful beat combo from Oxford by the name of Foals). Now don’t worry, I won’t go into tedious detail regarding exactly what happened on each and every night, mainly because I can’t remember exactly what happened now anyway (guess that’s the drawback of waiting a week to put a review up). Suffice to say, all three nights were good. Very very good indeed. They rattled through all their best known and most loved songs, such as Shady Lane, Cut Your Hair, Gold Soundz and the like, and these were undeniably awesome. However, some of the lesser known songs also stood out for me, songs like Frontwards, which I only vaguely knew from the second disc of the Slanted & Enchanted special edition, or Debris Slide, which doesn’t even appear to be on any of the special editions of the main five Pavement albums.

In fact, a lot of the songs that featured percussionist/shouty bloke Bob Nastanovich were highlights, like Unfair, Conduit for Sale! or Two States. This might be because they are amongst the most upbeat and fun of Pavement’s back catalogue, or it might be it was pretty darn entertaining to see him bounding around the stage screaming into his microphone. The slower songs were also good, with Here suitably epic and We Dance (a personal favourite of mine) was excellent. I also liked the expanded versions of Fight This Generation that they served up, probably again because I really like that song in the first place. Moreover, I can’t think of a song that they did where I thought “Pfft, wish they hadn’t played this rubbish” or “Oh dear, that was nowhere near as good as on record”, which is always a good sign when you’ve seen them play a total of around 80-90 songs or something in three days.

The band themselves also seemed to be having fun, particular the non-Malkmus ones. Mr Malkmus’ mood seemed to vary from day to day, Tuesday he was alright, Wednesday in a bad mood presumably triggered by technical difficulties blighting the first two songs, but on Thursday he seemed much happier and the whole band even had a bit of *gasp* banter. I do think it was a bit telling also that he was stuck out on the left of the stage, with the remainder of the band congregated in the centre/left of centre, and also that he would leave the stage on his own, on the other side from the rest of them.

As such, I am very much pleased that I went to see them three times. I can’t unfortunately see this temporary reunion being anything but that, and unless someone turns up with another suitcase full of cash in another 10 years, I doubt they’ll bother doing another tour. I certainly can’t see them doing a Pixies and reforming so that they can just tour incessantly.

It would have been very disappointing to have waited all that time for the chance to see Pavement, and then they went and sucked. It would have been even more disappointing if they’d done that and I still had tickets to see them again. However, this didn’t happen. They lived up to my rather high expectations, played almost every single song I’d have liked to have heard, and they were pretty excellent all round. Can’t ask for much more than that, can you?

Photo by aurélien..

I like Eddie Argos. This predominantly stems from liking Art Brut a fair bit, and him seeming quite good all round judging by his twitter and blog. As such it logically follows that I should like Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now!, what with him being in the band. Fortunately in this case, my logic is sound and I happen to think that their début album, Fixin’ The Charts Volume One, is rather good. I was slightly skeptical about the whole “correcting the mistakes of pop songs past” thing by writing response songs, but it works. With quite a few of the songs the whole response thing is lost on me anyway as I don’t know the original, which I think shows that they work well enough as stand alone songs rather than just responses.

Anyway, this isn’t an album review (I can’t be bothered to do one, but if I did it’d get 4 out of 5). This is a gig review. Of course with the record you don’t get the benefit of Eddie’s between song banter, where he instantly acquired a couple of catchphrases (“Ready Everybodywasinthefrenchresistancenow?” and “Do you know the song…?”) as well as explaining the downsides of writing a set list on a paper plate and not adequately securing it to the stage. Add all that to some good performances of songs I happen to like, and you’ve got the makings of a good gig.

A good gig it was too, as they rattled through almost all of the songs from their album (He’s a “Rebel” and Walk Alone were the ones to miss out, which was a shame as I particularly like the former), but they managed to make a main set lasting just nine songs not seem short, even if one of those songs, Think Twice (It’s Not Alright), did feature a partial cover of U2′s With Or Without You at the end, much to everyone’s amusement.

Debut single G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N. (You Know I’ve Got A) was saved for the encore, to be followed by a cover of The Rubinoos’ 1979 song I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend. You see, G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N. is a response to Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend, and her song conveniently nicks part of the chorus from the Rubinoos’ song, so this is Everybody In The French Resistance…Now!’s way of showing a bit of support for their ripped off comrades.

As ever with Mr Argos & co, it was a fun gig. Hopefully they will do a few more shows before they go away to think about which songs need fixing for Volume Two!

Annie – Songs Remind Me Of You

I was in HMV a while ago and I heard a song being played in there. It was odd as I’d not really paid much attention to Annie’s stuff in the last year or so but I was pretty sure it was her for two reasons: the first was because it sounded like her, and the second was because it was “pop” music that wasn’t a big pile of rubbish. Of course, the ironic thing is that although Annie is one of the best purveyors of “pop” music at the mo, her music is not popular. Neither of her albums have got into the top 100 in the UK charts, and apparently Songs Remind Me Of You didn’t chart anywhere whatsoever, which given it does seem to have been given a release is a bit odd – perhaps most surprising because it’s a very good song indeed. It’s a bit 80s, a vibe that is accentuated by the accompanying video, but it’s infectious.  I like it a lot.  Don’t Stop, the album this song is lifted from, is pretty damn decent too.

Yeasayer – Ambling Alp

Yeasayer’s effort is a bit funkier than a lot of the stuff I’ve been liking recently. They’ve been one of these terribly unfortunate bands that I’ve heard of but never actually got round to listening to any of their stuff. This changed in December when someone said to me “Oi, why don’t you watch this video, it’s a bit odd and the song is good as well” (I’m paraphrasing here, it may not be a wholly accurate quotation). I agreed with the suggestion strongly. The song IS good, and the video IS odd. No idea what it supposed to be happening in it, but then it beats a band just playing some instruments so it gets my vote.

It’s now getting on for two years since Blood Red Shoes released their debut album, Box of Secrets, and I surely cannot be the only one who thinks that they should release another one pretty damn soon. Luckily for us, it seems that the band themselves concur with this train of thought, and are preparing to release their second album, Fire Like This, early next year.

However, if you can’t wait until March or whenever it actually comes out, they’ve only gone and made a song, Colours Fade, available for download at www.bloodredshoes.com, where you can also go and watch the accompanying video. If you can’t be bothered to go to their website to watch the video, you can watch it below:

It’s quite good I reckon, only problem I have with it is that it sounds like it’s going to go somewhere, perhaps explode into something else after a couple of minutes (I’m thinking of something like You Bring Me Down). However, given the way the song ends and the general vibe I’m getting, it does sound to me like an album closer rather than a lead single, and wouldn’t you know, it would appear that I was right as some Swedish website reckons the tracklisting is as follows:

1. Don’t Ask
2. Light It Up
3. It Is Happening Again
4. When We Wake
5. Keeping It Close
6. Count Me Out
7. Heartsink
8. Follow The Lines
9. One More Empty Chair
10. Colours Fade

Pretty sure I’ve heard a couple of those songs live before, and they sounded good. Looking forward to hearing this new album in a couple of months or so then!

Metric – Gimme Sympathy

I would rate Metric as one of my favourite bands, certainly of the last couple of years or so.  I rate Live It Out very very very highly in my favourite albums ever (I might do a best albums from the 2000s, so eyes peeled please), and as such a new album coming out was something I was looking forward to very much.  For example, Metric released Help, I’m Alive as a free download in January-ish, but they only released a radio edit or something.  The proper version was on the Canadian iTunes store and was due out “shortly”.  So I pretty much checked the UK iTunes store daily to see if it was actually available, that’s how keen I was for just the one track.  I also believe that Fantasies was the first album that I downloaded from iTunes in its entirety, solely because it came out on there a few weeks before the physical release over here and I didn’t want to wait that long.  Wish I hadn’t done that really, as I’d quite like to have the actual CD and artwork and stuff, but there you go.

Of all the tracks on Fantasies, Gimme Sympathy has always been my favourite.  I have changed my mind a few times on which is my second favourite song, with most of the tracks prior to Gimme Sympathy on the tracklisting peaking at number two at some point (Help, I’m Alive had a strong period at first, particularly when it was the only song I knew, Satellite Mind got a boost after seeing them do it live at the Electric Ballroom in May, and I was quite  keen on Gold Guns Girls for a bit as it appeared in FIFA 10, albeit in heavily butchered form), but my favourite has always been clear. It just makes me very happy, and this is a good quality for a song to have I think.

And as if I needed any further validation, I have the stats to prove it.  Gimme Sympathy is my most played song of 2009 as well according to last.fm, with a hefty 115 plays (only one other song got into three figures, and oddly that will not feature in my rundown of good songs from this year).  One more play and it will be joint 20th in my all-time most played tracks.  Not a bad effort for a song that I’ve had for less than nine months.

It is with a smidgeon of sadness that I have to report the demise of The Rakes, who announced they were splitting up today. The full statement, as per their official website, is as follows:

The Rakes have always been very adamant and proud of the fact that we give 100% to every gig we’ve ever played. If we can’t give it everything then we won’t do it. That was the rule we set ourselves from day one.

After much deliberation we have come to the shared conclusion that we can’t give it 100% anymore and regret to announce that The Rakes are calling it a day. We are sorry to let down all the people who were coming to see us on the UK & US tours. Writing your own obituary is a surreal thing to do but we want to give particular thanks to our much-loved fans, all the great people we’ve worked with over the years, our management and loyal record label. We feel privileged to have had the opportunity to write music together and perform around the world. Genuinely, thanks for the good times…. That was one hell of a party! But now, we really must get some sleep.

The saddest thing about this is that I am not that bothered. Nor am I that shocked either, as I occasionally check this blog’s Google stats, and someone on Monday clicked on this blog after searching for “the rakes split up”. Maybe they knew something that we didn’t.

Anyway, their first album, Capture/Release, is still excellent in my opinion. The first few songs are solid gold stuff, and the rest often reaches those heights again as well. The follow up albums haven’t been as good though, with Ten New Messages being patchy and Klang so uninteresting to me that I don’t think I’ve managed to get through the whole album without getting bored and turning it off. This is really sad, given the excellent of the first album and my love for it. They were an excellent live band too, but again the first album’s songs were so much better than the majority of their other output so when touring new material they weren’t as good.

It seems then that I was lucky to have seen them last month supporting Young Knives, as they didn’t even last another month and it was the last chance I had to see them play. I was doubly lucky as they played mostly old stuff. I felt then that they must know how poor in comparison their recent material was, and perhaps it’s that knowledge that made them decide to stop. Or maybe them not putting 100% in resulted in half-hearted albums. Hopefully they’ll get up to some new music stuff individually in the future. I reckon Alan could possibly have a decent solo career, he’s a good front man so maybe another band would be good. Or maybe they’ll all go get jobs in the city. Ones that are alright. I won’t bother speculating as to how much they’d get paid.

But there you go, the Rakes are dead. Thanks to them, some fun times were had, so thanks guys.

So, Charlotte Hatherley’s long-awaited (well, by me anyway) third solo album, New Worlds, is finally released next Monday. However, I have had the pleasure of owning said album since last month, when I picked it up at Chaz’s gig at the Borderline, and I think I have had enough time to come to some conclusions.

The first of these is that it is a good album. Not a great, all-time classic album, but a solidly good album. Of the ten tracks on the disc, one does fall into “auto-skip” territory, where as soon as the previous song starts to end, I feel my hand drawn straight to my iPod/laptop/whatever I’m playing it on so that I can skip the next song as soon as possible. However, the rest are significantly better, so no itchy skipping finger to worry about with them.

There’s a strong theme running throughout the album, with almost all the songs containing lyrics about colours. It’s appropriate then that the first track, and indeed first single to be lifted from the album, is entitled White. It’s a good start to the album, but second song, and indeed second single to be lifted from the album (noticing a trend here?), Alexander is a real treat, starting with some delicate finger picking backed with xylophone, before slowly building as the song goes on to a stirring climax.

Then the album settles into a bit of a comfort zone. Most of the next six or seven songs are fairly standard indie pop rock type fare, and although it’s good standard indie pop rock type fare, it’s nothing particularly revolutionary. Straight Lines is a good song, no doubt, and the rest are all enjoyable. The notable exception is Firebird, which I don’t like at all. It’s a bit too…plinky plonky for my liking. It reminds me a level on Castle of Illusion, an early 90s computer game starring Mickey Mouse, where you wander around in a land made of cakes and do battle with evil jellies or chocolate bars or something. To be fair that description makes it sound quite good, but it’s not.

Like the first two songs on the album, the last two songs are a bit different. Cinnabar is a lot gentler, and all the better for it, although it does have the odd noisy bit. Wrong Notes at the end is also good, particularly the wonky guitar at the end.

So you should roughly know what I think about this album by now. Is it a must-have, best of 2009 contender? Not really. Is it a very good album, a consistently good album that is well worth a purchase and I recommend you check out? Yes, definitely.

get on the dancefloor rating: 4 / 5

Photo by Dan Newman

Recently I have been getting excited about and have been to see bands that have reformed. First there was Blur at Hyde Park, then there was Pavement reforming and the inevitable giggage that will bring. Friday night was no different, as I went to see Pixies for the first time.

Of course they’ve been knocking around for a while now, what with this tour being to celebrate the fact that their second and possibly best album Doolittle came out 20 years ago, and they’ve been doing stuff on and off since reforming in 2004 or so. However, I hadn’t got round to seeing them since they had reformed (I think I have a decent excuse for not having seen them before they split, what with me only being 5 or so) so this was a good opportunity.

The idea of playing a whole album in order is an interesting one. I’ve seen Muse do it before when they played Black Holes & Revelations in order, but I didn’t know about that in advance. This time I did know in advance, so I could properly prepare myself by listening to the album a couple of times in order, which was good because it reminded me how good the album is. However, I was also aware from previous reports and reviews and stuff that they would start off with some B-sides. I don’t know any of their B-sides, and to be fair they sounded alright, but they weren’t what most people came to hear.

It was when the first few notes of Debaser kicked in that the gig started properly. You could tell that even the band knew this was the “proper” start of the gig as the first four songs, all B-sides had no visual accompaniments, whereas the video screen started up the moment Debaser started (to be fair there were some pre-gig visuals, showing a short film about something or other, a highlight being someone having their eyeball sliced up a bit). Of course Debaser was one of the highlights of the gig, as it is on the album, but everything sounded epic live. Silver was awesome near the end, Hey was special, La La Love You was good fun, and everything they did seemed to work.

You could tell it worked for pretty much everyone in the audience as everyone seemed to be singing along. I was a little bit further back than normal at Brixton due to getting there later than usual and not being bothered enough to go right down the front, but there were a LOT of people singing along and there were a LOT of people jumping around. All in a good way as well, which gave the whole night an awesome atmosphere.

After they’d finished the album and had spent about half an hour saying goodbye and bowing to the crowd, they came back and did a couple more B-sides and then, in a second encore, some non-Doolittle songs! All three came from their debut album, and all three were excellent choices. Vamos is good, Gigantic is excellent, and Where Is My Mind? is awesome, so closing the set with three top-notch songs like that was a good move if you ask me.

Overall this was a somewhat excellent gig, and a welcome reminder of something that I’d started to forget over the last couple of years: Pixies are good. Very very very good.

As previously mentioned, Transgressive Records is five years old this September and there have been some gigs to celebrate. I went to the first on Thursday to see Young Knives and the Rakes play at Heaven, and I was also in attendance to see Foals play at the same venue the following night.

Last time I saw Foals was back in July where they were warming up for a Blur support slot the following day. They had taken time out from recording their second album, the follow up to the highly successful debut effort Antidotes, to do both the warm up gig and the Blur gig, and as such showed off a few of the new songs they’d been working on alongside their existing work. This time they were taking time out from recording their new album to play the gig, and played some new songs as a result. Sound familiar?

In fact, if I was bothered enough to double check, I reckon the setlists for the July gig and Friday’s gig would be pretty much identical. This was not a problem before as I liked the song choice they made, playing their best songs and supplementing them with some newer material, and on second listening it worked just as well, as I now have a vague knowledge of stuff such as Spanish Sahara, just because I’ve heard it twice rather than once. I recall liking it first time, and I still think it sounds like a good song. Not that immediate, more laid back and down tempo than something like Cassius, but a good song nonetheless. There was also another new song whose name escapes me, which sounded good, and an unfinished new song kicked off the encore. No words yet, but it sounded promising.

Of course the main attraction with this gig was the big songs, and Foals did not disappoint. The left-right combo of XXXXX and The French Open opened proceedings, as they have done at every single Foals gig I’ve been to, and singles Cassius, Balloons, Red Socks Pugie and Olympic Airways were also brought out to play. Electric Bloom, complete with usual manic Yannis drumming, turned up near the end as per usual, along with a mad leap into the crowd from the frontman, and Two Steps, Twice closed proceedings. As per usual.

It was business as usual really for Foals here. They played the same old songs in pretty much the same old order as they have been doing for the past year or two. This would be a problem if the songs weren’t good, or if they didn’t still put in a strong, energetic performance, but as it was they can get away with it. Next time I see them I will be hoping for some more new stuff. A setlist rejig might be nice too!