Introducing.. Fez (Unsigned)

(Indie Rock/Indie Pop/Alternative)

British guitar pop music is never something i've been a huge fan of; I like it when it finds me, but i never find myself making a conscious effort to actually hunt it down or listen to it, let alone buy it. Fez (or their latest recordings) are currently in the process forcing me to rethink, and for that reason, they are definitely a first for me in that sense - even though they definitely aren't a first in any other. They draw elements of all the bands who have gone before them, and although none of what they make is particularly original, it is made in such good spirits and to such a high standard that where their influences lie becomes irrelevant. The squealing post-punk guitars and charismatic four-part vocals make for an interesting compilation of the best bits of The Maccabees, Talking Heads and even more modern contemporaries such as The Courteeners. From what I can gather they formed in 2005 and are currently based in London - they are not currently signed and have a fairly limited future gig schedule, but with the creation of a new myspace, a set of new tracks and some new-found internet buzz Fez could be a potential underground indie rock band to make it in 2010.

File Next To - Talking Heads/Pigeon Detectives/The Maccabees

Fez - Lowlight (MP3)
Fez - Harmonix (MP3)

PENS - hey friend ! what you doing?

PENS - hey friend ! what you doing? (September 28, 2009)(Garage Pop/Lo-fi/Noise Punk)

Fitting in perfectly amongst the pioneers of 2009's musical explosion of 'beach/noise punk' al No Age, Japandroids and Wavves - all girl garage pop trio PENS make energetic and noisy punk-pop with bite. The sample track I picked up 'Freddy', gave me very high hopes, but to be honest, across the whole album there's not much in the way of structure, melody, tune, lyrics, subtlety or any particular creativity; most of the chord sequences are borrowed and re-used, and to top it off, the terrible microphone PENS used during their recording with De Stijl records means that the lyrics (or intermittent girly screams and shouts) are barely audible above the grinding overdrive on the amps.

As bad as that may sound, there is definitely something strangely satisfying about listening to all-girl musical chaos - and as much as I appreciate finely tuned songwriting, grand arrangements and experimental instrumentation - it is sometimes, for one reason or another, more satisfying to listen to a band that know full well but don't care in the slightest that the music they make sounds awful. Album opener Horsies, coupled with mid-album (and my sampler) Freddy are the standout tracks, not only because for the latter the usual clattering of drums is dubbed down, but also because for once the guitar follows a nice simple, cascading sequence and regular punk-pop beat, taking the song as far away as possible from the usual 70s rock caricatures which clutter the rest of the album.

At the end of the day, PENS do nothing groundbreaking, but through turning their volume notches up to 10, shouting, screaming and giving their guitars a workout they come dangerously close to putting out a decent debut. They're perfectly within fashion, but whether anything of hey friend other than Freddy is going to mean a thing to anyone five years down the line remains to be seen. As with synthpop in the 80s, shoegaze in the 90s and indie rock in the 00s - there's following fashion, and then there's sounding cliche.

4.5/10

Hey Friend, What You Doing? on Amazon for less than $3.

read my introduction post for more information and more mp3s.


File Next To - Wavves/Best Coast/Dum Dum Girls

PENS - Freddy (MP3) (via mediafire)
PENS - High In The Cinema (MP3) (via mediafire)

jj sign on to Secretly Canadian records + announce tour, new album.

jj - jj n° 3 (March 2010)

(Indie Pop/Dream Pop/Electronica)

JJ are a mysterious Swedish pop band about which little other is known than the names of its two members, Joakim Benon and Elin Kastlander. No-one would even have known they were a duo if it hadn't been confirmed by the Tough Alliance's Gothenburg based electro label Sincerely Yours earlier this year. With such little information, one can't help reading into the facts we do have, and i'm sure a band of conspiracy theorists somewhere are going to interpret their latest signing, to Secretly Canadian records (home of Yeasayer and The War on Drugs) , as some sort of subtle sign or clue from the so-called Swedes.

With such a mysterious air surrounding jj (always lower-case, for some reason or another, as are their song titles), it logically follows that, as with fellow Swedes The Knife/Fever Ray, the music should also possess a certain uncertain quality, and that to an extent is true of jj. They put a 90s ambient house/dance edge on to dream pop, leading to numerous accusations from Oakenfold and Pete Tong fans around the world of a heavy influence from the Ibiza movement of Balearic dance music which, driven by the pioneering duo, caught well on to the London club scene at the turn of the century. Whether they were influenced by Tong and friends or not, there is a lot of influence from contemporary ambient music on this cannabis leaf fronted collection of 3 minute pop songs.

The genre they involve themselves with most comes in the form of dream pop, which tends to go almost hand in hand with any kind of pop music with an ambient influence. What follows on is an ecletic and accented combination of fellow Gothenburgers such as Pacific!, The Tough Alliance and Air France into a reflective, dancefloor compilation of indie pop music, starting to verge upon ambient dance at times. Some parts of their discography would proudly take up their places on any 90s chillout dance compilation, but other parts, with their reggae influenced pop sensibility, expansive electro-string sound and twee pop vocals couldn't be further away in terms of style. Despite the features of this band which place them at opposite ends of the genre spectrum - the music is all ultimately drawn together by its ever-present sound pallete, which whilst creating some very different songs, creates only one distinctive and inspiring sound.

For a band with no identity and even less regularity, they've been extremely busy in the studio of late, and their first emergence on the popular world music scene came only in March 2009 with their release of jj n° 1 on Sincerely Yours, followed closely by their debut full length, the nine-track LP jj n° 2, on July 1, 2009. It was on December 24, 2009 that they announced the biggest news of their year, that their follow up album, the inspiringly titled jj n° 3, would be coming out in March of this year on the aforementioned Secretly Canadian label. If this wasn't news enough, they also revealed a full tour with British post-punk/rnb band The XX in March/April 2010.

jj n° 3 is out March 2010 on Secretly Canadian records.

jj n° 2 on Amazon MP3

03-22 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon*
03-24 Atlanta, GA - The Earl*
03-25 Carrboro, NC - Cats Cradle*
03-28 Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue*
03-29 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church Sanctuary*
04-05 Columbus, OH - Wexner Center*
04-06 Bloomington, IN - Buskirk-Chumley Theater*

*w/ The XX (currently also on tour with Hot Chip, Friendly Fires and Holly Miranda)

File Next To - The Tough Alliance, Pacific!, Air France

jj - things will never be the same again (MP3)
jj - baby (MP3)

Rural Alberta Advantage - Four Night Rider/Luciana

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns (July 17, 2009)(Country/Indie Pop/Garage Pop)

The Rural Alberta Advantage are a band I missed this year until quite recently, and without a doubt, if i'd listened through their album earlier than I did, it would have made an appearance on my albums of 2009 list. Hometowns was originally released independently by the band in early 2008 - but following an Emusic artist of the month feature in November 2008, The RAA signed onto Saddle Creek Records, and re-released Hometowns on July 7, 2009.

With all the lo-fi rock nostalgia of Jeff Magnum and Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island, The Rural Alberta Advantage make hyperactive indie pop with wailing boy-girl harmonies, heartfelt acoustic interludes and coarse electric guitars. There's stomping percussion and checkered shirts galore - as well as horns and occasionally keys added into the mix. They are currently touring extensively across the USA, moving on to bigger and better things as their popularity grows. Based in Toronto, Ontario, having grown up in rural Alberta, the band describe themselves below..

"The Rural Alberta Advantage play indie-rock songs about hometowns and heartbreak, born out of images from growing up in Central and Northern Alberta. They sing about summers in the Rockies and winters on the farm, ice breakups in the spring time and the oil boom’s charm, the mine workers on compressed, the equally depressed, the city’s slow growth and the country’s wild rose, but mostly the songs just try to embrace the advantage of growing up in Alberta."


Four Night Rider, live from The Bell House 5/4/09, via wingedfeetxc on Youtube.

File Next To - Harlem Shakes, Neutral Milk Hotel, Japandroids

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Four Night Rider (MP3)
The Rural Alberta Advantage - Luciana (MP3)


Hometowns on Amazon

Real Estate - Beach Comber/Snow Days

Real Estate - S/T (November 17, 2009)
(Surf Pop/Psychedelic/Chillwave)

I've been meaning to post something for weeks and weeks about Brooklyn band Real Estate, another pioneering group in the increasingly popular psychedelic surf pop movement which i've been heavily over indulging myself in recently. In the same vein as all my blog favourites such as Surfer Blood, Girls and Best Coast - Real Estate make snippets of 60s pop psychedelia coated in fuzzy reverb and drenched in sunny harmonies. The difference between this band and the others is the total chillout mentality they show across their entire self-titled debut album, leading to a whole load of comparisons to the other chillwave bands of late.

Unlike their synth laden companions such as Toro y Moi, Washed Out and Neon Indian they make chill out surfer pop music with more of a classic rock influence than one from electronica. Again, another feature sets them apart from bands like Surfer Blood and Woods is the fact that they coat their meaningful and heartfelt lyrics in meaningful and heartfelt music. As with most of the albums I've been posting about recently, this is another one for your Sunday morning collection.

Real Estate is bassy and slow-paced with occasional bursts of energy across the ten-track Woodsist Records release. The spaced out vocals of Martin Courtney don't feature heavily - and when they do, its more the notes they hold than the lyrics they deliver. It's not shoegaze, but at times the lyrics make more of a background appearance in relation to the simple melodies than a dominant one.

File Next To - Best Coast, Ganglians, Toro y Moi

Real Estate - Snow Days (MP3)
Real Estate - Beach Comber (MP3)


Real Estate on Amazon