Chartsengrafs (31/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls Barkley did indeed hold on at number one for a ninth week. Sandi Thom's rise to two was at least expected enough to not be shocking as well as depressing. Infernal STILL remained in the top 3, Primal Scream surprisingly failed to plummet during the week and ended up with their biggest hit ever (!) at 5 (I still haven't heard it though actually), The Ordinary Boys with Lady Sovereign hit 6 but may have both pissed off their fanbases in the process ("she's a chav!" "they're indie!"). Daz Sampson went up to 8 and The Feeling just about stuck around in the top 40.
Keane made number 15 on downloads alone, followed similarly and surprisingly by Pink at 19. Robbie Williams did indeed do pretty poorly but did manage to climb above The Futureheads (22 v 24). Taking Back Sunday got 36, just ahead of Oakenfold ft Brittany Murphy on downloads (is she someone famous? I think I missed something there...) The Darkness at 39 and again one entry each side of the 40/41 divide: this time it's on the rise Little Man Tate and less so Mystery Jets. The Spinto Band's 55 is actually quite the success, really. Meanwhile, what is that still at number 70? "Gold Digger"? Wow.

Sunday coming: Oh dear. After reading about the deletion of "Crazy" (although it's still within 37 copies of number one, their chances of catching up are now just about zero) I should have realised what was going to happen. Yes, Keane aren't quite the force that could be hoped when it comes to actual sales of CDs (one format at 3 quid only can't help) and so Sandi Thom is set to climb to the top. Pink is heading for the top 5 again, definitely beating her progress last album, and Ronan Keating is dragging Kate Rusby down with him within the top ten, alongside Oakenfold/Murphy. And, I hate to even mention it, but Tony Christie's unbelievably rubbish "(Is This The Way To) The World Cup?" (see what they did there?) is also heading for the top 40.
And for some less depressing news in the album chart... ah, Orson are going to be number one.

Eurovision!

As promised, some of my thoughts on it here, with more to come throughout the week.

News (29/05/06)

• Gnarls Barkley's 'chat-topper' "Crazy" deleted - there's a suggestion here and elsewhere that it will end its run at number one, or even ensure that it has never charted anywhere else, but aside from being readily available online, there are also still a lot of copies left out there in shops. (incedentally, today's bank holiday probably means a wait til Wednesday for midweeks, and I'm off seeing Guillemots for the fifth time in as many months tomorrow anyway)
• Gorky's Zygotic Mynci split.
• Sandi Thom's publicists deny PR tricks being responsible for her rise to success... well, that's the headline, but they don't appear to have actually really done anything of the sort but instead just gone "Ah, well, she's a home-grown talent and she's worked really hard you know. Let's not talk about details!"
• Essex FM bans James Blunt songs, manages to get itself loads of attention - presumably they've started playing one of the other five artists on their playlist twice as often now.

They've made it now!

Heard in Topshop today: Snowfight In The City Centre's "No Light Left". Slightly bewildering but a good sign for them, which is nice.

Heh (again)

PopMatters have a feature on less famous siblings of pop stars tagging along in their wake. Among their list of wannabes is... 'Daniel Bedingfield (brother of Natasha)'!

Free music Friday (26/05/06)

• Fans of Stars will already be aware of Amy Millan's fine voice: she's now taken up the popular pursuit of a country-based solo album to show it off on. "Honey From The Tombs" is out next week in Canada but will take til July to reach UK shores; you can get first single "Skinny Boy" for free on label Arts&Crafts' site now though.
  
  
• Boston's The Cinematic Underground have been around a while, it seems, but I've only just heard them and they do a rather good line in dramatic, melancholy indie with a sprinkling of experimentation (which owes a debt to Radiohead circa Talk Show Host). Listen to possibly their best moment:
  The Cinematic Underground - Carparks & Cubicles
  
  

In this week's covers section:

• Skatterbrain have The Pipettes taking on "I Think We're Alone Now", much to the dislike of some of their comments section.
• And regular readers will already be well aware of my total Guillemots worship, but please believe me when I say that their version of The Streets' new single "Never Went To Church" (as streamed by NME.com) is exceptionally beautiful, almost-as-wobbly-as-the-original singing notwithstanding.

Crap

I typed out a whole news post with comments and it somehow got deleted. So, er, just imagine me making fun of Red Hot Chili Peppers' plagiarism and the Evening Standard's coverage of James Blunt winning awards for selling lots or records here.

The internets win music

Just when you thought you'd never have to see another article about the internet-related rise of Arctic Monkeys again, various other stories have conspired to bring them back, at least in the Guardian today.
I admittedly didn't see the programme that sparked them off, largely because it indeed looked like it would be rubbish, but they seem to be making reasonable replies in general - MySpace being responsible for anyone's rise to fame is surely a complete red herring fallen for by sections of the media who don't really know what they are talking about and are trying to bluff their way through. It might be a useful tool for keeping people in touch with what you're doing (although it certainly wasn't the case for Arctic Monkeys) and offers a place to listen to music easily, but the bulk of people still have to be directed there from somewhere, be it elsewhere online or from Radio1, and most of what it does could equally be done on a well-maintained official site with forum.
Sandi Thom's story is obviously not to be taken at face value as well - even if you believe her manager Ian Brown (ha!) that she performed webcasts to large audiences created by word of mouth, had a friend of a friend set up the streaming and pay for bandwidth and was signed afterwards as a result of their success, one glance at the billboard posters for her single (''I wish I was a punk rocker broadcasting from a Tooting basement!") still suggests that she was signed more for having a highly marketable story than any great musical merit.
Lily Allen also makes an appearance - and it is pretty amazing that from never having heard of her all of, ooh, three weeks ago, it's now impossible to go anywhere online without seeing a mention. That's largely within music blogs which are 'read exclusively by other music bloggers' though, of course... it is still a bit disconcerting to not see mention of anywhere online promoting her other than MySpace, but it only takes a look at MIA to see how far internet hype can actually get you, I suppose.


On the other hand, easy as it is to agree with most of it, the whole article is about incorrect media reporting of acts' progress and features this:

'At the heart of this music revolution, declared The Money Programme, was a social networking website called MySpace. "With the boost from MySpace, the Arctic Monkeys proved yet again that successful bands can do without big record companies. They released their debut single and album on small independent label Domino. Both went straight to No 1."
Limited release
In fact the Monkeys' first release was a limited seven-inch vinyl single on Bang Bang Records. Domino, far from being the fledgling start-up operation, had already brought Franz Ferdinand to international prominence.'

Let's leave aside issues with the Domino part (fledgling start-up and small independent are in no way the same thing, and the latter isn't necessarily impossible while having successful bands). Yes, it's really awful when facts are bent and exaggerated to fit a story better than they should do. Like, uh, claiming something was a seven-inch vinyl single when just as many copies were released on CD, perhaps?

News (24/05/06)

• Madonna's crucifixion is, uh, 'part of an appeal to the audience to donate to Aids charities'.
• Elton John wins damages from Daily Mail but sees musical close after all of 39 shows.
• Prince, Kristen Bell are world's sexiest vegetarians.
• Pitchfork report on first listen to Thom Yorke solo album.
  

Chartsengrafs (24/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls' score reached 8. Infernal continued to rise to highest place yet at two, more through lack of competition than anything else, Christina Milian got to 4 with full release, which is lower than "Dip It Low", "AM To PM" and "When You Look At Me" managed. Can anyone else actually remember that last one? Busta Rhymes climbed to 6 with his first charting since ruining "Don't Cha", Sandi Thom was a disturbing 15 on downloads only, Angels And Airwaves 20 on full release. Elsewhere in the top 40: Primal Scream (23 on downloads, and it weirdly turns out, 'the most exciting single of the year', not Thom), The Feeling (28; downloads), Towers Of London (32), Nerina Pallot (37; downloads), The Ordinary Boys vs Lady Sovereign (38; downloads) and Eddie Thoenick and Kurd Maverick (39; who?).
In the albums RHCP became the first since Arctic Monkeys to do two successive weeks.

Sunday coming: RHCP to now make it three weeks, indeed. And - hooray! - Gnarls Barkley to make it nine and hold off Sandi Thom. Primal Scream heading top 5, which assures them of their biggest hit since 1997 and maybe ever, with Daz Sampson also heading into the top 5 despite the usual UK Eurovision failure. Top 10 places due for Matt Willis and The Feeling, which ought to be good news as I have one of these but annoyingly it still doesn't seem to be increasing in value at all (note also the usual 'guilty pleasure' crap).
Nerina Pallot's now going to climb to the top 15, with Pink somehow heading top 20 on downloads alone and The Futureheads looking a little folorn outside the top 20, though ahead of Robbie Williams (fully released and all! And indeed the only single being stocked in my local HMV this week).
Rounding off the top 40 are Jack Johnson, who must be selling almost no CD copies at all as he was just outside on downloads last week, and Keane who seem to be a popular bet to finally dethrone Gnarls Barkley next week when released fully. I would reckon against it and go for Embrace the week after. There will also be competition from Lordi (released on the Tuesday for 06/06/06, of course), though I would be surprised if that does anything more than make the lower reaches of the top 20.

Heh

Something Awful's David Thorpe takes on the music blogosphere - or at least a certain recently prominent section of it - with pretty amusing results.

News (23/05/06)

• Rap 'motivates a small number of children in a violent sub-culture.', apparently.
• Ricky Wilson run over.
• Jamie Hewlett 'designer of the year' for Gorillaz.
• Belle & Sebastian get together with others to record compilation for children.
• "Lordi's victory shows us that with hard work and belief in your own abilities even the greatest dreams come true," said Father Christmas."
• Babyshambles dropped.
• The Dears announce more details of new album Gang Of Losers.

Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family at Scala (22/05/06)

There's a pretty poor turnout at the Scala tonight - it never gets more than half full and despite the doors opening half an hour after the tickets claim there are still fewer than 10 people there. Even fewer manage our feat of somehow wandering past security and into Jeremy Warmsley's soundcheck (ps how hard is Jeremy to type correctly? Eep!) - fascinating.
Anyways, he plays mostly on his own with a bit of support from Tom Rogerson on keyboards tonight although full band sets are promised elsewhere soon, and it would be interesting to see the difference - his twisty constructions are full of interesting ideas and even a couple of great tunes but only rarely seem to fully take off for now.

We're here to see Bat For Lashes, and are slightly lucky it turns out, as they have cancelled shows in the last few days thanks to singer Natasha Khan's throat illness. Aside from a couple of coughs in between songs it doesn't show at all though - her voice sounds as rich and extraordinary as ever (somewhere between Cat Power and Bjork... ish) and she's visibly more confident than supporting My Latest Novel in March too, still speaking timidly but a little less terrified looking.
There is a certain potential for tweeness in their setup, not helped by the gold headbands and glittery facepaint sported by Khan and her two bandmates on violin, backing vocals, handclaps, bells and various unidentifiable weird things, but it evaporates with the yearning power of her voice and the way that they use silence so chillingly well, not so much leaving gaps in their songs as creating an inky blackness against which to set them. And in "What's A Girl?" they've now even written a twisted but definitely pop song to go alongside the mystery and magic elsewhere.
[listen to Bat For Lashes for yourself]

With Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family, the story is largely the same as in January - great choice of support, charming guy, technically excellent band, but all rather hamstrung by the fact that almost every single song sounds just like someone else. There's a couple of I Am Kloot numbers (not helped by his voice being a dead ringer for Johnny Bramwell's), the one which is practically Bright Eyes' "At The Bottom Of Everything", followed by the one which is practically Bright Eyes' "Lua", and an unamplified encore which sounds just like David Ford, all of them never exactly living up to the standard of those they resemble. Fortunately they do at least have one really great song in "The Mourners Of St. Pauls" which doesn't sound like anyone else... although it does crib a couple of lines from "(What A) Wonderful World", but we'll forgive that and mention that it comes out as a single next month and is actually worth checking out.

The Decemberists at Koko (19/05/06)

Radar Bros. look a little awkward in front of a clearly fairly disinterested crowd, and that's even before a glaring spotlight is suddenly turned on them mid-song, leading to a cry of "Oh no! The police have caught up with us!". A shame because while admittedly their sound (think Grandaddy with a lot of extra layers of noise) doesn't particularly lend itself to converting newcomers, at least a couple of the songs ("Shovelling Sons", the closer "Papillion") are really very good indeed.

They can't compare to The Decemberists though, who prove themselves once again one of the best lives band I've ever seen. Tonight doesn't quite match up to their astonishing show at ULU last Novemeber - it's at a bigger venue, violinist Petra Hayden isn't there, there's no "Mr. Blue Sky" and thanks to Club NME afterwards meaning a 10pm curfew there's no time for "The Mariner's Revenge Song" either, much to the distress of one guy who shouts out that he's travelled two hours just to see them play it.
Despite all of that though, they put most other bands to shame, playing everything with a stunning confidence and skill that allows them to play with changes and pauses everywhere without breaking the flow and ensures that just about every single song is a highlight. They make everything seem so easy you begin to wonder why not all bands sound this crisp, clear and perfect live (even "For My Own True Love (Lost At Sea)" sounds great!!) without losing any of the emotion in the songs at all. Of course it helps that there's a lot of inherant showmanship there to begin with, but it's still quite the feat and it's no wonder that Colin Meloy has the crowd in the palm of his hand throughout - he even gets us to excercise at one point, although not before a very funny shout of "speak for yourself!" when he suggests that we need to.
The ultimate trick comes during an encore of "The Chimbley Sweep", which mutates from the kind of bustling sea-shanty rock that The Coral would kill for into the the kind of dreamy psychedelia that, well, The Coral would also kill for, before Meloy points at each band member in turn and they exaggeratedly collapse to the floor. He then turns and with a simple gesture gets everyone on the entire floor and first balcony of Koko to sit down at once. It was awe-inspiring when they did the same at ULU but it's even more so tonight and the glee with which everyone jumps up as one once the song resumes pace is if anything even more exciting. Next stop, getting Brixton Academy to sit down?

The Shins at Koko (17/05/06)

Dungen's sheer dedication to recreating the excesses of seventies prog-rock is kind of inspiring - their hair is simply magnificent and they even bring out a flute numerous times - but while their ten minute epics are never boring (more than can be said for, ooh, Dead Meadow) but while technically great they lack immediacy and passion and so still don't make for an especially great live show. And there's a suspicion that if it wasn't for a longstanding love of Camel and similar I might find them just as irritating as Wolfmother.

The Shins also start rather umpromisingly - James Mercer stands to the side of the stage and is thoroughly undemonstrative, his shyness seeming to weigh down a lot of the early songs. They are helped by enthusiasic keyboardist Marty Crandall, who in contrast takes centre stage and clearly loves it. He begins by thanking us for coming despite the game (Champions League final) being on, a theme he returns to throughout with cries of "The Shins 1 - Evil 0!" and frequent enquiries about the score as well as a final dismissal of the entire Spanish nation on finding that Arsenal have lost, and goes on to ask about Madonna's gig at Koko before singing an amusingly ramshackle cover of "Justify My Love" "Borderline".
Either his confidence rubs off on Mercer or they just hit their stride, but by the end of the set they seem almost a different band, with "New Slang" and "Saint Simon" reliably brilliant and a couple of new songs almost their match. The third album is due in Autumn, they claim, and should be good on tonight's showing - new songs generally seem harder than those of Chutes Too Narrow but without the dusty coating of noise of most of the Oh, Inverted World material.
They return for an encore after the longest gap I've ever seen - the lights even come on a few times and just as it seems certain that they can't be coming back they do, finishing with a vital and triumphant "So Says I", for a clear second half victory.

Eurovision

As Finland's Lordi (imagine the above but with comedy white and blue Finland hat!) race away to win, time for a quick word on this year's (I've written a lot more for elsewhere which I will direct you towards when it's online) contest. The win actually seemed kind of inevitable from even before the contest, given the amount of coverage they got, but it was still great fun. There was a much wider variety of songs than last year's wall to wall Turkey/"Kiss Kiss" influences which led to better and, well, worse songs than ever, and the votes did go by a bit quicker thanks to not reading out every one although it did miss something, not least working out who actually gave France some points.

I should Koko

Apologies for the lack of updates this week, coursework mainly to blame, but I do have a couple of reviews of Koko ATP related gigs from this week coming soon - The Shins from Wednesday (good, not great, but worth missing Arsenal v Barcelona for especially as they lost anyway) and The Decemberists tonight which should hopefully be amazing again.

In the meantime, I appreciate that I am years behind here but I just recently got The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat (which certainly seemed to polarise opinions at the time...) and really really love it, although I actually didn't think nearly as much of EP (the only other one I've heard) apart from the one celebrating Spitalfields Market.

News (16/05/06)

• Creative to sue Apple over iPod menu system ripping off their Zen one - blimey, I own one and presumed that it was the other way round, or that it was just the only logical way to arrange mp3 player menus.
• Pete Doherty bored of getting into trouble in the UK, decides to try Germany instead.
• Hard-Fi joined onstage by Paul Weller on second day of Brixton 5 - don't think that I missed out much by going the previous day there.
• The Coral gain extra member on keyboards, currently recording fifth album [Planet Sound]
  

Chartsengrafs (16/05/06)

Sunday just gone: Gnarls Barkley inevitably made it 7 weeks, with a sales figure of almost 43,000 - still far from low by current standards. LL Cool J/JLo jumped up to 2, Infernal and Beatfreakz swapped places at 3 and 4, Rihanna is still selling well at 5, Pet Shop Boys made 8 which is the best for a while but not by enough for it to mean much in terms of getting beyond an established fanbase, and complaining about The Kooks last week must have jinxed the chart because they climbed into the bloody top 10 again.
From 10-39, entries came from Daz Sampson, Boy Kill Boy, Christina Milian's downloads, The Upper Room, Busta Rhymes and Orson (both downloads again), Delays and Graham Coxon. And finally, Hot Chip and The Beautiful South, separated by the length of last week's Stylus Singles Jukebox, were only one place apart, but it couldn't be a more crucial one as they ended up at 40 and 41 respectively.

Sunday just coming: Gnarls Barkley look likely to get an eighth week at number one - first time since "Love Is All Around"! Christina Milian is climbing to be the closest challenger, followed by Busta Rhymes and Orson also in the top 20. Lower down there's the oh-so-eagerly awaited return of Sunblock, as well as Angels And Airwaves, Towers Of London who sadly haven't fucked off after all, The Sunshine Underground and rather surprising download-only entries for Primal Scream and Nerina Pallot (downloads really must be taking over). Plus a worrying downloads only entry for Sandi Thom, who somehow manages the feat of making Towers Of London not the worst act on this list.

Hard-Fi at Brixton Academy (14/05/06)

Professor Green (here acompanied by a DJ and a couple of other guys, one seemingly just for high notes, is signed to Mike Skinner's label, and includes a cover of When You Wasn't Famous (as well as one of So Sick) in his set. All the signs are that he is really, really bad, but the appalling sound that a first support act at Brixton's cavern gets makes it impossible to even be certain of that - his set is a near-constant bassy boom with absolutely unintelligable rapping bearly even audible over it and not much else going on.




Billy Bragg gets round this by playing with only an electric guitar, of course, and plays a set which is hugely impressive, constantly passionate and amusing throughout. Non-musical highlights inluding a distraught recounting of West Ham's FA Cup final woes and an apoplectic denouncing of the BNP's success in his home town. I have to admit to not being familiar enough with his stuff to name musical highlights, besides a surprsingly near full crowd singalong to A New England to finish, but there are plenty and a (rather clever) special discounted version of his greatest hits being leafleted certainly looks tempting.
The only downside is someone repeatedly shouting "Fuck off!" between songs, at one point even following this with a superhumanly moronic "We haven't come here to see you!". It would be easy to place them as a BNP supporter or similar but they don't even respond to the relevant parts of the set so maybe they just genuinely hate his music and are, erm, physically incapable of going out to the bar.

I rather expect to be underwhelmed by Hard-Fi - thanks to my girlfriend being a massive fan I have seen them a lot more times in the past 12 months than I would have chosen to myself and they have certainly not improved each time - but am actually very pleasantly surprised. Playing the first of an astonishing 5 nights here but after most of a UK tour, Richard Archer's voice is no stronger than ever but is carefully controlled, rather than stretched and made to fail completely by halfway through the set as previously seemed to be the norm, and only new songs suffer as a result, although "You And Me" is rather too close to "Gotta Reason" for comfort anyway.
Helped no end by a crowd who enthusiastically shout along to nearly everything (though are far from the drunken mob that might be expected, maybe it's just because it's a Sunday), the singles from Stars of CCTV and a few others that somehow actually haven't been released yet are blasted with energy and a new musical ability. They have even finally dropped their rambling, overfamiliar cover of "Seven Nation Army" in favour of a decent one of Big Audio Dynamite's "E=MC²", and never suffer more than a little from playing such a large venue with only one album's worth of material to call on. The fact that their popularity has grown so fast that they could easily be playing somewhere far bigger by now might have something to do with it, but so does the fact that there is not a single weak link bar the new songs, with even the awkward-on-record "Move On Now" shining in the encore, played solo by Archer with appropriately more than a hint of Billy Bragg about it.