Commafruit

Gig last Sunday at Manchester Academy.

Sonic Boom Six opened promptly with an energetic set. I wasn’t familiar with their music before, but being a local band they received plenty of good feedback from the crowd. Taking elements from punk/ska, but also in places rapping like House of Pain or a far-more-aggressive Massive Attack. Definitely to be checked out.

Next, Streetlight Manifesto provided some high-quality (if slightly generic) ska/punk. I got the impression afterwards that these were expected to deliver more (they’d been hyped up to me no end), but they just struck me as a competent ska outfit.

Finally, Reel Big Fish took the stage. Opening with Sell Out, the crowd were immediately responsive, though the band came off as incredibly tame to begin with, especially compared to SB6. Later, SB6’s lead (female) vocalist Laila Khan returned to sing on She Has A Girlfriend Now, much to everyone’s delight.

I’ve been waiting a long time to see RBF live, and they didn’t disappoint. For the second time in a week, I was also reminded of what a great punk crowd there is in Manchester – the previous week’s Bomb Ibiza was also a great success.

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The Reindeer Section are a Scottish supergroup made up of members of several notable indie bands (Snow Patrol, Idlewild, Mull Historical Society, others), and, they’re brilliant. Essentially taking the best* elements from each of the component bands, the style is erie in that it’s so familiar (if you know the separate bands), but you haven’t heard it performed quite like this before. Hugely recommended for anyone looking back at the British indie scene so far this decade.

* read: my favourite

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Brilliant gig at the dive-of-Peterborough, The Metropolis Lounge. The Hedrons are an all-girl punk(ish) band from Glasgow, who kicked up a storm last night – best gig I’ve been to in Peterborough by some way. Also the first time I’ve moshed since I moved here – good grief I miss Manchester. I bought a copy of the album (due for release 5th Feb) while I was there, will post a review soon.

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An 8-track EP, though it features both the singles released from Through the Windowpane (“Trains to Brazil” and “Made-Up Lovesong #43″), the Guillemots debut (and current) album.

Catchy, bright music – not necessarily the sort of thing you’ll be humming for weeks after the first listen*, but that’s shouldn’t detract from the enjoyment, the songs are extremely attention-grabbing – and seem to have the ability to make you smile. This is possibly due to them being markedly different from most music out there today, From The Cliffs is tough to classify, and stands apart from almost everything.

* well, I wasn’t anyway

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Such delicate, precious music… sounds like something from a more innocent age (before I was born at least), it’s hard to believe that Wilco’s label actually rejected this album! (See Wikipedia for an article on the controversy.)
This is moving, uplifting, just listening to tracks like “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” and “War on War” makes me feel warmer somehow. This album was released in 2002, it’s almost annoying to think that I wasn’t aware of it for so long.

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As a loyal user of Last.fm, I love checking on my charts as they change, and have been surprised to learn what it is that I listen to most (NOFX^{w | Last} apparently – maybe not such a surprise). They’ve had a lot of downtime the last couple of months, with chart updates being highly sporadic (as a result of which I was given a free month’s subscription last month; more on subscriptions later), and though I’ve enjoyed the service I’ve received and waited patiently, a glance at the forums reveals that a huge number of users have been thoughtless, rude, and impatient with the staff. This is really disappointing, and must be even more so for the staff and forum moderators who work on the site.

For those who haven’t heard of the service, you install a plugin to your regular media player, then whenever you play a properly tagged audio track, the data is submitted to Last.fm, who collate the information and produce charts of your listening habits. These charts simply hadn’t been updating correctly, but promises of upgrades and service improvements seem to have done little to placate many users.

I’ve thought often of upgrading to the subscription service offered by Last.fm, but never seem to do so, largely because the benefits just aren’t worth it. If for the same price I was getting what I have now, plus the benefits of the subscription, I would consider it more strongly, but since the free service is so good, it is not worth the expense (trivial though it may seem, at £1.50/month). The company are perhaps a victim of their own success in this respect. I’ll probably pay for a couple of months once this current (gratis) subscription expires.

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Apart from the old Katie Melua album (Call Off The Search)*, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks listening to Waterloo to Anywhere by ex-Libertines frontman Carl Barát’s new band, Dirty Pretty Things.
I’m not going to say that the album is the best thing ever, but it’s highly competent indie-rock, and it’s been worth my attention over the last couple of weeks.

Beyond a certain point however, the quality isn’t that important, I’m just glad the album is as (nearly) as good as the Libertines were, because it means that Pete Doherty wasn’t really the only creative talent in that band. (It’s hard to deny Doherty’s new band, “Babyshambles”, aren’t great.) If you’re not sure who these people are or why I (and others) support Barát, you could do worse than read this wikipedia section. Picking up a copy of the Libertines’ first album, Up The Bracket is highly recommended as well.

* Wow what a stunning voice. A recent single, Nine Million Bicycles is similarly incredible, so it may be that I end up buying the new album…

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