A. Crusher’s SoundCloud.

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Boardwalk’s SoundCloud.

The post On the Horizon: Underneath the Beach House, Boardwalk. appeared first on Dots & Dashes.

This was always going to be a tough crowd, or perhaps it would’ve been were there much of one: it’s an instore first and foremost, and it’s a disparagingly overcast, thus generally dreary Tuesday afternoon of a distinctly monochromic June. And as such, the show instantly assumes a disquietingly self-conscious tone which, all the more intriguingly, seems to transcend the resolutely focal Pitts to infect his fellow band members.

All of which contributes to a truly perplexing atmosphere which is only exacerbated by the initially scant turnout (as Surfer Blood grow in confidence, admittedly their audience discernibly swells accordingly); the meek and continual stream of effusive thanks; the dreaded instore effect. It’s to be expected, and yet it remains unprecedentedly odd. I mean they air nine songs – some old; others lifted from their newly released sophomore effort, Pythons – and Pitts must exhaustingly utter the immortally mawkish: “Thank you all for coming” idiom after each and every last one. It’s articulated with exponentially increasing relief though whether that be due to the fact that the songs themselves bring an if not irrevocable, then incontrovertible sense of redemption, or purely because the show steadily approaches its conclusion with the expiration of each remains unclear.

Though to revert to the music, as the Floridians doubtless wish we all would a little more readily these days, even Astrocoast opener Floating Vibes has a defeatist timbre to it. “When you wake up in the morning, and you hear that awful applause” Pitts grimaces and you sense that it’s precisely this which he’s now fully anticipating at their every gig. It’s thereby rendered that bit more bittersweet and indeed wistful than ever before, but it’s when they deign to risk considerably more recent material that proceedings turn slightly more fraught still.

The inherently indolent Prom Song, during the chorus of which Pitts repeatedly sneers: “I just can’t be bothered”, makes for a pretty tricky listen. “You tell me things aren’t fair/ Like I was unaware/ So who told you, you could change your mind/ And run back when the stars aligned” he begins again confusingly, his in many respects naïve words provoking a self-explanatorily uncomfortable reaction. Though musically too, snaky pieces from Pythons wriggle around us awkwardly: Gravity resonates with the gleeful agelessness of Weezer, inclusive of dual geetar solo shtick, and so too the lackadaisical Slow Six perceptibly recalls My Name Is Jonas while Demon Dance positively shimmies to the tune of The World Has Turned And Left Me Here. But it’s thus an unmistakable power-pop derivative for the most part, and with it being so brand new and the band still jet lagged, there’s the odd banana-skinned slip-up here and there, too.

However it’s when they themselves slip into their more weatherbeaten numbers that Pitts et al. win us back on over: most notably Twin Peaks, an ode to the serial drama’s two complementary originators, has gathered gusto since last heard like, well, a bit like a wave of adulation, really. It’s the lynchpin of the evening – that which holds the show together, and again reels us in. Indeed positively effervescent, the same can be said of Swim. They’ll doubtless themselves be thankful to have reached the end, and the dramas will doubtless dwindle to a trickle of insignificance with the ebbing of time. But for the time being, they’d best roll with the proverbials as they do so valiantly this evening…

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Azure Maya’s SoundCloud.

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But it’s not only sonically that the innately lustful Do I Wanna Know? harks back to blinding days of yore, for as Yorkshire twangs abound so too do slips of the tongue as Turner dips his into a distinctly northern vernacular. “Have you got colour in your cheeks?/ D’you ever get that feel that you can’t shift the tide that sticks around like summat in your teeth?” he begins, his words undulating idiosyncratically about his and Jamie Cook’s humid duelling guitar lines before he goes on to implore his quarry “simmer down and pucker up.” Quite what the Norsemen will have thought of such forthright libidinous flagrance I’m unsure, provided the general gist was then even grasped, but this one ought to really alight Glastonbury in nine days’ time. For it’s a risky bizness, this music malarkey but as Turner poses forever inquisitive: “Have you got the guts?” it again appears that they’re only too content to take a chance and whereas the commensurately curious R U Mine? proved a tad dreary, the four Yorkshiremen have been fully vindicated this time around…

Arctic Monkeys headline Friday of this year’s Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts.

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BEΔCH HEΔRT’s SoundCloud.

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Frida Sundemo’s SoundCloud.

The post “I Could Stay Here for A Million Years”, Frida Sundemo. appeared first on Dots & Dashes.

It’s a peacock of an album – a strutting, puff-chested brute of a thing that his Godliness has deigned to bestow upon his adoring public. His own effusive arrogance – one bordering on self-parody, which continually threatens to eclipse him all but entirely – permeates to the extent whereby West could have quite conceivably called it Self-confidence Issues. Highlights are numerous, however: Black Skinhead with its flagrant ripping off of The Timelords’ Doctorin’ The Tardis, all of which is bizarrely set to soundtrack Leonardo DiCaprio’s forthcoming party stockbroker flick The Wolf of Wall Street; The Waterboy-referencing New Slaves; his contemptuous commanding of his devout minions on I Am A God, and the grotesque pseudo-love letter that is I’m In It. These tracks are harsh, abrasive and above all brash – they’ve not been tailored to anybody else’s specifications, and not once has he seemingly pandered to other people nor to their expectations. In a very literal sense of the word, this is thus a selfish record compiled for purely egotistical motive: made by him for him, it so too replaces West on his Messianic pedestal – one which is, once again, all of his own manufacturing. And it’s this in a bewildering way endearing arrogance which makes Yeezus really work…

But in addition it is a record that, with repeated listens, only becomes increasingly entertaining: in the same way that the nine-year-old me delighted in Eminem’s potty-mouthed ditties, Kanye’s ludicrous lyricisms (the now ubiquitous “Hurry up with my damn croissants!” from I Am A God) and self-aggrandising persona – verisimilar, or otherwise – keep me recurrently coming back for more. Yeezus is thus the musical equivalent of a Big Mac meal gone large with an extra cheeseburger chucked in for added gut-busting irresistibility: you know it’ll do you no good, and it has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever but after a couple sucks, you’ll be feeling the need to gorge on it forevermore.

Yet make no mistake: this is an absurd record. Sampling Billie Holiday’s civil rights anthem Strange Fruit as is on Blood On The Leaves, the Nina Simone version here heavily contorted and raggedly interpolated in amongst raps concerning Instagram and “all that cocaine on the table”, is vivid testament to that. Though this isn’t exactly an album to be taken at face value, nor perhaps even one to be taken seriously and hence its greatest success resides in its offering of an insight into the self-obsessed mindset of a man of Kanye West’s stature. Much like people delight in the schadenfreude of televised meltdown (Kerry Katona, I’m looking at you) or in speeding through car-crash Twitter feeds (Amanda Bynes, anyone?), Yeezus gives us a fleeting glimpse into the deluded, and at times seemingly demented brain of its composer. Somewhat fittingly therefore Kanye, instead of maturing in time for the release of his sixth solo effort and the leak of his first child, has produced an album that’s both as bratty and so too petulant as would be rightly expected of a newborn. One to keep his mortal acolytes awake at night then, Yeezus proves a consummate triumph of transcendent delirium.

Released: June 24th, 2013 [Virgin Records]

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Caveman’s SoundCloud.

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Ang Low’s SoundCloud.

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