Broken Family Band

Any one for "14 tracks of spite, bitterness and empty-hearted loathing"? That’s how The Broken Family band describe their new album "Hello Love."

Fortunately there’s a lot more to the band and their music than their tongue in cheek critique implies.

What you get is a band from Cambridge using Alt Country and Folk tricks mixed with American guitar bands and clever lyrics that understand the rules of Pop. They’re working in different fields but, like The Beta Band, you also get a sense that the unexpected is just around the corner.

They’ve also managed to do this while still holding down day jobs, working tours around annual leave. In a really entertaining piece in the Guardian recently singer Steven Adams made an excellent case for it.

He’d played in struggling bands for years, spending the days watching TV in his pants, before concluding "It's pretty easy to be in a band and have a job.

"You go to work in the daytime and you play shows in the evenings and on weekends. If we all agreed to take a pay cut (from our existing salaries) and to "do" the Broken Family Band full time for a year, we would require a one-off tax-free payment of £250,000. That's twenty-five grand each, per year, for two years (one year to "do" the band, one year to sit on our arses moaning about how we could have made it, and £50,000 for the pot). Anyone want to offer that? We have assumed not, so doing it this way makes sense to us. Two of our number have mortgages, one has a family to support, and one has an expensive trainer habit. So we've kept our jobs"

Giving up the day job or signing off is one of the foundations of the Rock n Roll world but think of the possibilities if you had to keep your old job, even after you’d cracked it as Rock ‘n’ Roll fabulous.

There’s the very real risk of being taught by Sting, being sold an ice cream by The Stranglers Jet Black or getting your hair cut by Kevin Rowland or Charlie Harper. Keanu Reeves would have to struggle on as a struggling actor.

And what about Bez? Forever cursed to wander the twilight between the worlds of work and Rock n Roll as one of the maraca shaking Undead.

Broken Family Band's current album "Hello Love" opens with "Leaps". It’s a saucy coupling of The Violent Femmes and Magic Numbers. It could be the most blatant celebration of afternoon delight since....Afternoon Delight.

"I love the way that it hides and it leaps out at you and it leaps out at me in the afternoon". The song fades out on a fuzz of discordant guitar, just before falling asleep with the afternoons intended tasks still undone.

The single "Love Your Man Love Your Woman" manages to get that deep ringing sound, like the bom bom bom rhythm of Mr Blue Sky, with the guitar, bass and drums hammering out the same note.

It’s a Grinderman type bastard blues howl and as Steve Adams sings "You need trees and flowers and someone to hold you when you want to be held" his vocals make the change, but the relentless (Nick) Caveman hammering behind him doesn’t follow the progression.

Eventually they do and use up those final 2 chords. Oooh, but they make you wait. It’s primitive and clever and there’s a scouring guitar solo that could contribute to coastal erosion.

Steven Adams vocals have a reedy Gram Parsons twang (obviously that’s a good thing) on "So Many Lovers" while on "Don’t Change Your Mind" he offers practical advice "You can’t always sleep naked knowing you have to run for the bathroom."

Well you’ve either got to wear PJ’s or else it’s cup and run. Might be one for the message boards.

My favourite track though is the wistful and jauntily sour "Give And Take" - "I’m sure she’s found a person/ to give her some attention/ and if I ever do meet him/there are things that I should mention/She will take your heart and crush it/and maybe you two should discuss it".

There’s an odd rhythm to the words but he fits the words round the melody so they sound absolutely right. With the female backing vocals from Jen Maro and the general guitar thrummery it feels like Leonard Cohen’s "The Partisan" meets Bill Callahan. It ends with a really effective reverbed trumpet part.

Closing track "Seven Sisters" goes from Will Oldham fragile hesitancy to a punkathon ending complete with that Johnny Greenwood (from Radiohead) style trick of squeezing needling, mosquito sounds from his guitar and Adams repeated distorted "Hello Love" bellowed refrain.

For a band whose original intention was to play a few gigs at their local and make an album they’re managed to squeeze out four full length albums and a 2 mini albums since 2002 including the impeccably titled "The King Will Build A Disco."

Their website is a treat www.brokenfamilyband.com because it actually captures something of the spirit of the band, sarky and funny and with an awareness of how they fit in (or don’t).

Triumphant gigs are described as "Smashed it" and I’m sorry to have missed two of their gigs in 2002.

"We were inappropriate but ultimately victorious at St. Luke's Primary School PTA Barbeque. It was great. Brian Penny's 59th birthday party was excellent, especially the hot pies, campsite, disco, bar area and eyebrows. Our happy future as a function band is secure"

Kaiser Chiefs

You can go a long way with a great song title or a nifty lyric and even further if the quality of the musical goods backs it up. Kaiser Chiefs have surfed on waves of goodwill partly due to the worth of their words.

I would have liked "I Predict A Riot" for it's title alone and there are probably Academics already researching the magnificence of new album title "Yours Truly Angry Mob."

Even at the time, their rise to Indie Stadium status did seem rapid.

The phrase "I Predict A Riot" had started to crop up as e mail sign offs and in knowing conversations and then at a 5 year old's birthday party in 2005 Punk Rock Builder Dad leaned over to me to recommend the just released debut album "Employment" (A note to Record Company execs. Forget MTV…Children's birthday parties is the way to do it.)

And the rest of course is history; Brit Award scooping, Glastonbury triumphing, "Ruby" at number 1, being covered by Lilly Allen and Girls Aloud, scooting off to America with the usual mutterings of "Could this be the British band to crack America?"

They've also had the benefit of being called "A bad Blur" by Liam Gallagher.

Actually that's not unusual as poor Liam is like the dazed Japanese soldier who's just staggered out of the jungle unable to accept that the Blur/Oasis war is over. He sees Blur in anything from the postman to the toaster.

There is a thick seam of Brit Pop running through their music but it's as much XTC as Blur. Stephen Street produced both of the Kaiser's albums, and even if he wasn't the architect of Britpop, he was certainly the builders merchant, with his Blur and Morrissey production jobs.

The key to the Kaiser Chiefs current success though is their lack of success in their previous incarnation Parva. They've realised this is the last chance of a bite at the pop pie, so they're willing to put the work in, and elbow their way to the front of the queue.

When they reconvened as the Kaiser Chiefs in 2003, they ditched all the old material and purposefully went all out for entertainment and big catchy choruses.

And these choruses are clearly signposted with plenty of spaces for oooohh aaahhhhhhGGGH! (Or other appropriate vocal signage).

You know the chorus is on it's way and you know you'll probably get flattened.

Never mind the Kaiser Chiefs, some of these choruses charge over the hills like the combined forces of Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, relentless and irresistible. Bad news for Custer. Good news for the customer.

There are some clever words and some of them may well feature in a song like Na Na Na Na Naa, but the simplicity of the chorus means you can save mental energy for dancing and singing along. Commercial genius!

The other trick they use on tracks like I Predict A Riot or current single Everything Is Average Nowadays is to have long single note guitar lines; picking out the melody lines like 6 string rumble strips...to make absolutely sure your attention doesn't wander.

Ricky Wilson described his stage moves as being like a “Lithe Indie Ninja”. His stage persona of big waves, pogoing and crowd surfing where he likes to “Get out in the audience and see what they smell like” is plenty entertaining.

Especially from an Eddie Izzard look-alike in pub lunch office worker short sleeve shirt and tie combo.

The rhythm section have also done a trolley dash round the charisma department....witness big haired bassist Simon Rix and drummer Nick Hodgson.

Hodgson sings “Boxing Champ” from the second album which is a deliberately slight, piano and vocal affair with the excellent line “You were a boxing champ and I was a weakling. You didn't give me a chance, you gave me a beating.”

It's all a bit camp...and even better for the fact that Hodgson looks like the singer from Showaddywaddy who (warning....the following information is pub based research!) would only ever allow himself to be photographed sideways on....to let everyone see the full profile of the pipe in his drainpipes.

First album “Employment” has quite a range of styles from the powerhouse pogo chorus of “Oh My God” and the line “I've seen more blood than a back street dentist” to “You Can Have It All” which is pastoral XTC meets Duran Duran synths.

“Saturday Night” has the choice line “We are birds of a feather and you can be the fat one.” Musically it's Pop Scene era Blur and the revving motorcycle is apparently Graham Coxon's.

The second album “Yours Truly Angry Mob” released earlier this year, is the better of the two.

The intro to “Ruby” is one of the best of the year. It's a statement of intent. You just know this song is going somewhere and you're going to like it.

“The Angry Mob” starts off as “Modern Life Is Rubbish” era Blur meeting the overhanging guitars of “The Queen Is Dead” by The Smiths and changes gear halfway through for the coda “We are the angry mob, we like who we like, we hate who we hate”

There's also a bit of a Julian Cope feel to tracks like “I Can Do It Without You (But It Wouldn't Be Very Good)” and “Love's Not A Competition (But I'm Winning)”. Nice bracket work Ricky! I do like his line in "My Kind Of Guy" - "You're My Kind Of Guy Cos I Like Your Style And You Sound As Horrible As Me"

The best line of all though crops up on the albums best song. “Highroyds” is another of Wilson's despatches from the frontline of the teenage sidelines. Drinking and not getting into either clubs or girls. “I got a text from my ex. She wants to know when we're in London next” is Bolanesque genius

At their Glastonbury appearance 2 years ago they had the air of a band who knew their time had come. This year, Wilson's Indie Stadium theatrics and gestures didn't need balancing with irony. Their time was coming again.

The band never wanted small indie cosiness or to be smug and skint. So it's the full on tour of the UK's enormo sheds. They're not new, but they have got big.....and they are quite clever

Badly Drawn Boy

You could describe Damon Gough AKA Badly Drawn Boy as a woolly faced, woolly-hatted Manc guitar strummer. But you could also describe him as a singer who manages to walk that fine line between sentimentality and whimsical humour, between easy pop and wilful awkwardness.

Pop Music is a difficult and dangerous business, (although Test Pilots and North Sea Divers may disagree) and songs can go disastrously wrong. For the aspiring singer songwriter, James Blunt is always round the corner.

Badly Drawn Boy’s live shows were once famously chaotic, with well written, rehearsed songs often losing out to half written fragments that he’d knocked together in the soundcheck, acoustic strolls through the audience, extended monologues, story telling and impromptu knock about covers.

After a series of hard to find e.p.’s his first album The Hour Of Bewilderbeast won the Mercury music prize in 2000. It goes from the Nick Drake, acoustic pickings and orchestral flourishes of tracks like The Shining or Stone On The Water to the shambling Fall sound of Everybody’s Stalking. (Mark E Smith once mistook Gough’s car for a taxi and jumped in demanding to be taken home...and Gough obliged. Don’t know much he usually paid. However Gough later co wrote and appeared on Fall b side Calendar).

Another Pearl has an intro riff that sounds like Cornershop’s Brimful Of Asha while This Song includes the lyrics “This song will heal your soul/Rest by this song and the peace that it brings/This beautiful song has wings.” Perversely, though, the stereo effect switches from speaker to speaker so rapidly and is so disorientating that it is actually unlistenable. And there we go – that’s the Badly Drawn Boy conundrum. Just as he’s created something lovely, he’s scared of the result and decides to mess with our heads instead.

He wrote the soundtrack for About A Boy, which works really well, and it’s key song Silent Sigh manages to be both melancholic and uplifting at the same time. (You’d also want to describe it as haunting but there is a strict quota on combining the words”haunting” and “melancholic”. It’s a bit like the Hay diet.

What Silent Sigh does have though is a really good example of why Gough’s vocals work so well. He never over sings, his voice is warm and conversational, it strains a little as he steps up with the melody but he is definitely not Mariah Carey in a hat. Glad we’ve settled that!

While Bewilderbeast is still seen as his defining work, I actually prefer Have You Fed the Fish from 2002, for the simple reason that that the songs are better. It’s not as eclectic and there’s less deliberate awkwardness (still enough to keep an edge, mind), but like I said - the songs are better.

Gough is a self confessed Springsteen nut, and was playing Thunder Road at early gigs. The opening moments of Have You Fed The Fish’s title track is the closest he’d come so far to the boss Sound of The Boss. Except that Bruce would never sing “I need a new eiderdown, I want some binoculars”. Odds are he also wouldn’t sing “I’ve killed all the mockingbirds, I’ve wrestled the octopus, I came out with extra arms, to carry your baggage”.

The Further I slide has got the rhythm of Sexual Healing, whilst Using Our Feet has got the sinuous stretchiness of Got To Give It Up. It’s mind boggling to think of Badly Drawn Boy morphing into Marvin Gaye’s bedroom soul. Bet he keeps his hat on!

Best track though is You Were Right, it’s straight ahead pop. Nothing straightforward about the domestic nightmare of a dream he had though. “I was married to the Queen, And Madonna lived next door, I think she took a shine to me, And the kids were all grown up, But I had to turn her down, ‘cos I was still in love with you”.

The song is supremely catchy, but thankfully he still can’t shake that awkward spirit though. There is a clumsy rhythmic hiccup where the guitars and drums sound like they’re falling over each other. Well they may have done the first time, but he’s kept it in and kept playing it the same way for subsequent years.

All Possibilities has been used in an advert for Comet. Hopefully he made some money out of it because in the video for the single itself he spent 90 minutes busking outside Waterloo Station for the grand sum of £1.60.

2004’s album One Plus One Is One is a lower key return to folky Nick Drake guitar pickings. And flutes ahoy! The sleeve notes include refer to the death of his grandfather in WW2 and the sudden death of a close friend The latest album Born In The UK has had the promotional might of EMI behind it, including free chipforks given away with the single and a tour that included 3 gigs in chip shops.

The actual song Born In The UK is 30 years of recent British history. “You wanna be a rebel then turn your hose pipe on/With two years to wait for the sound of Jilted John.”

Born In The UK

If the title track is the punslinger's nod to Bruce Springsteen there is more of Bruce’s influence on Welcome To The Underground and also on Journey From A To B. The Way Things Used To Be is country tinged and Long Way Round has a keyboard and trumpet sounds that recalls The Pale Fountains.

It’s all good stuff though and well worth a look at the Mac next month. You might see him in a chippie afterwards, or some other scruffy bloke singing.

The Stills - Destroyer

It starts with an electric piano, and Hammond riff, two of my favourite sounds in Pop, so I'm instantly doubly hooked.

The song itself is one those American Alt rock sound meets late period James (eg “Laid”). Big and warm sounding with a bit of a feel of “You're So Good To Me” by the Beach Boys and it's got great big parping slabs of burbling brass.

So that's pretty much everything I'd look for in a record.

You've got to worry about the keyboard players beard though...that kind of hairy chin shelf was last seen on a character living in Greendale and having letters delivered by Postman Pat.

Destroyer video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Y448s3fus

I like the fact that the record is called “Destroyer” and doesn't actually have the word "destroyer" in the song.

You can't beat using album titles by Kiss...especially when you are a bunch of pullover rocking Montreal art students. And I would count Kiss as one of my favourite bands, despite and also because of the fact that I never listen to them and have no interest in their music.

I just like the idea of the whole ludicrous thing they created. Revolving drum kits, rocket launching guitars, the merchandising…Gene Simmons. And who wouldn't want to be buried in a Kiss coffin?

I really like the sound of the Stills single and the way that singer Dave Hamelim has a good drawling delivery that manages to be both clear and earnest. And it does remind me of Tim Booth. But dear, oh dear... the lyrics.

"I will destroy you, Your soul impedes on mine, let go my free will, I can't stand compromise.....And the arrows are pointed and the archers delighted, the thrill the smell, The shit I've been put through.....I'm coming to your town "

Now there's always room in pop for a good vengeance song but I don't think The Stills lyrics have delivered.

Not only are they competing against the entire works of Nick Cave (either his vengeance or someone else's) or Morrissey's grumblings but there is also the absolute daddy of all song titles which pretty much explains the situation in real time. Just in the title alone!

I give you Melvin Van Peebles epic from the soundtrack of Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song (generally reckoned to be the first Blaxploitation film, the film also has a running time shorter than the song title I'm talking about).

Get ready, deep breath.... and... “The Man Tries Running His Usual Game but Sweetback Jones Is So Strong He Wastes the Hounds (Yeah! Yeah! And Besides That He Will Be Comin' Back Takin' Names And Collecting Dues)”.

But back to The Stills...”Destroyer” is a terrific song but sadly it's streets ahead of anything else on their just released second album, “Without Feathers”. The rest of the album is a bit pedestrian, and never really goes anywhere.

I'm still intrigued by their story though.

They formed in 2000 in Montreal. The first album “Logic Will Break Your Heart” came out in 2003 and they toured with the likes of Interpol and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

They certainly had that Joy Division, Bunnymen sound that the likes of Interpol and The Editors have been reviving. But then founder member and singer Greg Parquet left the band to go back University to finish his degree.

In a full and frank interview bassist Olivier Corbeil has said "For us, we were heading in a different direction for the record, I think Greg kind of felt like leaving. Not that we wanted him to leave, but we kind of felt that it wasn't a bad idea either.

“It wasn't a big deal. We hung out, had some beers, and he said, 'Yeah, I think I'm going to go finish this.' And I was like, 'Ah, that's cool' ". Beans comprehensively spilt!

So that's the singer and songwriter leaving after releasing a well received debut. Hmm. That can present a problem. So drummer Dave Hamelim steps forward.

Now this should be about as welcome as Phil Collins telling the rest of Genesis "Go on, lads I'll have a go" or indeed the (possibly apocryphal) homemade by Elvis porn movie where Elvis gets tired of filming and steps out from behind the camera to join in. A shaky leg indeed.

With Hamelim upfront on vocals and guitar, the band's sound changed from an English Post Punk to American Rock sound, closer to bands like Soul Asylum.

Although the album “Without Feathers” was originally released in the States last year, it's only just been released over here on Drowned In Sound. (Their site http://www.drownedinsound.com is always worth a look for new bands, reviews and scabrous comment) and they supported Kings Of Leon on their UK tour earlier this year.

Whether the radical change in style will pay off for the band though is debateable because there does seem to be a bit of a scramble for bands trying to nail that Joy Division Post Punk sound.

I proved this scientifically by watching the Glastonbury coverage this weekend, (from my sofa, getting into the spirit of the event by wearing wellies, avoiding the toilets and undercooking and overcharging myself for a veggie burger).

The Editors were paying their debts to Joy Division, and Bloc Party were doing their Joy Divison/Cure cut and shunt job.

When The Killers did their adventurous cover of Shadowplay. I was tickled by the way that the guitarist was punching the air. You wouldn't see Peter Hook doing that... unless there was actually someone in that particular airspace.

Hayseed Dixie

We're not scared of gimmicks and novelties are we? It's better if the music comes first but you've got to warm to a band who have at least made the effort to come up with a good story. I don't fear the gimmick. I embrace the novelty and cop a sly feel of the one hit wonder. So how about Hayseed Dixie?

A bunch of hillbillies playing speeded up Bluegrass covers of AC/DC songs? I'll have some of that. According to their own story (which I'm buying into completely) it all started when stranger's car crashed near their isolated Tennessee valley home of Deer Lick Holler. On the back seat they found some AC/DC records, but they could only play them on their old 78 record player. "The boys all agreed it was some mighty fine country music. So, in memory of the stranger who had perished the boys set about learning these songs." Now anyone who doesn't believe that story will also have doubts about the sibling nature of The Ramones and may wonder why one of The Corrs just seemed slightly less attractive than the other pouting poppets.

Hayseed Dixie followed up the AC/DC album with rollicking live shows and the albums Kiss My Grass (a Kiss tribute), A Hot Piece Of Grass, Let There Be Rockgrass and the new album Weapons of Grass Destruction. The later albums have a mixture of classic rock and Punk covers, with a couple of originals thrown in. eg their own sensitive song about dealing with loss…I'm Keeping Your Poop In A Jar.

They play "Songs that are fun to play while drinking beer and are hopefully fun to listen to while drinking beer." The playing is phenomenal though. Drummerless, but stonking honky tonkin' with frantic mandolin, fiddle and banjo, dungarees, scary mullets and ponytails. And vocals that go from a yodelling yelp to a thick lascivious gurgle.

There are some people who think that AC/DC is schoolboy smut played by trolls. Some people think that Big Balls (elaborate well attended social occasions, with dancing), Lets Get It Up (possibly not about raising the Titanic), Sink The Pink (snooker?) are double entendres. These people have taken it the wrong way.

Hayseed Dixie think that AC/DC songs are about drinking, cheating, killing and hell. Which does indeed make for mighty fine country music. Frontman Barley Scotch reckons that the Lost Highway that Hank Williams sang about and AC/DC's Highway To Hell "Were the same damn road…They were singing about the same stuff, from the perspective of a working class guy who's reserving his right to fight the man and raise some hell." He also said that "I'm not trying to advocate alcohol…but I love beer." But later on in an interview with The Guardian it turns out that Barley Scotch is actually John Wheeler who runs a recording studio in Nashville and has a PhD. I still want to believe that his bandmates Reverend Don Wayne Reno and Deacon Dale Reno are trading under their real names though

On the dixified Highway To Hell you can hear all the little country and bluegrass tricks that the Stones and Gram Parsons used, played at berserker speed but still obviously both AC/DC and Bluegrass. It's great to hear him sing, "Hey Satan paid my dues singin' in this bluegrass band."

It's hard to top the way that Brian Johnson wails the line "Yeah you" on the original version of You Shook Me All Night Long, but Barley Scotches delivers the line "Knockin' me out with them American thighs" with the ripe country fruitiness and overstuffed contentment of a good ol boy that finds he's not just at Tractor Pull but there's a Hog Roast too! It's a sound that Brian would find hard to match, but Brian also finds it difficult to stand with his legs any less than 3 feet apart.

The new album features covers of the Scissor Sisters I Don't Feel Like Dancing, a countrified Holidays In The Sun and Judas Priest's Breakin' The Law.

Hayseed Dixie are a great idea for a band and they play like demons. Just have a look at their version of Motorhead's Ace Of Spades http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJUywl7CFw


They're not only ones to tackle AC/DC's back catalogue though. If Bluegrass AC/DC is unlikely, then how about Folky AC/DC? The first solo album from Mark Kozelek (from sensitive 4AD types Red House Painters) included 3 AC/DC songs recorded as folky acoustic interpretations. They worked so well he recorded an album full with it's follow up What's Next To The Moon. His version of Love At First Feel takes AC/DC's slashing strutting boogie, puts it's trousers back on and gives it a haunted, regretful quality. It's a contrast to when Bon Scott sings, "They told me it was disgusting, they told me it was a sin" because you know that Bon wouldn't want it any way but sinful and disgusting. There's a Kozelek sample at
http://www.badmanrecordingco.com/bands/default.aspx#11

In fact to square the whole folk/metal circle, Kozelek's version of Love At First Feel actually ends up sounding like That's The Way from Led Zep3, but obviously with less elves. AC/DC never wrote about elves. They were too busy writing about drinking, shagging and Rocking. And they did do a lot of Rocking

Richard Hawley

When the Arctic Monkeys received their Mercury award with the words "Call the police, Richard Hawley's been robbed" it was a good natured nod to their Sheffield neighbour. It seemed that the world had almost caught up with Hawley's modern retro melancholia.

On that occasion he missed out on a cheque and something to prop behind the toilet door, but with his fourth album Coles Corner, he had delivered something new, in an old fashioned way....he'd also taken his time doing it.

I mean what is the likelihood of a 40 year old guitarist with greased back hair, specs and a hair lip making that move a few feet to the centre of the stage, from hired hand to star and then that big leap into our hearts?

"I could always hum along cleaning the pots. But after the Longpigs split I thought it was about time I stopped washing the pots and crack on with writing and recording".

He originally played guitar with Sheffield indie poppers Treebound Story and the more angsty LongPigs. When the latter disintegrated space was at a premium in Drink and Drugs hell.

Old friend Jarvis Cocker threw him a lifeline with his offer to play guitar for Pulp on their popularity squashing “This Is Hardcore” album. He spent the next six years working with Pulp and also Cocker's art/performance skeleton suit wearing side project, Relaxed Muscle.

He also played the guitar solo on All Saints version of “Under The Bridge”, wrote “Clean” for Robbie Williams but turned down further collaborations with him because he wouldn't have known what to do with the money. "I just didn't want to do it. It would have changed my life too much. Earning millions of pounds is not the reason I get up in the morning".

Hawley grew up in Pitsmoor, Sheffield where his dad was a steelworker who played in rock n roll bands. Hawley started playing guitar at 6 and was gigging with his dad and uncle as a teenager. Hawley's musical heroes are the likes of Link Wray and the original Sun artists, like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis...probably just like his dad.

Now I think there's something quite poetic and fitting about growing up in a Rock 'n' Roll household, having a youthful dalliance with indie pop and then hitting your musical prime as you approach your forties with music that draws heavily from your dad’s influence.

It's all in the Sidies....The sideburns you have at 40 are different to the ones of your 20's. Bushy grey truck driving monsters....none of your razored clubland cool, designer beers and bars...it's all tea and greasy spoon.

Which is fairly Rock 'n' roll when you consider that that the modern British mecca for Rock 'n' Roll is the original Rock 'n' Roll Mecca. The Ace Cafe with a car park full of oil leaking British bikes that dropped their engines in the road on the journey. Tellingly Hawley's 3rd album Lowedges has a classic BSA on the cover.

What Hawley has done with his music is to take a retro grown up, adult music, strip out any elements that don't work anymore, (there have been some very odd ideas about backing vocals and orchestrations that although they were ground breaking and maybe even necessary at the time, when you're given the choice, you wouldn't use again.) Richard Hawley had the choice and hasn't used them again.

Take for example Ray Charles “Modern Sounds In Country And Western”. As a link in the development of soul music and as a shake up to the country music establishment it's crucially important. But 45 years on, it can sound a bit syrupy to my ears.

Well Hawley has taken the style and sound of Roy Orbison, Sinatra or Johnny Cash and turned it into a very late night music. But without the cheese, despite the fact that he does call it cheesy old bloke music. The self deprecation is part of his charm.

He's an unabashed crooner and a shameless romantic and as the cd slides into the drawer, the hour seems to get later, the whisky bottle gets emptier and (depending on the song) the lover is either longer gone or closer to home.

And because this music is from the past if your TV's on in the corner, you'll find it's got less channels and your central heating has turned into a hissing gas fire.

Because Hawley is very muchin the wistful crooner tradition, you're not going to get the full highs and lows of the feelings behind the songs just from his vocals. It's just not part of the style.

That whole easy tradition that Hawley has drawn from, that Frank Sinatra, rinky dink and Martinis, showed pain without the wrenching Soul style pain of what Sam Moore from Sam and Dave called "The ugly face." The key to depth in Hawley's music is the arrangements rather than his vocals.

Hawley's arrangements are built on sparse echoing guitars, gentle sweeps from the lap steel and plenty of reverb. It's Twin Peaks soundtrack territory. Lowedges from 2003 is very much built on this sound with the likes of “Darlin'” with its Roy Orbison vocal style.

There are lots of songs about going away and coming back...exactly what the heartbroken crooner needs. “You Don't Miss Your Water (Till Your River Runs Dry)” has the line "Like A Thief In The Night, You Stole the love from my world... You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your River Runs Dry. You don't miss your lover till they're waving goodbye." And let's face it if you're never going to hear Roy Orbison sing those lines then Richard Hawley will do just fine.

“I'm On Nights” is a wonderful song built on a guitar that twangs like broken heartstrings. It feels like “I'd Rather Go Blind” which has been covered by Etta James, Clarence Carter (who was blind) and Rod Stewart (who was blonde, apparently) amongst many others.

Just the phrase itself "I'm On Nights" gives it an English feel despite the fact that he's crooning an American style song. "I'm on nights, we need the money" but in classic style he'll be coming back "Now it's time to lose your sorrow, I'm on days and off tomorrow."

While “Lowedges” mines the a rich but underplayed echoing guitar sound, “Coles Corner”from 2005 spans a wider range of styles.

“Coles Corner” refers to the popular meeting spot for lovers outside the Cole Brothers department store in Sheffield. Even though it was demolished in 1969, local people still refer to it and still arrange to meet there. The title track starts with an impossibly lovely sweep of strings as Hawley hopes that "Maybe there's someone waiting for me with a smile and a flower in her hair."

Actually he gets stood up, but the whole thing of singing about a place that no longer really exists, but is still a part of the city's emotional and social landscape and part of the soundtrack that's in his head definitely seems a very Richard Hawley thing to do.

“Darlin' Wait For Me.” Oh yes it's another darlin' song, another song about going away and coming back and another song where you can hear hints of Elvis. Thing is you can bet, Hawley can always hear Elvis.

“Tonight” is another song that seems rooted in Sheffield and while there may be other cities that have hills, to my ears the only thing that could make this song more Sheffield would be a line about Richard Hawley's beloved Henderson's Relish and the less loved Human League.

......"Oh tonight I got it really bad, Maybe I'll go out walking, Don't feel like staying home, Might take the car up to the hills and watch the city lights below."

“Wading Through The Waters Of My Time” is Johnny Cash style Country whilst on Woody Guthrie's “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet” the echo is on the vocal rather than the instrumentation.

It's sparse and haunting with a thick, muted sound from the barely brushed guitar. Closing track “Last Orders” was written in a taxi on the way to the studio and is more Twin Peaky atmospherics. Maybe if the journey had been longer it wouldn't have ended up as an instrumental. Nonetheless it's a clever contrast with the lushness of the opening title track.

“Coles Corner” is the critic’s choice but my tip is buy both and spend more time with “Lowedges”.

Richard Hawley

When the Arctic Monkeys received their Mercury award with the words "Call the police, Richard Hawley's been robbed" it was a good natured nod to their Sheffield neighbour. It seemed that the world had almost caught up with Hawley's modern retro melancholia. On that occasion he missed out on a cheque and something to prop behind the toilet door, but with his album 4 th Coles Corner, he had delivered something new, in an old fashioned way....he'd also taken his time doing it. I mean what is the likelihood of a 40 year old guitarist with greased back hair, specs and a hair lip making that move a few feet to the centre of the stage, from hired hand to star and then that big leap into our hearts?

"I could always hum along cleaning the pots. But after the Longpigs split I thought it was about time I stopped washing the pots and crack on with writing and recording"

He originally played guitar with Sheffield indie poppers Treebound Story and the more angsty LongPigs. When the latter disintegrated space was at a premium in Drink and Drugs hell. Old friend Jarvis Cocker threw him a lifeline with his offer to play guitar for Pulp on their popularity squashing This Is Hardcore album. He spent the next six years working with Pulp and also Cocker's art/performance skeleton suit wearing side project, Relaxed Muscle. He also played the guitar solo on All Saints version of Under The Bridge, wrote Clean for Robbie Williams but turned down further collaborations with him because he wouldn't have known what to do with the money. "I just didn't want to do it. It would have changed my life too much. Earning millions of pounds is not the reason I get up in the morning"

Hawley grew up in Pitsmoor Sheffield where his dad was a steelworker who played in rock n roll bands. Hawley started playing guitar at 6 and was gigging with his dad and uncle as a teenager. Hawley's musical heroes are the likes of Link Wray and the original Sun artists, like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis...probably just like his dad.

Now I think there's something quite poetic and fitting about growing up in a Rock 'n' Roll household, having a youthful dalliance with indie pop and then hitting your musical prime as you approach your forties with music that draws heavily from your dads influence. It's all in the Sidies....The sideburns you have at 40 are different to the ones of your 20's. Bushy grey truck driving monsters....none of your razored clubland cool, designer beers and bars...it's all tea and greasy spoon. Which is fairly Rock 'n' roll when you consider that that the modern British mecca for Rock 'n' Roll is the original Rock 'n' Roll Mecca. The Ace Cafe with a car park full of oil leaking British bikes that dropped their engines in the road on the journey. Tellingly Hawley's 3rd album Lowedges has a classic BSA on the cover.

What Hawley has done with his music is to take a retro grown up, adult music, strip out any elements that don't work anymore, (there have been some very odd ideas about backing vocals and orchestrations that although they were ground breaking and maybe even necessary at the time, when you're given the choice, you wouldn't use again. Richard Hawley had the choice and hasn't used them again. Take for example Ray Charles Modern Sounds In Country And Western. As a link in the development of soul music and as a shake up to the country music establishment it's crucially important. But 45 years on, it can sound a bit syrupy to my ears. Well Hawley has taken the style and sound of Roy Orbison, Sinatra or Johnny Cash and turned it into a very late night music. But without the cheese, despite the fact that he does call it cheesy old bloke music. The self depreciation is part of his charm.

He's an unabashed crooner and a shameless romantic and as the cd slides into the drawer, the hour seems to get later, the whisky bottle gets emptier and (depending on the song) the lover is either longer gone or closer to home. And because this music is from the past if your TV's on in the corner, you'll find it's got less channels and your central heating has turned into a hissing gas fire.

Because Hawley is very much in the wistful crooner tradition, you're not going to get the full highs and lows of the feelings behind the songs, just from his vocals. It's just not part of the style. That whole easy tradition that Hawley has drawn from, that Frank Sinatra, rinky dink and Martinis, showed pain without the wrenching Soul style pain of what Sam Moore from Sam and Dave called "The ugly face." The key to depth in Hawley's music is the arrangements rather than his vocals.

Hawley's arrangements are built on sparse echoing guitars, gentle sweeps from the lap steel and plenty of reverb. It's Twin Peaks soundtrack territory. Lowedges from 2003 is very much built on this sound with the likes of Darlin' with its Roy Orbison vocal style. There are lots of songs about going away and coming back...exactly what the heartbroken crooner needs. You Don't Miss Your Water (Till Your River Runs Dry) has the line "Like A Thief In The Night, You Stole the love from my world... You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your River Runs Dry. You don't miss your lover till they're waving goodbye." And let's face it if you're never going to hear Roy Orbison sing those lines then Richard Hawley will do just fine.

I'm On Nights is a wonderful song built on a guitar that twangs like broken heartstrings. It feels like I'd Rather Go Blind which has been covered by Etta James, Clarence Carter (who was blind) and Rod Stewart (who was blonde, apparently) amongst many others. Just the phrase itself "I'm On Nights" gives it an English feel despite the fact that he's crooning an American style song. "I'm on nights, we need the money" but in classic style he'll be coming back "Now it's time to lose your sorrow, I'm on days and off tomorrow."

While Lowedges mines the a rich but underplayed echoing guitar sound, Coles Corner from 2005 spans a wider range of styles.

Coles Corner refers to the popular meeting spot for lovers outside the Cole Brothers department store in Sheffield. Even though it was demolished in 1969, local people still refer to it and still arrange to meet there. The title track starts with an impossibly lovely sweep of strings as Hawley hopes that "Maybe there's someone waiting for me with a smile and a flower in her hair." Actually he gets stood up but the whole thing of singing about a place that no longer really exists, but is still a part of the city's emotional and social landscape and part of the soundtrack that's in his head definitely seems a very Richard Hawley thing to do.

Darlin'Wait For Me. Oh yes it's another darlin' song, another song about going away and coming back and another song where you can hear hints of Elvis. Thing is you can bet, Hawley can always hear Elvis

Tonight is another song that seems rooted in Sheffield and while there may be other cities that have hills, to my ears the only thing that could make this song more Sheffield would be a line about Richard Hawley's beloved Henderson's Relish and the less loved Human League. ......"Oh tonight I got it really bad, Maybe I'll go out walking, Don't feel like staying home, Might take the car up to the hills and watch the city lights below."

Wading Through The Waters Of My Time is Johnny Cash style Country whilst on Woody Guthrie's Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Feet the echo is on the vocal rather than the instrumentation. It's sparse and haunting with a thick, muted sound from the barely brushed guitar. Closing track Last Orders was written in a taxi on the way to the studio and is more Twin Peaky atmospherics. Maybe if the journey had been longer it wouldn't have ended up as an instrumental. Nonetheless it's a clever contrast with the lushness of the opening title track.

Coles Corner is the critics choice but my tip is buy both and spend more time with Lowedges

Devo

Now here's the question. Were Devo a silly group? Apart from the Flowerpot hats, the jerky songs and jerkier dancing, the yellow chemical suits and half baked theories about unbaked potatoes and evolution going backwards? Well there's certainly a lot to love about the first album but they also encompass social history and change, from their arty beginnings and the Kent State university shootings through to Punk and the MTV generation. Phew! Pass me a flowerpot hat and let's get started.

Bassist Gerald Casales, Mark Mothersbaugh and original guitarist Bob Lewis were at Kent State University Ohio and had used the devolution concept or the idea of humans evolving into primitive forms as the basis for art exhibitions. The theory really took root with them with the killings at Kent State University in 1970 as 4 students were shot dead by The National Guard. Casales told The Vermont Review that "I was white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew. Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends… Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil. In the paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season for students. We lived in fear."

Like Malcolm Mclaren hanging Punk Rock up on the coat hooks of situationism and the Paris riots, Devo had a theory to back up their world view. In the same way that half the fun of Art is pulling the wings and legs off the theory behind it then great tunes can sound better with something to think about...even if that something boils down to the 5 Devo oaths

Be like your ancestors or be different. It doesn't matter.
Lay a million eggs or give birth to one.
Wear gaudy colours or avoid display. It's all the same.
The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live.
We Must Repeat.

Not forgetting Casales idea of the potato "It's the self. And it's the all-seeing potato, it's got eyes everywhere, even in the back of it's head"

Never could see how it all tied in with Kent State though. Neil Young wrote Ohio, Buffalo Springfield released For What It's Worth. Devo went to the green grocers.

Devo spent the next few years playing often confrontational gigs. Their film The Truth About Devolution won a prize at the 1975 Ann Arbor festival. They put out 2 singles Mongoloid and their deconstruction of The Stone's Satisfaction on their own Booji Boy label in 76 and 77.

By the time they hit Britain though it was on the back of the New Wave in 1978 with a Brain Eno produced album, released on a bewildering selection of coloured vinyls. Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo. Call and response vocals, theories, dressing up and a band who could career jerkily round the stage and yet all step up to the mic simultaneously just like the Clash. They looked brilliant and of course they didn't sound like anyone else.

The album stands up really well today. Uncontrollable urge has got a fabulous yelping "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” opening line. Well I think that says a lot and I also really like the call and response chorus, "He's got an uncontrollable urge " "I’ve got an uncontrollable urge". The guitars alternate between crisp riffing and a bendy spring string sound. If anything it's like a bastardised Twist and Shout

But not quite as big a bastard as Satisfaction. The backing track pops, scratches and scurries like a little Captain Beefheart hamster all twitchy nose and whiskers. It's absolutely unrecognisable as a Stones backing track. The vocals yelp the familiar Jagger consumer blues lyrics. Marvellous

Mongoloid has electronic drum thwackery, synthesizer sighs and the guitar sounds thick but distant. Normally you hear an electric guitar and you want to know that the air around the speaker is actually moving. Noise and movement. But then you would expect oddities on an Eno production.

Gut Feeling speeds up as it moves from House Of The Ring Sun sound to a Stranglers style keyboard whirl segueing straight into the jerkiness of Slap Your Mammy.

The first album has a great mix of unfamiliar sounds teased out of conventional; instruments. I remember breathlessly asking an older mate who'd just been to see them in 1978 what instruments they used, as in my head these sounds could only have been made using strange futuristic instruments. I was a bit disappointed when he said “Just normal ones” Probably not even star shaped guitars either.

On subsequent albums they fully embraced electronics. The 3rd album Freedom Of Choice released in 1980 had the big hit Whip It which became an MTV staple but I'd lost interest after the first album really. They did mange to continue without me though. Bizarrely Oh No It’s Devo was produced by Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker, but the game was pretty much up by 1984’s Shout album. Day jobs beckoned

Mark Mothersbaugh, started a music production company Mutato Muzika , for commercials, films and TV soundtracks including the Rugrats and The Royal Tenenbaums. Gerald Casales makes commercials and music videos and has worked with The Foo Fighters amongst others.

The last proper Devo album was Smooth Noodle Maps in 1990, but there have been one off tours and side projects such as Jihad Jerry And The Evildoers and also The Wipeouters. And of course…. Devo 2.0 which was the Disney backed creation of a Devo covers band of child musicians and actors, with the videos directed by Devo and the lyrics cleaned up. Ouch! And if you really want to know what that sounds like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnot_03IAbQ

A safer bet is Devo’s version of Satisfaction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvcuaJy9OwI&mode=related&search

Art Brut

What exactly do you want in Pop Music?

There are times when I insist on chunky punky tunes, half spoken half shouted (and never knowingly sung) vocals, funny (but not novelty comedy) lyrics, arty leanings and maximum eyebrows.

Art Brut are just the band for those occasions.

Eddie Argos's luxuriant eyebrow and 'tache combination looks like something from a particularly gruelling bush tucker trial. It's not a Gallagher monobrow....these are free range beauties

There's definitely an arty chancer feel about the band. Now I don't know much about Art, but I know what I like...and what I like about Art is...it's usually to be found in interesting buildings full of arty women.

I also know that the name Art Brut comes from the translation of Raw Art, more commonly known as Outsider Art. One strand of it included art produced by psychiatric patients. It's the theory that Michael Stipe or Jarvis Cocker would use if they were trying to make an unwatchable video.

But would they have come up with a lyric as dumbly profound as Art Brut's song Modern Art. "Modern Art makes me wanna rock out. Wooooh!"

Eddie Argos used to be the singer in a band in his native Bournemouth called the Art Goblins and part of his stage act involved playing the vacuum cleaner and escaping from a sack. Art Brut though were formed in 2003 after he moved to London and pestered everyone he met at a party to form a band.

Debut single Formed A Band came out in 2004 with Argos declaring "Look at us, we formed a band...and yes this is my singing voice, it's not irony and it's not Rock 'n' Roll. We're just talking to The Kids."

Now we've been here before haven't we? Where the song describes what the singer is doing like Gang Of Four's Love Like Anthrax or Mark E Smiths lyric "I don't sing I just shout all on one note aah." And yes I do like that trick. And yes I like Formed A Band a lot too.

It sums up what Art Brut do, entertaining tunes and performances with quotable lyrics. They've also got a fine upstanding drummer (well he plays standing up)

In terms of Argos's vocals, though the closest match is Gerald Langley from Blue Aeroplanes. They had an arty bent and a Polish dancer Wojtek. (Historical note...the dancers were the amongst first wave of Polish migrants, just before the bus drivers and builders).

Their single Tolerance with it's meandering bassline was a DJ staple at The Click Club at Burberries in 86/87 and reason enough for me to go most weeks.

More knowing Pop referencing comes in the form of last years single Nag Nag Nag Nag which goes one Nag better than Cabaret Voltaire's mighty Sheffield industrial punk single Nag Nag Nag.

Art Brut's nagging has hanging chords, slight echoes of Magazine's Shot By Both Sides and there is a comic teenage petulance in Argos's lyrics:

"My record collection reduced to a mix tape/Headphones on I made my escape/I'm in a film with a personal soundtrack/I'm leaving home and I'm never gonna come back".

But when it comes to the lyric "I'm grown up now but refuse to learn that these were just adolescent concerns" there could be a lot of us diving for cover.

The significance and relevance of ideas about never growing up/extended adolescence/holding onto the things you think are important, depends on whether you're the accuser or accused. Guilty as charged M'lud...and I've got another box of records that I'd also like taken into consideration.

Good Weekend is a straight down to business celebration of his brand new girlfriend. It's a twisty shimmy of a song with a ringing snare intro and Gang Of Four crunchy guitars meeting B52's Love Shack. "I've seen her naked twice, I've seen her naked twice".

The video is worth a look just for the Eddie Argos Eyebrow experience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY4dQHsPdiI&mode=related&search=

More Brut goodies can be found at http://www.myspace.com/artbrut

Emily Kane is a plea to a long lost girl friend who may not know it but "If memory serves we're still on a break...Every girl that I've seen since, Looks just like you when I squint".

The debut album Bang Bang Rock 'n' Roll came out in 2005 and it's follow up It's A Bit Complicated is due out next month. They're fresh from touring with Maximo Park and visit Birmingham Academy 2 June 14th.

Cherry Ghost

You do already know “Mathematics” by Cherry Ghost. It sounded equally at home on Radios 1, 2 and 6 but wherever you heard it was usually better than the records on either side if it. And like nothing else you'd heard that day...

Unless you spend your days listening to melancholic but uplifting Country waltzes, drenched in strings and glockenspiels, sung by a 30s something with his heart in Nashville and his boots in Bolton.

Cherry Ghost is actually the alter ego of Simon Aldred, who after years of playing in bands found that both the times and life experience had caught up with him.

"I guess it depends on what kind of music you do as to when you become good at it. I think probably, if you're doing rock n'roll, it requires a lot of youth and enthusiasm so, probably, your chances are better when you're first starting out in music. I'm a big fan of Johnny Cash; kind of the more weather-worn singer-songwriters so it was just, kind of, learning the art of songwriting basically, and it took a while.”

He worked as a book keeper, sold store cards and was a maths tutor. It's not picking cotton or working on the railroad, but that's the thing with Country Music and it's modern spin off, Americana.

The cliche may be that it's all death, divorce and drinking, but because the lyrics have always been so important to Country as a genre, it does give the smart musician some real room to manoeuvre.

And there is the whole history of Country music to work with, where it became The Establishment but still loved its rebels. And you can do it as you get older, and wear great shirts, cowboy boots, open a theme park like Dolly Parton's Dollywood, have your own fast food spin off (Kenny Rodgers Roasters) or your own designer jeans with a shotgun pocket (King Kenny again).

The question is why would anyone want to play anything else?

Aldred cites Bill Callahan, Sparklehorse and Wilco (Cherry Ghost comes from a lyric in “Theologians”) as influences and there is a Vic Chesnutt wooziness to some of the songs. The closest comparison though is Richard Hawley.

Although he'd played in bands for years, schlepping around in vans, knocking on record company doors, the actual breakthrough gig was a 20 minute solo acoustic set at a Glasgow Mexican restaurant after demos of “Mathematics” started to circulate.

“I played for 20 minutes, just me and a guitar. People started putting offers in the next day.It was a matter of three or four months from writing the tune to being offered five record deals"

He signed to Heavenly, which gives it a stamp of quality, having given board and lodgings, or at least a helping hand to artists as excellent and diverse as Manic Street preachers, St Etienne, The Rockingbirds, Beth Orton and The Magic Numbers.

Mathematics is an extraordinary record, the richness of the strings, the melancholy and slightly pinched sound of Aldred's vocal and the lyrical progression from self-awareness to inevitability, as Aldred sings “It's funny how I always seem to alienate the people that I'm trying to impress/Cold mathematics is making it's move on me now”.

I love its opening line “Meet my on the corner by the fire escape and I'll be waiting”. There are not enough songs about fire escapes. (But while it is important to be able to evacuate a burning building in a timely manner it also needs to be remembered that Scott Walker's Big Louise is the ultimate fire escape song).

Cherry Ghost appeared on Jules Holland Later last year playing a stripped down version of forthcoming single “People Help The People”. Piano powered, with a bottleneck guitar swell and the lovely simplicity of the lyric - “And if you're homesick, give me a hand and I'll hold it”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8bRXxEusTk

It's just gone from his My Space site but “4am” was a corker. With it's picked guitar and brushed drums, it's got the sprightly feel of Kenny Rodgers’ “Ruby Don't take Your Love To Town”. It sounds supple and slyly rude. Possibly like the old silver fox himself.

There have been support slots with Amy Winehouse and The Magic Numbers, and he has been known to play 90's dance anthem “Suddenly” by CeCe Peniston (careful how you pronounce it)

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady and Arctic Monkeys were both on Jools Holland’s Later last week. They both do drinking songs about damaged characters and bad behaviour in clubs and bars, reportage from the front line of the sidelines. But the difference is …different tactics, different ages and different sides of the Atlantic.

The key to the Arctic Monkeys is Alex Turner’s lyrics and the bilious disgust in his voice. That’s what drags you into Monkeyland…. and while there’s a real pleasure in the spiky backing tracks, the instruments are just there to provide a backing to the vocals. That’s it. It’s fast and frantic, but it’s percussive and not melodic. The tunes have no tunes. I can’t see the music inspiring a generation of copycat guitar players, whereas the lyrics will. It’s all in the lyrics and attitude. I’ve also yet to read to read an interesting Arctic Monkeys interview, but apparently you can charge what you like for tiling a bathroom in London.

The Arctic Monkeys album was released last month, while The Hold Steady’s break through third album Boys And Girls In America came out in the US last year.

The Hold Steady bring you something you didn’t know you wanted. They’re still story songs but it’s Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC and Mott The Hoople played by a bunch of beardy 30 somethings with the musical skills and confidence so that it sounds like they could really do this all night. The lyrics are sharp, intelligent and literate and Craig Finn’s thick gargling holler of a voice rolls over the music, bouncing off the riffs or just getting on with the business of getting the stories out. Both the vocals and the music beneath stand up in their own right (unlike the characters that both Arctic Monkeys and The Hold Steady sing about).

The Hold Steady look like they’ve escaped the Stylist. Craig Finn sports the kind of full regular guy beard last seen on Discovery Home and Leisure features on master carpenters and fishing documentaries. The keyboard player’s curly waxed ‘tache looks it came off a mime artist…and it really should come off. There are also hats. Not good hats either.

Stuck Between Stations is the most Springsteen esque track, mainly for the Thunder Road type breakdown and piano. The ascending riff under the chorus though is like the mighty riff that underpins U2’s A Beautiful Day. You know, when the plane is coming down low enough for the pilot to see the pattern on the carpet but not quite low enough to take Bono’s head off. (I know Bono’s an easy target, but I never feel bad about taking the piss…after all it takes the pressure off Sting!)

The opening line of Stuck Between Stations is the Kerouac quoting “There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right, Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together”

The chorus just made me sit up though.

“She was a real cool kisser and she wasn’t all that strict of a Christian, She was damn good dancer but she wasn’t all that great of a girlfriend.” It’s just an excellent line from an unlikely looking band. Sung with utter conviction over righteous riffing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhwmk8mAaII

Finn grew w up in Minneapolis and his favourite band was The Replacements. As a kid he was impressed by the way that they used local references like the street names in Run It which is a song about jumping red lights. “Lyndale, Garfield Run it”

“I loved the Descendents. They sang about getting no chicks, and that's something I knew a whole lot about.” One of the dirtier Descendents asked Finn and his friends if they knew any girls who would…ahem…help him out. “If we knew that, what would we be doing at a Descendents show?”
On the second album Separation Sunday, he uses the characters of Hallelujah and Charlemagne to tell the tale of the “A real sweet girl who made some not sweet friends” but comes back from the brink/dead on How A Resurrection Really Feels. It’s all very growing up suburban and Catholic.

“I moved to New York when I was 29 years old, so maybe you’re hanging out with a better quality of person. When you’re 18, there’s some idiots who are like, “We’re gonna go drink this under a bridge, you wanna come?” And you’re like, “Yeah. Absolutely. How would we not want to drink under a bridge?” I think Minneapolis is pretty unique. The delinquents out there are pretty delinquent. And everyone’s got a car, so there’s like, a lot of mobility. A lot of bad ideas can be put into action quickly. ‘Cause you can like, haul stuff”

The Chillout Tent from the 3rd album tells the romantic tale of a boy (“Tennyson in denim and sheepskin, He looked a lot like Izzy Stradlin”) and a girl who have separate chemical calamities at a festival and regain consciousness in the Chillout Tent and start kissing as the nurses take them off their drips. It’s sung as a duet with Elizabeth Elmore. (Dave Pirner from Soul Asylum, another Minneapolis resident, is also on there.) It’s one of the standout tracks from the album, but scarily the boy girl vocals on the chorus end up sounding like Meatloaf. Also scarily …I like it.

The Hold Steady’s current label is Vagrant which is also the home of Paul Westerberg (The Replacements) and The Lemonheads. They’re playing in Portsmouth, London and Manchester in July. They feel like a band where you need to suspend your cynicism and possibly even consider using phrases like “The redemptive power of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The Hold Steady sound like other bands…but better. The Arctic Monkeys don’t really sound like anyone else. And certainly would never talk about Rock ‘n’ Roll (except maybe in connection with a sadder, older, more desperate character in one of their songs)…. But do they sound better?

Julian Cope

Is Julian Cope the Greatest Living Englishmen? Well he's more convincing in the stack heels and pointy hat department than Stephen Fry.

The thing about Cope is that he's pursued all the things that interested him, wants to others to share that interest and completely understands the importance of the grand gesture. From music to stone circles, he's a 21st century renaissance man with his heart in the Neolithic and his head in Haight Ashbury. Ok maybe he's not he's Psychedelic Da Vinci but his precarious balancing act between Pre historic Professor, dribbling loon, dogged music ferret, Shaman and shambles, Idiot Savant and idiot idiot is all done with such enthusiasm and charm.

There's a huge Cope back catalogue to work through from the Teardrop Explodes brief pop career through his mixed bag of solo albums. Since the late 90s he has withdrawn from the mainstream Record Industry, releasing material through his own labels and website. Although there is a lot to love about the man and his music, part of the real value of Copey is the interviews, his persona and the books. His monthly address to the nation is always worth a read and is always a good pointer to unusual music. (http://www.headheritage.co.uk/addressdrudion/96/2007/) His two autobiographies are both essential reading; well written, musically literate and chock full of some scary/funny drug stories from a man whose head was either in the clouds or up his arse.

Head On covers Copey's Tamworth childhood, escape to Liverpool Punk scene, the Teardrop Explodes brief brush with Pop Stardom in all it's Smash Hits glory and Cope’s transformation from resolutely drug free to determinedly drug filled.

It's really good at capturing the intensity of the desire in the early Liverpool days to make the band work. All the characters involved were out of control. Drummer Gary Dwyer spent one tour with a cassette of Frank Sinatra in his unchanged pants. Anyone unfortunate enough to fall asleep was likely to wake up to the sight of Dwyer "Getting the Frank out". People it’s bad…. but not as disgusting as Sacky Bill. This was Dwyer’s ability to stretch his bag over his bell and up to his belly until his genitals "Looked like a turtle covered in a tarpaulin."

Even as Reward was a hit, with its video of searchlights, the careering jeep (they bought it) and Copey in his now established uniform of leather flying jacket and jodhpurs, The Public were turning on him. Now I think an opening line of "Bless my cotton socks I'm in the news" the brass fanfare and swirling bass and keyboards is unbeatable. Some other people do not. Cope quotes 1981's best joke as

"What's the difference between a Cow and The Teardrop Explodes?"

"A Cow has got a twat at the back and horns at the front"

The first album was recorded with Cope dressed as Lawrence of Arabia and each morning Cope and Dwyer would take acid and ride down to the studio on imaginary horses. “I called mine Dobbin, Gary called his Bumhead”. By the sessions for the aborted third album they were playing a game called Brick where 2 people stood 15 feet apart and threw a brick at each other. Cope had the (Acid) advantage and he could see the vapour trails coming off the brick…. others were not so lucky.

I saw The Teardrops in Manchester during the Wilder tour. During a climactic final moment Cope ran towards a monitor looking as if he was going to do something dramatic.... as he tried to move it he realised that he couldn’t.... so he slunk off stage instead. It got worse. At one of their final gigs they, incongruously, supported Queen at Milton Keynes Bowl and were upstaged by Queen’s helicopter touching down mid gig. At their final Manchester gig at The University the tape machine broke and Copey stripped off. Milli Vanilli to Willy Vanilli

The second book Repossessed covers the period after the Teardrops split, as Cope retreated to Tamworth and started to revisit his childhood and rebuild his own myths about the landscape. In 1984 he sneaked 2 solo albums out past the record company (who’d only kept him on because he shared management with Tears For Fears) including Fried where he's naked under a tortoiseshell. I’ve always liked the albums but from a professional point of view, the industry had written him off, he’d become a byword for underachieving loon and he was underperforming at key gigs. He describes watching the support band The Woodentops as they used all his tricks and made it work. While the craziness of the first book is laugh out loud funny, it gets bleaker for the Tamworth years.

He started collecting toy cars, keeping them in a room in the attic. But he blocked up the door so that the only way to reach the sanctuary of the toy room was to crawl through a tunnel running the full length of the house. In 1985 his new obsession was speed walking round Drayton Bassett. Obviously he had a special outfit for it…. long johns and a hat made form his wife Dorian’s fake fur collars.

They became reclusive, unable to deal with the overflowing toilet and stockpiling food for an unspecified but imminent disaster. Eventually though they needed to go to the shop. He didn’t know how to get to the supermarket but couldn’t face calling a taxi. So he set off walking until eventually his path was blocked by a river.which he tried and failed to jump over. He eventually got to the supermarket but left a trail of silt along the aisles.

1987’s St Julian album and the accompanying tour saw him rejuvenated though, with a clanging “2 car garage band” sound and the Cosmic Asshole mike stand that that was equal parts mike stand, scaffolding and pulpit. The follow up, My Nation Underground was not the album that the record company, Cope or I wanted though. Cue another dispute and Copey sulk, and cue his sneaky recordings Skellington and Droolian. They go the full range from whimsical to silly, from acid casualty mumblings to Jelly Pop Jerky Jean’s pop perfection about Japanese hair spray. Unlikely to win new fans, but sure to remind the old ones exactly why they liked him.

The career highs are the Peggy Suicide and Jehovah Kill albums. Both sprawling, sweeping epics, with elements of Prog rock, Funkadelic, eco themes, Paganism and Goddess Worship and big-hearted Pop tunes like Beautiful Love or Try Try Try.

He’s now acknowledged as an expert on Neolithic sites and his books The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic European are huge labours of love based on visits to hundreds of sites across Europe. Part travelogue, part prehistoric guidebook.

“I'm past the stage of trying to theorize about these places. I know what I believe, but I'm more interested in getting other people to see for themselves. Yes, the book is heavyweight and archaeologically thorough, but, better still, it's full of amazingly photogenic sites across Europe that would make anyone travel”

Last time Cope was at The Glee Club, he delivered an entertaining talk that spanned uptight druid control freaks and Neolithic rock n rollers. This time round he promises old songs, lots of new songs from the new album You Gotta Problem With Me imminent and old Teardrop Explodes songs to celebrate 25 years since the split.

The Lemonheads

Evan Dando's band The Lemonheads went from Boston schoolboy Husker Du sound alikes to a major label brush with early 90's global hugeness. With his girl friendly surfer looks, ear friendly hooks and some cleverly written songs about dumb subjects Evan Dando had it all...And friends like Oasis, Michael Hutchence and Helena Christiansen.

Boys wanted to be him, girls wanted to be with him and drug dealers wanted to be a phone call away. Scientists are still pondering why The Lemonheads never became bigger, but some of the brighter boffins have proposed the theory that it was Dando himself who blew it

Evan Dando is the only original and constant member of The Lemonheads, and even he got so sick of his own band that that he put out a solo album in 1993 and sang with the reformed MC5 in 1994. He's back as Lemonhead now though and I'm definitely ready for some stoner Punky Country slackness.

The original line up with Dando and Ben Deily recorded their debut ep, Laughing All The Way To The Cleaners, the day after their High School Graduation and then released it on their own Huh-Bag label. Subsequent recordings Hate Your friends, Creator and Lick on were all released on local Boston label Taang! The records show a gradual shifting away from the Punky beginnings but also show a power struggle within the band with Deily eventually leaving. Deily's final album Lick has a Power Pop version of Suzanne Vega's Luka. - The first of many quirky cover version which Dando would perform.

Things were getting more interesting though as The Lemonheads (now effectively Dando) signed to Atlantic and released Lovey. It's got the Gram Parson's cover Brass Buttons and Stove which is a song about preferring the old stove to the new one. Great song but honestly it's not as deep as it sounds.

The thing with Dando is that he could never sustain the song writing himself, he always needed people around him...hanging on to them was a different matter though, as The Lemonheads was a revolving door for musicians. Drummer Mark "Budola" Newman was sacked and then unwittingly answered an advert for his old job

A 1991 tour brought Evan to Australia, where he met Tom Morgan and Nic Dalton who would all contribute songs up to the present day.

The quality of the songs from this period, the distinctive sound and the interplay between Dando's languid drawl and Juliana Hatfield's wide eyed teen movie girl backing vocals make 1992's It's A Shame About Ray the definitive Lemonheads album. If Nirvana were the bad drugs, self loathing and bellyaching sound of the discontented suburbs, then It'A Shame About Ray was the amiably stoned goofy dreamboat singing songs like Ceiling Fan In My Spoon and My Drug Buddy. It's about the minutiae of the suburbs. The comfortably off and the comfortably numb and it steers a path from the gleeful Alison's Starting To Happen (Alison's getting a mohawk, Alison's getting her tits pierced") to the lethargy of My Drug Buddy ("Is this the same stuff we got yesterday?"). Lets face it Kids, his records were great but, you wouldn't want to live in Kurt Cobain's house...and actually I don't want to listen to Nirvana records that often either. I play It's A Shame about Ray a lot though

I like the actual sound of the album. It's just bass, guitar and drums with the occasional keyboards, but the chords sound unusual and the bass lines often use 2 or 3 note chords for a fat bottomed sound. (Right Sir Fred?)

Rockin' Stroll is a great opener with a flurry of guitar notes bouncing off big square chords like a downhill skier who can't stop hitting the poles.

The album is ludicrously short, 10 tracks including the cover of Frank Mills from the musical Hair. Later it got reissued with additional track Mrs Robinson, which is still a bit of a comedy cover but I do like the guitar thwacks in the middle and Dando's pronunciation of "cupcakes"

So everything was geared up then for The Lemonheads to become massive with the release of Come On Feel The Lemonheads in 1993...well in one sense they did. Dando became a staple of gossip columns with increasingly erratic behaviour, and the inevitable combination of drink, drugs and Courtney Love. Although there are some good songs on the album, there's more filler and some dubious/infuriating/down right ropey old toss like Jello Fund. As an opening track it's hard to beat the sweet and brief power pop of The Great Big No and the single Into Your Arms but tracks like Being Around end up sounding too lightweight. "If I was a booger would you blow your nose?"

Big Gay Heart was Dando's acoustic Country Pop strum-a-long single. During 93 and 94 He'd turn up every where to sing it....which was part of the problem. He was usually trolleyed and in a PR masterstroke he announced that he couldn't sing for 2 weeks because of the amount of crack he'd smoked. He was booed off stage at Glastonbury after turning up hours late...with his acoustic.

Atlantic dropped him after the 1996 album Car Button Cloth. I'd already lost interest. I think he missed their money more than mine though.

The solo album (although lets face it ...all his records are solo albums with additional musicians and songs from various sources) Baby I'm Bored came out in 1993 and was a definite return to form. More country pop flavoured than previous material but with some strong songs and strong vocal performances, if that's not a contradiction in terms for Stoner Pop

The standout track is It Looks Like You which is acoustic driven bruised Country Pop with the excellent line

"I can't for the love of Jehovah, Comprehend why you knock at my door"

I also can't fail to like a song that calls itself The Same Thing You Thought Hard About Is The Same Part I Can Live Without

After the bizarre spectacle of him fronting the MC5 he released an album last year simply called The Lemonheads. The single Become The Enemy is a really good song. The album was produced by Bill Stevenson (Descendents, Black Flag) who also contributed some songs, with others coming from Tom Morgan (Dando's Australian gold mine). The thoroughly back on form J Mascis plays on 2 tracks. It's not all old American Punk players though as Garth Hudson from The Band also crops up on one track. They met at a Halloween reading of Edgar Allen Poe poems. Well that's one way of avoiding Oasis and Courtney Love

I'm glad he's back; and it sounds like he's interested again. However as the famously Pretty and Vacant Dando struggled simultaneously to walk, talk and hold onto his ipod during a phone interview with the radiofreecanuckistan blog he revealed he's got a reason to be back

"I took 2 long breaks. One from 94 to 96 and then another from 97 to 2000. I was basically spending tons of money and living it up. Then I got close enough to the bottom of my bank account again to be motivated. It's weird, money is bad for me. I'm by nature a lazy person. If I have tons of money in the bank, I just want to go skiing or bird watching or take a nap. It's good when you need to work again"

Bill Callahan

Bill Callahan is part of that American Alt Country/Folk thing, but definitely at the darker, more bitter end of the bile pile, like Will Oldham or the Handsome Family.

He serves up dark twisted tales of despair, death and a black humour with the vocal style of Lou Reed and the richness of Leonard Cohen. The songs tend to be stripped down, with a minimum of chords and a chord conserving attitude of "what's good enough for the verse is good enough for the chorus.

It's good stuff though and definitely suits those times when you find Prairie dust in your slippers.

Following a teenage interest in the SST bands and The Minutemen, he released bedroom recorded and bedroom quality cassettes on his own label but since 1990's debut album proper, Sewn To The Sky he has maintained a prolific output as Smog and also (Smog).

The forthcoming album Woke On A Whale Heart is the first album released under his own name. There are musical arrangements by Former Royal Trux man Neil Hagerty and it promises to be a more upbeat affair than his previous offerings.

So after having set the scene for an artist specialising in melancholic introspection, the first song up for grabs is dress Sexy At My Funeral from 2001's Dongs Of Sevotion album. The dearly departed's final request would certainly distract the mourners from the ham sandwiches.

"Oh Dress sexy at my funeral my good wife,

Wink at the minister, Blow kisses to my grieving brothers

Also tell them about how I gave to charity,

And tried to love my fellow man as best I could

But most of all don't forget about the time on the beach"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idt56Y1hFs0

'Neath The Puke Tree was an ep released in 2000 containing re-recorded material and new songs. The best track is I Was A Stranger which pushes all the right Cowboy Junkies buttons for me.

With a warm steel guitar sound and a hesitant semi spoken vocal delivery, it feels like it should be a careworn and bruised but ultimately uplifting and comforting song. It's actually a haunting, potential serial killer serenade.

"In the last town, You should have seen what I was

I was worse than a stranger, I was well known"

The song fades out on a getting down to business solo like the Cowboys Junkies peerless Cheap Is How I Feel.

I Feel Like The Mother Of The World is from 2005's A River Ain't Too much Land.

The video with Chloe Sevigny is as bleak as it gets. The eye patched/black eyed chambermaid works her way round the hotel rooms while Bill Callahan is the TV newsreader on each telly in every room delivering the lyrics with intercut shots of disaster and turmoil.

Callahan has said it's about War or Peace. Israel, Palestine. The US and Iraq. The chorus is "I feel like the mother of the world, With two children fighting"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntUXyBiheIU

I like it's opening line "Whether or not there is any type of God, I'm not supposed to say". It echoes Nick Cave's song Into My Arms and that most unexpected opening line on religion in a pop song when Cave sings "I don't believe in an interventionist God".

I Break Horses is a subtle song worth a not so subtle metaphor...Guess what kids...it's not really about horses.

"I break horses. Doesn't take me long. Just a few well-placed words. And their wandering hearts are gone"

He's currently in a stable (ouch!) relationship with squeaky Folk elf Joanna Newsome and sings on her Ys album. Newsome also played piano on his song Rock Bottom Riser. He also had a farmer (Ouch! Ouch!) relationship with Chan Marshall (Cat Power) who recorded his song Red Apples.

The ultimate horse/woman metaphor song is The Byrds Chestnut Mare. Roger McGuinn's breathless croon never sounded better. The line "I'm gonna catch that horse if I can, And when I do I'll give her my brand" sounds more like the Rebecca Loos aspect of animal husbandry rather than a time honoured permanent method of identifying livestock.

But the real surprise for me was finding out that McGuinn's co writer was Jacques Levy: theatre director, song writer (later co wrote much of Dylan's Desire album) and clinical psychologist.

He met McGuinn after directing Oh! Calcutta! They were going to collaborate on a musical based on Peer Gynt, but the only song actually produced was Chestnut Mare. So let's get this straight then. Psychologist directs nudey 60s musical then goes on to write a song about chasing a horse that is actually a woman. And people wondered about Equus and Harry Potter in the chuddy nuddy?

Sycamore from the new album Woke On A Whale Heart is positively life affirming. Gorgeous Go Betweens guitar trills, a little less Lou Reedy and more of a Luna feel. Stop sniggering at the back. Researchers (some of them wearing white coats) have proved there is a difference. It's the feelgood end of Alt Country with dads teaching sons to box and "You won't get hurt if you just keep your hands up and stand tall like a sycamore"

Follow the link for as good a summer song as you'll hear this summer.

http://www.dragcity.com/mp3/dc332bcs.mp3

Frank Turner

So what would you do when your Hardcore band splits up? Would you take your Black Flag tattoos, stage diving and go off and be a guitar strumming Folk singer......like a great big girl? Well, ex Million Dead singer Frank Turner is more of a Billy Bragg. He's got the personable personality, go anywhere, busk anywhere gig mentality, a bit of politics and a few love songs. He's also picked up on the Woody Guthrie slogan "This machine kills fascists" and subverted it to "This machine kills Hippies". The original was good enough for the guitars of Guthrie, Bragg and Strummer. I suppose you could also put a "This guitar kills fascists" sticker on a cappuccino maker or a vacuum cleaner....but it wouldn't feel quite right.


While Bragg worked to 77 style Punk Principles and took The Clash as inspiration, Frank Turner used the work ethic and discipline of 80's inspirational and confrontational California Punks Black Flag. He told Radio 1 that his version of Folk "Took the things that people in Punk talked about and actually did it instead of just talking about it"


My favourite Frank track has to be Thatcher Fucked The Kids. Music and swearing is just a timeless and classic combination. This song is making the perceptive (and screamingly obvious point) that if you spend 10 years denying there's such as thing as society then you end up with the society you deserve....but with swearing and a bit of humorous misanthropy.


"Whatever happened to childhood?
We're all scared of the kids in our neighbourhood;
They're not small, charming and harmless,
They're a violent bunch of bastard little shits.
And anyone who looks younger than me
Makes me check for my wallet, my phone and my keys,

YouTube clip Frank Turner - Thatcher Fucked the Kids


Million Dead split up in 2005 after 2 albums and non musical differences, but Frank had already been playing some solo shows as a sideline. He released the Campfire Punk Rock 4 track on Xtra Mile recordings in 2006, followed by a shared 12 inch vinyl release with Jonah Matranga where the artists did 2 covers each. Turner did The Outdoor Type by The Lemonheads and You Are My Sunshine, while Matranga, tellingly, did Billy Bragg's A New England


The album Sleep Is For The Week was released in January this year.


On Nashville Tennessee he makes the (fair) point that he's not pretending to be something that he's not. "I was raised in middle England, not in Nashville Tennessee...A simple scale on an old guitar and a Punk Rock sense of honesty"


Again it's the Bragg/Busker mentality that you have to engage with an audience, to entertain them but you also need them to trust you. Oh yes...And you've got to entertain them....again! You can do songs that are reflective and soul searching. Songs that are brutally honest about the state of your naval....but you've got to handle all the fluff and stuff carefully.


In an interview in DrownedInSound he said "Songs, and people, are thoroughly fucking dull if they can't laugh at themselves. That's the whole problem with Damien Rice - it's so fucking doe-eyed and self-serious, it just makes me want to vomit. Honestly, if you met someone with the personality of a James Blunt song, you'd fucking punch them in the throat at the first available opportunity, right? If you want to make a point, showing you're human before doing so is a good plan"


Black Flag would spend 200 days a year touring, often playing 2 shows a day to cater for both under 21's and legal US beer drinkers., as documented in Henry Rollins Book about his days in the band Get In The Van. As a solo artist Turner has notched up a fair few gigs. "Sometimes people offer me "beer, probably" to come play a houseparty in Cumbria or something. No. I'm getting a little pickier in my old age... I think I've paid my dues as it were. I have played some insane places in my time. As I enter the second half of my twenties I'm hoping to leave behind playing house shows in the middle of nowhere"


As a performer he is engaging, and the Hardcore/folk switch doesn't sound so strange when you think of the likes of Seth Lakeman trying to make a great big racket out of a small sound. But here's the thing.....on this video for Million Dead's 2003 I Am The Party ....Is this the worlds happiest Hardcore frontman?

YouTube clip Million Dead - I Am The Party

The band Rock mightily and Turner's vocals sound great but he doesn't look like the typical Hardcore frontman. Where's the screwey faced rage? Where are the big shorts? Will there be a stewards inquiry and a leg tattoo inspection? So maybe folky Levellers troubadour isn't such a giant leap for him. Anyway in the buskers tradition, if he's doing a show, he'll do it right here...and probably for The Kids. But not for the one's who are trying to nick his wallet

The Only Ones

There are not many records better than Another Girl Another Planet. And we shouldn’t really hold it against them that The Only Ones never came close to matching it.

According to Peter Kay, “You only get half a bucketful” and Another Girl Another Planet delivers Pop Punk Perfection by the sack load.

Released in 1978, after the initial rush of mission statement and era defining singles, by the likes of The Damned, Pistols and Clash, the Only Ones straddled the pre and post punk era. Too muso for Punk yet they could not have happened without it.

Another Girl Another Planet has one of the best intros ever. A proper what’s this? Oh this sounds good...and it’s just got better. A scratchy guitar chug turns into a guitar twiddle and then takes off like the Tardis. All wheezing groans, building drums and a guitar line that starts off in the teddy Boy 50’s before heading off into orbit in silver shorts.

The song was used in a Vodafone ad last year which gave it a new lease of life, but really for many of us distinguished Gentlemen Of A Certain Age, it had never really gone away.

“I always flirt with death, I look ill but I don’t care about it" - the weary vocal whine, the sci fi lyrics that (sorry kids) are actually about Perrett's real life love affair with heroin and the way that the vocals slide into the guitar solo with a heartbreaking, resigned oh oagh!

I mean you just can’t beat vocal lines that that sing along to guitar solos. Think of Radiohead's Iron Lung, or Lump by Presidents Of The United States Of America. Think of them and then be glad they exist!

The guitar solo itself is concise, neat and perfectly formed. Near the end of the song as Perrett sings “Another girl is loving you now” the guitars play triplets as they slide down the scale, like brawling cowboys falling down the saloon steps and still punching each other.

That vocal whine though.... I still don’t understand how such grizzling can work with such an exhilarating song. I might have to listen to it again, purely in the name of research, obviously.

Like The Clash, they were signed to CBS. But while the Clash kept tight control of their image and used their tussles with the CBS and the corporate culture to bolster their Punk credentials, The Only ones presented a different set of problems for the company.

Like many of the bands signed in the great Punk Rock closing down sale The Only Ones were skilful musicians, with musical backgrounds that included the less than Punk Rock.

In The Only Ones case it was Brummie drummer Mike Kellie’s time in Spooky Tooth and veteran bass player Alan Mair who had been in Scotland’s top 60’s boy band The Beatstalkers.

No, the real problem that CBS faced was Perrett’s addiction, and resulting unpredictable behaviour, squandered talent and the fact that for me as teenager reading the music press, Only Ones interviews were always a depressing peek into an unattractive place. Even if they could come up with more songs of the calibre of Another Girl Another Planet, just how could the company market them?

American tours would be problematic as there was an outstanding warrant for attempted murder after Perrett had tried to run over a parking attendant and Alan Mair has described a gig in Amsterdam where Perrett was scoring drugs in the dressing room from the Baader Meinhof Gang. "I was like, 'Bloody hell Peter. You’re dealing with the Baader Meinhof Gang, what's wrong with you?

If the band’s musical abilities marked them out from Punk, then Perrett’s addiction gave them a way right back in. The Speakeasy became the club of choice for the London Punk crowd, snatched from the previous Rock generation in a musical land grab. It was owned Chris Spedding, Sex Pistols demo producer, Flying V wielding Womble and ex husband of Nora Forster who was John Lydon’s girlfriend.

By 1978 it had became the home from home for a generation of Punk and junk casualties who in turn became the assorted musicians associated with Johnny Thunders So Alone album and his sporadic gigs.

They included Peter Perrett and Mike Kellie, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Sid Vicious. They even called themselves The Living Dead. When you think that Phil Lynott and the dead ones from The Pretenders were also regulars, there’s a part of me that keeps thinking.... why didn’t they go to a pub quiz instead or get an allotment. At least that would have spared the world the full horror of The Greedies A Merry Jingle

The Only Ones eponymous debut album in 78 has a New York sound to some of the tracks. Language Problem has the rickety feel and descending chords of Richard Hell’s Blank Generation. The Beast has got a Tom Verlaine type solo.

Even Serpents Shine, released in 79, is their best album although some of the keyboard and backing vocals give a slickness to some of the tracks that I could do without. Miles From Nowhere has got the excellent line “I want to die in the same place I was born, miles from nowhere, I used to reach for the stars but now I’ve reformed”

The last studio album Baby’s Got A Gun came out the following year with the band splitting in 1982. Perrett spent the intervening years doing very little except an enormous amount of drugs, although he did attempt a comeback in the mid 90’s as The One and released an album called Woke Up Sticky on Demon.

It’s all got a bit doomed Punk poet/Pete Doherty. So how about this for a connection…. Perrett appeared on stage with the Libertines in 2004 and his sons Jamie and Peter were in an early line up of Babyshambles.

There’s still a large amount of goodwill towards the band and the likes of The Replacements, Blink 182 and Belle and Sebastian have all covered Another Girl Another Planet. It’s great to think that the band are playing again. Although I can confirm 2 cases of star spotting to show what 2 of the band were doing while waiting for the reunion

Mike Kellie was spotted working at Rover a couple of years ago and Peter Perrett played football (Phil Daniels was also a regular) on my mate’s team. Apparently he’s a “Strange little pixie man…but very good at football”

Brett Anderson

The long running Suede/Britpop/Bernard Butler soap opera has taken another twist as Brett Anderson releases his first solo album starts an accompanying tour.

He may keep turning up like yesterday’s pants in today’s trouser leg of pop, but the impact of Suede's breakthrough year, their first 2 albums and the whole intrigue of the Anderson/Blur/Elastica threesome makes it an interesting story.... and then you've got that whole will they/won't they reunion story for Anderson and Bernard Butler.

So far, so Morrisey and Marr.

Few bands have been as hyped and yet also welcomed with such an expectancy from a waiting audience who just knew they were going to like them. Melody Maker had put them on the front cover as the best new band in Britain. It had been 5 years since The Smiths had split up and here comes this generation’s Morrissey and Marr.

Anderson was Morrissey with his teenaged estranged lyrics, ambiguous sexuality ("I'm a bisexual man who hasn't had a homosexual experience") and Butler was Marr. The most exhilarating guitarist in town, with a swinging fringe that could take the heads off the front row of an audience.

Debut single the Drowners was a Ziggy style stomper with guitar thwackery and stampeding drums. Fresh yet familiar.

Anderson was the Haywards Heath escapee who'd been dreaming of London sleaze and glamour, he had the Bowie fixation, the make up, and some fine individual dance moves. Something like a cross between an angle poise lamp and a pantomime horse...while slapping his own arse.

The Mercury prize winning debut album Suede was released in 1993, and was the UK's fastest selling debut album. I didn't really like the clunky sounding production by Ed Buller but I did like doing the comedy yodelling pronunciation of the name Suede.

Think of David Bowie's most Anthony Newley style bray.....Swaaaayyyyyyed! Bet you did it too? The Good Ship Britpop had been launched....it's just we didn't know it yet.

That's the thing with Suede; there were lot of Britpop connections. They were also briefly managed by Ricky Gervais.

Elastica's Justine Frischmann was in the original Suede line-up and she and Anderson were lovers after meeting at University where she was doing an Architecture course and he was doing Planning.

I have seen some footage of that early Suede line up with the future Britpop queen in trackie bottoms. Brett may well be in hairnet and curlers, or I may have made that bit up.

She left Anderson for Damon Albarn from the then struggling Blur. In 2002 she described leaving Suede as "I just thought it was better to be Pete Best than Linda McCartney. I couldn't deal with being the second guitarist and having this strange, Lady Macbeth role in it, along with being general mother to four blokes."

Animal Lover from the first Suede album is reputedly about Frischmann/Anderson/Albarn. Tender is Albarn's version of his own split with Frischmann and Beetlebum is his song about her heroin use.

The tensions that surfaced during Suede's second album Dog Man Star lead to Bernard Butler leaving in 1994 and gaining his reputation as one of the most difficult men in pop.

It's a an excellent album, wildly ambitious and it moves from the Glitter Band squall of New Generation to the bleakness of Black Or Blue and Asphaltworld to the downright morose Scott Walker feel of Still Life.

Collaboration with All About Eve singer Julianne Regan was aborted with Regan accusing the guitarist of possessing "Diabolical tendencies" and Butler pleading "I'm not the anti-Christ. I'm Bernard."

He spent a week in The Verve after Nick McCabe temporarily left and recorded a batch of songs with David McAlmont. This also ended acrimoniously, but the album was released as The Sound Of McAlmont and Butler and is a really good plastic soul album. Like Bowie's Young Americans with added Glam and Bolan.

After running out of people to fall out with Butler released 2 solo albums with Alan Magee trying to promote him as a Neil Young figure moving from the sidelines to centre stage. What he really needed though was a collaborator.

Suede meanwhile had released Head Music and also Coming Up with teenage guitar prodigy Richard Oakes stepping into Butler's shoes. As a teenage prodigy Oakes is not allowed to age and is still officially 15 ½.

He fitted Suede duties in between paper rounds and happy slapping...just like those other teenage prodigies AC/DC's Angus Young and Jimmy Krankie.

Suede ground to a halt in 2003 under the weight of the underwhelming New Morning album and Anderson’s addictions. Almost too fittingly Anderson had sung the "You're going to reap just what you sow" line on the Perfect Day Children In Need single in 1997.

Astonishingly after years of not talking either to each other, or even about each other, Anderson and Butler reconciled enough to form a new band The Tears. Here Come The Tears was released in 2005.

It's a good album with some tracks that can stand alongside vintage Suede. And then as if one reconciliation wasn't enough Butler went and recorded another album Bring It Back with David McAlmont in 2006.

So where can the soap opera go next? Well obviously to Brett Anderson’s solo record. He's gone and found himself a new collaborator in the shape of Norwegian Fred Ball and the live shows have featured Suede bassist Mat Osman.

The single Love Is Dead is melodic, melancholic and actually rather good. It's back to his old concerns "Nothing ever goes right, nothing ever flows". It's Morrissey misery with the song’s title sung in Andersons best Bowie voice with the full kitchen sink production and the orchestra in the utility room.

The album Brett Anderson is released this week and the tour is in full swing. Of course where the Soap Opera goes next is anybody's guess.

Anderson has described the Suede story as like " Machiavelli rewriting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It involves a cast of thousands. It should star Charlton Heston ...It's like a pram that's just been pushed down a hill. It's always been fiery and tempestuous and really on the edge and it never stops. I don't think it ever will."