Jumpstart Trainershoe - new music musings

Reading Revelry

Just a quick one to run through who rocked at Reading - now that the fog has cleared enough for me to remember what happened there.  

This might sound like rubbish but pretty much everyone we saw rocked at Reading because one of my favourite things about the festival is that it's small enough that if you decide you're not feeling a band, you can be watching another one in a few minutes.  Not that this happened very often because another one of the good things about Reading is that the crowd are so up for it all of the time - it's totally infectious and makes seeing bands so much more fun than perhaps at other festivals where people tend to just nod their heads along to the music.

I was there to do a twitter feed of the weekend (along with a colleague Jane) so you can get the gist of what I did by Reading through that - but here are the bands that stood out...

Bands I've not seen live before that I particularly enjoyed seeing:  The Joy Formidable (moody Pixies rock), Flashguns (Wedding Present meets The Monkees sort of), Black Tide (a new Iron Maiden with very, very long hair), Friendly Fires (special mention to them, totally, totally brilliant with carnival dancers thrown in), Esser (great pop going on), Cancer Bats (rawwwwk), Fucked Up (rawwwk with utterly amazing frontman), Santogold (looking and sounding great - NME calling her music genre-buggery is so appropriate), Yeasayer (sooo soothing after the brute force of...), Bring Me The Horizon (more heavy metal, amazing voice), The Whip (fat bassy repetitive beats on a pop tip), Holy Fuck (beautifully hypnotic live), Johnny Foreigner (utterly delightful indie that should be too twee but isn't) and Seasick Steve (drinking Jack on stage, how blues can you get?)

There might be more from the new (to me) stuff but that'll do for now...except for Metallica who'd I'd not seen before but were simply awesome - I can't really say much more than that to be honest.  Unbelievable.  Rage Against The Machine were fantastic but the sound was pretty crap where we were so we just couldn't get the full impact of it...plus it felt like they really lagged after the first few tracks, although admittedly they were back at full steam for the encore.

As for people we'd seen before: QOTSA, Justice and Gallows were totally superb - although Josh's new crew-cut is the subject of some debate.  QOTSA played a fan's set, missing out many of the obvious hits in favour of some longer. more noodly tracks.  Justice did a shortened set which upset Ian (who loves a bit of 'Phantom' but if you watch the video before it goes offline and check out the crowd reaction, you'll see that most people didn't seem to mind). Crystal Castles, Foals and These New Puritans were also as good as ever.

What a line up eh?  It was a great chance to see loads of brilliant music with a lot of people who were up for hearing it - one of the reasons why it remains one of my favourite festivals of the year. 

Roll on Bestival in a couple of weeks! 

Er yeah....hi!

Ok, this is very bad I know... but I have been busy. Since the last time I wrote I have been working at Download, Glastonbury. and, would you believe it, in Mallorca (see some pics from two of those events here), ventured on holiday to Corfu for a week, been to Wireless and Field Day festivals and seen My Bloody Valentine and Justice live - all of which looks a bit feeble when written down but it felt busy at the time, believe me.  I'm not going to bother revisiting all of those things - there will be photos of some of them my Flickr page when I get around to putting them up. 

I've not done much new music listening in that time weirdly enough, and a lot of the bands I saw at the festivals were ones I already knew about in the main, simply because I couldn't get the time off when I needed to but if I think of anyone of note as I go along, I'll let you know... 

I've been desperately playing catch up and here are SOME of the results - if I try and make this list exhaustive, I'll just stress myself out so I'll just the best of the best of the best up for the moment... Fingers crossed you vaguely agree, eh?

The Friendly Fires - 'Jump In The Pool' - a band guaranteed to put a smile on your face, they're sort of an indie-ier version of Klaxons and this song is very dang catchy. They're hugely hyped and even though some people think they've only got a couple of tracks, I've heard the album and there are more than that.  Anyway, this song is so good I couldn't care less :)

The Joy Formidable - 'Austere' - never one to shy away from gothy sounding, bass driven bands, here's another one!  Starting off with (slighly annoying) girly 'ooh-ooh'ing with a fuzzy bass, this builds up into a nice journey into Throwing Muses/Pixies territory.

Esser - 'Headlock' - this guy is clearly a little bit bonkers and the first time you hear it you might think 'eh?' but I'm afraid once you do hear it, it will be stuck in your head pretty much forever (approx).  He's clearly an utter pop genius and if he hits the Top 40 (which I think he will), it will be a wonderful thing. 

Micachu - 'Just In Case' - I love this girl  - her voice has a strange surly quality to it that makes her very listenable to me - and she knows how to screw up acoustic guitar music better than most. There's also a bonkers dubstep break down in the middle of the track.  Reminiscent of hearing Santogold/M.I.A. in those early days too - check out Golden Phone too, it's also brilliant.

Ladyhawke - Paris Is Burning - not exactly THAT new on the scene but worthy of a mention given my blog drought of late.  This track is so 80s Bananarama cheesy that it becomes an instant classic in my book... Much has been made of her Stevie Nicks obsession and check out this not so good quality copy of 'Back Of The Van' to see EXACTLY what I mean, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that... Expect people to be blowing coke up her ass real soon.

White Denim - 'Let's Talk About It' - one of my big regrets in the past couple of months was deliberating too long about whether to get tickets to see this band, only to find when I went to buy them, the gig had sold out and there was absolutely no way I could persuade the record company that I was important enough to be there given the illustrious queue that had already formed.  Anyway, their garage rock is so authentic, it sounds like the tracks were unearthed from a derelict recording studio somewhere (apparently it was a 1940's Spartan trailer if that means anything to you).  Pure and dirty rock and roll. 

Lord Auch - The Dig Inn - Last up an artrocker indie band demo that I rather like - I don't think it's gonna be a big hit but something about the vocals that REALLY remind me of loads of bands I like, none of which come to mind.  If anyone can help me out, that would be great... 

OK, so that'll do for now although other things of note over the past couple of months - 1) HOW GOOD were My Bloody Valentine at The Roundhouse? Oh my days that gig was inspired. 2) I simply can't seem to stop playing the new Beck album - it's just brilliant, even if his Wireless performance would lead us to suggest that Scientology has sucked the joy out his stage persona and 3) roll on Reading and Bestival!