Two Thousand and Eight.

Another fucking album list to glance at, just because I made one to give myself a New Year's Eve buzz... Looking at it, I think the top (baker's) dozen or so are ones which I'll still be listening to in years to come. That's a successful year, I think... 1. Islands - Arm's Way 2. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend 3. So Cow - I'm Siding With My Captors 4. Times New Viking - Rip it Off 5. Human Highway - Moody Motorcycle 6. Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances 7. El Guincho - Alegranza! 8. No Age - Nouns 9. Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion 10. Why? - Alopecia 11. The Mae Shi - HLLLYH 12. Deerhoof - Offend Maggie 13. Jape - Ritual 14. Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow and Blue 15. Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer 16. David Turpin - The Sweet Used-to-be 17. Nobunny - Love Visions 18. The Spinto Band - Moonwink 19. Adam Green - Sixes and Sevens 20. Dodos - Visiter 21. Jonathan Richman - Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild 22. Andy's Airport of Love - Ballad of the Aleutian Sea Otter 23. Psychedelic Horseshit - Magic Flowers Droned 24. Jason the Swamp - Jason the Swamp 25. The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride 26. Stephen Malkmus - Real Emotional Trash 27. Jeremy Jay - A Place Where We Could Go 28. Cheap Time - Cheap Time 29. Wavves - Wavves 30. Minor Constellations - Ten Things Interesting Observation Not a single British band. And this isn't some stubborn "you stole our taters" thing on my part. Just to prove it... Best British Band Let's Wrestle Annnnnnnd... As soon as I typed that, I remembered that Pete and the Pirates' Little Death came out this year and is very good. I'm not going back. Olé olé olé. Addendum I didn't include either of Jay Reatard's singles collections because I've only ever heard the songs from them as they were on the EPs. They'd be there otherwise, I promise. P.P.S. I didn't include Wackity Schmackity Doo for the same load of reasons which I suggest in that review. Best Show La Casa Azul at FIB/Animal Collective at Whelan's/Islands at Róisín Dubh (you'll have the share the trophy, you champs) 'Unacknowledged Genius' Award Nicholas Thorburn - made stellar albums as Islands, Human Highway and Reefer. Drew amusing comic strips. Was a swell dude. Got slated lots. Best EP Grand Pocket Orchestra - Make Happy War Best Single The Barbaras - Summertime Road Best New Band The Barbaras Best New Old Band Jan and Dean Band of 2009 The Barbaras C'mon da babs. The Barbaras - Heaven Hangs Human Highway - The Sound Abba - Happy New Year

Hitch A Ride In My Wetsuit.

JAN AND DEAN What kind of music is one meant to listen to during the winter time? Is it the cold, dark folk of someone like thinguma*jigSaw to reflect and amplify the present world and chill your bones even more? Or maybe something like Sung Tongs where the guitars crunch like the leaves underfoot and the heartstopping melodies wrap themselves around you like a body sock; the breakaway yellows in a palette of autumnal browns. Then again, perhaps the most ideal music is the least befitting? Bouncy, fun, summertime pop which, when coupled with closed eyes, will help you slip away to the beach for five minutes? Fuck it, a combination of all three suits me down to the ground thank you very much! But I've been finding the latter style to be the most agreeable S.A.D. combattant as of late, largely in the form of the greatest hits of hunky Beach Boys seed-planters Jan and Dean. To a postmodern child, these guys' music is essentially Eddie Rockets without the bloatedness and brain freezing. In fact - shit! - I just realised upon typing that sentence that the Empty Pockets 'theme tune' is a horrific appropriation of 'Surf City'! Weird. As American as a bullet-riddled apple pie (the collection even includes their song for a Coke ad), the young womanisers rarely have anything on their minds aside from surfing, girls and surfer girls. Indeed, the aforementioned song (their truly greatest hit) opens with the harmonised line "two girls for every boyyyyyy!"; a ratio which the slutty bastards continue to celebrate and taunt us with ("all you gotta do is just wink your eye!") for the next three minutes. I'm walking around the place listening to this stuff wearing a multitude of layers, the cold streaming tears down my face. I'm not "going to Surf City, gonna have some fun/going to Surf City cos it's two-to-one". There's nothing here for me to presently relate to but it's tremendous fun anyway. And there's definitely nothing relatable about 'Dead Man's Curve', their tragic car crash drama (complete with out-of-control-car-swerving-off-the-road sound effects), which is rendered totally bizarre because of them unafflictedly delivering the song in the same charming chirp they use to sing about boning beach babes. Surf City 'Surf City' live video - Jan's (I think) reactions to Dean's (I think) lyrical blips are mildly amusing. The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena) live on The Dean Martin Show. Old people are cool.

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Life Is A Rollercoaster, Just Gotta Ride It (All Night Long).

ANDY'S AIRPORT OF LOVE The closing track - and highlight - of 'Ballad of the Aleutian Sea Otter' is entitled Old Wooden Rollercoaster. Far be it from someone writing about music to pull a dumb metaphor out of his hole (sorry, I mean "apropos of nothing"), I won't bother suggesting that this debut "album" from Andy's Airport of Love (all 7.3 minutes of it!) is somewhat akin to a ride on a rickety wooden coaster. Perhaps Blackpool Pleasure Beach's Grand National? Over seventy years old and with the erratic track eroding away from beneath you, your only security on the thing is a flimsy seatbelt which is as if it's been digested and regurgitated by the herd of horses which the uncomfortably jerky carts are supposed to mimic. But this noisy old lo-fi rollercoaster is no less thrilling despite all of this, as you unpredictably careen around the theme park, all the time jeering the opposing train racing alongside you, even with the niggling fear in your mind that smashing your face off of the steel bar in front of you is a very viable possibility. But yeah... Here are eight songs, each one clutching onto the 60-second mark for dear life, always swooping, drooping, clipping, tripping and concluding far too soon (LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER!!!!!!!). Just thank Jehovah that this record doesn't come with a "no repeat rides" sign. Download 'Ballad of the Aleutian Sea Otter' for free.

"Zip him back up, he sucks!"

TRIPPING DAISY: I AM AN ELASTIC FIRECRACKER Here's another review which was originally written for the first issue of 'Underground Wires'. All of the albums reviewed within the zine were released in 1995 and were thus required to be written about from the perspective of one stuck in the dead centre of the nineties. Is Tripping Daisy a band comprised of recreational drug-users? Well, the Texans' second long-player is entitled 'I am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER'. The cover features an elderly Italian man, naked and covered in what looks like - but surely isn't! - blood (it's Guglielmo Cavellini "in the process of self-historification"). And the final track is entitled 'High'. So yes, they're probably boys who enjoy their illegit medicine. And what if you were to ask if they'd been taking more or less mind-altering substances since their debut release? Urine samples would be needed to come to any sort of judgement. 'Bill' (1992) came floating in on a wave of grunge, but with a splash of acid. Whilst they admittedly had bassy power chord riffs, and promo videos featuring unkempt youngsters going ape-shit at messy-looking live shows, they weren't making the same empty protest music as their peers. Frontman Tim Delaughter was fresh. He was a grinning bundle of joy. And he was happy ("love makes it good to be free!"). No guns and no self-obsessed moping; just charisma, energy, and (further one-upping Cobain) life. Mr. Delaughter is still a carrier of all of these attributes, but now he and his merry men also have the weight of a smash hit on their shoulders. 'I Got a Girl' may have been transplanted from its rightful place as track three of this psychedelic suite to a unit-shifting "alt-rock" (ew) anthem, but here it's not a made-for-radio novelty song. Like the rest of the album, it's just gleefully goofy pop music with ridiculous lyrics which are more interested in imagism than realism: "I am there choking on bubbles", "lying here with you is like heaven in the sun, in the seventies", "if I had the strength of ten men, I'd pull your arms out and stick them on your head". High-octane opener 'Rocketpop' sets the tone for the record as it bursts forth with layers of guitar and powerhouse drumming, before gorgeous Kim-Deal-on-Where-Is-My-Mind harmonies come out of nowhere and temporarily massage the song into a lazy euphoria. This fascinating sense of dynamics is most interesting to observe, and is perfectly matrimonial with Delaughter's voice, which possesses the ability to mutate from a touching drawl to a tuneful scream within milliseconds. Every track here is an anthem, even though many clearly aren't that way intended, from the sleazy and fierce 'Bang', the pastel-shaded 'Raindrop' and the haunting Pavement-esque 'Same Dress New Day'. This is indeed an album which reflects its title. Like a firecracker, it exudes energy, warmth and colour. And like Hooke's Law of Elasticity, F is equal to minus kx. Official site Unofficial myspace (with a nice 'Tripping Daisy for Daisy-dummies' playlist)

Nuts!

THE MACADAMIA BROTHERS Continuing the trend of misleadingly named "bands" on Rack and Ruin Records, The Macadamia Brothers consists of Canuckman Scott and... nobody else; not his sibling, nor a fellow friar. In fact, not even he is a friar! He doesn't specialise in making one particular sound of music, unless "good" can be considered a genre of its own. Amongst his polarised array of tunes is '(So) Into You', a song which resembles an even more layaround version of the Unicorns; its lazy, longing, seaside strumming of an acoustic guitar so bright and lulling that you'll be listening to it with your eyes in that comfortable glazed state somewhere between perfect relaxation and sleep and your only remaining thought will be "why don't I have a stalk of hay between my lips and why is it pissing rain out?". Its proud recorder riff is cleverly positioned so as to lay the foundations of the childlike chorus melody ("do do do do, she's so into you") within your head from the off. However, the swift concise pop song is not the only thing within The Macadamia Brothers' area of expertise, as April's Tomatoey Plates EP proves, sounding like a particularly lush and epic videogame soundtrack with wintery bells making it more ideal for listening to right now rather than in the early spring of its release. Each of the three sprawling songs on it contain a soothing repetition of the figures which are established, stretched and slowly garnished, all the time perfectly happy within themselves and displaying what could almost be considered to be an ambitiouslessness which is somehow exactly what makes them so ambitious. (So) Into You Download the Tomatoey Plates EP for free. The follow-up (and also free) Cissura EP will be brought-to-life on November 19th. His myspace

A Hi-Fi Hallowe'en.

HALLOWE'EN MIXZIP Click here to download my spooktacular Hallowe'en mix. Give it a spin to fend off evil spirits from your party, or you could of course come along and jive to them at the Hi-Fi Popcorn Hallowe'en Ball. Tracklisting: 1. North American Hallowe'en Prevention, Inc. - Do They Know It's Hallowe'en? 2. Vic Mizzy - The Addams Family 3. Final Fantasy - The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead 4. Neutral Milk Hotel - Ghost 5. Daniel Johnston - Casper the Friendly Ghost 6. Treehouses - The Trick or Treat Serial Killer 7. Bobby Boris Pickett - Monster Mash 8. France Gall - Frankenstein 9. Unicorns - Ghost Mountain 10. The Shaggs - It's Halloween 11. Pixies - The Thing 12. Volunteer Pioneer - Funeral Scene 13. X-Press 2 - Witchi Tai To (featuring Tim Delaughter) 14. The Paper Chase - We Know Where You Sleep 15. The Immediate - A Ghost in This House 16. Animal Collective - April and the Phantom 17. The Zombies - Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914) 18. Evangelicals - The Halloween Song 19. The Marketts - Out of Limits 20. The Polyphonic Spree - Town Meeting Song Some obvious exclusions from the mix include Ghostbusters, Thriller, Pet Semetary, Ghost Town, I Put a Spell on You, Scary Monsters and Devil's Haircut, as well as more recent vaguely-linkable-to-the-season treats from the likes of Jay Reatard, No Age, Patrick Wolf, The Libertines, Islands, Jape, The Mae Shi, TV on the Radio, thinguma*jigSaw, Nobunny and Wolf Parade. Actually, I was just the other day pondering as to why the only bona fide Hallowe'en HIT is the bonkers Monster Mash. Almost five decades after its release, no other popular song has appeared which really comes close to being as widely-associated with the holiday. The immense Do They Know It's Hallowe'en? was an admirable effort, but that was only available on a painfully-limited seven inch vinyl! What the hell's that about? There's a niche market if ever I've known one! Louis Walsh, you reading this shit? Get off my blog!

Idiocy is bliss.

THE IDIOTS The following review was originally written for the first issue of Underground Wires. All of the albums reviewed within the zine were released in 1995 and were thus required to be written about from the perspective of one stuck in the dead centre of the nineties. I’ll immediately assassinate the elephant in the corner of this room by mentioning a young group of upstarts called My Bloody Valentine. Four years on from the release of Loveless, The Idiots - a dreamy Dublin trio - release a record seeped in the influence of Shields and company. But it has also been seeped in a vat of uniquity and goes to great lengths to try to make both progress and a solitary work of stature. Although this self-titled ‘mini-album’ counts only seven tracks amongst its ranks, it clocks in at around 35 minutes long, testament to the band’s effort of design and liberty of structure. The opening track ‘Slow’ is the most traditional and accessible song here, but it too is inventive through its usage of layers of filthy duelling guitars, effects-laden with varying levels of fuzziness. One of them is played to provide a beat (on top of the already pounding drums) and another is severely altered in order to convert its sound into that of a synthesiser. But the real success of this tune is its chorus, where lead singer Brian Mooney stretches a simple and everyday first person pronoun into an impossibly catchy six-syllabled refrain. I defy you to rid your cranium of the phrase “I have had enough” for quite a while after having heard this. From hereafter, it becomes evident that the three Idiots like to shun conventional structure and the wordy cramming of songs, instead preferring to spend their time oxymoronically building spaces wherein they can then litter their chunks of tasteful noise, waves of reverb and fits of vocal repetition. At times - like on ‘Screwdriver’ - the thumping drums and high voltage riffs can make them sound almost like a metal band, but there’s also an underlying fragility buried beneath the bed of sound and intimate vocals. Exhibit A is the haunting game of hide-and-go-seek that is ‘Pinned’. The drum beat’s B.P.M. replicates human running and the tone of the music suggests a dark woods, late at night. To add to this canvas of fear, Mooney’s breathless and creepy “I’ve found you” is enough to strike fear in even the bravest of listeners. As a fascinatingly inventive piece of art music, this album is one which needs to be allowed to wash over you (despite the hygiene-related worries I’d have in doing so) and stands in direct juxtaposition to its humbley-monikered creators. Although much of what is to be heard here is militantly challenging and wondrously deep, it’s also possible to listen to without supplies or a shovel. Constantly dynamic and mysterious, the only obvious thing about it is the lack of idiocy involved. Then again, ‘The Genii’ isn't quite as good a band name, is it? I Should Go Slow 1997 interview Beautiful Unit myspace - the current solo project of Mr. Mooney. Trust Me I'm a Thief - an excellent record label founded and run by two of The Idiots.

Ghosts Die

A HAUNTED NIGHT OF LO-FI AT THE LOWER DECK I'm putting on a fun night of music in The Lower Deck this All Hallow's Eve. It's a third of the price of the Phantom FM Hallowe'en party. Come in costume, see five bands and dance to the Monster Mash til early November. Find it on last.fm here. A Series of Dark Caves An ideally named project for a Hallowe'en concert comes courtesy of David Ferguson, a young musical messer with a penchant and a dab hand for constructing tense, lushly layered slices of curious suburbia which suggest a formidable partnership between Noah Lennox and John Darnielle. Although on 'To The Kids' he heartbreakingly declares "I wanna know what's killing me", I can't help but get the feeling that he has no interest in genuinely knowing the answer to this mystery, with his catchy compositions being also as reverb-soaked, puzzling and open-ended as they are. Download: This Year in a Nutshell EP myspace Treehouses It brings me great pleasure to draw a comparison - however slight and unfounded - between an Irish act and the marvellous Californian indie-hop outfit Why?. 'Abandon House!' fires up with the thick beat-and-bassline combo and intimate stream-of-consciousness poetics which my mind has come to associate with Anticon's finest sons, but it's also so freeform and capricious that any mild contrasts are fleeting. The chiming metronome which rings throughout cleverly mimics the persistent doorbell which is being bemoaned by our narrator as he attempts to peacefully retreat from society in the way in which his pseudonym 'Treehouses' would suggest. Download: Abandon House! myspace How Will They Cope? The one time that I saw the cryptically monikered How Will They Cope live, it was a glorious mess. 75% of the band were... pie-eyed... and the remaining percentage (lead singer Davy Kehoe) was left to be the night's designated paperclip as the promoter tried desperately to pull the plug on their delayed and chaotic set as soon as possible. Fortunately, this kind of carry-on is totally my thing. They also answered their own question and coped quite capably, by allowing to seep out of themselves their intriguing collection of oft-meandering synth-inflected tunes with a spirit and energy sadly absent from so many of our island's feet-superglued-to-the-floor cool dudes. 'Mistral' - named after a violent French wind, shame on you for not knowing - finds Kehoe in a meditative mood in a meadow (hence its original punning title 'Meadowtations', I wisely assume), his dynamic alto vocals leaping and bounding over the band's Pavement-esque patterns, as together they gust towards a killer chorus and a sweetly lilting breakdown. Download: Mistral myspace Dublin Duck Dispensary I don't know much about these. Download: Mamma Mia (Abba cover) myspace Secret Special Guest Who knows!

I Know A Place.

JEREMY JAY Jeremy Jay's A Place Where We Could Go opens with one of the most pointless tracks in music history. It's not some terrible lengthy self-indulgent 'experimental' noodling which Jay will refer to as his defining work while everybody else sneers, nor is it filler spat out on the last day of mixing to make it to twelve tracks. No, it's a super-brief clip of him saying the words "night night". It's so short that when selected on my iPod, it results in this weird glitch where it just plays a sudden and paltry excerpt of whatever I was last listening to before firing straight into the album's second track, a shimmeringly romantic moonlit-stroll-and-red-wine tune which, funnily enough, is called 'Nite Nite'. This reiteration of the naming of the period which exists between 9pm and 4am does, however, allow for the musician to recommend the ideal time for listening to his gorgeous wandering minstrel meditations. To these ears, Jeremy Jay is the colourful Venn intersect of Jonathan Richman, Andrew Bird and Mark Bolan (during the stray moments when he wasn't being crap), but the K Records stamp on his album sleeve is a quiet and friendly reassurer as to his idiographic and self-styled talent. Nite Nite His myspace

Bogman Jason.

JASON THE SWAMP A swamp can't walk, a swamp can't talk, a swamp can't smile, a swamp can't cry and a swamp can't die. All a swamp can do is sit there being wet and dirty. Are we genuinely expected to believe that a marsh named Jason is a regular producer of sweetly bouncing ditties such as those contained on the Mice in the Mouse Organ EP from earlier this year? It's not even as though 'swampish' would be a suitable descriptor of his crisp and clean stylings. 'Running Around' sounds like he travelled back in time to 1983 Texas, visited Daniel Johnston's sister's basement, washed the gunk and grime out from Johnston's tatty old chord organ, figured out how to multi-track vocals and lobbed a giddy kitchen sink drumbeat on top. Some of the other tracks on the EP are spacious flashes of beauty; brief and twee will-o'-the-wisp instrumental pieces which resemble the pretty little melodies that often crop up in a good movie score and disappear near-instantaneously, meaning that you forget to do the necessary further research to find the responsible artist. Maybe Jason the Swamp is behind each of these sweet moments? If he isn't, he should be. Red Flannel Soup Download two free albums and an EP at Rack and Ruin Records. His song featured on We Love You Too! - A Rack & Ruin Covers Compilation is a terrific version of Man Man's 'Van Helsing Boombox'. His myspace

Bar Bar Bar Bar Barbara Ann

THE BARBARAS Personally accumulated knowledge is leagues more reliable than that which is discovered offhandedly from browsing the world wide web, but it's also likely to be markedly less interesting. Here's a quaint factoid which I can offer to you having listened to The Barbaras' 'Summertime Road' 7" record a few dozen times over the summer: I love it, it soundtracked the season. But here are two tidbits of information which I picked up from blogs and other such modern rumourmills: 1) Jay Reatard's bassist and drummer are in the group (this one isn't arguable, or controversial), and 2) Mr. Lindsey/Reatard apparently pleasured a "disabled" member of the band, who happened to be sleeping at the time. For fear of beginning to sound like a red-top, I should now blast into a cavalcade of metaphors, similes and adjectives which help me convey the muddy and static yet irrepressibly melodic noise that these guys make. But holy shit! One of them's disabled and Jay Reatard gave him a handjob???? That's flippin' mental! Summertime Road Live at Gonerfest mp3s Buy the Summertime Road 7" Their myspace

I Can't Stand the Sound of Flesh Hitting Bone.

GRAND POCKET ORCHESTRA I count the odds as highly unlikely that Grand Pocket Orchestra is a band which formed through a notice in a supermarket or a guitar shop or a parish hall. It's obvious that the thing which connects this 'riot pop' quartet is not a slim field of common influences ("everything from the Foos to the Chilis!") nor an impulse to combat boredom in the suburban evenings. Instead, I can imagine the four young hooligans of the group having being beamed down from outer space like Rowan Atkinson in the opening credits of Mr. Bean. There's the multi-tasking lady with neon pink candy floss hair, the punk drummer whose bare arms are a blur, the bratty, yelping lead singer whose movements suggest that he's permanantly engaged in a Nintendo Wii game within his head, and 'Flesh', the darkly mysterious Boris Karloff guitarist. These foreign beings then stumbled upon the music shelf of a branch of Formative Fun and, mouths agape like the guy on the escalator in those bad "he don't belong here!" comedies, began to make their singular and unbounded racket. Their new EP 'Make Happy War' consists of the eight finest concurrent minutes of audio to reach my ears this year. And I'm not being silly. It's such thrilling and unpredictable lunacy. There are melodies catchier than the expression "catchier than the plague" and indeed catchier than the plague itself. There are drumrolls to roll with, gangshouts to shout out and lyrics to lyricise, despite their largely incomprehensible nature. On an infuriatingly regular basis over the past three weeks, I've had lines such as the following (which are unlikey to be genuine Grand Pocket Orchestra lyrics) barge into my head uninvited: "I bet you wish you'd never bit the head off Italy", "Joe paints new pictures/they look so pretty", "in a river of cherry paths/oh yeah/I saw him/he was wearing next to nothing" and "everyone everyone everyone rock/let's all go to a Nokia stop". What the fuck! I don't know. Over the past year, Grand Pocket Orchestra has made nine songs available for public consumption. They have yet to release a single millisecond of junk. And judging by their live set and the album turnover rate of the music industry, it could be a number of years before they do, if ever. Everyone everyone everyone rock. Using the Body (from nialler9) Little Messy Odd Socks Their myspace

Bó Cow: When Bobby Met Cowey

So Cow So Cow is Brian Kelly, a young Galwegian man with a penchant for the scuzzy side of pop music. His most recent album These Truly Are End Times (2007) is a truly unique gem which I - personally, yet passionately - believe to be one of the greatest Irish records of all time. Critically acclaimed and loved by all those who listened, it also resulted in support slots with the likes of Dan Deacon and Ted Leo and The Pharmacists. His marvellously haphazard cover version of Deerhoof’s ‘The Perfect Me’ even attracted the attention of musical savant Greg Saunier who made it available for download from their website. Having spent the past few years teaching English in South Korea, he has returned to our island community clutching the half hour of power that is I’m Siding With My Captors. I catch up with him as he eats a curry and listens to Times New Viking, an unwise, stomach-upsetting combination. Hey! asl? 12 / other / Basra Sweet. First of all - don’t kill me - why are you called So Cow? So Cow comes from a spelling test given to a classroom of elementary school kids in Korea. One of the words I tested them on was ‘such’. One kid, Nick, wrote 'so cow'. I saw that, and the rest, as they say, took a while. Then, by coincidence, I found out that the Korean word for ‘cow’ is ‘so’. And when asked how they are feeling, if in anyway not totally happy, Koreans will answer in English “so-so”... it snowballed from then. It’s bigger than all of us now. Wow, I had no idea it was so intricate. So the third So Cow album is coming out soon. What’s happened so far? Well, the first one doesn't count [2005’s That’s It, Christmas Is Cancelled!]. The official first one was released last year to moderate acclaim and minimal financial reward. It was called These Truly Are End Times. Google it and, indeed, buy it. The new one is called I'm Siding With My Captors. It’s the second and a half, counting the first as the half. But yeah, it's the second. The first was burned onto, like, 41 CD-Rs for friends and nobody ever commented on it. If it was a dog, it would have been a stray knocked down by a lorry on a motorway. From what age were you musically involved? What first got you ‘into’ music? I liked music from early on, specifically The Beatles and Queen. But as for writing songs, I was more of a fantasist. I would imagine myself and three classmates standing on a stage, all playing guitar (which, in hindsight, was stupid… I used to imagine Beatlemania scenarios). This would have been when i wasn't restaging All-Ireland football finals in my back yard. I would guess I was a pretty inward kid… But writing songs took ages, until I was 16 or something. And I should point out, I was restaging ENTIRE Beatles shows and ENTIRE football finals. They were more innocent times. Now, on to So Cow: The Korea Years. I once heard someone describe you, aptly I think, as “Guided by Voices meets Cornelius”. Do you think your time spent in Asia has changed or modelled your sound in some way? Do you think I sound "Asian"? I think some stuff - say the guitar solo on Casablanca - sounds un-European. I mean… if you listened to me independent of knowing where I lived - and excepting the odd Korean lyric - the Cornelius would probably fall out of that equation. Though I guess I've learnt a lot of harmonies and ways of going about them while over there. They use different scales and whatnot, and I've planned on adopting those but not got around to it yet. But yeah, I get asked that a lot. It sounds, I would think, like a man in his flat writing songs in the style of music that he likes. I'm kinda stuck in many ways with my writing. I'm not going to leap out of the blocks with an Afrobeat record any time soon… Am I this generation’s Status Quo? That's actually something I'd aspire to. You're this generation's Vampire Weekend. I do what I do, and that's the end of it. I really shouldn't have had curry. Where has been more receptive to your music, do you think... Korea or Ireland? Oh, Ireland. but maybe that's the language barrier. In the last few months, America has been the place where from I get mails and CD orders and radio play and all that. Ireland, less so. Korea, not at all. Also, Korean crowds tend to be extremely reserved. I end up trying to goad them. Irish crowds... I don't know... I haven't played to enough, and perhaps “crowds” might be optimistic. What's smaller than a crowd but bigger than a rabble? On record, you play everything yourself. So what’s your song writing process? What comes first? The idea, then the humming, then the quick documentation (MP3 player mic or jotter), then the tryouts, then the melodies, then the lyrics, then the recording from which to run. That’s the usual method. So then the song only exists in my head, and I find it very difficult to tell other musicians what to do. They could be ace musicians but it wouldn't be what I'm hearing and I’d end up disappointed. I'm better on my own. But do you ever feel restricted by it just being you? No, I don’t. I'd feel 75% more restricted in a four piece band. I'm not a good drummer. They'd be pissed off. And I'm competent at most other things, and good on guitar. With bands, there are compromises that I can't imagine making. I'm not Ian MacKaye or anything... I'm not sticking it to The Man. They’re just personal choices as to how I go about things and about the work left behind when I'm done. So do you think it's a good or a bad thing that it's just you involved throughout, until the final product? Yes, I think it's a very good thing. So you won't be going into a studio with a producer anytime soon? I would go into a studio sure, but I’d run how things go, and I'm aiming to be the only person ever to play a note on a So Cow record. (thinks) Hell, my friend Adam Hopgood of Australia introduces the first song on this album… Well, I'd have someone there to make sure things aren't clipping or sounding shit. It's not an ego thing... I know that there are roughly 3,465,331 better drummers in the world than me, or recording engineers and so on. But at bottom, I make the decisions because it's my thing. But if you're going to do something, and you have the ability to do it yourself - or at least learn from it - then why not? Then again, I'm not hell bent on being a fixture. I'm not going writing soundtracks to Lucozade ads. I could go that way if I wanted. What do you mean you're not hell bent on being a fixture? You're not going to stop making music. No. I'm going to put out an album every year until I die... that's set in stone. I'll never stop. Phew. But I haven't gone the route I've always assumed is the route so far... “do some demos, gig like mad, try and get a radio session, do an IMRO tour, do a half page in a monthly music mag where you talk about how cheap the beer was in Prague, release a decent first album, gig some more, play CMJ, release a less good second album with some odd musical direction and then, well... leave quietly”. I mean... that's a fairly solid route... “gotta play Oxegen in 09!”. If this all finally comes together in a commercially/critically successful way in, say, 2022, that's fine. I have other stuff to do, like jobs. So Cow will continue. I don't see this as something where I need to be at a certain place at a certain time. There will be many songs, that I can promise. But there are bands now where I just think "this will be over in two years", which I guess they are fine with. But I'm in this for the long haul, i.e. LIFE. You have a sexy aesthetic. Why thank you. It's not often my aesthetic gets called sexy. Anyway, So Cow for 2022. A lot of your songs are love songs, but even so they manage to be really fresh and clever - the likes of Casablanca (So Cow bemoans the Hollywood portrayal of romance), Commuting (So Cow falls in love with a lady on a bus), Ping Pong Rock (So Cow proclaims love by quoting everyone from The Beach Boys to Mirakil Whip) and Moon Geun Young (So Cow’s relationship crumbles beneath a billboard where a Korean teen superstar flogs mobile phones). What do you aim for when writing lyrics? Where do they come from? I find lyrics difficult, and I like ladies. So what tends to emerge are songs about the various stages of liking ladies... the before, middle and after. I don't aim for cleverness a whole bunch. I aim to sum up something so neatly that my friend Muiris will go "ah, nicely said". I like the idea of someone listening and going "ah, that's what I thought!". But thoughts are scattershot. We all think stuff. But I always like listening to a song where someone says something and you just think "right, well summed up". The lyrics of a Coldplay song, for example… that's why I don't like them. The lyrics have that vague "we are running through the speed of light, everybody knows the way is not the way" bollocks. I like places, times, contexts, references. I like to be someplace in a song… a map that folds out with each line. I don't always write like that, mind. Very often I get vague. Often it's a necessity of rhyme. I can’t think of many other bands whose lyrics make me laugh AND say "that's just perfect!". I get tagged with funny lyrics a lot. That's fine, but I'd hate for anyone to think I'm on a bus with a notepad chuckling to myself. What about the lyric "I've got one hundred Helens on my street"… what’s that about? Do you actually have that many Helens on your road? It's about nothing. When I was playing that riff over and over again, I just sang that. I since found out where it comes from... Kids In The Hall [a Canadian comedy troupe] apparently had a sketch called 'Thirty Helens Agree' which I probably saw on telly when I was 9. I guess that's coming through. So what does ‘I'm Siding With My Captors’ sound like? Is it different to the last one? It's more rocking. There are eleven songs in 28 minutes. The only acoustic song is the last one. I wanted it to be ‘bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang relax’. I'd like to think, in a parallel universe where I was releasing singles, that I'd have a choice on this one. Then again, it was recorded in an office, so I think we'll stick to this universe and say that I'm far more confident in this album as an across the board batting average. If I could go back to the first album, I’d cut five songs - I just got giddy - or rename it 'The Kitchen Sink Story'. But yeah, I think it's better recorded and rocks more and is pop more. There's less fucking around… not that there's anything wrong with that. I read that you started work on I.S.W.M.C with 32 songs. How did you whittle them down? haha, that's how furious I am. Half of them were ideas, half of them songs. Fourteen or so ended up not fitting in at all. Six or so ended up being dead ends. Two or so got culled at the final moment for bringing things down, upsetting the apple cart. About ten will be re-jigged. They make more sense for the next album. What are your plans for 2008? I’m going to do an Irish tour in late April. I'm Siding With My Captors is out around then. But so far it's only Galway and Dublin and I’m kinda fine with that. I'm off to America in May, for a West Coast tour with a dude called No Bunny who is amazing. Then shows in NYC, Cleveland, Columbus and hopefully Montreal and Toronto. How did that come about? It's all fall-out from a seven inch of Moon Geun Young that a label called Almost Ready Records put out. Some people went nuts for it. Sometimes I still think it's a big piss-take. But America seems a bit more interested than anywhere else, so I'm off to see why. Is the So Cow/No Bunny thing a coincidence?! Is he like the American version of you? It only crossed his mind after the third email... totally a coincidence. But I reckon it'll make for good posters. He's just him; amazing songs, such fun. So I’ll come back in July, then release album number three. That'll be out in October, I would guess. Oh, is that nearly done?! There are about eighteen songs ready. It's written. I'm recording the drums for it in two weeks. It's probably going to be twelve or so songs. Again poppy, but with some noisy noisy bits. Like, disgustingly horrendously noisy... the sugar and piss album. Like Times New Viking? Em, maybe. Shit, you've just popped my balloon! I'm not going back to four-track or anything. The fidelity will remain the same. There'll just be more... well, Cornelius would be a good mapping point. By which I mean I'll be playing with the stereo aspect of things... going nuts with it hopefully. What else you want to ask? Ask anything! Ask away! I'm into the spirit of things. I don’t trust myself. haha, in what sense? Are you a muck raking hack? If you could be in any band ever, who would it be? And how different would they be because of you? Fantastic question... In the past: The Who maybe? Everyone in that band was going nuts. I used to want to be in Pavement or a band like that, but there's no real challenge there. Me and you and two other people could fuck around in a practice room for a weekend and be like Pavement. In this modern day and age, I’d choose Deerhoof for much the same reasons as The Who. They’re just musically exciting and above and beyond, without being an arse about it. But I would hope not to effect the band at all. Oh! And why The Who? I don't know. I liked Noel Gallagher's quote about them… "they were all playing lead... mental!”. I'm not a prog-head or anything. I just think they had something a lot of bands in that time lacked. I mean… I still can't find any reason to like Bob Dylan. It just seems like petulant, whiny, plodding shite. I know I WILL like it someday. It WILL click, but right now, no. I don’t get him either. I saw The Flaming Lips supporting him a few years ago and they whooped his wrinkled arse. In Nowlan Park? Yeah [on June 24th, 2006]… I was an alien onstage! Really? How hot was it? It was unbearable until we could take the masks off. They were these big heavy plastic yolks, but we had to wait until three or four songs in. Best day ever though. I think my brother was there. I was at a wedding in Ennis. I remember that day - at around 5a.m - getting up on the roof of the hotel and having a weird pivotal moment where I decided to start doing shit, finally. And So Cow did indeed start doing - as he modestly puts it - shit, and has being doing shit consistently and brilliantly since then. I’m Siding With My Captors will be launched at Anseo on Sunday April 27th, with support from Big Monster Love. It is available for a bargainous purchase here. Click onto So Cow's myspace for more info, tour dates and new tunes. The League of Impressionable Teens (from 'These Truly Are End Times') It's Over (from 'These Truly Are End Times') The Perfect Me (Deerhoof cover)

I'm The Wolf Today, Hey Hey Hey.

B*WITCHED As teenagers and members of B*Witched, Edele and Keavy Lynch were international superstars. Ten years on from the record-breaking success of their debut single 'C'est La Vie', they have returned, manifested in the form of Ms Lynch. Hi-Fi Popcorn caught up with them before their triumphant show at NUI Maynooth to talk smack and shoot the breeze. You’re not calling yourselves B*Witched anymore - it’s Ms Lynch. Are there any particular reasons for this name change? Keavy: A comeback would be the four of us and it’s a new project so we have to call it a different name really. So is there any chance of a comeback someday? K: We’re really happy with where we’re at and… you know where everything’s pointing in the right direction? It really is for Ms Lynch at the moment, so we’re really happy with where we’re at. It said on the bill “enjoy your favourite cheesy acts under the guise of ironic pleasure”. What would you think of that? E: “Under the guise of…”. What does that mean? 'Ironically, they’re actually quite good or something?'' K: Ironically, they’re as cheesy as hell but you’ll have fun. E: Once they think we’re good. Why do you think people would consider you to be a sort of guilty pleasure? K: I think it was just the jeans and the innocence of it all. There was really nothing to it. I suppose if you look back, we probably looked like four quite geeky people, singing cheesy songs that probably do your head in. E: It was very innocent, nicer than nice, cleaner than clean. Do you think that’s the reason that people might be somewhat embarrassed to admit that they bought C’est La Vie? Because a million or so people bought it, but how many would be willing to admit it? K: A million people bought it, maybe like 200,000 say they did. Would you consider yourselves to have been a manufactured pop group? K: In some way. We weren’t manufactured to the point where we were put together. You were all friends. K: We were friends, and we put ourselves together and started the whole project, so in that respect we weren’t manufactured. Having said that… E: Everybody is manufactured. K: Yeah, and we had a record company, so everything was planned. E: Our denim was definitely manufactured. Sweatshops. K: But we did write our own songs which manufactured bands don’t. So what’s your opinion on manufactured bands, like those from reality TV shows like X-Factor or Pop Idol? E: It kind of does my head in. In one way, it’s brilliant. It’s a lovely way of giving an opportunity to people. K: But they seem to only have the year, until the show comes back around again, and then the public are like “who’s next?”. E: But then you have the lucky ones like Leona and Will who want to stand up for themselves and actually come out with something that they can stand for, rather than doing what everyone tells them to. K: They took the time to write their own record, a record that was true to them, and that’s why they’re sticking around for longer. B*Witched split up as soon as you were dropped by Sony BMG. Why did you not keep on going? E: We did try actually. We had another label on the table. But Sony made it difficult for us to leave. Even though they let us go, they weren’t letting us go very easily. K: Legally, we were still under their contract. We couldn’t sign another one, and by the time they’d let us go, the other one had spent the money somewhere else. So with Ms Lynch, would you be reluctant to get involved with a major label like Sony again? Both: No, not at all. K: It was just an unfortunate shame that they had a new managing director come in and he wanted to put his own mark on the record company. E: It happened a lot with a lot of other bands, not just us. So now you’re 29 years old, which is still really young, and you have a new project called Ms Lynch. Tell us a little bit about that. K: We started about a year and a half ago. We were writing separately before then and we just thought ‘actually, we’re better together’. We write better music, we’re better performers… So we’ve been writing the album ever since. We started gigging to get people used to the fact that there’s only two of us and it will be live. So it was kind of doing the background work first to make sure people would accept the new music and the new look. E: So people would understand what to expect from us as a duo, without trying to rewrite B*Witched in 2008. A couple of songs - ‘Tip It’ and ‘Diet Coke’ - first appeared on your myspace in January 2007. A year is a long time in the popular music business. What’s been going on? K: They were the first two songs we wrote for Ms Lynch. We put them straight on our myspace when they were written. We just wanted people to understand that we were out there and we had stuff that was maybe worth listening to. E: We haven’t been ready for a release yet. We’re still with the gigs and the studio work and stuff. We’ve been finding Ms Lynch’s feet, and now our feet have been found. Edele, you’ve been writing for Xenomania. When you were co-writing hits for Sugababes and Girls Aloud, did you ever think ‘actually, I want to keep this for myself’? E: Totally. I remember someone going “are you so excited that they’re gonna do your songs?” and I was like “not really, I’d rather do it myself”. K: Somebody approached us about taking the Ms Lynch songs for somebody else and we were just like “how dare you!”. You have a song called ‘Diet Coke’ which positively mentions the drink. Do you hope to get it on to an ad or something? K: No, that would be great! But that’s not why it’s there. E: All our songs should be called ‘Gucci’ or… whoever wants to sponsor us, we’ll change “Diet Coke” to whatever… (singing) L’Oreal, L’Oreal! Lyon’s Tea, Lyon’s Tea! But you’re just fans of diet coke? K: Yeah, it’s just… E: I hate diet coke. K: Actually I don’t drink fizzy drinks at all. I drink vodka though. Vodka and diet coke. E: Wait, can we not say we hate diet coke in case they do give us an ad? I’ll edit it out. So anyway, what are your hopes for Ms Lynch? K: Just to get back on the road, back touring, sell our records. E: It would be really nice to think that people still want us out there, because we are good and I think the music is good. I’m blowing my own trumpet here, but… (trumpet sounds). Dustin is representing Ireland in the Eurovision. What do you think of that? K: The Irish are gonna love it. We’re all gonna think it’s brilliant. Have you heard it? K: No actually, I haven’t, but just for comedy value we’re gonna love it. But I think the rest of the world is gonna go “what?”. I was talking to Lindsay earlier and she said it was on the English news, going “oh my god, you’re gonna make a show of yourselves”. Would you ever consider entering the Eurovision? E: I couldn’t be bothered. It’s very political now. The year that Brian McFadden wrote the song, England and Ireland had two of the best songs and they were way down the bottom. It’s a very European thing now. I don’t think we’re gonna win it ever again. C'est La Vie video Their myspace

Holy Moly, Look At The Crazy Dude On The Beach.

EL GUINCHO Within several cynical and elitist bubbles of the internet, folk have recently been dreading 2008's inevitable arrival of a bandwagon crowded with "the solo artist with the sampler", desperately attempting to mimic Panda Bear's breathtakingly original Person Pitch record. Hipsters: you can treat yourself to a rest and some fresh air, because the bandwagon has pulled into town and El Guincho has disembarked, armed with a Boss SP-303 and a love of loops. And he's fucking good! Whilst it's undoubtedly true that nobody will ever speak of Pablo Díaz-Reixa without mentioning Noah Lennox in the same breath, that's no excuse for resistance. In many ways, his debut album Alegranza is the heads to Person Pitch's tails. Gone are the sounds of trains rattling by and in are the sounds of schoolchildren singing and clapping. It isn't a dark journey through the cavernous chambers of the listener's mind, but rather a trippy picnic in a sun-kissed inlet. It'd be more sensical to consider that El Guincho has inherited Jay Dilla's wondrous trove of samples than to think that he's actively splicing up long-forgotten songs by Cat Stevens and the Zombies. And whilst the vocals are still as indecipherable as Lennox's, this time it's due to a language barrier and not a productional technique, as Díaz bounces through the songs in an exotic Spanish tongue. The lyrics could be a musical adaptation of Stroszek, but ignorance is almost as blissful as tropicalia. Similarly, he might mask his face in hair and ignore the audience when performing live, but it's difficult to imagine him not dancing around the crowd topless, wearing baggy yellow trousers. Antillas features a tropical flickering guitar riff which sounds like the resulting treasure of a day digging through sand on the beach, bursting to the surface and greeting the summer sky. Sung over this is a vocal melody which is suspiciously - yet forgivably - similar to that of Animal Collective's future classic Brother Sport. Strangely, Kalise sounds even more like the Collective's electro-pop breakdown, either pinching or coincidentally concocting the same tune as both the "open up your, open up your... Maaaaaatt" and "you're halfway to fully grown..." sections of their song, as well as building-up in an unnervingly comparable fashion. But don't worry! Even Martin Luther King plagiarised, and he wasn't half as cool as this dude. And before you check your pockets during Costa Paraíso; no, that's not your phone vibrating. It's a sample. Nobody loves you, but cheer up! Here are nine songs as gleeful as Hey Ya, delivering everything you'd expect from a record named after an uninhabited volcanic island off the coast of Lanzarote, which was itself named after the Spanish word for 'joy'. Let the summer begin. Fata Morgana Palmitos Park Buy Alegranza here or here. Kalise video His myspace

Hard Working Class Heroes: Part 3/3

The Radio - One of Two Ways The Radio is the studio project of Stephen Murray (formerly guitarist with one of the best Irish bands of all time [Rollerskate Skinny]), in which he composes incredibly catchy ditties and enlists various females to contribute gorgeous vocals. 'One Of Two Ways' is so angular it could take your eye out, and its crispness suggests that Murray's shoegazing days are well and truly behind him. The most wonderful and concise definition of 'art rock' yet. Oh No Ono - Keeping Cold In Warm Country Keeping Cold In Warm Country is what would happen if The Strokes were gifted with an otherworldly synthesiser and forced to enter the Eurovision. In other words, Oh No Ono are awesome! Despite often sounding so impossibly 1970's NYC, there's definitely enough inventiveness in their music to convince us that we're actually listening to 21st century Danish rock music. The Lovekevins - Tamagotchi Freestyle The only thing stopping this Swedish duo from being called Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - apart from the very obvious legal reason - is that they have names like Lindefelt and Fredrik. Yes, Lovekevins brand a very similar brand of digital twee to that of their tourmates and friends. But I - and anyone else with half an ear - should find it very hard to get tired of any number of Pavement/Abba fusions. Jape - Floating Here's an all-time classic by the man who promises to be the saviour of Irish music in the very near future. His forthcoming 'Jape Is Grape' EP will contain the first of the much-anticipated batch of songs which have been amazing Jape concert attendees for over a year now. 'Floating' is where the many colours of Richie Egan combine to create a blinding white light, as slacker-pop and intentionally-lazy philosophical meanderings gradually squelch towards a euphoric conclusion.

Hard Working Class Heroes: Part 2/3

Fight Like Apes - Lend Me Your Face Here we have 114 of contemporary Irish music's most celebrated seconds. Despite the misleading running time, everything is played at such an illegal speed that the tune seems to squeeze in at least three choruses. And that's not to mention the pant-shittingly scary and forceful title motto which has since taken on a life of its own, in various "lend me your..." forms. It won't be long before this is a household phrase and Fight Like Apes a household name. The Terribles - These Songs The Terribles' predominantly downbeat and tremendously rich compositions makes their team statement - "to make people with converse-type trainers dance" - appear ludicrous. But it's not as though the world needs another Maximo Park. 'Those Songs' is a slice of lo-fi Americana just the way that Jason Lytle and Georgia Hubley like it, with dreamy vocals, lush drums and twinkling glockenspiel. Evil Harrisons - Lion Salad There's something distinctly theatrical about Dundalk quartet - and purveyors of showband indie - Evil Harrisons. 'Some Grand Plan' is their masterpiece; shuffling drums, Libertines-esque guitar, a stirring string section and oddball stream-of-consciousness rap vocals which are thankfully closer to Born Ruffians than they are to Red Hot Chili Peppers. Loveninjas - I Wanna Be Like Johnny C Labrador Records continue their generous, hook-laden contribution to the world with this group of electro-pop messers. Although they can sometimes be an annoyance (see: a song entitled 'She Broke His Penis In Two' and a couple of forays into 'eighties' overkill' mode), their debut album 'The Secret Of The Loveninjas' is filled with enough lovely moments to balance the books. The slow-building opener 'I Wanna Be Like Johnny C' is a good example, all climbing synths and Jarvis Cocker shouts. It is only unfortunate that their HWCH set clashes with that of their similarly-monikered countrymen Lovekevins.

Hard Working Class Heroes: Part 1/3

Hard Working Class Heroes festival 2007 takes place this weekend, in six venues within Harcourt Street's POD complex. There has never before been such an abundance of amazing Irish bands and - as many of them have yet to release albums - a festival like this is ideal for people to figure out what's awesome and what's awful. As well as showcasing hundreds of great tunes from this island, the weekend will feature a 'Scandinavian Invasion'. Although the Canadian showcase of last year's festival was of a slightly disappointing calibre, the foreign bands - probably en route to Ireland on longboats right now - performing this year are almost entirely great. This week, Hi-Fi Popcorn will be featuring twelve of the best acts... Soda Fountain Rag - Red Tape This bedroom pop project introduces us to a yé-yé girl for the 21st century. Ragnhild Hogstad Jordahl - drummer with Norwegian indie-popsters The April Skies - makes chirpy songs influenced by some of her fantastic fellow Scandinavians. Think France Gill or Clothilde, but armed with Fruity Loops and a laptop. Her debut album is due for release this autumn on Ireland's lovely yesboyicecream records, but until then, she has fifteen songs available for free download. Super Extra Bonus Party - Everything Flows Choosing a name which strings together three massively enthusiastic adjectives with one of the most positive nouns in existence doesn't leave a band with many options. And so Super Extra Bonus Party rise to the challenge, throwing samples, indie guitars and guest vocals on top of breakneck beats. Their awesome live show is a collision of inventive goodtime electro and bizarrely appropriate visual art. Michael Knight - Coronation Street Michael Knight is neither the name of a Knightrider obsessed band nor a singer-songwriter with a bizarre birthname. It's actually the assumed title of Berlin-based musician Richie Murphy, a man who specialises in clever piano-based pop songs infused with the spirit of many dead classical composers, as well as the smart-arse bounce of The Divine Comedy and multi-tracked harmonies which recall that band which were fairly popular during that decade we were in around forty years ago.. Grand Pocket Orchestra - Radio Following in the footsteps of their sometime bandmates Fight Like Apes, Grand Pocket Orchestra look to the genius of America's Elephant 6 collective for inspiration and to procure a distinctly un-Irish sound. 'Radio' is an exciting sprint to the finish line with clanging guitars and duelling vocal melodies, whilst 'Little Messy' is a summertime gem which falls somewhere between Pavement and Modest Mouse. HWCH sees the band make a much-anticipated rare live appearance.

Danielson In Dublin.

DANIELSON FAMILE It's not everyday that a troupe of film stars clamber onto a Dublin stage, fully decked-out in matching medic's regalia. Whilst maybe not - yet! - of the same calibre as Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts, last year's A Family Movie marked the Danielson Family's induction into the rockumentary hall of fame. Charting the band's progress since their inception (the first songs were written in 1993 as part of frontman Daniel Smith's thesis project), the film is a thorough study of an intriguing group. Perhaps most surprising is its exposition of Smith's stringent Christian beliefs. He often sings somewhat tell-tale lyrics such as "I love my lord, I love my lord, I love my lord", but it is still surprising - and perhaps even refreshing - to hear such a talented, respectable and nice man speak passionately about his spiritual mentality. As he insists that the band's material is written by God but channeled through him, we are given reason to praise the lord (and God's lawyers are given reason to sue the band for some royalty cheques). Shortly before the release of Danielson's sixth - and latest - record 'Ships', one of their cohorts released a solo album entitled 'Illinoise'. Although he utilised a similar approach to instrumentation, melody and harmony as his employers, it's easy to see why Sufjan became a megastar - whilst Danielson remained firmly underground - when you hear Stevens' soft croon alongside Smith's yelping, excitable and radio-unfriendly falsetto. According to the ever-industrious Pitchfork Media, he has a voice "like a mouse! Or a scary clown!", although maybe something like "Black Francis on helium" would be a more fitting reference point (Hi-Fi Popcorn 1-0 Pitchfork Media). Either way, they are some truly unique vocal chords which will be resonating and colliding with glockenspiels to fill the air in Dublin's Crawdaddy on Sunday night, as Danielson make their debut Irish appearance. We Don't Say Shut Up Rubbernecker Did I Step On Your Trumpet Good News For The Puss Pickers Uh Oh (It's Morningtime Again) (live Little Wings cover) 'Did I Step On Your Trumpet' video Their albums and shirts are all at reduced prices right now! Their myspace