Do you remember, ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’? For those with weak stomachs, it was the most unfriendly pub in Yorkshire, into which the ill-fated Yank hill-walkers strayed in ‘An American Werewolf in London’. Hopefully the welcome will be warmer for late-of-Oxford eight-piece Captive State when they take up their residency at the Farringdon branch of that establishment. They certainly deserve one.

Their current EP opens splendidly with ‘Mona’, a tune which can only be described as groove-based folk-pop. Is this a new genre? Perhaps, although there are echoes of The Super Furry Animals in there. Oh, and the producer is Lemon Jelly’s Nick Franglen, so the credibility levels are already pretty damn high. Captive State’s secret weapon is their horn section, which blows a lovely blowsy wind over the track. Warning! Hippy-haters should beware, as the lyrics are unapologetically of the ‘peace-out, man’ variety, and there is even what I call a ‘Send for Ravi’ moment, in which a sitar player takes a solo. Possibly the only misstep in a complex and wonderful piece of work.

Dave Gilyeat and Tim Bearder single-handedly justified the licence fee when they played the next track, ‘China White Doll’ on their BBC Oxford local music show last week. Imagine if Scott MacKenzie, instead of getting in a load of San Franciscan stoners to record his hymn to the city, had instead enlisted the Bilston Glen Colliery Band: hopefully this barmy idea gives a flavour of the unearthly gloriousness of this track. Ambitious, tender, passionate, timeless and brilliantly paced, this is the love song in epic form, culminating in an almost Schubertian piano coda. Quite simply, the opportunity to hear music like this is why I write reviews.

The remaining two tunes are pretty decent but don’t reach the level of the first two. ‘Weatherman’ starts with some annoying chirpy noises that sound like a saw put through an octaviser, before a rather unremarkable folk-rock number emerges. Think Kasabian fronted by The Beta Band’s Steve Mason. (Actually, don’t. It’s rather an unappetising prospect). Franglen does his best with various bleeps, bloops and loops, but he can’t hide the essential ordinariness of the tune. ‘Lost’ starts prettily enough with more lazy-day hippy-dippy vocals, before launching egregiously into a straightforward Robert Palmer-flavoured rocker that might have been in Patrick Bateman’s album collection in ‘American Psycho’. Actually, bombing down the M5 on the way to Devon, I quite enjoyed it as cruising-music, but then again, so would Jeremy Clarkson.

These reservations aside, Captive State have managed two brilliant numbers on a four-song EP, which promises much for the full album. I would recommend anyone to take a trip to Farringdon (two Rs, regrettably) to see them, but if the locals start telling jokes about the Alamo, to promptly scarper.

Captive State Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon.

Oxford Brookes may be unaffectionately known as ‘Runners-Up University’ to snooty members of the other place, but you can’t deny it has a great track record in getting good musicians together. The meeting-place for bands as strong as This Town Needs Guns and Fell City girl in recent years, it certainly triumphs over OU, which does a good line in barber-shop quartets, but not much else.

Fell City Girl were a big white hope a couple of years back, but imploded almost as soon as they were signed, amid confused reports of personal tragedy, record-company interference and poor health. Fortunately, The Winchell Riots has emerged out of the mess, with singer-guitarist Phil McMinn and drummer James Pamphlion adding a new bassist and guitar player to the line-up.

At first, ‘Histories’ sounds like a bold departure from the sort of wistful balladeering that made people talk about FCG as the successors to Snow Patrol. Certainly, the snappish, syncopated title track sounds like the band is trying to channel the high-end sonics of Editors through the emotionalism of The Rasmus, and they do it pretty effectively. It’s certainly chart-friendly, but doesn’t play to the singular strengths of the band; there are plenty of groups out there making music in this vein, although few will do it as professionally. There is also a ‘bonus’ track on the EP, in which the tune is remixed by Youthmovies, that doesn’t reflect well on either party. Youthmovies achieve the extraordinary feat of turning McMinn into a crap singer, yowling like a New York bagman in a Martin Amis novel. I’m not sure the Winchell Riots even need the intervention of a more famous group at this stage in their career; the collaboration smacks of cronyism to no artistic purpose: the remix has all the dynamism of an octogenarian three-legged race.

Fortunately, the remaining two tracks are in the top rank. ‘The Man Who Mapped the Oceans’ is as gorgeous as anything I’ve heard in months; it has a tense, poised beauty conjured using fairly standard gambits; syncopated drums, delayed guitar picks and McMinn’s engaging tenor croon. The result is as glacially enchanting as a Sigur Ros masterpiece, and enjoys that aura of borderless freedom.

Finally, we have the hushed, marimba-flavoured ‘I’d Lower You Down’ which starts quirkily (McMinn sounds jaunty but plaintive, a bit like he’s auditioning for Oliver!) but builds expertly with the addition of minimalist drums, e-bowed guitar and a legion of choral enforcements, who sing like an army of ghosts. Incidentally, McMinn’s lyrics are extremely strong throughout the record; the following lines stay with the listener for a long time after the music stops:

I constructed a building in memory of your name,

The President cut the red tape, the whole city was still for the day…

A very strong start for the new band, then. A glance at Myspace suggests that they have equally impressive tracks to back up the ones on this record (’In Red Square’ is particularly haunting), so there’s good reason to think that The Winchell Riots can go even further than FCG. Though I would give the chummy remixes a wide berth.

The Winchell Riots Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon.

This EP sets itself up as a cheap-and-nasty shocker. The cover art hasn’t gained much from printing over being doodled straight onto paper using a biro; the back of the CD also reassures me that having been “mutilated and massacred” by the band, the final musical “turd polishing” happened at Lovegrove Towers. Goodo. As for the song titles, while‘Belgian Surprise’ may conjure up some notion of good taste, the final title, ‘I wanna live in your buttcrack‘ leaves a rather different arrière goût.

However, the music itself is as humdrum as it gets. Plodding rock numbers with a slight 80-s vibe, grungy rhythm guitar, teach-yourself drum parts, semi-spoken tuneless vocals followed by relatively competent noodling. Overall, nothing too taxing, and thus the first three songs pass by relatively harmlessly.

So onto the meat of the matter.

Songs involving references to bums have quite an impressive pedigree. From the superior posteriors of Spinal Tap’s ‘Big Bottom’ (“talkin’ ‘bout mud-flaps, my girl’s got ‘em”) right the way down to Joan of Arse and Frank Zappa’s ‘Illinois Enema Bandit’, bums have been used in myriad ways, to which we can now add living up one.

Far from causing a stir, the song’s regularity, its swift oom-pah lilt, the slight twinge of West Country in Leigh Alexander’s vocals and the uncomplicated joviality with which he is prepared to live up someone’s anus, at most serve to conjure up images of a mildly lecherous rustic bumpkin failing to chat up the local serving-wench. While the musicianship is very passable, especially for a semi-live EP, the song does not surpass pub rock, nor does the level of wit exceed the likes of: “I wanna live in your butt-crack, it looks so warm and snug, if I were to die they could bury me as my grave would already be dug…” As much as I wanted to like it, it doesn’t really cut the mud.

And in answer to the title question: no, as a matter of fact this EP does not remind me in any way of kidney beans. Although it does remind me of Captain Beefheart’s ‘Big Eyed Beans From Venus’, in which he states, “men should get out their wallets and women their purses, as a man or a woman without a big eyed bean from Venus is the worstest of curses”. But a man or a woman without this EP is no worse off, really.

Beaver Fuel Myspace

By B.M.

No faffing here: just a pair of impressively-produced post-punk tracks from the Wakefield four-piece with designs on Oxford. ‘That’s a Nice Glove’ effectively combines the disco inflections of fellow-Yorkshiremen Reverend and the Makers, with a bunch of thick string pads The Killers made cool again and trembling high-end guitars a la Editors. The drumming, incorporating a slick cowbell figure at the start is noteworthy and the vocals are focussed and thrilling. The lyrics are a little woolly; less grounded than those of The Makers’ Jon McLure and an even longer way away from the street-realism of the Arctic Monkeys, but it could be worse: apparently Test Icicles are an influence. That particular shower of shit is no more, so I’d advise The Faff to delete any such references in their promo literature. It’s best sometimes to hide youthful indiscretions.

As a project, Cogwheel Dogs, the stage name of singer-sonwriter Rebecca Mosley and cellist Tom Parnell can only be described as-oh dear-absolutely barking. Writing a song about a herb growing down the back of your kitchen sink is scarcely the height of craziness, but it provides a solid platform on which to build the edifice of caprice which is encapsulated in this EP. And you know what? Some of it is really great.

The title track can only be described as the lovechild of Polly Harvey and Captain Beefheart, with Shostakovich as godfather. The good Captain also wrote about erratic vegetables, in ‘Big-Eyed Beans from Venus’, but the connection between the artists is above all musical. Specifically, Mosley and Parnell, just like the musical treasure that is Don Van Vliet managed decades ago, seem to have come up with a new take on that most conservative song form, the blues. We are a long way from Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson here, but the flat sevenths and above all Mosley’s husky, soulful voice are suggestive of nothing else. There are moments on Harvey’s 1995 masterpiece ‘To Bring You My Love’ album which are recalled, but Parnell’s cello, deployed using violent, atonal scrapes guarantees that ‘Cress’ sounds like little you’ve heard.

To my ears, Parnell has-oh dear-slipped his leash on the next track ‘Anticoagulant’, which in another world could have been covered by Blink 182 or Green Day. The aggression and busy-ness of the cello on this track renders it simply ghastly to listen to, and I’d much prefer it if Mosley were to perform it solo.

You have to hand it to that design classic, the typewriter, master of the comeback. Not only does it have a starring role in last year’s ‘Atonement’ (that manipulative nonsense which deserved an Oscar, it was so worthy and mediocre), but Mosley and Parnell have pressed it into service as percussion on the suitably-spectral ‘Ghostwriter’. Here, Rebecca reveals her versatility, losing the bluesy edge and singing in a limpid, blanched style redolent of Sinead O’Connor. The voice and cello are back in balance here, and the results are bleakly wonderful.

It will be interesting to see if Cogwheel Dogs has a long future. The duo certainly push at the boundary of what can be classed as popular music, and the extreme oddness of songs like ‘Cress’ will limit the extent of their appeal. That said, I’m glad they are around, and their success on XFM suggests that the punters may not be as fatally addicted to blandness as the doom-mongers imagine.

Cogwheel Dogs Website

On the whole, I consider myself to be a credulous man but I can’t shake a deeply held suspicion that this album has been designed with the definite intention of confounding and annoying its listeners, and especially its reviewers – just take a look at that wordcount-defying name and title. The thing is though, that Tie Your Shoes… do this with such a playful sense of humour and at times with such wonderful musical subtlety that much of the album turns out to be a pleasure to listen to; an always provocative, often uncomfortable and occasionally tantamount-to-unlistenable sort of a pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.

Tie Your Shoes… are an experimental band, and I’m using that term not in the normal, lazy reviewery way for things that sound a bit different, but in a proper John Cage’s mid-50s definition way. In other words, they seem to be focussing on the unforeseen elements of music making. I doubt they had a single clue what many of the sounds were going to be when they flipped them round, cut them up and showered them in delay and reverb, or that they knew what the ‘songs’ were going to be like before they assembled them, and I am certain that they weren’t aiming for any sort of genre aesthetic when doing so. Jesus it’s easy to sound pretentious when writing about this sort of thing. So back to basics, what does it all actually sound like?

Well, starting at the bottom end, the most unpleasant and annoying track is actually the last, ‘Kung Fu Annie’. There is a wilfully annoying beeping sound throughout (somewhere between a reversing lorry, the countdown to an explosion, and some important bit of medical equipment) over pattering drums, and random snippets of both a guitar and flute, none of which bears any resemblance to each other and it simply appears to be lots of different noises played together for no apparent reason. A close second in the maddening-the-listener stakes is ‘You’re A Gas Man’ which sounds like it’s twanged on a ruler and typed on a keyboard at the same time, but with neither having any awareness of the other sound. Extremely unsettling, and listening to it twice in a row just now has made me feel slightly motion-sick.

On the other side of the coin, however, lies the absolutely beautiful ‘A Shiny Sea of Knives’, with its wonderful meandering flute line. It’s the closest they get to a ‘proper song’, and is a surprising and soothing relief in the middle of the album. Better still is the crisper style brought to ‘Countdown Timer to Centipede Release’ and ‘Ghosts With Widely Spaced Teeth’ by centring them around a ukulele. The latter is particularly effective, with looped hand-claps, uke and bass weaving in and out of each other, and in and out of time with each other, creating a barely-controlled, strangely hyperactive mood, reminiscent of a twitchy, glitchy Iberian-style folk song.

So, plusses and minuses as ever - what to conclude? Well, first, that whoever made this album is very talented. Second, that they were probably taking the piss with much of it – from the gentle mockery of Oxford’s trend for over-complicated band names and album titles, through the hammy German SS officer accents in the opening interwoven chant section to the aggravating beep that ends the album. Perhaps they’ll find it very funny that I’ve taken it seriously, but in amongst all the things that seem designed to perplex, there is some thrilling and surprising music.

Tie Your Shoes..Myspace

By Daniel Mitchell

A condemned mansion on Cumnor Hill in the November darkness was Ellen McAteer’s choice of recording venue for this demo. Her ethereal tones, as well as Billy Rigg’s cello add to the other-worldly atmosphere of the record.

Her words have the lyrical sadness you might expect from a singer/songwriter who’s also a spoken-word poet. Opener ‘Blue Valentine’ is the strongest track with its haunting but hummable melody and lyrics hinting at emotional devastation close by. ‘Fake Tattoo’ also has a tune that will stay in your head for hours after hearing it.
 
The only let-down is ‘Howl’, which borrows a little too heavily from Mazzy Star as well as having a disconcerting melodic resemblance to Phil Collins’s I Wish It Would Rain Down; once you spot it, you can’t stop noticing it.

This demo suggests that Ellen McAteer is an artist with a lot of promise. Here’s hoping she returns soon with a full-length album: one that brings in some of the fire I’ve seen in her spoken-word performances, without skimping on the lovely tunes that make this demo a delight.

Ellen McAteer Myspace

By Kate Griffin

 Refreshing artlessness or just plain rubbish? I’m only thinking at this stage about the cover illustrations which accompany The Follys’ ‘Sunrise’ EP. Specifically, we have a rudimentary palm tree on the front and an even more basic sun with a smiley face on the back, rendered with a level of competence that would make the efforts of a sporty six-year-old look like Gauguin. But to be honest, the dilemma is applicable to the musical content as well, with laughably bad lyrics (check out the load of bull in the title track, and I mean that literally) jostling with the occasional quite pretty melody. The musicianship is mostly sub-par, although the singing, especially on the superior ‘In the Dark’ occasionally impresses.

The band is dominated by the prolific but uneven singer-songwriter Trev Williams on guitar, aided by bassist Paul Hancock and drummer Luke Gerry. There is no signature style to the EP, which lurches from spangly indie-pop (the pretty, if obvious ‘Give a Little Love’) through half-hearted punk (’Pretty City Boy’) to hackneyed classic rock (’Butterfly’). Hancock and Gerry are not the steadiest rhythm section in the world, and to be honest the band may have been advised to have rehearsed for another year before going near a recording studio, as they still sound like they are feeling their way. That said, they cope with the intricate, hypnotic introductory riff and time changes of ‘In the Dark’ manfully. In this song, Williams’ vocals nearly reach the heights of his rather good solo album, but the track is spoiled by a too-obvious steal from The Temptations’ ‘My Girl’ and a pointless coda in which Trev protests about how deep he is.

I’ll gloss over the tedious tale of Williams’ taurean encounter- if you’re interested, it’s all there on ‘Sunrise’. In the hands of the BareNaked Ladies (there’s the odd musical nod to this band too) the material could have been mildly amusing, but wittiness  isn’t really in Williams’ locker.

Overall, not very good I’m afraid. Williams’ lyric-writing seems to be getting more childish with age, and the band is a long way from gelling. Still, there is the odd hummable tune dotted around, and not all of them were written by Smokey Robinson.

The Follys Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon

It’s an odd effect, but Scottish songstress Iona Bain always sounds as if she’s about to burst out laughing. There are a couple of artists out there who had this quality but they’ve been off the stage for rather a while-Theresa Brewer and Doris Day come to mind. Although Iona’s style is old-fashioned, her music doesn’t quite hark back to those antediluvian acts (still being played on rockin’ Radio 2 of of course). Instead, her jaunty, sophisticated pop songs are often adorned with eighties-era synthesizers and drum beats that sound like they have been appropriated from ‘Thriller’-era Michael Jackson. Not promising then, you might think, but Bain has a real gift for melody, is an excellent pianist and her optimistic, gentle singing is uncomplicatedly loveable.

After all that praise then, probably her weakest tune on this collection is the first, the would-be funky ‘Emma’, awash with synthesizer sounds that should never have seen out the decade to blame for creating them. More important, why should a song about Jane Austen be funky at all? Shouldn’t it be all string orchestras and harpsichords? Be that as it may, we lose about two thirds of Iona’s words, due to the intrusiveness of the backing track.

Balance is restored in the plangent ballad, ‘Yet’, with Iona’s jaunty vocal backed only by a jazzy solo piano, the big opening riff having affinity with the one that begins Mark Cohn’s ‘Walking in Memphis’. Quality is maintained in the ridiculously catchy, ‘Romeo’, which adds both Shakespeare and Alfred Lord Tennyson to the literary canon namechecked on the record (could Iona be an English major, I wonder?). The production is still a little synthetic, but less heavy-handed than on ‘Emma’ and is all the better for it. The piano is compressed so that it sounds more like a clavinette, whose comedic style adds to the predominant mood of romantic semi-seriousness. I think this tune captures the essentials of Iona’s unusual charm: at their best, Bain’s songs momentarily restore our childish faith in love as being primarily about enraptured students having picnics on the Cherwell and reading Shelley to each other. Beats entire CDs about meeting chavs while collecting your giro any day.

Iona Bain Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon

People generally don’t listen to lyrics. At least not to the verses. Elvis Costello tells stories of late 80’s parents requesting his hit “Veronica” on the radio to celebrate their little princess’ birthday, when it’s actually about Elvis’ Mum going nutty in a nursing home. Ten years later there’s the tale of married couples requesting Baby Bird’s “You’re Gorgeous” at their wedding, despite the fact that even a cursory listen to the seedy storyline would seem to supply a perfectly good reason not to use it as your first dance. (Another being, of course, that it’s shit.)

We can imagine something similar happening to Family Machine’s greatest song, “Flowers By The Roadside”, in which intelligent lyrics probe society’s rituals of remembrance atop one of the catchiest melodies ever produced in Oxford. It even has a bloody whistling break. Is Family Machine - we know it looks stupid without a definite article in front, but that’s how it’s written on the sleeve, and we’re nothing if not anal about stuff like that – trying to smuggle mournful themes into our heads in the disguise of gorgeous pop music? If so, they do a very good job of the disguising: half of this album is heart-breaking melancholy, and the other half is meaningless fluff fun, best seen in “The Do Song”, a nonsensical pop romp which is like a cross between The Wannadies and Francis Lai’s theme to Un Homme & Une Femme.

Opener “Ko Tao” sets the tone, with a lightweight fuzz guitar bounce that recalls T Rex at their least serious. Before we know it, however, we’re immersed in the banjo plucking simplicity of “Burn Like Stars” or the resigned sadness of “Paving Stone Monsters”, which is heart-breaking even though we’re not sure precisely what these ever-present monsters symbolise. Even “Got It Made” undercuts its sampladelic Ninja Tune spy theme air with a widescreen pathos coda that could have come from Ennio Morricone’s most tear-jerking drawer. In fact, it’s only “Lethal Drugs Cocktail” that spoils the mood, coming off as too deliberately matey, like a desperate uncle making bad jokes at a wedding (though we’ll laugh at anything to drown out Baby Bird).

“Did You Leave” is perhaps a summation of the whole album, building an elegiac mood with heavily reverbed melody lines only to suddenly subsume it in bubbly “Ba ba ba” backing vocals. Except that the sadness never quite disappears, even as the grins surface. Maybe Family Machine is saying that melancholia is an undercurrent of even our happiest moments; or maybe the point is that even despair can have a tinge of happiness – it’s joyous to be alive and feel something, even if it’s only misery. Concluding the record with an uncredited lofi instrumental probably indicates that we’re not encouraged to reach definite conclusions about things like this.

Beyond all this philosophising, You Are The Family Machine is simply a fantastic relaxed album of semi-acoustic pop, that can make you dance on the tables downing sangria one minute, and slump weeping into your whisky the next. Highly recommended.

Family Machine Myspace