Band of the month – 2009 archive
JANUARY 2009
Unless you’re from Chicago, the name Scattered Trees probably won’t mean very much too you; but if you have a liking for emotive folk rock 
and bands such as Sufjan Stevens and Radiohead, remember the name because these guys are amazing. The band was formed by Nathan Eiseland who’s steadily being adding band members, including his wife Alissa. They’ve already recorded an album, Song for my grandfather, and an 8 track EP Heart of glass which are both available on itunes. This month they are back in the studio, and if the tracks below are anything to go by, the next record could be something very special.
I will say this twice
Reason to Stay
Bury the Floors
FEBRUARY 2009
Here’s a band I missed out on in 2008. Popup are a hardworking 4 piece from Glasgow who’ve already played hundreds of gigs slowly 
building up a fanbase without the backing of a major label. Their long awaited debut album A Time and a Place was released on independent label Art Goes Pop in October 2008 and is available on itunes. We are told that the band are already back in Glasgow’s SWG3 Studio Warehouse, “working on their second album, and are moving much faster than they did with their first, which was recorded during the course of a long year before gigs, after work and late at night. As a result it’s an idiosyncratic and surprising listen, at times pure rock’n'roll, at other times boy-girl harmonies that recall The Delgados or angular, stripped-back punk. They’ve been described as Arab Strap on happy pills, and the owner of SWG3 says ‘they are brilliant – sharp, irreverent and deeply Glaswegian’ “.
Popup join a series of great bands recently emerging from the Glasgow underground scene (Glasvegas, Frightened Rabbit, Twilight Sad, Attic Lights), but what makes them good is the energy and punchy rhythms and dark songs that are all their own.
Chinese burn
Lucy What You Trying to Say?
Love triangle
MARCH 2009
Brooklyn based 4 piece The Pains of Being Pure at Heart formed in early 2007 
and released their debut album on Slumberland in February 2009. It’s a joy to listen to : 10 tracks brimming with fuzzy guitar sounds, vibrant tunes and plenty of hooks. Their love of British indie pop is evident from these songs, and band members speak excitedly of their recent British tour where they supported the Wedding Present. Kip Berman – “supporting the Wedding Present was beyond any realm we imagined; its almost like a cake made entirely out of icing.”
Come Saturday
Everything with You
The Tenure Itch
APRIL 2009
This is music that assaults you : it’s heavy, dark, wild, aggressive and unpredictable. But Zu aren’t some teen 
noise band seeking to shock and deafen. Carboniferous (released to a fanfare of positive reviews in February 2009) is the Italian trio’s 14th release in the ten years that they’ve been together. Zu are a unique collaboration of drum, bass and saxophone. They fuse different genres : metal, noise, punk, free jazz. It’s an industrial sound, but not a soulless one – it plays cleverly on the dark side of your emotions. They experiment and constantly try to take their sound to new territory. The tracks on Carboniferous are all instrumental except for the stand out track Soulympics, which features vocals from collaborator Mike Patton.
My senses feel battered and exhausted after listening to these songs ! But buy the album – you won’t find anything to compare with it in 2009. The tracks below are all on the new album except the last one, which has a more laid back feel to it.
Soulympics
Carbon
chthonian
Spiritual healing
MAY 2009
Amy LaVere’s influences include folk, blues and jazz, and these all show in her diverse and beautifully crafted songs. She plays the upright bass, which has become
her trademark. She first achieved critical recognition with her debut album This World Is Not My Home in 2006. The plaudits just kept rolling in when she released Anchors and Anvils in May 2007. The standout track on the album, Killing Him, is a noirish tale of a woman whose love survives after she kills her man.
Amy took time out to play cameo parts in a couple of Hollywood films. She played Wanda Jackson in Walk the Line : “It was very strange how it came about. I was playing at this little club called Murphy’s In Memphis. I had a regular gig there and the assistant casting director happened to be in the room unbeknownst to me. Every now and then I’d cover a Wanda Jackson song, and that night I happened to do one. He told me I should audition. So I did and somehow I got the part … It was a real honor. It led to getting to meet her. I opened some shows for her. I think she’s really amazing. “
Meanwhile, her band kept performing. British audiences may have seen her on Later with Jools Holland, or supporting Seasick Steve at the Royal Albert Hall. In March 2009 she released an EP Died of Love, which included reinterpretations of a couple of songs from the 2nd album, and a couple of astonishing cover versions, of Tom Waits’s gorgeous song Green Grass, and of Michelle Shocked’s barnstormer If Love Was A Train. A new album is planned for later in the year – and I can’t wait for it.
Killing him
That Beat
Pointless Drinking
Green Grass
JUNE 2009
My band of the month isn’t a band in the usual sense at all – God Help the Girl is a project by Stuart Murdoch, of Scottish indie rockers Belle & Sebastian. 
Several years ago he started composing a girl group song, and gradually this turned into a film project, for which he would write the screenplay and the soundtrack. To find singers he held open auditions in which members of the public could send in videos or audio clips of themselves singing. The result was that a little known Irish singer Catherine Ireton was chosen to sing on the majority of the tracks. The other guest vocalists included other women who’d come through the auditions, and Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy. The God Help the Girl soundtrack will be released on 23 June on Matador Records in North America, and on 22 June on Rough Trade Records in Europe. The first single Come Monday Night was released on 11 May, however the real standout song on this delightful album (I think) is Musicians, Please Take Heed.
And the film ? Well the twist is that there is no film yet. According to a recent Pitchfork interview, Stuart Murdoch is still writing the screenplay and seems pretty uncertain as to when he might start filming; while Catherine Ireton has no idea whether or not she’ll be acting in the film.
Musicians, Please Take Heed
God Help the Girl
Come Monday Night
I Just Want Your Jeans
JULY 2009
Last December I started watching the weekly reality show Orange Unsigned Act on Channel 4. It was worth the half hour just to hear Tommy Reilly sing. Again and again the pimply teenager made my hair stand on end with his agonised Glaswegian voice. He is simply a brilliant singer songwriter,
and it was a joy when he eventually won the competition following a public vote, and the recording contract which went with it. And his song Gimme a Call has been the most played song on my ipod in 2009.
Since then he’s sold out two Scottish headline tours and won the Young Scottish Entertainer Of The Year Award. He released his second single, Jackets, on June 22nd (again available on itunes). In July he plays at the T in the Park festival and in August he brings out his debut album, Words On The Floor on A&M. I’m sure that most of these songs will be on it. “A couple of girls who shall forever remain nameless inspired quite a few of them,” he says. “I thought they were proper girlfriends; turns out they weren’t. But it was amazing how much better I felt when I wrote about those experiences. At first it was like I was deleting them from my life. Now I see the songs as fun things which came out of a shitty time and I can pack them up in a van and go see the world. That’s really bonkers, man. And so so brilliant.”
Gimme a call………………………. Jackets
I Dont Like Coffee………………Mr. Brightside
Dials……………………………………..Just Like The Weather
Grab me by the collar………..Words on the floor
AUGUST 2009
Think of brother and sister acts, and you'll probably conjure up an image that is very unhip (The Carpenters, anybody ?). London blues punk duo Joe Gideon & The Shark are a different proposition. Joe writes startlingly
vivid lyrics inspired by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Waits. When he and sister Viva (The Shark) left the group Bikini Atoll to set out on their own, Viva had six weeks to learn to play the drums before they began touring. Now she plays percussion and keyboards, sometimes simultaneously, making heavy use of loops, while also contributing on glockenspiel and backing vocals. The duo are big fans of Nick Cave, and last year got the opportunity to support the Bad Seeds on tour.
Their debut album Harum Scarum came out in the UK in March 2009 and gets its US release in October. It’s raw and bluesy and ranges from the thunderous swamp rock riffs of DOL (daughter of a loony) to the hushed slow beat of Pale Blue Dot. Most memorable are Joe’s storytelling songs delivered in a deadpan drawl. Hide and Seek is based on an actual childhood experience, Kathy Ray is like a sardonic short story, and Civilization is a wonderfully surreal coming of age narrative.
Civilization
DOL
Hide and Seek
Kathy Ray
Johan was a painter & an arsonist
SEPTEMBER 2009
The Raveonettes are songwriter and guitarist Sune Rose Wagner and singer and multi-instrumentalist Sharin Foo : a Danish duo now resident in New York,
who combine 1960s style vocal harmonies with a blistering electric sound and driving beats in a style reminiscent of the Jesus and Mary Chain. “We are not scared of being blunt about what the references are in our music,” says Sharin. “For instance, if you look at our name, The Raveonettes, it’s a complete direct reference to The Ronettes and Buddy Holly’s Rave On! . So, in that sense, we’re pretty clear about it.”
On October 6th the Raveonettes release their 4th album In And Out Of Control (which can be pre-ordered now on Amazon; also some tracks are available as mp3s through Vice Records). Amusingly the title track is not one of the 11 tracks included on the album. Sune and Sharin acknowledge that they have moved on from the darker sound of 2007’s Lust Lust Lust. Normally I would go for dark, but new songs such as Last Dance and Suicide are as immediate and powerful as anything in their impressive back catalogue.
Love In A Trashcan
Veronica Fever
Dead Sound
Aly, Walk With Me
Here Comes the End
OCTOBER 2009
The Cubical are from my part of the world (Liverpool), but you might not have guessed it. Their influences are mostly American, and their brand of garage blues swamp rock with Dan Wilson’s growling vocals sounds more than anything like the legendary Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.
Their first full album Come Sing These Crippled Tunes was released in the UK on September 28. The album
was recorded at Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood during four “very intense, sweaty Californian days”. Producer Dave Sardy “wanted to encapsulate the live energy of the band so the album was recorded reel-to-reel using an old 60s mixing desk. They also used vintage guitars and amps to try to recreate 1960s studio conditions in order to capture The Cubical’s sound the way Sardy had heard it on stage. Being a collector of vintage equipment, Sardy captured the retro feel of the music by using 1950s telecasters, battered valve amps, a jazz snare and even an upright piano that was minus a few keys! Any imperfections were just viewed as welcome additions to an intentionally rough and ready album.”
The single Like Me (I’m A Peacock) can be viewed on youtube and downloaded as a free MP3.
Two songs which didn’t make it to the album :
Saints above My Bed
Songs Of Silence
NOVEMBER 2009
Electronic wizard Jason Chung describes his art as “like a conductor calling up the violins and the cellos – I can pretty much mix and match any part of any song”. Chung started DJing when he was 13. Early influences included hip hop and drum n bass, but he takes inspiration now 
from many souces. Now 24, the Californian released his debut album Drift earlier this year under the name Nosaj Thing (Jason spelled backwards – geddit ?). It marks a big step forward for him as an artist.
Drift is a beautifully structured album in which the mood shifts subtly from track to track. As you’d expect there’s a huge range of electronic effects, lots of interesting things happening, but the integrity of the track and the melody is never sacrificed. The beats are softened, the hard edges removed, to create a mellow, at times ambient array of electronic soundscapes.
