Wednesday, October 26, 2005  2:31 am 

pretty indie things

Today it’s a 20Jazzfunkgreats do the indie pop thing issue, it’s just a coincidence that Pitchfork have an extensive dossier on twee stuff. By the way, when did Pitchfork news stop being funny and get quite annoying, as if they were written by a dude, or something? Maybe when they started trying to be consciously funny.

Anyway, here comes the indie jangly stuff, all you moody motherfuckers get ready…

Notwithstanding his brief appearance in Mt. Eerie, where he does God, a Calvin Johnson feature usually means a Calvin Johnson take-over, his bass voice spreads over whatever track lurks underneath like the smell of good coffee, which might be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you like coffee or not.

I like coffee, I am drinking one right now, and also like Calvin Johnson, so I find last album, ‘Before the Dream Faded Away’, out in K, to be a very enjoyable Autumn thing. The leaves are falling, it’s raining, you can look at all of that from the window and find warmth and refuge in Calvin’s voice, in his quirky couplets. It’s a home thing, we have known him for a while, haven’t we.

‘Before the Dream Faded Away’ is a slow burning affair, and while this adds to the whole sunset wind blowing vibe I somehow miss the stupidly danceable lo-fi numbers waiting around the corner in the Beat Happening (and rocked up, in the Halo benders, and danced-up in the Dub Narcotic Soundsystem). Actually there’s two of those. I also miss the Velvet style guitar drones (well, there’s one at the end). Most of all I miss heather’s vocals…Gee, I think I just need a new Beat Happening record!!

Especially interesting are the collaborations with Johnny Jewel from Glass Candy and Phil Elverum, who might well be the, erm, Danger Mouse and Madlib of the indie underground, what? What did I say? sorry, that was my third coffee of the day.

Whatever, Jewel lays up a very very sparse subtly dramatic lounge disco tune on top of which Calvin sounds a bit like Nick Cave when he gets in late night vampire gigolo mode. But it is Elverum the one who steals the show for me with his trademark meltdown of frail guitars, organic percussion and farting bass, ‘Deliverance’ is a beautiful hut in the middle of the forest, you can see that Calvin feels at home there. Me too.

Calvin Johnson-Deliverance

The Rough Trade indie pop compilation was a blow of fresh air on the back of my neck. Before it I thought there were only so many ‘lalalas’ I could take, maybe because in Spain all the plastic frame glass stripy sweater wearing ‘indies’ straight out of a fucking Jordi Labanda mass produced ‘illustration’ are into it (they’re like our own version of emo-kids), but I changed my mind, god, compared to the sluggishness of the current ‘indie scene’, each ‘lalala’ from a twee band is a memory of teenage harder yet simpler years and a sonic lifesaver to which I can hold hoping for salvation from the swamp of crap boy rock which nowadays fills the radio, Tv, music mags, and above all, the indie disco, ouch, the indie disco…

Probably it will never happen, it doesn’t mean it isn’t right.

Bearsuit are one of the bands fighting the good fight, just by doing their own thing. They are in Fantastic Plastic, which is also wonderful Help She Can’t Swim’s home (their new 7” , ‘Commiting Social Suicide’ comes out on November and is thing of beauty which will make you want to dance and cry at the same time, we will post it soon, those guys are everything that is and can be right with pop music these days).

Bearsuit- Drinkink

Someone said Bearsuit sound like Belle and Sebastian meets Deerhoof, which is fine by me, in their new record ‘Team Ping Pong’, out next Monday they come across charming, energetic, fresh and weird, they sound like a bunch of colourful mini-people arrived from a place where guitars are not phallic symbols and music is made to have fun and make other people have fun and transmit feelings, not to be cool and get off with people. They are as far away from rock and roll as anyone can be today, and that’s because we need to change the fucking definition of Rock, yeah. Kick the thugs out of the radio, bring back the twee!!

You can listen to another track by them, Going Steady, at Nashville News

When you leave here, why not visit the nice people who run a club in manchester and a blog Best foot forward and download that Daft Punk - Human After All (Emporor machine version) you were all wanting us to post a while back. Its Motorik. They cheated.

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