White Denim - 'Mess Your Hair Up'

Or talking about hype, as we were, there's White Denim, who emerged top of the pile in the most recent South by South West hype contest, something nobody on this island truly understands. I resisted because, well, you do, don't you, if you have any sense of your value as an individual human unit. But come on - or is that c'mon? - this record's great, pure and simple, and only the churliest of churls could not admit this, and although the boat has long departed and you all know this by now for yourselves, I felt these words banging against the inside of my skull about it and I needed a vent. Indeed, I now feel bad it's taken me a while to get onto this one in front of all four of our readership. (Can you let me know when your birthdays are, by the way? I'd like to make sure I send you cards.)

What we have here is the sound of a small group of young men who don't know there are any rules about what you are supposed and not supposed to do in music and aren't particularly interested in finding out what those rules may be. It was recorded in whatever the Texan equivalent of a shed is and it sounds like it. It has that raw, rough and readiness to it you look for in a debut record. There's dirt under its fingernails. It smells of sweat and puke and back of the Chevrolet sex with your cousin. There's bad beer, late nights and all being men together. One of the base ingredients here is dumb, ballsy, what-the-hell music, of the kind you find in early Who. And there’s a fair amount of grubby southern blues too, and there is absolutely nothing wrong in this. An obvious comparison is the Black Keys, back when they were on the mighty Fat Possum label and before they got old, clichéd and boring. But there's more going on here than that. They would also seem to have a fine sense of the dynamics of a tune and when to interfere with them. They use repetition and fracture to keep your expectations on their toes. Less is sometimes more, and it’s sometimes as interesting to take something away as add things. They have an understanding of space that reminds me more of classic dub reggae than anything else, and the same kind of homemade feel you got when people were working with limited technology, although obviously the rhythms are different.

Take this song, Mess Your Hair Up. It's a balls-out rock tune, alright. But then it starts, stops again, gets locked in a mad wah-wah loop, things drop out. What is more satisfying than a tune where you know all possibilities have been explored, and all within five minutes? Isn’t it frustrating when you feel there was a bit more in there, if only the band had done a little more digging?

So revivalist, yes, and involved in the business of fusion, perhaps, but the inventiveness and sheer evident love of what they’re doing in this conquered the hype. Naturally they’ll have used all their ideas up in one go and the next one will be flat and turgid as they take the humdrum path towards straight rock and drab Americana, but for now, this is one to cherish.

Glasvegas - 'Daddy's Gone'

We are, in this humble, dusty corner of the internet, resisters of hype. Press buzz deters us. The NME is a comic, and we mourn the days when you might be able to pick it up and take as much as half an hour to get from front to back. And most music blogs are - is there any other way of saying this? - shit. Vacuous look-at-mes who somehow think they're on the cusp of a career rush to break the latest, newest thing. Anything new is good. It's all fresh blood. Break it, be first, then move on for the next. It doesn't matter whether it's the 27th faint carbon copy of something which once might have had some life in it. Forgive me, I'm tired. But what very seldom comes across is a sense of the life-affirming joy music can bring, the adrenalin it can push through your sytem, the tears it can drag from your eyes.

So Glasvegas have been hyped to buggery. But you can only listen with your ears, and it turns out about half the LP is really good. You couldn't I suppose, hope for one that could be great all the way through. This, presently, is rare. It dips in the middle. But I don't mind. I've always been the lover of the single anyway. And one of those, 'Daddy's Gone', has made itself essential to my life at the moment. Of course it's histrionic and overstated, but I've always kind of liked a little bit of that. The lazy comparison of the music press is the Jesus and Mary Chain, which must be largely on the basis that they come from the same place. True, I can hear a shared love of Phil Spector, but for me the obvious comparison is the Mighty Wah!, for whom I've long nursed a soft spot. It has the same over-ambitious, slightly failed poetry in it, the same gutter-looking-in-the-stars thing, all working class regret and aspiration, choked throat early morning drunk dreams and bruised sentimentality.

Of course, they must never make another record.

The Kabeedies - 'Palindromes'

"Most of my parents are palindromes: M U M and D A D."

Yes! It's obvious but how come no one's said it before? This is brilliant, stupid and just a bit shit, always obviously a winning combination. This lot, The Kabeedies, sound like they just can't sit still. They're evidently an itchy hyperactive bunch. And here's a short, jerky, dumb and smart offering. Boy/girl singer combination. Really good. No need for sentences.

I'm never going to stop liking stuff like this, am I? This is the third or fourth cycle of this kind of thing coming into vogue - hey, remember Bis, and weren't they great at first? - and it often seems to hail from Norwich. This one surfaced on NRONE records, with which we've already confessed we're in love, and I recall an earlier single I enjoyed, 'Lovers Ought To' on the fairly reliable Cherryade label. Of course they're sickeningly young and have a terrible name (but then as I type I'm listening to and enjoying a band with the worst name ever of Thomas Tantrum) but I reckon they should do this for two years and then get their hair cut, grow fat and boring and go and work in a bank somewhere, if there are any banks left to work in by then. I'm going to make sure I see them live, even though I know I'll be the oldest fucker there.

Chairlift - 'Bruises'

I couldn’t wait for this one to make its appearance in the UK. I bought this direct from the venerable Kanine records in the US. I needed to have it. The internet makes this music thing easy. And the pound/dollar rate isn’t what it was, but still, what I paid in postage I saved on the CD. In truth, not all of this record, nonsensically entitled Does You Inspire You, does it for me. There are times when it all gets a bit too knowing, the musical equivalent of comparing ironic 80’s fringes. There’s sometimes an obviously too kitsch kind of oriental synth thing going on there. Chairlift, you feel, are not above the odd arched eyebrow.

But ah, this, Bruises, first heard as a demo a bit back, is beautiful and fragile and, apart from its ending where they couldn’t resist adding a layer of whipped cheese, understated. Love hurts, and there’s a truth that cuts through any amount of tongue in cheek. There’s a childlike simplicity and repetition in the lyrics of this, but sweetness comes mixed with darkness. What self-abasement wouldn’t you perform for the one you love? Then the man comes in singing about frozen strawberries at precisely the right moment. And you never thought frozen strawberries could sound sad and romantic, until now.

This apparently comes out properly in October, or you can get it on the internet now, or you can go direct to Kanine, like I did. Evident Utensil is here too, and we’ve already established how great that is, right? So for those two, I’m in, and I’m listening to the rest of it, hoping to love it all. Pass me the eyeliner and something tartan, then.