Big Tea Blog

Ghost BC - Infestissumam - Album Review

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:10:00 +0100

Ghost BC’s love affair with the Devil continues…

Changing your name must be quite annoying, but when your identity exists in a state of cowled mystery and no one knows who you are anyway it probably makes little actual difference. It certainly hasn’t for Scandinavian heretics Ghost, whose second album has had to be delivered under the moniker of Ghost BC to satisfy some legal wrangle or other. It’s done little to change their sound or gradual ascent upwards however, as the sold out show at Brixton Academy a few weeks ago demonstrated quite nicely. The fact they charged only a fiver for ticket (take note Mick and Keef) no doubts helped. For a band of self-Christened (they’ll hate that) Nameless Ghouls, they’re making quite a name for themselves.

Infestissumam is Latin for hostile, apparently, and is the title of Ghost BC’s follow up to their quite brilliant debut Opus Eponymous, which landed to little real fanfare in 2010 but made enough of a mark for Universal to tie the band up. They’ve progressed from their first album now, on a fairly logical path, developing their Blue Oyster Cult influenced sound through the anthemic ‘Ritual’ and ‘Night Of The Witch’ into a less immediate though very engaging style. The two part album openers lay the foundations for what will follow across the next eight tracks – lots of chanting, big vocal choruses, chunky guitars and lots of nods to their hero, Satan. The organ stabs that open ‘Secular Haze’ sound vaguely church like, like an evangelical carousel which soon yields to the heavier guitar riff. ‘Giggalo’ is jaunty, bouncy maybe, whereas the composed, restrained ‘Ghuleh’ shows the evolution from their debut record.

Faux-Gregorian chanting of the Devil’s various names opens ‘Year Zero’ and neatly juxtaposes their Satan worshipping with more traditional Christian worship, a pilfering of styles perhaps, or a simple reminder of how ridiculous religion is in the modern day. ‘Body In Blood’, despite its title, is fairly gentle compared to the livelier ‘Idolatrine’ and ‘Depth of Satan’s Eyes’, which could have been plucked from the mid-seventies quite easily. ‘Monstrance Clocks’ calls for unity for Lucfier’s son, the same refrain repeated over and over in catchy, memorable fashion, working much on record as it did on stage – an earworm in the making.

Infestissumam doesn’t have the same impact Ghost’s debut had, and the Satanic themes are somewhat predictable now, which makes you wonder how much longer they can run with the same basic idea before they end up just repeating themselves. However, at this still fairly early stage of their burgeoning career, it works fine when taken with the giant handful of salt required to overlook the silliness of it all, the blasphemous themes, daft masks and cowls, and the fairly clever twisting of modern Christian rites into the celebration of its nemesis. It’s bound to offend quite a lot of people, but who really gives a fuck? Religion in 2013 is outdated and unnecessary and Ghost are a noisy reminder of the inherent silliness of ritual, rite and passage. If this is hell, sign me up.

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“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

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Nineteen Years Today - RIP Kurt Donald Cobain

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:19:40 +0100

In memory of one of the great departed…

Nineteen years today. Almost two decades. The few all too brief years in the early nineties when Nirvana were the biggest band on the planet seem so long ago now. We’ve been without Cobain for far longer than we were with him, yet his star burns as bright today as it did back then. No band since Nirvana has conquered the world quite like Nirvana did, indeed no following musical movement has had the same impact as grunge did when it exploded out of the Pacific Northwest and knocked the whole fucking world for six. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, Temple Of The Dog, Mad Season…and then the girls: Hole, Bikini Kill, Babes In Toyland…it was a time when music dominated, when an attitude born of disaffection gave life to music so powerful we’re still obsessing with it even now. Sure, it wasn’t for everybody, but nothing ever is. For those of us for whom it was everything, April 5^th is a bitter day. Even more so when considering Layne Staley departed on the same day eight years later.

Cobain is oft portrayed as a reluctant rock star, but it’s hard to believe this; you don’t sign to a major label with minor ambitions. He probably never imagined the stellar trajectory his career would take, much as Geffen didn’t either, and was seemingly ill-equipped to deal with his global stardom post ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Nevermind. His death reaffirmed his great ability, that voice, those songs. Kids not even born when Cobain was alive and active wear the t-shirts and buy the records. Not many artists have had that kind of enduring impact, of a continual shaping of musical culture years after their death.

The world became a darker place without Kurt in it, yet the music remains to brighten the shadows he left behind. Perhaps it’s not better to burn out than to fade away. To be honest Kurt, I would rather have watched you fade than not be able to see you at all, but thank you for those few sparkling years all the same. In the pantheon of departed greats, you’ll always sit at the top table.

RIP Kurt Donald Cobain. 20.02.1967 – 05.04.1994.

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“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

My Bloody Valentine - Hammersmith Apollo, 12.03.2013 - Live Review

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:42:24 +0000

Going deaf never sounded so good…

“Earplugs. You’re gonna need ‘em,” says the girl handing out little packets of orange foam to My Bloody Valentine’s audience as they file into Hammersmith Apollo. MBV’s reputation for eardrum-splitting volume is legendary. Mention the loudest band you’ve ever seen, and inevitably people will agree, it’s either MBV or Motorhead. I remember a member of staff at the Roundhouse telling me they weren’t allowed in for MBV’s sound checks, as the venue’s insurance would only cover them up to a certain decibel level, which the band had patently ignored and turned it up to at least 14 instead. If you don’t leave an MBV gig with at least some ringing in the ears, you may as well not go, the experience is both the music and it’s ridiculous, infectious volume.

Loveless was released in 1991 and became the definitive album of the shoegazing generation, becoming pigeon-holed in a way it probably didn’t deserve to. It was so much more than just one record in a fairly short-lived but influential scene, one My Bloody Valentine transcended by their long absence thereafter. It’s from Loveless that the set tonight opens, the sampled loop that characterises ‘I Only Said’ competes with the masses of distortion from Kevin Shield’s and Bilinda Butcher’s guitars to fill the huge space inside the Apollo. It’s not as loud as expected, I curtail the fumble in my pocket for the earplugs and instead just allow the noise to penetrate through ‘When You Sleep’ and the bouncy new song ‘New You’.

As ever, the band are detached, aloof. They barely speak between songs and if you strain enough you can just about discern that they are actually muttering something into the microphones when the occasional vocals cut though the noisy ‘You Never Should’ and reappear on the cleaner parts of ‘Honey Power’. The more spatial construction of ‘Cigarette In Your Bed’ and the following ‘Only Tomorrow’, which is reserved, the vocals sultry and discreet, usher in a little calm which is then shattered by ‘Come In Alone’, the volume and atmosphere seeming to ratchet up a gear at the midpoint of the set, followed by a stunning run through of the sublime ‘Only Shallow’.

‘Thorn’ is about as conventional a song as My Bloody Valentine have in their repertoire (apart from maybe ‘Soon’, which follows later) and provides a safer interlude before the more intense and forceful attack of Colm’s thunderous drums at the outset of the excellent ‘Nothing Much To Lose’. ‘To Here Knows When’ swirls and scrapes its way into the droning dirge of ‘Slow’. As expected, it’s the old indie youth club disco classic ‘Soon’, all housey beats, jaunty samples and swooping guitars, which has the whole place hopping. There’s something euphoric about ‘Soon’, something contagious and utterly irresistible, it’s its own drug, a narcotic of sound, depth and substance, and it’s impossibly addictive.

And then comes the heavyweight, brutal noise My Bloody Valentine are so famed for, a fucking Great Wall of impenetrable sound arriving firstly with the thunderous, irrepressible ‘Feed With Me Your Kiss’ before the awesome might of ‘You Made Me Realise’ and the deafening ‘holocaust section’ of magnificent, bleeding white noise. It’s here, ten yards from the imposing stack of speakers, that the ear plugs are finally jammed into place (and I still leave with ringing ears). They could’ve ended the set here and I would left sated and thoroughly satisfied, the ten minutes of cacophony is climatic in itself yet they finish on ‘Wonder 2’, for which Colm departs the drum kit and picks up a guitar for more scratchy noise-making.

The reception after their recent Brixton show was mixed, talk of the band seeming disinterested and the sound system failing to cope with them, Hammersmith was a different beast. They were totally compelling, totally enthralling. By way of a footnote, there’s an interesting contrast here too. From the polished perfection of their studio work, that the live sound is so raw and seemingly untamed adds a further dimension to already elaborate, complex music. They’re masters of their art, Shields the genius that makes the whole thing happen. My Bloody Valentine are unique, a musical treasure, if they were the last thing you ever heard, you could go deaf safe in the knowledge you’re unlikely to ever hear anything better anyway. But just in case, those earplugs can come in handy.

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“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

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Sound City: Real to Reel - Album Review

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:05:00 +0000

From the stage to your stereo via the big screen, it’s Dave Grohl’s mixed bag of punks and rockers and Paul McCartney…

Yep, he’s been busy again. I’m beginning to wonder if Dave Grohl does actually sleep – and whether he allows the other Foos to too – as he seems to find so much time for his various and never ending projects. On the back of his Sound City documentary and Sound City Players supergroup shows, here comes the album, which you can hear streaming on the NME website here, featuring a mixed bag of punks and rockers and Paul McCartney. And Grohl on every track, of course.

Black Rebel Motorcyle Club’s Robert Levon Been and Peter Hayes lend themselves to the lively album opener ‘Heaven And All’, which sounds like an upbeat BRMC bashing their way through five and a half minutes rounded off with a fairly lengthy instrumental outro which sounds, well, like BRMC do. Half of Rage Against The Machine team up with Masters Of Reality mainman Chris Goss for one of the stronger tracks, the catchy ‘Time Slows Down’, which comes across better on record than it did live recently, when some of the subtlety achieved in the studio on the vox and guitars was lost a little on stage. It’s riff heavy, and packs quite a punch, Brad Wilk’s assured drumming holding the whole thing nicely together.

It’s Stevie Nicks’ contribution that gives the album some much needed variation. The slowed down, cleaner ‘You Can’t Fix This’ really suits her voice, there’s bitterness expressed in the lyrics - ‘Friendships break like glass / And the devil pours another glass’- though the target of her ire you could pin anywhere if you dig deep enough – drugs, labels, bandmates you’d think could all be likely candidates. There’s more than just a hint of Fleetwood Mac, which isn’t to be unexpected for an album showcasing some of the acts to have recorded at Sound City, across everything on here it needs to resonate from the past to now to work.

Lee Ving and Rick Springfield add little more than a bit of dampened-down punk and roughed-up soft rock respectively, before Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen drag the 1970s through a fairly unremarkable mid-1990s metal ringer. Josh Homme, Alain Johannes and Chris Goss rescue the album from its lull with the excellent ‘Centipede’. Picked acoustic guitars usher in a change in direction, spiking the interest, and in keeping with the lyrics the album comes alive with heavy chords and a driving riff like a jolt from a defibrillator, which continues across the accomplished ‘Trick With No Sleeve’, Goss stepping aside this time.

No supergroup would be complete without Paul McCartney sticking his oar in and sure enough ‘Cut Me Some Slack’ finds the surviving members of Nirvana propping the former Beatle up. Upon its first airing at the Hurricane Sandy Benefit Gig it was less than convincing, however a few plays on it’s a reluctant and surprising grower. The lyrics are nothing to shout home about and you can hear the Beatles circa ‘Helter Skelter’ lurking somewhere in there too, but I can’t help but think that this is what a BB King and Sterephonics jam would sound like, which given the talent on show serves to disappoint a bit. That they wrote and recorded it in only three hours is quite impressive though.

Touring keyboard player Rami Jaffee, violinist Jessy Greene and veteran session drummer Jim Keltner provide the backdrop to Grohl’s vocals on the softer ‘If I Were Me’, which hints at the more melancholy moments of the Foo’s back catalogue. The best is saved for last, however. Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and Trent Reznor is a mouthwatering combination. ‘Mantra’ closes Sound City: Real To Reel, from a cleaner, warm opening tension builds from guitars wailing in the distance into an intense crescendo cut off at its height by a lone, fuzzy bassline upon which the crescendo builds again, faster this time, to explode into a jaunty guitar riff hurtling onward to the final, fading feedback outro. It’s not perhaps as brutal a piece of music as you’d expect, but with Reznor on his more mellow, post-industrial tip with How To Destroy Angels, it’s this influence which courses through ‘Mantra’ rather than more furious moments of Nine Inch Nails or the stoner rock of Homme and Grohls’ Queens Of The Stone Age collaborations.

Sound City: Real To Reel is more a souvenir of a brief moment in Grohl’s epic career where he gets to realise the legacy of Sound City across the generations, rather than a work of creative collaborative genius. There’s as much filler as there is standout tracks, and in all honesty it’s not as great as hoped for. That this ever happened at all is perhaps Sound City: Real To Reel’s greatest accolade. Finding time in the schedules of the many outstanding musicians on here to write, record and tour this record is nothing short of a creative and logistical masterstroke, that the music doesn’t match the hype is a let-down of sorts, but this shouldn’t detract from the incredible work that has gone into making this happen. There was always the danger that this would end up sounding like another fairly predictable Foo Fighters album, and now and again you’d be forgiven for thinking so. The greatest shame though, is that one particular voice could never be heard on this record, the voice that made all this possible for Grohl and co, the voice of a generation.

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“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

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Sound City Players - Kentish Town Forum - 19th February 2013 - Live Review

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:56:00 +0000

Dave Grohl’s traveling band bring Sound City to London…

Enough has been said and written about Dave Grohl being a workaholic. Those epic gigs, endless collaborations, tours, movies, supergroups, handing out Brit Awards, making Soundgarden look silly on Segways…so now that’s out of the way let’s focus on his current Sound City Players project and it’s live incarnation last night at the Kentish Town Forum, which was quite something.

Having premiered the Sound City documentary on Monday, the traveling band Grohl has assembled using his very own Foo Fighters, Alain Johannes, Chris Goss, Lee Ving, Rick Nielsen and Krist Novoselic took to the stage about eightish, with rumours abounding that a three hour show was in the offing, that Paul McCartney might be making an appearance (thank fuck ‘Hey Jude’ wasn’t recorded at Sound City, eh?), that Stevie Nicks might show up…if all the rumours were to be believed, three and half hours could take all week.

Alain Johannes is first up. A long time friend of Grohl’s, having contributed to Them Crooked Vultures together and more notably to Queens Of The Stone Age’s seminal Songs For the Deaf, the show begins with ‘A Trick With No Sleeve’, a new song to be featured on the forthcoming Sound City Players album but soon progresses to running through Eleven’s ‘Why’ and ‘All My Friends’. The biggest cheer of Johannes’ set is predictably for QOTSA’s ‘Hangin’ Tree’, but there wasn’t a dull moment throughout.

Johannes takes on bass duties for what turns out to be the highlight of the gig, Chris Goss’ appearance for a run through of some of Masters Of Reality’s back catalogue. The volume seems to crank up, the guitars in particular becoming more dominant, more intense, and as the music gets that little bit heavier, so the atmosphere begins to crackle too. ‘Third Man On The Moon’ and ‘She Got Me (When She Got Her Dress On)’ precede a stunning run through of ‘It’s Shit’, the descending guitar riff packing a mighty punch. There’s time for another Sound City Players song and a wee tease of Black Sabbath’s ‘Into The Void’ to usher in ‘Domino’ and ‘The Blue Garden’. Goss is entertaining throughout, raising the crowd up with ushered hands and finding time to commend Grohl and Taylor Hawkins, even excusing the not quite sudden end to ‘It’s Shit’ by reminding us of how little time the band have had to learn these songs. As well oiled as the Foo Fighters are these days, that they have all learned so many songs in so short a time is comprehensive professionalism. No one begrudges the odd minor blip.

And after the heaviness comes the punk. Fear frontman Lee Ving, armed with harmomica, takes Grohl on a trip down memory lane, his punky cousin, indeed his ‘hero’, the subject of one of the rambling monologues that seem to litter the Foo Fighters’ gigs these days. Ving reveals he’s never played in England before, and as fun as the Fear tracks are, they seem more to fill a gap than add a great deal to what’s gone before. Similarly for Rick Springfield’s bubbly cameo afterwards, there’s nothing particularly special about it, and had I the will to fight through the crowds, these would’ve been the ideal sets for a pee.

There is to be no encore tonight, so the final part of the show is handed over to Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen. And it works. Cheap Trick are one of those bands whose songs you often don’t realise you know, and they’re delivered in playful mood. The band throw guitar picks at each other throughout and generally just seem to be having a good time on stage, which is in itself infectious. And this is Taylor Hawkin’s moment to be a frontman, no ‘Cold Day In The Sun’ from behind the kit today, this time he’s on vocal duties, bare-chested with a towel draped around his shoulders. The real highlight though is Krist Novoselic assuming bass duties, and the cheer that greets him on stage is to be the loudest of the night. Here, with Grohl on drums, and Pat Smear onstage too, is probably the closest thing we’ll ever see to a reunion of the surviving members of Nirvana. And with Hawkins lanky blonde hair and wiry frame draped around the mic stand not looking too dissimilar from Kurt Cobain’s, it’s a spooky snapshot of what Nirvana might have looked like in their forties too, a thought which is tinged with not a little sadness. Especially as I sit writing this on what would’ve been Kurt’s 46^th birthday. Part of me hoped Grohl, Novoselic and Smear might play a Nirvana song, in hindsight I’m glad they didn’t, Nirvana’s legacy should I think remain Nirvana’s.

The crowd let themselves down at the end however. Having just witnessed a once in a lifetime show that spanned nearly two and a half hours, certain aggrieved elements seemed unsatisfied and booed the houselights when they blinkered on. After the immense effort Grohl has gone to to make these special gigs happen, it was somewhat disrespectful. Even on the Underground later on I overheard conversations about people feeling ripped off because there was no encore, because it wasn’t three hours, because Macca didn’t turn up. £60 was steep for a ticket, but for a once in a lifetime experience, it’s small change for the memories.

Thanks to Paul B for the photo.

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“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Atoms For Peace - Album Stream

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:07:37 +0000

Yorke, Godrich, Flea - what could possibly go wrong?

Well not a lot actually. The album isn’t half bad. Review to follow, but have a listen yourself first…

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“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Psych For Sore Eyes - Sonic Cathedral - EP Review

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:26:00 +0000

Psychedelia is back!

If there was a ‘packaging of the year’ award, I imagine Sonic Cathedral would probably be in with a good shout for it for the double 7” Psych For Sore Eyes. It’s not every release which comes with 3D glasses, the hues of which are reflected in the two pieces of green and red 7” vinyl containing six slices of trippy psychedelia. We’re only in February, but it’s already one of the year’s must have releases, and as such has sold out already, helped no less by support from BBC 6 Music and Lauren Laverne.

But it’s not all about the pretty packaging, the music is pretty much spot on too. The droney Hookworms opener ‘The Correspondent’ hints at the stoned fuzz of Californian psychs Wooden Shjips, all long sustained vocals and guitar notes liberally drenched in reverb and delay. It makes you long for hot sun, cold beer and a smouldering spliff to soak it all in with. Ttolas’ Life Thus Far-Out’ is punchier, more upbeat, set to more insistent guitar chords but retaining the psychedelic vibe through the vox. The Vacant Lots follow in similar vein.

White Manna delivered one of last year’s surprise records, their eponymous debut didn’t really dent the airwaves but found its way onto the critics’ lists for being so incredibly accomplished. A huge soundscape, overrun with guitars, makes for a textural piece of music which if you closed your eyes you could easily imagine as an undulating soundwave (probably in 3D), carrying you on a raft of distortion, feedback and harmonies and then chucking you off into the waves to happily drown in a tidal wave of psychedelia. There’s an overload of instruments, yet it’s never overbearing, it simply adds to the effect. The bassline which drives Lorelle Meets The Obsolete’s ‘Medicine To Cure Medicine Sickness’ feeds into cleaner plucked guitar notes, soon giving way to the ringing distortion which characterises the six tracks on Psych For Sore Eyes. To close, The Band In Heaven ease you back into reality in less intense, less dramatic style, a nice cushion to come down from your trip on.

Psychedelia has almost found its way into the mainstream again over the past couple of years or so. Tame Impala and side project Pond, Ty Segall, even moments of the new My Bloody Valentine record, have all made their respective psychedelic marks and with new bands such as Temples and those on Psych For Sore Eyes to discover, the future for psychedelia is bright, green and red, and probably kaleidoscopic. Fingers crossed for seeking out one of those illusive records now…

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Kraftwerk - Tate Modern - 13th February 2013 - Live Review

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:12:00 +0000

German electro pioneers Kraftwerk take on a whole new dimension…

“Cold, calculated, distanced, magnificent,” reads the text I receive shortly after stumbling out of the Tate Modern, trying to readjust to three dimensions without the aid of complimentary specs. The message is referring, of course, to the sublime Kraftwerk show we have just been privileged enough to see; this industry does have its benefits. Kraftwerk’s eight night residency in the Tate Modern has garnered nothing but lofty praise, and tonight’s show – the seventh of their run – is seemingly no different. It was, in short, quite spectacular.

The Tate residency isn’t the first on this current wave of Kraftwerk gigs. New York and Dusseldorf have played host too, with Tokyo to come, but there’s a very nice symmetry to the Tate gigs that makes both venue and artist a perfect fit: an artistic band named after the German word for power station playing a venue which used to be a power station and now is an art gallery. That the Tate Modern is populated with lots of works of postmodernism adds yet another layer, which you’d imagine wasn’t lost on Ralf when this gig was booked.

Tonight, Kraftwerk are playing their 1991 album The Mix in full, which is a reversal of sorts from how the previous shows have played out. Due to the very nature of the album, we essentially get the greatest hits set first rather than tagged onto the end of a full run through of Autobahn or Radioactivity, The Mix being Kraftwerk’s digital re-working of some of the high points of their previously analogue back catalogue. But it’s not just the music which is the focal point of this show, it’s the incredible visuals delivered in captivating, futuristic 3D, set to surround sound for a truly unique sensory experience.

From the very beginning, Ralf looms over the crowd during ‘The Robots’, an omnipresent, almost celestial vision which is as imposing as it is terrifying. We’re taken down a Mario Kart-esque ‘Autobahn’, skewered by satellites, harried and hustled by musical notes, arrows, glowing words and the world’s biggest ever pocket calculator. Neon lights flash and glow, cyclists pedal past, models strut their stuff and giant trains depart, but it is ‘Radioactivity’ which perhaps makes the greatest impression. The real and immediate danger of nuclear power is made all the more apparent as the words - giant 3D words you can’t miss - remind us of the terrible fates of Chernobyl and the recent tragedy at Fukushima. There’s a deep but very apparent, very important message here, a moment which makes you pause for thought, a deliberate, though temporary, nudge back into reality.

Kraftwerk have always pioneered, be it in their music or through their legendary performances, and as the show reaches its climax with ‘Music Non Stop’ and the band depart one by one, Ralf saying a quick goodbye, and auf wiedersehen, even into middle age Kraftwerk are still more vital and relevant to music culture than any of the myriad artists and genres they have sired will ever be. It’s more than just music, it’s an aesthetic, a weave of so many different fabrics that has been carefully knitted together to form the immensely powerful spectacle we’ve all just been immersed within. The use of 3D was a masterstroke, it made the visuals all the more tangible, something you feel you could reach out and touch, which juxtaposes with the aloof, reclusive nature of its protagonist. He may look like a robot, but it made Ralf seem all the more human for a couple of hours.

“Cold, calculated, distanced, magnificent,” indeed.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away - Album Review

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:52:10 +0000

The fifteenth album of a glorious career finds Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in reflective mood…

The new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Album is a thing of rare beauty. Cave is an irrepressibly prolific artist, gifted with his words, and with the Bad Seeds complimented by a band who’s sense of atmosphere and ambiance in the music they underpin Cave’s often dark, sometimes very hard to fathom lyrics with, makes for a combination that continues to add to the enviable legacy you imagine many bands would give their right leg for.

Push The Sky Away is the fifteenth Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record and finds the band in a more mellow, reflective mood than Dig Lazarus Dig, the preceding album and their last for Mute Records. The new album is self-released, a perhaps sad indictment of the fact that successful artists simply don’t need record labels any more, but in contrast quite edifying too. With the seemingly constant collapses, mergers, redundancies, divestments and pallid homogenising of the music industry, that artists can become self-sustaining points to a new future. However, you’ve got to get there first; the order of the food chain is reorganising year on year, the apex of which seems to be shifting more to the artists now.

The opening track ‘We No Who U R’, driven by a bass that pulses like a resting heart, sets the tone for the remainder of the album. There’s a pervading calmness, enhanced all the more so by the flute that leads us gently away, but this calmness, almost stillness, continues throughout. The harmonies of ‘Wide Lovely Eyes’ are uplifting, countering the sense of emptiness and loneliness that comes through the lyrics – ‘You wave and say goodbye’ couldn’t be much clearer. The opening sections of ‘Water’s Edge’, and later ‘We Real Cool’, hint at heavier, more driven moments, but instead an intensity grows from the threatened snarl that never quite bites. ‘Jubilee Street’ is a little more upbeat, lush strings rising and swooping around single distorted notes and acoustic guitars.

‘Higgs Boson Blues’, the longest track on here, grows and grows with the strings and choral oooh’s, but it’s controlled, restrained but not inhibited, cleverly arranged, coming to a gentle, peaceful standstill with the words ‘Can’t remember anything at all’. The title track closes the album in resonant style, a warm down perhaps. The wavering keys, the double-tap on the bass drum, the soft tempo, those delicate harmonies – a requiem almost. But it’s the delivery of the lyrics that adds so much, in any other hands these words would be nothing but pub rock, in Nick Cave’s inimitable style, they’re so much more: ‘Some people say it’s just rock n roll / But it gets you right down to your soul’. As the music industry shrinks and Tesco and Amazon squeeze the life from it, they couldn’t be more poignant.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

My Bloody Valentine - mbv - Album Review

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:39:00 +0000

After more than two decades, My Bloody Valentine return in captivating fashion…

The wait for the My Bloody Valentine website to load seemed nearly as long as the 21 or so years it’s taken for this most precociously talented of bands to finally release the long-awaited, much anticipated follow up to their classic masterpiece Loveless. At 3am, having gotten only as far as entering my name and email, I reluctantly went to bed, figuring that one more day’s wait wasn’t going to make much difference when considered alongside the past two decades. I slept for a few hours, hauled myself out of bed and finally the page loaded, the vinyl package was ordered and the digital download began to play. Would the wait be worth it?

Firstly, all music aside, there was the sense of event, of this is actually happening, of sitting by the computer cursing the internet connection, of immersion into a suppressed excitement which the past 21 years have never managed to extinguish. To some, My Bloody Valentine are a musical zenith, peerless, almost generation defining, and watching the release of mbv sparking a flurry of excited tweets and Facebook posts from across the globe was captivating in itself. This is actually happening. I even woke my sleepy girlfriend up to tell her what was happening. But all this would be for nothing if the wait would prove to be fruitless, if mbv wasn’t to be as good as I’d already convinced myself it would be.

As the opening fuzzy, crackling distortion swells in your eardrums, deep, resonant, beautiful, there’s no doubting from even the first few seconds who this band is. ‘She Found Now’ ushers in the record in typical My Bloody Valentine style, the crackling guitars textured and restrained, lifted slightly by the cleaner chords over the top and Shields’ barely discernible vocals creating a landscape of sound which undulates gradually, building oh so gently until… falling gracefully to ring out as subtly as they arrived. ‘Only Tomorrow’ sees Bilinda Butcher taking over the vocal duties, an almost scratchy drum pattern providing a bedrock to the characteristic fuzz, which abates slightly to allow a more insistent guitar to give the music some fuel, some impetuous, to make your ears fear for how this will be delivered in Hammersmith in March. It’s almost impossible to pick many of the lyrics out, but for My Bloody Valentine, the mystery which surrounds words used primarily as adding an extra, lighter tone to the carefully constructed dirge beneath is part of the appeal, a reflection too of their live shows, where the vocals are merely a distraction from the immense force of the music. A solo of sorts, a few scattered notes, dominates the middle and end of the song, a distraction from all that lies below.

‘Who Sees You’ continues in a similar vein to the opening two tracks. Those characteristic swoops of the tremolo, gentle vocals from Kevin, a shuffling underlying beat and lots and lots of distorted distortion. There’s little pace but for the dominant guitar solo, made up of wailing notes like little stabs of sound picking their way through until being cut suddenly down for the moody keys of ‘Is This And Yes’, which works by changing the trajectory mbv was taking. The first four tracks could easily have grown from the time of Loveless, whereas ‘If I Am’, sitting at the mid-point of the album, is less about an all out sonic assault, however restrained, and more about something warm, enveloping and somehow closer. It’s something you could reach out and touch, rather than be knocked sideways by when mbv is delivered live.

‘New You’ made its live debut as ‘Rough Song’ in Brixton last weekend, and for the first time on the album you can really pick out the bass notes. The clean guitars, slightly delayed, are offset beautifully by the simple key notes which rise with Bilinda’s beautifully soft vocals. It’s dreamy, trippy, gentle. And from here, ‘In Another Way’ shows another side of My Bloody Valentine. Falling short of white noise, yet disjointed and intense, the guitars are harsher, sharper, difficult to listen to comfortably but so easy to be overcome by. It’s a jarring reminder to focus again after the cosiness of the preceding track, but you’re let off lightly by the warmth of the keys which guide the song to its conclusion. However, they’re not finished attacking your senses just yet, ‘Nothing Is’ retains the momentum, pounding drum patterns, a crescendo of marvelously impenetrable, brutal noise which you can imagine as the younger sibling of the holocaust section of ‘You Made Me Realise’. ‘Wonder 2’ brings mbv to its inevitable end in a melting pot of samples, guitars and synths swirling around like the dust after a bomb has gone off. The faint vocals are of little consequence, it’s all about spinning you around and knocking you off balance, which if you shut your eyes, stood still and turned this up, would be bound to leave you not a little disorientated, if not by the inevitable deafness alone.

mbv has been a long, long time coming. The music press has speculated whilst labels have gone out of existence, Shields has said characteristically little and a legion of fans, some who weren’t even born when Loveless was first making the waves that still wash over guitar music even now, have waited expectantly, patiently, for a new My Bloody Valentine record. Loveless has long been the standard bearer for the shoegazing generation, an album that many have tried to emulate and all have failed to come even close. Even its creators couldn’t find a way to follow it up. At the start of this article, the simple question was thus: ‘Would the wait be worth it?’There’s a few ways to look at it.

To simply have My Bloody Valentine back, in rare creative mood and delivering captivating live shows would be worth it even if mbv turned out to be an absolute stinker. Even the most die-hard fan can’t have had total confidence that mbv would be a worthy successor to its imperious forebear, yet after numerous replays of the record, like everything My Bloody Valentine have delivered since their first release on Creation Records, one listen just isn’t enough. There’s so much depth, some so well hidden we’ll probably still never get to the bottom of it in another 21 years, that you can’t help but be impressed the more immersed in it you become. It’s gripping, captivating and intriguing.

Then there’s the record itself. There’s no dramatic change of direction, this is instantly My Bloody Valentine, there’s no great surprises, no gambles. The songs all make sense. It’s hard to determine how the music press would have reacted to this had it followed on from Loveless within a year or two as there’s no grand departures from what made Loveless so great. The timelessness is still there for all to see and hear and thank fuck they haven’t made a dubstep record.

Finally, the simple fact that this is not happening anymore, and has actually happened, is perhaps the best bit. The band we love, have delivered a record we’re sure to love. For god’s sake Kevin, don’t make us wait so long again.

www.mybloodyvalentine.co.uk

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Big Tea's 25 Best Albums Of 2012

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:30:00 +0000

We’re bound to have missed plenty, but here’s some we enjoyed this year…

So, as 2012 draws to a close and there’s little left to be released now (except that long awaited My Bloody Valentine record…oh…), it’s time for another rather rambling and pointless list of what we here at Big Tea Records enjoyed this year. We’ll start with the albums, then the 7s, then the gigs.

So here it is…

1. SILVERSUN PICKUPS ‘NECK OF THE WOODS’

Big Tea’s album of the year, the record where Silversun Pickups really came of age, where their songs took on a newer, more adventurous angle. Some quite marvellous drumming throughout too.

Our review: http://goo.gl/rw08U

2. TY SEGALL BAND ‘SLAUGHTERHOUSE’

Ty Segall is nothing if not gifted and prolific, a healthy combination for any musician, and Slaughterhouse was the pick of his three album releases in 2012. Psychedelic garage rock at its finest.

Our review: http://goo.gl/Nbjn7

3. GODSPEEDYOU!BLACKEMPEROR ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND!’

Godspeed’s return is nothing short of stunning. They truly are the masters of post-rock, their ability to create vast rock symphonies which transport you somewhere else completely is unrivalled by any other band on this planet. ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!’ is simply stunning.

Our review: http://goo.gl/qFUCA

4. MARK LANEGAN BAND ‘BLUES FUNERAL’

An eight year wait for a new Mark Lanegan Band album yielded a brooding, dark and beautifully gloomy record, much in keeping with his back catalogue and general persona. Josh Homme makes an appearance too.

Our review: http://goo.gl/kT7qq

5. RINGO DEATHSTARR ‘MAUVE’

Club AC30 neo-shoegazers second studio LP for the label draws heavily from My Bloody Valentine, lots of swirly feedback, trippy vocals adding an extra tone to thoughtfully crafted pieces of music makes for an incredibly engaging, oft delicate, sometime brutal but thoroughly rewarding listen.

6. YETI LANE ‘THE ECHO SHOW’

First of two entries from the Sonic Cathedral label is the sophomore release from French band Yeti Lane. Lot’s of shoegazey dreampop stuff on show here creates a warm, enveloping record that makes you just want to sit back, shut your eyes, and become immersed within.

7. DEAD MELLOTRON ‘GLITTER’

And the second entry for Sonic Cathedral is perhaps the perfect accompaniment to the Yeti Lane album, lot’s of long fuzzy guitar parts and barely audible vocals which could have come straight out of 1991.

8. RICHARD HAWLEY ‘STANDING AT THE SKY’S EDGE’

After a few albums of crooning, Hawley finally remembers where he put that distortion pedal and delivers arguably his finest solo work to date.

Our review: http://goo.gl/27iHq

9. SOUNDGARDEN ‘KING ANIMAL’

The return of one the great grunge bands to both the studio and the stage has been one of 2012’s highlights. Although not as commanding as their earlier work, King Animal was never going to be another Badmotorfinger or Superunknown, but it’s mostly a fine album from a hugely accomplished band.

Our review: http://goo.gl/6xHTS

10. DEFTONES ‘KOI NO YOKAN’

More fabulous quiet, loud, quiet, loud, heavy as fuck stuff from the Deftones. They mastered their art many years ago and in fairness this is more of the same, but it’s so bloody good, it’d be a change to ever change them.

11. BOB DYLAN ‘TEMPEST’

He may be 72 now, but Bob has still got it. Fifty years of heavy smoking has given his voice a deep, gravelly texture that works with the darker themes explored throughout Tempest.

12. VCMG ‘SSSS’

Mute Records stalwarts Vince Clarke and Martin Gore collaborate for this fabulous slice of deep electronic. The three remix EPs which followed are well worth collecting too.

13. TOY ‘TOY’

From the ashes of the defunct Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong rose Toy. Drawing heavily from the Horrors, with a penchant for long instrumental sections, Toy have carved their own niche from the exploits of their predecessors and settled quite comfortably into it.

14. WHITE MANNA ‘WHITE MANNA’

One of the best albums of the year which barely made a dent. Lots of droney psychedelia, feedback and a Wooden Shjips-esque groove. Sublime.

15. BLOC PARTY ‘FOUR’

After listening to Bloc Party’s heaviest record to date, you get the impression this is perhaps the record they always wanted to make. It’s got far more attitude than you’d imagine, and sees Bloc Party really letting loose. Check out the Smashing Pumpkins influenced ‘Kettling’.

16. DINOSAUR JR ‘I BET ON SKY’

J Mascis just keeps trotting them out. The third Dinosaur Jr record since their reformation is pretty much as you’d expect it to be, typical latter day Dinosaur Jr. And don’t we just fucking love them for it.

Our review: http://goo.gl/Bk6ja

17. GRIZZLY BEAR ‘SHIELDS’

A continuation from Yellow House which finds the Grizzly’s in perhaps more radio friendly mood, but losing nothing because of it.

18. JACK WHITE ‘BLUNDERBUSS’

Having finally shorn himself of his wife/sister and found a band which can actually play, Jack White’s debut solo record is a triumph. Bluesy, rootsy and released in various very pretty coloured vinyl formats too.

Our review: http://goo.gl/N3DED

19. KATATONIA ‘DEAD END KINGS’

Scandinavians do dark rock so damn well, I don’t know why anyone else bothers. Their ninth album of a highly impressive and sadly oft overlooked career.

20. THE MACCABEES ‘GIVEN TO THE WILD’

After finally eschewing the rather dull little indie-pop ditties they previously chucked out, the long soundscapes and big sonic textures that make up Given To The Wild mark out the talent the Maccabees have kept so well hidden throughout their previous career to date.

21. MAXIMO PARK ‘THE NATIONAL HEALTH’

Another surprising record released this year, having not been all that interesting before, Maximo Park get it right on their third record.

22. NINE BLACK ALPS ‘LOCKED OUT FROM THE INSIDE’

It’s always slightly baffled me why Nine Black Alps never got much bigger, probably something to do with a label who didn’t know what to do with them. They should have kept faith in them though, their two albums since leaving Island have been outstanding.

Our Nine Black Alps live review: http://goo.gl/eJXGo

23. POLICA ‘GIVE YOU THE GHOST’

Haunting, ethereal and beautiful. Post trip hop, we get Polica, and they’re worth investing some time and money in.

24. POND ‘BEARD WIVES DENIM’

Tame Impala may have stolen the headlines this year, but before Tame Impala there was and is the wonderfully psychedelic Pond, which shares three members. To be honest, I think this is better…

25. WALKING PAPERS ‘WALKING PAPERS’

A collaboration between former Screaming Tree Barrett Martin, former Guns N Roses bassist Duff McKagan and vocalist Jeff Angel, this beautiful record aims to and succeeds in capturing the vast American landscape.

Our review and interview with Barrett Martin: http://goo.gl/0nQpS

Here’s the playlist too, CLICK HERE!

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Soundgarden - Shepherds Bush Empire - 09.11.2012 - Live Review

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Grunge legends deliver stunning career spanning set…

Some eighteen years ago or so, Soundgarden became the first band to play at the newly renovated Shepherds Bush Empire. Since then, their career has rocketed, peaked, dipped, dissolved and now gained new momentum since the reformation that has brought about the new record King Animal, the album cover art providing the pale backdrop to the stage tonight. And it’s from King Animal that the not particularly subtle message is conveyed on the opening track of both the record and the show - ‘Been Away Too Long’. Obvious, yes, but fitting too.

Soundgarden could easily have played a much bigger venue tonight, however it’s for the fans who pre-ordered the new record and few who got lucky after the ticket presale that they’re here following in the footsteps of their early nineties contemporaries Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins by taking to the Empire stage to power through the back catalogue and unleash a few new tunes too (that’ll be the tour support covered!).

It doesn’t take long for them to warm up either, quickly delivering a lively ‘My Wave’ and warmly received ‘Spoonman’. Perhaps as expected, the set draws quite heavily from Superunknown and Badmotorfinger, ‘Room A Thousand Years Wide’ an early highlight, but it’s when they start to delve into the deeper back catalogue that you realise that this is a well thought out set, designed for the die hard fans who’ve been with them since the late eighties. For example, ‘Incessant Mace’ is played tonight for the first time since 1995. ‘Blow Up the Outside World’ and ‘Fell On Black Days’ precede ‘Loud Love’ and a live debut for the new ‘Black Saturday’.

‘Rusty Cage’ and ‘Outshined’ are quite phenomenal, the later nearly taking the roof off. Cornell ditches his guitar and commands the stage, at home, holding those watching in a very tight grip soundtracked by some of the greatest music of its time, this is what we’re really here to see and they don’t disappoint, rolling back the years in captivating style. As good as the new songs are, they’re just not the same, and it’s a slight shame they chose to end the first set on two new tunes.

The encore, however, is quite magnificent. ‘The Day I Tried To Live’ followed by the inevitable ‘Black Hole Sun’ – which sounds SO much better live than it ever did on record – and the sumptuous groove of ‘Slaves & Bulldozers’ closes an incredibly good two hour set. There is always a fear that returning bands might not still be able to cut it, but there’s no chance of that here. Soundgarden remain a force to be reckoned with, and long may it last.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Soundgarden - King Animal - Album Review

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:14:00 +0000

The Knights of the Soundtable ride again…Soundgarden’s new album King Animal reviewed…

April 9^th, 1997. Tensions in Soundgarden are coming to a head. Two months earlier, Ben Shepherd has stormed off stage in Hawaii, not to return. Chris Cornell plays the encore alone. By April 9^th, Soundgarden are over. With grunge having faded, and Soundgarden’s stylistic shift away from the heavy, dark guitars that catapulted them to global stardom left aside for a more brooding, acoustic, lighter sound, the fans have lost interest in Down On The Upside, the band’s final album, and Kim Thayil and Cornell’s relationship has become fractious. They split up. Cornell goes on to write mediocre solo albums which pick up from where Down On The Upside left off, teams up with three of the four members of Rage Against The Machine for the short-lived Audioslave and pens a Bond theme. Matt Cameron, Soundgarden’s supremely talented drummer, joins Pearl Jam after the departure of Jack Irons. Shepherd and Thayil contribute to various side projects but remain largely out of the public eye.

And then this, on New Year’s Day in 2009, from Cornell’s Twitter feed: “The 12 year break is over and school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!”

Soundgarden would return.

It’s now November 8^th 2012 and the fruits of the reunion are finally beginning to ripen. The band have been busy. Two Record Store Day 7” singles have been issued, a new collection entitled Telephantasm has debuted new live recordings and a track that had previously been kept in the vaults – ‘Black Rain’ – which would also make an appearance on Guitar Hero, Soundgarden’s first live album Live On I-5 and their long awaited live return, firstly a small, low key show in Seattle as the Nudedragons, and then headlining slots at Loolapalooza, Hard Rock Calling and other festival gigs too. And then a brand new track for The Avengers soundtrack, ‘Live To Rise’, a riff heavy, early Soundgarden intro giving way to latter day Soundgarden acoustic verse and lyrics exploring themes of the rising sun and letting go; on one song, here is a snapshot of Soundgarden’s career to date. And then the announcement, King Animal will land on November 12^th 2012, the reformation of Soundgarden will enter perhaps its most exciting, if not intriguing, phase. After nearly sixteen years, a brand new album.

Before their headlining Hard Rock Calling set in London’s Hyde Park, the last time I’d seen Soundgarden live was in 1995 at Reading Festival, when they were underwhelming to say the least. Fast forward 17 years and through the rain and mud of an overly-quiet Hyde Park, Soundgarden deliver a career spanning, glorious set, with ‘4^th Of July’ and ‘Slaves and Bulldozers’ memorable highlights, but omitted from treating us to any of the new songs we all knew they were writing and recording. A very minor grumble about an otherwise fabulous show, but it added to the excited anticipation for the as yet unnamed new record. Fast forward a few months and a Youtube clip formally announces King Animal and two new tracks quickly follow, and soon they’re lighting up Jools Holland with ‘Been Away Too Long’ and a raucous ‘Rusty Cage’, and King Animal is upon us. And here’s what it sound likes.

The riff that leads in ‘Been Away Too Long’ is unquestionably Soundgarden of old, heavy, chunky, dissected by Thayil’s wandering riff between the heavier chord patterns, Cornell’s voice pushed to its latter day limits. And of course, the lyrics tell their own obvious story – they have indeed been away for too long, and this serves as a non too subtle reminder. The interplay of Thayil’s eastern roots in the lead guitars with Cornell’s heavier chords are the sound that so personified Badmotorfinger and Superunknown and Soundgarden themselves. ‘Non State Actor’ follows in similar vein, not quite so catchy, but feisty still, lyrically not so dark as years gone by but politically fervent; there’s disaffection here still, determined anger and a dissatisfaction with the world at large, epitomised by Cornell’s characteristic bestial screech. ‘By Crooked Steps’ repetitive guitar chords could perhaps have its genesis way back in the seemingly sadly forgotten ‘Birth Ritual’, but without ever contemplating those high notes.

‘A Thousand Days Before’ hints very much towards the Superunknown era, the plucked verse notes vaguely reminiscent of the title track and Thayil’s jaunty riff coming out of heavier, darker chords vintage Soundgarden, likewise ‘Blood On The Valley Floor’ nods to the past too, the swirling arrival of the vocals hinting at Badmotorfinger’s ‘Jesus Christ Pose’ yet the pace is more restrained, it’s atmospheric very much like ‘Mailman’ or ‘The Day I Tried To Live’, formulas they mastered years before but given a reworking here.

‘Bones of Birds’ is one of the album highlights, gentle, cultured, driven by Cameron’s instinctive, intricate drum patterns and Cornell’s longer, sustained vocals which carry you along over a distant, plaintive piano, hidden amongst the distortion. It has a subtle beauty, a fragility in the lyrics the healing music reflects back onto itself, fading out to mimicked bird cries. To use a much overused word, this is actually cathartic.

‘Taree’ is thoughtful, ponderous maybe, enlivened by a more rocky chorus but the prevailing atmosphere is less insistent than the first quarter of the record. ‘Attrition’ is punky, King Animal’s ‘Kickstand’, the only track to come in under three minutes. ‘Black Saturday’ is notable mostly for the beautiful, held guitar notes in the mid-section but alongside the following ‘Halfway There’ ring true more of Cornell solo than any of the previous Soundgarden records.

‘Worse Dreams’ is scrappy, but works, Cornell falling back on one of his recurrent lyrical themes (his obsession with the sun and dogs clearly still hasn’t abated) and ‘Eyelid’s Mouth’ is characterised by the layered vocal harmonies of the chorus. Album closer ‘Rowing’ is more a hymnal sketch than anything else, something you wouldn’t rule out appearing in a Coen Brothers film someday in the future.

Having waited so long for this record, it’s hard not to turn it off. But was it worth the wait? The thing that needs to be remembered here, by the music press in particular, is that King Animal is never going to have the impact Soundgarden had all those years ago when Louder Than Love and Badmotorfinger helped usher in a new musical phenomenon which Superunknown became the breakthrough cumulative product of. They’re a different band now, different people, with different lives and the cushion of success from which to relaunch themselves from, rather than the ambition that comes with youth and desire. It’s hard to imagine they need the money, it’s easier to think they’re doing this because they never really finished what they started on Sub Pop way back in 1987, when the ‘Hunted Down’ single was released (although Shepherd didn’t actually join until Badmotorfinger). The acrimonious split that followed the disappointing reception of Down On The Upside wasn’t how this was supposed to end, now they have the chance to start again, and so far, so good.

12^th November, 2012; you’ve been away too long. It was worth the wait.

Check back next week for a live review of Soundgarden at Shepherds Bush Empire.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Death At Sea - Drag - Single Review

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:21:00 +0100

Death At Sea’s debut single offers genuinely fresh, exciting new UK guitar music…

This is only to be a short post, but having recieved my copy of Death At Sea’s debut 7” single ‘Drag’, backed with ‘Selfless’, we felt compelled to pen a few words about this remarkably good single. Death At Sea hail from Liverpool, where their three guitar assault has slowly begun to send a few shockwaves out further afield, including landing a touring support slot with the similarly hotly tipped Haim. Unfortunately for Haim, they’re going to have to be really on it not to get shown up by Death At Sea, whose smooth blend of nineties grunge molded around a more British varnishing of thoughful, restrained, slick melodies makes for a compelling and very immediately arresting listen.

Death At Sea are brimming with promising talent, and as an opening salvo ‘Drag’ is a mightily impressive debut. In an era when the best Britain has to offer are nothing more than jangly, vapid indie bands (and as I write this, the band Tweet to say “We only made it because we were so bored of guitar music”), here comes some genuinely fresh, exciting new UK guitar music which will hopefully shake things over here up a bit.

‘Drag’ is out now on 7” vinyl and cassette from here. Check out the video for ‘Drag’ below.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Nine Black Alps - Borderline, London - 15.10.2012

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:33:00 +0100

Manchester’s finest neo-grungers Nine Black Alps serve up a seventeen song treat…

Nine Black Alps seventeen strong setlist in London’s Borderline earlier this week served as a reminder as to just how good this band were, still are and continue to be, long after their departure from a major label you get the impression probably stifled them during their two album spell there. Island Records certainly put Nine Black Alps on the map, but seemingly did little to keep them there and since departing they’ve put out two great records and pursued various other solo projects, all of which are worthy of note.

The Borderline is heaving, it’s a struggle to get to the bar but it’s no problem, little gigs like this work all the better playing out to a packed venue and London has turned out in force to watch Manchester’s finest neo-grungers tear through their high octane set. ‘Not Everyone’ opens the show in lively style, followed in quick succession by ‘Buy Nothing’ and an excellent ‘Cosmopolitan’. The biggest applause throughout the evening understandably comes for the older repertoire, ‘Unsatisfied’, ‘Heavier Than Water’ and ‘Get Your Guns’ still sound fresh and vibrant and sit comfortably alongside the new tracks, ‘Along For The Ride’ and ‘Vampire In The Sun’ notable highlights. But it’s the set closers ‘Ironside’ and ‘Shot Down’ which the crowd really goes for, the band finishing the show on the same high notes it began from.

Nine Black Alps are a great band. Their back catalogue has depth, honesty and integrity, and is bursting with great tunes, which if anything come across better on stage than they do on record. There’s a darkness that pervades the lyrics, very much in the vein of the Seattle bands of twenty years ago from whom Nine Black Alps’ primary influences are drawn. And like those grunge bands of yore, being able to witness the energy that goes into them playing first hand makes for a more connected experience than a stereo can ever provide, but this you know already. Live music is an experience like no other, and Nine Black Alps are fine purveyors of it. I, for one, was anything but unsatisfied when they exited stage right after an hour of great music.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

The Libertines - Up The Bracket - A Response To the NME

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:30:00 +0100

The Libertines’ debut is ten years old, but what was better, Up The Bracket or the soap opera that surrounded it? Did the music live up to its protagonists?

Last week’s NME was dedicated to celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Libertines’ Up The Bracket, an album the nation’s favourite sycophantic weekly music tabloid fatuously proclaimed to be “…one of the most chaotic, brilliant debuts of all time”, going on to further assert those who naysayed “don’t know shit” and suggesting that “every musician who really counts for something now owes a serious debt of gratitude to what those four dreamers did back then.” Up The Bracket was a good record, undoubtedly, but it didn’t usher in a new counter culture like Nevermind or Never Mind The Bollocks did. It wasn’t a global sensation like Dark Side Of The Moon or Appetite For Destruction. It didn’t capture the nation like Definitely Maybe or The Stone Roses. It’s no peerless genre defining classic like Loveless. Whether you like these records or not, in some way or shape they changed the musical landscape, what the NME seems to be missing here is that it was Up The Bracket’s creators which were the story, not the record itself. Up The Bracket, in all honesty, barely made a dent.

The short history of the Libertines reads more like a soap opera. Drugs, squats, fights, guerrilla gigs, burglaries, more drugs, arrests, fall outs and a very public self-combustion played out on the streets of London’s grimy East End was the story, Up The Bracket was merely the starting point for all this -just another record, but created by people far more newsworthy than their music ever actually was. What the NME fails to ask in its lengthy ‘untold story’ is whether the music actually lived up to its protagonists, and the simple answer is that it didn’t. Pete Doherty was/is a one man publicity machine. Talented certainly, and troubled, and rather adept at finding himself splashed across the papers. Carl Barat was his sidekick for much of this time, until finally having enough after Doherty, his behaviour becoming more and more erratic and out of control, ended the Libertines brief career in Paris in 2004 with Doherty absent.

The Libertines career has always been viewed out of focus. I write this not from the NME’s naysaying angle, but from a realistic perspective. The Libertines were a good band, who released one good and one distinctly average record and will be remembered more for their antics than for their music. Up The Bracket didn’t warrant an entire edition devoting to it. To assert that today’s successful musicians owe it a debt of gratitude is bogus in the extreme, the lessons learned from the Libertines are more about how to command tabloid headlines than how to write music, but then again, in an era when music has flatlined, how else are you supposed to make your mark? Perhaps there is some genius in there somewhere after all. To be a successful musician, you don’t need to be a successful musician. Go figure that one out.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don’t Bend Ascend! - Album Review

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:10:04 +0100

Godspeed You! Black Emperor return with a truly captivating new record…

Sometimes, a band really have been away too long, you notice the space where they used to be, it aches and moans and screams to be filled. It’s a void, a gap, almost impenetrable. Almost. Then they reform and it can go one of two ways. Firstly, the old magic is well and truly gone and chances of it returning are next to none. Secondly, the spark that used to be there ignites as it used to, a sonic explosion, a return to form and glory.

There was never really much doubt that the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor was going to be anything other than extraordinary. They’ve been instrumental in the defining of post-rock for a whole generation, their vision and accomplishment in creating magnificent, swooping and hugely atmospheric rock symphonies is beyond compare, with only perhaps Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky coming anywhere close to matching them. The disappointment at their split was inevitable, the excitement at their return even more so, and after last year’s live shows the new album Allelujah! Don’t Bend Ascend! arrives to fluttering hearts and nervous anticipation.

The four tracks that make up Allelujah! Don’t Bend Ascend! are of similar length, two being around the twenty minute mark and two shorter tracks coming in at a modest six minutes, providing an intense experience and creation of sonic texture and exhilaration that have marked Godspeed as being at the top of their game for the past fifteen years or so. The frantic intro to ‘Mladic’, from the sampled vocals to the eerie, groaning guitars, set the tone, tug at your nerves, hurl you into the song as it crescendos with frantic drums, strings and guitars reminiscent of the East. It’s as dangerous as you’d expect from the song title. As the song begins to wane, the snare comes alive, to lead in another darker, ethereal riff and plaintive feedback and twitchy samples of beeping horns and a marching rhythm of clashing pots and pans. It’s a beautiful, and utterly captivating, twenty minutes. The following ‘Their Helicopters Sing’ is a droning six minute coda of creepy off-white noise that delivers fervent anxiety and unassailable restlessness.

‘We Drift Like Worried Fire’ opens in calmer, more reflective style. Long sustained notes providing a backdrop to gentle, plucked nylon strings which give way to guitars being crept around by a resonant bassline. Initially, there’s less intention to shock here in the brutal fashion ‘Mladic’ does, there’s more of a sense of a symphony unfolding rather than the insistent, immediate need to demand your attention. It’s warmer initially, fuller, broken in the middle by the guitars breaking through to command the song and clear space for the lone drum to call for the lost instruments to drift back into place alongside a military snare drum which suddenly springs into life, a musical resurrection Hawkwind would have been proud of. And then a pause, the cue for a steady march onto the end. As with ‘Mladic’, ‘We Drift Like Worried Fire’ has it’s coda too, ‘Strung Like Lights At Thee Printemps Erable’ is all controlled feedback and swirling warmth gently coaxing you out of the record and back into silence, the ultimate coda, the moment to reflect upon what you’ve just heard, the journey you’ve just been on, and how your life has changed just a little bit by what you’ve just experienced. There’s value in just sitting awhile after the final notes have rung away and breathing Allelujah! Don’t Bend Ascend! in.

It’s difficult, bordering on impossible, to convey in words the effect Godspeed’s music has. To find useless sentences and paragraphs to do justice to the magnificence of their achievements across 53 minutes is beyond the power of the pen, but somewhere, probably between these lines, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s collective genius is put across somehow. You can’t appreciate this record from words alone, you need to hear it, to be immersed in it, to be carried and dropped, hugged and cast aside, bitten and infected. You can’t break it into pieces or return later to finish it off, you need to ingest it in one beautiful, endless moment. A truly astonishing record from a truly astonishing band.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Toy - Toy - Album Review

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:33:15 +0100

Toy’s eponymous debut record has been attracting lots of praise,have they earned it?

From the ashes of Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, one of the many bands never to fulfil the potential the media initially saw in them and quickly forgot about once their debut album had been released, or in Joe Lean’s case never actually released, sprung Toy, featuring three former members. They’ve emerged at a good time, with the Horrors riding high on their most successful album to date and other established artists dipping their toe into a bit of psychedelia too – check out the new Richard Hawley album, for example – the market is pretty much ready for Toy to bring their own brand along.

Following on from a few 7” and 12” singles and a super limited 12” featuring the band live at the BBC, as well as a four week residency at the Shacklewell Arms, the buzz around Toy has been fairly constant, the Horrors’ Rhys Webb even citing them as “the most exciting band to have come out last year”. The release of their eponymous first record has made the hype go up a notch, and its praise well earned, Toy is a fine debut.

Listening to the album straight through, Toy have a very consistent, almost trippy sound, Tom Dougall’s restrained vocals add more of an extra tone to the music than being an actual focal point, especially on the marvelous ‘Dead & Gone’ – the 12” of which features an exclusive Andy Weatherall mix on the flip side which is well worth having – and ‘Walk Up To Me’. At no point can you ever really say that Toy actually go for it, their sound being a reserved, constant motion rather than a series of separate journeys. In fact, the album is best experienced as a whole entity rather than broken down into its component parts. ‘Reasons Why’ has a certain cinematic quality and ‘Strange’ is sometimes haunting, sometimes sounding a little unfinished, which gives it a more organic edge than the other more perfectly produced moments on here.

The long instrumental sections the band clearly favour create a comfortable atmosphere of sorts, no more so than on the excellent album closer ‘Kopter’. In fact, the best way to describe Toy is probably to liken them to a moment of calmness in an otherwise turbulent day, as there is something charmingly soothing about their debut record, something which blocks the outside world out and lets you into their moody domain. Thing is, is it really where you want to go?

Yes, but with a little hesitation sometimes. As great a record as this is, it lacks something in terms of being truly memorable. There’s no doubts Toy have got bundles of talent, but where do they go from here? A question you could ask any band, it’s unlikely many would have an answer. All the same, I intend to keep enjoying this record for some time to come and will watch their career with interest.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Soundgarden confirm new album release date!

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 21:57:00 +0100

Soundgarden finally confirm release date for King Animal…

At last! Been waiting for this news for so long now, and finally it drops. Regular readers of the Big Tea Blog will know we like Soundgarden a LOT, so we couldn’t resist this very brief missive to post the trailer for the new Soundgarden album, titled King Animal and set for release on November 13th 2012. Take a look at the brief trailer below, with a snippet of the typically moody music to expect when finally we get to hear it in full. As ever, the influence of the East that so characterizes Kim Thayil’s style is there, but the surprising thing is perhaps the brightness of the artwork, reflected in the snowy landscape, but inevitably returned to where Soundgarden always end up, in darkness - cue the pagan-esque animal bones and skulls. We truly can’t wait for this to land.

And if you’ve been living in a cave for the past few months and haven’t heard the only track to have been premiered thus far, ‘Live To Rise’ from The Avengers soundtrack, here’s that too.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM

www.bigtearecords.com

Green Day - ¡Uno! - Album Review

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:30:00 +0100

We take a listen to the first of Green Day’s three new albums, and find ourselves pleasantly surprised with the first installment ¡Uno!…

So, there’s three new Green Day albums to come over the next few months, imaginatively titled ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre!, and the band have been super-busy with little club shows and guerrilla gigs at Reading Festival to promote them, the first record now streaming in full through the NME website. So is it any good? Actually, and dare we say surprisingly, yes it is.

Green Day have long been masters of the three chord trick, there’s no complexity to what they do, but their ability to marry simple song structures with hugely addictive vocal hooks has carried their career to date on a fairly impressive constant upward trajectory since 1995’s breakthrough album Dookie. They’ve no right to claim to be punks any more – and I’m not sure they do – being products of the mass corporate music machine. Gone a long time ago were dingy, smoky, smelly underground club venues, in their place they now play to tens of thousands in cavernous stadia the world over, charge a packet for tickets and sell bucketloads of new albums. They even do musicals. Yet, lying somewhere in their records, the sound of punk still remains, especially on ¡Uno! where they’ve returned to the roots of their third album, and major label debut, Dookie.

‘Nuclear Family’ is the lead single and opens ¡Uno! with a fairly trademark Green Day chord progression, dropping to bass and drums for the verse vocals before one of those classic Billie Joe nasal pop-punk choruses. ‘Can you hear the sound coming over the hill / Gotta move my feet it’s coming in for the kill’ Billie chimes, and with the amount of hype and publicity surrounding ¡Uno!, it’s difficult not to think he’s perhaps talking about it. ‘Stay The Night’ is all chord solos and noisy endings. ‘Carpe Diem’ is a call to arms of sorts, yet flies in the face of the current global financial meltdown – ‘Making a living, making a killing.’

‘Let Yourself Go’ picks up a pace and attitude reminiscent of Dookie - ‘I don’t give a fuck anyway’ - yet departs from its predecessor with the stellar solo leading into the bassey mid section. ‘Kill the DJ’ drags ¡Uno! into the modern age, the disco-esque beat and sharp guitar parts ring true more of the indie of the millennium age than the chirpy post-punk Green Day sprung from. ‘Fell for You’ is one of the album highlights, short, spiky guitars, chunky palm-muting and seamlessly fitting vocal lines are the heartbeat of Green Day and are no more evident than here, the dropped tone going into the chorus is a trick they’ve used for years and they repeat it to great aplomb here.

‘Loss Of Control’, the guitar solo aside, could have been lifted straight from Dookie. The verse to ‘Troublemaker’ sounds a bit like the Hives, and the guitar riff to ‘Angel Blue’ sounds suspiciously like ‘I Fought The Law’ by the Clash, but here the comparison ends. ‘Sweet 16’ has been an overused phrase in music since the 1950s and the corresponding song is probably one of the few bits of filler on here, a Green Day love song which does little for the remainder of the record. ‘Rusty James’ nods to the Clash again – ‘When there’s no one left around / And you’re the last gang in town’ – and ‘Oh Love’ closes the album in anthemic style.

There is always going to be the argument that Green Day are nothing more than bloated rock stars these days, and to some extent this is true. Their last few albums have spurned the odd hit or two but haven’t really excited that much, yet the return to form which ¡Uno! certainly is shows that in going directly back to what they’re good at they still have some great tunes in them. They are being hugely self indulgent by releasing three albums in one go but if they’re all as good as ¡Uno!, why the fuck not eh? As Billie has said when discussing the upcoming trio of records, there’s a mission here and that is to make a ‘big statement’ by reminding people that it’s not just about singles anymore and that making albums has become ‘a lost art form’ (there’s a also a certain irony here that he said all this whilst talking to Classic Rock magazine). To some extent he’s right, the impact of iTunes and the availability of any track you want on its own at any time for fuck all money has taken away the need for a solid collection of songs, which perhaps runs contrary to Green Day’s previous few albums and the three new LPs are going some way to correcting that. Whatever you think of Green Day, aside from their hugely entertaining live shows, on this evidence they have still got it on disc too, roll on ¡Dos!.

¡Uno! is released through Warner on September 24^th.

“The Seattle quartet unleashes a torrential thunderfuck that crashes math rock’s meticulous timing and breakneck changes against sleazy, pheromone-fueled bluster.” – SPIN.COM