Emmy The Great// First Love// Absolute// 02/02/09

For the past four years singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss has flooded the internet with a steady stream of anti-folk ditties, whether they've been official self-released EPs, free download only EPs, or the odd MP3 uploaded to her website, so it seems like a lifetime coming, but here finally, after picking up a full band and songwriting collective along the way, we have her debut album proper, and worth the wait it most definitley is.

Ranking alongside Kimya Dawson, Martha Wainwright, and Diane Cluck as a more lighthearted Laura Marling, Emmy treats us to a mass of emotionally charged tales of young love and heartbreak. In title track First Love, we're told a story of a meeting and doomed romance between a girl, and a boy obsessed with Leonard Cohen's original 'Hallelujah', in 'MIA', the story of a couple in a car crash, the boy dies a gory death, with the girl remaining in the car, listening to a compilation, which includes a song by the artist in the track's title, and she reminisces, amid the blood splattered scene "I always liked this singer, I remember/ how you were the one who/ told me that her name/ was either Mia, or M.I.A".

An anti-folk luminary in the making Emmy The Great certainly is, as an introduction of her/their talent to a wider audience, this album is more than sufficient. Expect to hear me, and soon the rest of the world, wittering on about her for some time yet!

Lightspeed Champion// Falling Off The Lavender Bridge// Domino Records// 21/01/08

In mid-2007, Dev Hynes, formerly one third of indie-hip-hop-thrash-metal-punkers Test-Icicles bounced back onto the scene with the single Galaxy Of The Lost. A world away from the sound of his previous band, this record had much more in common with the introverted strummings of Ryan Adams and Bright Eyes than, well, the sound of a dozen guitars smashing up a roomful of Atari 2600s. A lament on the singer's physical inability to drink, due to a billion ailments and health complaints, soothed only by the object of his affection, performed over a bed of swooning country guitars and Emmy The Great on backing vocals (more on her in the next blog post, or maybe the one after that), the single and a whole host of downloadable demos hosted by Dev on his own website would set the tone for the album that followed 6 months on.

The record itself, although sounding calmer to the ear, was just as adventurous as Test-Icicles' release, moving from Devil Tricks For A Bitch, a four minute, strings drenched croak in which the singer rants about wallowing in his room for days with only a guitar for company, to the ten minute epic, Midnight Suprise, a dreamy, cascading tune, supposedly written about The Legend Of Zelda. As the music meandred from indie pop, to lush orchestral arrangements however, the lyrical themes revolved mainly around Hynes' geek rock universe of Weezer, emotional awkwardness, and comic books.

When promotional duties for the album ended, Hynes took off again to the US, where the record had been previously written and recorded, and it's currently unsure whether another Lightspeed Champion record will be released. So, for the time being, make the most of this one!

The Rakes// Walk Home, Come Down, Retreat To Sleep, Wake Up, Go Out Again, Repeat

Came out of London in 2003/2004, with debut single 22 Grand Job, followed up by debut album, and their finest work yet, Capture/Release in 2005. Their early demos and first album managing to sum up the life of disatisfied city boys in the early 21st century with the odd injection of Eastern Europen romance, jumping from tracks boasting the mundanity of applying for 22 Grand A Year bank jobs, to 'just drifting along with no focus or meaning' in the succinctly titled Work Work Work (Pub Club Sleep), and then schizophrenicly flitting to odes to German spy stories in Strasbourg.

This writer here first came across them in 2003, at the Metro club in London, supporting Bloc Party, where they rammed through nearly fifteen songs in twenty minutes, a trait they never lost right up until 2006, when this writer saw them yet again, in Exeter Lemon Grove, only this time they played for forty minutes, with about twenty five songs, just as urgent, just as foppish.

Their second album Ten New Messages was a slight dissapointment, but still included a number of gems, an early outing for the fantastic, but then little known, Laura Marling in Suspicious Eyes, a tale of post 7/7 tube paranoia, a new version of track The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect, previously a 20 minute epic recorded especially for a Dior fashion show, the Eastern Bloc indebted fury of Trouble, one of the tracks most similar to Capture/Release, and Leave The City And Come Home, the culmination of all the slurred disillusionment they'd been singing for the past two records.

And that was all we heard, for two whole years. Until now, as their new album 'Klang' is to be released on 23rd March through V2/Co-op, with a new single '1989' due out on the 16th, much to my excitement!

So in preperation for that, I recommend we spend some time listening to these highlights of their career so far.

Strasbourg


Retreat


We Danced Together


All Too Human

Video O'Clock// Easing Myself In

It's gonna take me time to get used to this malarky, one below par review down... it's all good.

What's excited me music-wise this past week? Emmy The Great's album leaking... well a promo copy anyway, according to her myspace blog, and a couple other internet posts, it's going to be remastered before it's release. Also got a hold of the BPA album, Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim's new project, featuring the brilliant Emmy The Great, Jamie T, Dizzee Rascal and David Byrne of the Talking Heads amongst a whole load of others, could make for good listening!

As a bit of a taster, I bring to you Emmy The Great's new First Love single, and The BPA featuring Emmy The Great 'Seattle', in video form. Enjoy!

Emmy The Great - First Love


The BPA feat. Emmy The Great - Seattle

Morrissey// Years Of Refusal// Polydor/Decca// 23/02/09

Finally, after a series of false starts, and phantom release dates, indie icon Morrissey's latest offspring is upon us in the form of Years Of Refusal, his ninth studio album, his second, and sadly final, album recorded with the late punk pop mastermind producer Jerry Finn, also producer of his last great album You Are The Quarry. And worth the wait it most definitely is.

Fighting back against the mixed reception of previous release Ringleader Of The Tormentors, Morrissey finds himself willing to eek further more of himself into the public eye this time around, against a harder backdrop, with a few surprisingly Mexican flourishes, most notably in ‘When Last I Spoke To Carol’, and ‘One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell’.

From the offset it seems the singer is ready to be a little more personal with this bile filled homage to anti-depressant medication ‘Something Is Squeezing My Skull’, a theme which seems to follow throughout, as the album covers, in typical Morrissey fashion, suicide, rejection and never wavering arrogance. But it is possibly in the second half of the album that an even more personal message is revealed, as the singer seems to hint that his time in the music industry may be coming to a close, ‘One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell’ indicates this initially, with the obvious title reference and the line ‘so grab me whilst we still have the time’, but also rather more obscurely in the song ‘You Were Good In Your Time’ as Morrissey appears to take the side of his harshest critics who claim that, although once he was the voice of a generation, he is no longer relevant, an opinion that he seems scarily ready to accept might hold some weight. If this does turn out to be the full stop to Morrissey’s solo career, he leaves it with the statement he has surely been trying to word to the world for the past twenty five years, that regardless of everything ‘I’m OK By Myself’.

Whether or not this does turn out to be Moz’s swansong, it cannot be denied that the man is on top of his game, back to his solo best on Years Of Refusal, right down to the talking point artwork, pictured holding a baby, with a caesarean section scar on his wrist. Classic.

False Start// Here We Go

Apologies for the year long delay since my last post. This will not happen again. This is where we start for real.

What's been tickling my eardrums the past few weeks? I'd say...

Morrissey - Years Of Refusal
Kanye West - 808s And Heartbreaks
Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
Britney Spears - Circus
Thomas Tantrum - Thomas Tantrum
Sky Larkin - The Golden Spike
Rivers Cuomo - Alone II
Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke

to name but a select few. Reviews are on their way, as and when they're written.
Laters x