Saturday 21 June 2008

Something For The Weekend - Secondsmile

Do you remember when Deep Elm used to put out good records? I do certainly do. Yesterday I was thinking about listening to an old compilation cd I had from them. It's probably Deep Elm-mo at it's finest; Appleseed Cast, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Red Animal War. None of this Fightstar rubbish. Then I realised I couldn't be bothered to go through all my boxes of Cd's and so instead went to the old internet for something to listen to.

Secondsmile are from Bridport, but sound like they belong in the Midwest. But maybe from further south. Sounding like late period Appleseed Cast with sound Minus The Bear guitar bits, they make a good attempt at the Deep Elm sound; Deep Elm-mo, if you will. It's not strictly Midwest-mo, I think it's a bit too post-rock for that, but it's worth a listen. Typically, bands of this ilk are best suited to sunny days, but Secondsmile have enough of a dynamic to their sound to work on a rainy Saturday. Which is lucky considering British summer time.

This song is called 'Years'. This a download link for it. It comes out on Big Scary Monsters in the next couple of weeks. Have a listen to it and see if you can work out what the hell I mean with all my "-mo" style genres. Next up God-mo.

BYE!

Tuesday 17 June 2008

Dananananaykroyd - Sissy Hits


As a sometimes music blogger you'd think that I bought Cd's a regularly I couldn't move for those little bits of plastic? Well you'd be wrong. For various reasons I've not bought a CD since the end of last Decemeber, but last week saw me finally break the drought and part with some of my hard earned cash. The CD in question was Sissy Hits, Dananananaykroyd's debut ep. They've had a lot of press these last few weeks so I thought I'd add my 2.0 cents.

Now, if like me, you're totally hip to new bands and that, you'd have been waiting for this ep since the beginning of the year, when it was supposed to be out on Jealous Records. This is what I said about them in January. So not a lot really. Sissy Hits is basically more of the same but better because it has six songs on it. Opener "The Greater Than Symbol And The Hash" sets the tone for the ep. It starts of with some duel drumming and some choppy guitars, a lyric about "one million buildings crumble" before going double time into a post-hardcore sprint before again falling apart in a wall of guitar noise and clattering drums that would make Sonic Youth proud. You'd think that would be enough for one song but not for these Scots - with a simply cymbal hit the song morphs back into a droning half time riff and comes to a grinding halt.
The rest of the ep continues in the same way - it has loud bits, some quiet bits, some thrashy bits, gang vocals and some wonderful duel drumming. As a frustrated air drummer I highly recommend playing along to this ep.

Instead of posting mp3s from Sissy Hits, I thought I'd post their original 3 track demo and the lead song from the 7" they released on Jealous last year. This is for two reasons:

1. Whilst we're all guilty of downloading music for free, it's probably a good idea to still support indie labels; Holy Roar is run out of someones bedroom so they deserve your money.
2. All together now: "I prefer their earlier stuff". Lolz!


Here's the track listing:
  1. The Greater Than Symbol And The Hash
  2. Totally Bone
  3. Song #1 Puzzle
  4. Some Dresses

And here is the link.

Enjoy the music and let me know if you think this blog layout sucks.

BYE!