Afternoons
Calico CD
FF Vinyl. ffvin009.
by Keith McLachlan.
December 12, 2000.
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The terrible feeling in my stomach when listening to
this was the idea that I had swallowed the hype. There
it was: "oh this is the new Belle and Sebastian"
claimed Delia from Rough Trade and I bought it just
like the saps who think morons who can't punch a hole
in a ballot really deserve to have their ballot
counted or that America as a democracy is kaput. There
be I-- a lug.
There is not even an acoustic guitar to be found on this record! They are Welsh (usually a big score for my ears) and they do sound Welsh. In fact they sound a lot like Super Furry Animals should that band start amending its regular pharmaceutical diet so to include ritalin as well. It is slow, ponderous and vacant, not pretty or appealing by any stretch.
It tries to cash in on the breathy craze of the moment exhibited by bands like the Clientele (quite brilliantly) and Coldplay (quite craply) but really just manages to make me look at my bank account and growl. Oh wait this was a birthday present so maybe I am not all that disgusted. But really I am thoroughly bored, and absolutely completely sure of this, by the Afternoons.
Aikagi
Waterproof Leaf CD
Blackbean And Placenta. ACME 62.
by Keith McLachlan.
April 30, 1999.
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I was having a reasonably entertaining dream the other night, the sort
of dream that might be soundtracked by Aikagi and well I realized my
dreams, those I choose to remember, are far too pedestrian and
uneventful for discussion so I decided to come up with some ideas for
dreams and then practice my lucid dreaming skills and start enjoying
my nocturnal mentalism much more. Hey that sounded very
Morrissetteian I think? Maybe. Anyhow so a giant Raisin named James
is rising from the Sea and all that is left between him and his
capture of the snow monkeys living on Mt. Fuji is the Aikagi mobile
and their superpowers are extraordinary. They drive around all day in
their right-drive Mitsubishi van and blast their cd 'Waterproof Leaf',
each of the members of Aikagi is only 4'7" tall and they wear little
pink hardhats and the singer is in charge and she yells out the
songtitles that correspond with the most lethal doses of Aikagi, first
she screams 'Sugar Paste' and James is sent reeling by the cloud of
sugar spun lint, then comes 'doctor of insects' and without delay
'fluffy show' follows right after and by this time James Raisin has
been forced back into Tokyo Bay by large doses on ultratwee radiation
and he is seriously considering retreat and perhaps a detour to
Pyongyang and while his thoughts are so distracting the final blow of
'I wish I was human' with it's sharp barbs of fractured English
impacts on his stegosaurus plates and he falls face first into a giant
pocky loaded supertanker and is impaled and dies, not without
inventing a new flavour of pocky of course. Well Japan is saved and
then since we all want to celebrate, Aikagi play the last three songs
on their record and we all dance but oh no! they have not considered
the power of their tweeness on us unsuspecting civilians and everyone
dies of cutie overload Gasp!!! and then i wake up and I suddenly have
a hankering for black beans. Weird.
Airport Girl
Honey, I'm An Artist CD
Matinee. matcd011.
by Keith Mclachlan.
February 14, 2001.
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What this record sounds like very nearly almost takes
a bit of a creative leap, it sounds like the Pastels
playing in a Counting Crows cover band only they
couldn't find the right floppy fringe jacket and suede
boots to tuck their jeans into so they mistakenly, by
no intention of their own, did not turn out to be
crap. The music is earnest. The Band is english.
Not always is this entirely incongruous but still
somewhat rare I'd say, especially considering the
Matinee imprint on the sleeve. Here I had believed
them to be contenders to the slick, suave pop crown
but somewhere they have turned back on themselves and
while it is somewhat hit-and-miss the record sometimes
makes my spirits soar.
The singer guy has a casual, lazy deliery that sometimes turns Springsteenian, when Bruce is in the mellowest of moods granted, and turns the songs into miniature anthems for students and shut-ins. The tales revolve around art student travels through lives filled with not really obscure book references, torpid metaphors and dry conversations, but trust me it does, sometimes, turn interesting. I don't see the Pavement thing that seems to populate most descriptions of their sound unless they consider anyone of laconic demeanour to have derived such an attitude as a result of an endless stream of overindulgences at the foot of 'Wowee Zowee'. It is pop, only a bit more real.
Ant
"I Hope You'll Always Be There" 7" vinyl
by Keith McLachlan.
January 23, 2000.
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(This is a combined review for the "I Hope You'll Always Be There" 7" and
the "I Know Where Happiness Begins" cdep)Ant is Antony from Hefner. He has released two records now, the first on his bandmate Darren's record label and the second on a new Swedish label with the preposterous idea that all of their records will come solely in editions of 100. The first record is the more sophisticated of the two as it sounds polished in that scruffy hefner sort of way, meaning it is very DIY and what may be a surprise to most Hefner fans it appears to be a genuinely straightforward and incredibly twee pop record. Hefner lyrics are always filled with enough innuendo to make the sappiest of sentiments fodder for libidinous perusal. Ant however seems more keen on pouring the exact contents of his heart onto record with no room for open interpretation by the listener. All five songs here are in that vein and the ones on the Swedish label sound as if they are first hand recreations of Ant's emotional generator as the sound is a bit more primitive.
Ok we have established the fact that the music is fabulous but now onto the idea of 100 only pressings, why? If the reason is financial then why would a band agree to make such a limited release? Why create exclusivity in this supposedly gentile world of indie pop? I mean the label is named after a Field Mice song and one of the main ethics of Sarah was the abolition of the practice of limited edition releases. I guess these wannabe kids just wanna raise their own sense of worth, and what is with the japanese rendering of themselves on the inside of the cd? ugh!!! The handbook of cool needs some serious revision. But once again my rant should not distract from the fact that these are magnificent records, honest.
Ant
A Long Way To Blow A Kiss CD
Fortune And Glory.
by Keith Mclachlan.
March 9, 2002.
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Is it lachrymose? I don't think so. It seems almost
too child-like to engender any feelings deeper than
melancholia. Ant is the non-celebrity drummer for
Hefner, he seems to have been made obsolete by
Hefner's recent change in musical direction which
finds them now favouring technology over Ant's
unspectacular beat. So unspectacular in fact that he
employs a drum machine on his own drummer-gone-solo
solo debut album. But it was never the drums that
made the girls hearts quiver it was those all too rare
backing vocals on the likes of Hefner classics like
'The Librarian' and 'Don't Flake Out on Me' these were
the tones generated from the divine vox humana these
made the listener ache these made one wonder why
Darren Hefner was hogging the mic. So here at last
after some delay we have the very yellow (avid TK
readers (a patient lot this) might recall my theorem
about yellow being the colour of love synesthetes
might disagree) 'A Long Way To Blow a Kiss' and I
admit some trepidation beforehand worrying that Ant
would find some new brand of professionalism to
replace the archaic scrapbook style he had employed in
the past but lo I was wrong for the efforts here are
even more primeval than in the past. It almost sounds
like wheeze, obviously of the gorgeous sor t(are there
gorgeous sorts of these?) with Antony Harding (no
apparent affiliation with July Skies who have an
Antony H of their/his own) singing simple love
daydreams with a bare acoustic backing sometimes
accompanied by a wurlitzer or dancing with a balalaika
or coexisiting with the melodica and through it all
Ant by turns sounding like he has only just discovered
the catholicity of romance. This is the charm of his
music, it sounds naive and fresh faced, like a child
discovering the goodness of life for the first time,
free from trendy cynicism and not yet having
constructed a jade barrier to enjoyment of anything
without a sarcastis undercurrent. It's high time more
people express themselves in the manner of an Ant song
protagonist, their souls laid bare, their hearts on
their sleeve their expressions not veiled in hidden
subtext but made obvious and plain and entirely honest
and draped in loveliness. A national treasure then is
Ant, well, if you happen to be English.
Ant
Cures For Broken Hearts CD
Fortune And Glory. forcd014.
by Keith McLachlan.
September 9, 2000.
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If Hefner is a family, dysfunctional as it may be,
then Ant (the drummer here gone solo) is the cub
scout/alter boy of the family. He might be the Carl
Wilson too. After all, I just sat through the Beach
Boys movie that aired on ABC earlier and just tonight
on VH-1, and Carl made it through the entire feature
practically unscathed, guilty only of a few
questionable facial hair decisions (amazing how Mike
Love came out smelling like a rose guilty only of
excess meditation though this should not really be
considered a aurprise since it was likely he, of the
Mike Love Experience, who commisioned the entire
staging anyhow for a handsome consulting fee I am
sure). However, Carl's free pass resulted most likely
because it may have been seen in bad taste for the
probe to shine too brightly on Carl's flaws since his
death had been so recent whereas dim Dennis had passed
on more than a decade before. Carl Wilson came out as
the sensible one of the band, voice of an angel and a
heart of gold.
To go by his music alone the fourth rate actor playing Ant in a similar tv-movie, only this time chronicling the story of Hefner, well, this actor might have to pattern his performance on the one given by the would-be Carl. Ant sings less like a skybound angel and more perhaps like an angel with training wheels. While Darren Hefner may spend his days reading Henry James and nights watching skinemax, Ant likely spends his days doing his paper route and his nights doing laundry. Again, this is strictly an assessment made through experiencing his music but he is somewhat boyish, and all the better for it.
I am sure he would be appalled at the twee label being applied to his records but the term is inescable, everything here is cute, fantastic and moving too but above all cute. Is Ant cute? I can't remember. I just seem to remember him as tall.
Five songs here all of them are about love, all of them are aching. His voice just barely out of puberty will move you and his lyrics will sound both very familiar and warm, pretty far removed from the more sophistisleazicated stuff in Hefner notebooks. Fabulous, and hopefully this time not limited to only 100 copies like his first cd-ep.