LOCAL CD REVIEW: The Big Bang - Shoot the Freak

The Big Bang are well known in Birmingham and have built up a strong live following on the gig curcuit. Many of these songs have been around for several years on demos and downloads but this is their first official album release.

Taking in their live favourites and throwing in a few less familiar tracks they manage to speed through 10 songs in only 34 minutes - no self indulgent guitar solos here.

For the unintitated, The Big Bang are the kind of rock n roll band that most parents would disapprove of. Loud dirty guitars, screaming and swearing are all par for the course. Think the menacing base lines of QOTSA or the sinister vocal style of Guy McKnight (80s Matchbox b-line disaster) - this band fit in the same dark and deviant category.

Highlights are the songs from their live sets: "Sugar Daddy", "Love Bug" and "If I'm a Liar" are reminiscent of many a drunken night out. But the fact this CD has been years in the making has obviously been time well spent as I couldn't pick out a dodgy filler track amongst them.

"Shoot the Freak" is loud, seedy, rock n roll fun and is the perfect soundtrack to a drunken night out or a sleezy night in. Hopefully it won't take them so long to make album number two - I'm looking forward to it already.

Sample some tracks and buy from: www.myspace.com/thebigbangrocks

GIG REVIEW:Shady Bard/Little Dipper/Falling and Laughing/Chinook@Yardbird 8/7/07

This weekly Sunday night gig at the Yardbird, is a venture from ‘This Is Tomorrow’ (who have put together some blisteringly good gigs in Birmingham over the last 6 months or so.) It is the perfect end to a weekend and best of all, it’s free!

Chinook kicked off with his trademark magical acoustic guitar twiddling. He demands your attention without saying a word. He exceeds the Government Recommended Number of Words per Lyric Line by 1000%, at a pace reminiscent of the work of Scatman John and still manages to fashion it into the most serene and beautiful music you ever heard. Birmingham’s Eighth Wonder. I, like many others, watched in awe.

Falling and Laughing are a new local phenomenon. They like the word twee-core, yet are entirely unconvinced that it accurately describes their sound. Think the raw energy and chaos of The Wedding Present. Think the warm faux innocence of Death Cab. Think the comedic cheeky charm of Chas and Dave. This acoustic set was a nice contrast from their usual louder electrical sound, giving a gentle and warm edge to their interesting and creative rhythmical arrangements. Fuelled by incessant drums and pretty harmonies, they seem at their best at the extremes, for example the wistful ‘Lights Out Birmingham’ or else belting hell out of their instruments for a finale. Recommended.

Little Dipper, usually a solo act, was joined by bass and drums. A wise move, as this really brought a new strength to the songs and is a format I hope to see used in the future.

Finally, Shady Bard took to stage. Many technical false starts left an exasperated Shady Bard seeming distinctly unhappy but then sunshine, sugar and smiles is not really their thing at the best of times.
Their series of London and other city gigs this year, building up to their recent album release, has obviously left them polished and primed. Singer Lawrence has totally mastered the wailing angst that he has always seemed to strive for in his vocals and indeed it really is their distinctive quality. Over strings, guitar, keyboards and horn, his voice commandingly soars above it all and overwhelms in a pleasingly suffocating manner before abating, like the calm after the storm.

LOCAL CD REVIEW: Men In Caves - Lost at Sea EP

Available from http://www.myspace.com/menincaves £4

This Leamington/Cov three piece like muddy holes, hidden temples, teashops, cats and ringing each other pretending to be important members of the record industry. I guess Cov people have to amuse themselves somehow ;)
Lead Singer Tom Brindle has a beautiful and strong voice, frequently angst filled and emotion saturated. The accompanying band strike up a bold grungy rock sound, which is well structured and highly polished.
Stand out tracks for me are ‘Am I The One?’ which is a bluesesque yet jazzy toe tapper and ‘Why Did You Bring Me Here?’ for its slowly increasing tension to a head bashing climax before dropping away into meak exhausted heap. Great finisher

LOCAL CD REVIEW: Captain Polaroid - Other Short Stories and Better Works of Fiction

Available from http://www.myspace.com/captainpolaroid £7.

This is the Birmingham based Captain’s second album, on label 'Filthy Little Angels.' He has blended a magical formula of lyrics to spark discussion, fragile yet earnest and demanding vocals and fuzzy guitar melodies to sway your head to. The result is a thought-provoking lo-fi gem crammed full of playful poppy tunes.
Personal highlights include ‘Wintertime Ending,’ direct from the school of Conor Oberst, graduating with honours and ‘Better Works of Fiction’, tongue-in-cheek blasphemy filtering through to offer a more light-hearted edge to the underlying religious subject matter. Further investigation thoroughly recommended.

What's Hot and What's Not

Fern Britton: Fern looks and acts like she could have stepped straight off a saucy British seaside postcard - her infectious giggle and magnificent breasts make her our favourite celebrity mom.

West Midlands Safari Park: Firstly it's a quasi outdoors activity that actually requires no exercise, but most importantly the new cubs on White Tiger Ridge are enough to make any pro fox hunter join the WWF.

Choc o'clock: 3pm in our office is choc o'clock. We've discovered by giving a set time and name to being unashamedly, publicly gluttonous you can indulge without the slightest hint of Dr Gillian McKeith guilt.



Socialising with colleagues: Never blur the line between a work colleague and a friend and if the lines have become blurred you've been in your job too long. When I tell my colleagues the reason why I'm declining after work drinks on a Friday is because I'd rather meet my real friends they think I'm joking.

Bowling: I fail to see they entertainment value of paying to wear clown shoes and spending an evening feeling like I'm in an episode of Sweet Valley High. The colours of the décor are garish and the best food choice on offer is chicken in a basket.

Self-induced Halitosis: People who for no medical reason think it's perfectly acceptable for them to interact with other human beings despite the fact their breath is so toxic, that even at 9am, it could peel your skin and hair off leaving you looking like a survivor of Hiroshima.

Day-glo: Enough with the day-glo face paints already! They were mildy entertaining for about one micro-second last year but even on the hottest young thing once mixed with a bit of sweat it just looks like someone's had a fight with their highlighter pens and lost!

CD REVIEW: Biffy Clyro - Puzzle

Until recently Biffy Clyro had remained on the periphery of my consciousness. All I could have told you about them would have been "hairy singer, Scottish band, loud alright-ish songs" and then I would have been struggling to say anything else.

All that changed when I saw the video for "Living is a problem because everything dies" and I saw singer Simon Neil topless, tattooed and drenched in water. I'd discovered a new fetish for soggy, hairy men and I'm well aware that this is a pretty lame reason to investigate a band further but I'm very glad that's what I did next.

Puzzle is the fourth album from the band but is their debut on a major label. The move to a major has ensured they've developed a more accessible sound which will no doubt upset some of the hardcore fans from the early days but will be a joy to those who want to see the band get more radio play and move up to the "big league"!

Whilst the album contains several straight-forward rock tracks it's the more dramatic experimental numbers like "Living is a problem..." and "9/15ths" which are the standout tracks. Normally bands only add a choir to the proceedings when it's all starting to go wrong and they're getting major delusions of grandeur but fortunately in this case they've been brought in to add mask any weaknesses in the songs just used as icing on top of the musical cake.

Slower tacks like "As Dust Dances" occasionally veer into Snow Patrol territory but good Snow Patrol (Yes, there was such a thing - check out some of the early pre-success albums!) These songs aren't as memorable on first listen but likely to grow on the listener pretty quickly.

Puzzle is a definite step forward for the band and should see them gaining a whole new fanbase. If that ensures that they get to release even more albums then that's great news for music fans and hairy men fetishists alike.

CD REVIEW: Mr Hudson & the Library – ‘A tale of Two Cities’

Oxford educated and hip-hop producer sounds something of a bizarre juxtaposition or a recipe for disaster but on listening to Mr Hudson and his band this is no cringe worthy middle class white boy trying to be Eminem. Instead, what he and his band have done is blended various reggae, ska, jazz and blues elements into a truly unique, distinct and fresh sound. With introverted lyrics, that pass no witty social commentary, but focus on personal failures, relationships and regrets you can get truly absorbed into the songs with the backing band being just that.

Stand out track has to be a tie between their single Too Late, Too Late and Cover Girl. The single is Hudson berating himself for his re-occurring personal faults from trivial issues as lateness and playing the fool to a deeper sense of regret at opportunities lost. Played out over a stunning ska rhythm, this is a gentle laid back track that you will want to play on repeat. Cover Girl is a bitter sweet song about love, deception and naivety in a relationship which examines what people make themselves believe about their partners – personal highlight of the song being the home truth ‘You’ll never be a cover girl, just facing facts, your face isn’t right’ – all delivered in a beautifully melancholic manner.

You cannot pigeon hole this band – with their influences as diverse as Dr Dre, Chet Baker, Bowie, Andre 3000 and The Lemonheads, plus instruments used on the album varying from steel drums to classic pianos, I was at a loss as to what section of the record shop to look in – I didn’t have to worry as the proprietor clearly got it right by putting it on a best new music stand.

GIG REVIEW: Kategoes, The Midland Railway, The Love You Tigers @ The Jug of Ale

The Love You Tigers, despite having a name suggestive of more than one person in the group, was in fact one person. As it happens that one person was so entirely mesmerising, with his childish enthusiasm and geeky-on-purpose garb that no-one else was necessary. And the music? Well he coped with co-ordinating his synth, intermittent guitar and vocals admirably, a modern one man band by all accounts. His songs are fun electropop, heavy on the samples and with some inspired lyrics (“I went to see the doctor to make it all stop. He said, “You’ve been dancing too much to electropop”- a warning for us all perhaps?) and hugely catchy melodies. 'Dr Robotnik’ brought about many a nostalgic sigh from the old-enough-to remember audience to boot. Nice to see such confidence on stage in one so young. For getting you in the mood for Saturday night antics, this was grrrreat!

Next up were The Midlands Railway a four piece from Manchester who seem to have played a LOT of gigs over the last year according to their website. They seem to have already played twice in Brum this year already, good going considering most Birmingham bands haven’t even managed that! They brought an interesting mix of stage props – both feather boas and football scarves adorning the mic stands. The music started off well, obviously all the gigging has meant a tight well polished set. The emphasis here is geek-rock and while I enjoyed the first few songs, by late set I was feeling slightly unexcited at the formulaic nature of the songs. I couldn’t help but feel there was supposed to be some sort of joke here but I didn’t quite get it. Maybe it just wasn’t very funny.

KateGoes took their places and picked up their instruments dressed as a cat, a playing card, a caterpillar, a dormouse and a mad hatter. This was “KateGoes down the Rabbithole.” The theme for this outing was Alice in Wonderland and they treated us, not only to the usual themed costumes, stage props and theme-appropriate song, there was also a visual backdrop displaying video clips of Alices of all descriptions. Impressively professional and a joyful stimulation to all senses, it felt like proper art. Art in the Jug! Imagine that! They skipped and charmed their way through favourites such as the achingly fragile and beautiful triple harmonised “Heartbeat” and the poptastic “Boom Shadilak” to a heaving and hungry audience who refused to leave till they were treated to an encore. Most certainly one of Brum’s best kept secrets.

GIG REVIEW: Grandeur Rat @ Varsity, Wolverhampton

It's not very often you come across a band that really does look proper rock 'n' roll, but Grandeur Rat most certainly do. They are not a band you can go to the bar to whilst they're starting, they encapsulate their audience from the moment they plug in. Starting up the music, one by one, frontman Olly Burslem enters onto the stage looking likes he's not slept in days and he's halfway to drinking himself into an early grave -and that's probably not the worst of it.

Drawing the crowd in with a their own take of I Think I Smell a Rat (The White Stripes), Olly absolutely owns the stage and lead parading aboutlike a young Mick Jagger. Yog on drums is just too reminiscent of ascarecrow for some people's taste. Guitarist Andy probably looks themost tame but he's got a twinkle in his eye that says he can't wait forthe aftershow. Bassist Greg, dressed all in black just finishes it off to a tee.

They do the messy garage rock well, obvious influences taken from The Rollling Stones, Kings of Leon and the general Pete Doherty vibe. Quickpaced drumbeats and screaming make for good entertainment during crowdpleaser 'Bon Voyage'. 'Six Lovers Four Seasons' is another foot tapper, but 4 songs or so in,it does start to wear thin. The general tempo of each song is very similar, I suppose that's not an easy problem to solve for the garage rock scene.

My recommendation is, if you like this sort of fast-paced drug-fuelled sleazy rock, Grandeur Rat may satisfy the fix but maybe Leicester's Dirty Backbeats do it better.