This Will Destroy You - Another Language

This Will Destroy You - Another Language

Ah, post rock. Crescendos, melodic and cinematic interweaving guitar play. Beautiful songs that were made for dramatic movie scenes. I would listen to you all day, every day. But that was ten plus years ago before a slew of bands came along with the imprint and did nothing with it beyond unashamedly copying. The bands to survive this; Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. All bands who you could argue were never post rock in the first place.


       

So, how to avoid copying and maintain relevancy in a genre that's a corpse so dead that it's beyond rotting? 


       

This Will Destroy You luckily have always stuck their necks a little higher out of the sinking post rock ship than most. On earlier releases (Young Mountain and Self Titled) they still did the "oh my god is this record skipping or something" thing, but attacked melancholy guitar work with a slew of electronics and drum work which betrayed the post rock rule of 'only hit the hi-hat until the crescendo'. This actually led them to becoming one of my favourite bands until the release of their third album (which I either 'didn't get' due to me no longer liking the genre, or just simply knew that it wasn't a good album). The point being that, to maintain relevancy, an artist must be willing to make changes to the genre they are in. Challenge themselves, and their listeners.


       

On latest album, Another Language, have This Will Destroy You achieved this? Well on first glance it would appear so (nine tracks instead of the standard four/five tracks each lasting up to eight minutes). Look beyond this however and you have songs that feel like introductions that have lasted far too long (as on first track, New Topia, before it swells into the predictable crescendo), and songs like War Prayer, which initially sound fresh with fuzzy distorted bass, only to passively lull into a silence before yes, you've guessed it, the crescendo. When the band look at the rule book but only from a distance, they create tracks like The Puritan. A three minute ambient track that doesn't as much do anything special but grabs you by the ears and focuses your attention because it doesn't do anything except for being unashamedly beautiful. Leading into the almost jazz drum infused feel of Mother Opiate which is sparse and calmly alarming, not ever needing to be aggressive with guitars. As well as Invitation, an upbeat snare driven track with cutting guitar work that very much competes with even Mogwai's best work. 


       

So, Another Language, worth parting cash for? Yes. If you're into post rock or instrumental music then sure, this is as good as recent releases from Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. But if you're one of those who gets two minutes into a track and always says "where are the vocals", then steer clear. This isn't one of those albums that will bridge the gap into the mainstream. The rule book has definitely been printed and published meaning that, for most, post rock remains another language. 

       


3/5

Sam Brookes - Kairos

It's no wonder that Sam Brookes is being compared to the greats such as John Martyn with his new album 'Kairos' sitting somewhere between the legendary Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley.
    Standout, and opening song 'Numb' showcases Brookes at his best, with soothing vocals sitting comfortably upon intricate finger picked guitar playing. It is here, while Brookes vocals almost break under the fragility of his story telling, that layers of whistles and vocal harmonies just passively soak into your willing ears.
    'Crazy World and You' picks up the pace, with up-tempo strummed guitars, anthemic drumming and one of those pre-chorus build-ups that just begs to become the folky soundtrack for one of this summers festivals with Brookes almost spilling into crooning as he belts out the chorus lyrics, 'Out in the countryside where it feels like there's just a crazy world and you', but luckily saving himself with a glorious high note (of which there are many on the album).
       However, it isn't all positive. At times, 'Kairos' feels like it doesn't really fit anywhere. It's a little bit seventies folk, influenced by jazz, with tracks like 'On The Mend'  bordering, musically at least, on being cheesy and sounding dated. Whether this is a musical issue, or lyrical, or vocal, I'm not quite sure, but on a couple of tracks the album begins to feel almost like a guilty pleasure (as if you are secretly listening to one of dads old records that you said was awful previously). To some, including myself, this isn't a bad thing, but it could just be the difference between 'Kairos' being ignored, or getting the attention it deserves. This reviewer at least, hopes that music buyers can see this album for what it is, sonically heavenly, lyrically intelligent and an absolute pleasure to listen to.

4/5

www.sambrookes.com/‎

Spring Offensive - Young Animal Hearts

Eight years to release a debut album seems an awful long time. In the case of Spring Offensive it comes after a series of record label false starts leading the band to release 'Young Animal Hearts' independently, gaining the funds to do so through Pledgemusic. Luckily however, this long delay in releasing a full length has only seemed to increase the bands resolve and their willingness to think outside the box and the release of this album and its low budget theatrical music videos are testament to the bands work ethic.

Instrumentally 'Young Animal Hearts' is a well rounded and accomplished record. Indie at heart with the occasional subtle post-rock guitar moment, it's the creative rhythm section that mostly triumphs here, reminiscent of a 'Total Life Forever' era Foals, with snare rim shots, hand claps, tambourines and egg shakers ever present and a disperse bass rhythm that creates an often surprising groove that belies the emotive nature of the bands lyrics. And lyrically it is perhaps where the band are at their most impressive, recalling the prowess of Elbow's Guy Garvey and Counting Crows Adam Duritz before they both had too much success and ran out of things to write about. Songs like 'No Assets' are for the affected and financially struggling youth of today; "Our parents didn't wait for this long to have big ideas and our big homes". While in songs like 'Speak' the band tackle relationships with a masculinity theme with them announcing "I can't easily communicate how I feel to you, where I'm from, we tend not to speak until we're spoken to".

'Young Animal Hearts' is the soundtrack to those in the twenty to thirty age bracket, caught in dead-end jobs, or no jobs at all, all the while watching their relationships fail as their lives go nowhere. At times it is musically gorgeous and yet still, lyrically affecting and utterly, emotionally, destructive. If ever an independent record deserved to be listened to, it's this one.

4.5 / 5

http://springoffensive.co.uk

Falling Off Maps - A Seaside Town In Winter

Nottingham five piece, Falling Off Maps debut album, A Seaside Town In Winter, is a tale of two halves. On one side, songs like 'Honest', 'The Redeemer', 'I.D.S.T' and 'Through The Forest' have an emotive fragility which doesn't so much sucker punch you in the gut, but more so prods your heart to check it is still pumping. It is on the earlier stages of the album and the aforementioned tracks where this is most visible with singer Dave Wrights often childlike high vocals almost cracking under the weight of the burden of his words with a story telling lyric style of damaged relationships, as well as the difficulties of getting older at the forefront of subtle guitar work, trip-hop styled drumming, groove driven bass playing and intelligent, minimalist piano and electronic work that we've seen before in a less subtle way from the likes of Radiohead's In Rainbows.

Sadly though, somewhere along the way, A Seaside Town In Winter seems to lose itself and the pacing of the album goes awry. While the early subtle tracks sound like a mix of Radiohead, Portishead and folkier acts, tracks like 'Visiting Hours' sound from the offset more like a lackluster Coldplay or Keane (think epic piano build-up with repeated vocal melody and you have the whole seven minute track figured out). While 'Wolf River/The Smoking Room At Hotel Cafe' suffers from the being an eight minute track mid-way into an album, with more repeated (and this time chant) vocals which don't seem to be the bands forte.

At fourteen tracks long, A Seaside Town In Winter is the victim of being too long, and with the inclusion of a more anthemic turn, seems to lose sense of the narrative the band were clearly trying to tell with the album titles theme. That said, if this is anything to go by, Falling Off Maps have clearly got a bright future and are one to watch out for.

3.5 / 5
www.fallingoffmaps.co.uk

Radical Face - The Family Tree: The Branches

Following the mainstream success of song, Welcome Home, which was featured on the ever so popular Nikon advert, Ben Cooper, aka, Radical Face, has been, for better or worse, thrust into a place of popularity. This often goes two ways, either where Radical Face threatened to go with the albeit frankly underwhelming release of album Ghosts, or to a place where this new found popularity creates enough security for the artist to develop and take chances.

New album, The Family Tree: The Branches is part two (part one, The Roots, was released last year) of a three part conceptional series where Cooper tells the story of a 19^th century family whilst only creating using instruments from that era. Arrogant right? Yeah, I thought the same when I researched the album, but actually, the record works because of this with songs so stripped bare, often only featuring guitar and vocals, that they allow Cooper to let the song writing breathe for itself. Stand-out track Reminders is a strong example of this, with vocal harmonies interspersed between a half picked-half strummed guitar melody that is just utterly beautiful. It also contains possibly my favourite lyric of the year so far; 'I wish I had more nice things to say but I was raised not to lie, I'm either honest or I'm an optimist but never at the same time.'

No album is perfect though, and there is a part of me that just says, what's the point? It isn't like The Branches offers anything new to the folk genre, let alone to music. This isn't going to be one of those albums where you are going to look back in ten years time and say 'this album changed my life'. In part this may be due to the conceptual theme. There is no doubt that on an intellectual level the lyrics are great, but emotively there are only rare moments when you feel a sense of honesty and vulnerability (and it is often these songs that are the stand out moments). If Radical Face could move beyond that on this conceptual set and allow listeners to see their soul, then they could really be onto something because gripes aside, The Branches, at least sonically, is a warm, cuddly hug of an album that envelopes your ears as the world passes you by, and is more than worth of a space in your record collection.

4 / 5

Royal Canoe Interview

Firstly, for those who don't know of you, can you introduce the band?
We're called Royal Canoe. There are 6 of us. We all live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

'Today We're Believers' is your debut album. You've already received great reviews for previous EPs, so did you find the step up between EP's and a full album a daunting prospect?
We recorded the EP at the same time as the full-length, so we didn't have to endure that second-guessing  phase.. We're preparing to start work on the next full-length record (seems kind of weird because Today We're Believers is just coming out) in between our touring schedule, but more than anything I'm excited to get back to work on creating new material.  I guess there is a part of me that is curious about how successful the transition will be into whatever new place we end up taking our music considering how long we had to work on this last record and how different the schedule will be for the next one. But I'm more anxious than afraid.

Musically, you have been coined as experimental pop. Would you agree with this tag, and what bands or artists would you say influence Royal Canoe?
I don't mind experimental pop..  Although someone recently wrote that there was a "country-tinge" to our music, which I thought was interesting.  It goes to show that everyone hears things in their own way.  We listen to a lot of Hip hop in the van (Outkast, dr.dre, MF Doom), which really works its way into our rhythmic sensibilities.  As far as bands go, we draw from artists like Dirty Projectors, Tune Yards, The Knife.

With the exception of a small handful of tracks on the album, I would say that you aren't guitar focused. Many bands create first and foremost through a guitar melody. How did you approach song-writing on the album?
It might be because there were so many keyboards at our disposal or just where we were at musically when we recorded this album, but we were not that interested in letting guitar chords running the show. As you said, so often the guitar provides all of the harmonic context for a song, almost to the point for us where we have a hard time buying into a song if it's super "strummy." That being said, the guitar is an important aspect to our sound, but the challenge for us is to try to get something fresh out of it as opposed to just wanking or chording.  I've toyed around with the idea of going all-guitar on the next album just to fuck with people.  I think it would be pretty funny. 6 guitars, no drums, minimal vocals.  Hits all day.

Lyrically  the album is often bordering on the obscure. The lead single 'Bathtubs' alone has the lyric, 'the bathtubs in the hallway, are here to stay'. Firstly, what inspires you lyrically, and secondly, would you say you write to serve the purpose of the melody, or to create meaning?
At the very beginning of the song writing process the words are driven by the melody, but they often take over and can drive the song into strange places.  All of the words on the record have a very personal connection to us.  If the lyrical aspects of a song don't resonate for us on an emotional level it would make it very difficult to pinpoint its identity. The song,"Bathtubs," you mentioned is about our practice space where we wrote all of the songs and recorded large chunks of the album. At one point years ago each room in the building used to have a small bathroom with these beautiful claw-foot tubs. The gentleman who owns the building now, pulled the tubs out of the rooms and placed them in the narrow hallway when he was converting the building into studio spaces...that's where they stayed for years. I believe he had the intention of refurbishing them and trying to sell them, but it never happened. They just became these obstacles we always had to avoid every time we wanted to be creative.  It seemed like a good metaphor for our own struggle to try to make this whole being-in-a-band thing happen.

'Today We're Believers' seems to me to move between many genre's from indie and pop to funk, and as you mentioned before, rhythmically there is definitely a hip-hop influence. Do you feel that the bands environment and being from Winnipeg has had an influence on your sound?
I think being from Winnipeg has had a big influence on our lyrics and perhaps the giant spectrum of weather, the extreme hot and cold through out the year, might have an impact on the sorts of songs we write during those seasons. I don't think that we're necessarily a band that sounds like Winnipeg though, or at least historically the music that has come out of Winnipeg.

I am often hearing that modern music isn't as creative or challenging as previous eras. As a relatively new band, how do you view the quality of modern music, and how do you feel music listeners will discuss 'Today We're Believers' in say, ten years time?
I think its more that music is just more polarized than its ever been. Right now in modern music you have the just unforgivable shit on the mainstream radio, but then also an incredible thriving experimental scene that, with the help of the internet, has perhaps just as big an audience. There is just very little of worth in-between, which I guess is why a "cross-over" hit is so rare. So I think the quality of modern music is can be very high, but also lately has been increasingly short sighted in its scope. A lot of bands popping up that seek to have a niche following by doing something new, but mine such a small musical "territory" that they rise and fall with a niche genre's fleeting popularity. They sort of get downloaded for lunch and we all move on.  In response to the last question I really hope people are still discussing Today We're Believer's in 10 years time, that would be incredible. I hope it doesn't feel too dated. There is this song by Beck, "Get Real Paid", that perpetually sounds like it was written 20 years in the future… I'm not sure our record is quite there yet, but that's sort of our goal.

You will be touring the UK in November in support of the new album. Can you tell us when and where you will be playing?
Yeah just check the royalcanoe.com and its got all the dates there

Would you say there is a difference in playing in the UK in comparison with other places, and as a band, do you prefer playing live, or recording?
I wouldn't say this is specific to the UK but we've found that audiences across the pond tend to be more open to live music. There is perhaps less DJ culture and people are more into to checking out a live band in their evenings. I've always thought of myself more as a recording artist than a performer although we've heard from many people that our live show is what sold them on us, but I'd still say I prefer recording.

The album, alongside lead single 'Bathtubs', is out in the UK on the 23rd of September. Beyond releasing and touring the album, do you have any idea about future plans for the band?
I think we're all trying to make a career of this so we plan to just keep going, release and tour this album, record another, and do it again. It's something we really enjoy and at this point we don't really know what else we would do.


Royal Canoe's debut album, 'Today We're Believers' is out now. You can see the bands tour dates by visiting their website, www.royalcanoe.com

Royal Canoe - Today We're Believers

'Today We're Believers', the debut album from Winnipeg's Royal Canoe ticks all the modern indie boxes. Quirky, deceptively minimalist, summery dream pop indie with anthemic vocal melodies that despite their infectious nature, don't lyrically seem to mean a god damn thing. Songs such as previous single, 'Hold on to the Metal', as well as upcoming single 'Bathtubs' show why the band might be such a success in the UK as we move ever further away from summer. With tight sunny guitar licks and well thought out repeated choruses, you can see why the band have already been tagged as Temper Trap-like, and despite an often experimental and complex approach to song composition along with an almost hip-hop approach to percussion, Royal Canoe like Temper Trap have that knack of being deliciously pop.

It's on songs like 'Exodus of the Year' and 'Show Me Your Eyes' where the band show their strengths though. 'Exodus of the Year' is a no showboating beauty of a song that doesn't need to rely on being quirky to be brilliant, and for the first time shows a sensitive contemplative side which is inclusive of brass and string sections. If Sigur Ros were to write a mainstream song, 'Exodus of the Year' would be it, which as a massive Sigur Ros fan, is huge praise indeed. On the other hand, 'Show Me Your Eyes' is a fun, uptempo dance floor filler of a track that with its various entwining rhythms almost begs you to jig along to it. If this track doesn't get remixed and put in clubs I will be very surprised.

It isn't all good news for Royal Canoe though, and five or six fantastic songs aside, there are at least three tracks on the album that are quite simply put, very average. I often wonder why bands feel they have to have albums with thirteen plus songs when they only have ten good tracks. It is to the detriment of 'Today We're Believers' that the average songs seem to be wedged in between the great ones, but on the strength of seventy percent of the album I think this should be forgiven. After all, 'Today We're Believers' is a debut album, and it is a fantastic stab at a tired NME styled fanfare that already seems to be slowing down with bands like Temper Trap and Yeasayer releasing poor follow ups to fantastic albums (with Alt-J sure to be next on that list).

So if you want your summer continue despite rain pummeling your windows, or you want something that is easy on the ear but still challenging in its own right, then 'Today We're Believers' is definitely for you.

3.5/5