M+A - These Days

Album review by tatjana@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk

These guys are fun. Italian duo M+A  made me daydream a scenario wherein Beck had recorded 'Odelay' on Ibiza surrounded by a bunch of adoring girls in bikinis. I'm sure Mr. "loser baby" wouldn't be adverse to that picture. 'These Days' is the follow-up to 2011's 'Things', with an undoubtedly commercial sound that combines hooky dance-pop with the occasionally daggy Mattafix rap and beer-garden bass grooves. 'B Song' has the tinny sound of a Gameboy that made me want to play a little Tetris, while 'Down The West Side' moves back into some Italo-house territory.

'Freetown Solo' deserves to be blasted in one of those fashion stores that subscribe to the fast, loud get-'em-in-and-out school of marketing. 'Game' is a reflective affair that takes us to that point of the afternoon when you're not sure whether to kick on or call it a day. Recently I've heard of the genre "yacht rock" via former Wu Lyf members who did this with aplomb with smooth experimental outfit Los Porcus. While the aforementioned are making me dance below deck with my other jaded Gen X mates, M+A would be starboard with their radio friendly version, making sure the Gen Y clubbers are still entertained in the daytime.

The press kit says  "It's a perfect distillation of a yearning for endless summer", which is true if you weren't a cranky 30-something with two kids, unlikely to see the deck of a luxury liner in the near future, so maybe I just need to relax. It's jaunty piano, Crystal Waters (god remember them?) earworm synth moments and a huge capacity for good times - as long as they’re not taking themselves too seriously, then nor should you.





M+A's website

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Five For Free #241

No Coda - Numbers

Upon their signing to Nomethod earlier in the year, we said that Swedes No Coda were a band to keep an eye on, and new single 'Numbers' goes a good way towards proving that. Taken from their forthcoming album 'The Entire Cast', this is a shoegazey guitar tune with a motorik beat and plenty of voices floating in and out giving a ghostly effect.



No Coda's website

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Sea Legs - Take A Little For Yourself

Australia gives us another great band who are mixing indie and electro-pop sounds together. Sydney-based Sea Legs formed back in 2009 but have only recently been brought to our attention and released their first EP this year. With songs like new single 'Take A Little For Yourself' it's no surprise they've already played many notable gigs and are definitely a name to make note of.



Free download: 'Take A Little For Yourself'

Sea Legs' website

Catch them live:

Tues 26th Nov Hunter Valley Brewery w/ Regurgitator
Thurs 2nd Jan Hunter Valler Brewery w/ Jebediah
Fri 3rd Jan Dee Why RSL w/ Jebediah
Sat 4th Jan Bateau Bay Hotel w/ Jebediah
Thurs 9th Jan Marlin Hotel Ulladulla w/ Jebediah
Fri 10th Jan Campbelltown Catholic Club w/ Jebediah
Sat 11th Jan Waves @ Wollongong w/ Jebediah





Washington Irving - Fort Long

Volume 1 of 'Palomides' was released back in April, and this week Scottish alt-rock group Washington Irving release 'Palomides Volume 2', and when you put the two together you get a complete album that's sure to be highly rated. Epic finale 'Fort Long' is up there with their best and although it's bound to draw more comparisons to a certain set of other Scottish alt-rockers, this is still a top tune.



Washington Irving's website

Buy the EP

Catch them live:

Nov 14 Old Blue Last (Free Entry), London, United Kingdom
Nov 15 The End Festival, London (Highgate), United Kingdom
Nov 16 Westgarth Social Club, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom
Nov 17 Greystones, Sheffield, United Kingdom





Borrowed Beams Of Light - On The Wings Of A Bug

Both band name and song title have "psychedelia" written all over them. Well, there's a hint of that, but really it's a little misleading. Virginians Borrowed Beams Of Light use the term "Cosmos pop" which kind of fits too. We'd be inclined to say that the title-track from new album 'On The Wings Of A Bug' is cosmic Americana mixed with indie-rock, and also that it's a cracker.



Borrowed Beams Of Light's website

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Weathered - Coast

More loveliness from Australia, this time it's from Weathered, the alias of Upile Mkoka from the Gold Coast. The aptly-titled 'Coast' is a slow-building, dreamy track that incorporates plucked guitar, distant, shuffling drums and a rich, lush hum of sound to produce something that starts off brilliantly but ends even better. Dare we mention a more experimental Fleet Foxes?





Weathered's website

Buy the EP

Catch him live:

FRI 08 NOV Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst, NSW, Australia





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Mt. Wolf - Midnight Shallows

Single review by kev@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk

Has anyone else ever thought that soul music began to lose its real soul to slick production and needless vocal acrobatics sometime in the late '70s or early '80s? Now it often pales in comparison to those legendary stars that created the genre in its various forms. Other styles of music have picked up the missing pieces of soul and incorporated them into their own music instead, one such band being The Sound Of Confusion regulars Mt. Wolf, a band who never seem to let standards slip, and a group who are steadily forging their own unique style. You couldn't call it soul music as such, but it certainly contains plenty of the stuff.

New single 'Midnight Shallows' feels as though it was painstakingly recorded so that every aspect was perfect, and that perfection includes not being too slick, or if you like, the strange paradox of not being so perfect that it's sanitised. The video was made in much the same way, using traditional techniques and no computer graphics. I dread to think how many hours were spent on it, but it was worth it. The music is incredibly modern though, and while it may not be overly experimental, this is still the forefront of pop and it's quite stunning. You only need to type their name into our search box and listen through past releases to know it's no one-off. This fact they prove again with B-side 'Swarm', another expertly made tune. It's time these guys were getting more recognition.





Mt. Wolf's website

Buy the single

Catch them live:

TUE 05 NOV Fallow Cafe, Manchester, UK
WED 06 NOV Bungalows and Bears, Sheffield, UK
THU 07 NOV Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK
FRI 08 NOV Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, UK
MON 11 NOV The Haunt, Brighton, UK
TUE 12 NOV Heaven, London, UK





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The Sufis - She Said To Me

Single review by kev@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk

Although it was largely US bands who took British beat music and turned it into west-coast jangle-psych a couple of years later, much of what may be described as sunkissed psychedelia or garage music of recent times has come from the shores of the UK again, especially the continuous journey back in time that the various scenes in Kent and surrounding areas refuse to let go of. It's produced some fantastic music, and Nashville band The Sufis give us a trio of songs here that all possess that quality and all could have originated in that time period, but at the same time are subtly different from each other.

Starting with 'She Said To Me' you'd struggle not to think of the first Byrds album, and that's a compliment for anyone making music of this variety. It's filled with sunshine and the same melodic jangle. 'Different Views' does pretty much what the title says, taking a similar style but this time throwing the song back over this side of the Atlantic with a sound that touches on indiepop but also both The Kinks and Syd Barrett. It's a very English sounding song but is every bit the equal of the A-side. They finish with 'Most Peculiar Happening Cat', which may have you thinking of Barrett again and his Pink Floyd track 'Lucifer Sam' with its title. It doesn't recall that song much when you listen to it, although once more it feels idiosyncratically English and would have fitted nicely into that scene. An unexpected journey to the past, but a very welcome one. 

The Sufis' website

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Blockhouse Bay - Duality

Album review by kev@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk

Unless you've recently beamed in from another dimension, you'll have noticed the marked increase in electro-pop of just about every variety that's defined the last few years in popular music, particularly the charts, where vile, disfigured forms exist, blocking the good stuff from gaining entry like some sonic forcefield. It kicked-off (in the UK at least) with the rise of artists obsessing over the sounds of the synth-filled early '80s, most likely absorbed from their parents' record collections. The upshot of this is that in bringing electronic music to the masses, it's opened the door for some more innovative artists to get their work heard, and led to some unlikely acts climbing higher in the charts that more fancied artists. Would Crystal Castles have been such a big draw in the '90s or '00s? Probably not.

So where does Rhys Hughes' Blockhouse Bay fit into all of this? With 'Duality' being his debut album under this guise, he will have watched these musical trends come and go, all the while defining his own sound, one that does come under the electro-pop banner, but one that doesn't sit still for very long. Chart success is almost impossible to predict and often relies on one lucky break, with many of the best bands barely getting a look in. If the upbeat, radio and dancefloor ready 'One Of Us' had been released by an established name it would most likely have plenty of sales racked up already. It combines credibility with bucket-loads of fun; not the easiest combination to pull off. The female vocals and piano of 'Higherground' give a distinct mid-'90s alt-pop vibe and could be another potential hit.

It's the combination of the modern and the retro that seems to be the signature of 'Duality'. 'Supernatural' could be a remix of a track from thirty years ago and is a big highlight. Again it has "fun" tattooed across its forehead but the dark undertones give it enough edge to span those music borders and dip its toes into the alternative. 'Waterworlds' does this too but in a different way, as does 'Clover'. At first it hints at being a brooding slow-burner, but as it develops it mixes pop hooks with less mainstream production. The mid-album palate-cleanser of 'Temple Garden' is great. Boasting a more "band" type of dynamic and draped in maudlin strings, this trip-hoppy number makes for a refreshing change, not that one was needed in particular, but once you hear it, it serves its purpose brilliantly. Plus, surprises are ace, right?

Then it's back to the '80s with a bang on 'Borderline', and no, we don't mean it sounds like the Madonna song. Think more Human League meets Depeche Mode. Two obvious comparisons maybe, but they fit perfectly and you can imagine this having been a big seller for either band, especially the latter. That decade is approached again on 'Worlds Apart', but here that dreaded sax sound appears. You know the one, it plagued the airwaves for years on songs like 'Careless Whisper' and 'Your Latest Trick', but thankfully Blockhouse Bay has a bit more taste and doesn't allow it to take over. That said, it's still potentially the weakest song on the album as a result. This may be down to personal preference, but when the overall standard has been so high, anything that lessens it even slightly will be spotted. By the time we finish up at 'Enough Is Enough, you realise that at some point in space and time, each and every song on 'Duality' has the potential to be (or to have been) a hit single, and that's pretty good going for an entire album. The overwhelming sense is that Blockhouse Bay wouldn't have allowed anything on here to be considered filler, and the result is a record that transcends both time, and to a certain extent, genre as well. And what can be more current than that?






Blockhouse Bay's website

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Guards - Coming True

Single review by kev@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk

I haven't witnessed them myself, by reports suggest that powerpop/psych trio Guards are an exceptional live proposition, having impressed at festivals including The Great Escape and Coachella. It's perhaps this fact that brought them to the attention of MGMT who they recently supported on their European tour. With debut album 'In Guards We Trust' already available and gaining momentum as word spreads, the group this week release a new single from the album in the shape of 'Coming True', a song which has the accessibility and quality to turn even more heads towards their take on the world of alternative pop music.

It's that word, pop, that's fundamentally important with this track especially. Every other band who have a guitarist are getting described as psychedelic in some way or another, mainly because the term is so broad. Guards don't do deep psych or extended wig-outs, and neither do they plunder the late '60s for inspiration. It's merely a case that this guitar-pop has the slight influence of more modern forms of the genre, just enough to prevent them being labelled as indiepop or something similar. Call it psych, call it pop, call it indie, call it Geoff; it doesn't matter when you have hooks and melodies being fired at your brain with this much sonic enthusiasm. Top stuff.



Guards' website

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Empty Chairs - GTMO

Single review by kev@thesoundofconfusion.co.uk

If you think of the kind of psych-pop that Grandaddy made, or that Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev were making at the end of the 1990s, or more recently bands like MGMT, then you'll have an approximation of the style of Empty Chairs. Pete Spear began making music as a solo artist under this name, but after recruiting two new members the Brooklyn-based trio release their debut album 'Caveat Emptor' this week. Moving from Colorado to the NYC area to pursue a career in music has its plus points, the city is thriving and is always the focus of much attention, but on the downside, you're trying to keep your head above water amongst a sea of other acts hoping for the same gig slots, press articles and record contracts. In short, the only way to succeed is by being very good.

Following single 'Akira', Empty Chairs have put forward this backwards video to current single 'GTMO', and an interesting video won't do their cause any harm. Ultimately it's the music that the band will be judged on, and they've got that pretty much perfected too. Using the touchstones we've mentioned, this song takes dreamy psych-pop and freshens it up. So while those bands may have influenced Empty Chairs and may share some of the same DNA, 'GTMO' is totally current. The production ensures that. The contrast between the sharp electronic beats and the constant hazy hum of the song works splendidly to enhance the melodies and the vocals that would probably still sound perfectly pleasant on their own. There does seem to be enough about Empty Chairs to keep their heads well above the waterline of the flooded Brooklyn music community, so hopefully this won't be the last we hear from this band.



Empty Chairs' website





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