The Bank Holidays - As a Film.

 

It must be frustrating for a band like the Bank Holidays, with all their effortless talent and charm, to watch the culturally effulgent east coast spawn artists who, almost by protocol, manage to gather momentum and interest by sole virtue of exposure in the ‘big’ cities. You know, those cities where all the reputable indie labels are, where all the most forceful writers, announcers and lifestyle spruikers are. It’s probably extreme to paint Perth bands as outsiders – victims – but to an extent it is true. Most Australian musicians already understand the limits of our geographical predicament. Imagine living in Perth.
Still, with the opportunities for exposure and career-fulfilment being slimmer in Perth, there’s probably an instinct for the bands to work harder, or to play to their own strengths rather than the benchmarks set by others. The Bank Holidays is one of a handful of Perth bands at the moment that seem incapable of failure, if you ignore circumstance and concentrate solely on their efforts. In essence, As A Film is a marvellously consistent, lyrically thoughtful, emotionally provocative and seasonally specific (i.e. summer, i.e. now) album brimming with sincerity and melodic hooks to die for.
It’s an album for pleasure – an album replete with songs that mark moments like musical milestones. The lyrics are infused with the type of pop wisdom that we all take for granted but like to have reinforced in song. Take ‘Teaching Pupils’, where in the first verse a rather undesirable group of friends ‘tip your bag out on the lawn’ and ‘pin things to your uniform’. Following these accounts, sometime vocalist James Crombie warns us that, in order to save face and dignity, you’ll need to lie and ‘teach your pupils not to dilate’. Anyone who has ever forced back tears to save face will understand and cherish the sentiment.
Of course, being pop music it’s got a large capacity for nostalgia, and the strength of the melodies and harmonies involved here echo certain oft-referenced Californian luminaries, but if charisma and endearment are both essential ingredients for a good pop album, As A Film is a quiet classic.
by Shaun Prescott

Get It: HERE

+ 1 link

Frisbie - The Subversive Sounds of Love.

 

Heralded by many as the banner carriers of power pop for the 21st century, few bands have displayed such a mastery of pop songcraft on a debut release. Though not horribly adventurous with their sound, the unabashed reliance on sophisticated harmonic vocal arrangements, fuzzed out guitars, and occasional brass sections was seen as near revelatory in some critical circles. No doubt, the sweeping Big Star-inspired melodic progressions of tracks like "Shine" and "To See and Be Seen" more than deserved the accolades that The Subversive Sounds of Love garnered. When upping the tempo and volume on tracks like the galloping "Paid in Kind" or the punchy "Vertigogo," Frisbie can sound downright anthemic, though the more California-styled rock of "Disaster" probably fits their sound just as well. Still, it's hard to say that you ever get a real sense of the group dynamic that's at work in the process. And while that process delivers on an undeniably cohesive pop product, the personalities involved are never totally evident. An exception to this, the album closes with the theatrical whimsy of piano and banjo in "The Shuffle," proving the band can put a more pronounced face on their sound. Although artists like this emerge on a semi-frequent basis, and usually don't amount to very much in the long term, Frisbie gives hope to the power pop true believers. -AMG

Get it: HERE

GIG DATE. Sixties Garage, Power Pop night of love. GIG DATE

The Fighting Cocks in Kingston hosts a three band extravaganza on February 10th, the three bands gracing the stage are The Legendary Groove Men, The Past Tense and Pope.

Check the Fighting Cocks web page for times and venue location THE FIGHTING COCKS

Helium Angel - Early Clue to a New Direction

 

Helium Angel are a young mod band from San Francisco, so correctly mod in fact, that they thank their local Vespa Club and their scooter suppliers in the liner notes. The influences are all right too—The Jam, The Who, The Small Faces. But like the Small Faces before them, Helium Angel clearly dig psychedelia too, though theirs seem to come mainly from the Byrd’s “Eight Miles High” school.

As the album wears on, you realize there’s not a lot of fury here, but then Helium Angel aren’t playing in the shadow of Thatcherism and the Sex Pistols either. There is plenty of self-assured, catchy and crunchy power pop (yes, crunchy can be good), played with the confidence and ability only earned through generous amounts of practice, live playing and, dammit, heart. The punkiest song on the block is “When the Plane Touched Down,” about equal parts Who and Buzzcocks. Here and there, Keith Moon-style drums surface, but then so do Beatlesque harmonies, and a slashing Pete Townshend-ish rhythm guitar. I bet these guys have done a few windmills on their guitars—at least in front of their mirrors. It all adds up to an exciting debut, that while it could use a bit more variety, clearly sets them up for a killer effort next
time.
By PopMatters

Get it: HERE 

BABY SCREAM

Sometimes a band or musician seems to fly just below the radar and therefore get missed by the masses, one such band, who after 7 albums and EP,s of finely crafted power pop gems, should be flying so high above that are Baby Scream.  Listening to the musical output of this band, you may be left wondering why they are not picked up by satellite radars and beamed into every house across the globe!

Baby Scream is a project lead by Argentinian, Juan Pablo Mazzola, who crafts his songs in a similar vein to Jason Falkner, Bryan Estepa, Matthew Sweet and even early John Lennon solo material. All of Baby Screams songs are sung in English and it is very easy to forget that this is not the bands first language, the lyrics are so well written and delivered on each and every track the band have released.

 

The most recent album by the band, Secret Place, their 8th,  has a very retro feel about it, in as much as it is awash with great melodies reminiscent of The Stones, The Beatles even T-Rex, in fact the B-side of the "Hit and Run" single from the album is a version of "20th Century Baby" a song written by Marc Bolan and only released as a demo after his death. 

 

Secret Place is a typical Baby Scream album: it shares a vision equally desolated and hopeful of a world that combines innocence, evil, stupidity, youth culture, classic rock and roll, the escapism and the ravages of drugs, the different cities and places you visit when you're on the road, love, treason, rage, fear of the unknown, all of this expressed with an almost immaculate point of view that could belong to a child that observes the world without any kind of prejudice. It is maybe because of this that the album cover and the pictures inside the CD booklet, (taken by Marcia Hill) depict a somehow childish universe: the sweet grandma that offers us a tea in a suburban afternoon, the furry cuddly toys in the park, the toy windmill forgotten in the garden after playtime…

There is a secret place, seems to say Baby Scream, in which we are still children and we see things as they are: as an eternal dream passing in front of our eyes, always changing, always surprising, sometimes depressing, sometimes thrilling, in which we don't actually know our place or our role, but we still try to enjoy ourselves as much as we can.

  

Baby Scream - Hit And Run

You can contact and find out more about Baby Scream: Facebook  Myspace  Reverbnation

You can buy Baby Scream - Secret Place here: CDBABY

 

The Singles - Start Again

During the 15 minutes that Detroit became the center of the garage rock universe in the wake of the White Stripes' breakthrough, the Singles received a bit of international acclaim for their debut album, 2003's Better Than Before, but like a number of other Motor City bands, the hype machine didn't turn over for them, and four years later, leader Vince Frederick is fronting a new lineup of Singles for the pointedly titled Start Again. However, Frederick thankfully is still in firm command of the gifts that made the earlier version of the band memorable -- British Invasion style melodies, pop hooks galore, and plenty of energy, with the results sounding a good bit more like the Flamin' Groovies than, say, fellow Detroiters the Dirtbombs. Frederick wrote a dozen solid pop songs for this set, and he sings them with commendable spirit and force, and his new rhythm section (John Hale on bass and Brian Thunders on drums) are entirely simpatico, knowing when to push hard on a rocker like "I Want You Back Now" or "Start Again" and when to ease back on the more measured "Better Days" and the heart-broken "I Don't Wanna Be the Last to Know." Jim Diamond, who produced Better Than Before, is back behind the board for this set, and he gives the Singles a full-bodied sound that's equally friendly to the crunchy guitars and the precise harmonies. If you ever wondered what happened to power pop, it's alive and well and living in the Singles' rehearsal space, and with any luck, Start Again will earn this band the recognition they so richly deserve.

Get it: HERE

YOUNG FRESH FELLOWS - Electric Bird Digest

 

The decline in the Young Fresh Fellows' wackiness factor (and the growth of their relatively serious side) that began on This One's for the Ladies following the departure of Chuck Carroll continued on Electric Bird Digest. Musically, the band sounded harder and more aggressive than ever before, with Kurt Bloch and Scott McCaughey's guitars sounding much better integrated than on their previous go-round, though the pop sensibilities of primary songwriter McCaughey were still very much in evidence. And while there are glimmers of the band's trademark sense of humor (most obviously on the goofy snippet "The Teen Thing" and in titles like "Tomorrow's Gone (And So Are You)" and "Swiftly But Gently"), for the most part Electric Bird Digest is witty rather than laugh-out-loud funny, and there's a thin but audible undercurrent of angst running through much of the album (especially on Kurt Bloch's songs, which suggest the Fastbacks without their undertow of gleeful sloppiness) -- not particularly surprising from a band still trying to struggle by on a cult reputation after close to a decade on the boards. But as a rock band, the Young Fresh Fellows rarely sounded tighter or more emphatic than they do here, and, as on This One's for the Ladies, the best songs on Electric Bird Digest prove that the band could get serious and still have plenty to say, both musically and lyrically. And the production by Butch Vig gives the band's sound a muscle it rarely had in the past, without losing their melodic sense along the way. It's not one of the Fellows most fun albums, but, from a musical standpoint, it captures them at the top of their game. 

 Get it: HERE