BEGINNING SINGLES & EPS / BOOKS 01 BY JA NIN E & L EE B U L L M A N
WA R M BR A INS OL D V OL C A NOE S (MARSHALL TELLER) OUT APRIL 18
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Brilliant producers don’t always make for fine musicians. Just look at Timberland – a man who can shine the shit of anyone but raps so badly himself he has to gurn his way through music videos to keep us watching. Rory Brattwell is a producer, but he’s also a pretty good punk rocker too, maybe because that’s what he was doing way before he began recording every DIY band in London. Warm Brains is his current (solo) musical concern, and quite possibly his best yet – certainly if ‘Old Volcanoes’ is anything to go by. A mess of drums, sliding basslines and guitars, none of the instruments here appear to be playing the same song until they hit a chorus that is more than a little anthemic and features a surprise appearance of a xylophone. It’s an arrangement uncharacteristically sophisticated for a project so heavily set in today’s ‘lo-fi’ scene – full of the kind of lurching rhythms and endless, distortion-free riffs that allowed Pavement to make ‘slacker’ an aspiration in the early ’90s. Vocally, Brattwell is a little like old Test-Icicle band mate Dev ‘Lightspeed Champion’ Hynes, in the sense that he chooses to not swamp his soulful, semi-flat tone in reverb or echo. It’s just another smart move on a consistently smart debut 7”.
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2:54 ON A W IR E
T R OGONS C ON T IN A
(HOUSE ANXIETY) OUT NOW
(X-RAY) OUT APRIL 25
Grunge is back, so it was only a matter of time before post-grunge showed its face, which is perhaps why London duo 2:54 sound a lot like a mid-paced Garbage on this, their debut single. ‘On A Wire’ is sighed out in the most seductive of earthy purrs by singer Collette, accompanied by a trudging low-end that is dragged along by the waspy distortion of a dirty guitar that occasionally wanders off to perform metallic solos from the eighties. It sounds like it wears leather, and that it could teach you a thing or two in the bedroom. What’s most bewitching is that while all of that sounds like ‘On A Wire’ is instantly – and dangerously – gratifying, it isn’t. And perhaps the suspended allure of 2:54 – as well as Collette’s Shirley Manson drowsy hush – is what makes this track seem like a lost demo of ‘Stupid Girl’. Because while this single is sexier than suspenders day at Victoria’s Secret, it takes a while to realise just how much you fancy it.
When you’re a band of self-confessed sci-fi nerds – despite what your collective pasts suggest (Trogons is made up of four people who’ve played in some very hip London outfits before now) – telling a tale is bound to be high on the agenda. ‘Contina’ is the band’s debut “comic book with a serious message”, and its lyrics are even more important than its trippy, Hammer Horror organ and Death On The Nile guitar intro. This is the most theatrical and operatic story of a giant woman breaking through the earth’s crust, destroying the planet and finding the whole thing hilarious. “Ha ha haaa!” repeatedly channels our narrator, singer Gemma Fleet. For her part she sounds not like the Siouxsie Sioux she’s often compared too, but more like the raven sister of Kate Jackson of The Long Blondes. And it’s a perfect tone for Trogon’s gothic take on psychedelia - bewitching and only just of this world.
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ME MBE R S ONLY: T HE L IF E A ND T IME S OF PA UL R AY MOND B Y PA UL W IL L E T T S (SERPENT’S TAIL)
Paul Raymond enjoyed an edgy notoriety for four decades due to the fact that, besides being a prolific pornographer, he owned the renowned strip club Raymond’s Revue Bar: the garish beating heart at the centre of sexshop Soho that played host to Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Raymond was of the old school; a lad who originally arrived from Liverpool with five bob in his pocket and finished up hitting Soho by night dressed to impress in a fur coat and gold jewellery, with his latest showgirl in tow. Raymond’s final days, loneliness, cokeinduced paranoia and unimaginable wealth are dealt with without judgement here, which makes for a thoroughly entertaining glimpse into a world that has since disappeared.
HO W ’ S Y OUR D A D ? T HE S ON S A ND D A UGH T E R S OF R OC K R O YA LT Y B Y Z OE S T R E E T HO W E (OMNIBUS)
Zoe Street Howe, previously responsible for Typical Girls – the rather excellent story of The Slits – has now trained her pen on tabloid and gossip mag favourites, the sons `and daughters of rock stars. Of course most of us regard these progeny as talentless, over-publicised, over-privileged and underdressed, but it seems that is not always the case. For every irritating Osbourne there are stories like that of Baxter Dury, son of Ian, who would on occasion find himself babysat by a character known as The Strangler who made the young Dury pie and chips every night before passing out for days on end having left his scales and drug paraphernalia dotted around the house. Well worth a look.