Album Review: We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This - Surf City

We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This is Surf City's second album and it takes its title from an overheard conversation from a bar in South Korea. This album keep's the band's melodic and scuffed-up shoe-gazing sound giving it an instantly likeable charm that lasts much of its 46-minutes.

Slimmed down from four to three since Josh Kennedy had a child and left the band the tale of this album's creation takes in New York, Korea and the band's home country of New Zealand. It's a seemingly chaotic spate of long-haul flights and relocations. Following a short break during which lead-vocalist Davin Stoddard went travelling and Kenedy's child was born Stoddard moved to New York, found a studio, recorded some music then realised he hated New York and left. After a stint back in New Zealand during which he also recorded Stoddard ended up in South Korea teaching England and recording vocals and guitar in the evenings in his apartment, creating so much noise his neighbours ended up moving out.

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We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This - Surf City

There's more than a hint of the noisy, busy distorted melodies of The Jesus And Mary Chain on We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This and at its best it is layered with the slightly depressed and casually mistimed vocal delivery of Pavement's Stephen Malkmus. A mild loneliness permeates this record, the audible conclusion to Stoddard's lonesome misadventures and the alienation of travelling, at times it is the explicit subject of the songs themselves, as on 'NYC', but it is often there is the very modern postulating regarding the source of our modern angst (Facebook likes and the internet, apparently).

For me We Knew... is ultimately mainly just about the hooks, the swagger, the delivery. The lyrics are often buried under layers of instruments, effect peddles and, one imagines, tangles of cable. What comes through loud is an album of attitude, brilliant scuzzy hooks and  mild psychedelia.

 We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This is out on Monday through Fire Records, available to pre-order on CD, LP or MP3 [affiliate links]. Listen to 'NYC' via Soundcloud below:

Taken from the forthcoming album "We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This", released by Fire Records on 19th August Pre-order here: http://www.firerecords.com/site/index.php?page=release&releaseid=01020

Album Review: Hard Rubbish - Lower Plenty

Australian bands like Cut Copy and Tame Impala have a habit of throwing me into a slightly over excited wobbly mess but I think you'd struggle to peg Lower Plenty as Australian despite their Melbourne origins. Their sound, as highlighted back in January, is a bluesy urban-influenced take on country with hints of garage punk, a sound more American in origin than anything.

A range of influences are packed in to Hard Rubbish's short set though. It may be just 9 songs and only 24-minutes long but there is still much to hear, from the punky male-female Moldy Peaches-esque duets to grimey dischordent melodies.

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​Hard Rubbish - Lower Plenty

Lower Plenty are at their best when their music sounds its most improvised or melancholic. It shows, in a good way, that much of this album was recorded in a single take.

The cluttered and ill-timed lyrics of opener Work In The Morning or the lilting How Low Can A Punk Get are both perfect examples of Lower Plenty's freewheeling style, words seemingly spilling out of the singer's guts whilst the band play through the haze of a few too many days on the downers. Strange Beast and final track Close Enough both feel considerably more serious, the latter capturing vocalist Sarah Heyward's disconcerting attempt at self-assurance and post-rationalisation.

With such short length it is hard to class Hard Rubbish as more than a mini-album,  and priced as a full album it feels stingy. Yet there is no denying the band's honesty and attitude. This is very much the welcome appetiser, and a proof of concept.

​Hard Rubbish is released through Fire Records on 1 April, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].

Album Review: Blood Oathes Of The New Blues - Wooden Wand

Blood Oathes Of The New Blues is the latest album from James Jackson Toth, AKA Wooden Wand, and it follows on from his more rock and roll offering Briarwood [Spotify]. I'm new to Wooden Wand but this album has a certain atmosphere that means I can imagine it's a suitable follow up.

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The press release likens the sound to a Sunday morning 'wake and bake' to the previous album's Saturday night revelry. I'm not entirely sure that nails it - there's certainly an introspective, hung-over and full of self-pity sense to some of Blood Oathes... but much of this album feels like the after-after-party. Tired, bluesy songs for the long-trudge home in the January cold with a gently building sense of sobriety as your only company... Or perhaps it's the inevitable whisky or bourbon nightcap once you finally get there?

The timing of this release is either very fortunate or extremely well-planned, for it's as suited to January as thick coats, warm gloves and cold-remedies. There is a frosty loneliness to Toth's blues. This album isn't as alone as Bon Iver's first, for example, because the country style and additional female vocals lend company, but it is definitely one of cosy mutual consolation more than partying or celebration.

Blood Oathes... isn't just well timed, it also plays well with timing. It's a short album at 42-minutes, but still fits in the foggy 12-minute opener, the gloriously scruffy-yet-somehow-still-glittering two-part 'No Bed For Beatle Wand / Days This Long'. The several longer tracks that appear are offset with a couple of sub-two-minute ones, with album closer 'No Debts' providing a fine sense of closure.

Ultimately Wooden Wand's album succeeds based on Toth's story-telling. The best songs here a little more than a description of those personal moments you experience in the pursuit of living, and how they make you think - 'Outsider Blues' and its tales of car journeys soundtracked by arguments and Sticky Fingers for example. It's simple, but it works. Happy January.

Blood Oathes Of The New Blues is out now on Fire Records, available to order from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP or MP3 [affiliate links]. Listen via Spotify below:

Download: Strange Beast - Lower Plenty

This track from Melbourne four-piece Lower Plenty is pretty special. A dark, bluesy and claustrophobic tale of loneliness, this feels like a strangely urban take on country music and I love it.

Though the members have worked on other projects in the past, last year saw the release of Lower Plenty's debut album Hard Rubbish in Australia, and it's set for release globally in April through Fire records.