Love Ends Disaster!
Stories For The Dislocated EP
(Denial Records)

Continuing the great tradition of intriguing punctuation in pop (c.f. Therapy?, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Hear’Say) are Nottingham’s very own Love Ends Disaster! They claim in their press release to have “possibly the most varied range of influences known to man”, and whilst that’s a laudable aim, this debut EP suffers at times from trying to show them all at once. That’s not to say it’s bad though – in fact, someone should start a Campaign For Real Indie so we get more of this sort of thing and less dour rubbish from the likes of Doves and Coldplay. Love Ends Disaster! also win the prize for best track name with ‘Warning: Robots’, although the best song here is probably ‘Sendai’, a lovely little piece of squally New Wave exuberance about killing someone in your sleep.


Metric
Combat Baby (Everloving Records)

Came out a while ago this, but if it made an impact on anybody else, they certainly never told me about it. They’re a nice surprise though - Combat Baby sounds like the as-yet-undiscovered third Deal sister’s Transvision Vamp cover band, which is meant as a compliment. The lyrical subtext might be a bit hokey – essentially, ‘we used to fight all the time, but now I miss that’ – but Metric make up for it with their big bright pop hooks. They manage to get away with their Fight Club rhetoric by over-egging it too. You can forgive a sleepy voiced New York girl sneering “No-one here wants to fight me” quite a lot. Great fun.
Of course, given that the band used to share a house with The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Liars, they may already have used up their 15 seconds of Hosegate-approved credibility (if indeed they ever had any), but I don’t care. I like this record and I don’t care who knows it. Good B-sides too.


Editors
Munich (Kitchenware)

Franz Ferdinand have a lot to answer for. There are nervous guitar riffs and skittish drums all over this tune, and you can see the appeal to record companies in that sort of sound right now. Luckily though, Editors stray far enough from the prototype to be interesting, and Munich is a jumpy little beauty of a song, brittle and menacing and suitably Central European sounding.
“People are fragile things, you should know by now.” Croons vocalist Tom Smith, defiantly, “Be careful what you put them through”. As well as a plea for reasonableness, it’s also a warning – Editors sound like they’re sensitive boys, but won’t put up with any nonsense if you don’t treat them right. A bit like an indie Destiny’s Child.


Five O’Clock Heroes
Run To Her (Glaze)

Like being kicked down the stairs by a bunch of harmony-wielding garage band guitar chords. This is a great big rowdy new-wave pop racket, with singer Antony Ellis yelping all over the top about how well he knows your daughter. Whether your daughter is the ‘Her’ he’s planning to run to is unclear, but it’s probably worth keeping an eye on her, just in case.
This is a fun, jangly single (though I’m sure Five O’Clock Heroes take it more seriously than that) which won’t set the world alight, but makes a perfect accompaniment to jigging up and down in somewhere like the Cookie Club – a good song to spill your pint to.


Public Display Of Affection
Dirty Little Hands (Penny Dreadful)

This is more like it. I know we always say we’re not biased at LeftLion (well, not that biased), but this promo from Notts-based Public Display of Affection is probably the best of the bunch. It’s a sleazily desperate (not to mention desperately sleazy) frenzy of fuzzed up guitars, repetitive beats and breathy, scuzzed-up vocals. Best of all is the “wow-wow, wow-wow” vocal riff that kicks the whole thing off and repeats, in one form or another, all the way through the song.
The singer seems to be offering to protect his paramour, promising he’ll “never let them get their dirty little hands on you.” Although it’s not clear exactly who ‘they’ are, and frankly, he sounds like a bit of a stalker. But in a good way. The cover shows some sort of handsome shirt and tie-wearing cyborg plugged into the mains and putting his hand up a lady’s skirt – an image which sums this song up perfectly.

Alterkicks
Do Everything I Taught You (Fierce Panda)

This is Alterkicks’ debut release, and the kindest thing I can say about it is that it shows promise. It’s possibly unkind to point out that if that promise were fulfilled, they’d be The Coral, but I’m not here to be kind. This single certainly isn’t unpleasant listening – there’s some very agreeable jangly guitars and North West accented vocals – but if you were to actually go out and buy it, you’d probably feel disappointed. Wait for the second album, that’s my advice. Having said all that, I’m a big fan of B-side title ‘The Cannibal Hiking Disaster’, which would also make a better band name than ‘Alterkicks’, which is just awful.


Rodney P
The Nice Up (Riddim Killa)

Apparently, the dub rhythm this tune is based on is called ‘Armageddon’, which is a ridiculously portentous and overly dramatic name for anything that could have resulted in this happy little ray of sunshine. How happy? Well, for a start it’s called ‘The Nice Up’, what more do you want? “We’re going to nice up your area” sings Kymani (son of Bob) Marley, and you can quite imagine him and Rodders skanking up and down the streets of Hucknall or Bakersfield in some kind of Reggae-fied ice cream van, making everybody and everything feel 100% nicer than they did before.
Rodney P Interview on LeftLion


Sunday Coming
Demo

Straight outta Kegworth comes this three track demo from Sunday Coming. It’s pretty rough around the edges, but serves a decent advert for the band and is worth tracking down if you’re a fan of laid-back Led Zep-influenced rock. Well, I say laid-back, but opening track ‘Flits of Ladafta’ (after over a minute of mucking about and guitar noodling) erupts into sweaty trousered bar room punch-up of crunchy bass riffs, throbbing guitars, jaunty drumming and sing along choruses. It’s also the best thing here. The next two tracks, ‘Jake’s Little Book of Compliments’ and ‘Swallow Your Pride’ seem designed to showcase Sunday Coming’s mellower, more sensitive side. Whilst pleasant enough, neither makes your hips wiggle or your fists punch the air, but then there’s more to life than that.


Ray Lamontagne
Trouble (Echo)

Trouble is the title track from American singer/songwriter Lamontagne’s debut album, and whilst it’s perfectly lovely in a ‘hot chocolate for the ears’ kind of way, it also throws in every singer/songwriter trick in the book, leaving a bit of a nasty, metallic taste in the mouth. Ray repeats pertinent words (‘trouble’, ‘worry’) up to six times in an eyes closed, head shaking manner; He claims to have been ‘saved by a woman’; He adds ‘I said’ to the beginning, and ‘now’ to the end of lines, for added emotional emphasis; There’s a tacked on string section; He sounds like he smokes about 40 fags a day… I could go on. But I won’t. Despite the creeping sense of manipulation, it is still a lovely song. And B-Side 'Narrow Escape' is even better, even if it does have a bloody harmonica on it.
Ray Lamontagne review

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