rock – and so she thinks

Japandroids – Near To The Wild Heart Of Life

admin — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 13:02:22 +0000

They’ve been away for a while. Japandroids had a busy year in 2012 following their album Celebration Rock, playing over 200 shows in 40 countries, and have been absent since. But the duo will return to the stage and the stereo next year, with their third album Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, out worldwide on Anti- this January 27, 2017.

Some of the greatest rock’n’roll albums are the shortest and sweetest – think IV by Led Zeppelin, Horses by Patti Smith, and Bruce Spingsteen’s Born To Run. Near To The Wild Heart Of Life follows that pattern, with only 8 songs, just like Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock. Despite being a duo, dressed in black and white, and with a retro A and B side to the album, they’re far from monochromatic.

Devilish, heroic and bold, they challenge the fashionable notion that guitar music and straight up rock’n’roll bands are irrelevant. Thrillingly apocalyptic, it rolls with an infectious guitar riff before a punchy and positive chorus. With a raft of European tour dates on the agenda, it’s time to welcome back

Wyldlife

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:51:49 +0000

Whilst some of us are wondering how on earth it is mid way through 2014 already, New York’s Wyldlife are back in 1979, unwrapping their newly purchased The Buzzcocks records and wondering when The Clash might make it over the pond. Before slicking back their hair, downing some beers, chucking on a leather jacket shredding up their six strings and having a party on the Lower East. From debut The Nicotine EP to their first full length The Time Has Come To Rock’n’Roll the band have not hidden their passion for making sweaty, scuzzy, irreverant music, and having a damn good time, fearless and thrusting as they do so. Opening track The Right from TTHCTRR kicks off with the definite and defiant statement that ‘at 10pm it’s time to party,’ not fooling anyone that Wyldlife ever stopped their rampage and reverie. Loose morals, tight chords, rocking melodies and brash attitude. Roll on the seventies.

The Khmer Revival of Rock ’n’ Roll: Indie Music in Cambodia

admin — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 06:53:00 +0000

The sounds of drums and rock guitar pierce the air, young voices roar above their buzzing audience: no, this is not a gig in London or New York. It is the sound of Cambodia’s rock revival. As Francesca Baker attests, Khmer music is undergoing a rebirth and emerging as more energetic and determined than ever before.

Cambodia was once home to one of the most advanced and vibrant music scenes in Asia: it was the sixties and there was a thrill in the air. Controversial though he was, ruler at the time Prince Norodom Sihanouk was passionate and liberal about arts, and welcomed western influences. The Vietnam War had played a huge role in introducing rock ‘n’ roll to South East Asia, with the American Special Forces Radio Network dominating the airways, and US Navy flying studios spreading the sound of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music across Cambodia. People may not have known much about the music, but they knew they liked it, and soon started to imitate it in their own Khmer style. Parallel Lines released a compilation of songs – Cambodian Rocks – compiled by an American tourist named Paul Wheeler from some cassettes he bought in Phnom Penh from a local taxi driver. What’s more, two documentaries have been produced about the pre-war scene: The Golden Voice, Greg Cahill’s thirty minute film on the most famous of the era’s female singers, Ros Sereysothea, and Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, a feature-length history of the scene from Los Angeles-based cinematographer John Pirozzi.
Read more at The Culture Trip.

Introducing – Courtney Yasmineh

admin — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 19:54:37 +0000

Ballsy and confident in demeanour, Courtney Yasmineh is charming and captivating, and her music direct and delicious, a potent cocktail of alternative rock, folk, pop and even a little gospel, all blended and blurred into a dazzling and blistering output. A complex and tough upbringing saw her flee to great north woods of Minnesota where she started working on a six song EP, including the fanciful tune Married To Bob (Bob Dylan once fled from the same woods.) Since then she has grown and developed, but still always raw and honest. Brazenly emotive, her music perches on the brink of various styles but gathers up their substance, eclectic yet distinctive. New album Wake Me Up When It’s Over has a rather misleading title. Despite tough times and adversity Courtney strikes as the kind of woman who grabs life, attacks it head on, and rides out her thrills and demons. Opening with Ballad To My Other Self, a bold statement of awareness as to personality fractures and how people change, all glitch and guitars, the album flickers through slow and fast, happy and sad, grunge and folk. Scrutiny sees soft flirty vocals, and Bury Me makes you squirm with its raw and open wounds from an unhappy marriage. The ditzy named Pretty Kitty is a highlight, howling loops and compulsive riffs under slightly husky vocals, building up to a brash and almost seismic shifts. Released on her own Indie label, Stupid Bitch Records, she will be playing songs from it when she visits Europe.
26.09 – 12 Bar Club,London
27.09 – The Troubadour, London
30.09 – Gaslight Club @ Oporto, Leeds
01.10 – The Blues Bar, Harrogate
03.10 – The Victoria, Swindon
04.10 – The Jet Lounge, Amsterdam
05.10 – Het Podium, Hilversum
06.10 – The Music Village, Brussels.
.

The Ludlow Thieves

admin — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 16:49:24 +0000

Bear with me here. I am going to use the words ‘Americana,’ ‘Stereophonics’ and ‘good’ to describe a band. There, done. And genuinely meant. The Ludlow Thieves are comprised of an Iowa gospel guy, a classically trained musician and a Manhattan hippy it is no wonder that the music is difficult to pigeonhole but words like rustic, rootsy, dramatic, authentic, roaring and dense give you a good idea of the sound you may expect. Soaring soundscapes robust in nature but no less heartfelt for it. To Travel is a final goodbye to a loved one that tinges with both sadness and opportunity, whereas All The Money is such a quick and potent musical muse on that close to home topic of being broke, and Over Again expansive vista of a tune. Their album is available to listen below…

Komla EP

admin — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 19:57:34 +0000

Unique is a word often bandied around, often wrongly. Chameleon like Komla are more deserving than most of the adjective, their rambunctious, rocky, sexy and smooth sounds are driving and dramatic. Taking the best of bluesy sixties sounds and connecting them through the ages, picking up influences along the way, cutting and splicing them together into a musical montage. Anthemic and arty, there is a range of complex interludes and melodies in tracks 99 (Chocolate Girl), We Belong, Feeling Something and That Summer, cleverly masked into something simple and immediate. The invigorating chemistry between the three members reacts to make something more powerful than the individuals, each of whom are startlingly talented alone. Meandering guitar, deep swaggering bass, thrashing drums, music is for these guys a way to celebrate life’s delights and exorcize its demons. Produced by Paul Reeve, famous for his work with Muse, this is grand, glorious, and one to play loud.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/78102008″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Peter Darling – Limehouse

admin — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:44:38 +0000

Peter Darling is a singer songwriter from Kent. So Peter Darling is some bloke strumming his acoustic guitar and singing yearning odes to countryside times gone by, probably with too much facial hair like the rest of them? Ha.

They say that every song has already been written, but that doesn’t stop so many artists just replaying them. On Limehouse the musical canon has been well and truly absorbed, the best of it all being seemingly seamlessly merged into striking song writing, to plug back in again to the ever evolving musical cloud.
Having a seemingly symbiotic relationship with his craft, from the opener Sunland (Intro) that quivers and quakes its way across the strings to final song Never Outstay Your Welcome, a fun and frantic acceptance of the frustrations of teenage life, this is the sound of someone coming of age, and realising that amongst the dichotomies of black and white exist shades of grey and that can be damn good fun. Honest Again is engrossing and energetic whilst Venus sounds like George Michael’s best ballad – in a wonderful way. Changer chugs along with real grit, the strong vocals adding a layer of almost menace to the melody. A rampant and random amalgamation of hooks, fuzzy electronics and striking styles abound, and startle with the conviction and ability with which each is grabbed.
The entire EP (bar a cover of Air’s Venus) was written and produced by Peter himself, and is available to download for free from his bandcamp page. Talented and generous.

UnorthodOXJAM – Proud Camden, 7th Oct

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 12:36:17 +0000

The Switch, Orlando Seale and the Swell, Killing Fields of Ontario, The Wildes, and Shout Timber

A night of break-though indie acts brought to you by It’s All Happening, taking place at Proud Stables, Camden, all to raise money for the wonderful work of Oxfam.
Check out the line up…

Orlando Seale and the Swell
http://www.facebook.com/orlandosealeandtheswell

Rousing indie folk – think Arcade Fire and you’re not far off the mark

Killing Fields of Ontario

http://www.facebook.com/killingfieldsofontario
A meaty portion of Americana

The Switch

http://www.facebook.com/theswitchlondon
Wrap yourself up in hyped-up beats and bubble-wrap sounds

The Wildes

http://soundcloud.com/thewildes
Pumped up beats from the wilds of Thanet

Shout Timber

http://www.facebook.com/shouttimber/info
Melodious ska

Liam Young (XFM Club DJ)
Round off the night with a selection of rockabilly, indie and old soul.

Tickets

£5 in advance, £6 on the door
Available from We Got Tickets:
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/187207

What might your excuses be?
‘It’s a Sunday night’ – exactly, what else are you doing?
‘It’s £5 – that could get me a milky coffee and half a stale pastry on the way to work tomorrow’ – or it could get you a night of excellent music AND help save lives
‘Who are these bands?’ – have a listen to the links, and embrace the joy of discovering something new. It’s what makes us human. That and being unable to hang upside down from a tree.
See you there then!

It is what it is… Why Brother's simple lyrics sum up the deepest feelings.

admin — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:40:04 +0000

Francesca Baker
Not content with providing our favourite quote of It’s All Happening’s Great Escape preview zine, Leonard, frontman of Brother also treated us to a stellar soundbite during the inter-song soundbite that stuck in the mind and caused some musings. Having firmly lowered the eyebrows of even the most sceptical industry bods, with his guitar gripped tightly, glint in the eye, sweat glimmering, he ended the ‘million selling smash hit single’ ‘Darling Buds of May’ with the words ‘Some people say that song doesn’t mean anything. But it’s fucking good isn’t it.’
Firstly, I didn’t put a question mark cos it’s pretty clear that this was a rhetorical statement. Brash, bolshy and confident, a lad band to the max, Brother aren’t waiting around for anyone’s approval.
Secondly, I take issue with this statement, or at least the first half. It is fucking good. But not being about anything…it’s about that feeling, the feeling of love and bliss, adoration of the perfect person. ‘Her birthday’s in May!’ Well so what says anyone else, but to you, that’s amazing, because it’s her. ‘And when you walk, and when you walk, I feel better now.’ I don’t think that it’s because the subject the song has a particularly spectacular style of walking, traversing on their hands balancing food parcels on their toes to deliver to third world countries and sprinkling fairy dust in their wake. It’s because it’s her, and he loves her, and everyone in love knows that the love of their life does walk better, laugh better, sleep better, sit better than anyone else, and that they are the. Best. Person. In. The. World. Fact. And thus by association you do feel better.
In this line of work, being able to articulate a sentiment or a notion clearly in words is crucial. You may want to reserve judgement on that one. In a musician’s line of work it’s all about articulating that same sentiment through the medium of the note. ‘Darling Buds of Bay’ perfectly encapsulates that heady and heart throbbing, solid and safe see saw that is love. That’s a pretty good meaning. It is what it is. And it’s fucking good.