Marina and the Diamonds - Mowgli's Road

Just over a year ago we posted “If Mr Kipling made bands this would be another one of his exceedingly good ones.” That quote was in relation to the feisty, theatrical and quirky Marina and the Diamonds. One year on as Marina prepares to release her debut major label single Mowgli’s Road, that quote holds true.

Mowgli’s Road originally featured as the B side to the Marina and the Diamonds debut single Obsessions and has been re-recorded for its own release. The accompanying video is a highly entertaining performance piece, where we see Marina hoofing and flexing her muscles in a way never seen before. Mowgli’s Road stomps and romps as if a Latvian girl called Ani Kolachova had recorded the tune as an entry for a king of the jungle shot at the Eurovision song contest. It represents the warped and fun way that the UK is currently pushing out some quite unique and non formulaic pop acts, who unusually write their own songs and are not relying on their sexuality to sell their music. With it’s cuckoo call and lyrics of “You say Y-E-S to everything,” Mowgli’s Road is a blustering piece of sassy gloss that faces just one problem - it may be too oddball for the mainstream, yet too operatically pop for indie kids. Mind you, we thought that about Florence and the Machine last year, and that hasn’t stopped her. Besides, from what we have heard of Marina and the Diamonds unreleased material, she has some more obvious tunes in the bag ready and waiting. Mowlgli’s Road is released on 16th November through 679 / Warner.

If Mr Kipling really had made bands, we think Marina would be the angel slice in amongst the jam tarts.

Luke Haines - 21st Century Man

Luke Haines - mastermind behind The Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and a number of solo projects. A misfit, an outcast, a social commentator, a man who brushed with fame but lost it. Haines has in the past come across as one of the most arrogant but also absurdly loveable songwriters the UK has ever produced. If you haven’t read his book Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall and have even the slightest interest in music, put it on your Christmas list. It’s caustic, hilarious and brutal in its assassination of the leading Britpop cast and shows how his own ego, paranoia, drugs and alcohol led to The Auteurs failing big time. It is a brilliant read.

Yet ironically after the Auteurs Haines achieved critical and commercial success with Black Box Recorder. He even scored a bona fide hit with the song The Facts Of Life. Whilst his new solo album 21st Century Man will never return him towards the mainstream or the charts, it has many aspects to it that make it worth parting cash for.

From its opening line of “It’s the same old story we’ve all heard before, about the Satanists who moved next door, they met their match they didn’t stay for more,” on Suburban Mourning you know that this is not going to be your typical singer songwriter album. David Gray or James Blunt, Haines is most certainly not. There’s a song about German actor Klaus Kinski coming back from the dead where Haines whispers softly “Who needs people? Who needs friends? They only drive you round the bend.” Other titles include Russian Futurists Black Out The Sun and White Honky Afro. It’s fair to say that with songs like these Haines is putting his name up for the title of one of the great British eccentrics. Whilst the singer may be endearingly odd, it isn’t always loveable stuff. The savagery of his words are turned on himself for the song Our Man In Buenos Aires when he sings “Looked in the mirror, I said who’s that fucking freak?” We wouldn’t want to meet him on a bad day. However when he is being a little less acidic he sings of southern suburban heaven - a land of milk and honey, which he references as Guildford. But even then he can’t but help mention the Guildford IRA pub bombings of the 70’s and the fact that part of The Omen was filmed in the towns cathedral.

With such entertaining lyrics it’s easy to be distracted from the music. Generally, the tunes and melodies are solid with some variation. There’s a glam rock stomp on Peter Hammill and Wot A Rotter and an almost Ray Davies sixties influence on Love Letter To London. The best two songs however are those that bookend the album. The opening aforementioned Suburban Mourning brings a lush electric twang and acoustic strumming that sounds like a long lost Black Box Recorder tune. Then the near seven minute title track features gentle orchestral strings laid to an opus about Haines life which concludes that he is a 21st century man, because that is the century in which he will die. The irony of Haines singing that he is a 21st century man is that there really is nobody writing songs quite like Haines these days. His music is deeply unfashionable and out of time, and all the better for it.

This album is a welcome addition to the Luke Haines catalogue. Musically it is sound, often seeming from another time, but lyrically Haines frequently gets close to the levels of greatness. 21st Century Man will not reach any sort of mass consumption, but for long term fans or for those who have discovered him through the Bad Vibes book, there is much to delve into and enjoy.

Why Record Labels Are Important

With the ever expanding opportunities offered by the internet for an artist to write, record and self-release their own material, established record labels are competing with a whole new breed of ‘bedroom indies’. From new acts such to established artists such as Radiohead, artists are realising that there is a whole new world out there, away from the traditional corporate record label model.

So are record labels soon to be a thing of the past? Another concept in the music industry killed off by the on line and affordable technology revolution? Breaking More Waves hopes not. We believe there is still an important place for the record label, or rather a record label that holds good principles, not functioning purely through the basis of financial gain. Labels that are still interested in artistic development, the creative process and that care passionately about music, making money because of these principles rather than simply for short term gain are still vastly important.

We need record labels such as Bella Union and Kitchenware. Most importantly we need them because a good label actually gives an artist more creative freedom than if they are a self run bedroom indie. The problem with being a bedroom indie, as any committed artist of this type will tell you, is that sailing the ship alone takes up an inordinate amount of time resource, which restricts the artist from doing what they should be doing, and that is steering the ship, or rather being creative. Even in this day and age of Myspace pages and blog buzz, it is still unrealistic for an artist to expect to simply be able to write and record something, put it out there and find a huge audience. There has to be an element of business marketing to gain an audience. We recently read a quote from a new UK act whom this year has worked incredibly hard to have two top twenty singles and a top ten album, that only 5% of their time is actually spent on the creative process of writing, recording and performing the music. The other 95% is spent on the business side of things. This is why the music business is called just that. It is a business and like any business there is a lot of work to be done. Marketing a release requires a lot of commitment, and for go it alone artists that commitment means an even lesser amount of time being creative and more time doing business. If you agree with the argument that generally quality is related to time spent, then the more time an artist spends being creative the more likely he or she will produce more quality work. A good record label can take away much of the business from the artist and allow them to focus on being creative, but without interfering unnecessarily in the process or the outcome. A good label therefore allows artists creative freedom, and the time to be creative.

Secondly we need labels because, in the same way that a good blog actually cares about the music they write about and doesn’t just post up whatever free music a PR company has sent them, labels can filter out the rubbish. They have the resource to do this. As a listener, we don’t want our time wasted – we want to be able to find quality artists as quickly as possible. Labels that we trust and value allow us to do that. When for example Moshi Moshi announce a new single we now have an expectation that it is going to be something worth listening to and we will direct ourselves to check the release out. If labels didn’t exist all there would be would be hundreds of Myspace pages to look at, and believe us if you spend a day searching randomly through band Myspace pages, as we have done, you will soon come to realise how much detritus is out there.

It is for this reason that artists, punters and the industry needs record labels. The day they disappear is the day when we’ll all be spending a lot more time listening to inferior new music. We need trusted labels to guide us and to invest in artists.

And if we didn’t have labels ? There have been arguments put forward that consumer brands are the new model for artists to sell their music, making record labels redundant. Why sign with Sony when you can sign with Sony Playstation? We think this is not healthy for music. Consumer brands have no interest in anything other than making a quick buck through profit maximisation. An unsigned artist may be able to sell one of their songs for significant amounts of cash through a sponsorship deal to a brand, but once the deal is done the artist will be left with the cash but no long term strategy or support to help them develop as an artist. There’s always another act willing to sell their song.

With cash made the artist will soon return to being just another Myspace page, forgotten except for their one tune on a games console that in three years time will be redundant.

Run Toto Run @ Brighton Providence

There’s a moment towards the end of Run Toto Run's show at The Providence in Brighton where Little Red Riding Hood steps daintily forward, and with a gentle puff blows sparkling gold dust into the air. It sums the band up perfectly; Run Toto Run are the stuff of electronic fairytales. Evil spells, sorcery and demonic sprites will have been banished around the corner, even if this is a pre-halloween party where pumpkins, cobwebs and hanging skeletons adorn the room.

It is lead singer Rachael who is dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, and her magical Manchester based band are very pleased to finally be playing their first gig in Brighton. The last time the group were in the south coast city, a hastily arranged show was cancelled due to an issue with the PA system at the venue. The problem? No speakers. That really is some problem.

Tonight there are no such issues. In fact, despite the location resembling an office building converted into a Weatherspoons pub, the PA system is very good - loud and demanding of attention, but still clear. It is certainly better than many supposed ‘proper’ gig venues.

When we first featured Run Toto Run back in January here we related that the groups whimsical playground folk stylings were likely to see an increased use of electronica. This appears to have been almost an understatement. With the exception of their You Tube viral sensation cover of Passion Pit’s Sleepyhead where acoustic guitars and incredibly accomplished violins are whipped out, Run Toto Run are now manipulating their sweet melodies into delicious electro pop where bright drum machine patterns mix with keyboard pings to produce quirky sugary sounding tunes. There are some comparisons with The Postal Service, but other than this Run Toto Run are pretty much out their on their own. Where most electro bands delve into heavy beats, bombing bass and dance rhythms to murder on the dancefloor, Run Toto Run are more likely to skip gently up to you, kiss you with glitter and then fly Peter Pan like into the stars. Lovely.

There’s a healthy warmth in the groups twinkling computer sound, even when it’s fidgeting and stuttering during Catch My Breath or when Plastic Gold brings an electronic apple bobbing, clapping and operatic “Oh-oh-oh,” xylophone groove to the night. Run Toto Run are a hidden treasure yet to be found; exquisitely charming, full of smiles and loveliness. Whisper it to your friends. They are our current favourite unsigned band.

Noughties By Nature @ Sweeping The Nation

Today we divert you towards Sweeping The Nation blog, who have just started a monumental feature entitled Noughties by Nature. This is a project where Simon the erudite author of Sweeping The Nation and invited guests write about what they believe to be the best songs of the last 118 months (that’s 2000-2009 for those whom calender maths is not a strong point), be they international hits or unreleased gems. There's going to be about 120 posts till the end of the year. Breaking More Waves has contributed to this huge project and has written about six of our favourite songs of the decade. The list promises to be a highly entertaining read, as Sweeping The Nation’s tag line is “It may be white lower middle class schmindie hipster shit, bet hey, it’s British.” We fully expect it to be somewhat different from the usual lists bashed out by the mainstream ageing rock press, or even Pitchforks superb but slightly Americanised list. The first two songs that were listed and written about are Overload by Sugababes and Formed A Band by Art Brut, so you can see the kind of eclecticism that is going on here, although we suspect as it develops the indie vibe will really kick in. In the main our choices may be a little more populist than the average.

Our first choice and number 3 in the list is Can’t Get You Out Of My Head by Kylie Minogue. Read what we said about it here. Then visit Sweeping the Nation everyday, maybe twice a day as we will be, to enjoy the rest of the writing as posts go up every six hours or so.

The Palpitations - New Waves @ Breaking More Waves

UK indie guitar rock is dead. The once great alternative to the mainstream has now become just another niche marketing term. In the same way that some prefer Starbucks to Costa, indie rock is just another brand to choose from the plethora of musical brands. Second division Britpop and the subsequent rise and fall of landfill indie have taken the genre to new levels of Topshop identikit blandness. The genre has become devoid of creativity and originality. Indie is no longer independent.

Or that is what one could believe. Taking a swoop back at this blog over the last year, with a few exceptions, very few of the bands that have been exciting us could be defined as indie guitar rock. So it comes as a huge relief to finally find a group soaked with dark guitar riffs, eerie melodies and not a keyboard in sight that show us that the limitations of the genre exist only in our minds. With just a little imagination it is still possible to produce something a little edgier, a little denser, and a little more uneasy without it becoming inaccessible and unlistenable. This is the kind of stimulating, kinetic indie that exists away from the fluff of The Kooks, The Pigeon Detectives and their peer group. May we introduce you to The Palpitations

The Palpitations produce a wall of sound that is evocative and powerful, music that snares and circles your brain like a wild animal hunting its prey. The sorrowful Tears in the Rain takes its starting point from the Shangri-La’s drum sound that Glasvegas have used to such effect - but with less bombast, before lead singer Danielle’s strident vocal soars over exploding chiming guitars. It’s direct, absorbing and irreducible. Then there’s Take Me for a Ride which has a hint of the breathy nature of The Joy Formidable, a subtly sensuous take on dream-indie. The Palpitations state that they bonded by the refusal to join the cul-de-sac sect their surroundings insisted on. On this basis, there is a strong argument for dumping every band in suburbia for a while, the rebellion reaction seems to produce good things. UK indie guitar rock is still alive - it just skipped a heartbeat for a while.

The bands debut 7" split EP, featuring Tears in the Rain and Cabin Fever, released in conjunction with the The Lovebirds is available now through Pushing Pussy Records. There is also a download format for the more disposable type.

Express FM (Part 2)

Just over a week and a half ago saw our second appearance on the Guestlist show on Express FM a local radio station based in Portsmouth. To our embarrassment, yet again we were unable attend the studio for a live recording, due to our incessant gig going activity which took us to Brighton for two consecutive evenings. The reality was that once again our appearance was pre-recorded some three weeks before. This is the reason that the question “How have your couple of weeks been ?” received a rather long and rambling answer as explanations of activities in the future were explained as if they were in the past. The intention is for the next New Waves feature (this Wednesday) to be fully live and therefore a little less stilted! Here is an audio clip of Breaking More Waves rambling radio appearance number two, where we sound rather arrogant about being the first in the UK to write about Yes Giantess, but in excuse we were caught a little on the hop with the question and realise now that we need to perfect our media skills ! The music recommendation on the show is Stornoway If you haven't heard of Stornoway yet have a look at the label cloud in the sidebar and click on their name, they are worthy of your ears attention, and for those in the UK watch out for the bands appearance on Later with Jools on BBC2 soon next week.

Here's our small ramble.

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