Top 50 of 2013: No.49: Middleman - Counterstep (Self-Release)

It’s always nice when I get sent a link to an album I’ve wanted to check out anyway, even better when that album is good enough to make me re-evaluate my top 50 of the year to sneak them in. Middleman are another local band I was lucky enough to see at last years and by the looks of things final Crooked Ways festival, if you remember I said I wanted to hear more from them back then, took half a year but due to them being nice chaps and sending me a link to the album I finally got there. Kicking off with the massive sing-along of ‘Helpless’ you can’t help being impressed, especially when I can say I was singing the chorus to myself days later after one listen, Middleman take all the good elements of bands like Enter Shikari, Hadouken!, and to an extent The Music, and create something of their own with bigger hooks than Abu Hamza. Hearing a song like ‘When I Close My Eyes’ it sounds so familiar that you’d swear you’ve heard it countless times, which is impossible because I don’t listen to the radio ever, this feeling is prevalent throughout this album, and whether you like the more urban aspects of the band or prefer the huge choruses, or the crunching heavy guitars, or just like to buzz your tits off to the dance beats, this album has something for everyone. From a band that released their first single 7 years ago, it seems that their time is finally due, and if they don’t move on to bigger and better things there really is no justice. Awesome artwork also.

8/10

Buy here: http://www.middlemanband.co.uk/Welcome%21/ALBUM.html

Do The Beast...

Top 50 of 2013: No.50: Meat Puppets - Rat Farm (Megaforce)

I have to be honest, I’ve not really enjoyed a Meat Puppets album since 94’s ‘Too High To Die’, granted I haven’t really sat down and listened to the 5 albums between that one and this in great detail but none of them really got me hooked and I quickly gave up on enjoying them, so it’s with some trepidation that I put this album on and waited for the first song ‘Rat Farm’ to start playing, then I became quite surprised, this is actually really good, a great catchy opener of a song that had me waiting for the next eagerly. Is this actually the new Meat Puppets album I started to wonder because it’s got all the hallmarks of old Meat Puppets but without the OTT experimentation, I mean I do love a band to experiment with their sound but the Kirkwood’s seem to almost have been doing it just for effect and not to accentuate the song itself.

Buy here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rat-Farm-Meat-Puppets/dp/B00BDSRH72/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1391170606&sr=1-3&keywords=meat+puppets

CryBabyCry Leeds Oporto 28/01/2014 and EP Review

More bands need to be following in CryBabyCry’s footsteps, not having a cd launch, that’s been done a million times, but rarely do you get the cd as part of your ticket price, and if you paid on the door for an extra pound you got a free hotdog courtesy of one of Leeds nicest little venues the Oporto bar. Previously I reviewed CBC’s performance at Pontefract’s Crooked Ways back in June and if you read that you’ll remember that they were pretty much the best band of the day, so to say I was looking forward to seeing them again is an understatement. It says something about the quality of a band when I can recognise not one but a number of songs over 6 months later, as far as I know they’ve been playing for around a year now, and for a band to have songs of this quality and to be this tight live already is almost unheard of. Co-frontperson (politically correct as I’ll ever get) Jonnythefirth is a man of many talents, for proof of this just checkout his solo work or his other band ‘Knuckle’ who have already been getting good feedback, in CBC whether playing guitar or bass his abilities are never short of amazing. All this would be good enough for a decent band, but when you add Rosie Doonan’s sultry blues infused vocals, you go from decent to outstanding, the chemistry on stage would give Heisenberg’s blue meth a run for its money.

Highlights as before one of my favourite tunes already ‘Tombstone’, a storming rendition of ‘The Tramp’ and a song I’ll call ‘Jukebox’ because I’m not sure of the actual title, but the review doesn’t stop there, because once i got home I got to listen the debut EP. Opening song ‘Go Go’ is a brilliant call and response between Jonny and Rosie with a chorus most bands would kill for, but it’s the second track which really sends chills down the spine, as mentioned above, ‘The Tramp’ is a journey through blues and soul where Rosie’s vocals swirl throughout the song making it almost mesmerising, and closer ‘Lovely Bones’ is a country-gospel infused trip through melody, while it’s not the best of the 3 tunes of offer it would have fit in perfectly on the ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ soundtrack. For a debut EP it has no right to be this impressive, and for one of Yorkshire’s best new bands I can only see the future being bigger and brighter, unfortunately I can’t give you a link to buy it as it was only for sale as part of the show (which just makes the whole thing so much more special), so I’ll just put their facebook page.

9/10 for both

https://www.facebook.com/CryBabyCryBand

UPDATES.....

...Starting again shortly, in the meantime if you like your music on the heavier side check out the book below, it's a really good read.

Order direct from the author at http://www.evolutionofthecult.co.uk/p/contact-and-pre-ordering.html

New TOY album 'Join The Dots' due 9th December

Not content with having on of the top 50 albums of 2012, TOY are already returning with a second album, available to pre-order at: http://heavenlyemporium.greedbag.com/buy/join-the-dots-7/?tab=mp3_downloads

Judging by past releases this will be immense.

Girls Against Boys - The Ghost List EP (Epitonic)

Another great band reformed, but as always I approach these kind of things with a little trepidation, the last truly great music Girls Against Boys put out was around 17 years ago with the classic House Of GVSB, it’s follow-up was widely acknowledged as pretty awful. Then in 2002 we had a reformation of sorts with the decent ‘You Can’t Fight What You Can’t See’ which while being good, just wasn’t the band you knew and loved. So 17 years on can the band that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end pull it off again? Fuck yes they can.

First song ‘It’s a Diamond Life’ is a complete return to form and would have stood up alongside anything on Cruise Yourself or House Of GVSB, Scott McCloud’s vocals have never been better, and the band have lost none of their fuzzy laid back charm. ‘Fade Out’ is a rockier affair with menacing vocals that meld into a post-punkesque explosion of a chorus, with an amazing keyboard backing track.

’60 is Greater Than 15’ is eerily reminiscent at the start to the bands biggest tune ‘Kill The Sexplayer’ but thankfully without being a carbon-copy, they’ve almost taken their old blueprint and actually improved upon it with bigger hooks and chorus’s’ but while still keeping the edge that put them leaps and bounds ahead of all other bands of their day. Jumping literally into next track ‘Let’s Get Killed’ which may be the best thing on here and the best track they’ve ever done, so catchy and vicious in tone, The Ghost List is almost the logical next step they should have took in 1998, but 15 years later you hear the band get back to what they were always capable of.

Closing track ‘Kick’ sounds like what Nine Inch Nails should sound like now, all scowled vocals and beats mixed with hypnotic rhythms, except Scott’s vocals carry off the menace that Trent Reznor could only wish to convey these days, the only down side to this entire EP is that it is an EP and not a full-length, we can only hope that the future contains more music from GVSB because they’ve certainly got whatever they lost back.

10/10

Buy here: http://epitonic.bandcamp.com/album/the-ghost-list-ep