Review: Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Since their breakthrough with 2007's Cryptograms, Deerhunter's subsequent musical trajectory has been one of natural and seamless progression. 2008's Microcastle, and the EPs that fell either side, each seemed to pick up where the last release left off, slowly evolving the band's sound from dissonant krautrock  and ambient soundscapes to lusher, more melodic pastures. Halcyon Digest, not surprisingly, continues their evolution, with the band's most textured effort yet.

There's much about Halcyon Digest that recalls Deerhunter's recent work - the strutting rhythms, Bradford Cox's drowsy vocals - but it's like the band have submerged their sound underwater. Opening track Earthquake and Helicopter are layered in dreamy textures, autoharp and sloshing sound loops. The slow and gentle drift of Sailing effectively mimics its tale of being lost alone at sea, and the album as a whole seems to ebb and flow, with the hazier likes of Sailing and Basement Scene placed alongside the much more vibrant Revival and Memory Boy.

As the band continue to shy away from the noise of their earlier work, the line between Deerhunter and Atlas Sound, Cox's solo project, gets increasingly blurred, but the contributions of guitarist Lockett Pundt are a timely reminder that Deerhunter remain very much a band entity, and he puts forward two of the best (and perhaps most conventionally "rocking") tracks here. Desire Lines rides in on the stomp of Arcade Fire's Rebellion (Lies) and a descending note riff, and rides out on a simple yet deeply satisfying extended guitar coda. Fountain Stairs is a more straightforward, though no less enjoyable, surge of chiming guitars, replete with a blasting bridge.

Cox meanwhile does his usual thing, swimming about his own headspace, spouting out contradictions ("I lived on a farm yeah / I never lived on a farm", "I wanna wake up/I don't wanna wake up"), but he also delivers a couple of career-best performances here. On Helicopter, perhaps the highpoint of the album, Cox swoons "No one cares for me/I keep no company" over a pillowy and luxuriant chorus, whilst his strained delivery on the closing He Would Have Laughed adds a fitting tenderness to a track dedicated to the recently departed Jay Reatard ( the track cuts off abruptly, perhaps a reference to Reatard's untimely death). Above all, there's an abundance of wonderful touches throughout Halcyon Digest that make the record truly shine; the saxophone which wraps itself around Coronado is as unexpected as it is brilliant, and the ripples of autoharp that break in He Would Have Laughed are plain gorgeous.

Halcyon Digest is then, yet another great entry in an increasingly great catalogue, one which, like any of its predecessors, could legitimately be held as a favourite. Whilst some may wonder where the noise and bluster has gone, it would be foolish to think that these elements of Deerhunter have gone forever; remember how Weird Era Cont. brilliantly deconstructed the band's sound? In the meantime, I'm more than happy to ride the wave Deerhunter are currently on.

91/100

Festival Review: Wish You Were Here, Cambridge, Sat 25th September

The inaugural Wish You Were Here festival took place in Cambridge on Saturday. Featuring some 30 musical acts across a number of local music venues, Wish You Were is the first festival of its kind in Cambridge (at least to my recollection), and hopefully promises to be an annual event for the city. Here's a summary of the acts I caught.

Proceedings kicked off with something of a whimper at the Portland Arms with opening act Cavalier pulling out at the last minute, so I trudged across the road to catch the one guy who maybe deep down wished he wasn't there, Mark Ellis. Two years ago his band Hamfatter appeared on BBC's Dragon's Den, and when they successfully sealed a £75,000 deal with Peter Jones, it looked as though Hamfatter were on their way to stardom. But after some ridiculously harsh backlash from the press, the dream quickly disintegrated. If Ellis carries any bitterness at now having to play to a quarter-full room in a Cambridge pub, however, his warm demeanour concealed it well, as he delivered a set of pleasant, if forgettable bitter-sweet acoustic pop.

Next on the to-see list was Sweden's Sad Day For Puppets (pictured left) at the Haymakers. Save for Anna Eklund's ethereal vocals, the "nu-gaze" tag suggested in the programme was stretching the imagination a bit, but the band delivered an uplifting set of indie-rock that both them and the crowd seemed to enjoy. However, the most raptuorous reception of the day was saved for The Wilderness of Manitoba (pictured top) back at the Portland.  Coming all the way from Ontario, Canada, their beguiling blend of Fleet Foxes-esque four-part vocal harmonies, lush instrumentation (including banjo, cello and singing bowls) and innovative use of atmospherics (generated entirely by their instruments - no laptops here) made for the unquestionable highlight of the day.

I caught only a few songs from The Brute Chorus, but was impressed by a confident display, of frontman James Steel, and their pummeling reimagining of 50's style rock-and-roll. I then returned  to the Boathouse for what turned out to be an ark-less Alessi's Ark, as Alessi Laurent-Marke performed a 45-minute solo set. However, her beautiful voice and shy-but-sweet banter meant that she was more than able to hold her own, even with a few gaffs (which nobody would have been any the wiser of had she not said anything).

If any band's moniker was indicative of their sound then Pulled Apart By Horses (pictured right, tearing up the crowd) was that band. Their explosive post-hardcore, the perfect anthithesis of Alessi's set, tore up the crowd of the Portland Arms, whose confines provided the perfect setting for the ensuing mayhem. After their phenomenal performance, the big-haired guitarist (by now half-naked) triumphantly surfed the crowd, booting me in the face in the process. I regard it as a trophy from one of the most memorable performances I've seen in the Portland for some time. After such highs, the hearts-on-sleeve rock of Lonely The Brave at the Haymakerswas never going to quite compare, but that wasn't for want of trying on their part.

On the basis of both the attendance and the performances, Wish You Were Here was a huge success, and an enormous amount of credit has to go to the organisers, as well as all those who played. Hopefully this will be the first of many such festivals in Cambridge.

Did you attend? What did you think? Who were the highlights for you? Please leave your comments below

iTunes Ping - First Impressions

So I joined Ping, iTunes' "social network for music", essentially a Facebook in miniaturised form for music-lovers. In short, Ping allows you to follow your favourite music artists, alerting you of their recent activity, any artists they in turn are following, and allowing you to post comments on their profile. You can also follow friends and fellow Ping users, and (if you so wish in your Privacy settings) let them follow you, thus allowing you to recommend music artists to them and vice versa, as well as making any iTunes music purchases visible. And having spent a few hours playing around with it, here are my initial thoughts.

First off, it's pretty clunky. The presentation side of things is relatively okay, with a menu bar on the right-hand side consisting of just "Recent Activity","My Reviews", "People" and "Featured". Simple enough, but click on any of these menu bar options, and the menu (along with the "Find People" browser" tends to disappear; to recover it you have to click "Ping" on the top menu. A small annoyance, admittedly, but one that compunds the fact that finding the artists that you actually want to follow on Ping is unecessarily difficult. You would think Apple would've been able to sync this feature with your existing iTunes library, and automatically recommend artists that exist both in Ping and within your library. But no, you have to either type in the artist you're looking for, or trawl through the hundreds of "recommended" artists, few of which actually bear any semblance to your particular tastes in music.

At this early stage, the number of artists available to follow on Ping is understandably limited, although that's not to say there's not some interesting inclusions; amongst the artists I follow are HEALTH, Nico Muhly, Gang Gang Dance and Menomena. However, it seems like the artists are just as unsure on how to utilise Ping as the average Joe. The most recent post (at the time of writing) from HEALTH says it all; "So I think PING is really about discussion, communication. Good back and forth format, not so good for bulletins. And you can't list tourdates." Well, actually you can list tourdates, albeit in the unwieldy form of continuous prose rather than an actual list. Also, of the 20 or so artists I currently follow, none have posted in the past 5 days, which doesn't exactly fill you with confidence over the usefulness of Ping. Of course, you could choose to follow iTunes tools Coldplay, and be informed every time Chris Martin goes to take a crap, if you so wish.

For all its faults, there is potential in Ping. It's useful, particularly from a music blogger's perspective, to see the recent announcements of all your favourite artists there on one page (if they bother to post anything at all, that is). I also like the more personable nature that some artists, like HEALTH, have adopted for Ping, as opposed to the more sterile self-promotion tactics of other artists, and it's good to see the albums artists are currently listening to, as well as the artists they themselves follow. It's just disappointing that with Facebook and Twitter having been around for so long, that Apple couldn't make the first incarnation of Ping better defined and more user-friendly. I guess that's something they can work on over the zillion updates that will occur between now and iTunes 11.

Spotlight Artist: Andrew Cedermark

Former guitarist of Titus Andronicus (who released quite a good record earlier this year), Andrew Cedermark has just released his rather fabulous debut solo release Moon Deluxe. Its lo-fi but lush sound, aided by Cedermark's rich guitar work, will sit well with fans of Real Estate, but Moon Deluxe also has an organic intimacy to it which recalls Phil Elverum's Microphones project (indeed the title track both sounds and reads like it could have originated from The Glow Pt. 2). Some of his old band's ragged bar-room antics are still in evidence though, on the likes of Your Dream Is Killing Me, and the rambunctious closer I Won't Know Me Anymore.

Moon Deluxe, released on Underwater Peoples, is one of the year's most rousing records. You can listen to Anchorite on the Hear The Secret player.

New Music: iLiKETRAiNS - A Father's Son

Leeds' finest musical historians iLiKETRAiNS are returning with their second full-length album,  He Who Saw The Deep, on October 25th. Here's the video for single A Father's Son, a janglier affair than much of their previous work, though the words "Pry these words from my cold dead lips/ home is where the heart is" remind you who you're listening to.

The band will be playing the following dates in support of the new record:

14/10 - Hull, The Deep
25/10 - Glasgow, O2 ABC2
26/10 - Manchester, The Ruby Lounge
28/10 - Birmingham, Hare and Hounds
2/11 - London, 100 Club

Stream new Deerhunter album Halycon Digest in its entirety

Yes, Deerhunter's hotly anticipated new album Halycon Digest is just around the corner (out on 4AD next Monday), but for the impatient among you, it's available to stream in full here.

Look out for a review of Halycon Digest on these pages next week.

Do You Remember The First Time? The Dismemberment Plan - The City

In this semi-regular feature, I reminisce on the song which, if not introducing me to an artist for the first time, made some kind of indelible and irreversible impact on me.

For this first entry, I have decided to coincide it with the news of the reunion of The Dismemberment Plan. The Washington DC band have announced they will be playing together for the first time since their brief 2007 reunion for selected dates across the U.S., but have hinted that there may be more to come from them. Here's a full list:

(all in Jan 2011)

21/01 Washington, DC - Black Cat
22/01 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
27/01 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
28/01 Boston, MA - Paradise
29/01 New York, NY - Webster Hall

30/01 New York, NY - Webster Hall

I have to admit, my first experience with the D-Plan was not an entirely enjoyable one. Listening to 1999’s Emergency & I  (to be reissued next January) for the first time, there was no question that there was something a bit different about them, but their mixture of gurgling keyboards, perplexing time signatures, emo vocals and nagging guitars just didn’t gel with me initially. But The City, the album’s anthem and centrepiece, was a song I could instantly take to: it’s whirring synths, steady stabs of guitar, the pattering drums  all the while building up to that moment of release when Travis Morrision screams “since you’ve been goooooooone”.

It was enough to make me return to the album a year or two later, and sure enough everything made much more sense second time around. Sure, Morrison’s vocals may be “emo”, but they’re without that irritating nasal tone one associates with the genre, and he possesses a vocal range and versatility that left most of his contemporaries standing. Lyrically too, he was streets ahead; “I’ve lost my membership card to the human race/so don’t forget the face/’cus I know that I do belong here” he sings monotonically on What Do You Want Me To Say. This versatility can be applied to the record as a whole too; from the rollercoaster choruses of Gyroscope and 8 1/2 Minutes, to the deranged likes of Girl O' Clock and I Love A Magician, and the unnerving atmospherics of The Jitters, Emergency & I is a stellar collection of songs. Now with the D-Plan's re-union, I feel added impetus to add to that sole entry in my collection.

Listen to This City by The Dismemberment Plan on the "Hear The Secret" music player!

New Music: World's End Girlfriend

Japanese avante-garde/classical/post-rock/electronic maestro Katsuhiko Maeda, otherwise known as World's End Girlfriend, returns this week with a new album Seven Idiots, his first release on his own Virgin-Babylon Records. Check out first single and video Les Enfants Du Paradis, below. Anyone who's seen this guy live can concur how freaking amazing he is.

Review: Of Montreal - False Priest

False Priest, the tenth album by Kevin Barnes' technicolour troupe, can be considered as the third album from this current phase of Of Montreal, lifting its title, as with 2008's Skeletal Lamping, from a lyric contained in the band's 2007 near-masterpiece Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?. Promising a more R'n'B, bass-heavy sound this time around, and featuring contributions from Solange Knowles and critical darling Janelle Monáe, False Priest is in truth no great deviation from the band's recent work, but those deterred by Skeletal Lamping's schizophrenic tendencies may find the slightly more reined-in (by Of Montreal standards) False Priest to be a little more palatable.

On Skeletal Lamping, track names and divisions seemed little more than a suggestion; the album could've been divided up any number of ways, or just left as a single hour-long head-f*ck. On False Priest, most of the 13 cuts actually resemble stand-alone, fully-realised songs, although that's not to suggest that they're not packed to the rafters with the usual hysterics and histrionics. Yet whilst Skeletal Lamping, for all its critics, was rife with hooks, False Priest in comparison feels just a little short-changed in that respect, and for all the work and sonic details that Barnes has put into the album, there's not really much to come away with.

Barnes himself is a factor of his own downfall. His increasingly grating falsetto, coupled with his endless vocal overdubbing, and overly-verbose wordplay, reach new heights on False Priest, all too often suffocating the sounds of his fellow bandmates. Even with that aside, there are a couple of limp efforts here, particularly in the middle third; the soggy Hydra Fancies squelches along with no great purpose, and Girl Named Hello sees Barnes repeating "If I treated someone else / the way I treat myself / I'd be in jail", with diminishing effect, over an endlessly recycled indie-funk track which is fast becoming Of Montreal's stock in trade.

When Barnes throttles it back a bit in the latter third though, the rest of the band raise their game too.  Famine Affair is a surprisingly straightforward slice of 80's pop, made fun by Barnes' sulking ("go 'way, go 'way/ / you're a bad thing"). The morbid piano ballad of Casualty Affair sees Kevin Barnes laid bare (no, not like the notorious Las Vegas incident); "It's not fair / it shouldn't be like this/ you shouldn't be so compulsed" he cries, and then sighes "I dunno..../you should be more....awkward". That's followed by Around The Way, an edgy piece of synthpop that recalls Bowies Ashes To Ashes. First single Coquet Coquette is a success too, it's combination of Kinksy guitars and a galavanting chorus an appealing blend.

What of the guest appearances? Well, Solange Knowles is wasted on Sex Karma, trying and failing to out-diva Kevin Barnes. Far more successful is Monae, her suave delivery on Enemy Gene providing one of the more memorable choruses here.

There's much to enjoy about False Priest - I still haven't grown tired or Barnes' hilarious monologue on Our Riotous Defects - and Of Montreal continue to occupy an indie-sphere entirely their own. But Kevin Barnes has to draw inspiration from elsewhere next time; the arty love-damaged soul schtick is becoming increasingly thin and disingenuous.

P.S. David Barnes' psychotic artwork is, as ever, amazing.

71/100

Listen to if you like: MGMT, Phoenix, Memory Tapes

Grow Up! How to mature as a music artist

How many times have you read in an album review that an artist has gone for a more "mature" sound? How many times has that made you cringe? If you've read those words in Q or Rolling Stone, "mature" pretty much translates into "sold out" and/or "become really bland". So-called maturity can be a terrible thing for the creativity and credibility of a band - just look at the Red Hot Chili Peppers - but the fact is, very few artists can get away with forever mining the same sound. And when you start off playing as loud and as hard as you possibly can, there's only one way you can really go.

Portland, Oregon indie-punkers The Thermals are a prime example of a band  currently stuck in this conundrum. Their fifth album, Personal Life, which came out last Monday on Kill Rock Stars, is a disappointment, the sound of a band with the air taken out of them, when once they bristled with energy. Nobody could accuse them of "selling out"; their no-frills approach of guitar-bass-drums remains as true as ever. But their limited template just cannot bring anything to the (all too numerous) lower tempo songs on here.

Yet good bands can mature, and remain artistically vital long into their careers. Here are a couple of examples:

Pavement

Okay, so admittedly there's not many people who would say that their favourite Pavement album is Brighten The Corners or Terror Twilight. But those two releases honed in on the tunes that were always there, beneath all the jerking around and slack-strung guitars. And whilst the recording of Terror Twilight in full 24-track glory may have seemed like heresy to some, it served to make The Hexx the most densely atmospheric song in their entire catalogue.

Proof: Shady Lane (from Brighten The Corners), ...and Carrot Rope (from Terror Twilight)

Arcade Fire

A more recent example, yes, and a band (one hopes) still relatively early into their career, but the Arcade Fire solved the quite enviable problem of how exactly do you should follow up one of the defining debut albums of the last decade. Whilst Neon Bible was perhaps a minor misstep, this year's The Suburbs re-affirmed them as critical darlings by stripping away much of the  previous bombast, and delivering a set of songs with a clearly realised concept that sounded all the better in one another's company. And #1 positions on both sides of the Atlantic confirmed that it wasn't just critics who were in agreement.

Proof: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), Ready To Start (both from the Suburbs)

Fugazi

"Mature" shouldn't even be in the vocabulary of your average hardcore/post-hardcore band - most (Drive Like Jehu, Black Eyes, At The Drive In) burn fast and bright, whilst those that stick around (...Trail Of The Dead) go into a downward spiral. But typically Fugazi (along with perhaps Unwound) are the exception to the rule. Crucially, Fugazi demonstrated that sound experimentation, along with ever-improving musicianship and even a degree of subtlety, didn't have to come at the cost of the band's trademark intensity, and as great as 13 Songs and Repeater are, it's arguably the likes of 1995's Red Medicine and 2001's (probable) swansong The Argument that will remain the band's most enduring classics.

Proof: Fell, Destroyed (from Red Medicine), Full Disclosure (from The Argument)

Nick Cave

Here's another alternative; don't "mature" at all, but revel in your own filth as a dirty old man. If it helps, enlist some of your buddies in a side-project that allows you and your friends to let your hair down, and use that to re-inform and reinvigorate your day-job. That raucous first Grinderman album was swiftly followed by Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, possibly the most rollicking release in the Bad Seeds catalogue. The release of Grinderman 2 on Monday is a highly anticipated as any Bad Seeds album.

Proof: Get It On (from Grinderman), We Call Upon The Author (from Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!)

September - it's the new Christmas!

This time of year always seems to bring up a crop of high quality releases, and this year is certainly no exception. We've already had the outstanding new Working For A Nuclear Free City record, and that's just the tip of the iceberg - check out this list of lovelies (UK release dates). Look out for reviews of a selection of these titles on these very pages.

07/09
The Thermals: Personal Life (Kill Rock Stars)
Working For A Nuclear Free City: Jojo Burger Tempest (Melodic)
 
13/09
Black Mountain: Wilderness Heart (Jagjaguwar)
Blonde Redhead: Penny Sparkle (4AD)
Crocodiles: Sleep Forever (Fat Possum)
Grinderman: Grinderman 2 (Mute)
Interpol: Interpol (Matador)
Les Savy Fav: Root For Ruin (physical release) (Wichita)
Of Montreal: False Priest (Polyvinyl)
The Walkmen: Lisbon (Fat Possum)
World's End Girlfriend: Seven Idiots (Virgin-Babylon)

20/09
Abe Vigoda: Crush (Post Present Medium)

27/09
Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest (4AD)
No Age: Everything in Between (Sub-Pop)

Review: Working For A Nuclear Free City - Jojo Burger Tempest

Manchester-based Working For A Nuclear Free City don't do things by halves. Their first EP and LP were combined, along with a few extra tracks, onto Businessmen & Ghosts, a dazzling 2CD near two-hour sprawl that set about tying every musical strand to come from Manchester in the last 20 years together. Now they've returned with another 2CD effort, whose second disc comprises the 33-minute title track.

As great and as varied as Businessmen & Ghosts was, its array of musical ideas were all lifted wholepiece from other sources: a bit of Stone Roses here, a smattering of Doves there, some Chemical Brothers-style floor-filling to fill in the cracks. Whilst many of the musical touchstones on Jojo Burger Tempest remain the same, WfaNFC succeed in integrating them more seamlessly and really making them their own.

The band's love for instrumentals hasn't diminished, and Do A Stunt, which opens disc 1, is about as stellar as instrumentals get, throwing a careers-worth of ideas down at breakneck speed, as  funky basslines duel with mariachi guitars, vibrato-heavy synths and electronic noise breakdowns. This bleeds into the shimmery Silent Times, instantly eclipsing Sarah Dreams Of Summer as the band's most positively lovely song to-date, whilst being reminiscent of the Rose's Ten Storey Love Song.

Those two opening songs set an incredibly tough act to follow, but remarkably the remaining 15 songs on the first disc are able to hold their own. Helped by greater production values, the wealth of sounds and ideas on display here actually make Businessmen & Ghosts sound creatively redundant at times: the cinematic orchestral pomp of  B.A.R.R.Y; the gently rolling piano and clipped beats of A Black Square With Four Yellow Stars; the frazzled, Radiohead-esque Little Lenin. You think you know where a song is going, only for it dart down an unforseen avenue, like the moment the otherwise straightforward Alphaville throws down its arpeggiated guitars and electro synths. Thankfully, this wilful experimentation doesn't get in the way of  some memorable tunes, the highlight amongst highlights being Faster Daniel Faster, whose almost nursery-rhyme verses ride a crest of soaring guitars into a simple but triumphant chorus.

And then it's onto that second disc. Almost as though they felt unable to lay enough ideas down within a single song, WfaNFC indulge themselves with the title track, a half-hour sound collage of everything rolling around in their heads. By the second half of its running time, it devolves more into cut-and-paste than feeling like a single seamless piece, but the results are never less than enthralling, and it makes for a highly worthwhile addition to an album that already seemed to be bursting at the seams with creativity. It also serves to touch upon the band''s clear love for the 90's Haçienda scene; the term "nu-rave" may have become much derided and quickly obselete, but it's during the most hyperactive moments of Jojo Burger Tempest that WfaNFC seem to give the term any form of definition, not to mention dignity.

That similarity between Silent Times and Ten Storey Love Song seems entirely fitting; with its merging of dextrous indie-rock, funky grooves and electronic and rave music,  Jojo Burger Tempest is the album Second Coming imagined itself to be. Sure, it's a lot to take in in a single sitting, and a little uneven in places, but the end result is consistently compelling, frequently astounding. Get past that unwieldy band name, and the admittedly naff album title, and you're left with one of the year's most head-spinningly brilliant albums.

88/100

Spotlight Artist: Haight-Ashbury

Haight-Ashbury is a district of San Francisco, noted for its bohemian 60's counter-culture. Conversely, it's also the name of this Glaswegian psych/rock/folk trio. Musically too, this band seem far removed from their brooding home-town contemporaries, and the sexy indie-cool on the likes of Favourite Song and Freeman Town are more Rilo Kiley than Twilight Sad. The flipside to their sound is a folksy psychadelia, in-keeing with their geographical namesake, on songs like Molitof and Sympathetic Strings.

The band are about to embark on a big UK tour, including several dates with cult indie-heroes The Vaselines. I hope to catch them at the Portland Arms in Cambridge on November 16th.

Review: Women - Public Strain

Along with Girls and Mountain Man, Women are amongst a spate of recent bands with misleading gender-based names. It was fitting then, that their self-titled debut, released on Jagjaguwar, was such a hard album to pin down stylistically - blissful 60's pop in some places, discordant art-rock in others, unfathomable noise everywhere else. It was an unfocussed record, but it hinted at a whole range of fascinating avenues the band could explore further.

They go some way towards realising at least some of these ideas on Public Strain. Starting tentatively with Can't You See, its with Heat Distraction that Public Strain hits its stride, with clanging art-rock guitars and stuttering rhythms that recall Deerhoof at their most playful. Better still is Locust Valley, its richly interwoven guitar parts and gently wooed chorus helping to create something disarmingly beautiful.

As with their debut, Patrick Flegel's lyrics remain difficult to make out, as though they were sung down a long metal pipe. The band's sound is still filtered through a wall of noise - otherwise straightforward songs like Narrow With The Hall threaten to be engulfed by feedback - but moodpieces such as Bells serve to hold the album together, whereas in the past they might have disrupted the flow.

What's clear with Public Strain is how taut these guys have become as musicians. China Steps latches onto a jarring motorik rhythm and never releases you from its clutches. Drag Open's mangled guitars could almost be prime-era Sonic Youth. But as Black Rice, their previous highpoint from their first record revealed, the band know their way with a hook, and 6-minute album closer Eyesore is laden with them. This, along with Locust Valley, and the gentle lullaby of Venice Lockjaw, make for one of the strongest closing runs you are likely to hear this year.

Public Strain still doesn't quite feel like the finished article, but its a real grower, and with the band harnessing some of the good ideas of their debut, and throwing a few more into the mixing pot for good measure, there's every reason to believe Women will continue to grow as a band too.

83/100

Listen to if you like: Deerhunter, No Age, Ganglians

How Could You Have A "Top 50 Videos of the 90's" List...

And not include this stunning gem?

Click on the pic to view the Pumpkins' classic Tonight, Tonight video. A homage to the silent Georges Méliès film A Trip To The Moon, it's the pinnacle of a fine collection of music vids the band made across the 90s. Pitchfork did at least include the cut for 1979 - see the rest of their list here.

As for the worst video, well, it may be one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite bands, but the video for Velouria is a real shocker.

The Naira Project rock Harmstock!

Providing a more-than-welcome break from the dad-rock bands playing either side (and actually playing a set of entirely original material - halllelulah!), the Naira Project were the undisputed highlight of a particularly windy Harmstock 2010. Yes I may be biased since my Dad counts amongst their ranks, but nobody who witnessed the Naira Project last Sunday could deny what was a thrillingly original and varied set, not to mention just how far they've progressed from when they stood on the very same stage a year ago.

Thanks to my sis for the photos. The Naira Project will be playing an Introducing session on BBC Radio Lincolnshire on October 15th.