Best of 2009: Glasgow PodcART

Taking a wee break from the albums I've loved this year to talk about something else that's been a massive influence on both me and the blog. This time you can actually accuse me of writing nice stuff about my pals, but they deserve it.

In case you haven't heard of them, Glasgow PodcART are a team of Glasgow based music fanatics, who put together a weekly podcast laying music from both signed and unsigned artists and lots, lots more. So far, so simple. What makes the weekly podcasts must listens for me isn't just the music, but the people involved.

I was a bit of a late comer to the PodcART, only starting to listen at around episode 20 after seeing the name in Hinterland brochures. Within my first few weeks of listening I was introduced to the concept of Pooching the band, had Trapped in Kansas become forever known to me as Pumped in Venice, listened in on a conversation about porno boots for transvestites and heard something which - no matter how hard I try - I'll never be able to forget involving a glass Irn Bru bottle. Oh, and I heard an absolute ton of cracking music.

To say that listening to Glasgow PodcART has introduced me to new bands would be a massive understatement. Not every song or band is a winner with me, I'd be a bit worried if they were - but the good to bad ratio is heavily weighted in favour of the good. Without them I'd probably not have caught on to half the bands that have featured on Aye Tunes over the past six months, at least not nearly as quickly. I treat it as a good sign that I've upped my game when more of the bands featured now are ones I'm familiar with, but pretty much every week there's still something new to me, and for that I can't thank them PodcART team enough.

Aside from the music there's another thing I love about the PodcART, and that's the banter between whatever team members are taking part in any given week. I've had to stop listening when I'm on public transport, as there's almost always at least one moment every week where I'll uncontrollably laugh out loud. Often while thinking "that's just wrong" at the same time.
Listening to the team in conversation their enthusiasm for music and what they are doing is obvious, and infectious.

Since I generally attend gigs on my own, none of my pals are really into the same things as me and I don't want to be responsible for them having a lousy night out seeing bands that only I want to see, the Podcart team have been handy there too, since they often provide someone for me to talk to when I'm out and about on my own. They really are a lovely bunch of people.

More recently they've been responsible for some of my favourite gigs of the year, from the New Artists Showcase gig in November to their monthly live session gigs in The 13th Note. I know I'm not the only one who counts last week's Christmas party as a highlight of my year either.

All in all, if you have ears I highly recommend listening to the PodcART. Thanks Ally, Halina, Louise, Nicola and Sean for excellent entertainment, long may it continue.

Glasgow PodcART Website

Best of 2009: Beerjacket - Animosity

It seems somewhat fitting to me that the first album I reviewed over here ends up being my favourite album of the year. Even if I did and still do hate the review I wrote.

As I mentioned in the Top 10 post, Animosity took the top spot for more than just musical reasons. The release of Animosity was another thing that coincided with my birthday this year, and was an album that helped me get my act together round here and attempt to do more writing.
The Beerjacket gig I went to back at the start of August is pretty significant too, it was the first of my "at least one gig every week" quest, which I've kept up until now. I'm having a break this week, incidentally. Basically, if you don't like my writing, blame Beerjacket!

Even without the personal stuff the musical reasons for Animosity topping my list are pretty compelling on their own.
Over the course of the year Animosity is probably the album I've come back and listened to in it's entirety the most. It's hard just pick one song from it that stands out - Drum maybe peeks it's head above the others as a favourite - as the entire album is consistently solid.

Deceptively simple, with for the most part just one man and his guitar, Beerjacket songs are beautifully crafted and performed, with lyrics that are never trite or forced. From that point of view it's a little disappointing that a lot of the exposure Peter got this year came from his Dancing in the Dark cover. On the other hand, here's hoping that hearing that will have sent people to check out original Beerjacket songs.

Now to address the elephant in the room from that old review of mine: Elliott Smith. I got a bit stuck on that last time round, so this time I'll just say that Beerjacket songs remind me quite a lot of sitting and listening to my old Elliott Smith albums. To me that's great, Smith is one of my favourite songwriters. Beerjacket does have a stronger voice though.

Now, why not head on over to Peenko's Blog where you'll find a Beerjacket interview and as a Christmas bonus, all the demos for Animosity available for download?

Best of 2009: You Already Know - Stop Whispering

I slacked off a bit from getting back to writing about my picks for albums of the year, but I'm getting back to it a bit now, starting with this one.

I've mentioned previously on Aye Tunes that instrumental bands tend to be tough for me to get on board with, mainly due to having seen and heard so many rubbish ones over the past year or two. Imagine my surprise then when I fell in love with not one, but two of them over the course of this year.

Stop Whispering is the debut album by You Already Know, recorded upstairs in Avalanche Records in Glasgow. Funnily enough, to me at least, there was a launch gig for it on my 30th birthday.
Words like "epic" and "incredible" are terribly over used, but they do fit the way I feel about this album. The songs hit all the right buttons for me, ranging from spine tingling and melodic one minute, to ear scorching riffs the next, and back again.

It can be hard for me to fall in love with songs without lyrics to latch on to, but with this album You Already Know kick that straight out the window. The way the songs build and climax grab me instantly, and take me on a ride I never want to get off.

Seeing the band, after missing out on several opportunities earlier in the year, last week in the cramped confines of Glasgow's 13th Note showed that not only do YAK work for me on record, but they also, pardon my french, fucking nail it live. My round up of the gig afterwards on Twitter was "You Already Know just had rough sex with my ears, and they loved it, the sluts", which is a very, very good thing indeed.

Stop Whispering is nothing short of glorious, and gives me chills every time I listen to it.
Visit their Website and MySpace to have a listen and find out how to buy a copy.
Also, if you swing by the I Need Musik website you can get hold of the song below and a couple of others for free.

Fireworks For New Beginnings (Alternative Mix)

You Already Know - Website - MySpace

The Scottish Bloggers and Music Sites Awards (The Scottish BAMS Awards) 2009

A wee while back Peenko sounded me out about a mass poll by all us Scottish types to put together a top 20 albums of the year. Unlike plans I hatch in pubs, he actually put it all together.
So now the votes have been cast and counted, it's time to announce the winner.


Andy from The Phantom Band had this to say: "This makes us feel very honoured because the opinion of people out there giving opinions is what matters most, rather than the financially influenced press. It always amazes me that people would take it upon themselves to go out and champion a band or an album or a band for no material gain, but it gives me faith in human nature. Blogs and reviews have been the only advertising we've ever had. Apart from all those people who got online and promoted us, we'd like to thank those little almost-stale doughnuts you get in big tubs from Sainsburys for keeping us fat during the recording. We obviously also have our Producer Paul Savage and the wonderful people at Chemikal Underground to thank for letting us do what we want. These guys are the quiet heroes of Scottish music for sure."


The full top 20 is:
1. The Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage
2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
3. De Rosa - Prevention
4. King Creosote - Flick the V's
5. Withered Hand - Good News
6. The Twilight Sad - Forget The Night Ahead
7. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
8. Beerjacket - Animosity
9. Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
10. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
11. My Latest Novel - Deaths and Entrances
12. Malcolm Middleton - Waxing Gibbous
13. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - s/t
14. You Already Know - s/t
15. Broken Records - Until the Earth Begins to Part
16. The XX - s/t
17. The Antlers - Hospice
18. Sufjan Stevens - The BQE
19. And So I Watch You From Afar
20. Wilco - The Album

Taking place in the voting were 17 Seconds, Me, Dear Scotland, Earz Mag, Elba Sessions, Glasgow Podcart, Hooligans Lament, Jim Gellatly, JocknRoll, Jockrock, Kowalskiy, Last Years Girl, Love Shack Baby, Manic Pop Thrills, My Portiswasp Says, Off the Beaten Tracks, The Pop Cop, Products of a Gaseous Brain, Song By Toad, The Blues Bunny, The Daily Growl, The Spill, The Steinberg Principle, The Vinyl Villain, Under the Radar and of course Peenko. All sites worth visiting.

Best of 2009 - The Aye Tunes Top 10 Albums

The plan with this was to write a bit about all the albums before I published the final top 10, but time and laziness have gone against me, and if I try to write about everything then I'll keep changing my mind and never get the list done.
Instead, here's the top 10 with a couple of comments, and I'll get back to writing a bit about them all, and maybe a few that missed out, over the coming days and weeks.

The list has gone through umpteen different permutations since I started thinking about it, and has been complicated slightly by a good bunch of the stuff I've loved most this year being a single or EP rather than an album.I had to leave out a whole bunch of records I loved, and tried not to be influenced by other lists.
You can let me know what you think of my choices.

Before I can change my mind again, here's my top 10, after the jump:

Best of 2009: The Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage

Before I put out any kind of Best of 2009 list I plan to write a bit about some of my favourite albums of the year. Re-reviewing a couple, but mostly - because for the first half of this year at least Aye Tunes was shit at reviews - reviewing them for the first time, even if they've been out for ages. I'm not touching albums of the decade, I think my brain would explode if I tried.

Waaaay back in January I got all excited about the debut album by a Scottish band I'd spent a chunk of 2007 and all of 2008 stalking, catching live as much as I could and playing the Hell out of the one single of theirs I owned. That debut release was Checkmate Savage by The Phantom Band. To say it was long awaited by me is a bit of an understatement, ever since catching the band supporting Mother & The Addicts in August 2007, while they were still unsigned and everything, I'd been desperate to hear more from them.

Thankfully when the album eventually hit in January it didn't let me down. Every time I'd seen the band they sounded a bit better and by the time I got to hear the songs recorded they sounded fantastic. Despite my familiarity with some of the songs from live shows the whole album sounded fresh to me. Nearly 12 months it still sounds fresh with each listen, and there has been a lot of them over the course of this year.

I'm fairly sure there's a rule that when talking about The Phantom Band you have to talk about Krautrock, and it does rear it's head a few times throughout the album, especially on Crocodiles, but it is just one of many influences and styles that crop up throughout. The swampy rhythms and occasional staggering riff grab hold of you, hold on and take you along for the ride.

Checkmate Savage is an assured, mature debut, no jitters by a band finding their feet are noticeable to me. I'm sure having veteran producer Paul Savage on board helped with that, but nonetheless, it's a fine debut that never fails to be rewarding and lives up to it's ambition.

My only issue with it is that having lived with the earlier single version of Throwing Bones for so long (it was named one of my favourite tracks of 2007 on one of my old blogs), the new version on the album still doesn't feel quite right to me. A minor quibble at best, other than that the ablum remains one of my favourites of the year.

The Phantom Band - Folk Song Oblivion

The Phantom Band MySpace

Album Review - Cuddly Shark

First of all, Cuddly Shark is a brilliant name, therefor to pull off such a name, your band has to be pretty great too. Good thing that Cuddly Shark manage it then. I've had this album a few weeks, and it that time it's had plenty of listens, but as is the way with me it has taken this long for me to get round to writing up a review.

Cuddly Shark caught my attention earlier this year with a trio of very promising singles, some tracks from them make a reappearance here on the album, so I was rather looking forwards to hearing this self titled debut album.

Right from the off the album grabs you and yells in your face, opening track Bowl of Cherries is all thrashy, shouty vocals and even - hurrah - hand claps. I'm a sucker for hand claps, ever since Kenickie released Come Out 2Nite.
From there on in the album is packed with fantastic riffs, razor sharp lyrics and most of all a massive sense of humour, at time the lyrics are so tongue in cheek it's amazing anyone can actually sing them.
Influences are worn of sleeves, but Cuddly Shark have so many different influences that throwing them all together brings out something quite special.
It isn't all manic riffs and shouted vocals either, the band switch things up often enough to keep things from getting stale, showing on Whiteoaks that they can be tender as well as tongue in cheek, and throwing in a cover of old country song Boney Fingers for good measure.

Along with all that this album contains both my favourite celebrity diss of the year with "Jamie Foxx on Later With Jools Holland", and my favourite sweary moment of the year on last single "The Sheriff of Aspen Bay".
AND there's an old fashioned hidden track at the end.

Brilliant stuff quite frankly. Cuddly Shark are clearly having a fantastic time on this record, and so am I.
The album might not have been out for long, but it has already forced it's way into my favourites of 2009.

As a wee sampler here's Cuddly Jim, which was a b-side to The Sheriff of Aspen Bay single. I'm picking this instead of something from the album because (a) it is fab, and the album tracks can be heard on MySpace and (b) it's got my name in it, obviously.

Download Cuddly Shark - Cuddly Jim

Cuddly Shark MySpace - Website
Buy the album here.

Album Review: The Gothenburg Address

It seems every time I sat down to do this review something or other has cropped up to stop me finishing it. As a result it's been written in stages, so apologies in advance if that makes it a terrible read. Point out any huge flaws and I'll fix them.

The Gothenburg Address are a four piece from Edinburgh, comprising of Chris Bathgate (guitar), Rob Doig (bass) Luke Joyce (guitar) and David Jeans (drums). If any of those names are name to you, give yourself a point, in the past some of the members have played in other bands, including The Complete Stone Roses, Arab Strap and The Zephyrs. The band themselves first came to my attention back in May around the time of their release of A Lesser Coming Home as a single, mostly thanks to Ed over at 17 Seconds.

If you were paying attention a moment ago you'll have noticed that I didn't mention a vocalist. That's because there isn't one. That in itself maked The Gothenburg Address a bit of a hard sell for me right away. I enjoy an instrumental band, but sometimes it feels like you can't move for them. If a band has a charasmatic singer as a front man, if the songs aren't up to scratch and the band isn't on form, they can hide behind that front man. With an instrumental band there's no hiding place, and believe me, during some of those "can't move for them" bands that I've seen and heard, I've really wanted to hide. However, happily, any fears I initially had were blown out the water upon hearing that first single and from then on I've been keeping an eye and ear on The Gothenburg Address.

Which brings us along to this, their debut album. I'll almost never go out my way to ask a band to send me something - it's a confidence thing, I'm always convinced they'll say no - but when their Facebook page said they were inviting promo requests I couldn't hold myself back, and the album dropped through my door last week and has been getting played regularly since.

The album kick off with the grand sounding Leaving The Last Behind, which is lent further gravitas, as if it needed any, by Alan Barr, who pops up to lend cello. From there on, frankly, the album doesn't put a foot wrong. There's no need for a hiding place when your band sounds this tight and your songs are this well crafted.
There's no sense of the songs being samey, another trap some instrumental bands can fall into, everything sounds different but distinctive.

You can invite comparisons to the likes of Mogwai, even Aereogramme in places, but although those bands are handy reference points, The Gothenburg Address don't really sound anything like them, they sound like The Gothenburg Address, which is just another reason why I'm so in love with this album.

Quite honestly, there's not a single bad thing I can say about this album. It's already pushed its way through the queue of other albums I've loved this year to announce itself as a likely candidate for one of the year's finest. With that in mind it is hard to pick highlights, but just shading it are the tracks that bookend the album, opener Leaving The Last Behind and finale I Am Made Of Hearts + Fire, along with Its Not A Fjord But A Lake just ever so slightly shade it as my favourite tracks.

The album doesn't just live up to the early promise of May's single release, it exceeds it. On the arbitrary, meaningless star scoring system, it gets a solid Five Stars out of five*.

You can find The Gothenburg Address at the following places - Website - MySpace - Twitter

The band have put together a trailer for the album, you can watch that below.


Also, for a bit more of a taster of the band, you can jump over to their website and download their Shimmer In The City EP, made up of a live recording of the band performing at Nice n Sleazys in Glasgow, for the bargain price of nothing.

*I was asked about the scoring system the other day, so I'll go ahead an explain. I don't put an awful lot of faith in stars/numbers to sum up an album and think it can lead to laziness in just looking to see how an album rated. I'm all about catering to everyone though, so I'll include an out of five stars system on a review to keep those that like them happy, I'll just point out that in the grand scheme of things they don't really matter.