Keeping It Peel - Teenage Fanclub #keepingitpeel

Best way to follow that last post, featuring one of my favourite bands? Do one with another of my favourite bands.

If you don't know who Teenage Fanclub are then get yourself to Google and/or a record shop right now. We'll wait for you to come back.

Bellshill's finest can do no wrong by me. The alarming part is that I was only 11 when this session happened. Goodness I feel old now.

Teenage Fanclub appeared twice in the 1990 Festive Fifty, and three times is the 1991 one.

Teenage Fanclub - John Peel Session 28.08.1990
1. God Knows It's True
2. So Far Gone
3. Alcoholiday
4. Long Hair

This Silent Forest - The Fight

Lost in the midst of my gig self promotion last week was this new single from This Silent Forest. It is too good to let pass by without mention, so I'm invoking the good old "better late than never" ruling to mention it this week instead.

Having recently completed the terrifying sounding task of writing and recording a song every day for 30 days  - I can't even knock out a blog post a day and this requires no creativity, unlike songwriting - This Silent Forest have a new single out now through Never Make Friends Records.

The Fight is a grand sounding number. A slow build and storytelling lyrics teamed with rich layers of instrumentation build to a huge climax, resulting in a song that is sweeping and epic, without falling into the trap of sounding contrived that can often follow such things. Straddling the pop and modern folk camps, The Fight is pretty excellent really. The single is backed with a couple of alternative versions.

The Fight is available to download from iTunes and Amazon. A remix by Oh You Dancer is also available at iTunes and Amazon. The 30 songs in 30 days can be found on the band's Youtube page.

The Fight by This Silent Forest

This Silent Forest: Facebook - Youtube

Something New From The Twilight Sad

The Twilight Sad's third album, No One Can Ever Know, won't be out until early next year, but you can grab the closing track from the album, Kill it in the Morning, for free right now.
Kill it in the Morning hints at a bit of change in sound for The Twilight Sad, while still retain the atmosphere and hint of menace I tend to associate with them. James Graham's vocals are as spine tingling as always, and work better than I might have expected to over the more industrial sound.

Have a listen:
Kill It In The Morning by The Twilight Sad

Download in exchange for your email address:

The album No One Can Ever Know will be released in February 2012 by Fat Cat Records.
The Twilight Sad - Website

Teenage Fanclub Return, Summer Gets Instantly Better

Just because half of the Internet has already beaten me to it is no reason to neglect something new from one of my favourite bands.

When tour dates and a new album from Teenage Fanclub were announced recently there was much excitement round here. The Fannies have been favourites since way back when I was working what my own taste in music was. As I mentioned a few days ago they are a massive reason that I went to see Alex Chilton many years ago.
After a long wait - it's been five years since Man Made - there's a new album almost ready to arrive. Just in time fr the summer too. Summer and Teenage Fanclub go hand in hand for me. When the sun is splitting the sky and temperatures are rising, admittedly not that common in Scotland, it's hard to beat getting a bit of Grand Prix in your ears.

There's a download of new track Baby Lee available at the Merge website here. It's not a wild departure for the past, nor something revolutionary and groundbreaking. It is perfect Teenage Fanclub though, and it is as welcome as a warm hug from a much missed friend.

Shadows will be released on May 31st in the UK and Europe, and in North America on June 8th.
Around the same time the band head off on tour. Confirmed dates so far are:
May 1st – London Koko – Camden Crawl Headline
May 27th – Manchester Academy 2
May 28th – Sheffield Leadmill
May 30th – Dublin The Academy
June 1st – Aberdeen The Warehouse
June 2nd – Glasgow O2 ABC
June 3rd – Edinburgh The Picture House
June 4th – Leeds The Cockpit
June 6th – Bristol Academy
June 7th – Birmingham Academy 2

Teenage Fanclub Website

The Twilight Sad: The Room - Single Review

I generally wait til a bit closer to release to review stuff, but since the video for The Room is doing the rounds and is very pretty I wanted to show it off, so this has been bumped up the review schedule a bit.
Early versions of The Room and b-side The Neighbours Can’t Breathe originally appeared as Untitled #27 and Untitled #28 respectively way back in 2008 on The Twilight Sad Killed My Parents And Hit The Road, before being spruced up for inclusion on last year's Forget The Night Ahead album, so both songs have been around for a while.

The Room previously grabbed me the standout track on an album full of excellent songs when listening to Forget The Night Ahead. Repeated listens and time haven't changed that.
Centred around thumping drums and piano, and gradually descneding into an aural assault as more layers of noise join in, including an appearance by My Latest Novel's Laura McFarlane. The Room is both beautiful and terrifying. James Graham doesn't do storytelling lyrics, leaving the listener to project their own meaning on to his words, and in the case of The Room the music and lyrics mesh perfectly to take me to dark, unsettling places, in part influenced by Hubert Selby Jr's novel of the same name.
Claustophobic, unsettling, but undeniably gorgeous at the same time, The Room is as far as you can get from a disposable four minute pop song.

The Neighbours Can’t Breathe back up The Room on the single, in a stripped back acoustic form.
With the volume dialed down and the distorted guitars stripped off the song is down to bare bones, just acoustic guitar and vocals. A million miles away from the album version, and from Untitled #28 for that matter, and none the worse for it. Like the A-side, it is gorgeous, but thankfully a whole lot less sinister.

The Room is out on 7" and download through FatCat on 15th April, you can pre-order the single here. Watch the video after the jump.

Christmas Songs - Day 5

Day five, and due to scheduling issues, a song that's already appeared on a million other places before I've been able to slot it in. That'll teach me to plan ahead!

Today's offering is a brand new free download Christmas song by There Will Be Fireworks, a band who blew me away twice live this year, and whose debut album is still slugging it out for inclusion on my top ten of the year.

There Will Be Fireworks - In Excelsis Deo

Gig Review: The Whisky Works, Trapped In Kansas

Thursday, December 3rd 2009.
The Whisky Works and Trapped In Kansas, The Mill at Òran Mór, Glasgow.

I did say I wasn't going to review every single gig I go to, but I could do with a break from writing up my favourite albums - lots of half finished posts and headaches - so last night's gig is getting a quick write up.

I'd been looking forward to this gig for a while, I think I'd grabbed tickets almost immediately after the became available on The Mill website. I hadn't counted on my poor financial planning meaning it would use up every bit of my remaining cash to get there, although by this point I should have known better. Happily it was worth it, it was even worth the long walk home from the centre of Paisley to the arse end, where I live.

I hadn't seen The Whisky Works before, but I did pick up their debut EP when it was released. To be honest, I wasn't completely convinced by it. While it was mostly enjoyable, there were a few bits that left me cold. Nonetheless, they were a band I'd fancied catching for a while.
I'm very glad I caught them now. Having not seen the band before, I can't say what effect the recent addition of a new bassist, Ross Jenkins - also of Hey Vampires, but the band sounded fantastic. Energetic, moledic, engaging and loud. All those issues I had with their songs on the EP were gone live too. Really very impressed.

Incidentally, I've just realised one of the reasons I wasn't completely sold on the EP, Deficit Attention Program, that The Whisky Works released earlier this year is that the copy I got from eMusic skips all over the place. What I though were weirdly arranged and repetitive bits are actually screwed up mp3s. Oops!

I could have sworn I'd written about Trapped In Kansas before over here, but looking back it seems that other than mentioning a few of their gigs, I haven't. I'll rectify that more fully sometime soon. Last time I saw them, a while back in The Flying Duck, I was shaking off a cold, so wasn't in the best of form for judging bands. However what I heard that night, along with the songs I'd heard previously and since, were more than enough to rocket them up my bands to keep an eye on list. Thus, getting to see them again last night was something I was rather excited about.
I wasn't alone in that either, there were a whole score of familiar faces in the crowd last night. I dare say none of us went home disappointed. Well, except perhaps the member of Team PodcART who wanted five more songs, but if you ask me being left wanting more is far, far better than a band that outstay their welcome.
Trapped in Kansas make songs that are all at once complex and intricate, yet crowd pleasing and catchy, showing that you don't need to dumb things down to get the audience singing along.
A special mention also has to go to Finn Le Marinel's vocals. They are distincive, beautiful and are one of many things that helps this band, for me, stand out from the pack.

At a few recent gigs at The Mill I've noticed a few issues with the sound, but happily there were none noticable last night, both bands sounded great. Good night? As that wee nodding dog off the telly might say, oh yes.

The Whisky Works MySpace
Trapped In Kansas MySpace

Christmas Songs - Day 4

Day 4 and I'm not bored with this yet (admittedly that's because I wrote all the posts on Tuesday and scheduled them rather than writing them day by day), so hopefully you aren't either.

Today Teenage Fanclub get a turn. I won't hear a bad word said about Teenage Fanclub, they've made some of my favourite songs. Their Christmas offering comes from an old XFM compilation album, It's A Cool, Cool, Christmas. It was for charity, but now seems to be out of print, so I don't need to feel too guilty about posting a song off it.

Teenage Fanclub - Christmas Eve

Teenage Fanclub Website

The Twilight Sad Announce Intimate Scottish Gigs

Headline says it all for this one really.
The Twilight Sad have lined up two Scottish gigs in December.

On December 15th they will play The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh, on the 16th they cross country to play Nice N Sleazy in Glasgow.

Tickets are available now from Synergy Concerts

TV21 Album Launch

Scotland-based post-punk new wave band TV21 will shortly be releasing their second album, a mere 28 years after their first one. To celebrate, there's a launch party in the Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh on the 24th of May. As well as a set from TV21 Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit and Adam Thompson of We Were Promised Jetpacks will be playing acoustic sets.

Tickets cost a fiver plus booking fee and you can get them from Tickets Scotland.

Sadly there's next to no chance of me getting to it, it's on the wrong side of the country for me for one thing, but it looks like a good night.

For more info on TV21, the album and the gig you can visit their website or MySpace.