"An ectoplasmic smudge of a song sticky with McCartneyesque keen and channelling psyche-pop attitude" - NME-speke for 'not bad at all,' their verdict on Guided by Voices' new UK single Everywhere With Helicopter. Of course, you'll already know this if you've snagged the 2cd Ten Years of NoisePop compilation from earlier this year (also feat. Neko Case, Spoon, Beulah, Oranger, Track Star, etc)...

One of reallyrather's fave finds of '01 still being discovered: "An enjoyable blast of catchy Beach Boys by-way-of Weezer pop' says Sponic of Librarian types from Swedish band Holiday With Maggie. An ideal snack for the Fountains of Wayne-starved, adds reallyrather...

The small room upstairs at The Enterprise in Camden was filled to overflowing Thurs for a set from Seattle singer-songwriter Rosie Thomas. Though short (about 8 numbers) it was still comfortably worth twice the £3 admission. A slightly schizophrenic performer, Thomas alternates between the squeaky scattiness of her banter and the touching, occassionally sublime songcraft of her music. Easily reproducing the mellow folk-pop vibe of her Subpop debut, her impressively economical songwriting and beautifully controlled vocal needed no aid, tho' she was occasionally accompanied on electric piano by "brother Brian". (At times this brought one or two of the numbers dangerously close to Dawson's Creek soundtrack territory, Wedding day in particular a gift to that show's producers.) Highlights for reallyrather were two new songs, possibly called Carousel and I've been waiting, suggesting that the best is yet to come. A hasty appearance at the end by her stand-up alter-ego Sheila, a pizza waitress in a neck brace, shattered the mood somewhat but it was pretty funny...

"A gorgeous record...rural post rock and alternative country...a perfect blend between Califone and Sparklehorse." Maybe giving a whole new spin to the term 'spaghetti western', interesting Italian label Homesleep gushes persuasively about a vaguely improbable debut release by a band from Varese called Midwest. Can it be? Well, the single soundclip provided is similarly tantalising. Happily, we need look no further than Leeds to grab a copy of Town and country, £9.49 from ace indie retailer Norman Records...

Tribute Album Advance Warning! Same label Homesleep is presently busy calling in contributions from the likes of Howe Gelb, Spearmint and Oranger for Everything Is Ending Here - a Tribute To Pavement due late in the year. Ace cosmic-popsters The Tyde have dug deep, interrupting their doubtless hectic schedule to bring in a version of Perfect depth...

Home to many a reallyrather-friendly band, graze the Austin music+arts scene in the company of RiverCityNews, a nascent blog from the heart of Texas...

Something for the weekend:
Life at Sea / sink (mp3 | site)
-tasty indie rock from Chicago 3-piece
Gingersol / sticks & stones (mp3 | site)
-way too good to be left unreleased, surely?
Matt Cheplic / Don't let me lose my mind (mp3 via neohippy)
-rather sappy album yields mellow radio pop nugget

News from Camp Gingersol where recording for the next album has already begun in the company of Rami Jaffee (Wallflowers) and some of the guys from Minibar. Also involved is Marc Bauer of the Jukebox Junkies who put out debut release Choose your fix last year. 'In many ways, this album is not unlike a great, long-lost Wilco album..loaded with fabulous country/folk-rock hooks, which sound fresh and familiar at the same time,' said Allmusic; Wilco-meets-Stereophonics says reallyrather. Check it out here...

Jaffee and Dauer have joined forces with Pete Yorn to create Trampoline Records whose first release is set to feature new material from all the above acts + more...

Latest signing to Setanta is A Girl Called Eddy (Eddy Moran) hitherto purveyor of moody, wistful orchestral pop with more than a hint of 60s chanteuse-ery. To help out in the production of her Setanta debut the label have wisely roped in some of the considerable talent already on their roster, namely Richard Hawley and the guys from Hem. Hawley supports Coldplay, Pulp in shows across the UK this summer; Hem are working on the follow-up to Rabbit songs, their mostly excellent and strangely undersold '01 debut...

"I have a feeling that God or Jesus are kinda bummed" - David Bazan (aka Pedro the Lion) reflects on the eternal truth of the Devil having all the best tunes...

For a while there it looked as though reallyrather was in the money but at the death those good old Eurovision standards reasserted themselves and Malta's obviously superior sweetness was squeezed out by some ersatz Gloria Estafan tosh, and the Baltic brotherhood. (Bitter, moi?!) Still, the stake was more than doubled...

Oh me of little faith. A while back this column suggested that The Trolleyvox could've done better than to cover Is Vic there? for Groovedisques' Stiff Records tribute. Boss chappie Jim Slade has made this track available as a taster and reallyrather should've known they'd pull it off - loads of great Byrdsian guitar going on, and Beth's slightly detached vocal style really suits the song...

'There's no denying his talent, but Yorn needs to recharge his batteries and flesh out his catalog before he can hope to fulfill the promise of last year's debut.' Fair comment from the Boston Globe (rr had a similar conclusion after the Garage show back in March)...

Just when it seemed reallyrather's summer was turning into a gig-less desert (the Be Good Tanyas the only oasis), David Bowie(!) pulls a wizard stroke. His curating of the annual Meltdown festival on the SouthBank hasn't been without it's critics. Stuart Maconie in The Times lamented the relatively mainstream safeness of the programme, criticism Bowie dismissed as kneejerk sniffiness. Certainly, reallyrather's interest had hitherto failed to be aroused by the prospect of Coldplay, Divine Comedy, The The, etc but an amazing rabbit - actually, make that about two dozen rabbits - have just been pulled from the hat. On June 22, before the Coldplay/Pete Yorn show, there is to be a performance by The Polyphonic Spree! Loyal readers will recall this choral pop extravaganza were the toast of SXSW2002, their 18-28 robe-clad members taking the roof off whichever venue they were shoehorned into. As anyone who has the album The beginning stages of... will know, they apply an experimental, kitchen-sink orchestral approach to a clutch of sunny '60s-style pop songs. Whilst not completely successful on disc you get the feeling that's not really the point, this is pop music which can really only make sense in performance. With commonly 20+ voices, tympani, french horns, etc augmenting the usual rock band instrumentation, the simplistic tunes are stretched into something resembling, say, a widescreen Flaming Lips. For this London show they'll be on the ballroom floor of the Royal Festival Hall so they'll be sorted spacially if not acoustically. And the very best part of all is that the show is free - FREE I tell you! A collector's item for sure. Thanks Dave...

Can't quite say the same about the show at the Monarch in Camden the following Wednesday but only because reallyrather has seen the headliners at least three times before. Still unmissable though - it's Myracle Brah! Andy Bopp's full-on, harmony-drenched guitar pop never fails to deliver - hopefuly the line-up will be the same as last time with Paul Krysiak alternating on B3 organ / 12-string electric, Dennis Shockett bass and 'loud' Joe Parsons drums. As ever, they're part of a RainbowQuartz label night so share billing with fellow pysch-pop-rockers RockFour, the Grip Weeds and the Three-4-Tens...

From the sublime etc...
The trump card in the hand of all Europhobes fighting further integration, the Eurovision Song Contest casts it's shadow once again. Throwing up the type of 'music' for which the word 'execrable' was probable coined to describe, having a small wager is just about the only way to make the event interesting. Comedically dubious voting nothwithstanding, it's generally pretty easy to narrow the dross down to a handful of contenders. Going way beyond the call of duty, reallyrather has heard them all and can report that all your favourite elements - generic chord changes, lyrical cliches, etc - are all present in abundance. Hideous sub-Celine / sub-Flashdance monstrosities are legion and can all be confidently dismissed, as can the laughable 'boy' bands - can you be such if you're 27? - from Russia and Cyprus. The ghost of Hazel Dean is unwelcomingly summoned by Finland, Germany AND Latvia...no chance. Austria, no chance. Slovenia's cross-dressing trio? No chance. Sergio, "Belgium's Mr Entertainment" (actually the Robert Palmer from Hell), no chance. The UK's is one of slicker efforts but Jessica Garlick is joint-favourite and no value at 4/1. No, the reallyrather tip has to be Malta. One of the least offensive efforts, it's still numbingly lightweight Europapp, but catchy (and Ira Losco's v. easy on the eye) - good each-way value at 14/1 with SportingOdds.com...

"Hank Williams and Garth Brooks write 'country' music, I write moody little pop songs" - Josh Rouse puts everyone straight in the latest edition of UK indie mag Comes with a smile, joining in what's almost a mini-stampede out of the alt-c ghetto. Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams are certainly busy digging their tunnels. Steven Terry, Whiskeytown's drummer circa Strangers Almanac, is now a member of promising outfit the damnwells 'but don't call them alt-country,' warns the Pittsburgh Trib. in a recent interview. "Any time you do anything remotely twangish, you get that alt-country thing," says Terry; "We're just doing what we're doing," adds lead singer Alex helpfully. And what they're doing, aside from producing some decent EPs, is taking support slots with the likes of..er..Jay Bennett...

Talking of whom, Bennett's just given Glorious Noise an in-depth interview into his 'leaving' of Wilco plus a track-by-track run-down of everything he was responsible for on Yankee hotel foxtrot...

Back to Rouse, maybe to reinforce his point, he's spending part of the summer touring the eastern USA in the mildly esoteric company of The National Trust and, most interestingly, precious pop revivalist Archer Prewitt whose new album Three comes out in June...

"In order for us to become superstars, a paradigm shift of the largest order would need to take place in the world. I'm not ruling that out. We're living in interesting times and I'm willing to break new ground." Robert Harrison of Austin uber-popsters Cotton Mather still thinking big in the latest ed. of Popculturepress. It's a great long interview/feature disinterring the history of the band and most generously the mag's put the whole thing up on it's site...

Day jobs of the stars No.2: Whit Williams, guitarist, Cotton Mather - librarian

Still in guitar-heavy (if rather more straight-forward) power-pop territory, spinART releases the latest from Tommy Keene on June 4. reallyrather must confess to finding this veteran more appealing in theory than in practise - the albums generally 'read' well and he obviously knows his stuff but the reality often seems a just bit too pat. For The merry-go-round broke down he's joined by Jesse Valenzuela of the Gin Blossoms and Jay Bennett; his site offers a sample track...

Not surprisingly, the Guardian and the Independent were both at the Wilco show...

To the Astoria where Wilco played to a full house. Now reallyrather has never been a devoted Wilco fan - prior to the new album it's only been things like I'm always in love and Nothing'severgonna.., back-to-back pop bullseyes on Summerteeth which have really hit the mark. Neither of which featured last night. The main set was, naturally enough, new album-heavy and definitely no bad thing. Listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the obvious question that arises is just what was it that had those Reprise execs running scared? As countless reviews will tell, it's a classy collection, solidly rewarding and highly accessible despite the scare stories about Jim O'Rourke's production (which in places actually rescues rather than ruins things). On stage the band attempt to reproduce the album's sound and, here and there, to push it further. The most galvanising moments were those which signposted the band's burgeoning alt-rock tendencies - the brief electric storm into which Ashes of American flags crashed and burned, similarly new song Unified theory of everything. At these points Tweedy's characteristic clubfooted shambling was halted and he became rooted to the spot, shaking as though electricity coursed through him. Determinedly downbeat, JT barely spoke thoughout, all but a couple of numbers coming and going without identification. One thing's for sure, he's not about to be invited to host the MTV Awards anytime soon. Extended encores drew on the band's solid canon of bar room twang and crisp boogie - all appreciably of a standard but not (personally) quite so compelling.

[reallyrather wondered once or twice what someone like Josh Rouse makes of the new Wilco material. With songs like Kamera and Jesus, etc they would seem to be moving their vaultingly ambitious tanks onto territory he was quietly staking out for himself on Under cold blue stars.]

Coming to cinemas later in the year is Wilco - the movie, a potentially fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary on the making of YHF. Salon last week carried an interview with director Sam Jones: 'The day before he was going to start filming, Wilco fired drummer Ken Coomer. "Jeff pulled me aside and said, 'I gotta talk to you...We've let Ken go.' That was kind of a shocker." From there, it got worse...'

According to the album credits, Jay Bennett had a major hand in the tunes on YHF. He's presently on the road himself with new partner Edward Burch promoting their new album The Palace at 4am. Interestingly, Centro-matic's Will Johnson and Matt Pence make up the rest of the band. The spirit of co-operation is also evident elsewhere - The Long Winters are touring with Ken Stringfellow, the latter joining the LWs on keyboards & vocals and the LWs forming Ken's band for the duration...

Anyone missing the sort of retro-pop fabness served up so efficiently by Myracle Brah will likely find plenty to enjoy on Everyday and then some, new this month from Starbelly. Graduates of very much the same Academy of Pop Hooks as Andy Bopp (indeed, he produced the band's last album Lemon fresh and bass-player/singer/songwriter Dennis Schocket is a regular touring member of the Brah), classy jangle-pop with lashings of harmonies is their thing and it sounds as though they haven't lost the knack...

Catching up with a couple of hares set running earlier...
Maki is the 4-piece including guitarist/studio wiz Alan Weatherhead who's been associated with a few obscure reallyrather favourites (Champale's Simple days, I'm Not Sally's Jewels & fools) and recently toured as part of Sparklehorse. Lunch Records invoke Nick Drake and Wilco in their pitch for the album Tears on the blastshield, but then who doesn't get carried away once in while? What we have here is pretty straightforward guitar-soaked power-pop, the sort perhaps best listened to late in the evening, the critical faculties having been lowered a notch or three by a couple of glasses of red. Indeed, there's a sort of blasted feel throughout the 8 slow- to mid-tempo tracks. reallyrather was taken back to things like Spindizzy on the first Orange Humble Band album; Make you better is very Gigolo Aunts and Matt Shaker has a nice starbursty chorus. Throughout the whole chords come crashing like waves but with the tide going out not coming in...

Kevin Salem's 1994 album Soma City similarly carries no surprises stylistically but the quality of plenty of the tunes is a cut above. On the strength of various reviews his '01 release Ecstatic was flagged up here earlier and spotting Salem's debut at Secondspin, $3.99 seemed a risk-free investment. And so it has proved, the gnarled, comfortably familiar riffing slipping on like your old Levi's jacket. Actually this could be classed as archetypal Levi's jacket music. Gritty and melodic, the guitar, by turns chunky and splintered, hurling out chords in reassuringly predictable sequences. Some of it sounds like what might have resulted had, say, Joe Henry fronted the Smithereens. Tom Petty before he combed his hair. With only two or three of the twelve tracks attracting the 'Skip' button's attention, a veritable bargain. [Another copy's just dropped into Secondspin, $4.99 if you're quick!]

"Listeners searching for that more intelligent, yet wonderfully light-hearted pop sound have to look a little bit harder. Rilo Kiley craft exactly the whimsically sweet music those engaged in the hunt are looking for." Wise words from The Wood, though reallyrather is aware that this is just the sort of band that can convince otherwise quite peaceable folks that the gun laws may, after all, be a tad restrictive. My only problem with them is that the bloke gets to 'sing' (a common affiction, cf. Holiday Flyer, The Mendoza Line) - chaps, please, no...

In other news from the Barsuk stable, John Vanderslice today releases new album Life and death of an american fourtracker featuring contribs. from assorted Beulahs, Spoons, Cuties and Mates of State. There's a distinct Spooniness to the rhythm of the rather fine Me and my 424 available at his site...

Money, money, money. Splendid last week harshly pitched The Big One to the amiably shambling Mendoza Line: "How do you make a living?" Aah, the eternal indy band conundrum, and one which reallyrather is oft given to pondering. "Independence ain't that bad, ya know...you can make money," Donna Simpson of Aussie folk-pop charmers The Waifs insists to Ink19. "I just want to sell a few records and get to play," Colin MacIntyre (aka Mull Historical Society) tells Splendid today, "It's not about making money". Well, I believes him. Loss was comfortably reallyrather's album of '01, just great pop music. But what of the follow-up, Colin? "I've been walking around New York listening to rough mixes of my next record. There are a couple of songs that are the best things I've ever written. They're not very big, but very melodic. I want the next record to sound a bit more real, or natural, but still very poppy." Fine with me, Colin, fine with me...

Several friends came to his grave / His children were so well behaved / As the priest got up to speak the assembly craved relief / But he himself had given up / So instead he offered this bitter cup

'You're gonna die, we're all gonna die / Could be twenty years, could be tonight / Lately I've been wondering why we go to so much trouble / To postpone the unavoidable and prolong the pain of being alive.'

Set to a beautifully pulsing indie-guitar chime, there (almost) endeth reallyrather's album of the year so far. In all it's glorious gloominess, Control by Pedro the Lion is the most rounded set yet from David Bazan. Lyrically so resigned you end up laughing, the album's ten songs are a blistering chronicle of the death throes of a marriage, domestic casualties of American corporate culture.

Here's the thing that's so much more depressing than the infidelity itself / Darling you're so unoriginal / Each move more obvious than the one before ... And I guess I could be bigger but I'd rather make you pay / You'll see that I can be unoriginal just like you

reallyrather has always considered it a distinct bonus if the lyrics on a good-sounding rock record turn out to be stimulatingly literate and cliche-free. Bazan has a good track record in this respect and keeps up his standards throughout including a contender for the Best Song About Sex Grammy in Rapture. (In a nutshell: 'Wow, this is so good - shame it's not with the wife'). Too wearied and knowing to get just plain furious, this also pays dividends musically, melody and arrangement firmly holding sway over sheer noise. With thick churning guitar often to the fore it's a consistently rewarding set, ranging from the sugar-rush of Rapture and Penetration to the heavyweight drone of Second best. Some boffo drumming propels Magazine and simple, subtle keyboards come and go across the set. Indie-rock with plenty of light and shade, it'll readily please anyone inside the Wheat/Dismemberment Plan/Superchunk/even Everclear spectrum. A weighty contender.
[Not released in the UK yet but why wait? Label Jade Tree is rather excellently selling it for just £9 inc. p&p.]

The Austin Chronicle talks to Paul Westerberg:
Q:'Ever think a royalty check from the Goo Goo Dolls should show up in your mailbox?'
A: 'Put it this way: All they have to do is record one of my songs and put it on one of their greatest hits records then, you know, all would be even.'

And talking of things Replacement-shaped, Munich Records - European home to such as Centro-Matic, Utah Carol, Mother Hips - appear deeply thrilled to have signed up Austin's Grand Champeen, releasing their Battle cry for help in June. "They are the bar-rocking post-posits of the Replacements and Uncle Tupelo," according to one reviewer; more here...

Quite what a feat this represents reallyrather is unsure, but straight in at one on the album charts in Norway, Finland and Sweden goes Vapen & ammunition, new from Sweden's widescreen pop-rockers Kent. Almost certainly entirely predictable, almost certainly entirely agreeable in a chilly, soaringly melodic pop-rock kind of way. Not released elsewhere 'til later in the year, it's available now from Scandinavian retailer HotStuff, £12.50 all in...

Kent are borderline guilty pleasures - you know it's derivative, Radiohead-lite, etc .. and yet, and yet. Most definitely in the guilty pleasure category is the Butterfly Jones release, Napalm Springs. The title alone is warning enough ('Danger - ageing smart alecs at work'); the cover artwork similarly puts the toes on standby. And plenty of the lyrics and guitar grandstanding within finish the job - Alright with it's gruesome stab at Donald Fagen-esque sleezily hip storytelling (Freaks on the Strip, mad dogs, dodgy geezers called Ruiz, etc), the winsome When people are mean, various outbreaks of unwelcome Aerosmithery. And yet, and yet ... these guys can still turn out a hatful of hate-me-if-you-dare melodies. The aforementioned Alright is pulled back from the edge by its great chorus and lower down the order there's a pair of back-to-back pop winners in It's cool, dude (ouch) and the Ivy-like Dreamtime. The sound throughout is also seductively slick. But extended play definitely requires instant palette-cleansing - reallyrather finds The Strokes' album to be very handy in this respect...