Tuesday, 27 October 2009

GIG REVIEW : Bowling For Soup

- Manchester Academy 1 - 25th October 2009 -
Support : MC Lars, Zebrahead.



 Toilet humour, sex, drugs and sister jokes; nothing is off the table tonight as Bowling For Soup return with more of the same ‘silly-but-cheerful’, low-brow, comedic, pop-punk that catapulted them to fame all those years ago. Fifteen years and ten albums into their career, the Texan punks have generated quite a following as young and old gather at the Academy to witness the aptly named ‘Party In Your Pants’ tour. MC Lars kicks off the rock bonanza, joined briefly onstage by BFS lead Jaret Reddick for ‘Download this Song’. Zebrahead are next up to bat, hitting a home run with a unique blend of high octane, rap-punk, warming the crowd to boiling point with jumping competitions, ‘party arms’ and a ‘Wall of Death’, (renamed the ‘Wall of Sunshine, Lollypops and Rainbows' for ‘legal reasons’).
 Bowling For Soup do in fact appear to be 12 year-olds stuck in adult bodies. Backed by a video of them prancing around in anatomically-correct ‘erection suits’, tracks from new album ‘Sorry For Partying’ are mixed with classics; ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’, ‘Punk Rock 101’ and ‘High School Never Ends’. The orgy of barely-concealed euphemisms, condom balloons, (a.k.a. the penis Zeppelin), and lycra hot pants indicate that for America’s most beloved party-band, High School really hasn’t ended. An un-inhibited celebration of juvenile humour, they pause and crank up the house lights, posing with beers and dancing to Kool & The Gang's 'Celebration' at the front of the stage, before strutting to the side to give a ‘Bowling For Soup photo-op’.
 They may be the poster-boys for fart jokes but one area where fifteen years of experience is visible is the show itself. Bursting with professionalism the no doubt, painstakingly-constructed combination of comedic banter, giddy practical jokes and humorous videos provide constant and consistent entertainment without being awkward, stilted or over- rehearsed.

Verdict : Ending with ‘1985’, (choruses sung in ‘your best Antonio Banderas accent’ and ‘falsetto’, respectively), the band who are ‘much too old to be this damn young’ score an ‘A’ for effort.

10/10

By Beth Cook



Bowling For Soup's latest album, 'Sorry For Partying', released October 12th 2009 on Jiveis available from online stores : http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;0;-1;-1;-1&sku=272123
Tour dates and ticket information : http://www.bowlingforsoup.com/tour/

Sunday, 18 October 2009

GIG REVIEW : The All-American Rejects

- Manchester Academy 1 - 15th October 2009 -
Support : The Upwelling, American Steel.


 First support comes in shape of The Upwelling, waistcoated, tousle-haired perfection signed by AAR themselves, who play a few of their own grunge-influenced rock tunes before paying tribute to fellow New Yorkers, The Ramones, with a fantastic cover of ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’. Anyone who can rock out in a waistcoat is ok by me. Second onto the battle-front are punk-rockers American Steel. With their catchy riffs and boundless energy, (surprising from what looked like a group of middle aged men), they are the evening’s biggest surprise, heralding a new age of pop-punk. Definitely a band I’d see again. Predictably, the highlight of the night was, of course, The All-American Rejects. 
 Any other band would still be reeling from lead singer Tyson Ritter’s unexpected leg infection and the subsequent operation that forced them to cancel three shows and take two weeks off. But AAR seem to take it in their stride. Ignoring doctor’s advice to stay off stage for a while, they rocked into Manchester, the second leg of their sold-out U.K. tour, bright eyed, bushy tailed and ready to tout their own brand of dance-tinged pop-rock to the masses.
 The stage resembles a sugar-induced Mardi Gras hallucination, as amongst the flashing neon lights, Tyson bounces around in full Native-American garb, complete with body glitter and a feather headdress. Apparently for The All-American Rejects Halloween is a month-long affair.
 Clearly re-fuelled by their recent ‘vacation’, the guys are nothing but professional, delivering wall to wall songs and incredible sound quality despite technical difficulties with the mics. Peppering a few tracks from their new album 'When The World Comes Down', with mandatory hits ‘Move Along’, ‘Dirty Little Secret’, ‘Swing Swing’ and ‘It Ends Tonight’, keeps the set from spiralling into the tedious obscurity that often plagues the pop-rock scene.
 Losing the headdress during ‘I’m Waiting’, what isn’t lost is the enthusiasm and energy, which stays constant from start to finish... energy I’m sure had nothing to do with the bottle of whisky and mountain of snack-size chocolate bars I saw backstage before the show... well maybe not nothing.

Verdict : Tyson points to the bar - “you guys need to go help that guy out, you’re way too fucking aware for nine thirty”, but this isn’t a gig you need a stiff drink to endure. Fun and sexy, when they say they’ve been putting their ‘heart into the band for ten years’ it’s actually believable.

10/10

By Beth Cook



The All-American Reject's latest album 'When The World Comes Down', released on Doghouse, 16th December 2008, is available from online stores : http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;0;-1;-1;-1&sku=761427
Tour dates and ticket information : http://www.allamericanrejects.com/events

Saturday, 17 October 2009

This Week's Song Crush

'Alone' - Heart



From 'Bad Animals', Heart's ninth studio album.

 Sister duo Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart generally favour a hard rock sound, but a brief dip into power ballads in the 80s produced this gem. Composed by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, (masterminds behind much-loved classics like ‘True Colours’ and ‘Eternal Flame’), this song endured a short stint on the soundtrack of 1984 CBS sitcom ‘Dreams’, before being picked up by girl-fronted, hair-rock band, Heart, in 1987, and catapulted into power ballad infamy.
 Bursting at the seams with 80s melodrama, this classic was the group’s most successful single in both the U.K. and the U.S., (despite the video being choreographed by a certain Paula Abdul). Beginning with a haunting, reverberant piano melody and hushed vocals, it’s beautiful, but this is supposed to be a power ballad... where’s the drama? Where’s the power? Cue the guitars, exploding pianos and dramatic vocals, (and close ups of dramatic hair and dramatic eyeliner), perms never looked so good. Building to an epic instrumental crescendo, Anne belts out the chorus to Nancy’s typical, 80s, cock-rock guitar solo.
 Bands like Alice in Chains, R.E.M., and Pearl Jam cite these sisters as a source of inspiration and this song is frequently covered. Most recently by Kristin Chenoweth and Matthew Morrison on current FOX hit, ‘Glee’. Kristin’s dynamic, country-tinged vocals combine with the introduction of a male part to give it an interesting twist.
 Chock-full of power-riffs and electro-synth, this illustrious love song is perfect for those moments when you fancy a bit of drama, well deserving it’s place on every ‘Best Of The 80s’, or ‘Car Karaoke’, album it graces.

By Beth Cook



'Heart - Greatest Hits', released 10th July 2000, on EMI is available from online stores : http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1;-1&sku=528732
Tour dates and ticket information : http://www.heart-music.com/tour/tour.asp

Friday, 16 October 2009

INTERVIEW : Alex Westaway

Fightstar's Alex Westaway tells us about his upcoming horror film, the recent changes in the music industry and why this summer's Reading festival was the highlight of his career...


If we could talk a bit about your new album, ‘Be human’ is your highest charting album to date, do you think your music has changed since you started?
"Urm yeh I think we’ve just evolved a bit really, obviously we’re a few years on since we started out and we’ve had more experience and I think we’re all at a slightly higher level in terms of playing ... we’re always trying to stretch ourselves and trying to not make anything sound the same, trying to create new sounds and go in a new direction with each album.”

Well this one is quite different; you used an orchestra, what was the concept behind the album?
“There was no real concept it’s more to do with the space that we were all in at the time, when we were writing it, I think we were all feeling fairly settled in, like in life and that kind of reflected on it having a few more positive songs I suppose, and we’ve still got a few dark ones on there.”

Well you have a quite unique sound in general, delicate and dark at the same time, how would you describe it?
“I think we have a lot of different influences, we pretty much write whatever we want to write, it encompasses a lot of different sounds. We’ve always described our music as being hopeful... yeh we always liked that kind of epic feeling of hope you know?”

So are you quite heavily influenced by the music that you listen to?
“yes ... yeh, we all have like pretty similar tastes, although we favour different stuff, like individually, I bring more of the kind of softer side to the band, I’m less of a metal guy, i’m more of a post-rocky, like singer-songwriter type really, Dan on the other hand is more metal.”

You released your latest album yourselves in partnership with your management company, that’s quite an unusual move for a band, what prompted you to do it?
“It’s a sign of the changing times really, I think you’ll see a lot more bands doing it, purely because of the state of the industry.. I mean, at the moment, major labels are signing bands on 360 deals which means they get a big chunk of their lives, income, merch ......even if you’re a band and you’re on a major label, how you survive, how you pay the bills is by playing live, touring, selling merch, if that’s being taken away again by the label it makes it even tougher! We’ve always kind of liked the idea of going independent anyway and the opportunity arose for us to set up this label with the distribution through PS who are a great company - they’ve helped us out a lot, they’ve just done Oasis’ album.. That’s a good example really if you look at their roster, there’s a lot of bands doing it the same way we are, they’ve got Enter Shikari, they’ve got this thing set up which is a new kind of mould which is at the forefront of how the music industry is going to survive.. they’re growing and becoming stronger whilst the major labels are becoming weaker.”

So that’s definitely an issue in the music industry at the moment...
"yeh, well I think so, yes”

You guys have done a lot of festivals and toured with a lot of other bands, what was your favourite festival?
“Urm....Reading, this year”

And why was it your favourite?
“we were just lucky, the weather was great, we had quite an early slot so we were a bit sceptical about how many people were going to be up on a Saturday morning, we thought everyone would be really hungover from the night before, but we had a great response, like the best response we’ve ever had and apparently the circle pits and stuff we got going were the biggest of the weekend which is great you know... and it’s really epic to see that when you’re on stage and you look out and theres like a huge mass of kids going absolutely nuts, the ground was really dry so it was kicking up loads of dust and it was just really, really huge... there’s nothing else like that, it was probably the best experience I’ve ever had on stage, if I never did it again I’d be happy that I had that moment.”

You’ve got a huge fan base, you’re first big hit, ‘Palahniuk’s Laughter’ went straight into heavy rotation on music channels, how have you dealt with that kind of over-night celebrity?
“Well I don’t know if I’d ever call myself a celebrity, maybe if I was out in a small town and there was a rock night or something, maybe a few people would recognise me but we’re pretty under the radar to be honest. None of us are the kind of people who go out to these posh dos, we kind of avoid that really... we’re more into writing and being creative than poncing around.”

Well you’ve dabbled in a few things – producing, writing, cover art and I hear you’re directing a horror film at the moment?
“Yeh well Dan and I have a small production company, that’s been our kind of side- project, we’ve done a couple of music videos and various things, we’ve got two other guys, one of them works for ILM In the states, just two old friends from school really. We’ve always been majorly into film and the last couple of years we’ve been shooting what started off as a short film and it evolved into .. well it’s about an hour long now, but it’s completely done in our spare time, there’s no budget, we’ve written it, directed it, produced it, we’re writing the score for it so it’s all very much home-grown and there’s no budget at all .. so don’t expect too much from it but it’s what keeps us busy and in the future we’d love to be more involved with film.”

So is that something you’ll definitely do more with, acting and directing?
“Yeh, I hope so, I mean it’s our other passion really, film and music go hand in hand, and obviously we probably won’t be playing the same music that we are forever so it’s good to have another plan.”

Ok that’s fair enough, you’re starting your U.K. tour soon, in October, what can fans expect from your shows?
“we’re going to be playing quite a few songs that people haven’t heard live, a few new tracks off the album that we haven’t played before, the new single we’re playing, we just shot a video for, so it should be on the music channels in a few weeks time .. so yeh just as much fun as we can put into it really, as much energy, we just hope that the audience can enjoy it as much as we do.”

Well I’m sure they will. You spend a lot of time travelling and touring, how do you spend your spare time?
“ Urm making this damn film that we’ve been making for the last few years! That pretty much takes all of our spare time, so we’re never not doing anything, there’s always something creative on the cards or we go a bit mental.”

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t in the band? Would you be a director?
“I don’t know, it’s bloody hard to get into directing, the same way it is getting into a band where you can do it full time, I mean yeh... I’d love to become a director, my background is kind of art as well, so maybe a painter or... a struggling painter I’d be... probably.”

Are you working on any new material at the moment? In between all your directing and touring?
“yeh we’ve just recorded like four new tracks that are going to come out on a special edition, like a ‘Be Human’ special edition with some sort of live DVD on it, that’s going to come out in early February I think... so that was fun to get back into the studio, even though it’s quite soon after we’ve been recording, the songs are sounding really goods I’m looking forward to getting that out.”

Are the songs different to the rest on the album?
“Not really, it is a bit different but it’s of the same kind of ilk, I think it would fit nicely within the other songs.”

Any advice for people that want to get into the music business?
“yeh just write as many songs as you possibly can and play as many live shows as you can, that’s how you improve, you can never have enough songs!”

By Beth Cook


Fightstar's latest album 'Be Human', released 19th April 2009, on Search and Destroy, is available from online stores : http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;0;-1;-1;-1&sku=952365
Dates and ticket information for their upcoming U.K tour : http://www.fightstarmusic.com/tour/index.php

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

GIG REVIEW : Maximo Park

- Manchester Apollo - 8th October 2009 -
Support : Dutch Uncles, Hot Club De Paris.



 Skinny jeans are out in force tonight in Manchester, though none looking quite as good as they do on Hot Club De Paris, who play an impressively tight set despite battling against a half-empty venue.
 The place quickly fills for the main attraction and eventually, amidst disco lights and the thick layer of fog unfurling from the many smoke machines; transforming the previously drab stage into something from a music video; they emerge, launching straight into ‘A19’ – “we are Maximo Park” (hear us roar).
 A welcome break from the usual indie uniform of checked shirts, black wire frames and ironically asymmetric haircuts; in their smart suits and trilbies, Maximo Park are every inch sophisticated, film-noir chic. It’s rare to see a drummer in any type of shirt, much less one with a collar and cuffs, these guys are definitely serious contenders for Britain’s best-dressed band. The Apollo serves as an epic, theatrical stage for what is more a cabaret show than a rock gig. An observation validated when, after rattling through a few of their best singles, a five-piece brass ensemble join them to give latest album, ‘Quicken the Heart’ a cool, retro edge.
 The band are on form, but despite a flawless delivery, are quickly overshadowed by frontman Paul Smith, offering little more than background music for Smith’s energetic onstage antics. He acts out every lyric, punching a megaphone triumphantly into the air to screech out the chorus to ‘Quicken The Heart’, and clutching the mic stand apparently for ‘emotional support’ whilst belting out the ‘Parisien Skies’ in unison with the crowd. “ Manchester 'The Kids Are Sick Again'”, jetting around, giving the guys running the spotlight a run for their money.
 The stage suddenly takes on an element of horror, and the lighting glows as Smith stalks the stage during ‘Russian Literature’, his shadow super-sized on the wall behind him as the crowd jostle to get closer. It’s hard to believe that this ex-teacher ever thought that he ‘wasn’t frontman material’, a born performer, he's definitely at home on the stage, pulling out every trick to get the crowd moving – and they’re more than willing to comply.
 Crooning out an encore of ‘Acrobats’ and ‘Our Velocity’, they save the best for last as the latter of these generates the closest thing to a mosh pit i’ve seen all night.

Verdict : A good show but it’s Smith that sticks in your mind: his effortless showmanship makes for an electric atmosphere. Maximo Park? Try The Paul Smith Experience.

8/10

By Beth Cook



Maximo Park's latest album 'Quicken The Heart', released on Warp Records, 11th May 2009, is available from their online store : http://www.recordstore.co.uk/maximopark/
Tour Dates and Tickets : http://maximopark.com/live-dates

Saturday, 3 October 2009

This Week's Song Crush

'Wheels' - Foo Fighters



From the upcoming album, 'Greatest Hits'.

 After announcing in September 2008, that they were going on a ‘long break’, the Foo Fighters have kept to their word, warning fans ‘not to expect anything for a while’, (although there are rumours circulating that the band may have cut their hiatus short and be preparing to write a new album – we can hope can't we?).
 They promised to be back in the future, when people 'really miss' them, but in the mean time, they’re putting 14 years of stellar hits to use, and releasing a long-awaited record of their ‘greatest hits’. This upcoming album boasts fan favourites such as 'All My Life’, 'Monkey Wrench' and 'Breakout', as well as two new, previously unreleased tracks; ‘Wheels’ and ‘Word Forward’.
 First premiered on the lawn of the White House, (during this year’s Independence Day celebrations), 'Wheels' more than lives up to its suitably epic unveiling. I think I can safely say that they made a smart decision skipping the album stage and sticking it straight where it belongs; on the ‘Greatest Hits’.
 Rightfully chosen as the single to promote the new album, this soon-to-be classic has a distinctly country feel about it, complementing the Foo’s usual blend of acoustic and hard rock, and exposing the rarely seen softer-side of the revered quintet. Kind of a Green Day - meets - Rascal Flatts, if you get what I mean. The result is effortless and understated with bluesy guitars, country ballad melodics, and a rousing, inspirational chorus that shows that, (despite taking a break), they clearly have no indication of giving up their Rock God titles and want to remind us why.

By Beth Cook



'Greatest Hits', released November 3rd 2009, on RCA Records is available from online stores : http://www.play.com/Music/CD/4-/11924640/Greatest-Hits/Product.html