Customers, these are the days of the short attention span. The instant gratification. Already waiting for the next thing before this one is even close to finished. The seven-minute single is really only suitable for your most fanatical fans – and probably only listened to all the way through while experienced through a haze of bong smoke. As silly as Twitter considering upping it to 280 characters when there’s already so many people who can make complete dicks of themselves in half that amount. Thus DZ Deathrays, we salute you. Bad Influence (I Oh You) is a song of its time. That time being a smidge under a minute-and-a-half, which allows this self-described ‘four note punk jam’ to barge through the door, have a yell at you, and then fuck off – while literally not forgetting the obligatory kick in the ‘nads on way out. Well done.
Similarly, it’s only a couple of weeks since you got the first sample of that match made in indie heaven of Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile. But you want more, and thus they oblige. Continental Breakfast (Milk!/Marathon) is possibly even more scruffily, effortlessly, daggily cool than Over Everything – if such a thing is possible. It’s another rambling conversation on the nature of friendship, and cereal, and existence, and…stuff. There’s also charm in it being illustrated with some fly-on-the-wall visuals of their respective domesticities, loves, family, and friends with the eventual result of just wanting to go to brunch with any or all of them, followed by an excursion to an amusement park.
Another fairly natural collaboration – if only by location for starters – results in a very different kind of studied cool. Lykke Li, elements of Miike Snow, and the middle one from Peter, Bjorn, & John among others form LIV, resulting in the kind of quietly understated Scandi-indie supergroup you’d probably expect. Hurts To Liv (Ingrid) isn’t exactly a jolly sleigh ride through the snows, but a more thoughtful musing on the loss of various members’ parents, and pondering on that while actually not making it as mawkish or melodramatic as they may have - although the taciturn Swedish stoicism doesn’t completely hide the hurt and remembrance going on. Music to muse on.
Also finding an ideal counterpoint artistic input and complementary voice to what she’s about, Lo Carmen sends another postcard home from America with Sometimes It’s Hard (Chiquita). Again, she’s explaining to we grown-ups that relationships can be complicated. But setting her breathy regret, memories, and need against the somewhat more weary groan and keen of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy makes this special. Their conversation is sometimes with, sometimes to, sometimes at, and sometimes straight past one another, with a perfectly placed twang and space between them. It’s a lovely, and yet melancholy, piece of work.
Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter
Also dealing with the persistence of memory, the ongoing wistful gaze of Belle & Sebastian. Even the title of We Were Beautiful (Matador) suggests the reflective nostalgia of what they are now about. A handy compare and contrast might be made to Morrissey’s return of the last few weeks, where Moz seems forever grumping about his youth and vigour ebbing away – although one might argue he never really had that much in the first place – where lead Belle, Stuart Murdoch, is now more about an acceptance of moving on from the eternal undergraduate musings that for so long identified them. Visuals of Glasgow on a typically drizzly morning adds to the mood, with an odd mix of comfortable familiarity and grey granite oppressiveness. Music to hum and nod knowingly to, if you’re of a certain age.
Somewhere in what Swim Team do, there is the feeling of timeless Australian indie music. There’s a certain self-deprecating mood, even in the press release to announce the ideally-titled Positively Hopeless (Hysterical). Or maybe it’s the wiry guitar, gingerly picking its way among the unison singing which comes with its own doubts, as it seems to seek to hide among the drums’ clatter. Actually this is one half of one of those currently fashionable and budgetary responsible split-7” vinyl affairs, the other side given over to the slightly more nervously energetic Lazertits. And it all fits.
But what happens to those once considered so punk, so goth, so dangerous? The Horrors are now in an odd twilight zone somewhere between tabloid outrage and talk-show appearances, with a sound on Something To Remember Me By (Wolf Tone/Caroline Australia) that’s more Human League circa 1980, than The Damned of the same year - but still with hair equal in absurdity to either of those reference points. Faris Badwan still manages to look jaded and dangerous at once, but further proof that there may now be nothing new under the sun as far as the tropes of pop music videos are concerned, the ‘harvesting the secretions of rock and roll energy as a fountain of youth’ idea was probably done better by Silverchair 20 years ago. Wonder what happened to those kiddies?
