It’s quite a good time for new bands at the moment in our corner of the world, what with Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes riding a mild wave of critical acclaim in the wake of South By Southwest and so on. To that list we can add White Denim, another hit at SXSW that I’ve already written about here a while back.
We've just been playing the excellent forthcoming Kelley Stoltz album to start the week (I'll write about it soon), which reminded me of another Sub Pop album I've liked in the past few weeks.
It’s easy to be a bit snide about the Klaxons, as some of the fartish blather that greeted their Mercury Prize win proved. “Myths Of The Near Future” (was that the title?) wasn’t the best record on the shortlist, to my mind; I’ve played the Arctic Monkeys and Amy Winehouse albums more, if that’s any measure. Third best is still pretty good, though, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Klaxons were a truly futuristic band (one or two commentators claimed this after the Mercury win. I’m not even sure what “futuristic” means any more with regard to music, but never mind), I certainly like their ideas, their sense of intelligent mischief, and the suspicion that these are men who listen to a much more interesting range of music than their indie contemporaries.
Another Thursday morning just behind the Tate Modern, but today we are riding our goblin ship guided by a mermaid. Yes, the new issue of Uncut has arrived and the free CD is on our fancy new stereo. It's called "Fill Your Head With Prog", and it's just about good enough to convince you that punk was nothing more than a minor local disturbance. In 1978, surely, the only place to be was the Deeply Vale Festival with a flagon of Owsley's Peculier, watching Steve Hillage play "Hurdy Gurdy Man" for the best part of a month?
