No Sleep In This Weird Wild World

I spoke not all that long ago about Sleepies - check that out here. Well, I was speaking to Nick Sylvester of Mr Dream, who runs the God Mode label, and he let drop that New York mentalists Sleepies were releasing their new LP Weird Wild World through his label in August. Literally the next day, two of the band's members, Tom and Josh, separately emailed me raving about Ty Segall and Dope Body posts respectively, then passing on their track 'Seriously'. Serendipity indeed.

And of course, it's bloody good (I'm so into this delving back into 90s raucous dirgey rock and tweaking it for the 21st century - Cloud Nothings, anyone?). But it isn't even the best song - not by far. This album is so filled with killer that it slays me. Opening with the pent-up swagger of 'Cool Boy' and intensity of 'Combat' (amazing track), it walks through molasses for 'Strange Feelings', and the slowed down mode doesn't affect their attitude one iota, making it all the more powerful because of it. And it keeps rolling on. Which shouldn't come as much of a surprise, seeing as their taste in Mr Dream, Ty Segall and Dope Body is complemented by roping in The Men's Ben Greenberg to produce the damned thing!


You can pre-order Weird Wild World here. This is a great album, one of the better things I've heard this year.

Sleepies - Seriously

School Knights

Those snotty slackos School Knights have a couple new tunes floating around the ether. After the disappointing news that the fucking rad SK/Night Manager split isn't likely to materialise, it's good to hear these guys are still throwing their shit at their teenage bedroom walls. Take that, MOM! Yeah, these two tracks in particular play the Wavves card, but when the flat-brim cap fits... It's goddamn catchy, a veritable KFC bucketload of fun, plus it's a bit meatier - the duo of Michael Stein and Zack Roif are now a foursome, thanks to Morris Kolontyrsky and Ben Donehower! Radness! And it is honed (as much as this shit can be honed) with some ace tours last year opposite Ty Segall, Black Lips, Cloud Nothings, Vivian Girls and Gauntlet Hair. Yeah, I just came a little too...

School Knights - Present Tense
School Knights - Bender

Dreaming Of Yvette And The Fatherland

Nick Sylvester is a man that can't be tied down. Writing books, reviews, running labels (God Mode Records), gigging, living the dream. He is Mr Dream. Well, at least a part of the three piece who are throwing their scattershot grunge shtick into the fan and showering us in their glorious shit. Their Trash Hit LP of last year (which was pretty damn awesome and snuck into our highly commended albums of last year), and the follow up, the EP Fatherland, is even better. Riding high, they will be supporting Cloud Nothings before finishing with a stint on the SXSW circuit/gravy train/media scrumfuck.

Fatherland comes out on God Mode Feb 28. (NB - we have two tracks from the EP below, but they aren't the best. That's how good it is. Title track is fucking killer).

Mr Dream - What A Mess
Mr Dream - The Room

But as if that would be enough for this fucker. No, Sylvester is putting out a healthy slab of noise on a 7" for Yvette, the noise rock duo Noah Kardos-Fein and Rick Daniel. The Erosion 7" reminds me a little of HEALTH - all solid gold.

Yvette - Cold Sweat

Baldi Loses Sentiment, Cloudy Disposition

Many of the detractors of Dylan Baldi's latest output under his moniker Cloud Nothings, Attack On Memory, attest that he has flagrantly thrown out the old without any clear reference as to why, or at least without paying respect to the fans who had been enamoured with his glowing version of sugary pop rock. But the title itself heralds Cloud Nothings' album as a complete wiping of the slate - and how.

I loved much of Cloud Nothings' oeuvre, the insane ADHD infectiousness of it all, yet Attack On Memory is much more my cup of tea, and the fact it's a polar opposite to everything that has come before isn't the astonishing part - it's that it is so fucking good. Produced by Steve Albini you would expect it to be loud, bottom heavy and abrasive, yet it is the insidious way that Baldi and his cronies eschew their pop machinations for a far more sinister, stalking rhythm that surprises.


Attack On Memory is out on Carpark Records.


Cloud Nothings - No Sentiment

Spectral Pennies Aren't So Bad - More So-So

Spectrals (known as Louis Oliver Jones to his mum) has really tickled the fancy of the blogging world over the past couple years, and with good reason. His rise coincides with a plethora of bedroom dreamers (which number Wild Nothing, Beach Fossils, Cloud Nothings and Hanoi Janes in their midst) whose windswept, reverb-laden wistful pop reinvigorated the idea of what it takes to be a pop artist. The UK act has put out acclaimed releases on the likes of Moshi Moshi and Sex Is Disgusting, but we now have the LP Bad Penny (with Wichita Records fighting off Captured Tracks for the rights to put it out) to play with.

Now, before discussing the album, let me state my opinions here. Like most bedroom projects, the quality of output varies wildly, regardless of what the pop culture intelligentsia like to tell us. The above mentioned bands I enjoy (especially Cloud Nothings and Hanoi Janes), but as with most of the genre trends of the past few years, with the fires fanned by the "cool" generators (no names need to be mentioned), we get a glut of "next big things" that are either too green, unfairly pigeonholed or are just plain shit. It takes the gloss off the achievements of the people who are succeeding at their chosen craft (one case in point - Toro Y Moi and Washed Out's concerted efforts to step away from the tsunami of similar-sounding artists of a sound they invariably created). So, whilst I've liked some of Spectrals' retro 50s/60s pop meanderings, I approached his highly anticipated album with wariness.

Bad Penny is a great name for the album for two reasons. Firstly, it knowingly tips the hat at the style of music he utilises for inspiration - that which is almost half a century old, somewhat innocent and therefore almost rudimentary in its composition. The fact that Jones has that Yorkshire tint (his vocals are incredibly similar to Arctic monkey Alex Turner) also shadows the second reason Bad Penny fits - the idea of the contradiction. And there are many.

Firstly, like Turner, Spectrals specialises in creating addictive, upbeat music to background what are ultimately mawkish, sometimes bitter ruminations on young adulthood, love and life. But truth be told, whilst Spectrals as a live unit (and admittedly on most of the earlier releases) has been entrancing and personable, here the songs verge on the featherlight, almost begging to be liked and in the process becoming a wallflower in the genre as opposed to king of the prom. The English tones over the American sound notwithstanding, the juxtapositions are in the main disappointing. There are good tracks here - 'Big Baby' and 'Luck Is There To Be Pushed' in particular - but in the end Bad Penny, for me, was more of a misspent chance.

But hey, he's 21, and he already has some writing nous - he'll bounce back.

Bad Penny is out now - grab it here.

Spectrals - Baby Love