Sometimes the best things can be found by looking up. The partial Solar Eclipse of 29th March 2006 – taken between 10 & 11am GMT from Glasgow, Scotland.
Partial Solar Eclipse
Photo © SpoiltCat Photos
Sunspots
Photo © SpoiltCat Photos
Heaven’s Above – Eclipse & Sunspots
March 31, 2006
Decatree – Tears
March 24, 2006
Yawn. Deccatree are from Orange County and they were signed by Atlantic. They’ve had a tune used on a couple of US TV shows, been featured artist on MySpace and say they’ve sold 10,000 copies of their self released Battle of Life album after Atlantic chose to drop them. They’re four guys in a band. Tears is a song by them. And that’s about it, it’s bland americana television show soundtrack music that yes indeed you can just imagine playing on Tom’s iPod nano as he posts bulletins for the MySpace kids. Gods it’s dull.
On a more positive note there isn’t anything actually wrong with the track per-se and the thirty or forty seconds of intro building to the first crescendo almost tricks you into thinking it may be worthwhile. But no, there doesn’t ever feel like there’s any substance behind this at all, it’s decaffeinated pop/rock for those not interested in switching on, turn the volume up to eleven and it still sounds like background music.
The Visions – Into The Nightlife
March 23, 2006
Probably no one here will remember The Dawn Parade, I know I’d never heard of them before, but they had the John Peel seal of approval which has always been a good pointer. Well, The Dawn Parade evolved into The Visions and have now recorded another debut album with a few of the old Dawn Parade songs reworked to fit with the newer tracks.
Laurence Olivier’s Henry V during Morrissey’s Tongue tells you everything about how English this album is. It may also hint at the epic romance poetry the lyrics aspire to. Morrissey is a good name check I reckon, and then throw in almost any stadium filling English indie pop rock act from the eighties to yesterday and you’ll cover the influences here. Mark Radcliffe first played them sandwiched between The Smiths & The Beatles but I’ll maybe throw in wee Welsh shades of The Alarm & The Manics for some guitars and occasional vocals change as a jaunt away from their very Cambridge roots.
It all sounds very nice and polished which will be down to producer Chris Brown (Radiohead, Muse) but I fear they’ve decided on “epic” as being a goal and have used every formula in the book to achieve that, on the first listen I was predicting exactly where the guitars would go and just when the strings would appear to lift the sound to the anthemic chorus of each and every song. Don’t get me wrong Greg Macdonald has done a very fine job writing this stuff and if you like it then I guess you’ll love it, otherwise it’s a definite case of “meh” and will be all too easily forgotten by me before lunchtime.
I expect, though, that if I’d just seen The Visions closing 3rd stage festival tent I’d be raving to you about how your folly of seeing the over-hyped main stage headliners had meant you’d missed the best band in the history of the world. But they haven’t managed to get the raw rock hinted at across here often enough. If I’m ever in Cambridge I’d love to go see a gig full of their fans but until then, maybe one more listen to Good Luck Olivia and singalong to the chorus of Into the Nightlife and maybe accidentally leave the album on repeat a couple of times. That’s the problem with such by-the-rules songwriting, dozens of other tunes have already planted the hooks in my head, I’m tricked into feeling I’ve known and loved these songs for years—I grew up with this album before it was ever written. I don’t want to like it. I don’t want to admit I like it. So just one and only one more listen.
The Visions are currently unsigned but Morrissey’s Tongue is tentatively scheduled for an early summer release as the first single from Into the Nightlife.
The Tacticians – London’s Alright
March 15, 2006
Urban Folk? I don’t know. Genre names are funny, let’s just say it’s the sort of thing I’ll be sticking on while sobering up after a day’s long drinking session has left me bittersweet to the world. Sort of like a late nineties disillusioned bedsit band doing Kinks songs in a retro-acoustic style with shades of Jarvis Cocker & Pulp. I don’t care if it’s about London, any less-than-exuberant large city centre dweller will understand where they’re coming from.
The lyrics left me somewhat unimpressed though, despite the nice (clichéd) sentiment of “lovely lass makes world seem shiney” which I’m a sucker for, and I wish I hadn’t read them and instead just listened to the tune, it’s not made for indepth analysis. It does give off a nice quiet cheery vibe though which is what I guess they were aiming at and so well done to them.
