Kevin Spence listened to a lot of Phish concerts and came up with the fact that jams tend to peak around 74% mark, which not surprising as such, but there is a big difference that makes the Vermont quartet rather special:
Phish jams peak three-quarters of the way through. So do the same songs played straight, and so do most rock songs. The structure is familiar. What's not is how they get there.
Irish quintet Theatre go for a widescreen sound on their debut EP Incarnate, which fits lyrics wherein the emotions run high. They put folk, post-punk and shoegaze in a blender and topped it off with the crystal clear lead vocals of Maeve O’Shea. Whether she tackles bittersweet childhood memories (You Are), religion (Messiah) or turns the meaning of a 16th Century joyous hymn (Gaudete) into something dark and foreboding thanks to Dara Gooney's inspired guitar licks, it is never straightforward. They are fully aware that straying from sign-posted roads is far more interesting than playing it safe.
This is a band that is not feeling around where they want to go. They have hit the ground running, fully formed, with a bunch songs that earned them a place on the rock club circuit pretty damn fast. All they need now is more material for a full-length and their label to shell out the money for a physical release.
Dutch musicians Gijs Kerkhoven (Showdog) and Sander van Munster (No Ninja Am I) have found the time to enter the studio again for another double A-side single. Great Start goes through hills and valleys, with a fuzzy shoegaze guitar making way for dreamy post-rock interludes and eerie bits of dialog that sound like they were captured from a vintage transistor radio. Yellow Red & Blue starts out as a radio-friendly pop song, before making a sharp left into leftfield psychedelica.
It is a 101 for barebones shoegaze, using only a bass, a guitar and a bunch of choice effect pedals to create a sound that bigger bands are hoping for when they want to go back to basics.
Irish punk folk duo The Guzzlers keep it up with releasing good-natured drinking songs. The Drunken Tales of Gerry MacLean is basically a story how it came to pass that downing pints became such a huge part of their lifes and not feeling bad about that at all - not even when they ended up in a fight and the police came knocking on their door.
Montreal based garage rockers Taxi Girls have made a video for their Secret Handshake single about a Summer fling: "All that's left is a bit of muscle memory and bittersweet thoughts of what could have been, knowing full that it was not supposed to last."
HCTF review of Secret Handshake
