Saloon - If We Meet In The Future 8 out of 10

Second effort from Reading's only exponents of Kraut-folk

If summer is finally here, as seems to be the case, then here is the perfect soundtrack for drifting down the river in a boat. Amanda Gomez and chums have toned down the drone and hewn an album of gorgeous, heat-hazed langour that calls to mind the pastoral tones and unhurried ebb and flow of Talk Talk after they went bonkers.

The delicate leaf storm of "Dreams Mean Nothing" is one of the most beautiful songs you will hear this or any other year, "Intimacy" has got so much skip and bounce htat it could be an actual proper grown-up hit, and topping it all off, Gomez's enchanting voice - the kind that makes you develop a crush on her even though you don't know what she looks like. Music to lick ice lollies to.
PETE CASHMORE

Saloon - If We Meet In The Future ****, very good

Second album from Reading Krautockers

Saloon ended 2002 with their track "Girls Are The New Boys" voted No 1 in John Peel's Festive 50. This second album features even more potential vote winners. While reliant on Stereolab's Kraut-Parisian sound, Saloon's masterful blending of mournful folk violins and nocturnal acoustics casts a woozy atmospheric shadow. "Que Quieres?" and "Kaspian", for instance, are emotionally bruised mini dramas. Elsewhere, Amanda GOmez's aromatic vocals turn the riffing motoriks of "Happy Robots" and "The Sound of Thinking" into balmy pop delights. Throughout, Saloon's light touch makes a strong impact. Wonderful.
NEIL DAVENPORT

Saloon - If We Meet In The Future
Who says pop and politics don’t mix. Saloon have unwittingly made the strongest case for further European integration since Tatu hit these shores. Okay, so they’re from Reading not Russia but observe the facts. They play Kraut-rock with the influence of a certain Anglo-French band (we’ll come onto that in a minute), and have songs in Spanish (?Que Quieres?) alongside ones named after Italian volcanoes and Soviet seas (Vesuvius and, erm, Kaspian).

Not that they or anyone around them would admit to sounding anything at all like their Franglais mentors, Stereolab. Hey, it’s not as if we mean the art-installation-soundtracking, disappearing-up-their own-Moogs ‘Lab but the once mighty groop responsible for the likes of ‘Mars Audiac Quintet’. And it’s not to say that they don’t bring their own distinctive persona into the mix. Amanda Gomez’s vocal is soft and sweet throughout and, unlike Laetitia Sadier, actually comprehensible, and the backing is lusher and warmer.

‘If We Meet In The Future’ is definitely a record of two halves though. Whilst the opening five tracks are undeniably satisfying, it’s the latter half where they come into their own. Dreams Mean Nothing is so gorgeously languorous and lovelorn it could break hearts from Stockholm to Sofia via Seville. Just when you think that that may be the peak, The Good Life tops it by opening and closing with a naggingly familiar keyboard prod encompassing a glorious tune between and Intimacy reveals the sound of Ladytron embracing this beautiful summer and ditching the dispassionate vocals in favour of honeyed, pastoral tones. To close, The Sound Of Thinking builds towards a pulsing climax before the non-more-Mogwai titled I Could Have Loved A Tyrant floats away on a bed of twinkling percussion and lulling strings into the deepest blue horizon.

And thus Saloon easily pass the five musical tests laid out in order to justify entry into the big league. Should we still need a referendum, I can only implore you to vote ‘Yes’. It’s well worth losing (ten) pounds for.
James S

SALOON If We Meet in the Future Track and Field HEAT 17
LAST YEAR’s (This Is) What We Call Progress was a stunning start. On its follow-up, this folktronic quintet sound, if anything, too relaxed; as though the pressure that produced the precise experimentalism of their debut has given way to complacent insularity. That said, Absence contains everything that makes Saloon special: Amanda Gomez keens a wistful vocal, “If we meet in the future/I’ll know you my friend,” while, New Order-like, the guitar picks out a rival melody and the viola saws. “In another park, on another train/I won’t feel regret again”, she sings, and you know that, despite the release date, she means parks piled with autumn leaves and trains clattering through barren lands. But sometimes feyness intrudes: even folktronica, you feel, requires discipline as well as whimsy.
Two stars / good
DAN CAIRNS

Saloon - If We Meet in The Future (Track and Field)
I've been trying to think of a way to combine and compare this record with corny automobile quips however this is nigh on impossible for two reasons. The first is that saloons are increasingly on the wane in favour of the hatchback where as Saloon are intent on ruling the world, well the space pop world at least.
Secondly it's ludicrous to compare such beautifully driven pop to anything as dull as a car. There are few band's who create such a divine sound as Saloon, melding gentle electronica with jagged yet silky rock forcing the listener into a world of dream.
When the delicate note changes and high hat brushing introduce us to the band on Vesuvius we're off floating around the room in Mary Poppins style. The rich spaced out world Saloon create is due to the looped, repetitive note changes and shoe gazing chord play. It's incredibly natural and tranquil in its volume without becoming chill-out ambience, so rare in music using synths and electronics. However, without the angelic vocals of Amanda Gomez Saloon simply wouldn't be the force they are, her beautifully monotone voice sends shivers down the spine before delivering a shatteringly gorgeous chorus.
Each song is a gem to fall in love with and to, especially the more fragile Kaspian, a delicate folk pop meander ready to dissolve at any point. It's the more accessible The Good Life which stands out, heart achingly joyful pop music that has a simple yet perfect beat in accompaniment designed to have us swaying and dancing with our lovers. Together for five years Saloon truly deserve their rightful place as pop uber lords and this will record will do them little harm at all.

Various - Pow! To The People
Track & Field started as a club, then added gigs to their roster of happenings in October 1999 as they built a reputation for ultra melodic, sixties-flavoured soulful pop which impacts on brain and feet simultaneously. For the last few years they’ve opened London ears to some of the best independent music from across the world through hundreds of gigs and a fair few records. The double album is a beautifully balanced collection of bands that have played live for Track & Field, spanning the range of independent music from jangle pop to indie-electronica to low-fi folk.

Of Montreal’s Everything About Her Is Wrong has the most cleverly barbed lyrics since Wire’s Mannequin set to a pristine Californian pop tune. Hey Lover by The Aislers Set is a pristine girl group song, sounding as if it had been recorded in New York in 1965 and discovered on a rare acetate only yesterday. Comet Gain’s Look At You Now You’re Crying is the saddest tale of kitchen sink desperation, guitars loudly leaking buckets of tears alongside Rachel’s very English, very soulful voice. The Clientele offer up the purest Love-song. Galveston proves that The Ladybug Transistor’s Gary Olson has the perfect, most resonant voice for singing Jimmy Webb songs. Add to this Woodchuck, The Amazing Pilots, Kicker, Saloon, Tompaulin, Herman Düne, the Loves’ Velvet Underground stylings - the list of great songs and bands is 36 long. Cane 141’s The Grand Lunar is mournful and elegant, while Mid State Orange’s Association-influenced crystalline pop is light streaming through curtains on a summer Sunday morning. The Tyde’s How Am I Supposed 2 is a stunning stoner-pop love song, with a piano riff so addictive that the song should be prescription only. By the end of disk two I’m a glassy-eyed melody junkie looking for his next fix of sweet, soulful, slightly downbeat pop music.

As a labour of love it’s outstanding. I’ve personally been turned on to so many great bands through these gigs and hopefully this album will open them up to a bigger audience. If I wanted to produce a classic mixtape, I wouldn’t bother: it’s already all here. The album proves there’s more to music than what the radio and the NME choose to tell you. It typifies and defines independence: as soon as you realise that there must be an alternative, you’ll start noticing the signs; there’s a signpost (36 of them actually) before us right now. Brothers and sisters, the real rock revolution starts here.

The Essex Green - The Long Goodbye
Although straight out of Brooklyn, NYC, The Essex Green steer a drastically different course to their more raucous city buddies. Like chalk next to the proverbial garage rock cheese, The Essex Green flounce and swoon like flowered-up bastions of the Woodstock era, crafting breezy pop sounds as pure and dazzling as the summer sun. With bellowing harmonies that only bloused hippies would dare sing, and a gentle, rolling narrative that caresses full-flung optimism like a beaded Wondermint cradling their potent stash of hashish, ‘The Long Goodbye’ is a sunfried bevy of power-pop strokes and city rock dashes. Capturing the sound and spirit of the late psychedelic era there’s no better way to spend the summer solstice than in the company of The Essex Green.
Matt Brown

The Essex Green - The Long Goodbye
Collegiate country hymns from eager NY trio
The art-school sleeve makes one thing certain : if you're looking for greasy, plank-spanking rockers you're in the wrong place. The shuffling alt. country softness of Lazy May and Southern States carry the lonely twang of big mountains and empty roads.
Tim Wild

The Essex Green - The Long Goodbye
They might not sell a million, but this Brooklynite art school are taking on indie twees like Belle and Sebastian. Though only 38 minutes in length, The Long Goodbye still packs in 12 languorous love songs and sounds all the better for its brevity. The group consists of present and former members of Vermont outfit, Guppyboy, and Ladybug Transistor. They also once recorded an entire album under a completely different name - The Sixth Great Lake. A veritable musicologist's fantasy, innit?
SUNNY CROCKETT

The Loves - Shake Yer Bones EP
My 7" slice of black plastic rotates pleasingly on the turntable: the perfect format for the lo-fi indieness in which Cardiff's Loves have been dealing for years.
This EP is slightly different, because whereas previous recordings have veered into material only their mothers and John Peel could love, there's a wealth of tuneful Americana here.
The title track reminds one of Simon's slightly discordant, affected, yankish drawl, but get over that hurdle and the song oozes cool quite surprising in one of the country's premier cardigan-wearing outfits. "Don't Spin Out" and "Cool" involve nicely before "Mary Woronov" closes with a riff naggingly reminiscent of Blondie's "One Way or Another". One way or another, a surprisingly easy-access introduction to The Loves.
JAMES MCLAREN

Herman Dune - Mas Cambios (4/5)
Herman Dune are two Swedish brothers displaced in the US, singing the blues with lopsided grins. Their voices - one high with wistful optimism, the other rough and ready for life to disappoint him - melt under the shared acceptance that love, life and geography are impossible.

Theirs is a hazy world. Random thoughts and visions somehow reveal profound truths in these pared-down folk songs, in which strange ideas collide with carefully stored details. The unlikely combination of a recorder and an electric guitar wheezes under sassy, self-pitying vocals to conjure a morning-after mood in Red Blue Eyes.

The haphazard guitar that slashes the sweetness of In the Summer Camp leaves you wondering whether it is the hymn to childhood it appears or a more awkward adult goodbye.

Best of all is the beautiful You Stepped on Sticky Fingers, where the itchy rhythms cease and Herman Dune savour a moment of recognition as the Rolling Stones album is broken underfoot but a heart suddenly starts beating.
BETTY CLARKE

Herman Dune - Mas Cambios (8/10)
The Dune brothers could almost have stepped off the celluloid of some outsider art flick : a pair of thick-bearded Swedish militant vegetarians, holed up in a house just outside the decaying fairground of New York's Coney Island, making some of the most mournful music imagineable. But their third album, "Mas Cambios", is very real.

The clear antecedent here is classic outsider country troupe the Palace Brothers : the Dune brothers' voices are so similar - one enigmatic and cracked, one hillbilly-high - to Will and Ned Oldham back in the day, it's actually faintly eerie. But the likes of "Sunny Sunny Cold Cold Day" have a strange magic all of their own, a commune of voices rising in baying chorus to toast these brittle hymns to melancholy.
LOUIS PATTISON

Herman Dune - Mas Cambias
“Mas Cambias” – more changes. The title comes from signs on the New York Transit System but could equally apply to the whole world of Düne. They hung (and hang) around with the ‘anti-folk’ movement, that collection of heart-on-their-sleeve low-fi emotional troubadours, and sounded like Leonard Cohen had gatecrashed the Velvet Underground’s picnic. While various anti-folkers still play on the album, now it feels like Herman Düne are a few stops on, writing songs not just for their mates but ones that are universal and accessible, though no less individualistic.

The album is the sound of a long sigh, filled with loss and longing. It’s the best resurrection of the romantic poets Keats, Byron and Shelley since Dylan in the 60s. Their romanticism is off-kilter, as in In The Summer Camp and they express the controlling, paranoid nature of romance in the otherwise singalong Show Me The Roof: “I wish I could watch over your naps…/ installing myself in/like a huge fucked up comforting software/ taking over anything that could make you worry”. They quote Daniel Johnson on the sleeve that “love is for losers”. It might mean that only losers fall in love, which seems echoed by Red Blue Eyes: “my breed is a melancholy one/ I’m skinny and slow with a hairy chest”. Yet that song has the opposite message that love is best appreciated by those who have and lose it. It lists the things the writer loves and has a fatalistic attitude to loss that is entirely positive: “I love it when night falls on Hoboken/ it’ll fall again/ truer word was never spoken”. In my humble opinion, it’s the best thing they’ve ever written and among the very best things I’ve heard this year.

Musically, it’s powerful without needing to be especially loud. The Silvertone guitars produce a warm buzzing while the recorders, ukulele and toy instruments add charming low-fi touches. Neman’s drums and percussion are unobtrusive but essential, adding light and shade. On A Sunny Sunny Cold Cold Day is full of reverb with off-beat lyrics (they write very well but there’s an attractive quirkiness if you study the words because English isn’t their first language). The Static Comes From My Broken Down Heart is a simple country sound with a tone of sweet melancholy, helped by Laura Hoch’s sympathetic backing vocals. My Friends Killed My Folks is a noir thriller, nervous and edgy while At Your Luau is quick and bongo-tastic, full of braggadocio and regret.

The album is a collection of jewels, a mini-masterpiece of melody, humour and playfulness as well as a comforting melancholy that connects on an emotional level with the listener. “Mas Cambios” is the way of the world; make it your own personal motto too.
GED

Herman Dune - Mas Cambias
Although lacking some of the immediacy of their previous long-player, "Switzerland Heritage", "Mas Cambias" is a fine piece of work, demonstrating how utterly affecting pop music can be when played by peoplewho really care. Swedish chain-smoking vegan animal rights activist brothers Andre and David-Ivar Herman Dune and drummer Neman care enough to get a bunch of their Brooklyn anti-folk chums to sing all over their album and call them the Flower Choir. They write lyrics so bare and uncomplicated ("When your cellphone batteries run out, I'll fill them up for you" from "The Static Comes From My Broken Heart") that you can't help but sing along second time around. They don't use a bass guitar, but there's no annoying holes in the sound (White Stripes: get a new guitar sound). They're also unashamedly Americanised, which should feel like some sort of cultural treason, but comes off as one of their sweetest attributes; they're all funny accents and Velvet Underground motifs still, but it's a charming, universal pop sound. The final track is titled "This is So Not What I Wanted", which might read like a line from Friends, but it plays like heartbreak caught on tape. By lovely men. With Beards. Smoking. And if you're not moved by "Show Me The Roof", with its lazy-anthem chorus and disarmingly pretty sentiment you will die lonely and afraid.
BRIAN PENNY

Of Montreal - Jennifer Louise
They've got it all; wit, charm, humour, great tunes, Dottie Alexander, lyrical genius and a guitarist with a broken foot (who is normally found performing in the quite brilliant Marshmallow Coast.) Jennifer Louise is the most obvious choice of single from the recent Track & Field LP, an upbeat sing-a-long tale about a long lost relation who hits it big sparking off a somewhat unsurprising interest in her affairs. The B side is more rocking, buy the album though, it's a real grower but you'll be rewarded for your attention.

The Projects - Entertainment
Entertainment is edgy, fractured post-punk spliced with spacey Europop. The initial, staccato effect is like the Slits or Kleenex until it glides into a warm bath of swirly synth noises and Lisa’s caressing French-pop tones. It’s lo-fi but high quality. The B-side What To Do, which is no longer in their live set, is a meaty garage rock riff which collides with synthy twizzles and ends in sampled electronica, a bit like the Standells playing Stereolab at Space Invaders

.

Dressy Bessy - Little Music : Singles 1997 - 2002
The first rays of sunshine outside and on cue we get the perfect summer record, a long playing platter of 60s tinged indie from those bubble headed cuties from Denver. This one is a veritable treasure trove of long deleted US-only early singles, demos and comp releases, saving the discerning pop picker a fortune on international money orders on eBay.

Fronted by the airy, saccharine sweet Tammy, and accompanied by the fuzzy but melodic guitar of the double shifting John Hill (he also strums for Apples in Stereo), it breezes along with all the fluffy care free abandon of a kitten on a motorised pink slipper. The amazing thing though is the consistent quality. Without checking the inner sleeve track list it’s impossible to ascertain what might have been a B-side, a demo or number one Stateside smash hit. Ok I jest about the latter. This may be sugary pop but just like our very own C86 revolution it’s much too underground for Dwight Spiegelhacker the third, who would glaze over at the relatively simple production and mildly psychedelic guitars. Dwight’s loss is our gain.
PAUL M

Dressy Bessy - Little Music
Regular readers will know of my affection for Dressy Bessy and it will no doubt come as no surprise then when I say that this is fantastic. Even though these are non-album tracks the quality is impressively high. Songs like Live To Tell, Princess, Fuzzy and especially Superstar Everything are among the best the band have done. Alongside the normal fuzzy pop that you expect there are some clean guitars on growers Gloria Days, Instead and the highlight of the Kindercore Christmas Two album All The Right Reasons. 18 tracks including the whole of the normally over priced California EP and their surprisingly mature sounding fuzz-tastic debut EP. Time to shake your shimmy man, do your little dance, me thinks!

Of Montreal - If He Is Protecting Our Nation... Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children
Of Montreal aren't "of montreal" at all. They're of Athens, Georgia. But you wouldn't expect a band who write songs called "My What a Strange Day with a Swede" to care about biographical accuracy, would you? In fact, it's best you accept, right from the beginning, that of Montreal don't care much for anything sensible. Like endings to songs, for example, they don't so much as end as wander off looking for their friends. This usually follows three minutes of smiling lunacy that you could call "psychedelia" if it didn't sometimes sound like Hootie and the Blowfish. We shouldn't get off on the wrong foot though (particularly as one track - a curving slice of new wave that puts Blondie back in their drainpipes - is called, "There's Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics"), "Friends" incidental music it is not. It's just that Of Montreal's happy melodic attitude to music occasionally crosses over with other bands who have a happy melodic attitude to music. Which is good (The Beach Boys) and bad ("Wake Up Boo"-era Boo Radleys).
There are plenty of genuinely gorgeous moments, like the opening of "Cast In The Haze (been there four days)" : "I'm happy today because I'm in love [...] I hop off the train singing your name." And lots in the way of swivel-eyed silliness: "There's a hole in my sock where my shoe always bites it." So it goes well with spring. But if you like your pop accessible, straight-up and infectious, rather than brain-bending, kooky and made out of nuts, stay well away.
DJ

Of Montreal - If He Is Protecting Our Nation... Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children
The album, coinciding with the end of the UK tour, is pieces of everything: song sketches, full-blown tunes, B-sides and rare singles. For the fan, it’s a bit of a feast. For the OM virgin, it’s not the best place to start (that’s ‘Aldhils Arboretum’) but it proves how chock-full of clever ideas they are.

Girl From NYC (named Julia) is acoustic, introverted and romantic before it bursts with electric melody and anxiety. My, What A Strange Day With A Swede is like an off-centre Beatles record, with a regular song with lovely melody in there only twisted and turned upside down. Spooky Spider Chandelier, a sketch rather than a song, has a wonderful otherness with Japanese vocals from Yoko Sawai. Cast In the Haze, an old US single, is dreamy psychedelia with a ladleful of melody and sprinkles of oddness. The love of melody is reflected in the cover of the Zombies’ merry Friends Of Mine. Complete with a roll call of friends who are couples, there’s a humorous sleeve note that announces “in the time it took for the record to be released, they all split up”! Most striking is the recent B-side There Is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics. A study of the psychology of rock writing, you long for a sheet of the tongue in cheek lyrics. In a punk rock style, is Kevin really singing: “I’m not confused like you twits, you Lester Bangs wannabes”? I hope he is! This song takes on the mantle of greatness the more I hear it.

Finally full marks for the anti-war stance on the cover. While most bands are waiting to decide their stance based on their accountants’ advice on the effect on their US record sales, Of Montreal declare “we don’t want to fight in your beast war” with a surrealistic cover that has George Bush spurting the finest crude from a derrick set at groin level, all over a one-clawed child in an ‘America’ t-shirt. It’s striking and bizarre but effective and a welcome sign that pop’s found its conscience again.

of Montreal - If He is Protecting Our Nation…Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children
As the press release for the record states, by the time this is in the shops, George ‘Basil’ Bush may well have dragged the USA, and our very own puppet nation, into an unwarranted massacre. Well, as the bombs start to fall in Basra despite little conclusive evidence regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction, we are about to open the most dangerous of chasms weeks earlier than planned. Meanwhile, in South Africa 1 million people will meet their death by the end of the year because of the AIDS catastrophe, which could have been avoided 10 yrs ago with monetary aid from some of the oil hungry war barons. Instead Britain is spending £1.75 billion on an unworthy conflict, while the US, which has its own growing poverty problem, is spending untold amounts on ‘smart bombs’. Well done boys, well fucking done.

So, before this review turns into a political critique, it’s a relief to pick up a record that recognises the world’s problems via its title before it shows us how it really should be on this beautiful planet. There are no protest songs or political manifesto’s here, just pure unadulterated pop fun that those in power should be made to listen to. But then again, the strange, complex and most importantly fun sounds Of Montreal produce just wouldn’t make sense to the uneducated likes of Bush and his wife, Mr Blair. If He is Protecting… is a compilation of b sides, outtakes and recent covers, like the brilliant Zombies song Friends of Mine, which does the 60s psych/garage kings more than justice – coming on like an anthemic West Coast version of All You Need is Love. The fantastically titled There is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics is a clear indication of the bands maturing sound, having appeared on the recent single Jennifer Louise. Over sharp psychedelic sounds, Barnes sings that if you don’t like Of Montreal, something must be wrong with you and I tend to agree with their view point.

As with the rest of Of Montreal’s back catalogue the strange borders on the ridiculous – but that’s where the band succeed, they’re here to lighten up our lives so you can’t help but enjoy them. On the ludicrous Christmas Isn’t Safe for Animals the song stops half way through for several people to say “Why rent, when you can have your own washer and dryer for just $225? Put it on your Sears card!” Why indeed! You sometimes get the feeling that Barnes is simply talking to himself when he adds his vocals over the clever instrumentation. However, on Cast In The Haze (been there four days) his vocals are touchingly melodic and his harmonies partner the acoustics and organ perfectly as he sings “I’m happy today/because I’m in love”. Some Of Montreal can leave one cringing when the tune seems to go missing for a few seconds, but on the whole the band are one who deserve your affection and this record is no different. Someone should blast If He is Protecting…at top volume on Capitol Hill, until Georgie starts smiling and laughing at something other than a country’s misery. CHRIS PARKIN

Homescience - "Songs for Sick Days" (Track & Field)
Homescience wear their Americana influences proudly and affectionately on this beautiful album. Over the space of 50 minutes, these 22 songs curl around you like a duvet on a flu-ridden day, warm, tender, letting you know it's OK to feel a little bit sorry for yourself. The two opening tracks give a flavour of things to come. Little Wings is a downbeat lo-fi acoustic tune which starts "You cut off my head/But I wont be dead/'Cos little wings will sprout from my shoulders". You know that you're in for something a bit odd, gothic, special. The vocal style recalls the fragile, melancholic delivery of Mark Linkous, and indeed throughout the album I am reminded of the power of those seemingly simple, uncluttered and heartbreaking songs of Sparklehorse.

Then there's the carefully put together Don't Shirk, a sort of Pet Sounds chewed over by the Flaming Lips, with a vocal melody and slight non-committal rhythm. It sounds brilliant. And unbelievably the whole album is like this: lo-fi, intimate, sad melodies, mainly acoustic, sometimes electric, sometimes floating, sometimes rhythmic (Song, one of the most straightforward countryrocktype tunes here, is a gentle singalong about a song that you can call your own, natch), sometimes with the odd sound experiment (the backwards sample of train and birds on Complete Train Kit).

Homescience may hail from Scotland but you wouldn't know it - "We've been here livin' whiskey for days/Tumbleweed could just take me away/From the brownstones and pains/To my home on the range/The stestons' ten gallons of NYC rain" they sing over the clip-clop rhythm and bar-room piano on Livin' Whiskey. And boy, you're with them. Americana being a state of mind, of course.

In Homescience and Songs for Sick Days we have something homegrown and special, that may point to the likes of Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips, but avoids the pretentious excesses and pitfalls that they can suffer from. If you've ever liked the more focussed songs of these bands then I suggest you will like this. Now for my sicknote - "Dear boss, cannot come into work today*.You cut off my head*".

Homescience - Songs For Sick Days
Ce qui frappe à l'écoute de ce deuxième album d'Homescience, c'est le mimétisme confondant avec Mercury Rev, tant au niveau de la musique que de la voix et du chant précieux. Y'a pire me direz-vous, d'autant plus que les écossais ont au moins la bonté de nous épargner le pompiérisme grandissant desdits américains… De plus la production fait instinctivement penser aux smile sessions des Beach Boys, voire aux Beatles, pour le son chaleureux et un rien désuet, et surtout pour cette façon de s'amuser avec les sons et d'embellir d'effets discrets et originaux des compositions acoustiques a priori simples. Pour preuve, écoutez le très bon Don't shirk dont l'intro fait irrémédiablement penser à un Good vibrations repris par Mercury Rev et malmené par les Flaming Lips. Bref, autant d'arguments qui vont dans le sens de ce Songs for sick days… Une seule réserve toutefois : si les compositions ont le mérite de toujours aller à l'essentiel de par leur concision, 22 titres ( !) ça fait un peu beaucoup et ça finit par être poliment ennuyeux.
Guillaume C.

Homescience - Songs For Sick Days
No matter how hard the editor of Uncut will try and convince you, at the end of the day The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev are only good bands. OK so most of their output is far more inventive than your average chart band but for me neither can hold out over the length of a full album (come on it was only really The Dark is rising and a Drop in Time that were exceptional on All is Dream). The real heroes of the "fantasy / childrens musical" genre, as I choose to name it, are none other than Sparklehorse. Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is easily one of the best albums I've ever heard, but its follow up, Good Morning Spider, never really hit the same dizzying heights and by the time It's A Wonderful Life came out, I'd lost interest. And so here are Homescience to deliver the follow up that never was.

The fragile voice, the unashamed love of pop, country and toy instruments, the gentle sentiments, the hope, the ability to carve a song out of any situation, the downright openhearted unrequited love. It's here in abundance.

If I was to pick one song out of the twenty two I think track twelve is the standout. Imagine the perfect harmonius slow pop of Kincaid and Grandaddy's love of technology whilst happy robots watch in awe and clap in time. Maybe 14 tracks would have sufficed but when you've got so many good songs how do you choose which ones to leave out? Most bands would kill for just six or seven songs this good and maybe that explains a lot.

Saloon - Girls Are The New Boys
A cursory glance could afford Reading's Saloon little more than feckless indie-schmindie status, but the carefree romp of "Girls Are The New Boys" hints at more with its delicate chorus and suprisingly abrasive conclusion. The electric backbone of "Solitude" builds upon this promise with singer Amanda's toasted marshmallow vocals proclaiming words of wisdom over the top ("Don't give up on yourself," she purrs), before all is delivered with "I Am the Cheese", a former live favourite of the band trembling between "Things Lost In The Fire"-era Low, The Sonora Pine and The Gentle Waves, all strings and cobwebs and shivering beneath the stars.

Saloon may have some of the trappings of sugar coated chamber pop, but these are suppressed enough to let the songs (rather than the paisley shirts) shine through - and on the evidence of this record, they show themselves in fact to be one of Reading's best kept secrets. second only to that little record shop in the arcade near the train station.
Karl Kremin

Saloon - Girls Are The New Boys
I've come to the conclusion that Saloon are the perfect 7" band, a whole album is too much but 5 minutes in their company is nothing short of bliss. The brilliantly titled "Girls Are The New Boys" begins with a nagging two note viola riff set to driving Teutonic beats as Miss Saloon gently seduces you with her sweeter than honey tones. And 3 and a half minutes later the drummer gets bored and exploeds into action as the guitarist and viola-ist fight to see who can play the fastest. The result? A New World just like the other world. Take a look inside.

Of Montreal - Aldhils Arboretum
Fragrantly funny loveliness from quirky Athens, Georgia collective
In contrast to the recent crop of bands purveying twee 60's-style sunshine pop, the latest from of Montreal comes as a relief. While they, too, are feeling the hippie spirit - their artwork leaves us in no doubt that they believe free love and flower power are groovy, baby - they blend retro psychedelia with a healthy sense of irony: here, witty lyrics are just as important as sweet melodies and honeyed harmonies. An irreverent and enjoyably silly listen.
NICK DAWSON

Of Montreal - Aldhils Arboretum
Fiendish, grinning psychedelic idiocy.

If you swooned for Chicagoan semi-dwarf Bobby Conn's blend of power ballads and gay songs about golf, you'd be an idiot to miss this. Of Montreal are from Athens, Georgia but REM they ain't. A deviant bunch of paisley pop freaks, their multi-tiered songs will give those with a detailed knowledge of Anglodelic ancients XTC's back catalogue more than a few deja vu moments.

Everyone else should just swoon at how beautifully arranged the effortlessly quirky 'Aldhils Arboretum' is. A special note for 'Jennifer Louise' which, aside from sounding like prime-period Pulp, may be the first great pop song about pestering a distant cousin on the off chance that she might have some money. Indisputably strange but secretly brilliant.
8/10
Jim Wirth

Of Montreal - Aldhils Arboretum
I remember being slightly disppointed when I first got Cocquelicot, but after giving it the attention it deserved it soon revealed its brilliance in all its brilliant colours. And so Aldhils Aroboretum has taken several listens to grow. The normal crazy characters are there but this time you've got to search a little harder to find them, like the "crankily elderly lady next door who accuses us of burning down her barn" and harry the alcoholic neighbour asking for a trip to the liquor store in Isn't It Nice?, a swaying tune of domestic bliss, not disimilar to the Gay Parades Neat Little Domestic Life and Natalie the lonely girl who buys herself a Yorkshire Terrier and names it Effie in the pub sing-a-long piano and trumpet epitaph of Natalie and Effie. And of course Louis Capouche, the cute little lost orphan in the album highlight Kid Without Claws, which sets the template for the majority of the album. It's more of a return to the rocks roots (but still with a generous helping of pop!) in a Nicki Lighthouse kind of way, and more straightforward songwriting, though with of Montreal mothing is really that straightforward.

Unlike The Gay Parade and Cocquelicot there doesn't seem to be a definite theme running through, one thing that does stand out though is a now apparent fear of growing old. Emphasized in Old People in the Cemetery "there's nothing sadder than an old woman in the cemetry / picking leaves off her husband's tomb / knowing that her only wish is she will die and join him soon" and in Ode to the Nocturnal Muse where, though jokingly, he exclaims "I can't wait to be old / growing senile together / holding hands / and completely out of our heads". For now though Mr. Kevin Barnes remains young and his ever fantastic mind keeps churning out the goods and ever impressing me with his great but sometimes mind numbingly obvious songs, such as Jennifer Louise, his cousin that he has met but once still he "just wonders about you / wonder if you ever think about me."

If you haven't already been won over by the wonderful world of of Montreal then this is the perfect starting place and once this one has won you over, go check out their older stuff, you won't be disappointed.

Of Montreal - Aldhils Arboretum
What do we know about of Montreal? They’ve released about six albums, though this is their first proper release in the UK. Some of those have been – gasp! - concept albums. They moonlight in other bands like Great Lakes and Marshmallow Coast. And judging by Kevin Barnes’ lyrics and David Barnes’ artwork, they don’t see the world like anyone else.

of Montreal are poppy like the Beatles circa Sergeant Pepper, harmonic like the Beach Boys, psychedelic and whimsical like Syd Barrett, often all within the same song. Songs are sharply drawn vignettes, beautifully observed but all slightly out of kilter and offering a surreal take on life. Time signatures change mid-song leaving you slightly disoriented. It’s pop music with a slightly bitter tang. Doing Nothing is fresh sounding Monkees, very melodic with fluttering guitars but with enough twists to suggest that the band aren’t following a pop formula. Or try Jennifer Louise: full of melody, with perfect harmonies, but lyrically it’s a stalker’s tale of unrequited love for a cousin (coming from Athens, Georgia you’d have thought they knew better). Pancakes for One is pure 60s pop the way the DBs used to interpret it: guitars jangling the senses, melodies soothing them and gorgeous harmonies served up like lashings of comfort food. Old People in the Cemetery is blackly humorous but moving too: “old people…unprepared to come to terms/with the fact that we’re all food for worms/ do they think a prayer could make a difference now?”. It’s tuneful and melodic with a calypso beat happy tone and a string section reminding us of the grave situation. Isn’t It Nice is a song of praise for country life, melodic and superficially hearty but evolving into a sinister warning about the people you meet there: “Larry, our alcoholic neighbour, at 10am asking for a ride to the liquor store” and “cranky elderly lady who accuses us of burning down her barn”. And however rhythmic and poppy Death Dance of Omipapas and Sons for You is, and it is, that title alone puts it in the “ma, they’ve been at the mushrooms again” box.

There’s a knowing innocence about all this and, while the whimsy can be a little strong at times, the range of pop styles, and the intelligence that applies them, makes this worthwhile listening. You might not get all of it first time, but you’ll want to keep listening till you do.
Reviewed by Ged

The "Exclusive" Fanzine
Issue 8

Kicker - Fivefortyfives
that's kicker the band, not the equally august german football magazine. we don't normally review german football magazines.

long awaited - by us - "5x45s" does what it says on the tin, allowing us to listen to kicker's resumé to date without the usual attendant gaps of cuing one of the singles up, playing it at the wrong speed, dropping the needle, etc. of course, we know that's the attraction of vinyl, too, but in these digitally obsessed times...

it's all rich and warm, if sparsely produced, conjuring images of analogue recording and dansette playback, motown melodies and (inescapably) the comet gain and velocette axis which we understand is, or at least was, represented in their six-strong line-up. kicker take guitar, bass, drums and sixties organ and supplement them with strings or brass where necessary to produce a sound which is undeniably an ode to the past, but that is usually lively enough to justify their role in the present. the only exception to the over-riding northern soul feel is probably "turning left", which is more obviously a recording made under the influence of the tim gane / miss mend school of archness, but that still works perfectly well.

the release order of the singles is also mixed up, so that the cd starts with a bang with one of their very strongest tunes, "boy, have you got it ?" and then hops around between both the preceding and subsequent platters. to be honest, from their first single "get rid of him", to the inspirational 2002 effort "no more tears" with its sparkling exhortation to just live life - one of the very best singles of this year - the quality control is pretty smooth, so newcomers will be treated to a coherent whole (fans of the saturday people's album, for example, might recognise the retro-pop sensibilities). as such, it will certainly tide us over until single six arrives...

Kicker - Fivefortyfives
It's amazing that the band that has had the most releases on the label remains the least known. Listening to this compilation of their five singles so far it amazes me yet more. Why aren't this band huge?

12 stabs of northern soul influenced moog-a-licious pop gems peppered with toe tapping, hip-swinging beats of which the wonderful "Boy Have You Got It?" the country tinged "No More Tears", with its heart achingly honest spoken word outro, "besides you owe me" it concludes and the stomping "The Falling Leaves" standout.

Sometimes, like on "Chancifer", they sound like a northern soul version of the highly underrated Tiger but for the most part they sound like 1966 down at the northern soul dance party.

Kicker - Fivefortyfives
Bitterscene nights at the Bassment have a brilliant reputation thanks to lively gigs by bands like Kicker. If you were foolish enough to miss them there is some consolation.Luckily,all indie-pendently minded hipsters can savour the sound of Kicker on Fivefortyfives - a fine compilation of their first five vinyl singles.

They've repaid the Bitterscene support by thanking them in the slleevenotes and by making one of the best indie releases of the year. Kicker make all-nighter raids on the the vaults of Northern Soul then melt the tunes with their burning indie spirit. The wonderful Boy Have You Got It? and Gone And Forgotten recreate the sublime Sixties sound of Decca records. So wonderfully retro yet so refreshingly now. Be careful though, Jill Drew's sexy soulful voice will inspire you to raid record fairs for rare Billie Davis and Dana Gillespie vinyl - she's that good! The groovy vibe continues through the liberating and heartmending emotion of Get Rid Of Him. Kicker outshine Stereolab on the infectious On Your Floor and No More Tears and Turning Left is what 'Lab fans really wanted after the complete space-pop of Ping Pong.

There is another side to Kicker. When Phil Sutton sings they transform into an equally impressive Felt/Yo La Tengo hybrid band. The Long Way Down, Chancifer and Baby Don't Worry are lush lo-fi treasures. Fivefortyfives will give you goosepimples - it's too good to ignore. Let's hope Kicker keep their road atlas open and travel back to Chelmsford soon.
Don Blandford

Great Lakes - The Distance Between
This is the second album from the Athens, Georgia trio (which also includes various other Elephant 6 type people) and it carries on the off-centre Sixties melodic garage pop sound of before bit takes it to a more lush place than I previously remember. Aside from the three cover versions (Mike Nesmith's "Some of Shelley's Blues", The Zombies "This Will Be Our Year" and The Bee Gees (!)"Morning of My Life") that whilst fitting in perfectly with their sound are not their own and do not have a lot of "value added", there are 8 songs of Beach Boys style HUGE orchestral guitar pop. It is unashamedly retro, sounding like 60's / 70's guitar pop and why I should love this and not the Beatles copyist retro of Oasis I don't know. Probably because this is not "blokey" at all, it's orchestral and vulnerable and all that matters is it puts a big fat smile on my big fat face.

Great Lakes - The Distance Between
The formula remains the same as previously yet the vision is slightly altered with the inclusion of some garage-y guitars on Sister City, ( a great song unexplainably ruined by a totally unnatural key change in the middle 8) and added experimentalism sd hinted on the instrumental tracks of their debut album.The slow moving Ever So Over and schoolroom Beatles echo that is Now is When both meander off into experimental city or at least just inside the gates of the mythical city. The fact that there is three cover versions (The Zombies is the only one I recognise) annoys me slightly, why a band with so much talent must rely on other people's songs will forever mystify me. All three songs, however, are exectued brilliantly and fit in with the general feel of the album.

There's no doubt about which song is gonna win over the most fans. The brilliant "Conquistadors" is a fantastic epic blues-y garage beast of a tune. Two minutes of perfect pop lead into a four-minute guitar wigout. Several time changes later and an excerpt from Suede's Metal Mickey and you're left speechless, your fingers bleeding from playing along on your red shiny air guitar.

Great Lakes - The Distance Between
This is a collection, but not of greatest hits, though the quality is so good you’ll want to return to them. The album collects songs not on the ‘Great Lakes’ album but released in various other formats, mostly in the US. As most of these formats were singles or compilations, the hook-rating of the songs is very high. Great Lakes are associated with the Elephant 6 camp so you know roughly what to expect: wayward psychedelia, sixties garage pop laden with hooks and smothered in melody, married to a modern pop sensibility but rather quirky and off-centre. Although a couple of tracks are fillers, most are substantial and lovely pop numbers. Ever So Over is a full Beach Boys production, stately and elegant, with Jamey Huggins’ languid voice massaged by mournful viola and harmonica. It’s nearly 5 minutes of slow burning melody gently emerging from the tightly layered track. Sister City in contrast is all guitar riffs and feedback, shorter and more direct but just as melodic and instantly infectious. There are three covers, all of which fit perfectly into the Great Lakes pure-pop universe, being linked by their melodic edge and catchy tunes. Mike Nesmith’s Some of Shelley’s Blues is pop-heavy country-rock. The Bee Gees’ Morning of My Life is very simple and sweet and builds in sound as the verses get progressively more surreal. Their cover of The Zombies’ This Will Be Our Year is wonderfully melodic with a pretty sentiment delivered perhaps even better than on ‘Odessey and Oracle’. There’s a lovely use of horns and strings and the whole thing sounds pretty timeless. The first two minutes of Conquistadors are amazing West Coast pop, kicking off like T-Rex meets a country-rock Byrds, with stunning piano fills. It’s hookier than a family wedding at the New Order bassist’s house. Guitars then go off like someone dropped a lit match in a box of fireworks and it ends in a bit of a guitar/piano wigout but just for a while we’re planting the flag on planet pop and everything is gorgeous. There are lots of external events to remind you that it can be a pretty shitty world sometimes so it’s good that Great Lakes are there to stroke your brow and show you some of the finer things in life.
Reviewed by Ged

Great Lakes - 'Conquistadors' / 'Sister City'
Oh look, a garage rock seven-inch from America. Fair play to Great Lakes, though, who sound roughly like the Beach Boys, had they been dragged up backwards in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and sent to record in a diving bell.

Theirs might not be the greatest idea on paper, but it's massively appealing in practice, especially when one of them decides to have a bit of a go on his guitar and is finally led away crying, four and a half minutes later. We really like this one.
JM

Great Lakes - 'Conquistadors' / 'Sister City'
This single provides a taster of Athens, Georgia band Great Lakes' second LP, due in October - and what a scorcher it's set to be. 'Conquistadors' is an exercise in sneery, drugged-up cool, spiraling off into an extended psychedelic jam that lasts long enough for the drugs to kick in and wear off. Yet it pales into nothing against the rousing 'Sister City', a perfect slice of 60s pop falling somewhere between Tripping Daisy and the Apples in Stereo without the overindulgence of the former or the whacked out trippiness of the latter. Play this loud and extend your summer by a month.
Karl Cremin

Tompaulin - 'Give Me A Riot In The Summer Time'
and yes, it probably was the summertime when this actually came out... on the strength of this sprightly ep, 2/3 of which is produced by ben lurie and jim reid (jesus and mary chain, of course), and also tompaulin splinter micktravis' rather fine début, we might need to reappraise (or to use the current media buzzwords, "upwardly re-grade") tompaulin, who we have previously and patronisingly placed in the hideously bulging "quite good" bracket.

"give me a riot itself" rises, subtly, from the embers of the northwest's recent racial tensions, the mary chain's "some candy talking" playing off beat happening's "indian summer" as two chords and jamie holman's not un-fey vocal drift through the smoke of burnt out cars and eerily silent streets. after 90 seconds, mary chain guitars proper duly join in, closely followed by stacey mckenna's voice, which comes across not unlike romi mori's part of her duet with a certain j. reid on freeheat's fine "the two of us". the lyrics, though, as we've hinted, are far removed from that song's romanticism - the mood is rough as trumpton, as tompaulin focus on the hate that has bred violence across so many of these polarised towns. a touch disappointingly, though, the sound is still pretty clean overall - a single muddy guitar line does hardly a cut off "psychocandy" make - but it's still mean, moody and several significant steps towards magnificent. the star turn production might not be quite the job that the brothers reid did on björk that time (remember the sugarcubes' "birthday" as enhanced by their "hey hey hey"s and distant white noise ?) but we still think it supplies just the kick that tompaulin needed, so their music could match the width of ambition of their subject matter...

as proof of the pudding, the real mccoy comes with track two, "swing low stuart" which, like the subject of the song, is unassuming on the outside but harbours a deep dark secret. for two minutes in to the song's dulcet half-acoustic meander, our ears start to be luxuriously caressed by some proper, seeping feedback - progressively higher in the mix but never devouring the melody - for a good couple of minutes, recalling the likes of dundee's brilliant wildhouse (if you remember the "let's get married" ep). we being lovers of feedback, it's going to be high in the running in our favourite tracks of 2002, of that let there be no doubt, all courtesy of the mary chain's midas touch. can someone give belle & sebastian jim reid's phone number ?

so fair play to track & field for releasing this well conceived, brilliantly executed and smartly sleeved cd-ep. may they release many more political and occasionally noisy tunes in future.

Tompaulin - 'Give Me A Riot In The Summer Time'
This is Tompaulin's sixth release to date and the first sign of new material from the Blackburn-based band whose debut album and last release 'The Town and the City' came out in November.

Tompaulin are my best friend's favourite band of the last few years, but my relationship with them is different to his strong friendship with them. The first time that I interviewed Tompaulin for my former fanzine, 'Independent Underground Sound' , the group's frontman Jamie Holman told me that he was a big fan of the Jesus and Mary Chain's William Reid. My previous interview prior to Tompaulin had been with William Reid.

I interviewed Jamie again last November, which was about the same time that I interviewed Freeheat, the new project of Jiim Reid and Ben Lurie, both of whom had also been in the Jesus and Mary Chain. Jim and Ben mentioned in the interview that they had produced 'A Long Way to Nowhere', the debut mini album of the Parkinsons. Over the course of various internet chats with Jamie about Freeheat, I told him about this and he asked me if I thought Freeheat would poduce Tompaulin. My answer was "Go for it ! If you don't ask, lad, you don't get !"

He asked. They met, went drinking and this single is the first result of that collaboration, upon which I sort of helped out on bringing two of my favourite bands together (In my own little way). 'Riot'

is very different from Tompulin's vinyl adventures of the past, and was described to me a while ago by Jamie as "Nancy and Lee" on smack, which is sort of right.

Both the first and second track were produced by Jim and Ben and Jamie told me he got to use Jim's back line while recording this.

'Give Me a Riot' and 'Swing Low Stuart' are both dark and light songs.

'Give Me a Riot' starts out softly with just Jamie on vocals and at this stage of the song has a Buffalo Springfield 'For What It is Worth' feel before his co-vocalist Stacey Mckenna comes in taking over the vocals and the tune bucks up its tempo. To a degree they sound like the Velvets. This could be the second part of 'Slender' , one of Tompaulin's early singles.

The main chunk of 'Swing Low Stuart' has Stacey singing about a normal Northern guy and his sexual perversion to a nice groove, but half way through Jamie runs off to find Jim's guitar and effects pedals, putting a stupid grin on my face, as he gets everything to feedback, better even than any record by the Jesus and Mary Chain.

This is followed by the softest and lightest track here, the beautiful old ballad that is 'The Saddest of Things' which I seem to have been listening to for years now. Alison Cotton of Saloon plays some fine violin on this.

Definitely Tompaulin's finest twelve minutes to date !
Anthony Strutt

Tompaulin - Give Me A Riot In The Summertime
Rumbustious effort that finds some pleasing new angles for the familiar Waiting For My Man template, with the aid of ex-Jesus &Mary Chain producers Jim Reid and Ben Lurie, who know a thing or two about refurbishing dusty Velvet Underground riffs. Tompaulin, it has to be suspected, are on the verge of something.

Saloon - (This Is) What We Call Progress
Imagine Sandy Denny fronting Kraftwerk. Saloon sound something like that previously inconceivable pairing, except that the addition of some tasty guitar-thrashing, courtesty of Matt Ashton, and vocalist Amanda Gomez's habit of vocalising in French, Spanish and English gives them a contemporary edge.

The heart of the band's synth-driven sound is Adam Cresswell's input, though, with Alison Cotton's viola, reinforcing the Velvet Underground air that permeates the whole proceedings.

Progress? Of sorts, and as their "Girls Are The New Boys" shows, even progress as slight as theirs can be utterly enchanting.

Saloon - (This Is What) We Call Progress
Reading - the overgrown urban commuterville on the west wing of London - is hardly synonymous with romantic pop promise. But Saloon may just well be able to over-turn that perception. Listening to the Reading-based foursome's debut makes you wonder if there's been an influx of indie-pop Scotsfolk (relatives of The Delgados and The Pastels perhaps) and old synth lovers (Broadcast, Pulp, Stereolab fanatics, maybe) into the ever-shuffling Berkshire population.

Pivoted around the velvety-soft tones of Amanda Gomez, Saloon lasso their songs to melodic Moog-grooves, lilting guitars, jazzy percussion and sweeping strings. Certainly not averse to a bit of plagiarism it's true, but when the band steal from so many good sources, it feels like well-informed research.

Occasionally though, the inspired inceptions can slip into borderline insipid, leaving you a little stifled by the band's twee proclivities. But such moments only happen once every three listens, so as long as you don't overplay '(This is What) We Call Progress" then it will sit nicely in a CD-rack featuring both The Pastels' "Illumination" and Stereolab's "Emperor Tomato Ketchup".

May 2002

Saloon - (This Is) What We Call Progress
Reading-based Saloon spent four years quietly building a following among John Peel's indie masses through a string of low-key singles before releasing their debut album (This Is) What We Call Progress. Like Track And Field cohorts Tompaulin, Saloon have a passion for lilting melodies and docile guitar 'n string symphonies, but where the former often find themselves aligned with Belle and Sebastian, Saloon veer off in the direction of Stereolab with celestial Moog washes and shyly seductive multilingual lyrics. Wonderfully off-kilter tracks "My Everyday Silver" and live fave "Girls Are The New Boys" tread cosmic paths but fall on just the right side of kitsch, and Bicycle Thieves" swoons while deftly sidestepping twee territory.
Leslie Gilotti

Saloon - (This Is) What We Call Progress
Blending guitar pop and analogue electronics with stylophones, theremins, melodica and violins like a space-age Belle and Sebastian alongside Stereolab and Broadcast in Doctor Who's tardis, Saloon's quietly-awaited debut album is a low-key wonder. Ditching all five of their previous singles to produce ten new tracks, Saloon weave delicately beautiful, dreamily melancholic songs with a wonderfully lazy grace. Led by Amanda Gomez's hushed, seductive, Beth Orton-like vocal sighs, the effortless charm of 'Make It Soft', the fragile emotions of 'Bicycle Thieves' and the surprisingly angsty guitars of 'Across The Great Divide' match the song-smithery skills of the Delgados. Shamelessly flaunting a love for the wistful whispers of the lost Sarah Records, this music is beautiful and yet so brittle that a cold stare could almost shatter it. Songs to accompany lost sunny afternoons and twilight-chilled regret, to sink a few hearts and raise more than a few hopes. A small, delightful victory for indie-pop served with a side-order of leftfield trickery.
Ian Fletcher

May 2002

Saloon - This is What We Call Progress
Saloon play the kind of softly, softly indie music that record shops affiliated to no chain horde and dish out to earnest fans of music. People like lead singer Amanda Gomez whose caring yet troubled voice can be heard lilting around the periphery of Matt Ashton's guitar, Michael Smoughton's rhythms, Alison Cotton's viola and a whole host of electronic wizadry. The great thing is the mix of it all. Amanda can make this record sound somewhere between Beth Orton and Stereolab. Whereas Matt's guitaring can be really seductive and understated, but on the other extreme he will yield his axe like it is the last time he will be able to play it. The album title alond begs a witty reposte and analysis. But in the end the only question, that should worry you before purchase, is am I fey enough?
Stuart Wright

Sleazenation
May 2002

Saloon - (This is)What We Call Progress
Theremins are waved at frantically. Melodicas fellated mercilessly. Guitars crunched valliantly and beats syncopated splendidly whilst vocalist Amanda ruminates in a tri-lingual whammy of heartbreaking plaintiveness.
CS

Saloon - (This is) What We Call Progress ****
Gentle folk vocals over experimental schoolroom charm, organic sounds and a synthesiser making weird and wonderful noises. The melodic insistence and darkness of a choral ghost backed by the Velvet Underground. Belle and Sebastian pop - and something of a gem.

Saloon - (This is)What We Call Progress
Saloon are a Reading five-piece who sound a bit like Stereolab with a dash of Dubstar, or maybe a mellower Add N to (X). And dear old Belle an' Seb are peeking over their skinny shoulders: listen closely, and there are some cute acoustic touches in among the Moog-y drone and trilingual wistfulness-violas, trumpets, the numerous melodicas that lend a note of Augustus Pablo-style melancholia. The standout song is "Girls Are The New Boys", which could be the soundtrack to a post-rock Super-8 remake of Midnight Cowboy featuring Sean O'Hagan as Ratso. Which might not change your life, but definitely offers more sustenance to the yearning soul than, say, the next Oasis album.
Tim Footman

North Guide
April 2002

Album of the Month...Saloon - (This is) What We Call Progress
There is an ethereal quality to Saloon, a lightness to their palette of airbrushed electronic pop symphony and song. It is a buoyancy that has allowed them to exist largely incognito up until now, floating somewhere above our heads alongside Broadcast and Stereolab, watching the goings on beneath them.

A number of singles have teasingly dropped an airy mix of jangling guitar, sombre viola and various other electronic noise machines (Moog stylophone) into the realm of our perception. These give some body to Amanda Gomez's softly sung vocals which barely show up on mainstream radar. Sometimes she sings in Spanish or French (Le Weekend) and there is nothing more incomorehensible to an English ear than a foreign tongue.

(This is) What We Call Progress is their calling card to the general consensus. The blinking bleeps that open the first track, Plastic Surgery, are a subtle musical binary invting us to follow them as they descend from their hiding place on something that (judging from the whooshes and pops emitted from the Moog of Adam Cresswell) resembles Mr Boo's sub machine from Jamie and the Magic Torch.

It is the opening track of an album that includes none of their previous single releases an dby this fact alone is deserving of Album of the Month. What was the last record you bought that shared that same quality?It is an occurrence all the more surprising when you consider that two of the said singles (Impact and Freefall) entered John Peel's Festive Fifty at the end of 2001.

A delicate and fragile sound exists throughout the album, powered by the gentle yet insistent drums and the space found in the percussive nature of Matt Ashton's guitar creating an enchanting veneer like the spokes of a spinning wheel chasing one another.

There is the constant threat of a large stick being mischeviously thrust into the movement resulting in a fine mess of blood and metal, but Saloon generally avoid the temptation to overindulge their sonic inclinations and spoil the journey.

In fact nothing is surplus to requirement here. The cascades of repetitive guitar codas do not represent a lack of ideas but serve to set the pace where a fresh change in gear is needed on songs such as My Everyday Silver is Plastic. The violas on Static provide a perfect bottom end with all the brooding presence of Robert Kirby's arrangements on Nick Drake records.

These are thoughtful, carefully constructed pop songs that strive to achieve the perfect balance between redemptive and purifying noise, clamour and repetition and heartbreaking, stomach dropping chord changes and melodies. Girls Are The New Boys perfectly demonstrates how a chorus of beatiful melody and harmony can provide the symmetry for a misshapen verse.

On occasion (2500 Walders Ace.) the airiness threatens to lose us as a breeze blows them slightly out of cognitive grasp. Soon after, though, the slight unhappiness in the guitars of Across The Great Divide scolds us for not keeping up; and we should, because Saloon are good company to be in.
Craig Rowson

Saloon - (This is) What We Call Progress
Looking for an album to chill out to? Buy this one. Electronica, throbbing guitars, mournful strings and haunting vocals may not seem a recipe for rest and relaxation - but in this case, they are. The sound can seem a bit raw at times (Across the Great Divide, Le Weekend) and this adds to the album's charm. Amanda Gomez's wonderfully soft singing is the outstanding feature. Was this woman really discovered in Reading?
Leigh Mutton

Saloon - (This is) What We Call Progress
They have names like Adam, Amanda and Alison, and their song titles include Bicycle Thieves and Victor Safronov, so it's tempting to picture this Reading five-piece as part boffin, part bohemian, lightly sawing at violas or tapping glockenspiels amid the hissing of Berkshire summer lawns. There is whimsy aplenty on this deeply lovely debut, from the Altered Images pop of Girls Are the New Boys to the Talulah Gosh wispiness of Make It Soft. But there's also something hard at the centre; thus, Static's lightness gives way to a thrilling discordant crescendo, a device repeated on Le Weekend. A propulsion that is equal parts John Cage and Philip Glass is constantly in evidence; so too is willingness to cut through Amanda Gomez's deceptively detached Nico-like vocals with sounds and textures that recall the haunting insiduous monotony of Joy Division. Stunning.
DC

Dressy Bessy - Sound GO Round
Put away that umbrella! At last the forecast is fabulous because an Atlantic high has hit these shores. Dressy Bessy have breezed in from America bringing some vital sonic sunshine and refreshingly sweet fuzzy pop to brighten this disappointing summer.

Sound Go Round is the second offering of gorgeous girl-pop from Denver's darlings and it's even catchier than their debut, Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons.

It's a brilliant feel-good album. Just when you thought there's no cure for the summertime blues along come Dressy Bessy. They start splendidly with the tale of a songwriter on I Saw Cinnamon, with Tammy Ealom singing, "I saw Cinnamon drinking from a bowl, he had a mouth full of melody - fah, soh, lah, ti, doh..." Its meaty bassline could be from B.R.M.C.'s naughty sister recording a secret session.

The romantic There's A Girl unites two pinning lovers and Just Being Me is an infectious adventure in stereo but Dressy Bessy get even better.

Lie in the long grass and hear the summer stunner, Buttercups. Or drink in the sweet nectar of Flower Jargon where Dressy Bessy "go for a walk because the weather sounds just right..."

The musical melodies of Apples in Stereo guitarist, John Hill, form the core of Sound Go Round and make it stronger and more appealing than other flimsy summer-girl pop.

They're bringing the blue skies back so open up your summer wardrobe for Dressy Bessy. It's rare to find such fine weather friends.
Don Blandford

Dressy Bessy - Sound GO Round
Enter the peach fuzz jangle-jangle world of Dressy Bessy. Eat sugar mice (no heads first). Make health shakes out of celery. Watch French movies in the dark. "Soundgoround" is a warming, plump marshmallow of a record, with strikingly similar Aisler Set vocals innocently stroking over Slumber Party guitars. It's a bouncy, wholesome collection of cutesy indie pop. If my life was like this record I would be a very happy lady: very happy, and utterly insufferable.
Mia Clarke

www.pennyblackmusic.com
May 2002

Sound GO Round - Dressy Bessy
It was with great anticipation and, I must admit, a degree of trepidation that I awaited the arrival of the new Dressy Bessy album. Mainly because I had loved the first album (Pink Hearts Yellow Moons) so much and had been enthralled by a thoroughly addictive, pulsating albeit rough and ready live initiation to the band. Suffice to say my anxiety was unnecessary.
Welcome to, in my not so humble opinion the first timeless classic album of the year. This is the work of sheer genius, resilient vision, and juxtaposition between elegant dignity and pure indecipherable excitement. I sat listening in pure joyous wonderment. This is an album conceived of love, naivety and a blissful belief in music and melody. For those of you that by either the misfortune or bad judgement missed last years golden moment, that was Pink Hearts Yellow Moons let me put you in the picture. Dressy Bessy are a four piece from Colorado. They comprise of Tammy Ealom with a sugar coated, girl next door (If you live in Denver) vocals and fuzzy rhythm guitar. John Hill courtesy of "The Apples In Stereo " on soaring dreamy (That's technical musical terminology) lead guitar. The counter melody or some may say lead bass is played by Rob Greene. While Darren Albert plays timeless groove laden drums that make you just want to discard your self-consciousness and jump around your living room with reckless abandon like…well…like I do. There are also thirteen, yes thirteen killer songs and uncountable hooks here that will have you humming along to in no time at all and addicted to this record. Every utterly infectious track here are built on an orthodox musical framework, but aren't afraid to sacrifice themselves to summer poppiness and a simplicity so endearing you could almost classify as dumb or label as bubblegum. If you know me then you will be aware that I can pay this album no higher compliment.
Sound Go Round is Dressy Bessy's second album released here in England within twelve months and was recorded in their studio coincidentally called, wait for it…. Sound Go Round. It is both coloured and lauded by an organic sounding simple production. In fact it sounds as though the songs produced themselves, such is the transparently deft hand of the producer. That is not to say that this is a subtle album. Far from it, It is just that in perfect symmetry to the last release it cuts to the chase and renders any straying from what is essential to the individual songs as redundant In fact this record is so accessible and addictive that it must soon be labelled a narcotic and put beyond the acquisition of the public, but it would be criminal in itself if everyone hadn't tried it first.
"I saw Cinnamon " opens the album with a lush fuzzy guitar alongside disciplined instrumentation. The introduction of a garish sixties sounding organ in "There's a girl" liberates the whole sound and opens the door to a whole world of sixties garage and raw bubblegum influence that's alluded to throughout the record. "That's why " has beauty, balls and a dirty, chaotic audacity that rips through the chorded riff and handclaps and subsequently l I could place the track on any of the nuggets compilations. My favourite track on the album, today anyway, is "Flower jargon" where the vocals float upon a song so alluring and charming that I would suggest that anyone with a soul that listened to this piece of perfection could not resist this gem of an album. The end of the record seems to sum it all up for me as Tammy sings. Let me quote "Bop bop top of the world we're so small we see less is more ". What more can I say? Here is none of the vacuous rock balladeering or frigid slipstream mentality that resides in so much pompous self-reverential rock today. Here lie only songs to die for, or fall in love with. This, in short, is the most complete summer album. Windows down with the sun/ rain (delete where applicable. U.K.= rain, Rest of the world = sun) pouring in while you sing along to the words. Sing it loud and proud in any key you want, I will.
The fact that I believe Dressy Bessy don't accept or embrace irony is to their immense credit and this release positively pops and sparkles with unrestrained eloquence. This is a quality act and it will be appreciated either sooner or later. Get on board, pack your bags, buy your copy of Sound Go Round and wave your troubles bye-bye!
Gary D Wollen

I Am The World - Out Of The Loop
Now operating under this abbreviated alias, IATW is the project of Brooklyn-based Daniel Geller and Amy Dykes, formally the unfortunately named I Am The World Trade Centre. Now re-titled as a mark of respect post-September 11th, I Am The World finds Geller (co-founder of Kindercore Records) and his partner Dykes laying-down suitably uncomplicated indie-pop processed by way of an ageing laptop. While Geller engineers a backdrop of breezy retro beats, Dykes floats and glides over the rhythms with her superbly sardonic, detached larynx, pitched somewhere near Debbie Harry and Sarah Cracknell. These are lo-fi, cut 'n' paste, drag 'n' drop tunes armed with a naïve charm that's tough to deny, particularly on the synth-driven, melancholic urges of 'Sounds So Crazy' and the Daft Punk dragged backwards through an SU bar groove of 'Move On'. Reminiscent at various times of Looper, Luscious Jackson, Laika and Stereolab, IATW are a bedsit Garbage struggling to get to grips with their malfunctioning Casio keyboard or an alternative electroclash combo forgetting the prerequisite eyeliner and still fearful of catching the millennium bug. Add N To (X) as applied by students of Sarah Records, dance music for people still clinging resolutely to their Wedding Present t-shirts, whatever they call themselves, I Am The World are certainly an outfit well-worthy of being on first name terms with.

Ian Fletcher

I Am The World - Out of the Loop
And literally hot off the press and out in the shops in the New Year and after two years of false starts the debut UK release for the very wonderful I am the World featuring Kindercore Records co-owner Daniel Geller and Amy Dykes. This baby has been on constant rotation since those nice people at Track and Field sent me a sneak preview CD-r a couple of weeks ago. Sort of using the Charlatans 'The only one I know' as a frame board to work on, this duo go about creating a complex and tight kaleidoscopic fusion of cut and paste up front disco beats and spacey lounge mediums, real mish mash of mesmerising summery pop that'll have you on your feet and dancing faster than a live wire placed in a sensitive area. And just when you thought the original couldn't get any mellower, flip the disc and you get a seriously laid back version of the Stone Roses 'Shoot you down' that's been given such a tasty electro afterglow as to have Bob Stanley of St Etienne fame green with envy.

Also featured on the aforementioned CD-r are the A sides for the forthcoming singles from Kicker and Great Lakes to be released in a week or three, need I say more than to say full reviews next missive when we track down finished copies though I can hold up my hands and say that 'The Long Way Down' is probably Kicker's finest moment so far. Not forgetting the Great Lakes, 'A little touched' gets a worthy release in it's own right being that it is one of the immediate highlights from their excellent debut long player. Available from Track and Field Organisation at www.trackandfield.org.uk

March 2002

I AM THE WORLD - Out of the Loop (Track and Field)
The debut album from US lo-fi electropopping duo I Am The World is a classic collection of pop melodies melded to dance patterns/structures. Of course, when I say pop I don't mean the verse/chorus version; these songs have a dance mix approach, which layers on/removes samples and rhythmic loops to create a groove. Perhaps this is probably not surprising given Daniel Geller's remixing background. And it's not surprising to learn that the LP was composed entirely on a laptop, and that its songs are festooned with drum loops, synthbass lines and a variety of samples from flute to sitar. Amy Dykes (Daniel's girlfriend) provides vocals * not unlike Sarah Cracknell it has to be said in gentleness, tone and delivery. The St Etienne comparison also begs to be made on a number of poptastic tunes. Like the uptempo Metro, with its organ and guitar riff samples, Me to Be, with its staccato rhythm, flute figure, and scratching, Light Delay, with its shuffling sampled drum and FXdelayed organ, and Aurora Borealis, with its pop-pedestrian drum, electric bass, vibraphone and flute (again). It's like best bits of Foxbase Alpha but much much better. If you've heard the single, Look Around You (not the best track here in my view * there are many other possible singles on display), is a good example of what IATW are up to with its cheesy baggy-type stabbing piano chord and maracas lead drum pattern, electronic warbles and wah guitar. But hold on, there's more. Elsewhere IATW wig out with samples and catchy rhythms, as on Inside Your Head, where the duo duet over a sitar drone, pingponging blips and shuffling beat; Flute Loops, an instrumental which sounds like a segment of the Rainbow theme played through a sampling filter; and You Don't Even Know Her, an uptempo dance floor number with cascading bleeps which might (or not) be a lo-fi version of Maddy's Ray of Light. It's bright'n'breezy, it's fun, and it's an immensely enjoyable album. Track and Field have turned up trumps again.
Reviewed by Kev

I Am The World - Out of the Loop
Brooklyn boy-girl duo, formerly I Am The World Trade Center until events intervened.
Americans are masters of Britney Spears-style melody by committee, but for detachment, irony and lovelorn humour you generally need to rely on Europeans. I Am The World, however, are an exception to the rule-perhaps because they look to this side of the Atlantic for their pointers. Their mournful electro-pop is most reminiscent of a budget Saint Etienne, or Kraftwerk, on a soporific Horlicks diet. Songs such as Holland Tunnel glow with lo-fi charm, while Daniel Geller's spry way with samples and Amy Dykes's foggy Sam vocals manage to make up for their injudicious use of hackneyed vocoder effects. A charming record.
Pat Long

Dressy Bessy - Pink Hearts Yellow Moons (Track & Field)
Question. How do you start objectively reviewing an album so breathtakingly simple in its production and execution that you have quite unashamedly fallen hopelessly and willingly head-over-heels in love with it?

Answer: You don't. Just tell it as it is, brazenly proclaiming it as genuine glistening pop gems, boldly shouting it from the rooftops that this is perfect, perfect pop.

From the same people that brought you the mighty Tyde album early last year. An album that cuts through to the bone, doesn't beat about the bush and tolerates no flabby, flashy and unwanted embellishments. Just pure garage bubblegum pop. It is like a stealth bomber in that it gets over the target, drops the bombs doesn't wait around to see the explosion and gets out again before the radar's pick up the merest inkling of something untoward. But, when the explosions detonate, my God do they go off! I thought I'd adopt a similar attitude to this review. Just cut to the chase Gary!

The latent genius of this album is that it doesn't complicate anything either by chance or design. Take your pick. It is beautifully naïve and there is not the slightest temptation to add an extra verse, lengthen instrumental pieces, choruses to fade ad nauseam just for effect or to stretch out a good idea, thus diluting it to just excellence from perfection. It is so simple and transparent in its intent and delivery that its almost stupid, though not in a grandiose or mannered fashion but with a purity and an earnest desire to just present the song with what it requires to soar and propel itself with great velocity into your poor unsuspecting psyche. All this played by a band that should be, on this evidence, the biggest pop band in the world but, for a mess of reasons to complicated too go into in this review and by definition of what makes them fantastic never will be.

From the first lazy chord exchanges that herald a formidable call to arms that is the album opener 'I Found Out' shimmering guitars draw you in and then POW! A chorus big enough to have nuclear capabilities explodes from the speakers, before familiarity can hit home, it has disappeared into the ether. And Tammy oozes "Hi, its been a while" and we're off with 'Just Like Henry'. Following this is the album's most instant pop thrill and the most criminally hummable tune this side of 'Sugar, Sugar' a song called 'Look Around'. The melodies then come thick and fast and before you can grab them they're gone, instead replaced with an equally memorable hook or chorus that leave you wondering where it can go next. Well, the beauty of this album is that just as you think they're gone, out of the blue BANG! They return hours later and hit you square between the eyes and intermittently you will end up humming each one of these songs. They're friends for life, but before you can quite steady yourself and compose your resources the album has passed you by in an agonisingly short 29 minutes. 'Don't think of it as 29 minutes, think of it as 11 tracks instead' Tammy says, but it's like that fleeting first romance in the days when summers were a great deal longer and warmer. You dwell on the fact that a blissful 8-week love was a dalliance with grown up emotion not exalting in the fact that it was just that.

So when the album has finished there is only one thing to do, just press track 1 again and this time just try to enjoy the moment, languishing in the tunes. This time capture 'Crazy Galore' and every other utterly enjoyable moment on this fine album. After numerous listens you come to the conclusion that this is indeed perfect as it is and quite honestly you wouldn't change a note, a nuance, not a single thing about this lovely record. 'Come on Jenny, Come on'.
Gary Wollen

Great Lakes - Great Lakes ***
Dressy Bessy - Pink Hearts Yellow Moons ***
Twin blasts of retro US indie-pop produced by Apples in Stereo leader.
Though both mixed by Robert Schneider, Great Lakes eponymous debut is easily the more explicit display of his neo-psychedelic production values: Pepperland Pet Sounds that see-saw between gorgeous stereophonic experiments ('A Banana') and whimsical vaudeville ('Virgil').
Denver's Dressy Bessy , also featuring Apples guitarist John Hill, offer a more wholesome melodic experience, ridding a bubblegum breaker of radio-friendly harmonised girl-group punk. 'Jenny Come On' is as succint as a vintage Red Bird 45 and enjoyably vapid with it. Like parma violet to Great Lakes' Olde English spangles.
Simon Goddard

Great Lakes - Great Lakes
An engaging record from the Great Lakes who seem to live in Alice's Wonderland or a Yellow Submarine world where there's a fairground on every street, a circus act in every person, where every ride's a magic carpet ride. Hence the title 'World's Fair' perhaps, or 'Posters for the Theatre'. And so assured they are within this environment; suddenly stopping a good rhythm for a halting, stuttering digression, and then taking you off at a new angle. Always looking for the unexpected, the grotesque, the fabulous, always heading off in the direction you least expect. With the sense of being kinda inebriated too (or maybe it's just me) - seeing stars in the sparks of bumper cars, for example, or psychedelic galaxies in oil puddles - it always seems to rain at fairs in the evening - which kinda gives, I dunno, a hi-sensitivity to it all, that glorious nowness you get when being drunk. The most beautiful track is called 'A Banana'. While the brilliant 'Come Home And Come True' achieves a greater range of emotion in its four and a bit minutes than some groups can manage in a whole album. They make it seem so easy. There's a bit of everything in the LP, from Mozart to Pink Floyd to Olivia Tremor Control. Oh, I don't know, you can only guess at their myriad ideas and influences.
Stu

The Loves - Just Like Bobby D
That's Bob Dylan, as opposed to Bobby Darin or Robert Downey Jr or, erm, Bobby Dillespie. As such we can assume that the motorcycle sample during this two-and-a-bit minute garage-rock archetype is a cruel mockery of the man's serious road accident decades ago. You evil bastards, The Loves!

Ahem, the record. It's good. The Loves would be the last people to suggest they are doing anything radical, but this is highly enjoyable in short blasts-as is Lou Reed-in-C86 B-side, I Know I'm Going To Heaven when I Die. Not with that heartless attitude you're not.
Noel Gardner

Gary D Wollen

Dressy Bessy/Saloon split single
"Live To Tell All" might be a bit sugary for some but when it gets going it's great. A sassy sexy alt dancehall classic. I reckon they could do a pretty fantastic version of "Sophisticated Boom Boom", if they were ever so inclined. Saloon on t'other side tumble n skip along a S'lab groove, kickin n drivin in their usual way, then comes that pitch-perfect siren beckoning on the fated t'ward the light, and then comes a lofty guitar that clangs and gongs and destroys ya heart for a bit as a troop of trumpeters trudge towards the gates of heaven. They are without equal.
Stu

Dressy Bessy/Saloon split single
In on Track & Field is a ltd number of the Saloon/ Dressy Bessy Track & Field tour 7". Saloon do the Neu/ Stereolab moog thing with an alarming degree of efficiency. One of the best things I've heard by 'em. Cracking. Better than cracking, maybe cracked??? Dressy Bessy do Elephant 6 style girlie summery indie pop. Didn't think it would be anywhere near as good as the Saloon side but it's also alarmingly good. This is known as a great record and probably the best thing I've heard on Track & Field. Shame it's a ltd release and not everyone will get a chance to get one.
Reviewed by Kev

Next up a hatrick of releases from Track and Field Records.
Saloon from Reading, U.K. recently co support for the mighty Great Lakes have been around now for about three years, several much sought after releases under their belt, 'Free Fall' sees their debut for the label that has previously brought us releases from the Tyde and the Screen Prints. A seductively breezy guitar lead pop gem of sorts and one of those once in a while feel good records that trips into your life. Wilfully timid and fragile in approach, you'll be humming 'Freefall' for weeks to come. 'Movimiento' is altogether more absorbing, starting off and remaining for all intents and purpose in a similar vein to early Pram, this instrumental reveals a more textured and darker side to the bands repertoire, shimmying along with repetitive ease this moog drenched tune imparts more than enough liberally scattered catchy moments to have you revisiting it time and again.

Housing ex members of Velocette, Hood and Comet Gain, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it would be a dream indie supergroup of sorts and Kicker don't disappoint in living up to the promise of such heady delights. 'City Limits E.P.' is the bands latest outing their fourth since their inception in 1998. Four tracks of differing clarity make this release an inspired collection. 'On your floor' is replete with the kind of 60's style keyboards that you just can't beat especially if they come part and parcel with a melody to make you swoon, blush and smile, though not necessarily in that order. 'The falling leaves' is a beefier prospect, again spiced in a glow of 60's kaleidoscopic garage pop and emerging from the same primordial soup as early Inspirals, Mystreated and ? and the Mysterions. Crafty or what? Sunshine pop at it's most ardent rears it's head on 'Gone and Forgotten', a jiggly wiggly vibrantly compulsive toe tapper of the highest order, spiced with glassy summery keyboards and guitars set to a tale of forgotten loves and we all know about that, though at the moment I've forgotten what I had to remember. 'Baby don't worry' is spoilt throughout trying to spot the 'magic chord' mentioned on the sleeve notes that's played by Phil the drummer. That said it's a nice piece of sedate pop that nicely rounds of this latest excursion to greatness.

Last but not least of the trio are the Loves from Cardiff, Wales. With a title like 'Boom a bang bang bang' the alarm bells should have been ringing loud and clear. I've played this single umpteen times and I just can't shake 'Monster Mash' from my head, what makes it all the more worrying there are elements of Showaddywaddy doing 'When' lurking in the shadows. This really does have a 50's at the hop feel to it and if anything just lacks a resonant vocal like Romeo Challenger to make it a perfect pastiche. Better by far is 'Patty' on the flipside. Too short for it's own good, it's terrace ground chant and 60's garage/mod vibes point tastefully towards Mudhoney's 'She's Sixteen' can't be bad.
Mark

Life is full of things we wanted to do, but never seem to find the time to carry out. I wanted to write a piece on Track & Field - the record label not the athlete activity - which involved wandering aimless through the streets of London, exposing my senses to its fictions, my weary feet to its endless pavements and alleys, and those street markets where half the fruit seems to end up the gutter squashed and inedible like some squashed and inedible metaphor, taking in big gulps of pollution and pollen and gasping at the sheer ugly-beauty of everything. All under the influence of a walkman crammed with Track & Field music intercut, on their advice, with Dexy's Midnight runners, and the jam of course. (Dexy's may have produced two and a half great LPs; but the jam made four.) But I haven't found the time. Maybe I will. I wish England hadn't beaten Germany 5-1 the other day - think I lost two days after that. Not to mention a pile of books I've been meaning to read for, literally, years. The Track & Field Organisation meet at the Betsey Trotwood. Betsey Trotwood is David Copperfield's great-aunt. I know this because I'm half-way through the book. Page 456 to be precise. I've been on Page 456 for about three years. The last page of this stuff is nearly here, so 'll be as brief as I can. I believe in Track & Field's new soul vision. I really do. I've heard the records and I believe. The Screen Prints coruscating colour-pop in Lane 02. The Tyde's glorious-majestic swirling poems for the world in Lane 04. And Kicker in Lanes One and Five. Each song is a micro-score to some three minute Up the Junction-like reflection upon a council block facade, a black and white pan across an autumnal city horizon, to a single mother pushing her pram through the park, chased by the leaves, to bored kids throwing stones into the windows of abondoned sheds, to the drunks who sit in the same place every single day and drink their lives away cos it's less painful that way. I wonder why the new Kicker EP is called "City Limits". Is it merely a reference to a geographical borderline or a statement of fact? Each song contains the mad drive of the city yet coated in the melancholy of its abjects, the sorrow of the unwanted. "The Falling Leaves" is brilliant, possessed, emotion-fuelled and utterly fantastic when it gets to the title bit. Just get that deep-deep breath before he begins the second verse. Or the addictive "On Your Floor" which I've been singing all morning, it's the mazy whirlpool of sound going round my head. Or "Said and Done" mournful, anguished, lush, a hearful of soul, and reviewed in at least two zines I know of well over a year ago. But hell, my life is just one missed bus after another. Do I care? Fuck no. I don't know what soul music is meant to mean but when I listen to Kicker strange things happens. Something involving emotions, feelings, the desire to truly live and all that stuff. Life suddenly has a new sheen for three minutes. So I guess that's soul music.

What else? There's also "Boom-a-Bang-Bang-Bang" by The Loves which just does as it says, I guess. A single coming soon from Saloon. "Bicycle Thieves" and "Make It Soft" being the beautiful highlight of their sumptuous Peel session. "Second Rate Republic" by Tompaulin caresses love-stricken souls better than any chemical. And "It's A Girls World" is close to being the best song ever written. But not quite because that would diminish the sense of longing. I want the whole world to feel the way that I do, but the world doesn't want to know. The world hasn't got time...

STU

Saloon - Freefall/Moviemiento
Saloon seem totally committed to becoming to Reading's own replica Stereolab. Which may smack of a ponderous plagarism nightmare in theory but yields some cute pop rewards in practice.

On the A-side, "Freefall" they deftly merge gorgeous fey girl vocals with fuzzy farfisa and jangly guitar licks in a concise package.

AA-side instrumental "Moviemiento" holds even greater rewards with its distant violins, Krautrocking keyboards abd Cocteau Twins guitar shimmers. Derivative maybe but delivered with plenty of panache and just enough mystery to transcend mere homage.
Adrian Pannett

THE LOVES - Boom-A-Bang-Bang-Bang
Not as Eurovision as its title suggests but a slice of sugary Phil Spector-esque pop. Haven’t heard “Shang a Lang” in a song lyric for 25 years. B-side ‘Patty’ is polite garage rock.

THE LOVES Boom-A-Bang-Bang-Bang
The Cardiff-based Loves ram-raid the indie back-catalogue on this single for the oh-so-cool Track and Field label. Not content with playing the Velvet Underground-on-speed-instead-of-smack card for all they’re worth, they jerk their way through Boom-A-Bang-Bang-Bang like The Ramones playing The Supremes. Singer Simon Love does his best falsetto as the lo-fi hyperactive guitar fuzz of Pnosni Love (they aren’t related) fizzes along. The song burrows into your head like a leech, and stays there. Unfortunately, despite the obvious ear for a tune, Simon’s rhyming of bang-a-bang with shangalang is singularly annoying.
JAMES MCLAREN

California brings us another great band that desperately wants to be English. The TYDE hail from Los Angeles and have already had great interest from the UK. Having three members from the excellent psychedelic pop combo BEACHWOOD SPARKS also helps to enhance their reputation even further. The good guys at Track & Field in London have done a great job exposing this band to the UK market by releasing their debut album "Once" & a single "Strangers Again" all on their label simply called Track & Field. All this material came out last April & together with recent debut gigs in London we have experienced the fusion of West Coast Psychedelia together with 60's British pop & Dylanesque melodies. With their summery outfits & flares they have been listening to a lot of FELT or acoustic Jesus & Mary Chain and through the druggy haze have been giving us a dose of doomed romance and thumping beat pop together with some genuinely good psychedelia. A great compact band for the hazy summer moments. The TYDE are certain to rise and rise.
THEODORE VLASSOPOULOS

Top 50 Albums, No. 44 The Tyde - "Once"
It took just a week of club dates for these Beachwood Spark affiliated moptops to charm the pants off the UK. Some bewildered folk even dubbed them the "West Coast Strokes", so potent was their unique double whammy of Dylan-esque reveries and finely sculpted cheekbones. Crucially, as the Track and Field label suggested there was a distinct whiff of the dank British bedsit in these cosmic American jangles - Felt and Lloyd Cole often quoted as reference points. A surprise treasure from the least likely of sources.

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Sharing three members with like-minded space/country outfit Beachwood Sparks, the Tyde nonetheless separates itself from the glut of Los Angeles retro bands by sounding less anachronistic and more reverential. The overexposed, muted tones of the group shot on the cover photo may recall Love's debut or Morrison Hotel from Elektra/Asylum Records' glory days of California rock, but David Scher's pedal steel is kept toward the middle of the mix and songwriter Darren Rademaker's vocals are way out front, giving the group's debut a classic West Coast pop sound without sounding dated. There's a bit of a lazy feel to Once - could be hippies' love of pot or just Cali mellowness - and by keeping songs unhurried, the trippy vocals, winding fuzz solo and pedal steel on the closer, "Silver's Okay Michelle," lend it a more accessible Spiritualized feel, especially given the track's near-10-minute length. Rademaker's songs exude a kind of resigned bliss, even when cataloging trials and tribulations of breakups on "Strangers Again." Ann Do's organ and piano playing is the group's strength, normally blending in and out with the pedal steel; when it takes the lead, as on the final, jamming moments of "Your Tattoos," it exudes an energy and punchiness that elevates the song to another plane. Picking and choosing songwriting techniques and sonic flights of fancy from the past three decades, the Tyde has made its own timeless record.
DAVID SIMUTIS

Issue 16
Summer 2001

The Tyde - Once (Track & Field/Orange Sky/Dionysius), Strangers Again (Track & Field), All My Bastard Children (Lissy's)
It's only February as I write this, but I'm pretty convinced that The Tyde's debut long-player will be the best album I hear all year, Quite simply, Once is a masterpiece. While The Tyde are hardly a soul group in the traditional sense, very few groups have ever poured their hearts into their recordings as powerfully as this Los Angeles' six-piece has done here. Fronted by vocalist/guitaris Darren Rademaker, formerly of underrated mid-'90s Creation recording artists Further, The Tyde combine Rademaker's brilliant heart stopping Dylanesque melodies with breathtaking atmospheres that mine similar terrain to genius late '60s UK artists like The Small Faces (think "Afterglow" and "The Autumn Stone") and The Koobas and contemporaries such as Delta, The Chamber Strings and The Clientele. From the lush opener "All My Bastard Children" to the breathtaking UK single "Strangers Again" to the punchy, Velvet Underground-like "North County Times" to the spell-binding nine minustes plus closer "Silver's Okay Michelle". Once is emotional rescue in the truest sense. I can't think of anything I would change about this record. Rademaker's lyrics are nothing short of genius ("Silver's Okay" is all the proof that you need). The rest of the group is equally proficient. Ann Do sets the tone with her spellbinding grooves, while the rest of the band, including three members of critically acclaimed Sub Pop recording artists Beachwood Sparks is equally gifted - just listen to the instrumental flourishes at the end of "The Dawn" and the previously mentioned "Silver's Okay".

The two UK singles are also well worth picking up. Though they do not include any new songs, the renditions of "Strangers Again", "Improper", "All My Bastard Children" and, especially, the shorter take of "Silver's Okay Michelle" are different to the ones on the LP and were recorded earlier by a slightly different lineup.
BEN VENDETTA

The Tyde - Once (Track & Field)
When Thatcher and Reagan cemented Anglo-America relations in the Eighties, this probably isn't quite what they had in mind. A few American missiles stationed on British soil and pointed at Russia for sure. But a whole load of 80's indie-pop records shipped over in a big crate to America's West Coast? Well maybe, given that California's sun-baked clan The Tyde have decided to mash up British indie-pop past with American heritage.

So for example, "All My Bastard Children" is the Pastels poked with a Pavement stick, "North Country Times" is Teenage Fanclub jauntily molested by Bob Dylan and the seriously lovely "Strangers Again" is Felt caught up in a Mercury Rev twister. Although Tyde leader Darren Rademaker wants to be Lawrence from Felt more than is humanely possible, his band (featuring members of Beachwood Sparks), keep things rolling smoothly. the harmonies are gorgeous, the keyboards are suitably fuzzy and the guitars glide between chime, shimmer, twang and jangle. "Once" is an album that delivers more than you expect and offers promise of more and even better fun yet to come.
ADRIAN PANNETT

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s the case, then The Tyde is the most sincere band going. Wonderfully copping elements of the Velvet Underground, Pavement and the mellower songs of the Jesus and Mary Chain, Once presents a band that makes no attempt to hide its obvious influences. Good for them! Vocalist/guitarist Darren Rademaker presents his fragile spoken vocals before a swirl of guitars, organs and backing vocals to great effect. While the tone of Rademaker’s songs and lyrics have a decidedly British psychedelic sensibility, the group’s playing is full of stoned–out, California soul. While The Tyde does include three members of the Beachwood Sparks, it would be a shame if the band were merely thought of as a “splinter group.” The Tyde present a well crafted homage. Although heavily indebted to its influences, Once offers a thoroughly enjoyable listen in its own right. Love the Velvet’s Loaded, but don’t want to waste the money on that post Lou album? Look no further! Enjoy Pavement, but thought their last few albums were a little lackluster? Order up! The Tyde have enough merit to stand on their own, while deftly tipping their floppy hats to those gone by.
MARK NORRIS

Rock's Back Pages
July 2001

DIG THIS! Special: 2001 at the Halfway Mark...
No 20 The Tyde: Once (Orange Sky) Now that New York has decided to get its ass back in gear with the likes of the Strokes and the Moldy Peaches doing their bit for Big Apple retro, what about Los Angeles? The Tyde haven’t forgotten that the West Coast used to produce its share of goodies. Formerly the cult L.A. lo-fi punk group Further, after four albums they split to form Beachwood Sparks and the Tyde. Where Further drew on Brit punk influences, the Tyde are all about English and West Coast psychedelia. (Former Pretty Thing and Pink Fairy "Twink" puts in an appearance on tambourine.) Unlike the Sparks, who sound like they actually do come from the ’60s, the Tyde add a more modern sensibility to the retro sound of the rolling, psych-tinged ‘All My Bastard Children’, the upbeat space jam ‘Improper’ and the nine-and-a-half-minute finale ‘Silver’s Okay Michelle’.
JOSH RINKOFF

Number 8
Summer 2001

The Tyde - Once
Fans of the much-missed 90s LA lo-fi ensemble, Further, must think all their Xmases have come at once, Further, largely the work of brothers Brent and Darren Rademaker, excelled in creating a chaotic, breezy, tune-laden noise pop. Interested parties should actively seek out their 1994 Grimes Golden CD; their melodic apex where a sun-drenched Dinosaur Jr is welded emphatically onto the Beach Boys. Towards the end of theit time together, Further's sound shifted towards something approaching a psyched country rock, the cosmic American music of Gram Parsons. This direction was maintained last year when Brent's new band, Beachwood Sparks, released their shimmering epnymous debut on SubPop. Now it's the turn of Darren's outfit, The Tyde, a six-piece collective incorporating three loanees from Beachwood - brother Brent, Chris Gunst and Farmer Dave Scher. Again Once takes its cue from 1960s West Coast country-tinged pschedelia, but Darren Rademaker's songs chart their own course. The band is credited on the sleeve with "coloring in" his songs but they do have such wonderful material to work with. There are obvious stylistic nods to 1960s totems like Dylan and The Band (especially on opener "All My Bastard Children"), the Velvets ("North County Times"), Love, Byrds and Neil Young but Rademakers lived-in sincerity lifts this album way above mere pastiche, a Stars in their Eyes Haight-Ashbury special. "Your Tattoos", retrieved from an obscure Japanese 7" split single, is warm and funny as Darren sings "You know how much I hate tattoos/But on you I'm sure they're beautiful" and the tune soars. The closing track, "Silver's Okay Michelle", this one reworked from a less obscure UK 7", is a stretched out 10 minute epic that still seems too short. There's nothing on here that sounds like it was recorded in the last 30 years - surprising given Further's punkish roots - but that's not a criticism. If you want to hear an album of substance, a West Coast classic regardless of the year of release, Once might just be that record.
STEVE RAYWOOD

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Another in the deluge of bands who kneel at the altar of '60s guitar pop, the Tyde are one of the few bands who actually make you long for the glory days of AM radio. In a different era, their instantly infectious songs would rule the airwaves. Comprising three members of psychedelic alt-country band the Beachwood Sparks, the Tyde distinguish themselves by borrowing from Love instead of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Once, their debut full-length, is a radio playlist of mini-epics that never fails to please. Sounding like a Velvet Underground-era Lou Reed, singer Darren Rademaker delivers sugary melodies with an off-hand passion. From the opening ode to an unfaithful lover, "All My Bastard Children," to the catchy sing-along tune of "Strangers Again," Once sounds more like a classic '60s radio program than a current album. Even at its worst, it's pop genius.
KEVIN GRASHA

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Imagine this bizarre timeline: Late-'90s American group are influenced by Scottish bands who were in turn inspired by the early-'80s Paisley Underground revival of the late-'60s Sunset Strip sound. Then they play all their songs at half speed. The construction of The Tyde's debut album might not be quite that convoluted but Once sounds roughly three times removed from their heroes, Buffalo Springfield and Love. Featuring three members of the "cosmic country" combo Beachwood Sparks, The Tyde lollop along with a gorgeous steel guitar and a brace of understated, bedsit-friendly tunes. It's hardly the stuff of legend that their heroes mustered in those revolutionary times but in terms of stoner romanticism it's occasionally top dollar.
DAVE HENDERSON

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
The unpretentious attitude of Once creates a relaxing atmosphere that is as calming and soothing as any proverbial tide should be, lulling the listener into a slightly swaying reverie. Born from L.A. bands Further and Beachwood Sparks, the Tyde washes up on the shore like a castaway of post-mod Brit-pop with the same delicate defiance of the Waterboys and musical integrity of sixties trailblazers like the Byrds. An almost syrupy psychedelia swarms over the shimmering guitar, snarling lap steel and liquid organ while lead singer Darren Rademaker tells his tales with lyrical courtesy and impeccable cadence. It's easy to make a Rademaker/Dylan correlation here, especially with songs like "All My Bastard Children" and "The Dawn," but bits of flotsam and jetsam from the Rolling Stones, Felt, and Radiohead float around these songs as well, cropping up subtly in a guitar lick or a simple lyric. Our musical shores are cluttered with useless crap that has been tossed away again and again only to return even worse off than before. But Once is an album that we should feel lucky that the Tyde brought in.
REV. KEITH HARRIS

The Tyde - Once
If I didn't know this band's background, I'd guess they were the latest Scottish pop hopefuls. They sound like a cross between the Cosmic Rough Riders and Belle and Sebastian with Lloyd Cole on vocals. In fact, they're the latest project of ex-Further member Darren Rademaker. The line up incudes brother Brent, Dave Scher and Chris Gunst of No Kind of Superstar favourites Beachwood Sparks. With such a pedigree you know you're guaranteed some strong songwriting delivered with a laid back California vibe. If you've already got everything Dylan did in the 60s, and can accept Darren's slightly affected vocal tones, then you'll find much to enjoy here. Highlights for me include "All My Bastard Children", which hits home with its welding of a tune to die for with off-the-wall lyrics in an Arthur Lee style, and the ten minute epic "Silver's Okay Michelle" which arrives just as the album is threatening to sag. I imagine this is a stage fvourite as it builds slowly and allows the band to showcase its musical skills; Ann Do's judicious use of synth on this track, together with Dave Scher's always exemplary lap steel playing, help make it stand out. All in all, the perfecet soundtrack to a lazy summer's evening.

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Damn this is good. Mellow Southern Californian sunshine mixed with warm oozing keyboards, twangy-jangly guitar bliss, great Dylanesque word play, great vocals and harmonies. That's LA's Tyde, a new group from the former indie rock band Further leader Darren Rademaker along with three members of So. Cal country rockers Beachwood Sparks including bassist brother Brent, singer Chris Gunst on the traps and Farmer Dave on organ and lap steel as well as keyboardist Ann Do and guitarist Ben Knight. If you dig serene beautiful pop songs with great lyrics and memorable melodies this is the best you're likely to find.
RICK KUTNER

bitterzine fanzine
May 2001

The Tyde - Once
Thanks to Track+Field (those boys are always one step ahead of the pack) who put out this albim. This and the Aislers Set's Last Match are certainly the albums of the year so far. The Tyde are 6 strong and feature 3 members of Sub Pop's Beachwood Sparks. Where the Sparks sound like Gram Parsons era Byrds, the Tyde are pre Parsons Byrds jamming with Felt and Teenage Fanclub. It doesn't get much better - buy this album.

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
They should have called it The Tyde Is Coming In! From the 'y' in their name and the Airplane-in-Haight-Ashbury cover pohto to the precesence of psychedelic legend Twink on tambourine, The Tyde are manifestly in love with the Love Years. But thanks to a certain lyrical asperity, their music is much more than a tourist trip. Once is a warm and often witty record. "You know how much I hate tattoos/But on you I'm sure they're beautiful," sings Darren Rademaker on the soaring Your Tattoos, somewhere between Loaded-era Velvet Underground and Felt's Ballad Of The Band. Rademaker's songs are more robust than those of his bandmates in Beachwood Sparks, and suffused with a kind of cheerful melancholy: All My Bastard Children and Strangers Again, in particular, are Bona fide West Coast classics. Excellent stuff, and much more than the sum of its vintage parts.
ANDY MILLER

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
This one is so hard to pin down, so I will use one word to pin it down - fantastic. A mix of late 60s psych, a bit of country (think The Byrds) and a bit of indie (no denying a Mercury Rev feel in "Strangers Again"), it`s a great mix that owes at much to 1968 as it does to 2001. You get the feeling that you will hear a whole lot more of singer and songwriter Darren Rademaker in the future. Hard to choose stand out tracks as there really are no below par tracks on here. Buy it!

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Ex-Further guys (and the current line-up, save for the drummer, of Beachwood Sparks) led by Darren Rademaker (who was also in the great Summer Hits) and so far this is a front runner for album of the year. This is gorgeously layered psych. pop w/ 9 great songs and I have listened to this constantly since I first got it and the songs seem to get better w/ each listen. And the amazing thing is how effortless it all sounds. Really, see if you can listen to tunes like “New Confessions”, “North County Times”, and the epic “Silver’s Okay Michelle” just once.
TIM HINELY

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
An impressive album from a band which includes members of Further and Beachwood Sparks. The music is a mixture of 60s pop and non-naff country, with a dash of 80s jangly indiepop, and occasionally includes elements of the rockier side of psychedelic music. This is a really brilliant album, full of catchy songs - I can't recommend it enough! Released in the USA on Orange Sky (ben@orangeskyrecords.com), but it should still be easy to find in the UK as over here it's out on Track & Field/Dell'Orso. I must add that I saw The Tyde at the Jug of Ale recently, and live they are equally impressive as on record. They played several songs from this album, a song I'd not heard before, and - get this - a cover of SULLEN EYES, yes, the SEA URCHINS song! Now this is TOO COOL FOR WORDS. They should record and release this!
KIM HARTEN

The Tyde - Once
San Francisco's Further were a terrific early-Nineties band who might have enjoyed the acclaim of Dinosaur Jr or Sebadoh, if only they had mustered as much as enthusiasm for self-hate as scuzzed-up West Coast hooks and indie in-jokes. They split, and became the Tyde and Beachwood Sparks: two of the best psychedelic pop bands of the era. What Once, the Tyde's debut album, proves is that all along Further were just the Beach Boys, the Monkees and Spirit in disguise. Freed of old-fashioned slacker shackles, there's no need for the Tyde to pretend that All My Bastard Children and Improper (What's the matter with love in your life?) aren't songs to drive at high speed into the sun to. There's a waster's rancour here, but it seems mainly aimed (Your Tattoos) at a generation of American teenagers incapable of enjoying themselves. Somewhere in the gaps between the pop kids, rap masochists, sports-metal numskulls and indie elitists, there's a generation of disaffected fun-lovers just waiting to fall in love with this band.
TOM COX

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
There's only one good type of American, and that's one who wishes he wasn't. Darren Rademaker and his band of merry janglephiles The Tyde may trot from LA but - lawks-a-mercy matron! - they want to be British so much they'd swap their all-year tans and sexy way with a motorbike to be two specific pasty buttocked Brits: Jim Reid from The Jesus And Mary Chain, and Lawrence from Felt. Better than the more obvious choices of Chris Martin and Benny Hill sure, and 'Once', The Tyde's debut album, is as faithful and brown-nosing a tribute to Denim and Felt as it could be without being by a band called Lycra. 'Strangers Again' and 'Get Around Too', particularly sound like they could've been written in a sixth-form common room in Sheffield in 1988. The genetic lure of the slide guitar eventually conquers - but 'Once' still shines through as a slice of good old, no-arsed, underachieving, crap-in-a-fight British indie brilliance that you'd expect from the Official Home Of Morrissey.
MARK BEAUMONT

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Ah, the California sun is not only shining on the cover of the Tyde's Once, but also in the music that makes up the band's debut album. Following last year's Beachwood Sparks' album of California country fun, the Tyde (with members of Beachwood Sparks) stick to the down home feel of Cali and give us the their version of the Byrds to Beachwood Sparks's Flying Burrito Brothers. Once is a tribute to the surf, sand and Frankie & Annette-style beach parties. With nods to country, psychedelia, and '60s rock, the Tyde have all of their influences covered. The songs are strong odes to love, nature and good times, and the band's use of instruments makes for a playful and laid-back time. The guitars range from lonely lap steel to the upbeat jangle of a Rickenbacher, which are both complemented by a Fender Rhodes and a carefree rhythm section. Blending these sounds with Darren Rademaker's desolate voice brings songs like "Silver's Okay Michelle" and "Get Around Too" to a teary end and "North County Times" and "Improper" to a dance around the campfire. With bands like Lilys and Beachwood Sparks around, the Tyde fit in quite nicely in allowing those who missed the '60s to have their own little experience with their headphones.
CAM LINDSAY

LA six-piece The Tyde offer rather lovely, hazy, sun-drenched melodies, featuring Beatles allusions teamed with wry, up-to-date lyrics. Fans of Cosmic Rough Riders, Elf Power and their ilk should check debut album 'Once'.... It's like Bob Dylan on Prozac (© NME, probably).

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
The future's so bright, I gotta wear granny shades: The Alternative Nation, having finally subsumed '60s sounds, from Brian Wilson (Flaming Lips) to Buffalo Springfield (Beachwood Sparks) to Nick Drake (Belle and Sebastian) to the Beatles (practically every band associated with the Elephant 6 brain trust), is on the cusp of a Renaissance period if it keeps on track with its apparent quest for trans-genre enlightenment.

Not that those in the know haven't mounted a retro defense against encroaching blandness before. In '84, members of the Rain Parade, Dream Syndicate and Bangles assembled a heartfelt collection of covers (of Dylan, the Springfield, Velvet Underground, Big Star and more) titled Rainy Day, although back then the means for disseminating good taste and even finding copies of certain key, classic recordings were sorely restricted. Operative nowadays in the breaking down of generational and stylistic barriers -- hey, those silly hippies actually listened to some cool-sounding bands back in the day! -- are both the Internet and what's approaching a near-fanatical level of vault-scavenging by the record labels. (In an intriguing bit of synchronicity, just a couple of weeks prior to the recent Elektra-Rhino bonus track/remaster overhaul of Love's seminal '67 album Forever Changes, bootleg label Deep Six offered an insider's peek at Love with a collection of '66-'68 studio outtakes, The Last Wall of the Castle, which easily rivals its aboveground counterpart in terms of superb sound quality and elaborate packaging.)

Newcomers The Tyde fit perfectly into this equation. Helmed by singer/songwriter Darren Rademaker (ex-Further), the freewheeling, six-piece collective (which includes three members on loan from the Beachwood Sparks) incorporates elements of practically every group name-checked above, and then some. The nine songs on Once unfold gently, rendered with a casual sense of purpose that enhances, rather than undermines, what are exquisite compositions. Six-minute dreamscape "Get Around Too," for example, has that same ethereal, druggy quality that made Neil Young's "Expecting to Fly" such a memorable album track for the Springfield. Ruminating in a voice that suggests a cross between the Church's Steve Kilbey and the Go-Betweens' Grant McLennan, Rademaker perfectly juggles romantic yearning ("Baby, I just want to follow you down") with utopian earnestness. At times he seems to verge on waxing overly precious, yet he always pulls back just in time, as in "All My Bastard Children," a kind of cosmic cowboy, Byrds-with-Mellotron tune so gosh-darn melodic 'n' tingly 'n' uplifting that when Rademaker exhales potentially destructive clichés like "I got down on my knees" and "I'm so glad you're my woman -- baby now!" all you feel is the urge to cheer the dude's romantic reverie onward and upward. Many are such moments for The Tyde -- flower-power Dylan ("Strangers Again"); Lou Reed before the paranoia and meth abuse kicked in ("North Country Times," which adds some jaunty pedal steel to the rave-up guitar/organ arrangement); confessional Arthur Lee/Love (the serenely drifting "Silver's Okay Michelle"). Call Once a collection of new music for your next, ahem, rainy day.

Worth noting, too, is the guest presence of John "Twink" Alder, nominally tossing out a tambourine lick or two but whose appearance seems highly symbolic, given his deep-seated association with British pop-psych groups of yore (Tomorrow, Pretty Things, Pink Fairies). That's no mere passing of the torch from granddaddy to disciple -- it's a friggin' imprimatur.
FRED MILLS

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Taking its cue for late 60's country-flavoured psychedelia and adding a healthy dose of their own sound, The Tyde's Once is poised to become one of the more notable releases of 2001. The twists and turns throughout Once make it resonate with a vibrancy that's near impossible to ignore. From the opening All My Bastard Children (think Dylan as supported by The Band) to the closing opus Silver's Okay Michelle (a ten-minute workout worthy of such a length), The Tyde make use of a number of strengths. Among these strengths is the participation of Beachwood Sparks' Brent Rademaker, Christopher Gunst, and that band's inspired lap steel player David Scher. Comparisons with Beachwood Sparks would seem inevitable, but it's the songs of Darren Rademaker that charts The Tyde's own course. The band is credited with "coloring in" the songs, and they do indeed have exceptional material to work with - the cool groove that's perfect on New Confessions, the authentic psychedelic vibe of Your Tattoos, and the Stones-like swagger of The Dawn are just a few examples. There's a consistency across Once that prevents it from sounding random. Even when adding an R&B element to North County Times or a simple hypnotic groove to Strangers Again, The Tyde never stray from sounding like - surprise, surprise - The Tyde. Already acknowledged as being a band to watch in the U.K. and Japan, Once is certain to win many fans on this continent as well.
CLAUDIO SOSSI

March 2001
Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Tyde - Once CD/LP
Maybe it’s the pegged jeans, fringed leather jackets and Beatle boots. Maybe it’s the Rickenbacker and Gretsch guitars. Maybe it’s the sun-kissed idealism of the lyrics and tight harmonies. But there’s something about the sound and vision of Hollywood’s mid-’60s rock combos that compels younger generations to pay tribute with the most sincere form of flattery. A new crop of Los Angeles bands is sharing a romance with bands like the Byrds, Love, Buffalo Springfield and the Mamas & the Papas. Two acts spearhead the revival: the murky Brian Jonestown Massacre and the sunny Beachwood Sparks. While BJM has served as boot camp for many musicians in the scene, Beachwood Sparks has now produced a worthy offshoot of its own. The Tyde features three of the four Sparks members supporting singer-songwriter Darren Rademaker. You won’t catch even a nod to contemporary music on songs like "All My Bastard Children" and "Silver’s Okay Michelle," but Rademaker’s psychedelic folk-pop sounds too lived-in to be written off as mere pastiche. And with the shallow state of today’s popular music, who can blame the Tyde for plunging to greater depths in search of something more substantial. It’s doubtful that the band signals an industry sea change, but you might want to get your feet wet anyway.
ROBERT CHERRY

Tompaulin-It's A Girl's World (Track & Field)
They deserve better. They deserve not to have the words "Belle" and "Sebastian" woven into every single review. Especially since this cracking song sees Tompaulin stepping out from under the shadow of their Glaswegian peers. But, as comparisons go, they're still in the neighbourhood sharing a love for '60s pop and a knack for sharp-eyed lyrics. Anyway: boy/girl vocals tell of teenage troubles in nothern towns. Incidentally, fact fans, this song was inspired by a girl 'Paulin used to see outside a disco.
KITTY EMPIRE

Dec 6-Dec 12 2000

Frazzled Dylan Obsessives
The Tyde-"Strangers Again" (Track & Field)
WHO THEY?An LA six-piece formed out of the ashes of Further and featuring three-quarters of country rock demi-gods Beachwood Sparks. "I got so utterly bored of indie rock," mainman Darren Rademaker explains. "Further split, Pavement and Sebadoh got really crappy, so I started to listed to old music and changed style without being retro. We're the best of AM radio from the Sixties through the Nineties, really poppy but still rock'n'roll."

WHY BUY? Their debut single, "Strangers Again" sounds like Bob Dylan before the motorbike accident, caught in a druggy haze as te summer hits of the Sixties wash against him. Rather like Eighties Creation Records legends Felt, you might very well say. "Felt have been my favourite band since the early Eighties," Darren admits. "Lawrence [Hayward, Felt frontman] is one of the best songwriters to come out of England."

TELL US MORE...Darren hates tattoos. "Totally! In LA there are Sixties or Seventies looking groups like us, or big greasers with tattoos. There was this girl I,er, was with us recently," Darren rues, "and she was covered in tattoos.She would never be truly fully naked again."

BEST LISTENED TO? "After a really late night out," Darren recommends, "after listening to too much techno, The Tyde will clear your head."
BEN CLANCY

The Tyde - "Strangers Again"
More Americans in thrall to the excitingly damp sound of '80s provincial England. Los Angeles' The Tyde, however, defy the logic that condemned Interpol by being transparently infatuated by Felt and still making a terrific little seven-inch. Lord knows how many fey chancers have tried to recreate the wild mercurial jangle of Felt in the past 15 years, only to come up with some of the most trite and incompetent whimsy released in the name of indie. The Tyde (nice ye olde psychedelicke spellynge) are a rarity; a band who realise that beneath the chiming guitars, organ flourishes and frail vocals there was a weird belligerence, too, a desperation that made Felt's best songs both beautiful and wired. "Strangers Again" and its equally fine flip, "Improper", capture that spirit perfectly. We await their evolution into the Californian Denim with terror.