Incoming: Spoon – Transference

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ALBUM REVIEW: NATIONAL BEEKEEPERS SOCIETY – PAWN SHOP ETIQUETTE

ALBUM REVIEW: National Beekeepers Society – Pawn Shop Etiquette
words: Gareth O’Malley

So how about that album cover, then? The tracklisting is mainly on the back cover, with the song names on stickers. It crosses over to the front cover, with the album’s final, title, track in the bottom-left corner. I’m not really a fan of the artwork, if I’m honest, but I feel it adds something to the album.

National Beekeepers Society hail from Wisconsin in the U.S., yet the album opener, ‘Look At Me’, sounds remarkably like Wolf Parade, a Canadian band, and there are hints of other Canadian bands throughout the record – Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire (strangely enough) spring to mind at times.

There are quite a few brilliant lyrics here too. The aforementioned ‘Look At Me’ rails against celebrity culture – “I wanna perfect life made for perfect people!”, howls the lead singer, after giving us his best Spencer Krug impression in the verses, over a sideways time signature and pounding drums. ‘Lazy’ boasts the best line on the album, “Let’s place a minimum bet on who gets offended”.
‘Given In’ sounds quite like Spoon, another band these guys have been compared to, and it’s a cracking song, with more lyrics that stick in your head – “I can hate myself, but that don’t make it right”, for instance.

Those three tracks were on the sampler I heard last week, and I was expecting the rest of the album to maintain the high standards that had been set by its first three tracks. It does, for the most part. ‘Upon the Hills of Georgia’ (most of this song is in 5/4 – I quite like unusual time signatures, so I loved this track) sounds remarkably like The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘Take Five’, oddly enough. It is also the shortest song on the album, coming in at little over a minute. ‘Suburbanite’ also deserves a mention for its lyrics: “Sometimes I stare at the walls of my apartment / Waiting for a call from someone important… Life is hard for a suburbanite”.
It’s pretty much all good so far, but the next few tracks aren’t all that remarkable or memorable, with ‘Orange Is For Apathy’ occupying space on the tracklisting, and little else, contributing nothing to the album and coming across as little more than filler.

This is followed by the best song on the album, ‘Fall of Rome’. Acoustic guitars take centre stage, and the song’s melody is the most memorable on offer here. It is at this point that the album enjoys a resurgence. ‘Confidence’ takes an unexpected detour near the end of the song, and we find NBS in a rockier mode than usual.
Things are brought to a close with ‘Pawn Shop Etiquette’, which starts off quite quietly before building to a stunning climax.

This is by no means an immediate album, and most of the songs don’t outstay their welcome. ‘Pawn Shop Etiquette’ clocks in at just over 34 minutes. It is a disjointed and chaotic record, and there are flashes of pure brilliance here and there. The tracklisting, however, lets it down slightly, and by the end of the album, you’re left thinking, as I was, “Good job NBS. Two words though: Quality. Control.”

6.7

National Beekeepers Society – Look At Me
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2007 – The Albums That Survived…
words: Jamie Milton

I begun to feel a little heartless the other day when I had Spoon’s ‘Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’ come on shuffle. I’d obsessed over that record this time last year, seeing it as some God-send for music and yet I can honestly say I don’t think I’d listened to that record once in 2008 prior to last week.

But surely some of 2007’s stellar releases are still making it to my play count? I’m asking the other MFM writers the same question to see if they’ve got any more suggestions to add but below are three records that have been relentlessly played throughout the year, ahead of some of 2008’s most notable releases.

#1 - Low – Drums and Guns
This may well not be Low’s greatest asset to their discography but it can still throw a few punches. And ‘Hatchet’ may be a cheesy, cringeworthy effort playing host to a tribute to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones but that aside, ‘Drums and Guns’ is another politically-inspired giant of an album. ‘Belarus’ and ‘Breaker’ sink into the system with relative ease whilst later on in the effort, ‘Take Your Time’ and ‘In Silence’ add a slower, darker movement to the effort.

PLAY: Low – Belarus [Buy 'Drums and Guns']

#2 - PJ Harvey – White Chalk
The main reason why this is still getting regular plays is because people are still making a fuss about it. Sharing a phone call with Eels in January, whilst speaking to him about his producer for ‘Souljacker’, John Parish, he let ‘White Chalk’ dictate the conversation for a good minute. It was a u-turn in direction from PJ Harvey, the most diverse of female artists and the most inspired. As the record progresses, her happiness regresses, it digs itself into a dark, seemingly depressed state and as it closes mournfully on ‘The Mountain’, you can’t be sure whether it’s going to find its way out of this state.

PLAY: PJ Harvey – Silence [Buy ' White Chalk']

#3 - Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
A new album may be awaiting us in the winter month of January soon, but it’s hardly like Panda Bear and co. have been away for long. In truth, they’re always doing something, but the standard was raised in almighty fashion with ‘Strawberry Jam’ and the following ‘Water Curses’ EP a few months later. A summery, surprisingly non-acoustic “jam” was melted into a positive, spirited affair. At times experimentation was taken a little too far (see the confusing #1) but it was all the more worth it once you got to hear the glorious trio of ‘Chores’, ‘For Reverend Green’ and ‘Fireworks’ in succession once more.

PLAY: Animal Collective – Chores [Buy 'Strawberry Jam']

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MFM Summer Mixtape Vol.2
words: Jamie Milton
image from jenn

So I hope you’ve been enjoying the first part of our summer mixtape but we appreciate that downloading 61MB of music all in one click might seem like a bit of a hurdle. Then, we discovered muxtape.com along with that. Not sure why it took us so long to discover this lovely little revolution of a music site but well, it did. All the same, we’ve uploaded the second part of our summer mixtape onto muxtape simply because it’s easier than the last way we did it and probably a bit funner for you guys.

The second part of our mixtape is more summery in the way that there’s no messing about with this side. On the first side we had Interpol (hardly summery) and Secret Machines (ditto) who don’t automatically remind everybody of summer – their songs suited the mood of the mixtape but now it’s moving on towards the musical stereotypes of summer. We’ve got Panda Bear, MGMT, Mystery Jets, it’s all happening.

Tracklist for vol.2 and in case you missed it, scroll below or look at this for vol.1:
1. Ruby Suns – Tane Mahuta
2. Panda Bear – Take Pills
3. FrYars – The Ides
4. Cut Copy – Far Away
5. Spoon – Don’t You Evah
6. Throw Me The Statue – Lolita
7. Fanfarlo – Fire Escape
8. MGMT – Electric Feel
9. Midlake – Young Bride
10. Mystery Jets – Two Doors Down

Listen to Mixtape @ http://musicfansmic.muxtape.com/

INDIVIDUAL TRACKS:
PLAY: MGMT – Electric Feel [Buy 'Oracular Spectacular']
PLAY: Panda Bear – Take Pills [Buy 'Person Pitch']

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