positivexposure is a digital magazine that celebrates creative expression and positivity.
“Doubt and thou shalt be corrected.”
That’s perhaps not the greatest philosophy to believe in when you’re a person who outwardly advocates positivity, but you’d be surprised at how often these words have crossed my mind these days. I’ve found myself in chance situations where something that is seemingly doubtful works out for the better and the discovery of SWTHRT’s Compact Disc is a prime example.
I think you can always get a sense of a band from the name and while I still don’t understand the cryptic meaning behind SWTHRT’s moniker, the first time around it gave me a bad feeling. However, once I actually took a turn to listen to the album, I was pleasantly to the point of unnervingly surprised.
SWTHRT have got that great echoing vibration to their music which is definitely reminiscent of bands like The Cure, Joy Division and to a further extent, The Velvet Underground. So right off the bat, you’re on the money if that’s your sound of preference. The hypnotic, continuous beats and ‘glitter raindrops on roses’ effect of the twanging synth guitar is not actually an uncommon thing seen in the realms of alternative music today. The Horrors strayed from their incessant skinny-jeaned screeching to do something like it on their album Primary Colours, yet I will come right out and say that SWTHRT do it better.
Shuteye Unison open like The Stooges would.
The opening of Our Future Selves is brash and bratty and sets one up for something they are ultimately not expecting - whether that’s a good or a bad thing is still a mystery to me. First off, I liked it. The second time around, I liked it even more. “Be Kimball” would be that Stooges-esque opener. It sounds and feels like a punchy punk standard should, in that it catches attention but differentiates itself with timid vocals hummed with a voice like velvet.
Track number two (“Our Future Selves”) is where it all changes. From punk we find an ambience of delicacy that sounds like an entirely different band altogether - except for those lovely vocals. Lovely is the only way they can be described overall. Not in a prim way, not in a posing way. Just in a simplistic, wholesome manner in that they are sweet to listen to against the backdrop of entrancing guitars and marching drums.
As the album moves along, different moods are dropped upon you. You’ve got the standards of happiness and potential anger but through that confused mess of buzzing vocals and defiant guitar arranged in satisfying disarray; as a listener you reach into the depths of implied loneliness and implied ecstasy. Everything is up to interpretation.
From what little knowledge I have of punk, I have determined that it’s a genre riddled with hits and misses. Fortunately though, I believe there have been more hits than there have misses. From the outset, I understand that it’s quite a political music - it carries a clear message, sometimes poignant, rather than just vomiting up a lot of waffle about rebellion and anarchy. However, as we all know simply from being people, having someone’s opinion wailed at you through stereo speakers can get rather tired. That’s when the trickiest formula comes to fruition; to have a band that plays not only great punk rock, but is loose on the politics too. This area is best occupied by bands like The Ramones and Iggy & the Stooges who have that magic combination of being darkly fun yet still driven by that raw power (pun intended). It’s a hard game to match up to, and it’s been attempted many times. Many people overshoot the balance completely; but then a collective from Illinois named The Heat Tape arrived to show them how it’s done.
Their debut opens with a track entitled “Spend It”, and it sounds exactly the way you’d expect it to sound - or, rather, exactly the way you’d want it to sound. The drums play out classically, an incessant adrenaline beat that shows no signs of giving up. The guitars screech and wail before folding into a steady rhythm. The vocals are scratchy and monotonous at times, and that sets up the blueprint for the entire LP. And while these might sound like negative features, they are absolutely not. They draw up the character of the band into this very glorious, very tangible domestic chaos.
A gentle orchestral score is what sweeps you into the intro track of Bars of Gold’s LP, which is quite bravely named Of Gold. Ambitiously titled? You could say that, but once a charming melody of electronic keys begin exploding like Pop Rocks over the grand instrumental, you can’t help but feel a little warmer about their pre-perceived assertiveness. The aforementioned opening track is called “Boss Level,” and at first listen it sounded a little goofy, but I think that’s what gives it such a great character.
“Heaven Has a Heater” follows, which is an altogether more vibrant and energetic track. It employs a whole world of bashing, breaking and guitar-shredding, but doesn’t really deviate from the standards you’d expect to hear on a punk album such as this. As far as tracks go, it pales in comparison to the track that succeeds it.
“Birds” is such a track, which begins with oddball acoustic that’s got a really visceral, folky, elemental feel to it that I adored. Something you would expect to be at odds with the tense twanging of Bars of Gold’s harder sound moulds in harmoniously and produces just the right witches’ brew you would want from a band like this. Of all, it’s the clear standout track on the album as it creates a real physical excitement as the tempo slowly gathers momentum in the depths of your eardrums.
I need to get something out of the way before I gush about how beautiful the sounds I just processed are.
When I recieved the press pack, I saw it included a file of lyrics for the seven inch. Upon opening it, I scrolled down a little and lo and behold was an exerpt from Night Gleam, a poem by Allen Ginsberg.
Congratulations, Montagna and your Mouth to Mouth, you’ve successfully won over my sensitivities before I’ve heard a single scrap of music you’ve produced.
My Ginsberg-loving nature aside, when listening to the title track of The Mouth to Mouth’s 7 inch Ultrapolyamorous, I realised this was not a song you listen to once or twice and decide upon your opinion solely from that. I find it intruiging that one song alone can be so diversified in genre and sound. One moment, it’s very much indie pop. The next, it’s basked in a glow of shoegaze ambience. The next, it’s thrust under the light of a psycho-electro Americana landscape.
It’s second track, “At Full Speed”, employs female vocal talent not unlike that of Isobel Campbell. This track is more easy going and accessible, akin to something Broken Social Scene may have wanted to come out with, but The Mouth to Mouth caught the worm and thought of it first. It still has that adorable character of mashing thirty songs into one, matching it quite perfectly with its predecessor.
Ultrapolyamorous, with it’s trippy alien noises and indecipherable vocals, makes for a thoroughly haunting listening experience. It’s individual, truly individual, which is a rarity among rarities. If this 7 inch is any inkling to Montagna and the The Mouth to Mouth’s new album, then fans and music lovers alike are in for quite the psychedelic ride.
The idea of vaudeville is a heady concept, I believe. The term, derived from the French expression voix de ville, or ‘voice of the city’ holds a whole world of ability to its core. Obviously, it’s about expressing a message of some sort, but vaudevillians expressed their message in an overtly theatrical manner - through dance, song, vivacious costumes and make up. Through vision, motion and sound. And that’s a little bit akin to the movement of punk rock, don’t you think?
In the description on The End of America’s Bandcamp site, the opening line states that, “The End of America is not some grand political statement. Instead, it is an honest attempt between three friends to return music to its purest form.”
Their debut album, Steep Bay, opens with a song titled “Are You Lonely”. Its trembling melody is an abstract anxiety communicated via guitar. It insinuates the feeling of isolation which is, as we know, a very frightening feeling at first. The song is very frightened, it is very timid… it seems to prey upon the childlike uncertainty of the unknown and all the emotions it can trigger. This is a very strong connective element that the album carries throughout, though it fades as the tracks gradually grow with confidence.
If there’s any popular trend in music, it’s that of the throwback. You’ve got The Kills channeling The Velvet Underground’s raucous sixties theme, Imelda May pulling influence from rockabilly greats such as Wanda Jackson and even Lady Gaga’s more-than-obvious mirroring of Bowie’s glory days.
Assistant Features Editor Clara Dee shares her top 9 picks of 2010.
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