Make 'Later...' Now

'There's nothing on the same scale... There's nothing that has as many bands who're actually playing live. It's a really good idea, it's always worked because the diversity of the artists is always really interesting... So if you tune in to watch one band you end up seeing bands sometimes that you'd never dreamed of watching that you actually really get into.' - Robert Smith, The Cure



Later with Jools Holland has been running (without a break) since 1992 now. That's eighteen glorious years of what is possibly the best music entertainment show on air today. An eclectic and diverse mix of music from all genres and countries, always interesting, always enjoyable, and always presented by the most charming man in music entertainment.

Why the sudden fascination in Later, then? I'll admit, if I were announcing mind-blowing news about amazing line-ups for new shows, it would be fantastic. If I were announcing the show was disappearing from our screens for good, it would be an emotional farewell to a show that has wormed its way into my heart and made a nice little home there, as something to sit in front of with a cup of tea, a cigarette, and relax. Alas, it is neither of these things. In fact, the real reason is much more mundane. Yesterday, whilst perusing the DVDs in the campus CD/DVD store (the name for one of these escapes me) I happened to pass the Later with Jools Holland DVDs. Upon picking it up, reading the line-up of artists, nodding my head in great approval, I turned to my friend and articulated my view that this was an awesome DVD; another great Jools Holland show. Her response? 'I've never heard of it.'

Now, this obviously floored me then and there, and I was only to sink lower into my pit of disbelief, and my jaw was only to drop lower as more and more people professed their ignorance of Jools. They had to be educated. But there was no way to immediately implant the idea in their heads of such a long running, diverse, entertaining, relaxing, intriguing, foot-tapping, head-bobbing, smile-drawing show like Later. this is because Later is more than a simple television show. It is a weekly roller coaster of musical styles, artists, feelings, rhythms, melodies and music. The show itself seems to have a kind of atmosphere about it. Jools himself seems to draw you in with his charmingly toothy grin and staccato sentences, and the artists take turns to show you just what they're about, taking their five minutes of fame to create an event; a demonstration of their genre, their music, themselves.

So I think it's fair to say I'm fond of the show. Originally a spin of of The Late Show, Later hit the tube in '92, as Nirvana's Nevermind hit number one in the US Billboard 200 chart, Prince, Billy Idol and David Bowie were all hitting the headlines with court cases and marriages, and Madness re-formed. There was no shortage of musical talent around, and Later found a new and unique format in which to showcase acts both old and new.

Today, however, our screens are washed out with talent shows, with Simon Cowell making us all feel nauseous and Andrew Lloyd Webber crooning over how great he is, with the latest sob-stories of contestants who need to make a headline in The Sun every day in order to ensure they don't have to return to singing badly on a cruise ship for old age pensioners who probably can't hear them anyway (and sometimes it's just as well). But with Jools you get something different. You get something that seems rather rare in music entertainment these days... honesty. You get sincere, genuine artists playing music for the sake of playing music, trying to be nothing more than they are. Each performance is not subjected to the opinion of three or more 'celebrities' who we'd all like to shoot anyway, and we're let off hearing raucous crowds scream at the stage as though they were chimps at a football match. Instead, we get a true sense of gratitude, some applause, perhaps a short interview with an iconic musician, and on we go. It's brilliant. Pure bliss. I don't feel like flicking my cigarette butts at the screen. I don't feel like punching my television. I don't despair at the state of humanity. If anything, Later is the kind of show that gives me hope in humanity.

So perhaps I've glorified good ole' Jools' show a little. But hey, no one ever got far with moderation. Good ole' Jools has a show to be proud of, an eighteen-year-old weekly festival of music. It showcases and celebrates the best talent around, new and old, loud and quiet, fast and slow, hard and soft, good and... always good. So if you have yet to become a fan of Later, in the interest of your ears, I implore you to give it a try. The DVDs are out there, the TV repeats are too, and once a year Jools' Annual Hootenanny brings in the new year.

Later with Jools Holland: an under-rated institution of a show.

Parachute: Losing Sleep

Parachute: coming to a radio-station near you. Or at least, they should be. Losing Sleep is Parachute’s debut album, and it’s an album that pretty much ticks all the boxes. It’s an album that wouldn’t find itself out of place on a One Tree Hill soundtrack, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Parachute’s combination of pop beats and pianos - with rockier guitars bringing up the rear - makes for a record full of irresistibly catchy riffs and bouncy rhythms; never before has an album given such meaning to the phrase ‘foot-tappingly good’.

The sound is an eclectic mix of artists such as Matt Wertz, Delirious?, Gavin DeGraw, The Hush Sound, Maroon 5, Andrew McMahon – a style of mature pop; it is piano-based pop-rock at its best. Tracks such as All That I Am and Words Meet Heartbeats are liable to have even the most cynical of listeners jigging up and down in their chair, air-drumming, or running to find someone to bounce around and share a smile with. The lively, up-tempo songs will inspire energy in even the most lethargic of people. Other tracks such as The Mess I Made and She Is Love are slow, melodic ballads, guaranteed to find a memory in your heart the music can fit to; they’re the songs you needed dealing with your first heart-break.

Parachute seem to have jumped out of nowhere with Losing Sleep; an American quintet from Charlottesville, Virginia, the band’s members only graduated from college a short two years ago (2008), and have since been touring to promote their debut album. Soon after their graduation they found themselves headlining their own tours, as well as supporting big names such as The Script and Kelly Clarkson.

Following an impressive beginning on the music scene, one sceptical question lurks over Parachute; will they be able to conjure up an equally impressive second album? Or will they fall into a genre of textbook American teen-pop? Despite a debut album with more catchy songs than a Michael Jackson box set, there just doesn’t seem enough to push Parachute into a league of their own. Will the future see them mature and find a more original sound, or will they simply become a lost pop-rock band in the mires of the HMV ‘Rock and Pop’ section?

All this remains to be seen, but for now, whether you’re looking for chill-out music, inspirational music, bouncy music, pop music, rock music, back-ground music, fore-ground music, music to cuddle to, music to cry to, music to smile to... this is the album for you. Parachute: coming to a radio station near you. Or at least, they should be.

Stars and Sons: Where do we put them?

Unique. Piano-pop. Brash, intelligent indie-pop. The truth is, it’s pretty hard to place Stars and Sons. It’s an odd form of alternative-pop, and at first listen you might just find yourself wondering if Alphabeat, Same Difference and Mika have got together, and then called in Andrew Lloyd Webber for musical direction. The album sounds like it wouldn’t be too out of place accompanying a musical, whilst at the same time fitting in at the Alternative or NME / Radio 1 stage at Reading festival.

The five bouncy Brighton poppers have definitely produced an interesting debut album in Good Morning Mother. The group are new on the scene, though not entirely unknown; they’re big enough to have scooped some BBC radio-play courtesy of Lauren Lavern, yet not enough to have more than a single song on Spotify, or even a Wikipedia entry (because let’s be honest, you’ve not made it till you’re on Wiki). Despite this however, Stars and Sons have managed to scoop Mr Dave Eringa to produce the new album, a man responsible for producing records by the likes of Ash, Manic Street Preachers and even Kylie.

The band claim to have influences ranging from The Beach Boys to Bullet for my Valentine, and this is the kind of variety you can expect to hear on Good Morning Mother. There are no songs about surfing in the USA, nor is there a face-melting guitar-shredding session ever thirty seconds, but the variety of the tracks will raise an eyebrow. The album’s opening track, Out of View, sounds something like an odd combination of Wicked (the musical) and music from The Sims. From here, we move to songs that sound like Queen, Maroon 5 and Mika have all spent a few hours on acid together (Untested, Untried), to Empty Hands which sounds more like a Radiohead-meets-Oasis-esque attempt at pop-with-violins.

The album is definitely a ‘grower.’ At first listen it’s easy to get lost in all the twinkly xylophones, swinging drum rhythms and electronic synth effects, but after a while it all starts to blend together quite nicely. What it blends into however, is still something of a mystery. One thing that’s certain is that you won’t hear another album quite like it any time soon... and I'm still not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

You Me At Six: Hold Them Down!

Upon first hearing You Me At Six a few years back two things immediately occurred to me. Firstly, how the emotion-packed lyrics qua ruined relationships, bitterness and jealousy, the blocky power-chords complete with trebley counter melodies dancing on top, all found a place in the heart of the fourteen year-old emo-kid inside me. Secondly, that You Me At Six were in danger of falling under the heading of ‘generic emo-punk-pop band’, forever to be lost among a heap of similar albums, slowly gathering ‘generic-pop-punk’ status along with bands like Kids in Glass Houses, All Time Low, and Mayday Parade.

Finding their feet in 2007 with the success of debut album Take Off Your Colours, the punk-pop quintet also found a niche in the hearts of every emo-kid with dyed hair, a fringe, and a skate-park, and grew steadily in popularity from there, even nominated twice for Best British Band at the 2008 and 2009 Kerrang awards. Their second album, then, Hold Me Down should show some signs of a more matured band. The question is: does it?

The answer is a grey area. The tracks on the album seem at times to stray away from the ‘Punk-Pop 101’ manual, ditching whiny-yet-heartfelt lyrics for a more punchy, punk feel. In other tracks, it sounds like the band have matured a little, and moved in a more melodic direction; guitars with deeper tones and more intricate melodies. The first track of the album The Consequence kicks off as a more rocky track, sounding like the love-child-song of American Hi-Fi and Taking Back Sunday, whilst Playing the Blame Game moves in another direction, sounding strangely like Paramore might have wandered into the studio and written a few guitar parts.

This, however, is still part of the problem. The influences you can hear straining through Hold Me Down, the likes of American Hi-Fi, Paramore, and Taking Back Sunday can all be found under the same group of emo-esque punk-pop. The question with the new You Me At Six album, for me, was one of whether they would be able to shake off the shackles of the ‘generic punk-pop’ label and produce something fresh.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The tracks still melt into a blurry same-ness after a while, and the sound gets lost in the pages of ‘Pop-Punk 101’ before too long. Tracks like Safer to Hate Her and Trophy Eyes seem to be produced from the same song-manual as the last album, and eventually the new tracks get lost in the pop-punk mire along with bands like Hit The Lights, Mayday Parade, All Time Low and Escape the Fate.

That’s not to say that this is a bad thing; the pure energy that explodes through the speakers is enough to lift you off your seat into immediate spontaneous bouncing and head bobbing. As a punk-pop album it’s fair to say that Hold Me Down hits the bullseye. This might perhaps be both its best and worst quality; it is a brilliant work of bouncy, punk-pop music, but is it anything more?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Written November 2009

2010 definitely seems to be the year for new and upcoming artists. With Talent shows like the X-Factor (heard of it?) showing no signs of leaving us alone just yet, and companies such as Fiat (previous credentials involve some cars and being French) launching its new ‘Evo-Music Rooms’ contest to find and fulfil the star spangled dreams of some young indie band with large hair and skinny jeans, it looks like 2010 could be the year for new acts.

2010 then, definitely another year for fresh artists to hit the radio-waves and stages of the nation, with underground sensation The XX beginning to find a mainstream audience and superstars Biffy Clyro planning another side project – one that you could be in. Artists like Florence + the Machine and Little Boots are carrying music over into 2010 quite nicely, having both found their niche in 2009. This is all brilliant of course; the rhythmic, vocally amazing Florence seems like one of the best artists yet to be part of the new direction of music, yet far too many people seem to have completely missed one of the biggest, jaw-dropping pieces of news to have come out of music since Courtney Love came home to an awful mess in the shed.

I’m talking about none other than Them Crooked Vultures, a name that usually has to be repeated a few times before even the most avid music fan will recognise the surprised/disappointed look on your face and clamour desperately for information that might save their ‘cool’. Most of these blank faces will feel like they missed out on a rather large piece of news there, and that’s because they did. Them Crooked Vultures, despite floating around as a concept since 2005, finally released their self-titled debut album at the end of 2009 – an album which reversed the trend of many modern artists, in that it deserved more hype than it got.

So what is it that makes Them Crooked Vultures such an amazing band; why exactly am I writing about them as though their guitarist is Jesus? The concept is simple. You take a dash of Californian rockers Queens of the Stone Age, a piece of English rock-gods Led Zeppelin, and a slice of American hard-rockers Foo Fighters and see what you get. It’s not even like we just mean a band with great influences, because although this rings true, what Them Crooked Vultures is actually about is Josh Homme (Guitars and lead vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar, keyboards, slide guitar, synthesizer, mandolin etc), and Dave Grohl (drums and percussion) coming together to see just what happens.

I’ll be honest, once the news had reached me there was little anyone could do to stop me heading out to buy the album; the prospect of 3 music gods meeting in one studio to record brand new material? Amazing. So just what does happen when 3 legends of rock run into each other in a studio in Los Angeles and decide to make the most awesome record ever?

The result is something weird and wonderful, the result of experimental guitar rhythms and foot-stompingly catchy riffs complete with a juxtaposition of straight and simple yet punchy drum rhythms which drive the music forwards like a thousand-horsepower Bugatti Veyron. On top of this, Homme’s vocals compliment the obscurity of the riffs and rhythms in a somewhat ineffable way. The album showcases Dave Grohl on drums and percussion in a stable band for the first time since he briefly played for Queens of the Stone Age in 2002, and before that his position as drum-man of a little grunge band called Nirvana. Josh Homme’s musical history comprises mainly of the acclaimed Queens of the Stone Age, as well as side project Kyuss. I think it’s fair to say that the musical influence of QOTSA comes across clearly in TCV in lyrical obscurity and riff-based and crunchy lead guitar. John Paul Jones influence can in no way be denied – but then the influence of Led Zeppelin can hardly be denied in modern rock music as a whole – Grohl and Homme both acknowledging zeppelin as a key influence to their own bands. On the Vultures album Jones dabbles in everything from bass to mandolin, throwing in some keyboard solo’s in tracks such as ‘Mind Eraser, No Chaser’, maybe just to prove he can. The result of these three heavy-weight titans bringing their own musical influences, experience and power to the TCV table is a jaw-dropping result; a fresh sound that can’t exactly be summed up in a catchy by-line, or inferred through listing other bands. At best you could attempt to describe the sound as a QOTSA-meets- Radiohead-meets-Led Zeppelin-meets-Foo Fighters-meets-White Stripes kind of affair.
Perhaps one of the best tracks on the album to showcase the awesome power and drive, yet sheer obscurity of the music is the tempo-shifting, riff-based lyrically-trippy track ‘Elephants’, which seems to attempt to crunch every zeppelin riff ever recorded into an epic 7 minutes of musical magic. Other favourites include ‘New Fang’; the band’s first officially released single back in October ’09 (followed by the album in November) and the inescapably catchy ‘No-One Loves Me & Neither Do I’, the first track of the album, which introduces you to the loose recording style, obscure guitar sounds and lyrical eccentric style in a 5 minute blast of what is a genuinely unique sound.

The question must be asked though – with a sound so obscure, which seems to rest more than an ordinary amount on experimental recording styles and guitar-riffs you have to sort of familiarise yourself with before the song hits home, would the band have come out as such a whopping success without they’re previous credentials? I would say that the answer is somewhere between ‘Of course not’ and ‘not a chance.’ The album seems to ride the line between a cool, innovative, fresh sounding style and an unsuccessful attempt at trying to be ‘new’ through a slapdash recording and a loose control of the guitar strings. I will personally admit that if I had listened to the album without knowing whom it was that was gracing my ears with their musical genius, I might’ve regarded it as the latter, along with any other new-wave band gigging around Camden town on any given night.

However, the case remains that the band in question do carry with them the titles of three (or more) successful and influential bands, revered by fans worldwide, and this means that the threesome could have walked out of a studio in LA one sunny day having recorded their own version of John Cage’s 4 minutes 33 seconds and still made headlines. The album however, is not a rendition of any of John Cages ideas, and is in fact a whirlwind – a powerhouse of musical ideas and styles. Definitely an album to own as part of your definitive Rock collection, and definitely a band to watch in 2010. As good old rock and roll fades away, replaced by punk-pop, new-wave, electronica and so forth (Golden Silvers, a sort of Indie piece with a keyboard at centre is in no way a replacement for rock and roll, my friends) TCV are definitely a group to watch this year.