The Pukes - Too Drunk to Pluck

The Pukes are such a great idea you wonder why someone didn’t do it before.  It may be that someone did and I’m not aware of it: if so, please let me know so I can check them out because I can’t get enough of this band and if anything like them in the universe exists I want to know about it.

It’s a simple idea.  You take a bunch of ukuleles and a bunch of punk songs alongside some tunes you’re written yourself, play them in an unaffected and spirited manner and eventually put them out on an album called ‘Too Drunk To Pluck’.  But you add a twist, because many of the songs covered are not the most obvious choices and that’s part of what makes the collection such a delight.  Given the vast number of possibilities available, why would a ukulele band decide to approach such an apparently inaccessible number for their instruments as ‘Holiday in Cambodia’?  And why ignore the temptations of the Pistols, Buzzcocks and The Clash in favour of Discharge, Peter & The Test Tube Babies and Cock Sparrer?

I don’t know, but the selections are original enough to give this collection an off-kilter quality that sets it apart from any expectations with which you might have approached it, and they pull every one of them off brilliantly.  The original compositions stand up very well too: ‘Will I Learn’ is a punk classic that someone forgot to write first time round, while ‘The Ballad of Micky Fitz’ has a street charm that in itself is reflective of some of the aforementioned choices: this is not a band stylistically welded to a 1976/77 vintage – its inspiration comes just as much from the output of early eighties neu punk, whose place in the punk canon has too often been denied.

They do far more than just set the record straight, however.  The Pukes’ ukulele charge is a powerful and innovative musical statement in its own right: there is no sub-George Formby cheesiness here, but a stripped down assault that loses none of its forthright appeal through the lack of guitar riffage or punctuating snare attacks. The Pukes are a musical delight in their own right: treasure them, then pray for that ukulele-based homage to the Anti-Nowhere League the world has been waiting for.

I'm playing their version of Cock Sparrer's 'Because You're Young' in my Dandelion Radio show this month and you can get the album from their website at http://thepukes.co.uk.

Molokai - Rack Attack 2.0

There was a time, around the mid-nineties, when I was particularly enamoured of surf music.  Enamoured is putting it mildly, actually.  I was often seen emerging from independent records shops in various parts of the midlands and north-west of England with teetering piles of vinyl threatening to obscure the path in front of me as I ventured precariously into the traffic.

It was a bad habit to acquire because, too late, I realised that I’d got to the stage of buying things I didn’t actually like very much.  Belatedly, I eschewed my profligate ways, returned to the more varied musical diet that was my natural inclination and became, I admit, something of a surf music sceptic.  Whilst the likes of Man…or Astroman continued to form an important part of my listening experience, I grew wary of venturing too far into the surf waters lest I once again be indiscriminately consumed by whatever lay out there.

The consequence of this is that nowadays a surf band has to be pretty damn special to attract my attention.  Molokai are one such band.  Emerging not from southern California but from Bitola, Macedonia, they’ve released their second album despite all being a mere nineteen years of age.  It comes via their own Predisposed To Oppose label and it’s the best bit of surf guitar to assault my lugholes in many a long year.

Titles like ‘Creepy Heap From The Deep’ ought to grab your attention anyway and even born again surf cynics like me can acknowledge that what lays behind such surface charms more than delivers on its initial promise.  Molokai have exactly what a really top drawer instrumental surf band needs: a rhythm section keeping it tight and steady while the guitars let rip to deliver riffs that manage to stay faithful to the idiom yet – and this is what sets them apart – sound like nothing like anything other worthy practitioners of the art like M…oA, Sir Bald Diddley or the Tiki-Men ever unleashed on the world.

Thus, I can confidently play a track like ‘John Travolta in the Castle Revolta’ in my Dandelion Radio show this month secure in the knowledge that I’m not only doing it because I like saying the title.   If you want to hear more, and I suggest you do, find it at http://molokaiau.bandcamp.com.  Disturbingly, the fact they've put (2011-14) on there suggests this might be the end of their short existence - let's hope not.

Green Man 2014: Unsurprisingly Good

I've got a guy to the left of me in a Crass t-shirt and an elderly woman to my right doing some knitting.  In front of me is a young girl with multi-coloured hair and her bespectacled and be-anoraked boyfriend.  All are nodding away to the music while thirty or so people sway and occasionally groove as they queue good-naturedly at the Hippy Chippy van.  You couldn't be anywhere else but the Green Man festival.

There's another side to the Green Man, though, and one that was all too in evidence in the 2014 event which, let me be clear, was a triumph, though with some reservations.  The relaxed atmosphere that makes it possible for practically anyone to enjoy themselves at the festival may yet, I fear, turn out to be its undoing.  At times, those festival abominations camp chairs stretched out so far before the Mountain and Walled Garden stage those who wanted to do the decent thing and stand to watch the bands found it difficult to find a space in which to do so, and were occasionally clucked at when they occupied a position in front of someone's seat: not very often, though, because more often than not the person in it appeared not to be showing a blind bit of interest in the music and all too often was in the process of spending hours with his/her back to it, his or her interest far more engaged by the contents of a Green Man Growler, Goan Fish Curry or Pieminster pie.

If Green Man isn't careful it's in danger of becoming little more than somewhere the middle classes can spend an August weekend in a relaxed liberal arts atmosphere with fine ales, superb scenery and unchallenging music.  For many who come to the festival, you sense that's what it already is.  It needs shaking up and one way to do it is to get rid of the far too many bands filling out the schedule this year who offered little more than background music to this cosy scene.

  

Fortunately, you can create your own excellent Green Man schedule by picking your way around the stages and there was plenty on offer to challenge those who wished to be challenged, and occasionally upset those who didn't.  Neutral Milk Hotel (top) played a storming set to close the main stage on the Sunday night, for example, but it was telling how many picked up their chairs and vacated the scene early in the set: classy Americana they like; the kind that NMH trade in, with its sophisticated and disjointed wooziness, clearly demanded too much concentration for those who wished to be passive recipients rather than active participants in the Green Man, which was always a big part of its point.

Slint, in the more receptive environs of the Far Out stage, found themselves with an audience largely made up of Slint-ites and therefore their characteristic refusal to make concessions was warmly and eagerly received, though their remarkable ingenuity and deftness of touch was lost on a bunch of girls behind me who disappeared complaining that they'd expected something a little more like the Foo Fighters based on what the programme had said.  Dunno where they got that from.  The sound wasn't great for their set, but then this band must be a sound engineer's nightmare: the overall effect, though, was mesmerising.

Others in the Far Out marquee made highly memorable contributions: Plank's sledgehammer attack of a few years ago has developed some intricacies but is none the worse for it.  Jupiter C, whose single from earlier this year I've been playing in my August Dandelion Radio show, revealed a bewitching promise well beyond the evidence I'd encountered previously.  James Yorkston played one of those sets of his that are half serious and half arsing around but he and his band made it work.  The short set Tender Prey delivered in the Cinema tent was highly enjoyable, while Talisman's performance in my one visit to the Chai Wallah on the Sunday night was every bit as good as you'd expect from one of the finest reggae bands Britain has ever produced.

Despite the cosiness demanded by too much of its audience, the Mountain Stage offered more highlights than is often the case.  Angel Olsen, a woman who could easily cut an easier path through the facile music industry by trading on her looks, instead takes a more difficult and far more interesting path, her sulky on-stage persona brilliantly matching the Cohen-esque richness of her delivery; like Olsen, Samantha Crain brought to life one of the finest albums of recent times in an exquisitely crafted and engaging performance in the Walled Garden on Sunday night, while Neko Case also didn't disappoint, one of the most distinctive voices of our age showing no ill-effects in what was her last live appearance of a lengthy tour.  Also on the Mountain Stage, veteran Cornish troubadour Michael Chapman added his considerable weight to the proceedings, providing one of the early highlights of Green Man 2014 and one that was only occasionally bettered throughout the long weekend.

Only Jeffrey Lewis and the Jrams (right) managed it. I'll be surprised if most of the mainstream reviews tell me I ought to have been watching The War On Drugs at the time, but for me Lewis is as close to unmissable as music gets and he didn't disappoint, raking brilliantly over the content of several albums (and he's never released a bad one) and leaving us, among many highlights, with an astonishing rendition 'Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror', as perhaps this festival's greatest moment.  I wish some of the chair-carriers had been able to see it above the heads of the highly appreciative crowd that swarmed around the front of the stage - would have done them good, I reckon. 

I suppose the issue I have, however, is that all of the above were artists I anticipated delivering the goods before I set out on Thursday morning.  I'm pleased they didn't disappoint, but for me so much of the beauty of the Green Man lies in the discovery of great new stuff.  This year, for me, only the excellent Frank Fairfield (left), who blew an appreciative crowd away with his startling re-imagining of songs of the old west, really did the business on this score.  Others I went to see on the off-chance of something interesting happening ranged from the ordinary to the truly appalling.  I won't name them because I don't believe in wasting words on music that doesn't do anything for me, but, among all the great music on offer, there was a gaping, disappointing hole in the middle of this festival and it needs seeing to because I suspect it, and the apathy of too much of the crowd, are two sides of the same coin.

The Green Man Festival is something that usually manages to surprise and delight in equal measure.  This year I'm happy to report that there was plenty to delight, but we were sadly lacking in surprises.

Green Man 2014: A Personal Top Ten

1.  Jeffrey Lewis & The Jrams
2.  Michael Chapman
3.  Samantha Crain
4.  Angel Olsen
5.  Neutral Milk Hotel
6.  Frank Fairfield
7.  Slint
8.  Talisman
9.  Jupiter C
10. Tender Prey

derTANZ - Vatta

I've written about derTANZ before.  On the one hand, they're one of many Budapest bands who are doing remarkable things with a broad punk mindset at the moment.  On the other, they're completely different from any of the other groups from that city that have been getting airplay on my Dandelion Radio show over the past couple of years.

I don't want this to sound like a put-down of those other bands, some of whom produce a full-on trash/hardcore/noise rock onslaught I love almost to the point of insanity, but with derTANZ you get more.  There's plenty of noise here, but its overlaid with elements of psychedelic experimentation and improvisation that stand above practically anything else coming out of Hungary at the moment.  Last year's Kaktusz album ably showcased their unique aesthetic, and now Vatta has come along to show us more.

There's a more slick feel to the production on this album but thankfully that's not diminished their appeal one bit.  The songs alternate from doom-laden low moans to frantic blasts of anger with many shades of grey in between: sometimes the tempo and mood can fragment and rebuild within the same song - as in the remarkable 'Slow Tilt' - while the near-a capella of 'Elvis Left The Building' illustrates this band's penchant for challenging their listeners' expectations and winning hands down.

I'm playing 'Beginner's Bible' in my April show, which may well be my favourite track on the album, but this is a collection that works best as a whole rather than via snapshots or excerpts.  You can pick it up here: it's name your price and, should you choose to chuck a few coins into their bowl, you can be reassured this band will be putting them to very good use.  To be honest, I'd have been perfectly happy with a re-hashing of Kaktusz, but Vatta has bravely chosen to build on and extend the template and, in pulling it off so brilliantly, derTANZ are more than worthy of the half an hour or so of your time it takes to appreciate this fine album.

Nnevteiga - New Codes of the Unfun

Sometimes change is a good thing and sometimes it isn't.  I wasn't looking for Nnevteiga to make any major modifications to their sound after last year's stunning debut simply because there seemed so much more plundering of that wonderful sound to be done, and these guys were obviously the best people to do it.

I needn't have worried.  New Codes of the Unfun pretty much picks up where last year's self-titled masterpiece left off, weaving further layers of damaged intensity into a beautifully abrasive noise that stands apart from and above pretty much all the other beautifully abrasive noises in my life at the moment.  It's like the soundtrack to an emotional holocaust, covering a ravaged landscape from the warped sludge of 'Forest Fuck', its brooding instrumentation punctuated by howling vocal interjections, through the stuttering tremor of 'Merrick' and right out the other side where the sub-gothic wailing of the title track batters you into a submission you'd admitted well before it arrived.

The longest track on the album, 'Cold You And I', stands as one of the musical high points of 2014 so far, somehow absorbing pretty much all of the above elements into a four minute frenzy you could happily set before anyone who wanted to know what makes this band so damn special.  I'm playing the track in my April show on Dandelion Radio, which continues streaming until the end of the month.  There'll be something else from the album in my May show.

In the meantime, get the album here or e-mail the Tendresse label for a cassette copy: tendresserecord@gmail.com.   Just four euros plus shipping for an album that'll keep you company for the rest of the year and well beyond that.

Return to Hungary: Another Overview of the Magyar Punk Scene

Last spring I gave a bit of an overview of some of my favourite things happening in the Hungarian music scene which, at that time, seemed to be more active in terms of exciting guitar-based music than any other country in the world.  I'm pleased to say that, almost a year on, things don't appear to have died down at all and my March Dandelion Radio show contains some new discoveries along with recent releases from some long-standing favourites.

I'll start with another mention for Amstatten Bedroom Punk, one of the first bands to get me intrigued about what was going on in their neck of the woods and a band (?) about whom I still know little.  Every now and then they put out a release on their bandcamp site and every now and then I get just a little bit more excited about them.  They put a two-track single there back in January and I feature something from that in the show: the sleeve photo (left) contains a rather unnerving image of two masked figures apparently kidnapping a small boy.  It encapsulates the strangely sinister element at the heart of the band, a certain enigmatic creepiness lurking below the magnificent noise they create.  I'd like it if they put more stuff out, but then these fleeting glimpses of their strange world are part of what makes them so irresistibly appealing.

Another band I got very excited about last year were PFA, whose last album I included in my list of favourites of 2014.  They're back with a new EP, called Army Of Pigs, and it's another triumph.  From Veszprem, they're very much at the play-it-fast-and-loud-and-either-you-get-a-nosebleed-or-we-do end of the punk spectrum and they do it pretty much better than anyone else around at the moment.  I'm playing 'Children of the Safety Pin' in the show, a track that times at just over a minute and is the second longest of the ten tracks on the EP, which gives you some idea of the kind of dizzy rush this band specialises in.

In Fuck Like Bunnies, from Budapest, I've found someone who generate a similarly dizzy rush, but whose work contains something of the sinister undertones of Amstatten.  Obviously you can't resist a name like that anyway, but don't be fooled into thinking this is some playfully irreverent, designed to shock in an infantile way comic-book punk band.  Anything but.  They put out a split release with Tragedia in 2012 and their recent Nema Jelenlet EP is, as far as I know, the first we've heard from them since then (first I have anyway).  I play EP opener 'Egig Emelt Falak' in my March show if you need to get a better grip on what they sound like than the one I'm struggling to provide here.

Also from Budapest, Tumo also play loud and hard but with an almost gothic hearbeat pounding away beneath their abrasive skins.  Their self-titled album, the sleeve photo of which consists only of a chimney, throws up ten tracks of caustic noise rock that, like so many of their compatriots, weave an enigmatic edge into what appear initially to be fairly classic punk structures.  If, like me, you missed the album they put out last year, which is almost self-titled, you might want to correct your error and check that out too.

Gustave Tiger are a rather different proposition. Their Mitanni Mares album

originally surfaced at the end of last year and its palette draws as much on indie and psychedelic influences as it does punk, a mixture that conjurs up an intoxicating brew nonetheless.  Their 'Thompson Springs' contains an irresistable melodic flavour that I find it hard to get out of my head - again, it's something you can hear in my March show.

All of these releases are available as NYOP from the bandcamp links provided and all are deeply worthy of your attention.  As I've already indicated, you can hear a track from each of them in my March Dandelion Radio show, streaming at various times through this month.  If you like what you hear, tune in again in April because I've got a track in there from the stunning new album from derTANZ, possibly my favourite of all current Hungarian bands.  Until then, enjoy what's on offer here and I'd advise you to check out as much as you can from what's easily Europe's most fascinating punk scene at the moment because there are bound to be things out there I've not happened upon myself yet.  If you do, please let me know because I can't get enough of this stuff.

 

EyeSea - Blue Ten

Blue Tapes have done it again.  The label received a lot of deserved attention for Katie Gately's 'Pipes' single last year, a track that provided one of the major highlights of the 2013 festive fifty when it unexpectedly snuck in at number 19.  Even had they left it there, they would already warrant recognition as one of the finest conduits innovative music of our time, but they clearly don't intend to.  For that we can be extremely grateful, especially as this EyeSea release isn't far behind the Gately one in terms of quality and easily on a par in terms of musical audacity.

It's another vocal-only affair, this time appropriating the unlikely tag of 'a capella death metal' to give the world what will surely prove to be one of the most original things - musical or otherwise - you'll encounter anywhere in 2014.  Even more than anything else that Blue Tapes have put out, Blue Ten shreds your expectations as much as your senses: hearing the rabid growl of a death metal vocalist without instrumental accompaniment raises the hairs on your back and plays merry hell with your sensibilities with scant regard for how open-minded a listener you might like to think you are.

There are ten such gems on this release, each one stylistically similar and yet bewilderingly different.  It's from the same series of vocal studies as the Gately release, but there any similarities end.  The power of the aforementioned artist's 'Pipes' was in how it somehow martialled the most sparse and rudimentary elements to produce something that was, for the most part, oddly melodic.  There's nothing melodic here, only a pugilistic vocal line that pounds your senses into willing submission while your head jars to the guitar line you know ought to be there but which, shockingly, isn't.

I'm playing 'Stuck 2' from the release in my March Dandelion Radio show.  You can grab a copy - as usual, it's a cassette only affair, from here.  If you're missing something in your life at the moment, it's probably this: and even if it isn't, it'll certainly take your mind off whatever it is.