Selfish Cunt – England Made Me II

i don't know what percentage of my income i spend on records. probably as much as i pay for rent. maybe even more. anyway, spending a great amount of money on records doesn't mean i just pay shitloads for anything. i usually try to find the best deal or real bargains. which usually brings me to foreign, mostly overseas internet shops. and that usually brings me to browsing pages and pages of random stuff looking for something else i might want, to save on postage. even the greatest one dollar record can be overpriced when you have to add twelve dollars on postage.
and what else i might want is rarely stuff i know because mostly i already have it or at least have ordered it from somewhere else. no, it's the stuff that i don't have. the stuff that sounds interesting by the review, by the bands it gets compared with or just by the fact that it was released by the same small indie label that also released the record i initially went for.
what caught my interest on this record was the band name. simple as it is. a band called Selfish Cunt can't be bad. actually it needs to be good since airplay seems impossible and promotion difficult. and try finding their stuff on eBay! is it “cunt” with one or two stars replacing letters?
that's how i came upon this little cockney gem. and the song blew me away from the first note. it got power, it got enthusiasm, it got the “fuck you” attitude that made the charm of old heroes like MC5 or Dead Kennedys. vocalists Martin Tomlinson sporting a Dead Kennedys shirt in the video is no surprise. he seems to be very influenced by Jello Biafra not only in respect of the vocals but also his stage appearance.
ensuing i had to learn that the band not only just released their second album but also that they are about to tour mainland europe and i'll have the chance to see them live in a few weeks. lucky me, usually i find out about a band a couple of weeks after they toured.

Selfish Cunt myspace

Cocoanut Groove – Walking To Madeleine Street

the 80s was the end of analogy in music in more than just one term. instruments were digitized, recordings were digitized and in the end the music medium itself was digitized. with the birth of the cd the pop culture as an overall artistic concept got reduced to auditory pleasure only. „cover art“ became a meaningless term and music fans, ready and willing to pay a few bucks more for original pressings in gatefold sleeves and with inserts or other gimmicks were left behind with a little piece of plastic and tiny booklets you need a magnifying glass for to read. the holistic concept of pop culture got lost and bereft of its visual part the emotional value of a cd became null. since there is no audible between a factory-produced cd and a home-burned, hand-labeled copy, why bother spending too much money on it? and today with the internet and tiny mp3-players that can hold more than one day of music and not just 74 minutes the physical medium is bound to become extinct.
Cocoanut Groove's debut single "End of the summer on Bookbinder Road" was an old fashioned single in its very original meaning. a single song on one side and another single song on the other side. and even though both songs, "End of the summer on Bookbinder Road" and „Shadow“ are great songs it was „Walking To Madeleine Street“, one of the bonus songs that came with the download version of the record on all relevant internet blogs that enthused me right from the beginning. now, with Olov Antonsson's debut full length „Madeleine Street“ finally out it is also available in a physical form.
to describe Cocoanut Groove's music in a few words: a little more simon-and-garfunkelish version of Kings Of Convenience with Nico singing.
the combination of a laid back acoustic guitar and a little moony vocals paint a nice picture of early summer insouciance and infatuation; of blooming trees, singing birds, green lawns and a cloudless sky. it invites you to just sit down and close your, to forget the next appointment and the city around you, to just listen to the song and daydream. after all this song seems to be made to end up on an mp3-player and to be taken along anywhere and everywhere.

Cocoanut Groove myspace

The School - Let It Slip

yes, retro is a four-letter-word. and whereas the last few years saw a small revival of the early 60s diminutive „-ettes“ as in the The Raveonettes, The Pipettes or The Noisettes the music mostly didn't accompany the names. so, even though The Schoolettes would better hint the sound, The School went the other way. it's not that you'll be completely unprepared when confronted with their happy-happy-lollipop-pop: the almost expressionistic use of just bright colours and the displayed post-petticoat fashion are indications enough. the name „The School“ bears, at least for those of us who didn't become teachers, the connotation of adolescence and our last years in the institution of the same name.
The School started spreading the light heartedness of summer and juvenility most fitting in format and colour on a pink 7“ record. now they doubled their output with a 4-song MCD. and it still works and doesn't seem to wear out.
i don't know what them welsh kids plans are, but late spring, early summer would be a good time to dare a full length: a gazillion hormones, induced by the reappearance of full days of sunlight, floading everyones body and create a state of involuntary happiness, that will turn us into all too recipient mediums for this grand twee pop. actually the music itself creates that state even on the darkest and coldest winter days. so why not more of that sonic instant happiness right now?

The School myspace

Cut Off Your Hands - Oh Girl

for a long time british pop music was ruled by 2 opposites: The Beatles and The Stones. your mom's favourites sons-in-law and the bad boys of rock'n'roll. good and bad, black and white. then the 80s offered blue: the gay gentleman, always perfectly dressed for a funeral but going to the carnival. sophisticated and lugubrious. The Smiths. from then on british pop music was ruled by the 3. just think Oasis and Blur and Pulp. it's obvious who is who.
with that in mind the first question for me about a new british band is: what school does it belong to? and very often the answer is rather simple. but must never be too simple. one thing that never should happen is to sound too much like one of the three bands. that privilege is reserved to non-english bands only. I remember a swedish band, who's name i never remember, absolutely sounding like The Smiths but with swedish vocals. they apparently broke up and the singer did it solo as the swedish Moz.
Cut Off Your Hands are from new zealand. so it is only righteuos the have the freedom to go fully for that Smiths sound. and they do it way better than this swedish act since they don't really sound like a Smiths rip-off. more like the Smiths, not aged a day since the break up, would have gotten back together for a new record in 2008. their debut is more mature and less wild than The Smiths first steps but still it has the dichotomy of sad lyrics for happy pop songs. well, it has a bit of johnny's guitar work and steven's vocal lines. anyway...
people like to go nostalgic about music in the 80s only remembering the songs they still like. but when you find an old 80s compilation record, and i'm talking about an 80's compilation that actually is from the 80s, or see a re-run of old chart shows you realize that almost 90% of the music in the 80s was codswallop. Cut Off Your Hands is a band i wish to be from the 80's so i can still like them today and get nostalgic about the good old days.

Cut Off Your Hands myspace