Tag: music

I suppose, with so much new music constantly being released, being late to discover a band can happen. Though, the two decades since this album’s release might be starting to be unfashionably late to the party. However, when it comes to discovering hidden gems that deserve wider attention, as is the raison d’être of Unspun Heroes, time doesn’t really matter. It’s much more about that moment where you hear something and want to share it with the world. This was the case the first time I heard an album that came out in 2003.

Ten Songs by Assistant.

Almost exactly 21 years ago, a young band from Brighton put out their first album. And while the name may not win awards for inventiveness, they made music that would have broken through had it been recorded 10-15 years previously. In 2003, the world was listening to indie rock, with Muse, The White Stripes, Radiohead and their ilk, as well as the likes of Jay-Z and Outkast. It wasn’t listening to jangly indie pop that draws influences from Stereolab, Felt, and Galaxie 500. Certainly not en masse.

A real shame, for us and for Assistant.

Fast forward to 2024, however, and things are about to change (as you’ll see).

I heard of the band only a few months ago, via social media. I’d seen a Tweet about jangly pop and, because listening to lots of music is good to do, particularly when it’s new to you, I gave their debut LP a spin on Bandcamp. Now, I am a fan of the writer, John Wyndham, so the opening song has the right title for me. However, it was the second track, Freaks, that absolutely caught my ear. That catchy bass hook! The noisy guitar that comes to the front of the mix! The vocalist who doesn’t try too hard to ‘sing’ the song. It felt like I was in the best years of my youth rather than the later years of middle age. It’s right up my rue, as they say en France.

Yes, it’s jangly indie, but it has an edge to it that, to my mind, puts it in that sort of early nineties musical neighbourhood. There’s that DIY element to the songs, which gives them a real personality that polished production might rub away. No-one need ever know, is a straight up pop hit, despite its rather downcast lyrics. In fact, all the songs have that sort of pop feel to them, like a lot of songs by The Smiths always did. And while I don’t think there is any more of a comparison here, the songwriting definitely feels like it owes a tip of the hat to Stephen Morrissey, as well as Damon Albarn, and Crispin Hunt.

The album has many surprises hidden in plain sight. I’ve already mentioned the bass hooks that are given a lot of room to shine on every track, as they should be. But I wasn’t prepared for the boogie-woogie piano riff halfway through Bomber, for example, yet it feels like the song simply wouldn’t work without it. Because of that, this has quickly become one of my favourite tracks.

Across Ten Songs, you’re left with the feeling you’ve heard a band’s sound mature across an album rather than a career. As the album winds into its closing numbers, so the vibe becomes much more chilled. This definitely gives you an idea of where the band ultimately headed, especially with songs they recorded in 2020. You’ll get more introspective jangle pop on closing song, Reasoned,than edgy indie, although Get Away has that Hot Hot Heat vibe, and Losing My Mind soundslike it’s been made in some NYC-Manchester hybrid rather than a British seaside resort.

Brighton has always delivered musically. The scene in the city of Brighton and Hove is hot right now – my (current and ever-changing) picks are Porridge Radio, Opus Kink, KEG, DITZ and Dream Wife, but let’s not forget Blood Red Shoes, Electrelane, 14 Iced Bears… (Oh, the list is too long I’ll have to make a playlist.) Whatever. The point is, I think Assistant deserves a spot on that list.

Ten Songs is the perfect place to start.

The following has been written by Jonathan, the vocalist for Assistant. We met in a Brighton coffee shop to chat about life, music, the late 90s… and about how life can change when you let go of the things that might have once held you back.

23 years ago, I appealed, via a Brighton forum on a distant version of the internet, for people “with no musical talent”. I had just moved to Brighton and wanted to form a band. I had written a song, so it seemed like a good idea. My Assistant bandmates, Pete and Anne-Sophie both replied and, for the last twenty-odd years, whenever life has allowed us, we’ve written songs together or with each other in mind – more recently taking it in turns to share the load, iron the songs out, record them, embellish and improve them. 

From time to time I write in Brighton, scrabbling at my guitar while my toddlers busy themselves around my feet. Over in Oxford, Pete writes songs daily, and for Pete they flow out steadily, a kind of diary-keeping. He keeps most for himself and will occasionally say ‘this is for Assistant’, and once he’s done that a few times the odd alchemy of making a collection of songs begins, with left-field ambushes from Anne-Sophie, who chips in with her own surprising, inscrutable demos.

As our songs come together, we begin to swap ideas for album titles, sleeve designs, concepts. Pete’s songs are pure of expression. My songs come less easily and are generally autobiography which is then clothed in a disguise of vagueness. I’m not always sure I know what I want my songs to be doing, so they often exist in many variations for months and even years, until I find a variant that I’m happy with. Pete is decisive and sure of touch. I am much less so, my clumsy fingers conjuring many flimsy takes, so Pete will often send me emails with subject lines like ‘new album?’, wondering if we’re done.

However, I like to sit on the songs for so long that I almost forget where they come from. I forget how to play them. And then I start to reassemble them, swapping stuff out, changing something here, there. Eventually, at some point, they are finished. But since we reformed properly, in 2020, we have tended towards doing almost nothing with our songs at this point. They go up on Bandcamp, very quietly, where they sit undiscovered. Once I sent an email to the host of my favourite radio show – Josh Meadows – who cheerfully played us four times. I learned absolutely nothing from this. Months passed.

Since 2020 we have made three albums this way; collated by post, assembled slowly. The songs have become increasingly personal and important to us. And I think of each of these Assistant albums (one is unreleased) as finished, whole, totally real. Our own art. But it’s not often I will mention them to anyone. A few friends know and are supportive – but they are not really fans of the music. So the songs just sit there. 

–

Perhaps we are an imaginary band? I like to think of us that way. I can see us low-down on the bill supporting Felt or The Servants in a London Polytechnic in 1987. Or we might have squeezed a song onto a compilation album alongside an early Electric Soft Parade demo or a Young Knives b-side. We played some really great gigs in Brighton and London in the early 2000s, in fact, but we were quite drunk and they’re harder to remember than I’d like.

At Christmas this year, I suddenly thought: “I’ll tell everyone about our band”. So I created a Twitter account and began sharing songs that we’d written alongside some little reviews of records I liked and videos from YouTube. This is where things started getting a bit weird. With remarkable speed, people began listening! Not only did they listen, but they told me they liked the songs, and even began referencing back my very favourite artists too. My imaginary band was flickering into life, and it made me very happy.

Pete and Anne-So were completely disbelieving. “Who are these people????” Anne-Sophie would say. “We are becoming a cult band”.

We are probably still way too small to be a cult band, but then… but then I am suddenly filled with a giddy conviction that we are indeed going to become a cult band. “We’re the new Blue Orchids”, I tell myself, as I click on our Bandcamp stats to see that, somehow, we got 30,40,60, even 100 plays that day. It is not much, really, but it is really really really exciting. I squint and try to imagine our audience.

The lesson, I suspect, is that lots of people out there really love pop music, and feel the same way about it as I do – they chase that delightful moment of discovery, that instance of recognition when you hear a song and think “oh, I get what they’re trying to do here”. As a few people tune in, I’m getting that mirrored back to me after years of celebrating the weird little songs that crept into my life. Music is so great – the rush which heralds the discovery of a great new song is a feeling almost completely unchanged from all the way back then – back when I was sat in my bedroom in 1994 staring at a wall of Blur posters. A new song to love is like receiving a kiss.

And I discover, too, that some people are just incredibly nice. They will be insanely generous with their time and energy, going out of their way to share the things you share, to recommend you, even get you played on the radio. People have gone out of their way, which I did not expect at all. This small thing which is happening to Assistant is so wildly great and totally unexpected, so tremendously nice. And in the meantime, all of a sudden, I am discovering wonderful bands left right and centre, and exchanging messages with them as if I too am in a band – a real one, not an imaginary one. It’s flipping great.

The work of art you make has so much more value than you think it does, especially if it is made with love. I think in retrospect it’s probably for the best that I am not (or was not) ambitious about having an audience, as it has allowed me to enjoy making art without needing to improve, or break out, or face the horror of criticism, either. But now I am telling people, and will do so until they tell me to stop.

If you make stuff, I really, really recommend telling people about your art, even if, like me, you have to do it through a veil of very British irony and embarrassment. You deserve the thrill of having your work noticed. I wish I had done it earlier.

UPDATE: Since this piece was written Assistant have signed a record deal and are releasing their two most recent LPs through Subjangle on the 21st April.

There have been more than a few occasions where I’m had to admit I had things wrong, that I’d had preconceptions that had held me back. And many times I’ve been proven wrong in my assumptions. I’m happy to admit it. This is one of those times.

And, whoa, how happy I am to be proved wrong.

In my defence, I’m a person who will give any music its due. Sometimes, I have to be doing something else when I listen to an album I don’t know, to let it infuse itself into my brain like a melodic marinade. This is one such time. I’ve had this album playing while I’ve been doing other things. But each time I’m stopped in my tracks by it.

This could be called Americana, country-folk, or whatever label you care to drop on a style of music. However, like a lot of these labels, it falls short when it comes to Drink Ring Jesus by Stephen Simmons. Listening to this album is like a searing knife through flesh it cuts into a part of me that I can’t begin to describe. The eponymously named opening track literally brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it, and that hasn’t diminished through the several plays I’ve gone through since I first pressed play on Stephen’s Bandcamp page.

And it doesn’t relinquish its hold on you. Before you’re even able to get yourself together, Simmons pushes on. If there was a knife, you’d feel its twist as Time To Pay plays out. I couldn’t wait to get the feelings this record has created in me on to digital paper, such is the effect I’ve felt by this set of tracks, first released in 2006.

A single guitar, a voice and occasional harmonica. It’s stripped back in instrumentation, but it’s loaded with emotion. If I didn’t know better, I’d be worried for Simmons’ own life, but he is actually playing a character who, possibly, is sat on his front porch in rural Tennessee and pondering the decisions that got him here. Seeking solace from Jesus and The Devil and finding himself bereft and exhausted. As he sings on You Give Us:

“Sometimes I get so sick of this life
Sometimes I think I must be losing my mind
Sometimes I wonder why I even still try”

Somehow, Simmons has imparted these feelings of introspection into the recording. It’s like vapours pouring from a vial, it’s music you inhale until you embody it. I know it sounds unlikely – and I would have agreed with you had I not heard it myself. This is an album that you forced to invest in, it’s that compelling a listen. I defy you to not do be haunted by this.

Lyrically, it flits between sinister and uplifting. Sometimes, there are moments where the two worlds cross over. The opening lines of the chorus on Devil’s Work Is Never Done is one such time, but the melody Simmons conjures up drives it home as if the words were delivered by a nail gun:

“It looks so easy sounds so damn simple
You think these souls fall right outta the sky?
Jesus back off, this one’s mine”

I mean, come on!

This album could have fallen into clichés very easily. Somehow, Simmons avoids them even while the themes sit up front, riding shotgun. The words he chooses, the chords he plucks; these are the things that prevent this from being pastiche and ensure the album continues to have that emotional effect on you throughout. I can picture the tribute Elvis bawling as Simmons’ sings Cryin’ Elvis. Brought to life by his voice, held by the framework of composition and thoughtful fingerpicking on the guitar.

The album is littered with clever lines. It’s hard not to quote them endlessly. Lines like, “I sipped on a quart of sloth / Fell behind and got lost” which pops up in the second half of Dante’s Blues No.7. And there are plenty more to discover.

Even as the album slows and begins its descent towards its end, the quality continues to ascend. It brought to mind another recent album that floored me on first listen and continues to reward, Evensongs by Andrew Rumsey. It’s interesting to me that both have religious connotations, but wear them like a tattoo that can be glimpsed. You can pull up the sleeve and bear witness, but even if you prefer to ignore them it doesn’t diminish the experience these songs bring. You’re part of the congregation listening to Simmons’ blend of sermon and confessional, just by pressing play.

I’ll leave you with another lyric, this time from the final song, Long Way To Go.

“And I heard somebody say
You gotta walk that lonesome valley
On your own just to prove your worth”

Well, actually, you can have Stephen Simmons accompany you. And that’s as close to perfect as you’ll get on any day of the week.

For international audiences, Ettab (occasionally written as Etab) seems relatively unknown. However, in the Arabic-speaking world, this Saudi singer is a huge star. A legend? Maybe best described as an icon, in fact. And rightly so.

Ettab was born in 1947 as Tarouf Abdulkhair Adam Muhammad al-Talal Hawsawi, in Riyadh, but was exiled for her activism and support for women’s rights in the music world, spending the majority of her time in Egypt until her death in 2007.

I suppose it’s not unfair to call this album pop music. Recorded in 1992, in Lebanon, by producer brothers, Mahmoud and Ahmed Moussa for their Re-Lax label, it serves as a great collection of songs for discovering an artist who delivered over 15 albums in her lifetime. Catchy melodies and string-laden music – alongside some amazing synth work – is set against Ettab’s exceptional voice, which is both rich and playful.

There is a distinct North African vibe, or chaabi (which is used to describe a genre of ‘folk’ music from that region), alongside the more specific Algerian/European fusion known as raï. This provides the music with the more modern elements of several Western musical styles alongside the obvious Arabian influences, especially noticeable on Track 4 Khalas Min Hobek.

It’s this mix that gives the album a timeless sound – and yet, it could also have been produced some thirty years previous to its actual release date, such are the visuals it creates in the listener’s mind, mostly on its opening two tracks, Min fina Ya Hal Tara and Ya El Koweit. However, for me, it’s the penultimate track, Ma Aâla El Aâchik, that captures what this album is all about. The album was reissued in 2023 by French label, Elmir Records, which is devoted to ensuring that the musical heritage of North Africa and the Middle East is conserved.

A vinyl pressing, of which only 500 copies were made, is still available via their Bandcamp page at the time of writing. Listen to Ettab’s album in the embedded player below, or via your preferred streaming service.

New Cross in south-east London is synonymous with ground-breaking mid-noughties indie bands. One that slipped under many radars is named after a social club that existed in the area, although some may consider to be Peckham (but let’s not split hairs, they’re in the same-ish area). Back in the day, the New Cross area was known as Hatcham (which, incidentally, means a ‘clearing in the wood in Old English)… and so, we have Hatcham Social.

Their debut was released in 2009, and it’s this that we steer your ears towards. The brilliantly titled, You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil, is a collection of 11 songs, each a catchy indie bounce – the album was produced by Tim Burgess of The Charlatans (UK), and it shows – with its twinkly synths and rhythmic guitar.

Fronted by one of the Kidd brothers, Toby, and driven by the sticks of former Klaxons drummer and other brother, Finn, they sound quite laid back yet sanguine. You can hear aspects of other bands of their era in the mix, but they are very much their own band. It could be pop, but it’s too noisy for that; it could be indie rock, but it’s got some smarts in the lyrics and the treble in the guitar sound shifts it out of that genre. They describe themselves as Art Pop, so I guess we’ll have to go with that.

There is a knowingness that lifts it above many of their contemporaries, particularly on songs such as Murder in the Dark, and I Cannot Cure My Pure Evil (which to my ears could be a cover of an obscure demo from The Cure). There are so many references you can pull from this band. Clearly, somewhere along the line they listened to The Smiths, for example, but chose not to emulate them in song structure or lyrically content, and so avoid being a pastiche of their influences. Aspects of Orange Juice and Talking Heads flicker in amongst the whoa-ohs of So So Happy Making, too. They’ve taken all the best bits of the best bits of indie pop and melded them into something new.

The album was released by Fierce Panda, a label known for bringing some of the best indie bands to the world, from Ash to Supergrass (okay, also Coldplay and Keane, but we all make mistakes). Artwork was created by Faris Badwan, lead vocalist of The Horrors. Yes, Hatcham Social are in good company. On release it was critically acclaimed, gaining solid reviews and a lot of support from the music media (except from The Guardian, whose reviewer was peeved there were no sing-along-a-chorus moments).

And yet… and yet, the band never really broke through in the way that other such as The XX, Florence and the Machine, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, and other luminaries of the indie scene. It’s hard to say why, considering the calibre of the songs on this debut. However, at Unspun HQ still believe this album is very much worthy of wider attention, which makes Hatcham Social’s debut an Unspun Hero.

It was never released on vinyl in the UK – although a US release with a different track listing did come out on TBD Records who licensed it for UK release. It remains to be seen if Fierce Panda (or TBD Records) will consider doing a limited edition vinyl release, so perhaps someone else will? In 2022, Hatcham Social released a career-spanning retrospective on Fierce Panda called We Are The Weirdos. Still together, we can hope they’ll continue to release new music at some point in the near future. You can enjoy listening to their debut via their Bandcamp page, or on other streaming services of your choice.

I loved Twin Peaks when it came out, watching it religiously (alongside Northern Exposure – which could be a blog post in its own right) throughout my early twenties. Not only did the plot keep me enthralled, but the music did, too. That widescreen sound, full of synth and guitar layers that mirrored the writing, all designed to pull you in deep to try and make sense of what you were watching and listening to.

This is what I think of when I think of The Luxembourg Signal’s second album, Blue Field. Building from the remains of the band, Aberdeen (from California, not Scotland), The Luxembourg Signal not only continue with the place-name-as-band-name theme, but also the melodic and indie dream pop jangle with guitar fuzz overtones. There’s a lot going on. (It even has a song called Laura Palmer.) It’s all texture and mood on this album, melodic and expansive.

However, while they started with a more shoegaze sound their music has evolved with Blue Field, their second album, which was released in 2017. Opening track, There’s Nothing More Beautiful Than A Well-Made Machine sets the scene, although as the album goes on so do the nods to Ride and Slowdive deepen, particularly on tracks such as the aforementioned Laura Palmer, and short instrumental Slow Delayed Heart. This, though, is not a negative. In fact, that ‘shoegaze’ word is no longer (thankfully) seen as derogatory. This is atmospheric indie pop at its best. Think of artists like Cloth and Kathryn Joseph as much as those 90’s stalwarts.

The title track is something to savour, as this seven-piece band creates the sort of song that wouldn’t go amiss soundtracking your journey to a summer festival, or the early morning hours after you’ve broken up with your long-term partner. It’s one for many different occasions, which is surely nothing but a good sign. Bop around to it, or wallow: it’s still the kind of album that burrows into your ear and hooks itself into your consciousness. Partly this is the vocal talent of Beth Arzy, partly the angular guitar riffs and glistening arpeggios of Johnny Joyner and Kelly Davies.

There is that filmic quality, always present. It’s this that truly defines the album, and much of The Luxembourg Signal’s output before and since. The fact that their sound could be from 30 years ago or 30 years into the future says a lot. Futuristic Retro as a genre anyone? And while the tempo doesn’t shift much, you still get a sense of momentum building to a climax. By the time you get to the final song, What You’re Asking For, you might feel both cleansed and pure – and like you’ve watched an unsettling TV crime series and need the perfect cup of sweet tea to reset your nerves.  

A bit like watching Twin Peaks.

Of course, though, like each and every Unspun Hero, Blue Field deserves your attention. Listen to the album at The Luxembourg Signal’s Bandcamp page.

On a recent trip to Middlesbrough, on Unspun Heroes business, so I was played an album that is about to come out on vinyl. (Yes, an Unspun Hero can be something that is fresh and new and not-quite-released on a plastic disc.) I sat back with a cup of tea and a biscuit and listened. The background hum of the office I was in just faded away and I was sucked into the music so deeply I could have sworn I’d been dreaming.

I hadn’t. What I’d experienced was Tom Blackwell’s latest album. And what a stunning collection it is.

This is an album of musical minimalism that somehow appears to be fuller than expected. Guitar and harmonica, it’s easy to immediately think of Dylan. Yet, I think it’s fair to state that Tom is producing music that is on par with those early Zimmerman acoustic songs, but perhaps with more of a Donovan folksy feel, shot through with notes of Americana to give each of the songs their own unique flavour.

His biography has a line in it that sums Tom’s musicality so perfectly, it deserves repeating: “Blackwell sings his songs as if he is living them.”

Indeed.

And as a listener you feel as if you’re living them alongside him. Oh, these must be a delight to hear live (although, as they’re a one-take recording with just a microphone, captured at his home, I suppose you actually are). Remarkable tunes, each and every one of them.

They’re almost a decade old, which means Tom has sat with these gems inside and alongside him, and it’s this that creates such a depth not only to the songwriting but to the playing. He says they’re a collection of love songs to a café in Pimlico, London, where he used to find himself after walking for hours. He suggest listening to them late at night, which I think it probably right. With a whiskey sour, perhaps, and friends. I think you’ll find yourselves stunned into silence, perhaps the occasional murmur of appreciation leaking from mouths at the end of each track.

Buying a copy of this to play late at night in my own home was an easy decision. I’d made it the moment I came back to myself in that office in Middlesbrough. I urge you to give this a listen, and I think you’ll come to the same conclusion. There are only 200 copies of this available on vinyl – well, 199 at least – and I doubt they’ll hang around for long, except in your own record collection and in the memories of those who are lucky enough to have heard Tom Blackwell. Listen and buy via Tom’s Bandcamp.