Rihanna Unapologetic

It was billed as an opportunity for fans and journalists to gain an insight into the singer and join her on a weeklong party while she completing her 777 tour; seven gigs in seven cities to celebrate the release of her seventh album. What should have been a great PR opportunity turned flat when the singer failed to spend any time with the people she had invited to be around her and promises of parties failed to materialise and one journalist got so bored he took all his clothes off, which certainly Rihanna would approve of. It all sounded so good to start with, a private jet with a star who is  (if her Twitter account is anything to go by) a party princess but failed to deliver, much like the album.

Unapologetic has all the ingredients to make it a huge record. The industries best writers, the best producers and the powerhouse of Def Jam and of course the lady herself. Considering her six previous albums have a strong ratio of hits to filler it’s surprising that Unapologetic lacks any substance.

It feels like Rihanna or more accurately the people who write her songs have got bored. Considering all Rihanna had to do was add her vocals to the record she could have put some effort in, it sounds like she recorded all her parts in one take with the same enthusiasm she would put into ordering a drive through. She doesn’t in any way make it sound like she is enjoying it so how is the listener meant to?

Opening track ‘Phesh out the Runway’ sounds like it should have been given to Nicki Minaj and the songs carry on from there. It’s more a collection of songs ordered together rather than an entity that has had some time taken over it. Even the lead single ‘Diamonds’ lacks the power that it should have being filled with clichés and absence of any hook. Tracks are littered with Dubstep, more because that’s what’s selling records at the moment rather than because it needs it.

The only theme that is present throughout is the thinly veiled attempt to justify her relationship with Chris Brown. Their collaboration on ‘Nobodies Business’ is completely tasteless and musically uninspiring. There is a difference between forgiving someone for a mistake and victimising a misogynist by flaunting your toxic relationship. If it really is nobodies business keep it that way rather than whining on through a whole album about how misunderstood your relationship is.

Does the fact that there is no theme, no consistency and most worrying of all every song is devoid of even a feeble attempt at a chorus hamper it’s chances of selling well. No. Has the fact that most critics have reviewed it in a negative tone stopped it going to straight to number 1? No. Should anybody bother buying? No.

Ben Howard @ O2 Academy Leeds 14th November 2012

A faint spotlight searches the stage, giving the occasional glimpse of a lone figure. For the first song Ben Howard remains on his own, dressed in black, delicately strumming an electric guitar.

His band, consisting of three multi-instrumentalists who switch instruments between tracks, join him on stage and help produce the soaring folk harmonies his songs are known for. Throughout the set Howard displays amazing musician qualities, using an acoustic guitar to get percussive rhythms by tapping, slapping and knocking the sides.

You get the sense he doesn’t give himself an easy time vocally and makes himself work for it, pushing his voice to desperate places but never missing a note. Considering his talking voice has such a soft tone that it slightly gets lost while he talks to the audience, when he sings it fills the room with power and emotion. His set follows the same pattern as his songs, a measured start, teasing the audience with what is coming and then building up to a glorious crescendo of voices and cymbals.
The Wolves and Keep Your Head Up were the highlights of the show, songs that cry out for the audience to sing, clap and holler along.

Howard has an extremely warm tone to his voice and his songs are so tender it would have been nice to hear them in a more intimate setting, as occasionally the chatter from the audience took away from their beauty.


Published in Yorkshire Evening Post 

Bad for Lazarus Interview

 

Brighton based psychedelic rockers Bad for Lazarus have been whipping audiences into a frenzy in the last few years with their energetic live shows. Ahead of their long awaited debut album they released the stand alone single ‘My Muddle’, the video of which was the second most popular on NME. I chatted to Rich Fownes to find out what the reaction has been like to the new tracks and the state of rock music.

You set up your own label Shit Chic, why do that rather than approach an already established label?

For every cliché reason you hear about day after day. We'll always be open to offers, but it's a fucking wasteland out there and I don't expect any favours or easy rides. No established label would have much of a reason to gamble on us, why pick us over One Direction...if I had money to invest I'd know who the safer bet is. We don't want to curb our ideas to try to appeal to the last, panic-stricken dinosaurs remaining.

As a band you have had a few incarnations, was it every frustrating and how did you keep the motivation going?

Not frustrating at all, we got better every time. So there were always a few cum faces when we took it to the next level.

How’s the tour been going? What’s the reaction been to the new tracks?

Amazing so far! (I have to say that though, right?) ..but genuinely amazing. The main difference I've felt on this tour is our singing has started getting really tidy. It's nice when that kind of thing starts feeling effortless, when you start you never know if you're gonna get there. Right now we're feeling the karmic payoff for all our public onstage no-no's.

Goyte @ O2 Apollo Manchester 15th November 2012

Nothing about Goyte’s gig tonight is ordinary, from the stage set up to the display of musical talent. The stage is a solar system of sample triggers strewn in all corners and Wouter "Wally" De Backer spends the show bouncing around hitting, tapping and plinking the various samples that make up his distinctive alternative rock. The superb drummer he is becomes apparent in the first song and even though he is hammering the skins his voice doesn’t falter from its impressive range.

Throughout the set a projector casts animation and images on the back wall, a favourite would be the cartoon organ taking over a family house in ‘State of the Art’, a funky and dark track using a vocoder to create some menacing vocals.

Midway through there were a few quieter tracks that show he can still create great songs that are stripped back. Like the fabulous ‘Bronte’, a touching song about a family putting their pet dog down, which combines ethereal harmonies with simple drums. Considering his excitement throughout the rest of the set he is able to perform the track with tenderness and keep the same fullness of his more layered songs.

When the time comes for the breakup song of 2012 to be performed, the audience notes Kimbra’s absence. Brilliantly, the audience is asked to join in to cover her second verse and chorus backing vocal part, it’s a warming moment. Not many performers would be able to get that level of audience participation without encouragement. In fact not many performers would be able to seamlessly navigate their way around the huge selection of sample triggers set up whilst still maintaining an engaging and humours dialogue with the audience.

The entire set is well choreographed around the huge selection of instruments and is extremely well executed. The transitions between songs are smooth and the band genuinely looks like they are having a great time. Goyte’s live show proves him to be a dynamic and enormously talented individual.



Published on Music-New.com

The Lovely Eggs Interview

Bands don’t get much more wonderfully bizarre than TheLovely Eggs, a married duo from Lancaster that have, for the past five years, been touring their surreal punk rock around the globe. Back with their third album ‘WILDLIFE’ we talk to Holly and delve into the minds of the band that write about sausage roll thumbs and washing line smiles.

For those who don’t yet know much about you, tells us a bit about the Lovely Eggs?

We are a two-piece band from Lancaster, we got together about 5 years ago mucking around really. I was living in Paris and a friend said ‘oh I bet you cant write a song’ because they didn’t believe we had been musicians as me and Dave have both been in bands before. There and then we wrote a song and we quite liked it and we have never stopped really.

You are very prolific; does song writing come naturally to you?

Yeah it does, we don’t even think about it we keep writing and then if we have got a particular song we want to release we just release it, we just keep writing away. It’s like stories to us about our life and things we have observed.

You have a unique way of looking at things.

We do wear a different pair of spectacles to most other people I think. The way we look at life been inspired by other authors and other writers and musicians, its about looking at the world differently from how you normally would. If you do that you end up with lyrics that are maybe different. I suppose we have a different approach to song writing, as we don’t really write about what other bands are writing about. We write about what happens in our life, we are quite like voyeurs, we see stuff and write about what had happened to us.

The Staves Interview

Folk trio The Staves enamoured legendary producers Ethan and Glyn Jones so much so that for the first time the father and son duo co-produced a record together. The result is the sisters debut album ‘Dead & Born & Grown’ an incredible blend of the girls angelic harmonies and poetic stories. Scene caught up with Emily to talk about their debut album and how they look after their voices.

Was there much in the way of preproduction on the album, as it doesn’t feel overworked at all, just very natural and charming?

We didn’t really do very much preproduction at all, we went and sat in Ethan’s garden for an afternoon with him and Glynn and we just played through some songs. We would play them a song and Ethan would say “I can hear a bit of that maybe” and we had tea and cake and went home and we were like “ok we will see you in a couple of months” and that was it. We really didn’t have it all planned out at all and we wanted quite a live feel to it. We didn’t want to over think it by being absolutely sure and making all the decisions about what would happen musically before we had actually got into the right space with the right people and kind of discovered what everybody was feeling should happen in the song.

Is there one song that best represents the album?

We sort of had that thought process when we were deciding on what the album should be called and so we settled on ‘Dead & Born & Grown’, which is the title of one of the songs. It’s one of the first songs that we wrote together, I think if you get that song then you really understand where we are going from, it’s very simple it’s just guitars and vocals, some simple harmonies in there. I would say that’s fairly representative of us but then there is also a song which comes at the end called ‘The Eagle’ and that is the most recent song that we have written and that’s also kind of the most representative in a way because that’s the point that we are at now so you have kind of got both ends of the album.

The video for ‘Tongue Behind my Teeth’ has a great cowgirl and revenge theme, who came up with the concept?

It was a friend of ours, we were talking about that being the next single and doing a video for it and our friend was like “I always hear horses hoofs, I always just see you girls on horses” and we all kind of laughed. Then we looked at each other and were like “do you think we could do a cowboy thing?” We went in and said to our video people that we had this idea ‘we want to go to the desert and make a cowboy video but we will be girls, we are not going to be all corset, sexy girls, we want to be like men seeking revenge.’ We were expecting to get shot down but they said ok so we went out to this place in Spain and we were like “I don’t really think anyone has thought this through as we can’t really ride horses, what are we going to do?” It was really good fun.

Hot Chip Interview

HotChip have spent the last 8 years refining their electro pop sound with their fifth studio album, In Our Heads, gaining critical acclaim as their best yet. The band have left record label giant EMI, who released 2006’s The Warning, an album that saw them nominated for the Mercury Prize and was Mixmag’s album of the year. We spoke to Felix Martin (drum machine/synthesizer) about the bands decision to change labels, measuring the bands success and whether he would have chosen instant success at a young age.

With the fifth studio album is it easier to create the songs together?

Our albums seem to come out pretty regularly, one every couple of years, we are onto our fifth album and we kind of pride ourselves on being quite prolific, we don’t really get musically constipated like some other bands who keep trying to make other records and it just doesn’t work out. We are lucky enough that we always have loads of ideas, I’m not saying they are always amazing ideas but we keep moving forward, we just keep trying to add momentum. We create a lot of music so there is no point in hanging around and not putting it out there when it’s ready.

Why the decision to release In Out Heads on Domino rather than EMI?

It was a very natural decision to say we’re friends with them, they really like our music, they wanted to sign us originally years ago and they get who we are and what we want to do. We don’t have to explain to them too much and they won’t try and force a round peg into a square hole, which is maybe what you get slightly with a major label. On the other hand we never really had a problem with EMI and there were some nice people there, they did do a good job. It did change a lot towards the end and it wasn’t really the same company as when we had first signed to them. 

How do you quantify success as a band?

We definitely think about it. From the point of view that we are, partly at least, a pop band, we are definitely aware of whether or not our albums are being listened to by a lot of people and whether our tours are selling out and whether we are still relevant in any way, shape of form. When you’ve made five albums, internally you start trying to justify it. Why do I think it’s necessary for me to keep doing this or would it be better to stop now but we just haven’t really come to that point in terms of creativity and the ideas that we have. You see people’s careers on the up and down, not everyone retires when they are at the peak of their success. A lot of people, the venues are getting smaller and the crowd is diminishing, that’s hard as well but it’s your career so you have to keep plugging away at it I guess.