Fear Of Men - Luna (Video)

Here’s another band that we haven’t featured for a long time on Breaking More Waves (last seen in Camden in 2012) so let’s make things right. Here are some facts:

1. The new single from Fear Of Men is called Luna. Lead singer Jess looks very serious in the video, but that’s probably because she’s holding a live snake. Dance routines probably weren’t an option.

2. To be fair Fear of Men don’t sound like a band who would do dance routines. Their music isn’t exactly full of four to the floor beats, instead it mixes a gentle pop etherealness that harks back to a day when indie music was somehow purer and only for the alternative kids; 90’s 4AD label etherealness combined with a chiming and charming guitar pop nuance would be our summary. 

3. Whilst she might not be much of a dancer, it appears Jess likes to live dangerously. When she’s not got a snake coiled around her neck she’s standing inches away from having an arrow shot through her heart, an idea taken from artist Marina Abramovic and her performance piece Rest Energy, which is about placing yourself in a vulnerable position. We hope that if Jess is to continue this line of performance in her videos that she has carried out a suitable risk assessment (otherwise the Health and Safety gang will be out) and has valid insurance cover in place. 

4. Maybe next time the band will be inspired by Abramovic’s 1976 piece Relation In Space, the concept of which was two naked bodies running and hitting each other frontally and increasing the speed for one hour. We’ll let you know if the band get in contact with us and ask for volunteers.

5. Fear of Men will be out supporting another old school indie band The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart in April and May, which makes a lot of sense musically, and have a few UK shows to warm up for that. An album, Loom, is due on the 21st April which you can pre-order now from here.

Fear Of Men - Luna (Video)

The Camden Crawl 2012 - Review (Saturday)

The cold wet streets of Camden are awash with drunken hordes tonight, but that’s just a typical weekend here. Thrown into that mix is a bunch of wristband wearing music seekers who are staggering their way between the pubs, clubs and venues of north London’s pleasure streets. Yes, you know it can only be the Camden Crawl.

The legendary multi-venue multi-gig festival may be the oldest swinger in town these days, imitated by many others that have arguably become more prestigious (Brighton’s Great Escape now lays claim to being the UK’s biggest and best of these sorts) but the Camden Crawl still packs some weight. Maybe it’s because of expert advance planning, maybe because of the double-dip recession or maybe that this year’s bill doesn’t hold so many must-sees as previous years, but the criticisms past of over long queues and crammed in likes sardines venues don’t transpire.

“This is really unhealthy to be playing this early,” announces frontman Denis Smith of Imperial Leisure for their 1pm set in The Wheelbarrow. You wouldn’t think it though. The 8-piece, brass wielding band may be crammed on to a tiny stage but they give it everything. It may be as subtle as a Katie Price underwear photo shoot, but their mix of sweaty shouty ska-rap-rock mix goes down a treat, especially with the two loons dressed as dancing monkeys po-going in the front row.

Up at the other end of town hard-touring Peace take to the stage and look every ounce the indie band. There are floppy fringes, fur collars, leather jackets, converse boots, skinny jeans and pale boyishness a-plenty and some half decent tunes that flourish with a crowd that is not yet too drunk to pay attention. They’re followed by Elle King who imports her songs about heartbreak, love and crap towns in Ohio with gravelly country vocals, banjos and trumpet sounds and who is gorgeously affecting.

Destroying the ideology of the Camden Crawl, a short bus ride rather than a long walk takes us to Koko where The Milk are packing as much as they can into their day with three shows. With this half hour set they’re like DJ’s with guitars – there’s no break for applause, just a continuous stream of music until the end. The Milk can play. They don’t need to soak their sound in reverb to hide their inadequacies like so many bedroom groups today. Instead there’s tight playing and great songs full of call and response vocals, slabs of 60’s r ‘n’ b influences and straining soul. Their best song Chip The Kids doesn’t even get an airing and yet they still sound on top of their game.

The Crawl is not all about indoor gig venues though. Camden Gardens hosts the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Outdoor Arena whilst down at the Roundhouse a tiny dome canopy has been erected on the outside terrace. It’s here amongst the palms, patio stonework and over large sunshade that the Melodica Melody and Me coax the sun out for a short while with their twee folk sound and We Were Evergreen charm with cute xylophone led French pop melodies. However by the time it’s over it’s become as cold as Christmas and the warmth of a grotty Camden boozer seems very welcome.

It’s at the Monarch where we get a dose of Lo(ish)-Fi  indie guitar work from Fear of Men. Vocalist Jess sings some lazy but lovely pop melodies like The Primitives or The Shop Assistants with slippers on and it’s all quite pleasantly appealing. The addition of a new female backing vocalist fleshes out the bands nostalgic sound somewhat and it’s only a lack of interaction with the audience that lessens the groups regency a little.

By now things are starting to get a little messy and Polarbear, Brum’s answer to Scroobius Pip, has to battle with the chattering drunk masses in the Earl of Camden. There may not be a raised stage but Polarbear creates one with a mix of spoken word, beats and on one track the use of the word bum-hole repeatedly. Giving out free records to the crowd and taking the p*ss out of MC’s who rap about girls “when technically they’re women,” he’s funny and endearing. His rhymes about teenage snogging in the park perfectly capture the excitement and confusion of a first kiss, his words strangely romantic and evocative.

There’s a gaggle of girls at the front for Swiss Lips (yes, it’s slang for vagina) whose short, sweet , synthy set shows a band with much promise - file under ones to watch. The band might be from Manchester but their sound doesn’t take any reference from their home cities past. Instead there are hints of Fenech Soler, The Killers, MGMT, The Bravery and Passion Pit in their catchy sound. “We’ve never seen so much movement in a London crowd,” they announce. They’re lucky to get that, some people here can hardly stand up let alone move.

Willy Moon finishes us off for the evening and the hope is he’ll answer some of the questions we’ve been asking about him, namely is he a one-trick pony? Is it all clever studio trickery? Is he actually some sort of record industry in joke?

With his sharp white suit and slicked back hair, Moon and his band look like they’ve stepped straight out of a magazine photo shoot. His guitarist is a seductively vampiric looking lady and behind them is a legs-apart-hit-‘em-hard drummer in space age bra-top and black and white striped trousers. Hidden away in the corner is a DJ who seems to have forgotten to dress for the occasion and maybe as punishment his sounds seem somewhat turned down in the mix. Moon’s studio releases to date have found a niche that mixes 50’s rock-n-roll with daft hip hop beats. Live his set is rawer, rougher and leaves us as perplexed as we were at the beginning of his set. My Girl sounds like a potential hit in the making whilst Yeah Yeah predictably gets the biggest audience response. He walks into the crowd, does some of THAT crazy dancing. It’s momentarily ridiculous and brilliant and by the end we’re still none the wiser if his blend of retro-modern cartoon pop is genius or rubbish. It’s probably a bit of both.

Listen to some of the bands mentioned in this review below.

Elle King - Good To Be A Man

Fear Of Men - Green Sea



Swiss Lips - Grow

Fear Of Men - Ritual Confession

Listening to new music is like a personal relationship; there are fundamentally two ways of doing things. The first is the type of listener / lover who decides what they like at an early stage and then settles into a comfortable safe but possibly stale involvement. The sex is always the same, the conversations are always the same, it’s a humdrum routine of existence and the music follows a line of unimaginative duplication. This sort of person likes Viva Brother because they remind them of their younger years listening to Oasis and Shed Seven records. Or they will listen to Hurts because it awakens memories of the 80’s – the decade that they will proclaim all the best music was made. This sort of person probably only ever has sex in the missionary position.

Then there are those who always want to be excited by the new and different – never satisfied until their pulses are set racing by something challenging. Their kama sutra became well thumbed and worn out years ago and they're still looking for more. There’s a tendency for this type of person to set off on an exploration of new music discovery and to delve so deep that they end up in a mine so narrow and so underground that they find themselves isolated from the mainstream. It’s probably why some new music blogs start off covering reasonably well known bands but a year or two down the line are posting fuzzy, lo-fi groups that couldn’t put a melody together even if they were offered gold bullion.

Brighton based four piece Fear of Men have been getting a number of new music blogs who fall into the second category very excited. In many ways their music ticks the required boxes – their sound is relatively lo-fi, the sweet vocals are just that tiny bit flat but equally endearing and the sound is very old school / C86 indie. They have underground credibility. There is no chance of this band having a top ten hit single. Yet whilst Fear of Men may be exciting the deep miners, they just as easily fall into the ‘I only like having sex in the missionary position’ camp. This is because their songs are rooted in the traditional values of catchy hooks and jangly guitars – following a lineage that could include the likes of Velocity Girl, Talulah Gosh, The Shop Assistants and The Primitives. There’s nothing particularly original about what they do, but Fear Of Men have the savvy to write a pleasing pop melody.

Guess what? Sometimes it’s ok to have sex in the missionary position, as long as it’s giving pleasure. Today Fear of Men bring that satisfaction. Ritual Confession is out on 7″ through Italian Beach Babes on 22 August.

Fear of Men- Ritual Confession

The Great Escape 2011 - Preview (Saturday)

On the third day of The Great Escape as an observer you are far less likely to see rough looking and exhausted punters compared with the typical outdoor / camping festival. As a punter unless you’ve had the misfortune to sleep on Brighton beach (a romantic idea in theory – a nightmare in practice) you’ll have experienced a decent amount of sleep - maybe even a lay in - followed by a bath /shower or proper wash and breakfast in comfort. This all sets you up neatly for the final day, so there really is no excuse for not catching some bands early and three of our recommendations for Saturday will enable you to do just that, probably before you’ve even had lunch.

These are our final five acts that we’re recommending for Great Escape 2011. We won’t be at all of these shows, but certainly hope to be at some of them. Check back at Breaking More Waves early the week after the festival to see our Great Escape 2011 review – it won’t be just about the music, but a punters snapshot of everything else that makes the event great or not.

Fear Of Men – Shipwrights Yard 12.15 and Green Door Store 19.10

It wouldn’t be right to suggest fifteen bands playing the Great Escape and not name at least one home town act. Our choice is Brighton’s latest fuzzy, jangly indie sensations Fear Of Men. Fear Of Men are very new, very lo-fi and have just a handful of tracks on line one of which Phantom Limb streams below and can be downloaded from Bandcamp (here). Despite their cassette tape aesthetic Fear Of Men have a pop sensibility which reminds us a little of listening to an early demo by The Primitives or The Shop Assistants. If the weathers good then the open space of Shipwrights Yard may be a good place to start your day – but if not there’s always the Green Door Store later.

Fear of Men - Phantom Limb

Lanterns On The Lake – Queens Hotel 15.15 and Komedia (Upstairs) 20.15

If you fancy an afternoon of varied but singularly great music, you could do no better than getting yourself along to the Queens Hotel for a ‘North East Invasion’ run by Generator. The afternoon features four bands all of whom have featured on Breaking More Waves – Polarsets, Let’s Buy Happiness , Mammal Club and the blissful Lanterns On The Lake who we introduced way back in January 2010, describing them as having a ‘flat-out loveliness’ and a sound of ‘subtle fragility.’ Since then the band have inked a deal with Bella Union records and we have a feeling that when an LP arrives it will be endearingly wonderful

Lungs Quicken by Lanterns on the Lake

Daughter – The Fishbowl 14.30 and Life 20.45 (Also at Latest Music Bar 21.00 Friday 13th)

Another act who will be performing twice on Saturday is Daughter aka Elena Tonra. Elena has already picked up significant coverage from many of our favourite UK music blog peers including The Blue Walrus, Faded Glamour, Flying With Anna and Music Fan’s Mic. “‘I want you so much, but I hate your guts,” sings Elena beautifully over haunting guitar work on her song Landfill which streams below. It’s moving and stirring stuff and we suspect a Daughter live show could be exactly the same.

Daughter - Landfill (free download)

The Vaccines – Corn Exchange 23.30

Hardly the most adventurous choice of recommendation, we’ll agree, but here’s why The Vaccines could be worth a go on Saturday night. Because after the wave of hype that The Vaccines rode in on when they first appeared, they did the right thing and got down to letting the music doing the talking. They played gigs and released an album, a record that will never appeal to indie snobs but, on appraisal, is packed full of decent songs. No, of course these songs are hardly ground breaking, but then how many acts in this day and age can be considered truly original? Nearly everything references something else to a greater or lesser extent. And now The Vaccines find themselves headlining a big venue - the 1200 capacity Corn Exchange. Can they pull it off? Have they got the charisma and personality to work these bigger venues? The Great Escape will be a test for The Vaccines, to see if they can take it to the next level. For this reason we think they may be worth a shot.

The Vaccines - Blow It Up

D/R/U/G/S – Audio 20.45 and Concorde 2 23.40

Our final choice also plays a late night show that goes head to head with The Vaccines, but musically it’s a polar opposite. D/R/U/G/S first came to many people’s attention, including ours, at last years In The City in Manchester. Since then we’ve featured them a number of times including (again, like The Vaccines) naming them as one of our Ones to Watch for 2011. We say ‘them’ as they used to be a duo but we understand that D/R/U/G/S is now just a solo outfit, or certainly recent live shows have just consisted of one member. Taking house, ambient dance and minimalism as reference points D/R/U/G/S create hypnotic electronica that grows to produce layers of character that’s brutishly intelligent.

D/R/U/G/S - Velodrome II