Truck '07 (well sorta)

Global warming is dead-set on ruining the summer. First, it made Genesis reform for Live Earth leaving a nation's ears bleeding with the sound of Phil Collins trying to be cool. Then the floods deprived Wales of it's first proper music festival (leaving thousands of Welsh Fightstar fans distraught). Now even the pluckiest of festivals, Oxford's Truck Nine, has felt the mercy of climate change after being canceled this week due to unprecedented flooding that's left much of the site several meters underwater.

But will that stop some posh boys from Highgate? Will it fuck. In fact, for legendary Nambucca promoter and everyone's best mate Joel Crisp, the answer is blindingly obvious: if he can't go to the festival than let the festival come to him. Which is why we found ourselves in Joel's conservatory, which is adorned with school photos and a rather charming homemade model sailing boat, watching some of London's best indie bands and, I shit you not, Lethal Bizzle.

First on are WinterKids who manage to hold some stage presence which is pretty impressive when the 'stage' is the corner of a room not much bigger than a disabled toilet. They make that jangly guitar laden, ever-so dreamy pop music that didn't take off a few years ago and probably won't now. Still, they've got that 'lovelorn teenagers' thing pretty much down and you could picture them doing well in a sunny field in Oxford.

Stand-ups always moan that performing to a few friends is harder than to a sold-out arena. Lethal Bizzle was probably thinking the same thing when he performed Pow! (Forward), a song that has induced nightclub destroying riots, in front of thirty public school kids with gun fingers in the air. But if anyone knows how to get a crowd moving, it's Bizzle. With just a few of his big hits, some monster samples including House of Pain's Jump Around and the now rarely heard Rakes remix he sets the conservatory on fire. Demands of an encore, followed by a quick photoshoot make Bizzle late for his next engagement, but he sticks around to lap up the love. Without a doubt, the most surreal gig in hip-hop history.
Because we had to go on a booze run (8 cans of Heniken, 8 cans of Kronenberg, a crate of Stella, 2 packs of Malbro Lights and one tin of Super Strongbow for Jamie. When we carried two boxes full of booze through the house Joel's mum didn't look too impressed.) we missed Lo-Fi Culture Scene but we can assume that they were pretty amazing anyway. Just look at this picture, they're like tiny rock gods.



Kate Nash is to Lily Allen as The Turncoat is to Jamie T. A year after Wimbledon's favourite stormed the charts the Turncoat may need to find a new bandwagon, which is unfortunate because his tales of lads, love and larger are sort of sweetly endearing and ring with an honest authenticity that Jamie lacks. And his reworking of Walking in Memphis to a tale of a drunken night, 'dancing in chelsea' is sublime. Lyrics like 'I've got a pocket full of uppers man but I'm as down as a boy can be' sound much better in Turncoat's Souf Londawn drawl than in print, but you get the idea. Lairy but impassioned, listening to the Turncoat is like listening to your mates tell you what they did last night if they actually did anything interesting.


Which just leaves Bombay Bicycle Club. With Bass and Drums out the country, Jack and Jamie run through a last-minute acoustic set. Stripped down versions of songs less than a year old would be a daunting task for lesser bands but Bombay breeze through. Jamie still plays the guitar like it was a particularly hard gameboy game, and Jack still does that voice thing that normal people can only do sitting on the back of a vibrating bus. But basically if there was anyway to make this gig feel more intimate than Bombay somehow manage it.



And that's that. The NME journo who's been wandering around in a dressing gown puts his clothes back on, the microphone is unducktaped from the camera tripod which has been used as a make-shift mic stand and everyone proceeds to get royally smashed in the garden. Truck: it wasn't. But Lorry Fest 2007 (as it has now been dubbed) was the most surreal, hilarious and sublime afternoon of music the UK festival circuit is ever likely to see.

*Thanks to Adam for all the photographs
**Ridiculously large thanks to Joel for holding this thing, seriously the place coulda got trashed, it was a big risk that really paid off. Nice one.

Acceptable in the 80s: Magazine

If punk was the sound of disillusionment, rebellion and anarchy then what came next should have been amazing; a blank slate for a new generation to make music that would destroy everything that went before and show the establishment how redundant it was. Instead we got Dire Straits and Neil Diamond. against the backdrop of Thatcherism and Race Riots. Well, sort of. While the mainstream was collapsing under the weight of it's own dirge, the 80's also provided the groundwork for basically every stop-start indie pop-punk band the gets splashed across the cover of artrocker. In fact fuck that, the 80's invented artrock. And at the front runners of this meeting of intelligence and pop were Magazine.

Fronted by Howard Devoto, who'd already turned punk on it's head once as the lead singer of the Buzzcocks, Magazine realised that there was nothing wrong with slicing some spikey guitar with a melodic synth line and lyrics that actually meant something. In fact there was something kind of genius about it. So you get the swooning backing vocals of Laura Teresa on You never knew me, turning a hate-filled tale of a loveless relationship into stylish, refined, bitter-sweet ear candy. Or the concise but precise lyrics that could turn society into self-conscious wreck on tracks like Philadelphia, where Devoto groans 'I have liberty of movement, I have liberty of movement, but I'm so lazy'.

Yet despite their obviously skill at song-crafting and alternative leaning, Magazine were far from musically pretentious. If a song needs a slap bass line, as prominent on Thank You, then the song gets a slap bass line, doesn't matter if that's uncool because it's sounds fucking awesome. It's the same with gospel style question and answer choruses, or male/female double tracked vocals. Magazine knew the components of great pop music and managed to export them into a punk sensibility, all without losing an ounce of credibility.

And their influence is everywhere, not only seared into the arses of every floppy-fringed teenage who's passed through the barfly, but also prominent with some of the biggest indie bands in the world. Morissey regular performs covers of their songs while Radiohead not only covered Magazine's first single Shot by both sides but also managed to nick the same song's main riff to create Just. Sneaky.

Magazine were a band that could bend time. They were championing post-punk before punk even existed, gave the new wave blueprint to pop groups like XTC and Talking hands while showing Television and even new bands like These New Puritans how to strip punk down and start again. They showed the next three decades how to be indie, but unlike so many of the other artists touted as a great influence on the new wave of guitar bands, if you listen to magazine today, they still sound ahead of their game.

You can buy all four magazine albums, although mostly the correct use of soap, at Rough Trade aswell as any half decent second hand record shop. Here are a couple to get started wtih:

Magazine - Philidelphia

Magazine - Shot by both sides

Notices to the scene

1) Can you please stop wearing those Cajun Dance Party T-shirts. This will act as a protest to Cajun to put some better fucking artwork on their T-shirts. If you insist on wearing them can you please use some tip-ex to change it to "Asian Dance Party" which is obviously far more hilarious.


2) All-ages concerts are called "all ages" instead of "underage" so that they can get away with serving booze to minors. They are not called all ages so that old men can watch average indie bands with a bunch of 12-year-olds jumping up and down in front of them. Just to be absolutely clear on this, if you are over 21 and going to an all-ages gig, you are definitely a paedophile.

3) Jack Penate is not the messiah, he's just a very naughty boy.

4) You do realise that LDN is a victim is taking the piss out of you, don't you?

5) What?!? You don't even read the NME and you think the Arctic Monkeys are overrated!!!?! OMGZZ!! You're like so subversive and fucking the mainstream man. It's like Anarchy in your brain. Errrrrrrr, no. Get some proper opinions.

That is all for now. Feel free to add your own. Ta.

Things that we love #4: Laura Marling

It's extremely difficult, almost impossible even, for a song to be awarded a 5 star rating on my ipod. The criteria is very tight, the song can't just be good but has to be able to warrant hundreds of repeat listens, without ever being rinsed. And a song can be entered even if the rest of the artist's work is pretty shit (Get over it by OkGo) but some of my favourite artists don't make the grade because they don't have one particular song that is good enough (Be Your Own Pet, The Knife, Bloc Party, actually there's hundreds). The are loads of rules, it's like High Fidelity with bells on.

Yet despite the level of excellence required, Laura Marling, the 16-year-old multi-instrumentalist from Reading, has managed to get two songs into the exclusive 5 star club. Induldging in the alt.folk genre that has allowed many of her contemporaries to escape the seal of death "singer/songwriter" tag, Marling creates simple pop songs crafted to perfection. But while many of the new breed of indie solo artists flirt with fantasy and poetic narratives, Marling is more of an urban princess, flittering between tales of infatuation, escapism and trepidation set against the very recognisable background of Libertines records, candle lit fags and dodgy rock bands.

Marling wears her influences on her sleeve, citing in both her lyrics and her interviews her love for the godfather of the acoustic guitar Ryan Adams. There are also obvious parallels with Regina Spektor, both singers share that woefully endearing combination of apparent innocence and astute wisdom that makes falling in love with them all too easy. But what Marling has over these artists is her youth, allowing her to present the worn toils love and lust from a previously unaired perspective.


Neither of the songs have been made avaliable yet which is why I'm putting they're up. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go to Rough Trade and get the EP, because you should.
Laura Marling - Candelight.mp3

Laura Marling - The man sings about romance mp3

Things we love #4: The Walkmen's Bows and Arrows

In a race to the broadsheets, scenes will always leave bands behind. Look at “New Rave” a scene so terribly manufactured and volatile that it only really exists in the pages of NME and on the lips of 12-year-old girls. While Klaxons and New Young Pony Club are reaping the rewards of the nonsense term by getting splashed across The Guardian and Q magazine like Snow Patrol were going out of fashion, some of the most original and unusual bands that have been lumped in with scene have been left behind.

Shitdisco make spiky electro that violently asserts dance music to be something that can be intelligent and complex. Foals surpass what other bands would consider to be the limits of pop music, using hammering bass, thrashing drums, shrieking choirs and any combination of electronic blips to create a soundscape of rhythm that demonstrates both stunning musical ability and colossal innovation. But these bands are likely to be forgotten, as we already have groups to represent their scene, and in twenty years time when you’re watching I ♥ 2006 you can be sure that they’ll be talking about Klaxons, not Foals, as the purveyors of the made-up genre.

Balloons - Foals Right Click and Save Target As to Download



If you need proof, just look back a couple of years to that whole “New Cross” thing. Basically Angular Records realised that a whole horde of exciting new music was coming from the same bit of South London and so brought out a compilation. They also told the NME bandwagon jumping and scene inventing department, which quickly wrote a feature with the headline “Forget New York, This is New Cross”.

4 years later and what are we left with? Bloc Party, earmarked as the leaders of the pack, are on to a second album and are going to be playing some arena shows in a couple of months. Art Brut have become indie heroes in the UK and proper rock starts in the rest of Europe. Both bands have managed to maintain the charm that made us love them in the first place, but what about the rest of New Cross? The stunning delicate punk of The Violets and the slightly rubbish political political poetry of The Vichy Government have sort of fizzled out, because the scene ran away without them.

Mirror Mirror - The Violets Right Click and Save Target As to Download

But the loss of these bands, although unfortunate, is not going to erode the indie landscape to greatly. Sometimes though, people get so caught-up in the scene that they overlook bands that will change your life. In 2001, with Britpop a stale memory and the charts infested with talentless pop bands, indie kids needed something to bring life into music. Enter the New York garage rock scene, the return of super slick post-punk guitar bands and all the skinny jeans and battered converse that come with it This scene consisted of hundreds of bands, but, once again, only The Strokes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs will make it into the history books. There seems to be an unwritten law of guitar bands that states any musical movement is only allowed to have two bands in it. Now you could argue that, in this case, it's fair enough, seen as both the strokes and the yeahs are two of the finest bands you're ever likely to hear. But neither of their debuts hold a torch the New York's scene great lost LP, Bows & Arrows by The Walkmen.

If you're a fairly decent indie kid you've probably heard the Walkmen. Their anthem, The Rat, just happens to be the greatest song in the world ever circa 2004. It's bassically the sound of injustice, paranoia and raw anger. "You've got a nerve to be asking a favour" it growls over tumbling drums and furious guitar. I can't think of a song that is anywhere as near as honest and astute in describing what it feels like to be truely fucked off. But The Rat only scratches the surface of what the walkmen are capable of.

Their second album, Bows & Arrows draws on the grouchy cool of the Velvet Underground and the sparse, atmospheric but pungent arrangements of Echo and the Bunnymen. Tracks like No Christmas While I'm Talking are not songs in the traditional sense but just stunning sentiments, music layed out for you to explore. And when they Walkmen do wonder into more familiar territory, like on the Strokesque Little House of Savages, they do it with all the balls of proper guitar bands but none of the arrogance. They're not scared of real instruments either, piano and strings scattered across the record not just for the sake of it (The Arcade Fire) but because the music needs it, to combat the grit in his voice.

And what a voice. Hamilton Leithauser is one of the greatest frontment of all time, not because he wears great clothes (he doesn't, it's pretty much all plain GAP shirts) or because he's particularly Rock'n'Roll (although he did get arrested last night just before their SXSW show) but because he's a truely amazing singer. His vocals are emotive, stress carefully placed on only the most important consonants, some words slured together, some chanted like a mantra. He has absolute control of every song and can convey semantics through melody like no one else.

The Walkmen's more recent album has been recieved pretty poorly by the music press and to be honest, it's just not that good. But Bows & Arrows is a record you can fall in love with. It doesn't tire, you just sort of grow more and more fond of it. Bassically if you're gonna buy a record this weekend, buy this one, it will greatly improve you quality of life. Fact.

The Rat - The Walkmen Right Click and Save Target As to Download

New Year's Eve - The Walkmen Right Click and Save Target As to Download

Things that we love #3: Good Shoes

In this confusing time of pop bands pretending to be rock‘n’roll (Dirty Pretty Things, Kaiser Chiefs), indie bands pretending to make dance music (Klaxons, Bloc Party) and just a scarily large amount of mainstream shit (The Kooks), the question of what is ‘indie’ has become a little blurred. I blame Jo Whiley, but then, I always do.

Thank god then, for Good Shoes. The archetypal indie band. And what makes them so very perfectly alternative? Spiky angular riffs with melodic pop sensibilities? Check. Lyrics about paranoia, guilt, insecurity and pretty much everything that makes you feel like rolling the sleves of your hoodie to the tips of your fingers and being emo for the day? Check. Look like a bunch of underpaid geography teachers? Check. Oh, and they’re signed to independent label, which I guess is important depending on how you feel about the music industry Murdochs.

But Good Shoes aren’t just indie by numbers; they’re not just churning out troughs of mediocre shite in the hope that some of it might stick (The Fratellis). They’re a genuinely brilliant band that write songs that are danceable yet incisive, accessible yet complex. Charming artrockers are a rare breed in a scene dominated by bolshy carling drinkers and too much hair. In fact, I can’t understand why I haven’t seen Good Shoes live since February last year. That’s gonna change though because the band are doing an instore at Covent Garden Rough Trade on the 11th of March. You’d do well to come along.

Link to free Mp3. Right Click and the Save Target As to Download. Then Buy the record, don't steal.

Photos on my Wall - Good Shoes

Things that we love #2: Albums with no gaps

I don’t spend £15 on what is essentially 12 inches of plastic to listen to all the singles I already have with some shitty songs in between (yes The Holloways, I am talking to you). I want to hear a body of work that is presented with artistic intention. Track order, cover images, sleeve notes: these things are all important. The cherry on the proverbial cake, though, are albums where each track is beautifully segued, flowing, songs perfectly juxtaposed with one another. Taking away those couple of seconds of silence between songs can turn an album from a northern line tube to an all night road trip.

Here are some of the best examples:


Debuts are often just lazy demo collections and it often takes a band a follow-up release before they realise what makes an album. But CSS know all about turning a record into art. The first track on their self-titled first attempt is basically just them screaming “CSS Suxx” over and over again. And real highlights are spread across the record so that you aren’t left with all the big tunes at the beginning and some dirgey stuff at the end. And of course there are pumping kick-drums, fuzzed-up guitars and lyrics that should be illegal. But what makes this album so good is that those things go right across the record, each track comes pounding over the previous one so that CSS don’t even leave you time to breath. Plus Lovefoxx is the greatest woman ever made.

Link to free Mp3. Right Click and the Save Target As to Download. Then Buy the record, don't steal.
Music is my hot hot sex - Css



Almost certainly my favourite album of last year, Mystery Jets’ Making Dens is a concept album with bells on. Like CSS they make excellent use of an introduction, opting for an overture of violins and random snippets from across the album crescendoing for opening track You Can’t Fool Me Dennis to come crashing in, all over the noise symphony that has gone before. With a band as schizophrenic as the Mystery Jets, transcending many of the dictates of style and genre that hold other bands back, it’s hard to imagine how they could make an album which feels like one piece of work. Yet Making Dens does exactly that. It lets tracks, that could sound texturally sparse on their own, become part of a rich and insightful album where themes and sounds are carried through from beginning to end. It’s an indie concerto that, like only a handful of other albums released this decade (Silent Alarm, Kid A, We Have Sound: off the top of my head), can stay on your record player for weeks without getting dull.
Link to free Mp3. Right Click and the Save Target As to Download. Then Buy the record, don't steal.
You can't fool me Dennis - Mystery Jets


Ok. This one is sort of cheating because it’s a live album. But if you’re one of those who’ve dismissed Nirvana because they have become a Camden market cliché then I beg you to give From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah a go. It is fucking electrifying and shows what an awesome power the band could be on top form. Shame about that whole suicide thing I suppose...

Things that we love #1: Bastardised French electro pop

Oh for god’s sake Fergie (Black Eyed Peas token whore), nobody’s buying it. Crappy, less than subtle, innuendos about your humps and your London Bridge are not sexy. Repulsive, cheap, pathetic, artistically void, embarrassing: perhaps. But not sexy.

17-year-old French indie and electro darling Uffie telling “icky sticky bitches and fetish friendly freaks” they can’t touch her, as she is, after all, a “cold ass bitch who ain’t ready to suck.” That’s sexy.

Link to free Mp3. Right Click and the Save Target As to Download. Then Buy the record, don't steal.

Hot Chick - Uffie

Underage and uber cool, The Teenagers first record role-plays between two cousins-in-law after they’ve had dirty sex. The band also get girls to send pics to their myspace with “I love the teenagers” written across their tits. That’s sexy.

Link to free Mp3. Right Click and the Save Target As to Download. Then Buy the record, don't steal.

Homecoming - The Teenagers

Dancefloor kings Justice, when not contributing to the dancefloor hit of the decade “We are your friends,” are busy making grimey industrial floorfillers that thousands of scenesters can grind to at the discotheque. Pulsating beats that makes indie girls wanna dance? Um, that’s sexy.

Link to free Mp3. Right Click and the Save Target As to Download. Then Buy the record, don't steal.
Phantom - Justice
So Fergie can you please put your tired Labia away and let the French do what they’re best at. Je t’aime.

Welcome to Indie Eden

Betamax, you are an obselete format. Long live the blog. Long live Indie Eden.

We are a brand new music blog with a taste for the very best in what's pop and what's not. But we hate blogs that begin with mission statements. Like when Colin Murray started that new radio 1 show and he went on so much about all the good music he was going to be playing that he forgot to actually play any. Rather, over the next week or so, we'll be posting up some of things that we love most in the world. So you'll get to know us a bit better. It'll be like a first date but without any of the uncomfortable silences. Hope you stick with us, there are good days ahead.