Everett True vs Go-Mag

I want to bring your attention to this fine Spanish music magazine, Go-Mag.

They asked me to compile a CD for their 100th issue, while muttering something about how I'm the "UK music press equivalent of Tony Wilson", which is both a slightly double-edged compliment and an indication that they've got my influence on music way out of all proportion, but I still consider it a signal honour to be asked. Sadly, I can't read Spanish but my wife can (it's her degree) and so I was able to ascertain roughly what they were talking about. And the magazine really looks great. Like Les Inrockuptibles (France) and Bant (Turkey) and any number of German magazines I've encountered over the years, it kind of makes me sad that there's no real equivalent in the UK (or Australia, for that matter) but glad these highly skilled titles survive and thrive.

(Doubtless, someone's going to write in and tell me how Les Inrockuptibles sucks these days, but whatever.)

It's actually the first time I've compiled a CD for commercial purposes. And I totally enjoyed it. If anyone else would like to ask me, particularly if they work at Trikont or Dust-to-Digital, by all means please do...

In the meantime, I thought I'd supply you with the CD notes that were printed in Go-Mag. I'm kind of proud of this compilation. I think it kicks ass.

Straight From The Heart
The CD is a 2009 collection compiled by Plan B Magazine Publisher-at-large Everett True. All quotes are adapted from articles written by Everett during the past year – most from his time in Brisbane, Australia.

1. Michachu – Sweetheart (0.53)
“This music is messy and random, but it’s not horribly over-polished or sexed-up like much of the synth-pop that’s being pushed on us…and it’s spiky. Very, very spiky. I know as much as you, really. Not that much. Micachu and the Shapes are reclaiming DIY pop for artists with imagination. They are digital when they should be analogue. They are analogue when they should be digital. They sound mischievous, but not to their detriment. Their songs are blissfully, mercifully short – they could barely be anything else, so crammed are they with ideas, mashed-up pop and aural alchemy.” (The Guardian, 4/2/09)

2. Ray Rumours – Meaningless Words (2.30)
“It’s rare that I listen to music. Our three-year-old, Isaac doesn’t enjoy it. When we’re in the car (one of the rare occasions when we can listen to music, un-intimidated), we need to turn the music down so we can hear his chatter. If we’re smart, and announce that a new CD is ‘his new CD’ it becomes easier. Ray Rumours enhances our driving experience: it’s sweet, refined and confined by certain parameters (a love for Sixties pop, texture that dwells on certain instruments). It feels continental (Ray Rumours sing in languages aside from English). It features a female singer, and soothes while retaining a certain melancholy.” (Music That I Like, 16/3/09)

3. Frida Hyvönen – London! (4.03)
“I know this album too well. It long ago surpassed everything – musically – in this house. Isaac demands it, but we (the parents) gracefully allow. And, just occasionally, he’ll allow us to play track 4, my favourite, ‘London!’ – a bittersweet love poem to a city the equal of Beat Happening’s ‘Black Candy’, a love poem by a Swedish singer that makes me more nostalgic for the rainy grey of King’s Cross, the shattered dreams of Rotherhithe, than anything else I’ve encountered in Australia. Maybe it takes an outsider to make us see what we have, I don’t know, but the way she sings, ‘London! The way you want to get rid of me/Makes me weak at the knees’ makes me feel weak at the knees…” (Plan B Magazine, December 2008)

4. The Young Liberals meet The Legend! – Daniel (4.40)
“The Tabu is dank. Small and dank, and over in the corner is a sign saying The Hellfire Club, where men fatter and older than me congregate in small circles, wearing rubber. A few rocker types litter the tables – here to catch ace pick-up garage band The Young Liberals featuring local rock hero Ben Salter (Gin Club), who race through a turbulent set of deconstructionist rock songs such as the Art Brut-esque brace ‘We’re in a Band’ and ‘My Neighbour’s Band’. A disconcertingly sober Englishman (myself) clambers onstage to provide caustic spoken word, but mercifully the florid interruption is brief.” (The Guardian, 15/10/08)

5. Vivian Girls – Where Do You Run To (3.16)
“Vivian Girls lift their influences from the right direction – The Wipers, Nirvana, The Shangri-La’s – but sound nothing like…the first two. Indeed, Vivian Girls are so naïve about their musical heritage – Fizzbombs, Shop Assistants, Talulah Gosh, especially Girls At Our Best! – they describe their sound as ‘shoegaze’. Um, the Brit shoegazers of the early Nineties never jarred. Vocals overlap with vocals. Drum beat overlap with drum beats. The sound is super-saturated, not to the extremes of Times New Viking, but pretty bright nonetheless. This is heartland Everett True music, in case anyone still cares.” (The Stranger, 18/11/08)

6. The Drones – The Minotaur (3.26)
“The trouble with Australian rock – and criticism – is that it isn’t Australian (in the main), but a warmed-up UK/US copy. The Drones are the Australian band that bucks the trend: writhing, railing, wreathing, virile, vitriolic, venomous and all those other great words that end with ‘ous’: drawing wantonly on a tradition that takes in Charlie Parker, The Saints and Kim Salmon. One song is like ‘The Mercy Seat’ given a new half-life – but that’s where the Bad Seeds comparisons begin and end. The band I’m most reminded of is The Triffids: and, man, that’s fighting talk.” (Drowned In Sound, 12/1/09)

7. Speech Debelle – The Key (3.01)
“On the web, she looks Missy Elliot cool, got a wrist tattoo, wears glasses on stage. She works in Carnaby Street, London. Daughter of a middle-class Jamaican family, she wrote poems in primary school, was told to leave home at 19, wrote her debut album Speech Therapy in a hostel. Someone cool from a label I respect (Big Dada) sent me a download link to the – we’ll use the word ‘rapper’ here, but she reminds me way more of antifolk or punk poet Patrik Fitzgerald – rapper’s new single, ‘The Key’. I listened. I liked it – a lot. Same way I once liked De La Soul – a lot.” (Plan B Magazine, April 2009)

8. Mitten – Success In The Grocery Business (1.50)
“Mitten rocks AND rolls. Thanks for that. Incidentally, I think you should just insult her in print. Flat out insults are the new chicken soup.” (email to kicking k, Plan B Magazine, 19/2/09)

9. Softboiled Eggies – Permanence (3.24)
“It’s been pointed out by a Plan B writer that (LA duo) Softboiled Eggies are in love with the rainy Sunday afternoons of the UK in the early Eighties – we’re specifically talking New Age Steppers, The Leopards, the gentler side of Au Pairs, and The Raincoats. And that any American influences that result, happen only because of shared influence (the glorious Phil Spector via Trixie’s Big Red Motorbike thrills of ‘Glassy Eyes’ remind me of the first Beat Happening song I ever heard, but that’s another story). Am I wrong to love Softboiled Eggies when they remind me so indelibly of my past? Jesus. I should care.” (The Guardian, 22/10/08)

10. The Gin Club – 10 Paces Away (4.20)
“To my left lies a CD by local wastrels and heroes The Gin Club. Its cover reminds me of an early Tindersticks album, it’s a double and I mention it now because I saw them play a few days ago in front of a crowd of mullets and bare legs, pool tables, leather jackets and ‘winter’ scarves. I didn’t want to mention it because every person we know in Brisbane has a connection – be it label, musician, partner, fan, band-member – but this is music made for waltzing and crying crazy whiskey tears to, and hoping and laughing and lamenting…” (Village Voice, 17/7/08)

11. Violent Soho – Muscle Junkie (3.14)
[No past words, nothing. This is just a track I appreciate from a compilation I appreciate – Brisbane Sounds 2008 – that helped serve as my introduction to Brisbane, back when I still had hope for this town. Its fire and venom and use of dynamics and gratuitous swearing recall the days when I would drink and rage and spatter around claiming to like ‘hard rock’ (grunge, some called it), and I would imagine Violent Soho build considerable fury live, but shamefully I never caught them before they moved to the East Coast of America. Ah well.]

12. The Deadnotes – Orange Trumpet (0.55)
“I will not for one second be drawn on the fact The Deadnotes – trained in the School Of Error, drummer Leighton Craig realising months ago that where drummers go wrong is when they cross their arms – aren’t precisely The Music I Like: trumpet wailing mournfully over Sixties garage rock riffs and fed through hideous analogue synths, ‘Orange Trumpet’ being the finest naïve melody of its kind since that Maher Shalal Hash Baz single. Trumpet howls as trumpet must. Drums rattle and clatter because that’s what drums are built to do. There could be a three-year-old playing and it wouldn’t sound any finer.” (Plan B Magazine, May 2009)

13. Slow Down Tallahassee – The Beautiful Light (3.13)
“For a brief, forgotten moment back in 1978, there was this wonderful sound called power-pop, quickly overwhelmed by punk’s vociferousness – slightly edgy bands schooled in the post-Beatles chug of Nick Lowe and (early) Cheap Trick…or, if you want it more obvious, what followed later: Dolly Mixture, The Tourists, The Photos. I miss power-pop, always have done, but Slow Down Tallahassee ease the pain. Every chord is minor, every trauma is epic and teenage, every heart is heavenly, every walk is rain-splattered, every street is paved with heartache. And that’s the way I like it.” (Village Voice, 28/5/08)

14. Jeremy Jay – While The City Sleeps (3.09)
“He dances like a 21-year-old Robert Forster, lanky and a default heartthrob in his collegiate sweater, side-parted hair and tight-fit jeans, infused with the glamour of beautiful dreaming, swinging his guitar round during a laconic solo, bending at the knees, voice distorted by reverb and pathos. He looks like the sort of fellow you’d cross over the street just to congratulate for being alive – someone who looks a little like Brian Jones, back when Brian Jones looked a little like someone. And his voice echoes with the cool of youth and rock’n’roll, the way of Dan Sartain, the way of Vic Godard, the way of leather-clad Eighties cult singer Ziro Baby, the way of…yes, a 21-year-old Robert Forster, infused with the sadness of beautiful dreaming.” (Plan B Magazine, January 2009)

15. Tenniscoats – Donna Donna (3.40)
“In the centre, a Japanese duo is tapping out a magical song, the harmonies being taken up in call-and-response, pastoral and deceptively gentle. A grand piano dominates. Guitar solos are plucked out, deconstructed but not snidely. The innards of the piano double as percussion. One song is played out on the rims of wine glasses. There is much bowing, and laughter. The set is nothing if not too brief – but it lingers for weeks afterwards. The set is brief but is more than generous: psych-folk lapping in the slipstream, Glasgow among the dreaming spires.” (Plan B Magazine, May 2009)

I'll post the interview that Go-Mag did with me tomorrow.