Swing Batter Batter!

Apologies for the lack of posting recently, have been variously on holiday and gallivanting around the nation for the Day Job. I’ve had a few writing commissions that, for factors beyond my control, got cancelled by the client and hence no clips updates. I have, however, recently bought and set up gregsmyth.co.uk.

Currently I’m working on a short piece for Dazed & Confused to tie in with the release of Warren Ellis‘ forthcoming debut novel, Crooked Little Vein. More as and when.

If you hit the front page of Gigwise, you’ll find the Fields interview I posted here a little while ago.

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Tags: fields, gigwise, interview

Ross Millard’s boys finally hit the road

Tags: catweasels, news, nme

When I were a lad, all this were…

Gigwise caught up with Matty and Henry from Anglo-Icelandic shoegaze popstrels Fields to talk debut album bunker syndrome, touring with Bloc Party and, err…, their love of catering.

It’s just gone 6pm and Fields are hammering out their soundcheck at the Carling Academy Newcastle. Or so we suppose because, having blatantly not finessed the art of “looking like we’re supposed to be here”, Gigwise is relegated to freezing his man-tits off outside with the kids and some spectacularly downtrodden touts in Newcastle’s practically arctic February conditions. That said, when the Fields advance party of bassist Matty, drummer Henry and their tour manager arrive to escort your correspondent inside they get equally short shrift from the gang of twenty part-time neo-fascists guarding the venue’s inner sanctum. There then follows ten minutes of awkward feet shuffling, as the three of us wait in front of the rabid bouncers while the tour manager legs it to blag a AAA pass (all the while Team Nazi gets a rather humiliating balling out from their leader for our nearly outsmarting their collective wit). Hell, if the band can’t even get into their own gig, what chance does a simple hack have? Luckily both Matty and Henry are in good humour and, having finally dispensed with the security situation, we settle in and talk turns to the tour with Bloc Party.

Continue Reading »

Tags: fields, gigwise, interview

Another NME.com news story here, from last night’s YCNI:M gig.

Tags: news, nme, your code name is: milo

Baby Machine (Monotones)

More often than you might think, this music journalism malarkey is something of a zero-sum game. The initial rush of post-postal excitement at the latest batch of jiffy bags can all too quickly be overcome by disappointment when their guts spill out a raft of third-rate promos that’ll be lining the walls of an Oxfam near you soon. And so it seemed when this, the debut album by Leeds’ This Et Al, flopped onto the proverbial doormat.

But never let it be said that we at The Cuckoo Press don’t give things the benefit of the doubt, because, beneath the, frankly, bloody awful band name, album title and similarly rubbish sleeve hides a startlingly excellent slice of QOTSA-meets-Editors stadium rock. At once ambitious, sprawling and grandiose in its conception but taut and muscular in its execution, Baby Machine is an unexpected gem of an album that, were it not being self-released and hence almost invisible to the nationals, would have the music press crowning them the new Biffy Clyro. Actually, strike that, since it’s taken Biffy seven years and a Kerrang! resurgence to be taken seriously, but you get the idea. M-et al.

For The Cuckoo Press

Tags: album, cuckoo press, review, this et al

Hatton Gallery, Newcastle
Saturday, February 10

If there’s a less punk rock gig venue than an art gallery, we can’t think of it right now. Invariably packed to bursting with pretentious chin-stroking Herberts more at home with Verdi than The View, by comparison, rocking out the dole queue down the DSS is The Pistols at the 100 Club. Mercifully no one seems to have told tonight’s main draw, as Chester-Le-Street’s urchin punkers Catweasels seem determined to knock such preconceptions out of bounds.

That the gig is also the launch shindig for Ross Millard’s new label, Longest Mile Recordings, may explain the curious location but it’ll take more than a couple of glasses of cheap plonk to dispel all our doubts. Luckily Catweasels are more than up to the task. Just check single ‘This Is Just The Night Time, Andy’, as it judders along like a drunken tramp shadowboxing his way round the Toon. Meanwhile, frontman Sam Megahy wrestles his mic-stand like a twelve year old epileptic at a Klaxons gig, simultaneously answering the greatest question in pop history: what if The Cure cheered up? They’d play gloriously infectious outsider-pop infused with the whacked out joie de vivre and playful weirdness of Wayne Coyne. Obviously. Modern art may be rubbish, but tonight Catweasels were nothing less than majestic.

Tags: catweasels, live, review

Micah quits band, Annie keeps going

Drummer and keyboardist Micah Calabrese has left Giant Drag. Internet rumours had begun in December when the band’s Myspace was altered to state the band members were “Annie and whoever else feels like doing it”, fuelling speculation that Calabrese had quit the band for a second time to pursue non-musical interests. Posting on the band’s website giantdrag.com, Annie Hardy said she would continue with the band alone for the meantime and recruit band members after recording of the follow up to last year’s ‘Hearts & Unicorns’ was complete.

“The old skoolerz know that he has done this once before but this time is for keeps. It is very sad but I am going to continue without him. Besides not really having a choice (I am the only one who is signed to the record deal as Micah had quit the band [for the first time] just before that happened) this music jizm is all I really like doing so on I shall go with it. I’ll be keeping the name giant drag since I came up with it and same goes for all the songs but all the drumming, synthing and bearding just wont be the same without young Mr. Calabrese. In the next few months I will begin recording the new record and when that’s finished I will put together the new band, which will include at least one person more than two persons. I am pretty excited about the new songs and the people that are going to be involved on the record but I don’t want to say it out loud because that tends to jinx things.”

Further to the statement, Hardy has posted an unreleased cover of The Jesus And Mary Chain’s ‘Cracking Up’, (from the band’s last album Munki) on their Myspace page (myspace.com/giantdrag). Originally intended as a UK B-side, Hardy says it is the last track she and Calabrese recorded together.

Tags: news

I wrote this for NME.com.

(Although, obviously not the bit about the impromptu Futureheads gig. That may have been a slight subbing error…)

Tags: news, nme

27 January 2007

It’s just past 11pm on an arctic Saturday night and, mercifully far from the dubious corned beef-thighed delights of the city’s more sleazy environs, your correspondent pitches up to find Newcastle’s revamped Club NME mobbed with prospective punters. Having successfully fought our way through the queue, NME catches up with The Draytones, already firmly ensconced by the bar, before heading backstage to make our peace with the rider. On stage later The Draytones cut a gangly figure, as their retro-pop mix of foot-tappingly infectious 60s Merseybeat and 1965 label mates The View’s scuzzy rambunctiousness gets the party started in fine style. By the time the harsh lights kick in at the end of the night and everyone starts spilling out onto the street, the Toon has witnessed a revelation while The Draytones have converted more than a few to their Britbeat cause. NME included.

For NME

Tags: live, nme, review