Robyn Writes

Review: Caves – Leaving [12″]

It’s been a bloody good year for punk rock. We’ve been treated to some truly outstanding records – Against Me!’s massive hit Transgender Dysphoria Blues, Cayetana’s incredible debut Nervous Like Me, the ridiculous yet wonderful 48-hour tape Mysterious Ways from Bangers, another great record from The Lawrence Arms… I really could go on. I could go on forever, and I probably will when it gets to my end of year list. And here’s another record that is 99% sure to make that list.

Caves have always been great at crafting big tunes, and Leaving is a short, sharp blast of pure punk rock joy. Their new 12″ is a shining example of what Caves are capable of, and an excellent follow-up to Homeward Bound. Like any great punk rock record, it starts out with an absolute banger. ‘Sad’ is a fast, thrashy affair, and effectively sets the tone for the rest of the record with grungy undertones and some truly great vocals from Lou. ‘Oh Antonio’, my favourite song on the record, follows on with rumbling bass and megaphoned vocals, and that’s just a sign of things to come. There are fantastically spidery guitar riffs taking the forefront, great singalong choruses – even without any gang vocals in sight – and razor-sharp songcraft. No song overstays its welcome, but every track leaves you wanting more. Finally, the record closes with ‘Sadder’ – two minutes and thirteen seconds of sheer WOAAAAAAAH. I’m not lying. The production’s a lot tighter than previous records, but Caves still haven’t lost that gleeful sense of reckless abandon. If anything, every hook punches harder. You get a much clearer sense of the rhythm, and it leaves a lot more room for experimentation.

Lyrically, it’s all pretty good too. Leaving is all about holding your ground, and ‘Anchor’ portrays this perfectly with nautical metaphors that playfully mess about with cliché. ‘Puddle’, with its 90s emo vibes, makes concrete cities seem prettier than they are. Title track ‘Leaving’ is so posi that it makes my cheeks hurt from smiling. Caves are great at tackling the little things that mean a lot, and this record is just more great reinforcement of that notion.

Leaving is pure punk perfection. Buy it for yourself for Christmas and then sneakily listen to it all throughout November because screw it, the nights are getting longer, the weather’s getting colder and you need something as joyful as this in your life.

4.5 out of 5 high fives!

Review: Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness – s/t

The new record from Andrew McMahon is ambitious. So ambitious, that he’s released it under yet another name. Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness is really Andrew’s first solo album proper, given that Jack’s Mannequin became a full-band project, and is very much a pop album in the way that Jack’s Mannequin and Something Corporate were not.

For the potentially wary, it’s not a huge leap away from his solo EP The Pop Underground, and of course, Andrew’s signature sound is still very much there, loud and proud. However, there’s a much greater electronic influence in AM In The Wilderness than in any previous projects, and there’s plenty of fantastic synth lines running throughout. And that’s just part of it – the sheer breadth of style that AM In The Wilderness encompasses is incredible. From huge pop numbers like ‘Cecilia and the Satellite’ to gospel-inspired ‘Canyon Moon’, and beautiful piano-led tracks like ‘Rainy Girl’ to 80s-styled finisher ‘Maps for the Getaway’ (which sounds like it would fit fantastically on The Breakfast Club’s soundtrack), no two songs sound the same. Each track has its own individual timbre, and yet as an album, it all works together perfectly.

The record also holds a delicate balance between old and new. On the one hand, there are plenty of songs about the forthcoming birth of Andrew’s daughter, Cecilia. ‘See Her On The Weekend’, ‘Rainy Girl’ and of course, ‘Cecilia and the Satellite’, which is the shining star of the album, all reflect on this huge event in different ways, culminating in a wonderful tribute to a baby girl. But there’s a lot of looking back and soul searching as well – ‘High Dive’ and ‘Black and White Movies’ are all about past relationships, and ‘All Our Lives’ is simply a fantastic take on life, its potential difficulties and eventually moving on. It’s an incredibly introspective record in places, bold and decisive in others, but ultimately uplifting at every turn. ‘Maps for the Getaway’ in particular is simply about making it through, and it ends the record on a triumphant, yet poignant note.

The fact is that Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness is a lot of different things. It’s a beautiful example of emotionally intelligent songwriting, immersed in stunning melodies and gorgeous metaphor. It’s brutally honest and genuinely heartwarming. It’s daring, and yet another step further from Andrew’s pop-punk roots. And above all this, it has the potential to be his greatest record yet. Fans of Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin will love this, but then again, so will everyone else.

5 out of 5 high fives!

Q&A – Guerrilla Monsoon

Guerrilla Monsoon are a band from Birmingham who write big, punk rock bangers. Veterans of the Midlands scene, these guys have been in more bands than you can count. You can hear echoes of days gone past all the way throughout their tunes, but together, they create something completely different and pretty damn exciting. Their forthcoming EP, Big City Plans, is an explosion of melody, gruff voices and fast tempos, and it’s no surprise that the band got picked up by Paper + Plastick and Beach Community before their first anniversary.

I fired a bunch of questions at Lewis Bloor, one of the guitarists/vocalists in the band, and he came back with some pretty interesting answers. Read this, then buy the record because it’s ace.

You guys have got a rich heritage from bands like Cannons and Tanks (who by the way, I adored – went to virtually every show you did in Leamington), Shermer, Hopewood et al. How have you taken that experience and turned it into something which actually sounds quite different to those bands?

Thanks for the kind words! To be honest, I don’t think that we’ve actually changed all that much with regards to our individual playing styles, it kind of all just clicks. Mark is playing his noodley guitar lines, John is letting rip on the drums, I haven’t actually changed the way I’ve played guitar since I was 16 and in bands that basically wanted to be Texas Is The Reason, and Rob plays bass like he’s in The Bouncing Souls. It all just fits nicely. Mark and I do our clean/gruff vocal trade-offs and it just seems to compliment the rest of the music. It’s nice to find a bunch of guys that are happy musically together that fit so well.

You’ve managed to pick up support from two excellent labels, Paper + Plastick in the US and Beach Community over here. What does that mean to you personally, and what does that mean for the band moving forward?

It’s been a roller coaster of a ride. To get this kind of backing as a new band is amazing and totally unexpected. We recorded a few songs at the beginning of the year and just sent them off. It’s pretty old school really – we’re no YouTube hit band, we haven’t got thousands of likes on Facebook, we don’t have a million followers on Soundcloud… We put up a few songs for free on Bandcamp and it all came from there.

Moving forward, it means that we get to do a lot of amazing things that we didn’t think possible. We get to play Fest in Florida for starters… That’s a massive deal for all of us. Hopefully, if people like our record, we’ll get the chance to tour and play with some amazing bands. I think we’re going to totally indulge ourselves with that. On a personal level, that’s one of the main reasons I’m in a band, just so I get to play with bands I like!

Big City Plans is a combination of new tracks and older ones – was the decision to split them like that purely down to that, or was there a bigger reason for grouping the way you have?

We recorded five songs, we then recorded two songs, we then recorded three songs… we put two of them out a few months ago on a split and there were eight left. The “older” songs on there are only older by a couple of months, but we’d already put them up on the Bandcamp. After a little bit of chat we just thought it’d be nice to bung them all on. They were all re-mastered and had a few mixing issues ironed out, but eight seemed like a nice number for a bigger EP or mini-album.

What’s your songwriting process like?

Tears, frustration, anger… actually, it’s quite nice. Mark comes up with songs he writes himself and we work it out as a band, or Rob and I work on some riffs together and songs come from that. Or, we just jam in practice and make a row with some chords and rhythms. Mark writes the majority of lyrics and we both work out our vocal lines from there. I write the odd batch of lyrics but I’m my own worst critic and I’m never really that happy with them.

Where do you take influence from when writing (not necessarily musically either!)?

Life. Write about what you know, it’s a lot more honest and sincere that way. Our influences are pretty much everything we’ve all grown up with. We’re not kids anymore and we’ve all had a fair amount of life experience, love, loss, regret, recovery, ups, downs… pop it all into a great musical blender and leave the top off.

Lyrically, there’s a lot of ground covered on Big City Plans. Is there a unifying theme threaded throughout the record?

Real life. That’s all we know. Changes around us and within ourselves. Our relationships with each other, our parents and our friends.

You’ve been touring the UK at the moment, and you’re headed off to Fest later this month – what’s been your best tour moment so far this year, and what are you expecting for Fest?

We’ve toured with quite a few bands (if you call tour more than three days in a row) and we’ve made some really great friends from that. We’ve got up to some ridiculous things and it’s been a great summer, so it just adds to the experience. Best tour moments are when there are actually people there that have come to see us! Over the last few weeks, we’ve noticed people actually singing along which is amazing! Fest… I’m expecting a hangover. A big hangover.

As performers, what makes the perfect show for you?

We all give it 100% every time – if it goes without hiccup, it’s amazing for us. Things happen though, like the breaking of strings, john throwing his sticks at us, Rob hitting me or Mark with his bass. We take it all in our stride though. Again, if there are a few people watching it’s great!

Who are your favourite bands to tour with?

All the bands! We’ve met so many great people already and we hope this continues for as long as possible.

The new record’s out on 28 October. We’re dead excited, but how would you convince someone who might be on the fence of the power of #team_monsoon?

Haha, this record has already had that many “releases”, it’s quite funny. The digital date for release was the 6th October, but as we were on tour that week it went onto Spotify/iTunes a week early. Then the vinyl turned up in the UK early so we started selling it at gigs. The pre-order for the vinyl for the UK and US went up earlier this week and officially gets sent out on the 28th October just before Fest. We’re so used to doing it DIY style and getting it out there as soon as we can, and we just can’t hold back. I reckon we’ll be a little more organised if/when we get the chance to do an album… And if you’re on the fence, we suggest you get off before you get splinters and come join the party!

Guerrilla Monsoon are Rob, Lewis, Mark and John. Big City Plans is out on 28 October on Beach Community (UK) and Paper + Plastick (US). Check these dudes out on Bandcamp already.

Review: This Will Destroy You – Another Language

This Will Destroy You have some big shoes to fill – their own. Their last records have been true examples of visceral, verging on primal, post-rock, even if that’s a title they don’t want to give themselves. Another Language, their fourth LP, comes from an extended break, and represents a more unified approach to songwriting.

When you take each track on an individual basis, they’re beautifully crafted and intriguing tracks. Indeed, TWDY eschew the classic post-rock vibe with a more industrial, doomier sound. There’s a very analogue feel to the record, starting with opening track ‘New Topia’. Subtle, almost wistful synths back up an evocative build-up of guitar and drums. A choral-like organ breaks through the fuzz, leaving plenty of space for ‘Dustism’ to follow on blissfully with a range of perfect programming. ‘The Puritan’ has some incredible piano sprinkled throughout. The frantic drums of ‘Invitation’ and the second layer of guitar create an exciting sonic experience – well, as exciting as instrumental rock can get.

But as the record goes on, it all starts to just blend into one. There are plenty of complex aural landscapes throughout, lots of sounds layering up against each other and building an interesting sound, but ultimately, it gets hard to distinguish which track is which. Take them on their own, they each make a statement. Put them together and those distinguishing moments of amazing songwriting get totally lost. In a record like this, it’s vital for everything to flow, but it loses its finesse. It’s not a ‘safe’ record, but it feels like TWDY, so used to pushing boundaries, have written themselves into a safe space – for them, anyway.

Another Language has truly beautiful moments, and it makes a lovely soundtrack to a rainy day, but on the whole, it falls a little flat. TWDY are definitely speaking another language with this LP – it’s just not all that easy to translate back.

3 out of 5 high fives!

Review: Heavyweights – Keep Your Friends Close [EP]

Baltimore’s Heavyweights have got a pretty solid record on their hands with Keep Your Friends Close. It wasn’t long ago that Alex Gaskarth from All Time Low loudly declared that pop-punk will live forever. I sincerely hope that All Time Low’s brand of derivative drivel will die out, but Heavyweights’ new EP harks back to pop-punk’s golden age and gives it a fresh, enthusiastic shot to the heart.

Did you like Fenix TX or Allister back in 2002? Did you ever listen to Tsunami Bomb, or even Good Charlotte’s first album? Be prepared for a wave of nostalgia to hit you in the face hard as soon as the first bars of ‘It’s Not Pretty, But It’s Us’ start to play out. The Heavyweights EP could have come straight out of that scene and you wouldn’t know any different. Is this a bad thing? Hell no. Are you going to remember Heavyweights in ten years like those bands? Maybe not with this EP, but they’re definitely on to something. After an echoey riff, ‘It’s Not Pretty, But It’s Us’ launches a full pop assault – expect fast guitars, bouncing basslines and ridiculously infectious hooks. ‘Dior 999’ and ‘Bonfire’ are much of the same, absolutely chock-full of melody and malice with some really catchy choruses. Of course, it wouldn’t be a homage to 00’s pop-punk without a cheeky cameo, and Mike Hayden of Count To Four fame steps up to the plate in ‘Bunkbeds’. And then it ends on a banger of a ballad with ‘Anna Marie’, which starts out deceptively slow with a fantastic half-time breakdown before speeding up for a total thrill-ride. It’s an incredibly tight record, and Heavyweights have truly got their sound down just right.

Yet, as much as Heavyweights embrace pop-punk’s conventions and all its glories, Keep Your Friends Close has also inherited a few of its clichés. The EP’s still all about girls and how much they suck because they’re all heartbreakers, but I guess you write what you know. Most of that at least rhymes, which I’m down with, but it almost feels like Dave Heilker is singing the same song after a while with a different melody. There’s also very little variance in style between the tracks – possibly due to the fact that it’s an EP – and although each track is fantastic in isolation , it all starts to get a bit wearing after five fast-and-loud numbers.

All in all, it’d be great to see what Heavyweights can do with a full-length record, as they seem to be another one of those bands who perpetually come out with EPs. Keep Your Friends Close is plenty of fun, and although they’re not quite there yet, Heavyweights are onto a winner.

3.5 out of 5 high fives!