A Place To Bury Strangers photographs

Capture/ Release - 2005 - a look back

The Rakes

Capture/Release

V2 Records

Released: Monday 15 August 2005

Primarily, I think I should note that as I write this, The Rakes are no longer together. They broke up in October 2009 due to a lack of understanding amongst the band members; although I guess you hardcore fans out there will already know that.

Since their introductory album, Capture/ Release in 2005, The Rakes have released a new album every two years, their last being in March 2009. Capture/ Release is often viewed as the most significant of all three albums, with Ten New Messages and Klang not quite making the same impact.

Capture/ Release offered the hope of something new and interesting, something sometimes weird but exciting. I guess it was a bit like 'Dr Who' when it first hit British TV screens. 'Binary Love' continued that science-fiction theme with its lyrics about a robot who has fallen in love with a human female: 'despite the metal and wires, I still have human desires... I can feel all the things that we can't share'. Binary Love held all the eccentricity to suggest that Capture/ Release was the start of something special and it was but whether that 'start' even had a 'middle', is open to debate.

In addition, like a possessed dalek, the overall essence of the album is troublesome to pin down. We have tracks, such as 'Strasbourg', which is anthemic and gung-ho and then there is 'Open Book', full of turmoil and the previously mentioned Binary Love. However, Strasbourg and '22 Grand Job' do gravitate together as they are equally sentimental and current-sounding. In 22 Grand Job, lead singer, Alan Donohoe, sings about work and city life: 'The girl from work looks alright, but the lights are too bright. Bloke in sales likes her too, what am I supposed to do?' Pretty simple really but it sounds cool enough.

An album almost singularly influenced by the city cannot really fail to seem modern. After all, the city, especially London where The Rakes are from, is always new, everything current comes from there. Capture/ Release has this interesting capacity of commenting on modern society, which makes it more intellectually worthwhile than other albums. Maybe the artistic/ emotive aspect of music is more important though.

There seem to be just as many poor or average reviews of this album as there are favourable ones but I have to put this down to what I suspect to be a lack of research/ listening time. Capture/ Release is a very good album; not groundbreaking, but it is still unique despite having similarities to music from other sources.

We Have Sound - 2005 - a look back

Tom Vek

We Have Sound

Tummy Touch/ Go! Beat Records

Released: Monday 4 April 2005

Tom Vek - We Have Sound

Tom Vek's album, We Have Sound, was released at a time when electro was well in the throes of a comeback. The Klaxons had just come on the scene in Britain as well as Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. However, there is something about We Have Sound, whether it be the imagery Vek uses or its enigmatic simplicity, that makes it a timeless piece of music. Listening to it, it lives and grows between your ears as of the present moment as the blood running through your veins.

Independent music had made it to a position of dominance in the UK charts in 2005 but forays of genius from Kanye West and System of a Down had left gaps open for different types of creative musical expression. We Have Sound was one of these.

We Have Sound is a prime example of using the solo artist medium to the full. In Vek's music, you hear so many different sounds from drums, keyboards and guitars but only one man's voice next to all of this eclectic noise. Vek directs his music with his voice and non-complex but profound lyrics. Simply, We Have Sound gives you everything you want from songs and without the sometimes messy nature of a whole group of singers. Vek learned how to be a one-man-band at his childhood home where his guitarist father had rigged up a makeshift studio in his garage. He then learned how to use an eight track to record whole songs, including drums, bass, guitar and microphone.

When listening, there are very few clues that it was created in a relatively rag-and-bone fashion, if anything, We Have Sound has the aura of music made on the moon in the year 3000. Maybe it is the futuristic sound of the eighties coming through. Vek said that he had help from DJ/ record producer/ wallpaper collector, Tom Rixton to 'do some things, mainly with computers, that I've never been able to do before. It was like using it as an instrument, only to do things that only a computer could do'. Moreover, in what I see as the album's headline track, 'Nothing But Green Lights', as a listener, you are taken away to a barren and peaceful landscape with warm, comforting lights, green of course. Vek calls out: 'I can see your eyes from here, I can't see nothing in between... there's nothing but green lights from here.'

'I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes' is more upbeat and determined. The song begins with a repeated, robotic guitar riff, which leads in to, 'There is still so much to see, there is still so much to do, I can't be more than half way through', 'Don't get upset, It's not my time yet, I ain't saying my goodbyes'. After the first two verses, we only hear the drum beat and a sci-fi whirring sound until Vek's clear and harmonic voice returns.

Vek is unlike other men, other solo artists from the noughties but, at the same time, shares the same maverick image and use of different genres of music as the American multi-instrumentalist, Beck. Tom Vek and We have Sound are Outkast-ice-cold-cool. We Have Sound will stroke and chill your ears and leave you lying, motionless on the floor. If you want to meditate in musical bliss, like Jesus in the wilderness, wrap your head around We Have Sound.

The New Fellas - 2005 - a look back

The Cribs

The New Fellas

Wichita

Released: Monday 20 June 2005

Many fans of The Cribs say this is easily their best album. The sound they were producing in 2005 was synonymous of The Cribs and that is for a good reason, one that is often the case. Good bands will often debut with a resonating first album and even the second album will excel, sounding similar to the first but still new. However, after the second album, bands often find it hard to be creative and to find that ingredient, as secret as the ingredients in Willy Wonka's confectionary, that amaze listeners so much. You could argue, then, that 'The New Fellas' is the last album of The Cribs's period of magic creativity, not to say that the following albums could not be as good.

The Cribs have been relatively prolific between 2004 when they released their first album, 'The Cribs', and 2009 when they released their most recent album, 'Ignore The Ignorant'. Nevertheless, their 2005 album, The New Fellas and The Cribs were such brilliant albums that the two years before their 2007 album, 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever', seemed like a lifetime. The Cribs' debut album was exceptional and it gave a massive leg-up to The New Fellas and allowed it to be recognised by the media and fans alike. In fact, the two albums could have probably been released as a combined mega-album as they came from a very similar musical place but The Cribs allowed The New Fellas to be more expressive, loud and daring. Songs like 'Hey Scenesters' and 'Mirror Kissers' display the belief garnered from such a successful first album.

Johnny Marr, who is now an honorary member of The Cribs, says his attention was caught by The Cribs, with Hey Scenesters: 'the thing that struck me straight away when I heard, Hey Scenesters, was the style of vocal delivery and the guitar playing'. He also said: 'it sounded really like someone who had listened to that New York - punk rock - guitar playing, but in the right way'.

The city/ party theme is seen in several songs in the album, such as, 'You're Gonna Lose Us'. Gary Jarman belts out, 'when I'm drunk I can be an hassle, but that doesn't mean I've got no class though', and in 'Things Aren't Gonna Change', with, 'well I've been drinking for days and I'm happy to say, that we've been leading you on so you'd do it our way'.

The New Fellas was an album that made The Cribs one of the most well-known and best-loved Indie bands in Britain and also guided them to a success that allowed them to adopt an ex-The Smiths legend. The Cribs have the style of a New York band but are unmistakably British. With the best of American and UK Indie injected in to the recipe, The New Fellas is an album which encapsulates Indie from 2005.

The Freedom Spark - 2005 - a look back

Larrikin Love

The Freedom Spark

(original link - Larrikin Love - The Freedom Spark)

Warner

Released: Sunday 25 September 2005

Larrikin Love seemed to come from nowhere, with no pigeon-hole to associate them with and no particular movement from which to have come from. The Freedom Spark was the only album ever made by the band and it provided its fans with much excitement and hours of re-playability.

Looking back, the band was very raw and unpolished. There videos were genius and funny but chaotic, messy and low-budget.

Despite being their first album and one of innocence, it is not completely naive and the lyrical quality is up there with big William Wordsworth. They talk about politics in Downing Street Kindling in a determined way. They will not accept England's mundanity anymore. Every syllable resonates and alliteration abounds, like in the song Downing Street Kindling, 'I would sleep on sheets of satin and eat my cigarettes'. It is all joyful stuff and you are left wondering how Edward Larrikin managed to put such great lyrics in to such unbounded and emotive songs. You might say that great lyrics ensure a great song but the arts of poetry and song lie on very different plains.

Some try to define Larrikin Love as Bluegrass or Thamesbeat, whatever that is. I would say they write like a Victorian band that can see the future. They have a poetic but free way of expressing their young dreams and irks. What I am trying to say is that this album sounds like five very talented young musicians and wordsmiths dancing around joyfully whilst belting out songs of freedom and adventure.

The Freedom Spark is refreshing in that most of its songs do not seem to be about romantic issues. You can listen to the album and just enjoy it, not having to be reminded of past relationships gone wrong. And it really is an uplifting piece of Ed Larrikin genius. It is sad that Larrikin Love had to come to an end. Of course, Edward has ventured in to a solo career with The Pan I am but that has not gone so well commercially.

Larrikin Love might be gone but their music still remains and their efforts did not lack impact on the scene around them. Since Larrikin, the once desperately unfashionable Folk image has gained acceptance and allowed artists, such as Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling to flourish in the UK charts.