Since The Dreaming Spires wear their influences so proudly on their collective sleeves, it seems apt to set a review of their debut offering within the context of a brief history of the genre they fit most snugly into. The Spires are UK-born, Americana-tinged, “power pop”. So the choice of ‘Brothers in Brooklyn’ as the title-track of their debut album is about more than just a catchy title, it’s a declaration of musical fellowship. The opening track has referenced Gram Parsons before the music’s even started, and you don’t have to wait long before The Byrds are name-checked. But the point isn’t just the tip of a cowboy hat to our cousins across the pond, it’s a reference to just how intertwined we are musically.
Take power pop for example: as with many things, it began with The Beatles. Three minute melody-driven pop songs about young love formed the blueprint, with catchy guitar riffs pushed to the fore alongside vocal harmonies. The power was injected by a dose of the aggression and energy of mods like The Who and The Kinks. Keith Moon’s wild drums and Pete Townsend’s power chords were a formative influence and you’ll even hear it said that Townsend coined the phrase. So it’s no coincidence the first true American power pop bands like The Raspberries cropped up shortly after the British Invasion and the mod scene in the UK. They even dressed like those British bands. But they were going against the grain of the heavier rock ascendant at the time, so they had an uphill struggle on their hands…
Bringing us to the band most famously associated with the term “power pop”. Big Star has been called the second biggest cult band in the world after the Velvets, and while that’s open to debate, they were certainly one of the most ill-fated. Formed in 1971, marketing and distribution problems with their label, soul-based Stax records, meant their output went largely unnoticed by the public and resulting tensions (aka – outright brawls) ended their time together after just two years. Led by the song-writing duo of Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, Big Star were more than just power pop, but they were obviously influenced by the genre and subsequently influenced it heavily themselves, to the point where they’re now synonymous with the term. Bell struggled with depression after leaving the band and died in a car crash in 1978 at the tragic and infamous age of 27. But not before he crafted two of the most painful but beautiful records ever etched in vinyl – “You and Your Sister” and “I Am the Cosmos” – both later covered to haunting effect by This Mortal Coil.
The Spires’ love for Big Star is obvious – they host a monthly night, “Covered in Glory”, at The Betsey Trotwood in Clerkenwell, where they invite friends to help them play covers from a legendary artist, and the opening night was dedicated to Big Star (The Byrds and Gram Parsons, The Beatles and The Band have also been honoured), but listening to “The Strength of Strings” specifically brings Bell’s solo work vividly to mind. It’s a slow-burning, ever-building crescendo and an ode to the paradoxical power of melancholic music to lift the spirits that would feel perfectly at home on Bell’s posthumous album, “I Am the Cosmos”.
Power pop gained popularity as the 70’s progressed, with mostly US acts defining the sound. Compression in the electronics was added, making the sound even punchier, and keyboards began to appear. Early Tom Petty, some Todd Rundgren, Blue Ash, Flamin’ Groovies, Cheap Trick, etc., built the path to power pop’s moment of glory in the late 70s when, spurred on by punk and new wave, a string of classic signals marked the genre’s brief ascendance on both sides of the Atlantic.
Coming out of pub-rock and punk in the UK, The Only Ones’ 1978 single, “Another Girl, Another Planet”, wasn’t a hit at the time, but remains one of power pop’s best-loved tracks. That same year UK punk produced two other classics, which, if you squint at some critics’ narrow definitions enough, you can easily call power pop: The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” and The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks”. Then, Nick Lowe, a figure variously associated with pub rock, punk, new wave and power pop, had a hit on both sides of the pond in 1979 with “Cruel to Be Kind”. Meanwhile New York new wave had produced the chimeric Blondie, who were pulling in influences from all over the shop, but while there’s some on “Parallel Lines”, “Dreaming”, the first single from “Eat to The Beat”, was pure power pop and did better over here than it did at home, reaching the heady heights of No 2 in the UK charts. The seeds of power pop’s decline had already been sown though, by what is probably the quintessential power pop single. The Knack’s “My Sharona”, was No 1 in the US and so ubiquitous on US radio that there was a backlash against the band which spread to the whole genre and, despite fine efforts from bands like The Romantics and The dBs, by the mid-80s power pop as we know it had faded from sight…
Gone but not forgotten. Around this time Big Star’s real impact began to surface, with bands like REM, The Replacements, etc., citing them as a seminal influence. The more nuanced and complex brand of power pop enshrined in the band’s output pointed the way towards the alternative rock of the 80s and 90s and songs like The LA’s “There She Goes” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” and bands like Gin Blossoms and The Posies, showed that power pop, if not exactly experiencing a revival, was not exactly dead either. It was this landscape that birthed one of the other cornerstones of The Dreaming Spires’ inspiration. Teenage Fanclub’s 1991 album “Bandwagonesque” drew on both The Byrds and Big Star and fused power pop with indie rock and shoegaze to reinvent it and the band are name checked in the same breath as The Byrds in the opening track of the album.
The major US influence on the development of power pop was the jangle-folk-rock of The Byrds, who were themselves inspired by The Beatles, both of whom were big influences on Big Star, all of whom are loved by The Spires. So there really is no better word than “intertwined” and it’s this reciprocal relationship that ‘Brothers in Brooklyn’ celebrates. The band’s love of the music that inspired them shines through, and when they sing: “You said: ‘you know this is the real show,’ Singing Sin City in sweet, ragged harmonies,” the emphasis is on the ragged, rather than the sweet, but you feel that’s intended. It’s a genuine love of heartfelt pop music and it lends the whole album an earnest, authentic, joyous quality that it’s hard not to be affected by – I defy anyone to listen to “Everything All the Time” without an ear-to-ear grin. Yet, on closer inspection, hearing the line: “Walking down the same streets, wondering if it’s me or the city that’s changed…” you realise it’s melancholic, dwelling on the inevitability of human dissatisfaction, a la “I Can’t Get No…” or Steve Earle’s “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied”. And that’s as good a definition of power pop as any: joyful sounding melancholy designed for singing your heart out to – to lift your spirits and exorcise life’s inevitable pains.
The album falters occasionally, usually in its slower moments (“Woman That You Are” for instance), but the rest is a joy to listen to and capable of transporting you to other places and times (admittedly mostly dusty 60s/70s America but that’s no bad thing). “Not Every Song from the Sixties Is a Classic”, recorded with friends from Two Fingers of Firewater, is an absolute gem which grows and grows,and the title track grooves along on an insistent bass riff, delivering their mission statement: “…we do it cos we must cos we need this the most, & we can’t give up, no we won’t give up the ghost, we’ve got a message to deliver to the people back home, oh carry me, carry me, carry me on.”
Amen to that.
Story by Simon Makin, for Notes from Mt Pleasant. Simon can be found on Twitter (@SimonMakin) or http://simonmakin.me.uk/
The band is currently on tour with Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou and Danny George Wilson – hitting London Sunday 16 September at The Birkbeck, Leyton. For all dates, check their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thedreamingspires
This Sunday afternoon The Apple Tree, our favourite pub on Mount Pleasant goes old-time.There aren’t many London (or even UK) bands playing traditional American old-time music: the type of mountain music from the Appalachians (or thereabouts) that came to prominence with the Oh Brother Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain soundtracks, and the likes of Gillian Welch, the Old Crow Medicine Show and recent Grammy winners the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
The Glorification have soaked up buckets of that old-time feeling – rubbing shoulders with legendary American players like Tom Paley at London jams, and from band camps and their various travels to the States. Helen Keen (aka L’il Liza) sings and plucks a mean banjo, clawhammer style; Pat Longley (aka Patty-Jo) is an inspiring fiddle player whether its bluegrass or old-time; and guitarist Phil Alexander (aka Uncle Philbert) is well-known amongst London musicians for his duff jokes and rustic singing. They are admirably backed up on double bass by Richard Eyres (aka Big Dick).
Mixing old-time ballads of loves lost and found; instrumentals that evoke the misty morn’s and moonshiney nights up on the Blue Ridge; and country rock classics with an old-timey twist, The Glorification promise a harmony-filled hoe-down, that’ll get your feet-stomping and heart racing for the American South.
Get down to the Apple Tree tomorrow (27 Feb) for Come Down and Meet the Folks hosted by Rockingbird Alan Tyler. Music starts around 5pm, kicking off with James Deane followed by The Glorification and then headliners, rockin out Exile-on-Main-Street style, The Snakes.
If you still have your old Betsey posters from 2009, hang on to them, or if you want one, you can now buy them at Liberty’s for a rather impressive price
Recorded on the last night of Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou’s hugely successful Tin Tabernacle Tour. We’ll be loading up additional films from the closing night of this tour, at Kilburn’s tin tabernacle, featuring more performances from Pepe Belmonte and Pete Greenwood and of course, more of the delectable Hannah & Trevor.
Stand by for more information from them soon as they have just finished recording their new album, we’ll keep you posted with tour dates and info.
Fleet Foxes have finished recording their follow up to their stunning 2008 self-titled debut, and their website showcases some really great images of the recording sessions. Here is a link to the full gallery, where the images shown here and many more can be seen. Can’t wait for that release! All images by Sean Pecknold.
Got some friends playing in this new musical on at the Arts Theatre in London about the life and music of Woody Guthrie. We haven’t been yet but we’ll let you know what we think when we do go.
A friend recently reminded us about this great collection of images commissioned by the Farm Security Administration encompassing the Depression years in the US. Skilled documentary photographers travelled across the States during 1939 -1943 experimenting with a then new technological development – Kodachrome film, (sadly phased out at the end of 2010) and made a collection of around 1,600 images, a selection of which you can see here.
A larger collection of 175 images is available in a hard back book called Bound For Glory, its title aptly borrowed from Woody Guthrie’s autobiography. We highly recommend it if you can get your hands on a copy,
Filmed in the basement of the Betsey Trotwood 7th January 2011 while the Lantern Society played itself out upstairs. Had to shoot in between the sounds of the tube trains rumbling beneath us.
This is from his same-titled album Here on This Frontline
Joe has a new album Looking for the Grave of Garcia Lorca, both available from ITunes or through his website http://www.joewilkes.co.uk
Jack Day, host of The Lantern Society filmed in his kitchen, singing his brand new song, Shadows in the Sun. We caught him before he’d even had a chance to play it in front of an audience so it’s super hot off the press.
Jack’s just fixing to go into the studio and lay down a whole new album which we’ve all been asking him about for a while. His new website is up and running so head over there for more info or just keep an eye on here, we’ll keep you updated.
A group of five music fans and makers, film takers, image makers, some-time tour managers, ex band managers, music journalists, archaeologists, banjo players, prize drinkers, sharp thinkers, festival tinkers and a whole host of other things too numerous to go into here. We'd like to share what we love about the Folk|Country|Blues we are lucky to be surrounded by here in London and give you access to some of the talent we see and hear. Use us to keep up to date with what's on, who's playing, what's coming whether you live here or are just passing through.
Contact us at: info @ notesfrommtpleasant.com
Since The Dreaming Spires wear their influences so proudly on their collective sleeves, it seems apt to set a review of their debut offering within the context of a brief history of the genre they fit most snugly into. The Spires are UK-born, Americana-tinged, “power pop”. So the choice of ‘Brothers in Brooklyn’ as the title-track of their debut album is about more than just a catchy title, it’s a declaration of musical fellowship. The opening track has referenced Gram Parsons before the music’s even started, and you don’t have to wait long before The Byrds are name-checked. But the point isn’t just the tip of a cowboy hat to our cousins across the pond, it’s a reference to just how intertwined we are musically.
Bringing us to the band most famously associated with the term “power pop”. Big Star has been called the second biggest cult band in the world after the Velvets, and while that’s open to debate, they were certainly one of the most ill-fated. Formed in 1971, marketing and distribution problems with their label, soul-based Stax records, meant their output went largely unnoticed by the public and resulting tensions (aka – outright brawls) ended their time together after just two years. Led by the song-writing duo of Alex Chilton and Chris Bell, Big Star were more than just power pop, but they were obviously influenced by the genre and subsequently influenced it heavily themselves, to the point where they’re now synonymous with the term. Bell struggled with depression after leaving the band and died in a car crash in 1978 at the tragic and infamous age of 27. But not before he crafted two of the most painful but beautiful records ever etched in vinyl – “You and Your Sister” and “I Am the Cosmos” – both later covered to haunting effect by This Mortal Coil.
Coming out of pub-rock and punk in the UK, The Only Ones’ 1978 single, “Another Girl, Another Planet”, wasn’t a hit at the time, but remains one of power pop’s best-loved tracks. That same year UK punk produced two other classics, which, if you squint at some critics’ narrow definitions enough, you can easily call power pop: The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” and The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks”. Then, Nick Lowe, a figure variously associated with pub rock, punk, new wave and power pop, had a hit on both sides of the pond in 1979 with “Cruel to Be Kind”. Meanwhile New York new wave had produced the chimeric Blondie, who were pulling in influences from all over the shop, but while there’s some on “Parallel Lines”, “Dreaming”, the first single from “Eat to The Beat”, was pure power pop and did better over here than it did at home, reaching the heady heights of No 2 in the UK charts. The seeds of power pop’s decline had already been sown though, by what is probably the quintessential power pop single. The Knack’s “My Sharona”, was No 1 in the US and so ubiquitous on US radio that there was a backlash against the band which spread to the whole genre and, despite fine efforts from bands like The Romantics and The dBs, by the mid-80s power pop as we know it had faded from sight…
Gone but not forgotten. Around this time Big Star’s real impact began to surface, with bands like REM, The Replacements, etc., citing them as a seminal influence. The more nuanced and complex brand of power pop enshrined in the band’s output pointed the way towards the alternative rock of the 80s and 90s and songs like The LA’s “There She Goes” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” and bands like Gin Blossoms and The Posies, showed that power pop, if not exactly experiencing a revival, was not exactly dead either. It was this landscape that birthed one of the other cornerstones of The Dreaming Spires’ inspiration. Teenage Fanclub’s 1991 album “Bandwagonesque” drew on both The Byrds and Big Star and fused power pop with indie rock and shoegaze to reinvent it and the band are name checked in the same breath as The Byrds in the opening track of the album.
The major US influence on the development of power pop was the jangle-folk-rock of The Byrds, who were themselves inspired by The Beatles, both of whom were big influences on Big Star, all of whom are loved by The Spires. So there really is no better word than “intertwined” and it’s this reciprocal relationship that ‘Brothers in Brooklyn’ celebrates. The band’s love of the music that inspired them shines through, and when they sing: “You said: ‘you know this is the real show,’ Singing Sin City in sweet, ragged harmonies,” the emphasis is on the ragged, rather than the sweet, but you feel that’s intended. It’s a genuine love of heartfelt pop music and it lends the whole album an earnest, authentic, joyous quality that it’s hard not to be affected by – I defy anyone to listen to “Everything All the Time” without an ear-to-ear grin. Yet, on closer inspection, hearing the line: “Walking down the same streets, wondering if it’s me or the city that’s changed…” you realise it’s melancholic, dwelling on the inevitability of human dissatisfaction, a la “I Can’t Get No…” or Steve Earle’s “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied”. And that’s as good a definition of power pop as any: joyful sounding melancholy designed for singing your heart out to – to lift your spirits and exorcise life’s inevitable pains.
September 14, 2012
notesfrommtpleasant
Notes from Mt. Pleasant 