The Courteeners

There are mixed reviews flying round about The Courteeners.  Hotmail music man Tom Something-Or-Other-Knob-Head , calls them flat pack indie, and has the balls to compare them to the likes of The Hoosiers and Scouting For Girls. Others, such as Nme have hailed them the “Manc Messiahs”.

 St. Jude, their debut album was realesed earlier this year, and singles Not Nineteen Forever and That Kiss have been playing around the charts and catching peoples attentions, including Mat and myself. The songs are super catchy, with fun lyrics which tell snippets of storys about love and life. A personal fave of mine, is Acrylic, which was made as a demo in 2006. They can hold a beat and rhythm, but still make it legiable. They sing songs that mean something, but that don’t bring you down. They have a cool northen manchester accent, but you can still hear the words.

So say what you want about them. They are the new Marmite. Love them or Hate them. Think there new and exciting, or blasse and sound the same as everything else. Personally, i hope they stick around!

8/10

Top songs

That Kiss

Acrylic

No You Didn’t, No You Don’t

By Sally

White Denim, Workout Holiday

Well this is pretty complex. Workout Holiday is White Denim’s first full length album, with their label Full Time Hobby. It shares it’s name with the band’s earlier release which was only sold on their tour and consisted of 9 self recorded songs but also goes by the name Tour EP in some cases. White Denim have a US full length EP called Exposion, that was originally available on the Spring 2008 tour and was called 11 Songs, however White Denim released it in digital format from their website in October 2008, this EP was self-released.

Phew, that was pretty epic.

Workout Holiday kicks off with ‘Let’s Talk About It’ a fast paced, shouty, has furious bass playing throughout and sounds utterly fantastic. After that start you might think White Denim tone it down a little bit, however there are no let ups as they launch into ‘Shake Shake Shake’. Again the fantastic bass that continues all the way through the album is here again with a fantastic riff that is really catchy, hats off to Steve Terebecki. This song begs to be shouted along to and you cannot help stamping your feet along to the infectious rhythm. Now White Denim tone down a bit in pace but there is no let up in quality, Sitting is a marvellous song that i have played over and over. The piano introduction is uplifting and the section around 1.10 is begging you to sing along. ‘I Can Tell’ and ‘Mess Your Hair Up’ is a return to garage band wonderfulness, after which ‘Heart From Us All’ comes in with its bluesy feeling guitar intro it then builds up pace from this steady start into a solid block with the bass and drums creating a infectious rhythm with the lead guitar adding decoration with nice little licks. ‘All You Really Have To Do’ sounds like Hendrix with some southern rock thrown in. ‘Dark Sided Computer Mouth’ is similar to ‘Let’s Talk About It’ but if while playing they had gone crazy and just throw in anything, which they do a little bit with a acapella slice of ‘Sitting’. It is fantastic! Its a strange mash up of other songs from the album. Ending with ‘Leiei’ the album quietly ends, as though the band are completely exhausted like they probably were.

9/10

Download

1. Let’s Talk About It
2. Dark Sided Computer Mouth
3. Sitting

p.s. It could easily have been any of the other songs on the album it really is that good, go get it, NOW!

Mat Sayer

What Does The Credit Crunch Mean For Music?

Its everywhere these days isn’t it?  The Credit Crunch. Words like “Recession” and “Administration” have become part of our everyday language, but what does this all mean for our music business? We’ve had it easy for the last 20 years,  and lets be honest, the music and bands  hasn’t really had that much staying power. Except for the 90’s phenomenon Grunge. This genre however, was born around the time of Black Wednesday, and the collapse of the American stock market. Hard times make good music. This again seems to the the case of the 70’s. This saw the rising of punk. The government, and the world for that matter, was in a state, and it was the music of the time that spoke about this, and reached out to its audience. It was new, loud, exciting and it got the young people to react in the only way they knew how. This time created some of the most iconic bands, such as The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Clash. Also the case in the 1960s, debateabley one of the most important times for music.

So with todays problems, what does the future hold for music? Will it just collapse, as the credit crunch takes away more and more managers, and recorders. With the collapse of the people in charge, what hope do our youngsters have. Shops selling there cds, such as Zavvi are also going under. So with no-one to record the songs, or at least very few people, and no-where to sell, what hope is there. We have to hope our fighting spirit will keep us going, and that the music will stop being so commercial, and stop being for money, and go back to the days when it was played for love and passion! Corny, maybe, but its what we want.

So is there a new music revoloution just on the horizon? I certainly hope so. The recesion could be the thing that saves music.

Sally Murray-Fella

Top 10 Songs of 2008

Hey this is Mat i thought i’d tell you all my top ten songs of the year, even though you probably don’t give a monkeys! Anyway…

1. Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire
2. MGMT – Kids
3. Glasvegas – Daddy’s Gone
4. Janelle Monae – Sincerely, Jane
5. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
6. Santogold – Say Aha!
7. White Denim – Shake Shake Shake
8. Vampire Weekend – Walcott
9. British Sea Power – Waving Flags
10. Roots Manuva – Again & Again

Fleet Foxes

Conor Kiley of Holy Ghost Revival said ‘fuck that caoneing music’, Dizzee Rascal said ‘fuck that folk shit’, however Uncut, Mojo and The Times all made Fleet Foxes self-titled debut album their album of the year and over in MySpace the Seattle quintet have been establishing a big fanbase and have over 4 million song plays.

Personally when i first heard it i would have sided with Dizzee and Conor Kiley. But once you give it a chance and listen to it a couple more times it starts to show how impressive and what a brilliant album it really is. ‘White Winter Hymnal’ with its simple, chanting sound is fantastic and ‘He Doesn’t Know Why’ is one of the most beautiful pieces of music to come out of 2008.

Be warned though its not mickey mouse ‘indie’ pop, like i said earlier your first impression may be along the lines of Conor Kiley but with a few more plays Fleet Foxes will earn a place amongst your top albums of the year easily.

8.5/10

Download

1. White Winter Hymnal
2. He Doesn’t Know Why
3. Ragged Wood

Mat Sayer

www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes

Hello world!

Hey guys and gals, welcome to El Worldwide Muziek Projekt (theres abit of Spanish,English,Dutch and Swedish for ya!) Anyway me and Sally decided to create this blog for a few reasons, were abit bored, we both love music, we both have opinions on music and often have a nice debate on it and thought it might be good to channel them into an organised thingy and we both want some future in this sortof journalism type stuff (also we thought we might blag our way into a few gigs but shhh). So yeh, we’ll be reviewing albums, gigs, just giving our opinions on bands and the happenings in the music world. Ciao!