Jade McNelis

Courtesy of Good Fences records, I received a nice little nugget in the post in the form of the debut EP from Jade McNelis, entitled 'All The Fables'. Co-produced by Chris Seligman (of Stars) and Drew Malamud (known for his work with The Dears, Death From Above 1979 and Stars), as well as featuring a host of other "famous" names. Murray Lightburn of The Dears, Andrew Barr of The Slips and Gregory Paquet, formerly of The Stills provide competent instrumentation throughout.

Much of Jade's six track EP remains subdued but the melodica on 'Lies And Locks' breathes life into the record and is a sign of her ambition and invention. 'Miles Over Seas' also shows a feisty side to the singer-songwriter but sadly, the EP has little more of this, with Jade preferring despairing ballads over a more spiky sound. Her collaborators also allow their influences to seep through onto the record but this compliments Jade's youth (she is only twenty years old). Not that she lacks wordly experience having been born in Taiwan before being adopted by an American couple and settling down in Florida.


Photo credit - Sanchez Brothers

The 'All The Fables' EP lies somewhere along the lines of Regina Spektor meets Radiohead but lacking the hypnotic intensity of the aforementioned artists. Nonetheless, Jade manages to tell her own stories (as alluded to in the EP title) and can only mature and progress as her career continues upwards.

Jade McNelis - Lies And Locks
Jade McNelis - Miles Over Seas

Buy 'All The Fables' from Amazon Canada [link] and if you're in Canada for the next few weeks, it might be an idea to go watch Jade McNelis. Dates are available on her MySpace [link].

Ra Ra Riot

I may be a little bit behind the times but nonetheless the news of Ra Ra Riot drummer John Pike's death has been truly shocking and saddening. Read the NME.com news report [link].

Ra Ra Riot are one of the most hotly tipped bands around at the moment, booked as tour support to the rather ace Tokyo Police Club and a band that were soon to be featured on this blog. Admittedly, I'd only listened to Ra Ra Riot last month having heard of their impressive performances around London earlier in the year but their ability struck me from the very first listen. My first impressions were of an upbeat version of The National, with a similar blend of strings veering them towards Arcade Fire. A more carefree and less pretentious version, of course. To be robbed of their talented drummer at the tender age of 23 has understandably hit the other band members hard. They released the followed statement on their website [link]:

We are all in a state of shock. Time has been dragging on slowly since the early hours of Saturday morning. This has been a difficult time filled with numbing sadness and many unanswered questions. We all have tremendous love for our friend, and we have an endless supply of wonderful memories of him. This has felt
like the unraveling plot of a tragic piece of fiction…nothing would have prepared us for such an immense loss.

We are deeply saddened by this, and we know that John was loved, admired, and respected by everybody who was fortunate enough to have met him. We are grateful to
his parents for raising such a wonderful person. We are lucky to have known him, and he has had a profound effect on us as people, friends and musicians. We will miss him.

The band have also made the funeral arrangements for John public to allow fans to participate. Read their MySpace blog entry for more details [link]

The track I've uploaded is from a 2006 demo but consult the Hype Machine [link] for plenty of other tracks, including a vibrant cover of 'Hounds Of Love'.

Ra Ra Riot - The New Flesh



RIP John Pike.

I AM 1

I can't really believe it's already been a year (well, a year and a bit now) since I started this blog, as a whimsical venture back in the day. Let's take a look back on what happened:

May 2006 [link to May's archived posts]
So I kicked things off by explaining the reason behind the name of this blog - it refers to the story of Pandora opening that box of hers and closing it, only managing to "keep hope inside". How mythical of me. Posts that month focused on Little Man Tate, Lily Allen and The National. As well a selection of Tony Yeboah's wonder goals.

June 2006 [archived posts]
I published my little 3 day review of Brighton's Great Escape Festival, which in its inaugural year suffered horrendous weather and some organisational problems. Nonetheless, Hot Club de Paris and The Spinto Band put in quite special performances and saved the day(s). The Rakes, Jamie T, Good Shoes and the now defunct Les Incompetents all had some love from me this month. And Peter Crouch, of course. I was also thankful to the much respected Sweeping The Nation blog for pointing their readers to my blog.

July 2006 [archived posts]
This was the month where I successfully predicted the Nationwide Music Prize winners (Arctic Monkeys), although noting Richard Hawley's high probability of success soon after. I discovered the song of the summer in 'Young Folks' by Peter Bjorn And John and also praised The Indelicates.

August 2006 [archived posts
I suppose the big news this month was the publication of my and only interview (and that's just because I doubt I can have a better one!), with Los Campesinos! who at the time had only done one other interview. And mine was better obviously. Although the big news personally was the addition to the Hype Machine, which meant lots of new readers. I found the time to talk about Ben & Jerry's Sundae On The Common where I saw Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family as well as The Pipettes amongst others. I got into a bit of a trouble posting a new Bloc Party demo ('Song For Clay' would later feature on their second album) and the new Monkey Swallows The Universe single. Oops. I predicted the death of Hope Of The States and they've now been joined by Shake My Hand (née Yossarian) whose demo I very much enjoyed that month.

September 2006 [archived posts]
A very good month for finding great new bands with Late Of The Pier, Cajun Dance Party, I Was A Cub Scout and Munch Munch all receiving nice write ups. Add to that favourable single reviews for It Hugs Back, Popular Workshop and The Longcut, safe to say this was the best month of my blogging career so far.

October 2006 [archived posts]
Despite very sporadic blogging due to my hard drive dying and my new tenure at university, I was voted 23rd in the BT Digital Music Awards 2006 which I was "chuffed about". Amazing tracks came along from DARTZ! and Nic Nell as well as an ace Girls Aloud megamix.

November 2006 [archived posts]
November yielded very little, which I apologise for. Nonetheless, we had some lovely new tracks from Tiny Dancers, Mystery Jets and Larrikin Love.

December 2006 [archived posts]
December shamefully yielded even less, which I doubly apologise for! But I did manage to mention Cold War Kids who now seem to have disappeared off the planet. Not that I really saw what the fuss was about anyway. I also noted how great Casino Royale was, and while we're on the subject, Science Of Sleep is a pretty great (if a bit bizzare) film too.

January 2007 [archived posts]
The new year brought my predictions for 12 slightly obscure acts with potential crossover success. Of them only Hadouken! and Laura Marling seem to have received any mainstream attention but the likes of Foals and These New Puritans (who signed to Domino not too long ago) could break through.

February 2007 [archived posts]
A lovely email meant I heard my favourite demo of the year so far, from Johnny Foreigner. I also managed to point people to a new Bloc Party track and live versions of tracks from the new Arctic Monkeys record. I still really like 'How To Save A Life' by the way.

March 2007 [archived posts]
March saw me get off my bum (in a sense) and publish my first ever podcast, featuring new singles from Distophia and Help She Can't Swim, great tracks from previously featured artists and a fantastic acoustic rendition of 'Hippy Jam Fest' from This Town Needs Guns. A shaky start recording wise but that didn't spoil a selection of great tracks. A sneak peek at new Manics material and reviews of The Black Ghosts and Polytechnic also made it onto my blog.

April 2007 [archived posts]
Podcast #2 made it out, with Bat For Lashes and This Et Al making appearances as well as a plethora of new acts. A more healthy month post-wise saw me write about The Libertines "re-union", the demise of Ladyfuzz and Action Plan (the latter seem to be returning as Rosa Fears though), Love Ends Disaster! and post about nice covers from Patrick Wolf and Maximo Park. I even put up a couple of fab radio sessions from The Wombats and Mr P-Wo.

May 2007 [archived posts]
So, we come full circle. A hectic exam schedule and having to cover people at work meant the only action May saw was podcast #3, with a more North American vibe to it. But with amazing tracks from Shut Your Eyes & You'll Burst Into Flames, Assembly Now and a dazzling cover of 'Disorder' from iamchemist, British bands hardly suffered.

All in all, a good year. Admittedly, a bit light on actual blogging posts, but with the advent of podcasts, hopefully you'll still get to hear plenty of new/underrated bands from my blog one way or another. Uni and my old computer dying didn't help much blogwise either but if you're reading this now, then thank you very much. It's meant a lot to me that people have been reading and listening to my podcasts and I hope people will continue to do so. And just for persevering to the end of this post, here's a few tracks by artists I featured in my early days of blogging...

Les Incompétents - Reunion
Les Incompétents - Much Too Much
65daysofstatic - Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here
Good Shoes - Ice Age

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