SHOUT-OUT: The Boy Will Drown

PIAR makes the best out of a bad situation...

Sadly, British art metallers/avant-garde hardcore band The Boy Will Drown have called it quits. So there can be no better reason to write a shout-out and drum up some support for whatever project they undertake next!

Check them out for their musicianship, sense of humour, energy and refusal to be pigeon-holed into any genre. For fans of intense music, unique and triumphant.

Sorry to see you guys go!

 http://www.myspace.com/tbwd

(Photo: Bang;photography, taken under creative commons from http://www.flickr.com/photos/laynaaa/5825957842/in/photostream)

SHOUT-OUT: Wolf Gang

Just a quick recommendation for fans of alt-pop...

I suppose you'd call him a baroque-pop artist, and whether he's a solo musician or a band is equally up for debate, but currently on repeat in my mental dukebox is new single "The King and all of his men" by the delightful Wolf Gang. Currently finishing a run of UK dates in support of up-coming debut Suego Faults, PIAR strongly urges you watch out for this one...

Patrick Wolf meets Mika? Catchy noises from the love-child of Owl City and Kate Bush? Panic! at the Disco raised on British Indie? None of this really does justice so feel free to add your own definition after.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZLv36LvRo8

REVIEW: The Naked and Famous - Passive Me, Aggressive You

Not just the wannabe sound of summer...

 A first listen swifty reveals that sound-wise this album is gunning for the synth-pop and general rock crowd. The young band clearly understand the potential of both genres and the overall achievement of the album is in the way it blends these constituent elements. Synth melodies map onto backing guitars, the male voice and the female voice exhange and compliment one another, the backing vocals and percussion ensure catchiness and promote shameless bopping - in PIAR's case anyway.

Hopefully it is just the product of over-listening, but soon the album's obvious singles ("Girls Like You", "Young Blood") begin to sound tired and a little flat. They are self-consciously anthemic and a little pretencious which begins to grate. An album full of filler would easily fall at this hurdle, but the saving grace of Passive Me, Aggressive You is the songs in between the singles. Tracks like "The Sun" and "Jilted Lovers" revel in subtlety rather than pushing for the big choruses and simple song structures. They get into your subconscious, under-the-radar and their lyrics, often delivered in low-key, mantra-like chants are in a strang way haunting.

To conclude, PIAR's experiences of this debut are different from those of most reviewers. Instead of writing this album off as simply "the soundtrack to your summer," PIAR asks that you check it out for the potential hidden in the lesser known tracks. Here the real value of the album, and hopefully the longevity of the young group, can be found and it's here that the album earns its difficult fourth star.

4 unavoidable suns out of 5

Hats off to the BBC for the headline...

PIAR likes headlines, especially this one...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13807494

SHOUT-OUT: The Naked and Famous

Album review coming soon but for now PIAR strongly recommends checking out New-Zealand, synth rockers The Naked and Famous...

They put on a great live show and write catchy tunes, check out the link below... 


The Naked and Famous - Girls like you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHC8vuBU9rg

 

REVIEW: Clipper Tea

Just a really lovely cup of tea.
Nothing else to say really.

5 short reviews of 5












(photo used under creative commons - thanks to nshepheard on flickr)

REVIEW: "Rubber" (2010)

PIAR spends and evening having the mickey taken out of him and still isn't sure how he feels...

Marketed virally as a "so-bad-it's-good", B-movie flick, 2010 film "Rubber", by French director Quentin Dupieux, is far from what the trailer makes it out to be. Instead of a tribute to the genre's revival, brought about by the Rodriguez/Tarantino "Grindhouse" project, it is difficult to say whether "Rubber" is anything at all.

Ostensibly a film about a killer-tyre going on a killing spree in a desert town, "Rubber" both makes fun of and demands its audience's desire to search for meaning. The film opens with main character (if indeed he is a character) Lieutenent Chad giving an ironic speech about the amount of things that happen in life for "no reason." This immediately sets the jokey-tone the film takes towards applying reason and motives to a film about a killer wheel.

As such its difficult to comment at all on the events, characters and themes of "Rubber" without falling into this trap and being part of the joke of the whole movie. Perhaps this is the reason that the film met with such negative reception at Cannes when it was debuted? - movie critics are being made fun of for doing their job and trying to read "Rubber" as a text and they don't like this!

Yet it cannot be ignored that "Rubber" does have something to say on the topic of how we regard and encounter film. Another key block of characters in the film are the "the audience" who are watching the escapades of the tyre from their god-like vantage point. The different personalities within this group stand for different types of film audience. There are the "film nerds" who comment and joke throughout the film, the casual-viewers who get annoyed at these nerd interruptions and then, finally, there is the obsessive fan stalwartly refusing to let the film end until he is embroiled personally in it - (the fate of the genetleman in the wheelchair).

To an extent it is true that the film within the film ( the plot concerning the tyre murders) has no meaning or reason, yet it is untrue that the film proper ("Rubber" as a whole) does have something to say on the themes of film-making and audience perception. Well...either that or PIAR is just another victim of Dupiex...

In conclusion do not watch this if you want an evening of ironic or dumb B-movie schlock. But if you're willing to be challenged or mocked (or both) then there is plenty here to get confused or angry about...

3 strange, bicycle-wielding men out of 5