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Expect a plethora of Fat Cat related reviews in the coming week or so - it seems we’ve taken our eye of the ball a little and during that time several of the blighters have snucked past our defences to cause a fair amount of rarely seen winging and dinging in the losing today potting shed of dreams.
First up though as a means of easing ourselves into the task ahead this rather essential (it has to be said) sampler compilation from Brighton’s finest giving a taste of things to come and things currently around and about with which to drive your hi-fi to states of delirium with.
Nineteen tracks feature within that gathered together and listened to as a whole reveal the depth and multi faceted nature of this very special and most relevant of labels currently to be found on the scene.
Beginning with something old and familiar, Vetiver open the proceedings with the sumptuous ’idle ties’ culled from their ’to find me gone’ from last year which alongside the outstanding debut full length from Our Brother the Native and Welcome would have - if we had bothered to draw up a top 10 list of best albums of 2006 - occupied three of those places. A lolloping gem that imagines Cockney Rebel’s ’Mr Soft’ relocated to the deep set prairie fields of American pop to be rekindled by a moonshine swigging pairing of Pavement and the Summer Hymns. The aforementioned Our Brother the Native on the other hand could in time prove to be the most important find by the Fat Cat dudes since the glacially treated hopelandic chatter of Sigur Ros first peaked from out of their impish igloo which is strange given that the spellbinding ’we are the living’ taken from their forthcoming ’make amends for we are merely vessels’ full length sounds like its tripped straight off the sessions for ’Agaetis Byrjun’. As invigorating a cut as you’ll hear all year, braided with celestial sweeps and lush swathes of ice tipped grandeur there is no other way to describe this that just simply saying it is majestic - I wouldn’t mind but knowing this lot it probably isn’t even the best track on the album. The previously advertised Welcome’s ‘All set’ is a head warping fringe messing psyche boogie of some measure that to these ears sounds like its fallen straight from a Nuggets compilation - think 13th Floor Elevators fused with the fractured pop of Barrett era Floyd deliciously tripped with ‘Doolittle’ era Pixies nuances.
No Age’s ‘weirdo rippers’ has in equal measures puzzled, perplexed and playfully wrapped itself in our affections these last few months, dislocated - sometimes dangerously deranged and yet at other times just plain deranged - fusing elements of an out of it beaten and bruised Ramones as though meeting head on the combined taskforce of the outer fringe battalion of the Elephant 6 Collective - ‘Neck Escaper’ showcased here is a short, sharp shock of fraying and frazzled twisted candy coated west coast fuzz pop with Neutral Milk Hotel overtones. Rank Deluxe if memory serves me right head out from Dartford way, ‘they don’t matter’ - here in its demo form - is a beat bopping buzz sawing skanking punkoid hellhound bastard of a cut. More please. Equally at home at being vicious and visceral, Charlottefield offer up the front loaded assault of ‘firewood’ - a taster culled from their ‘what are friends for’ set - should by rights acutely appeal to fans of the mighty Jesus Lizard et al.
Not to be outdone Songs of Green Pheasant whose shortly to be released full length ‘Gyllyng St’ is much the cause for the occasionally heart flutters in our gaff, is packed to the rafters with fully realised gemstones of miniature explosions of cascading colours, moods and textures that are set to an aching vibrancy’ ‘West Coast Profiling’ featured here lilts and arcs with the arresting grace of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ’Forbidden Colours’ dutifully decorated with pastel shades by Oddfellows Casino to tenderly tingle and illicit a warm fuzzy feeling. Simply beautiful. Amandine’s ‘Secrets’ gorgeous to a tee is so classic era Neil Young in terms of style, texture and delivery that we have to keep having a quick double take to make sure some humorous blighter hasn’t changed the CD over.
‘Go go smear the poison ivy’ is the long awaited follow up to 2004’s ‘Summer make good’ by Icelandic trio Mum, ‘blessed brambles’ from that album still finds these shyest of creatures still crating melodies not of this time, place or indeed planet. Existing in a fabled magical realm somewhere between the folds that separate Bjork - The Knife and Cornelius, ’blessed brambles’ sleepily wakes, yawns, stretches, crackles and fizzes delicately into life to usher enchantment and mystery - a bit like a less overboard and unhinged Animal Collective being teased by d_rradio. Distantly related to Mum or so it would seem, are the beguiling Silje Nes. ’Ames room’ pulled from their as yet untitled debut is a sweetly tangy slice of breathless pop that possesses the delicate charm of the Sundays as though set to lullaby intones and coated with a alluring vintage texture that should appeal to lovers of Shortwave Set. Frightened Rabbit on the other hand imagines a three way collaborative event between Jonathon Richman, Jeffrey Lewis and June Panic labouring together in a studio trying to re-evaluate Dylan and instead stumping up some superbly twisted barnstorming countrificated road blues courtesy of ’the modern leper’. Elsewhere ‘Cup’ finds Crescent unusually playful - okay I’ll give you its still pensive, awkward and frankly quite something else while the Twilight Sad (have we got this album we ask ourselves?) serve up the simply stunning ‘and she would darken the memory’ - think pumping underpins, hazes of lushly layered corteges of paired down and pristinely shimmering dream pop - a la early career House of Love as though finding themselves relocated north of the border and fronted by a DNA crossed front man made up of Ivor Cutler and Rab C Nesbit.
Last up and by no means least - Vashti Bunyan. Reclaimed from oblivion in recent years, her collaboration with Animal Collective a year or two ago is deserving of a place in any well ordered record collection. ‘I’d like to walk around in your mind’ is a wonderfully lulling and effervescently twinkle some gem from the early origins of Brit folk pop - taken from a forthcoming double CD set of rarities and demos recorded pre ‘Just another diamond day’ entitled ‘some things just stick in your mind’ this should be high on any well ordered record shopping list and a perfect companion methinks for the forthcoming double CD set of near lost gems from Karen Dalton via Megaphone.
An invaluable collection.
www.fat-cat.co.uk
Key tracks -
Our brother the native ‘we are the living’
Songs of green pheasant ‘west coast profiling’
Silje nes ‘ames room’
MARK BARTON
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