Tough Love Records

New Website

2010-01-14T18:15:00.001Z

We've relaunched our website which now includes a regularly updated blog.

This site will be disappearing soon.

So go here www.toughloverecords.com and leave your comments.

Small Town America Podcast

2009-11-04T19:05:00.003Z

Small Town America asked us to do a takeover of their regular Public Service Blogcast - find it here.

Public Service Blogcast Episode 57
46 minutes 38 seconds
Recorded 20/10/09
Tracklisting
00.48 Graffiti Island - Headhunters (from Sisters EP - Sister Phunk)
04.25 Japandroids - Wet Hair (from Post-Nothing album - Polyvinyl)
09.38 Tap Tap - Queen Of Hearts (from On My Way album - Stolen Recordings)
14.36 Becoming Real - Let The Right One In
20.50 Gold Panda - Like Totally (from Phatom Channel Presents...Part 2 album)
24.39 Spectrals - Don't Mind
29.37 A Grave With No Name - And We Parted Ways At Mt Jade (from Mountain Debris album – No Pain In Pop)
35.42 The Twilight Sad - I Became A Prostitute (from Forget The Night Ahead album - Fat Cat)
44.08 Fair Ohs - Almost Island (from Sex Is Disgusting split vinyl)

Our own podcasts will be making a return soon enough - watch this space - - - - - >

William @ White Heat with Japandroids

2009-10-09T17:04:00.000+01:00

Sick http://www.wegottickets.com/event/56648.

Male Bonding Single Launch In Pictures

2009-09-16T21:51:00.006+01:00

As the post below indicates, Saturday was the day we officially celebrated the release of the Male Bonding/Eat Skull 7". I'd be lying if i said i was surprised by how many people turned up - i knew it would be busy. Below are some choice shots of the night, taken from a variety of disposable cameras we passed around and then some from Sean Carpenter of Disposable Youth - a good man.

This is what fun looks like in Dalston.

Ryan Tough Love looking like Ryan Tough Love.

Before it went a bit messy.

Capitalism.

Matt Favours for Sailors in the middle of singing "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy (not really).

Kevin Male Bonding and Wesley Let's Wrestle sharing a moment*

This crowd nearly broke sound, which would've sucked, but their intentions were pure.*

Male Bonding and Wesley. I have no idea what was happening here, as I couldn't see a thing*

This girl was intense.*

And she did not rest...

* All Sean's work - more here

Male Bonding/Eat Skull Single Launch

2009-09-03T13:29:00.005+01:00

Saturday 12th September @ The Stags Head, 55 Orsman Rd, Dalston

We've hooked up with MB's own label Paradise Vendors Inc to host a launch party to mark the release of the above mentioned Male Bonding and Eat Skull 7". Because Eat Skull live in Portland, sadly they're not able to make the trip, but there will be other great bands and even a comedian compere. It's even free! Just read this:

Male Bonding -http://www.myspace.com/malebonding
Cold Pumas -http://www.myspace.com/coldpumas
Veronica Falls - http://www.myspace.com/veronicafallshard

Compere:

BJ Rubin -http://www.pukeos.org/

DJs:

Graffiti Island/Italian Beach Babes

Sexbeat Tough Love
8:30 - late

FREE entry

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117009736228&ref=ss

Don't Go Home With Your Hard On

2009-09-03T13:25:00.002+01:00

Sunday 13th September @ Old Blue Last, Shoreditch

First night at the Old Blue Last since the epic all day 4th birthday celebrations in July. It's also the day after the Male Bonding single launch. It's going to be an intense weekend. Details:

Not Cool -http://www.myspace.com/notcoolisaband
Bloody Knees -http://www.myspace.com/kneesbloodyknees
Pipes -http://www.myspace.com/pipestheband

Tough Love DJs8:30pm-12:30am

FREE entry
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148448560855&ref=ts

William on XFM

2009-09-03T13:21:00.001+01:00

Wiliam recently recorded thier second session for John Kennedy's Xposure show on XFM. Listen to a track tonight on the show from 10pm.

William at New Slang

2009-08-14T16:14:00.021+01:00

William played New Slang at McClusky's in Kingston last night. I went along.

It took me a long time to get there on the train. The guard tried to fine me as my travelcard didn't cover the journey. I managed to negotiate my way out of it because I'm very good at playing dumb.

I helped William load-in. The venue is massive. A cold sterile nightclub (when empty) with ostentatious furnishings. Banquet records who put on the night were lovely throughout. They had about 20 staff working and were always keen to help out.

They put on a lovely rider and were very apologetic for the initial poor turn out, which was unnecessary as the place soon filled up.

William played;

Youngun
Thomowski
Zhero
Aperture
South of the Border
Midi
DS1

I think it was in that order. They were so good they made boys kiss each other in the front row. God knows what was happening in the back row.

The next band on were Hatcham Social who I had to miss so that I got home at a resonable hour for a school night. Which is a shame because they sounded like they'd be fun when they were soundchecking.

Upcoming William Gigs

2009-08-07T10:16:00.006+01:00

William are playing some gigs soon. I thought some of you might like to know.

10 Aug 2009 @ The Old Blue Last w/Tubelord Shoreditch, London

13 Aug 2009 @ New Slang @ McCluskys w/Hatcham Social, Kingston

27 Oct 2009 @ MADAME JOJO’S (WHITE HEAT) w/Japandroids Soho, London

It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To

2009-07-30T15:13:00.011+01:00

Last Saturday was the Tough Love birthday party. We were 4 years old. I don't need to say this all again. It's all written below. i wrote about the day for another website, but unfortunately the article got pulled because of the credit crunch, global warming and pig flu. There wasn't really much they could do. Circumstance is a bitch. But because the internet is the land of opportunity, I'm able to self-publish like a true radicalist. Just don't call me a crusty, OK! Photos come courtesy of the gregarious Kevin O'Neill (that's those with the flare set to HIGH) and equally lovely Naomi Goggin (that's those with Favours for Sailors looking handsome and the crowd getting wild. More here). Thanks, y'll.

"This weekend the label celebrated it’s fourth birthday with an all day party at the Old Blue Last. Seven bands, loads of DJs and a fanzine swap workshop. Sounds great, right? Well yeah, but also no. Thanks to the New Plague, we lost a band, a DJ and a photographer to illness before the day had even started. Pig Flu is closing in. We are all doomed. But thankfully, I managed to weather the storm by drinking an intense chocolate milkshake and crushing anxiety with a mile high sugar rush that was better than drugs. My head was in the clouds, even if I was nervous everything was going to go tits up. And then the bands started and it got really busy. Ridiculously busy. Because there’s no money in running an independent label, you have to do it for love (and the girls too, which is a different kind of love). But this was definitely hard work, more like when I spent a summer digging holes for a man obsessed with bikes than rock and roll glamour.

We worked the door for eight hours solid, as well as sorting out lost equipment and band rider demands. This was all done sober too, because have you ever tried counting money when drunk? You have to tattoo numbers on your arms every three seconds because memory and alcohol are not conducive and your life slowly turns into the film Momento. But fortunately, there was some cash to count. The night sold out (obviously amazing), but this then meant turning away hot Italian girls who aren’t used to being told no. The kind of girls I struggle to say no to; anyone would struggle to say no to. It felt like a moral dilemma, although according the bouncers at the venue, there’s no such thing as morals when there’s a low cut top and a suggestive look involved. I was stronger.

Just as it looked as if we might coast to victory, there were four power cuts that lasted for a total of two hours. The room was plunged into accusing silence and darkness, and for two brief minutes I considered turning the night into a murder mystery and killing myself. With the venue curfew closing in, we were faced with the very real proposition of having to refund everyone’s money. My little heart was fluttering like a hummingbird having a panic attack, especially as I’d already paid half the bands. Then suddenly, as if by magic (or what they now call ‘electricity’), power was restored. Favours for Sailors took to the stage to play their last ever gig, replete with overenthusiastic man-child crowd surfing, stage invasions and witty asides. Finishing with their Ramones aping anthem “C U Next Tuesday”, they stepped from the oily stage leaving us with the final words “that proves conclusively that there is no such thing as free will”. It was an emotional moment, and I was holding back the tears as I was accosted by appreciative drunken men and 18 year-old-girls reveling in the glory of the night. The girls certainly helped.

Running a record label is bloody hard work. It’s also the best thing in the world."

TLV 032 - Favours for Sailors

2009-07-24T10:50:00.003+01:00

So we asked Favours to come up with the 100 individual titles for TLV 032. We whittled their profanity and depravity down to this final selection:

you've been framed by Allah
in the drink
for brine is the glory
the deaf sea
why the why not?
what why?
waifs beneath the waves
worst and foremost
laxative scene
the rum diaries
3/4 midlands
20,000 leagues above you head
the problems will find you
one hundred beers of solitude
nothing to output
backwards insight
be gone foul band
guilty of doing nothing
more animal than beast
we never tried to not try
no thrills
b-ee-r moth
pervert from now on (since you're gone)
the coastguard always knocks twice
fucking innuendo
the paramol of animals
cooking with valium
pervert's vision
googling mirror never lies
How to get fat and effluence people
My first time in Kettering
Lunchtime special
Spurious Fun
Fuck black bears we are the crystal wolves
There is a dead person in your bed
Ghouls Fold
3 Bears in a bag
The Pigs! Live in your Garden!
Je suis le Queen
FFS play William's greatest hits
Honey corpse
terrible becomes bearable
culture went north
give it up for martin jackson
infinite hiatus
for sex call 999
does this hearse have a hot tub?
loving you is easy cos you're easy
Nice church Jesus
Maltese Supremacy
Merchant of Penis
Stupid Cat.
I can't find the light switch
Blood Worms
Whats the difference between David Cameron...
Armoured Cocoon
Hey Lou Reed!
Iron Fisht
Ironed Curtain
A tomb with a view
Face in the Fridge
Peter's Cooked
ABCDIE!
Never met a prick that likes Pavement
Verlaine and Pollard - Rock Detectives
Je Suis Timidé et mal de Téte
Liar Hydrant
Punch me in the face
Please kill me
I'm already dead
Billillillillmurray
Fouls
Live Animals!
Brothers in Harms
For Fucks Sake
Come Die With Me
Brothers in Arms
Art of Trance
Nautical by Nature
That Fatwah isn't Funny Anymore
The Abysmal
Allah or Nothing
Gash Diet
The Label Said: "Be Creative"
Avant Jazz
Generic Statement
Dead at the Fly, Oxford St
Past Drunk
It's too late to apologise, sorry
Dudley Whore
Tourettes De France
Schoolboy Error
Shoolgirl Error
Dad!Dad!Dad!
Clean One For My Mum
This is it
Who's the Nanny?
Pig Seeks Garden
Major Label Debut
Free Phil Spector

These tapes are selling really well and we expect that they will sell out on Saturday so order one from the shop now.

2009-07-21T00:14:00.004+01:00

TLV 032 - Favours for Sailors - Demos

As previously mentioned, Favours for Sailors have sadly decided to go their separate ways, playing their final show at our 4th birthday party this coming Saturday at the Old Blue Last, London. This means that we’ll never have the chance to release their debut album proper. However, we are able to do the next best thing. The band were a productive lot and managed to record a number of demos that never saw the light of day. Given the quality of the song writing, we thought it a good idea to right this wrong. So, we’ve collected together a selection of 13 of the best recordings on a cassette tape. It reminds me of the first Silver Jews album; all ramshackle charm and pearly wisdom. If you loved the band, you might struggle to make it through “Night Alone” without shedding a little tear or two.

It’s a strictly limited release, with only 100 copies made. It’s just £3 and each tape will come with it’s own individual title. We’ll also send you a link to download the songs from our website. Here’s the tracklisting:

Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. “Down In The Panty Mine”
2. “Bad Dad”
3. “Brokeback Futon”
4. “Rod Stewart“
5. “Have A Drink You Fucking Idiot”
6. “Shy Times/I Would Rather Go Blind”

Side B:
1. “Connoisseur of Sunsets”
2. “Capua!“
3. “Hanging From The Christmas Tree”
4. “Last Chance”
5. “Die or Get Rich Trying”
6. “Showers of Prowess”
7. “Night Alone”

Sample track "Capua!" available for download here http://bit.ly/BbYk6. The tape can be purchased from the shop.

We are 4

2009-07-13T22:10:00.002+01:00

Tough Love Records 4th Birthday Party
Saturday 25th July @ the Old Blue Last, London

Four years ago we started this messy thing. Seems like something worth celebrating to us. The 25th July also marks one year of Tough Love in London, since it was at the end of last year's celebrations in Coventry that we packed our bags and headed Dick Whittington-like to the capital. Living in Wood Green, I can report that the streets are actually paved with dog mess, not gold. Crushing realisation. That aside, it's been amazing. Come help us celebrate with our all day event at the Old Blue Last, London.

In one respect, it will be a bittersweet affair, as it'll also be the final ever Favours for Sailors gig. News stories have already started cropping up on various websites about the band splitting. I think the general reaction has been one of shock. The four nautical bad boys have decided to part ways as they are 'unsure of how to keep the indie rock dynamic interesting and fresh in our current incarnation'. Seems fair reasoning. So, they're going out with a bang at our birthday - it's my party and i'll cry if i want to (i'll want to). Excitingly, there will be special Favours for Sailors goodies available on the night (hint: new music). There will not be any open caskets, although there's likely to be some dead media and Jon may throw his brain into the crowd...

It's not just about Favours for Sailors though, as we've lined up a whole host of bands to help celebrate the momentous day.

Favours for Sailors - www.myspace.com/favours4sailors
William - www.myspace.com/williamtheband
Munch Munch - www.myspace.com/munch
Gold Panda - www.myspace.com/goldpanda
The Bridge Gang - www.myspace.com/thebridgegang
Young British Artists - www.myspace.com/youngbritishartists
Young Athletes League - www.myspace.com/youngathletesleague

No Pain in Pop DJ's, Tough Love DJ's and More Guest DJ's TBC.
Downstairs will be a special Zineswap workshop

Doors open at 1600 till late.

Advanced tickets are available for £5 from www.wegottickets.com/event/52831 Be warned, these will sell out. We will keep a reserve of tickets on the door, but recommend you get there early if you want to guarantee getting in.

(Post)Modern Life Is Rubbish

2009-07-06T14:49:00.002+01:00

I went to see Blur on Friday. I did it to make me feel better about that awful news posted below. It did make me feel better, even if just for a few hours. Because i now have a job writing for Platform, I also reviewed the gig. Well, it's a review of sorts. Platform have had to edit it slightly, because i do not understand the notion of word counts and because my big mouth also translates to the page. But copied in below is my full, unedited review.

"In a brazen and frankly unnecessary attempt to win over the crowd, tonight Damon Albarn jokes about this show being the first to go on sale, cannily implying that those present are the real Blur fans. But he’s not talking to me. I don’t deserve that. I waited until an entire twenty-four hours before the start of the show to arrange a reduced-price ticket. I’m such a tourist. I can’t even decide on my favourite Blur album.

But as if to spite my flagrancy, things don’t go quite to plan and I almost get bitten hard on my tight arse. By the time I arrive at Hyde Park, my friend with the spare ticket is already inside the arena and I spend the next hour and a half getting both her answer phone and increasingly, childishly anxious. There’s a mobile phone black spot playing havoc with my heart and threatening to crush the realisation of a long held teenage dream. As cultural imperialists Vampire Weekend take to the stage, I decide to panic-buy a ticket from a couple who’ve been lucky enough to win backstage passes. Hate them. Just as we complete the transaction, my phone begins to ring. Great timing. It must be a tout conspiracy. I accelerate from zero to one-too-many tickets faster than an LA ambulance with a dead popstar inside. But at least I’m guaranteed to get in now.

As I make my way to the bar, I embarrassingly realise the hole in my cut-offs thinks it’s a charity and has decided to donate all of my money to the grass; a grass that’s populated by such a high proportion of twats I start to think I may have bought a ticket for an Oasis concert instead. Fantastic. Showers of Tuborg bottles filled with piss fly through the crowd, hitting boring people in their fat faces. This makes me feel a little better. All it needs to do now is start raining.

But it doesn’t. The sky stays so blue its like it was drawn in to evoke the sense of hope of the New Labour 90s boom Blur are inexorably tied to. Because, as relevant as Blur have remained, tonight is all about the past. It’s a nostalgia trip which Blur embrace unashamedly, airing a selection of songs from each one of their seven albums. For the most part, time has been incredibly kind to their back catalogue (although “She’s So High” still sounds like the first song they ever wrote) and, in particular, Alex James. The more bourgeois he becomes, the better he looks. I have a man crush. If that’s what a champagne addiction does for you, then hook some Moet to my veins now. Sadly, the same can’t be said for poor Dave Rowntree, the torment of time emphasised by a devious camera man who decides to provide a big screen close up of his overflowing mid-rift and animated jowls at exactly the point Damon utters the fateful “all the seams are splitting ” line from “Tracey Jacks”. It can’t be a coincidence and it’s not the only time that this words ring eerily true tonight.

We all know we’re going to die of something this summer (thanks, The Media), but if it’s to be soundtracked by “This Is A Low”, then it’ll be a beautiful final communal sunset, even when the mass sing-a-long sounds like aural pig flu. It’s an anthem for Broken Britain, sung along to by all the people that keep breaking it. It’s like all the characters Damon has created in his lyrics are standing there in the crowd screaming back at him, like a musical “Lunar Park”. Thank God he didn’t create Patrick Bateman. Nevertheless, I could quite easily go the rest of my life without ever again hearing some fat HMV indie dad with sunburn and an over designed River Island T shirt bellow along to “Tender” like he’s never heard music before. It’s like drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa, but less funny and with more BO. It’s Ernold Same’s one gig of the year. But it must be a beautiful moment for the band. Damon in particular appears visibly moved by the reception they receive, although he’s manned up a little after going Gwyneth Paltrow at Glastonbury. It probably also makes him feel better to know that he’s not the only one here who can’t sing very well and he certainly looks only slightly less trampy than his fans.

But, as populist as Blur are, this isn’t an Oasis gig. The crowd might be mainly 18-to-over-30-and-off-their-fuckin-heads, but at least what they’re here for is much more intelligent than gigs this size generally are. They close with what’s probably the best final encore ever in “For Tomorrow” and “The Universal”. Those songs still hit hard, perhaps harder than ever before. It’s almost as if they were always written for this moment. As if they’d consciously written their own history from the start.
Strategically wading through a carpet of plastic bottles as we leave, the chorus to that final song is looping in my head and all I can think is “fuck, they’re the band The Beatles could’ve been”. Ask me what my favourite Blur album is now. I’d have to say The Best of Blur. That’s what it was tonight."

And sorry for the terrible title for the post. If only i was as clever as i thought i was.

A Message from Favours for Sailors

2009-07-06T13:58:00.006+01:00

Dear FFS fans,

Sad news: our ship has been boarded by pirates, who have executed the crow's nest and made the starboard walk the plank. The rumours are true – FAVOURS FOR SAILORS HAVE DECIDED TO CALL IT A DAY.

However, we have ONE MORE GIG, at Tough Love's fourth birthday party, 25 July, at the Old Blue Last in Shoreditch. More details here http://www.wegottickets.com/event/52831.

We'd like to thank everyone who bought our music, or ever came to a gig, especially those who came to several, and particularly to those who seemed to come to every show. Sorry if we were ever shambolic (but you didn't notice, right?).

Special thanks also to Tough Love for releasing and promoting our mini-album Furious Sons, to Sally for designing the album artwork and to Rory for doing such a good job recording it.Here's an anodyne statement for a press release: 'We're unsure of how to keep the indie rock dynamic interesting and fresh in our current incarnation'.

We will be posting a load of unreleased songs as soon as we can decide which ones won't land us with a string of libel cases.

FFS x

The Furious Sons EP is available from http://www.toughloverecords.bigcartel.com/

Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On June

2009-06-10T16:34:00.005+01:00

Sunday 11th June @ Old Blue Last, London

After a break in May because of ATPs and Primavera and holidays andheatwaves, we're back once again like the renegade master. This monthis a purposeful reflection of the unfeasibly awesome weather we'vebeen using as an excuse to not do any work - i.e. sounds like summer (I wrote this before it started pissing it down like a Hidden Cameras song).

The details:

Sunny Day Sets Fire
www.myspace.com/officialsunnydaysetsfire
Elephant 6 style indie pop that the NME are convinced is made by wizards.

A Classic Education
www.myspace.com/aclassiceducation
Orchestral and grand and swirling, this is epic indie, in the vein of Arcade Fire, The National and Fanfarlo. Not bad associations, them.

Empty Set
www.myspace.com/emptysetpop
Tom's final gig before he moves to Sweden to be a real full blown actual scientist (rather than just singing about being one).

Tough Love DJs, 8:30pm-12:30am and FREE entry

Situationists (2005-2009) R.I.P

2009-05-31T13:37:00.004+01:00

I never wanted to write this. I don’t suppose there are many obituaries that do want to be written. So young and still so far to go! But yes, sadly Situationists have decided to go their separate ways, playing their final gig at The Harley in Sheffield last Thursday. Perhaps this should be seen as a posthumous love letter rather than an obit though, because we’ve definitely loved this band as hard as any other over the last four years, big or small, famous or otherwise. There’s slightly embarrassing LastFM stats to prove it, if proof is what you need.

But, as upset as we are, maybe this was the way it was always meant to be. There has always been an air of melancholy piercing through even their most sprightly pop songs. Listening through their back catalogue now, it’s as if they were consciously foretelling their own demise, writing their own ending from the start - “What will we do when our luck runs out?” (“Onwards and Upwards”), “These plans are flawed” (“Somersaults”), “Please don’t put your faith in this fortune that can’t last forever” (“Comprende!”), “This is torturous, but so satisfying when it’s over” (“Bag of Nerves”). So young and yet so full of heartache! Like all the best bands, they had a startling ability to balance the romance of youth with a subtle, keening sadness. Those things always go together well, because they’re true. Just don’t call it emo, OK?! And don’t forget all of those interlocking guitars, like lines on a map spiralling off into infinity, meaning just one thing: possibility. Up and down that motorway, in that practice room, up on that festival stage, to millions on Channel 4, anything was possible.

And so it's because of this that we're deeply saddened by the fact we never got a chance to release a full-blown Situationists album. Never had a chance at presenting them to the wider world on a grander scale. Their songs deserved that platform, but more importantly, as both musicians and people, they deserved it too. But we - because we did all of this together, always - can be proud of what we did achieve: two beautifully packaged EPs of indiepop gold, two free download singles, a Japanese album and too many life-affirming gigs to recall in their entirety. And fortunately, if there’s any silver lining at all, there’s one final fanfare, one triumphant swansong that undoubtedly proves they were taken in their prime.

Recorded and produced by Nick (what a talent!) in the first few months of 2009 at their own studio, Grazie Infinite completes the triptych of EPs we had planned from the start. Unfortunately, this record won't be seeing a physical release, so we've decided to "do a Radiohead" and offer a option. Put simply, if you choose to, you can download the four-track EP for free from our main site. Alternatively, if you deem it worthy, you can also contribute a small payment by clicking on the designated button.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy the new songs and it would be fitting to send the band away with a little money for all their efforts. The artwork was once again designed by Ralph, who’s forging a real talent for design - get in contact with him through the band’s MySpace if you’d like him to do some work for you (please don't give up playing drums though, Ralph!)

Tracklisting:

Calluses
Old Silent Movie
Bag of Nerves
Somersaults

So, that’s that. Thanks Dan, Nick, Ralph and Sam (and Andy) for being awesome. It was only ever the best of times all of the time. Ah, bittersweet emotion! Please start making music again, thank you! The final words are yours, boys, because you already said it better than I ever could: “windows down, spirits up, pollen surging through my blood, streaming tears from swollen eyes, but we’re all smiles”.

All Tomorrow's Hangovers (At Once And In Quick Succession)

2009-05-15T15:06:00.003+01:00

We’re sitting in the chalet our friends won at the pub quiz at last December’s Nightmare Before Christmas and revelling in the indie kudos. Amongst the typical ATP fare of episodes of The Day Today and people using beer boxes to create robot masks, talk turns to Neil Young’s ill-fated 1982 album Trans. Having not heard it before, someone slips the CD into the chalet’s DVD player and enlightens me. It transpires that Neil Young had heard DEVO and thought it a good idea to pretend to be them, singing about Computer Cowboys and Transformer Men through a vocoder. It’s a unique, if unfathomable experience. Looking at the absurd, anachronistic album cover, featuring two cars from different eras passing each other in a Tron-style haze, someone else notes that it’s “half future, half past”. It’s a perfect ATP moment and as good a description for the uninitiated as to what happens on that Minehead beachfront thrice yearly as can be expected.

Alongside the cheap plastic paraphernalia that adorns the numerous shops scattered across the Butlin’s site and torturous drinking sessions that turn that same site into a mess of ruined bodies, ATP is fundamentally about one thing: new experiences. With the growing success of their canonising Don’t Look Back series and consistent attempt to bring young, interesting acts to these shores, ATP is effectively the front cover of Trans incarnate. Such a claim should come as no surprise, given that the festival takes its name from a song by arguably histories most retroactively canonised band. With a line up half chosen by ATP, half selected by the attending paying customers, the list of acts reveals the fans are as aware of the festival’s purpose as the organisers themselves, even if there was a poorly judged effort to have a fortunately unavailable MGMT play. Democracy: know your place.

As an initial point, it’s maybe worth noting that as good as ATP is, it’s not an unmitigated success, although admittedly, failures are to be expected when you fly so close to the sun. Spiritualized may divide the stage with their white/black, heaven/hell style clothing, but not my opinion. They’re sounding increasingly staid and dated now. Whereas once it was transcendent, now all J. Spaceman’s rocket ship can do is take us all the way back to 1997. With access to a rocket ship, you’d think he’d prefer to go somewhere more interesting. There are other notable embarrassments too. Powerful and sharp on past records, live, !!! are an amorphous mess of jam band mentality and Factory Records cut offs, coming off like James’ Tim Booth fronting a bad (read: even worse) Flowered Up. So cringe worthy and deluded is frontman Nic Offer’s faux-shamanic shtick, that his desire to assert his ‘funkiness’ and bad Dad dancing serves only to convince that he may be made entirely from hemp and self-satisfaction. The Big Chill beckons.

But for all said bands’ poor appropriation of former glories, there are several others on hand to remind just how deep the well for great alternative music runs. While The Jesus Lizard and DEVO are primal and joyful in equal measure, it’s the intensity of a reformed Sleep that truly shakes Butlins to its plastic core.

A stoner rock band from the early nineties, infamous for blowing their shot at commercial success by signing to London Records then subsequently delivering a 60 minute album containing just one song, Sleep play the entirety of 1992’s Holy Mountain, in what is my first encountering of the band and their first show since splitting at the end of the century. For those, unlike myself, cool enough to recall them first time around, it’s a long awaited reformation and is met with a sea of requisite devil horns and fan worship intensity.

Quite simply, Sleep are the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. The stage is kitted from floor to ceiling with amps, constructed from a backline rented from Thin Lizzy, no less. This is stadium equipment transposed to a holiday resort bingo hall and the result is heavy, dense and at times, uncomfortably physical. As the deep end of the bass and constant squall of the guitars spiral off into the ether, the air in the room becomes so thick you can almost climb it. It’s like a ladder of sound and dope smoke.

Playing for what seems like an eternity, the encore lasts almost as long as the set itself. But it doesn’t diminish the moment. Their impact remains intensely overwhelming; their relatively uncelebrated place in history a mystery. With the room so busy, TV screens monitor the action to provide those seeking sanctuary from the noise at the back a better view. It feels like an alternative Live Aid, with one notable difference. Instead of asserting sanctimonious guilt trip rhetoric, it’s the monolithic nature of the music that the world has no choice but to be moved by, even if it was only my world. But in this century of self, it’s seems a fitting moment.

So, if Sleep are the sound of yesterday reanimated today, then it’s to Grizzly Bear, Fuck Buttons and, most strikingly, HEALTH that we catch a glimpse of the future. All three bands air new material from highly anticipated follow-up records and on this weekend’s showing, the latter half of 2009 will bear witness to some important albums.

The multi-part, reverb-heavy harmonies of Grizzly Bear lull and charm like a Coney Island fairground waltz, while Fuck Buttons continue to push their take on noise to increasingly epic, euphoric levels. But HEALTH, playing only the fourth slot of the festival, set the benchmark.

Whereas their first album was a metallic cacophony of primal percussion, the new songs are more expansive and accessible. On new single “Die Slow” for example, they embrace both the softness of the incongruently melodic vocals and the ‘disco’ element channelled on their highly successful remix album to arresting effect. While HEALTH don’t so much care for song structure in any traditional sense, much like Sleep, it’s their sound, and the recreation of it live, that truly resonates. Texture is integral, and with a bass that sounds like a wounded robot dinosaur and a relentless set list with few pauses, either for the crowd or themselves, it’s an immersive experience. HEALTH may be tied to the parochial cool of L.A.’s Smell scene, but with performances and material like this, they’ll easily transcend any such associations.

With its increasingly London-trendy crowd, ATP is admittedly zeitgeist friendly and slowly developing into its own hipster institution. While fashion may be transient and capricious by nature, with such careful consideration of the past and inquisitive embracing of the future, it still remains the most innovative of UK festivals (Supersonic included). Now all we can hope for is Neil Young and Trans next year. Don’t Look Back To The Future, anyone?

Old friends, new records

2009-05-09T11:36:00.008+01:00

For you avid Tough Love followers, both of you, you’ll be familiar with the names Calories and Youves. It would probably help if I said that Youves were up until not too long ago called Mirror! Mirror!. Well, dear reader, I mention both bands in a recommendation for you to purchase their latest releases.

Calories debut album Adventuring (Small Town America) has been on the Tough Love stereo continually since we received an advance copy a while back. I was intending to review the album but I realised that I’m not very good at that. And Tom, Pete and John would get all embarrassed by the gushing praise anyway. It’s a plain and simple recommendation to go buy it (from here) and catch them live on one of their many, many tour dates.

Similarly, those Nuneaton based rapscallions Youves have blown us away with Cardiovascular (Holy Roar). Building on the promise they showed with the release we put out, Cardiovascular is a 7-song call to arms of pulsating energy. With song titles like Fully Erect Serve and Protect, Bigorexic, Another Djemba Djemba and My High Horse is a Penny Farthing and THAT artwork you wont be disappointed. Buy it here or catch them at one of the venues listed on their myspace.

There’s no Don’t go Home this month because of ATP, ATP and ATP. We will be back on 14th June with Sunny Day Sets Fire, A Classic Education and The Empty Set. The July gig (25th) will mark our fourth birthday (we’re getting on a bit) and a very special line up is being put together and it’ll knock your moccasins off.

And one more thing, wtf, seriously wtf.

Last night I had a dream about you

2009-05-08T11:13:00.004+01:00

Situationists - TLV 029 - Digital Love/Whisky and Water (aspx remix)

Available on the Tough Love Selecter now

As some of you may know, Situationists have decided to go their separate ways, playing their final show in Sheffield at the Harley on Thursday (14th). It's a bitter disappointment that we never had the chance to release an album by the band. However, there's some consolation in that they've recorded several new songs, which will see the light of day very soon.

In the meantime, we're giving away a free download from our site which features a newly recorded version of their cover of Daft Punk's "Digital Love" and an INCREDIBLE remix of perhaps their best song "Whiskey & Water" by The Aspirins For My Children.

To access the songs, just follow the simple steps below

1. Go to http://www.toughloverecords.com/

2. Click on the Selecter tab

3. Enter the code 'thissongisfrench'

4. Download

Slightly Delighted EP Launch Party

The aforementioned Situationists played at the Slightly Delighted EP launch of label mates William last Friday (1st May). Favours for Sailors completed the line up and our friend Gary Keenan has captured the rock posturing here http://www.cut-out-and-keep.com/.

In other news, you can download the lead track from William's new mini album from This Is Fake DIY:
http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/downloads/william-younguns

Buy the mini album here: http://www.toughloverecords.bigcartel.com/

Don't Go Home With Your Hard On @ Old Blue Last, London

2009-04-08T00:46:00.005+01:00

It's that time of the month again that changes every month. Keeping you on your toes like kissing a tall girl.

Artefacts For Space Travel
- http://www.myspace.com/artefactsforspacetravel
Signed to Stolen (the home of Pete and the Pirates and Let's Wrestle), they're a little noisy, a little psyche. And more than a little good.

The Bridge Gang
- http://www.myspace.com/thebridgegang
Don't call it a comeback, although that's what it is. Formerly signed to Brille, The Bridge Gang foolishly split after releasing three impeccable powerpop singles. They've since come to their senses and reformed, with this they're first gig back!

Honeytrap
- http://www.myspace.com/honeytraponmyspace
They need no introduction, but what does need saying is that their new recordings are by far the best things they've ever done. And equally exciting is that they now feature the best human ever on drums.

Sunday 19th April
Entry: FREE
Doors: 8:30pm - 12:30am
Tough Love DJs

2009-02-19T18:06:00.004Z

At the last Don't Go Home... Ryan joked (or was he being serious? So hard to tell) that in putting on both PENS and Teeth!!! we were doubling the 'quota' of women who have played Tough Love nights over the last 4(!) years. While that's not entirely accurate - maybe we pushed it into double figures? - it's true that we do unconsciously lean towards 'male' bands. I don't know why. It's a criticism that's been leveled at us in the past. But I don't see music that way, in those kind of gendered categories and I think it would be a little disingenuous to release a record made by women just for the sake of it, just as much as we'd steer clear of the tokenism in releasing a record by black musicians just so we could, y'know, 'balance things out'.

While Tough Love is mainly a distillation of two people's music taste, it doesn't completely reflect what we listen to, as I hope the recent Podcasts have made clear. This last week I've fallen head-over-heels for the new Marissa Nadler song - "River of Dirt" - that's been floating around on the more on-point blogs these last few months. Marissa Nadler is a woman. That is true. I can't deny it. And I still like it. Maybe I'm not a misogynist then? Or maybe in pointing that out, that's exactly what I become? Either way it's a pointless discussion, because what I like best about this song has nothing to do with her sex.

There are of course qualities to "River of Dirt" that may be traditionally interpreted as feminine - her beautifully tender, yearning vocals, the soft, flowing sweep of the subtle production - but in almost all European languages the word 'music' is gendered feminine, so make of that what you will. Which incidentally should be that it's all construction anyway.

The beauty of this song for me lies in the narrative, made opaque by imagery drawn from nature and an undefined recent past. It evokes a love taken for granted now diminished, existent only in faded rose-tinted memories. The moment at 2:16 when she sings "Take me back to the place of the golden slumbers, where I was happy and you were my middle name" has me welling up a little. A moment of ineffable joiussance if there ever was.

In terms of subject, it's familiar territory for sure. It's a story told many times before. Cynics may ask does the world really need another lovelorn break-up song? The answer to that question is, of course, a resounding yes. Heartbreak is as old as humanity, and so long as there are new hearts experiencing it, we're going to need new ways to hear it articulated and Nadler beautifully navigates the subject. We may all be "so painfully alone", but we're alone together and it's in songs like this you can revel in that self-indulgence. I think that's the point anyway. The comfort in being sad and all that.

I think this might well be the most emo post ever, on any blog anywhere. But y'know, tis a beautiful song and if your heart doesn't break a little when you hear it, you might want to check you have one, or at least start using the one you have got.

Download
Marissa Nadler - "River of Dirt"

Don't Go Home With Your Hard On 3 In Photos

2009-02-19T18:05:00.009Z

These have taken a few days (erm, weeks!) to post, but thanks to all that came down and made it such an amazingly fun night. The dancing at the end to "Breed" was as exciting as it was unexpected. Wow, looks like Nirvana are still pretty popular. On top of all the funtimes, it also looks as if something even more positive may have come of the night (hint: it's to do with a future TLV release). Can't reveal details just yet, but we are up high on bat wings about. Yeah, that good.

Credit to Kristian for all the beautiful photos (they'll also be appearing in Vice soon, if not already!).

Urgh, Shoreditch

Teeth!!!

Phone Home

Male Bonding

There can never be enough male bonding

Most aptly monikered band to play the night yet?

PENS

They actually did not stop smiling. I wouldn't either.

Podcast No. 5 - The Podcast About Nothing

2009-02-14T09:59:00.006Z

Recent activity has been pretty thin and few. I offer no apologies. We have lives away from the Internet. I know it's a struggle to consider that possibility. We shall not be tyrannised by technology. But despite this, we have recorded another Podcast. It's our fifth. Seems hard to believe someone hasn't stopped us. Of course Im biased, but this could well be our best, musically at least. I don't know how to measure the quality of our input, but I do love these songs. And anything that contains both Silver Jews and Talking Heads was always going to set my heart on fire.

In other news, I've just finished interviewing Bill Callahan (he of Smog) for a feature in Bearded magazine. When the magazine is published, I'll post the interview here. But really, you should buy the magazine. It's a beautiful thing to own.

And in further news beyond that, Favours for Sailors are slowly becoming the biggest band in the world. Even bigger than The Bravery and Pull Tiger Tail. But not as big as MGMT. That's impossible. But yeah, Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq have been all over them this past week. It was euphoric. It was vindication. It's only the start.

Tracklisting:

1. PENS - "Networking"

2. Wale - "The Kramer"

3. Silver Jews -"Trains Across The Sea"

4. Apollo Ghosts - "Dobermans"

5. Palace Music - "New Partner"

6. Talking Heads - "Uh Oh, Love Has Come To Town"

7. Kotki Dwa - "Nearly Go"

Don't Go Home With Your Hard On 3

2009-01-27T10:00:00.006Z

After taking a rest in January, we're back, like Paul Newman in The Colour of Money. Yeah, that good. "What you got in there?" "Doom" Well, not quite but something equally big and messy. So, here it is:

Tough Love presents...
Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On 3 @Old Blue Last, London

PENS
- messy and bratty and a little bit naughty too. Times New Viking with more references to penises and just a little less EQ, if you like. Can you get behind that?
Male Bonding
- "The sound of homosexual panic" but with more of a hangover and less bothered. Guest on the other side of a 7" released with PENS. Incestuous. Can you get behind that?
Teeth!!!
- like Crystal Castles if they didn't have black holes for eyes - i.e. with a SOUL! Just back from The Smell in LA. I can get behind that.

8:30pm-12:30am
FREE entry
Art School Scum DJs
Born on the Floor DJs

Here's the Facebook event, if you're into to multiplatform, transmedia interconnections.

And finally, thank you to Laura Rayner for the incredible poster.

RIP Silver Jews

2009-01-23T17:44:00.003Z

This is going to read like an obituary. It shouldn't. No one has died and the unseemly and unexpected passing of Ron Asheton last week is of far more consequence and I wrote nothing about that (although perhaps because anything else would seem like a tautology after one friend's beautifully succinct appraisal of the man - "never has one person done so much with so little").

I understand this is laced with unnecessary melodrama, but the news today (from the horses mouth via the Drag City forum, cos even cowboys got the Internet) that David Berman and his Silver Jews are stepping down and out of music was a Friday morning body blow I didn't want or need. His reasons were admirable if rather obliquely expressed (what else were you expecting?), citing a desire to concentrate more on 'writing' and end the band before they inadvertently recorded "the reply to Shiny Happy People". That's a flawless argument. Really it is. But I'm going to miss them.

It's a common shibboleth that Silver Jews albums have got progressively worse. They've not. They've just changed focus, influences steeped more in country then indie aesthetic, but remaining consistently affecting and human. I'm going to miss anticipating his next line and never once getting it right. He was - he is - the antithesis of cliche and yes, the greatest lyricist of a generation. There, I've said it. I've made that qualification. If you don't know what I mean, I'm strangely envious. There's a back catalogue I'd love to hear for the first time again. And now there can be no more firsts, at least with his music anyway. What he does next is sure to enthrall me in equal measure (as with his book of poetry, Actual Air), but just like recent albums, it too will be a different experience. Whatever happens, it's likely to be charged with the usual combination of skyscraper intelligence and imperious integrity.

And so music, like football, always manage to throw up strange little ironies. It was only this week that I rediscovered Will Oldham's reinterpretation of Palace Music songs on Greatest Palace Music. Listening inattentively (you know what generation I belong to), i was drawn to something I'd not noticed before; D.C. Berman chiming in on backing vocals on "No More Workhorse Blues". I'm not going to patronise you, but there's something incredibly prescient about my rediscovery of that song. Maybe the recent end to the Jews live show freeze out and the incessant touring and pressures that followed as a result had shifted what was once a love into a chore for Berman? It's not quite been spelt out yet, but in it's own unexpected and possibly inaccurate way, that song explains enough. How typically contrary of the man that it's someone else's words doing the explaining now.

Podcast 4 - Ones to Watch 2009

2009-01-13T21:55:00.012Z

BOOM! 2009, here it is. There it was more like. While we were sleeping in nursing battered bodies and "please-fuck-off-now" paunches the year started unannounced. Just as December pisses out end of year lists like a river of sunburned corpses, January is rife with predictions and theories. And somewhat less cynically, possibility. Anything can happen and probably wont, but that isn't going to stop the whining wannabe clairvoyants. And it wont stop us either.

With that in mind, here's Podcast No. 4 - these are assuming an uneasy regularity now. This time we're talking about, you know, bands worth taking note of in 2009. There's only six songs, but don't take that as a suggestion that the year will be defined by a paucity. We'd just rather listen to the sounds of our own voices then someone else's. It's called being an only child, OK? OK!

Be warned, there's more swearing in this one, particularly by Ryan and I adopt the catchphrase 'indie heat'; a terrifying notion. A terrible human being.

Tracklisting;

1. Danananaykroyd - Chrome Rainbow
2. Animal Collective vs Frankie Knuckles - Your Love My Girls
3. Situationists - Whiskey and Water (Aspirins Remix)
4. Fryars - Polystyrene
5. The Clean - Twist Top
6. Wavves - So Bored

Podcast No. 3 - Christmas

2008-12-18T22:09:00.001Z

It's cliched to be cynical at Christmas, but that isn't going to stop us. Here's Podcast No.3, cashing in on the seasonal stupidity, if only there was anything to actually cash in. So it's all vanity and bullshit, but it's ours and if you click the right button (that's to say, the one on the left) it can be yours too. And that don't cost a thing (just like our Xmas album, available from here).

Tracklisting:
1. Arab Strap - "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)"
2. Galaxie 500 - "Listen, The Snow Is Falling"
3. Favours for Sailors - "Hanging On Your Christmas Tree"
4. The Walkmen - "No Christmas Whilst I'm Talking"
5. Slow Club - "Christmas TV"
6. The Waitresses - "Christmas Wrapping"
7. The Long Blondes - "Christmas Is Cancelled"

The Year In (More) Lists

2008-12-16T18:57:00.006Z

Close friend, long time supporter and Tough Love DJ, Liam P. Manley has been good enough to send me his choices for album of the year. There's a few in the list that I myself managed to miss, but listening to them now (Harvey Milk in particular), I'm wondering just what it was that made me pass them over

Roots Manuva – Slime And Reason(Big Dada)
Rodney Smith stepped back into ’08 with this collection of bangers, bouncers, winders and grinders. Slime And Reason finds him chatting direct over the perfectly skewed production of Metronomy and Toddla T, at once both precise and, in Smith’s words, wonky. At ease skipping between raconteurish lechery (“It’s the whisky man, the frisky man”) and the trials of fatherhood (“you gotta learn, dude/be careful what ya sperm do”), this is nothing less than a triumph of honesty and wit.
Download
Roots Manuva - "Let The Spirit"

The Walkmen – You & Me (Fierce Panda)
Last heard covering Harry Nillson’s Pussy Cats, NY’s finest washed up on shore of this summer, half-smiling, half asleep: “There is still sand in my suitcase/There is still salt in my teeth”, they croaked. Sun-bleached, crumpled and curled-at-the-edges, You & Me amounts to a travelogue of hazy, drunken episodes half-remembered yet lovingly sketched in sepia tones. Singer Hamilton Leithauser’s hard-worn vocals are the ideal instrument to relay these tales, carefully balancing the celebratory moods and their woozy aftermath. Forget labelling them one-hit wonders: hit singles are immaterial when faced with the fourteen sublime chapters presented here.
Download
The Walkmen - "I Lost You"

Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours(Modular)
Summer 2008 will not be remembered as a summer of love, but rather one of tragically dull inclemancy. Regardless of this, these Aussies reminded us of better times: a time when The Pet Shop Boys covered Elvis or sang with Dusty; a time when New Order were arguably the greatest band alive and not just arguing. Concerned first and foremost with the matters of the heart, be it longing ("Far Away") or fledgling romance ("Unforgettable Season"), In Ghost Colours carefully married pure pop with 80’s pre-hyphenated house. P!ss poor weather aside, the real tragedy would have been if nobody fell in love with (or to) this dazzling record.
Download
Cut Copy - "So Haunted"

Fucked Up – Chemistry Of Common Life
(Matador)
Less concerned with burning down churches than the hypocrisy of the pious (be it punk insularity or right wing evangalists), Fucked Up burst through like a gang of punk-rock Richard Dawkins. Bridging post-hardcore elements with Stoogified space rock, they tear up the template, happy to fuse flutes, loops and drones with vocalist Pink Eyes’ invective, like Iggy vomiting lava. The choice is simple: either wait around for the rapture or get Fucked Up and go to heaven (before you die).
Download
Fucked Up - "Twice Born"

Harvey Milk – Life... The Best Game In Town(Hydra Head)
A celebration of mortality where life is for the living and death our reward, Life... came without warning and even less expectation. Equally blistered and blistering, Harvey Milk never once resort to the advocation of lunk-headed hedonism or self pity, preferring instead to wallow in glory and splendor. Ever ambitious, starting with a Christmas choir before unleashing a skip load of sludge and hot tar into unsuspecting ears, you’d be hard pushed to find a more fearless statement than opener ‘Death Goes To The Winner’. Fittingly ended with the theme from Looney Tunes, this is a record determined to die smiling.
Download
Harvey Milk - "Motown"

Records of the Year - Part 4

2008-12-12T17:09:00.002Z

So, this is my last say on the matter of 2008, but I'll be posting some contributions from others connected with Tough Love in the next few days. They have the gift of brevity, whereas I like the sound of my own voice (even when typing), so will be posted in one sitting. Wow, content!

My four selections will also be published on Rockfeedback on Monday in their annual Best of the Year feature. I'm unsure where exactly they'll be in the list though. Publish and be damned, indeed.

And so...

Silver Jews – Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea(Drag City)

18 years since their debut single, 2008 finally saw D.C. Berman publically realise what the best of us had known since forever: he’s an outright, bonafide superstar. Last year Silver Jews broke their live show freeze-out and Berman began the unenviable task of having to deliver a canon of songs that had for too long belonged wholesale to the fans. And the pressure showed, not least in his tentative stage manner and on the relatively straight-laced Tanglewood Numbers.

But Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea - and the heart stopping, life affirming shows that accompanied its release - was Berman embracing what for so long he had feared. His struggles with the Nietzschian black stuff have been well documented, but having come out the other side, Berman now has wisened perspective to match his always-inventive cryptic word play.

In amongst the twisted narratives of “San Francisco B.C.” and “Party Barge”, this is Berman with his aim set firmly to true. “Strange Victory, Strange Defeat” and “Suffering Jukebox” are perhaps the best double team one-two to ever address the internal paradox of fame and its vicissitudes, while “What Is Not But Could Be If” has Berman enunciating like the University Don he could’ve easily been (just as much as he could’ve be the drunken bar room sage spouting pseudo-philosophical epiphanies into an unappreciative breeze, had events taken a different course).

But it’s on closer “We Could Be Looking For The Same Thing” that the raw humanity of The Joos truly shines through. Sharing vocals with wife and seemingly eternal muse, Cassie Berman, they blissfully chime in unison “we could belong to each other” and it’s pure unfettered Country drama, albeit in a softened new wave skin. This was as direct as Berman has ever been and as gauche as it may seem, if you’re not moved by that, then frankly, you’ve nothing in your hollow chest.

Many silvery moons ago on The Natural Bridge, Berman somewhat disingenuously claimed “now that I’m older and subspace is colder, I just want to say something true”. On Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, that’s exactly what he did and it was glorious.

Download
Silver Jews - "We Could Be Looking For The Same Thing"

Records of the Year - Part 3

2008-12-11T12:27:00.003Z

Hot Club De Paris – Live At Dead Lake (Moshi Moshi)

End of year lists are frustratingly tautological. They’re merely a(n) (in)convenient summary of what’s already been echoed a million and one times that past year and, as such, are mainly in service only to the retail sector and the goldfish among us. But with Hot Club De Paris, there’s (sadly) undue cause for concern on that front. Their second album Live At Dead Lake was released to little fanfare mid-2008 and despite the passing of time, I’ve still yet to work out why exactly, let alone witness anyone try to readdress this critical imbalance.

Musicians from Liverpool tend to fit into two camps: those who love Love and stop at The Beatles, and those who are good. Thankfully and to their credit, Hot Club… (if I may) aren’t interested in exhuming any corpses, although they are distinctly Liverpudlian. Stretching arcs of influence across the Atlantic, they’re clearly tapping into both an American post-hardcore and post-punk lineage, even going as far to wear their hearts on their sleeve and cover the Minutemen. But then Liverpool always has been a port city after all…

But these aren’t strictly pastures new for Hot Club… On Live At Dead Lake they retain the tricky time-signatures and mouthful-of-ideas song titles present on their debut. This time out however they display a seemingly intuitive understanding of space and melody that indicates a band with an enviable sense of invention.

And it’s not just the music that resonates. Lyrically, Live At Dead Lake indicates an affinity with hip hop style wordplay that many of their peers dare not attempt (“ a real swimming-with-sharks type lover tough cookie with the impulsive streak of a streetwise rookie”/ “and that this thing forever seems to last forever if this thing forever’s going to last forever anyway”), twisting syllables and twisted syntax around the most breathless of parochial imagery. And they’re funny fuckers with it too.

Such is the transient nature of the music industry, where Hot Club… go after Live At Dead Lake remains a mystery, but without them 2008 would have been a little more artless and a little less interesting. Let’s not let them become a cult concern. To paraphrase one of their obvious antecedents: memories don’t have to wait…

Download
Hot Club De Paris - "I Wasn't Being Heartless When I Said Your Favourite Song Lacked Heart"

Tough Love Podcast No. 2

2008-12-06T14:27:00.005Z

Here it is, the second potentially-award winning Tough Love podcast. If it's half as much fun to listen to as it was to make then it will be OK-to-good. I'll settle for that.

Tracklisting:

1. Future of the Left - "Suddenly It's A Folk Song"
2. William - "South of the Border"
3. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "People Aint No Good"
4. Nas - "Queens Got The Money"
5. Jean Grae and the 9th Wonder - "Don't Rush Me"
6. Bricolage - "Turn U Over"
7. The Empty Set - "You're The Top"

Albums of the Year - Part 2

2008-12-05T16:18:00.005Z

Crystal Stilts – Alight of Night
(Slumberland)
For Crystal Stilts, nuance is key. From New York and expressing an obvious kinship with 80s Manchester, they sound for all the world as if they’ve never stepped outside of their own. Theirs is a sonic enclave informed by the acerbic chill of first and second wave post punk, alongside the monochrome intensity of Joy Division, Felt and Josef K. Hardly irregular touchstones admittedly, but on Alight of Night Crystal Stilts display a rare aptitude for refinement and subtlety that suggests a distinctive re-imagining of a previously well-trodden path.

Not simply well-studied appropriation, Crystal Stilts are an immaculately conceived entity, generating an aesthetic filtered through prisms of fractured glass to reveal the sparsest shades of primary colour. As with the post-punk austerity they’re clearly inspired by, it’s the shading that defines them, the minimal shards of light powerful in their economic elegance.

Eponymous opener “Crystal Stilts” is a perfect case in point; all black and white B movie intensity, until (twice) revealing a brief keyboard driven coda that shimmies with a rockabilly abandon. It’s an exercise in understatement typical of a band that clearly understands the distinction between formula and continuity. Take for example the swooning and loping “Prismatic Room” and “The City In The Sea”. While displaying the band’s more soporific leanings, they’re quite obviously the lovelorn cousins of their more kinetic, but never bombastic, counterparts.

Puritanical in its execution, Alight of Night showcases a vision as clear as its creator’s namesakes. Forget the egalitarian realism of much current indie; I want my stars not of this world. In forming their own beautifully nuanced aesthetic, Crystal Stilts understand the form and function of rock mythology and in Alight Is Night, have created a compelling document of why we should value them as such.

POSTSCRIPT: Slumberland really is a wonderful label. You could do a lot worse than invest in their most recent releases (I strongly recommend both Bricolage and Sexy Kids). It's also worth investigating their history too, for it's one that's clearly tied to the development of a particular type of indiepop music.

Download
Crystal Stilts - "The City In The Sea"

Albums of the Year - Part 1

2008-12-04T18:49:00.005Z

Oh great, just what the world (not to mention blogosphere) needs: another end-of-year list. I can't justify this with claims to a unique approach, or even if we'll be bucking the critical consensus with our choices. But we are fans of the slow-reveal, so we'll be posting our list of favourite albums over a period of time and in no particular order. This aint a competition, y'know. What anticipation, no doubt...

The Wave Pictures – Instant Coffee Baby
(Moshi Moshi)

Music often provides a well-renowned catharsis for those racked with sociopathic impulses and The Wave Pictures are a perfect case in point, forming a distillation of the erudite neurosis of their chief songwriter, Dave Tattersall. By no means a car crash stumbling through illness and destitution ala Television Personalities, The Wave Pictures are a strange amalgam of the joyful and the socially perverse and with Instant Coffee Baby they’ve hit an apotheosis.

The Wave Pictures are driven by the same pop impulses as conceived by Modern Lovers and the Velvet Underground, and channelled by bookish but disarmingly seamy indie icons like Hefner (with whom all three of The Wave Pictures often play). Charged with twisted witticisms and a plague of failed and failing relationships, Instant Coffee Baby is buoyed by a charming power-pop simplicity, offset by an equally soured tongue that’s as sharp as cystitis.

As immediate and affecting as the song writing is here - and they’re certainly a band with the requisite chops, if chops is what you need - it’s the inventive wordplay that truly engages. Tattersall’s shrill whine is an acquired taste perhaps, but it’s pinpoint designed for the tales he weaves. The desperation of each failed sexual endeavour and ridiculous social indiscretion is present in the body of a voice that forever stretches and searches for a note technically better singers find in an instant. And as anyone that has witnessed them live this year will attest, Tattersall is by far the most proficient singer in the band. But it’s in this apparent ‘lack’ that The Wave Pictures shine; virtuosity supplanted (and thankfully so) with a yearning to be heard, suggesting stories that need to be told. It’s pure unfettered jouissance sidled with a literary bent and as such finds itself of a lineage shared with such luminaries as Richman, Bowie and Costello: a heady pantheon indeed.

As Tattersall insistently wails through “I Love You Like Mad Man”, evoking images slightly unnerving for their close-to-the-bone desperation, there’s nevertheless a pervasive and flagrant romanticism that still believes that hearts can be won, broken and fixed through the power of song. And in these cynical times, that’s a belief with which we can all sympathise.

Download
The Wave Pictures - "January and December" (early version of the song that later featured on Instant Coffee Baby)

Sound & Vision (at last)

2008-12-02T21:44:00.003Z

Maybe it's a money issue. Or a time issue. It could be a skills issue. Maybe it's an issue of all three. It seems hard to believe and slightly tricky to swallow, but in over three years, there's not been a video associated with one of our releases. It's like the 1860s round here. But just as that ridiculous monochrome train in Back To The Future 3 smashed it's way through parochial 19th Century Wild West life, we've a music video that startles us from our luddite slumber. And about fucking time too.

As with most of our firsts, it's Situationists that lead the way with this immaculately conceived one-shot take video for recent EP lead track "Onwards and Upwards". Directed by Nick Shaw, who's previously worked for both Xtra Mile and Moshi Moshi, I'm starting to think it was worth the wait. You can judge for yourself below actually...

And as if one first isn't enough, there's a second. We've had printed 50 Situationists T shirts, which you can buy from our MySpace now. There's a picture of a beheaded Dan modeling the savvy designs below. As would be expected, they're selling ridiculously quickly and we wont be making any more of this design once they're gone...You know what to do.

Tough Love Podcast No. 1

2008-11-23T19:51:00.005Z

Boredom can be a dangerous thing. Once I was so bored I ate two dinners and would've gone for a third if stomach and fridge capacity allowed. So last Sunday we found ourselves in a similar situation, deciding instead to turn our attentions away from potential obesity and towards Garageband and the dreamwish of our very own Podcast. And you may decide that's what it remains. We're hardly au fait with the process of 'producing' media content of this kind, but everyone has to start somewhere and growing up in public is a common practice now. Whether this exercise has been successful or not is for you to judge, but it was certainly a lot of fun to make. Hopefully we'll become more slick as we gain experience. But there's also a very real possibility that we wont. Lo-fi, DIY; it's all kudos, right?

So here it is, the first Tough Love podcast: one take, unedited, ramshackle and unshackled.

Tracklisting:

1. Situationists - "Onwards and Upwards"
2. Aspirins - "Hollow Out"
3. Crystal Stilts - "Converging In The Quiet"
4. Scott Walker - "Plastic Palace People"
5. Honeytrap - "Little Blue Holes"
6. Favours For Sailors - "Erode My Empire"

Sunday 9th November - in photos

2008-11-15T14:06:00.005Z

FAVOURS FOR SAILORS

world in motion

all sweaty and thoughtful

posed to death

CALORIES

adventuring can be dangerous

"off we go into the sunset"

SITUATIONISTS

all-boy gang choir

jouissance

"we stood in silence..."

Let's Talk About Love

2008-11-10T15:33:00.006Z

Tough Love is an appropriate name for this pirate endeavour we have here. When I think of love - and I mean love in its nascent stages - it's not the swinging round the lamp post exhaulted joyful type, or a cartoon like quivering of the legs swooning just the other side of lust. It's something that little darker. It's a slight sickness. That's a well known characteristic and let's not trot out those 'love sick' cliches. But it's also anxiety and possibility as one: exciting of course, but charged with fear, doubt and that crushing feeling that at some point soon you're going to fuck it all right up hard, fast and embarrassingly forever. Love is hard.

And so that's how i feel about this here record label. It's inconsistent short bursts of elation, constantly punctuated by a subtle frustration and worry. But it's worth it. Last Sunday night showed that, as we held the London launch for Situationists new EP at the Old Blue Last. It was an epically dismal Sunday. Rain lashed at an expectant but hungover body and I don't think i was the only one feeling that way. But despite the nightmare billing of Sunday evening malaise, post-alcohol come-down blues and the bleak insistent force of nature, people came. Quite a lot of them. And they cheered and smiled and generally weren't awful. It was a bloody revelation. Situationists were supremely confident, buoyened no doubt by the reception the new EP has received (and is still receiving). They even played a new song; all elegiac guitar lines intersecting like the cartographic wonderlands they've often romanticised about, alongside some fine American Football-esque melancholy. It's a perfect counterpoint to the indiepop precision of their more well-known songs. Exciting and excited in equal measure, i was spilling over.

Unfortunately, the EPs hadn't arrived in time from the Czech Republic, which was potentially embarrassing. However, Ralph's (Situationists drummer) spark of ingenuity and creative abilities saved face admirably and it was beautiful to see people still paying for music despite all that media scare mongering that seems to find residence in the less considered press on a weekly basis. And very good music, of course. There's a lot to be said for good taste and then knowing what to do with it.

And of course the night wouldn't have been what it was if not for the might and drive of Calories and the ramshackle powerpop charm of Favours For Sailors. And they're all, in one form or another, Tough Love bands. It's an exciting time, but one I'm fully prepared to see collapse into a mess of my own making. But that's the nature of this particular beast.

So, you can also purchase the new EP from our site here: www.toughloverecords.com/product.htm. We'll even send you free MP3s of the songs while you wait for the record to be delivered.

On a related note, Puregroove Records - that exceptional independent London record store (amongst many other things) - have included a free Situationists song as a free download on their site. Go to this link and download it now: http://www.puregroove.co.uk/itemview.aspx?item=674

So much more news to come in the next few weeks and i'll endeavour to document it here properly. Promise.

Don't Go Home With Your Hard On

2008-11-07T09:45:00.003Z

Sunday 9th November @ The Old Blue Last, Shoreditch

Following 3 years successfully promoting the club night Don't Go Home... in Coventry we can now finally present Don't Go Home With Your Hard On in London. Having played host to Dananananaykroyd, Johnny Foreigner, Rolo Tomassi, The Wave Pictures and Youth Movies in the last year, it's a club night with a proven track record at hosting the best new bands in the country.

Rather fortuitously, the launch night just so happens to be the date before Situationists release the aforementioned pretty bloody amazing second EP. It's almost like we planned it that way. And it's free too. So, details:

Situationists (EP launch) www.myspace.com/situationists

Calories www.myspace.com/caloriesband

Favours For Sailors www.myspace.com/favours4sailors

The Aspirins For My Children DJs www.myspace.com/aspirins
Tough Love DJs

8:30pm - 12:30am
FREE ENTRY

Dancing About Architecture

2008-10-30T17:54:00.004Z

Last week, or so, I was sent a group email by Rockfeedback asking for contributions to their A-Z of Underrated Albums. Below is my reply, which sparked a lengthly discussion with friend, musical savant and Tough Love DJ Liam Manley. I thought it was interesting enough to copy in here, thinking it might inspire some of its own debate. Or maybe we are just invoking that famous Elvis Costello criticism. Or maybe it's incredibly self-indulgent (if i say that, I can't be criticised for it, right?)...You decide?

ME
Hi all,

Think this feature is a good idea, but i also think you need to be careful about what you choose. There does of course exist a popular canon as reinforced by Q Magazine (et al) list bore - ons, which includes the aforementioned Pet Sounds, London Calling etc etc.

But there's also another canon that's just as pervasive and I'd be tentative in reinforcing that. Pitchfork, DiS and their like, alongside the collective blogosphere have created their own sacred cows, of which band's like Dismemberment Plan [a suggested underrated band] are central. These sites have huge readerships and they're characterised by a fairly crippling critical consensus. Indie isn't really that indie anymore. There's nothing marginal about it.

And there's also retroactive canonisation too. On it's release, Six was, perhaps unfairly, maligned. But now, I think it's widely agreed by everyone to be Mansun's best album. It happens all the time - look at Joy Division, Kate Bush, Suicide, The Stooges, Velvet Underground, Sparks...

So, what I'm saying - asking - is what do you mean by underrated? Underrated by whom? I'm not saying we have to be willfully obscure or esoteric in our choices, just careful in what we choose to celebrate. I guess Tim's choices [Reynolds, Joeyfat] fall more in line with what I was thinking, mainly because I've not heard them. You can't get much more underrated than that (not that I know everything).

And my suggestions:

The Lapse - The Betrayal
Urusei Yatsura - Slain By...
Aerial Pink - The Doldrums

I've probably just contradicted myself now...

Cheers,

Stephen

LIAM
Fair point.

My personal contribution was going to be Leave Home by The Ramones. Chronologically, and in terms of canonisation, it falls between their self-titled debut (a supposed cultural landmark) and Road To Ruin (widely considered to be their best/most obvious attempt at pop). Their sophomore, Rocket To Russia, also happens to eclipse Leave Home in terms of perceived importance. I thought it would be interesting to talk about the album, not in terms of it's place in the canon or as any reaction to that, but in terms of its own musical merits. E.g. this is a good record because it has good songs and that.

So, what I'm saying is that it is possible to formulate a series of these reports/essays, just so long as it's not adding to any perceived canon or trying to react to any existing canon, which, as you've pointed out, merely results in the development of yet another canon...

I mean, every year there's another 'lost classic' unveiled, with bonus what-nots and 'unheard' versions (2008 model: Pacific Ocean Blue)... What's that Smiths song? “Paint A Vulgar Picture”???

ME
My take on that:

Music is populated by a series of canons, at once parallel and hierarchical. They accord with value systems - mainstream vs independent, authentic vs inauthentic, art vs commerce et al. In eschewing or debunking one, there's the process of constructing another. And there is the tendency to invoke that most peculiar of indie impulses to venerate the obscure, as if obscurity alone is enough to substantiate its quality. That's why rare records are worth so much. It's a false economy on which not only monetary value is predicated, but also subcultural capital.

There's no difference in terms of process between Pitchfork and Q, just battling ideologues, which at one point or another, assimilate eventually (see My Bloody Valentine).

So, I think your argument is most sound. Pick a record that exists within the oeuvre of an over-canonised band and assess its merits in that context. And on that criteria, what should i choose? Be Here Now, of course...

LIAM
The only problem with that is that you end up reacting to the canon, unfortunately. All I'm suggesting is that people write up an album that they like regardless of any parameters of taste/non-taste (that guilty pleasures stuff is inverted snobbery bullshit). Hang on, in trying to avoid parameters, is that not setting up a different form of parameter?!?!? Fvvvvvvvvvvvck!!!

Tom [Rockfeedback editor] wanted to talk about Sandinista – that album's already regarded as 'mad cap classic'...

I'm saying we should find an album we like and discuss its merits, regardless of any canon. Therefore, we should all be writing about Be Here Now.

Ps. We should definitely write about Be Here Now.

ME
When you stand for nothing, you stand for the people that stand for nothing. There's fences beyond (and within) the fences. You can't stand outside of the world when you live in it, I guess.

Let's write about Be Here Now. There's too much fun in that album to write it out or off. I want to dance the architecture out of that shit.

LIAM
Hmmm, I guess The Outsider's protagonist already tried that and failed.

There really is no room for subversion anymore, is there?

Be Here Now is quickly becoming my favourite Oasis album, for sure - I like it's big dumb face.

ME
Judging by everyone elses reaction, it seems irony is the only obvious subversion, which is a little galling. It's a weak reaction, because contrary to how its used, it shows no attempt to assert an individualised taste, but rather assimilate yourself into one discourse or another (just like canons, they're stacked: mainstream: indie elitism: anti-indie elitism: a fatalistic irony). Rude Box isn't underrated; it's shit. All the trite ironic 'student-y' assertions you can muster are not going to convince me otherwise.

LIAM
Irony shmirony. I’m getting a heavy sense of 'glibness'.

What exactly is fatalistic irony?

Did you read all of that 33 1/3 book about Celine Dion? The only reason I
bought it, really, was because I thought out of the series about albums I love (Daydream Nation/Let It Be/Notorious Byrd Brothers), it might actually offer the most insight it why we like things and how tastes are developed/manufactured/marketed.

ME
What I mean is that there's no sense to it. It doesn't achieve anything other than an enforcement of what it seeks to negate. Irony is fatalistic because it's hollow. There's no substance. It's the ultimate postmodern condition - a reaction that states no alligiance, that makes no commitment, that is worth nothing. Irony is never having to say you’re sorry, right? Does that make sense?

LIAM
Yep, that just clears it up for me – I don’t want to apply it if it can’t define it!!!

ME:
Anymore thoughts about what we were discussing yesterday? Canonisation is a strange process, mainly in thrall to commercial needs, but it's also very persuasive. Sometimes it's hard to separate what you really like from what you're supposed to like, no matter how much you think you're removed from or aware of the process. Pleasure is an intriguing position, because how much of it is conditioned and how much of it is negotiated or individualised?   

LIAM:
Hmmm... how much of your enjoyment is based on outside approval? Like peer pressure or the words of a supposed ‘influential webzine’, perhaps ?

ME
Well, there's more music than ever before and more people willing to espouse its virtues and flaws, so I guess some sort of critical barometer is necessary so we can navigate our way through it. But then that begs the question; who do you trust to get it right? Certainly not anyone in the mainstream (NME or Q for example) and Pitchfork can sometimes shoot themselves in the foot. I guess critics exist as a way in and then you devise your own opinions. But critical consensus can be quite persuasive.

Do you not find yourself swayed by it at times?

LIAM
Oh, totally. Totally... I’ll sometimes give things another go if a writer I’ve agreed with in the past has written something persuasive enough... it informs my opinion, in a sense, but it doesn’t replace it. It is possible to build relationships with writers and begin to respect their viewpoint above others – so much so that you’re more inclined to agree with them (Neil K, Simon Reynolds and Stevie Chick come to mind).

If critics are there as a way-in, how much is being left aside that you might also find interest in? I’m constantly plagued by the thought I might be missing out on something!!!

One thing I notice about NME and Q is that they seem to be controlled, to an extent, by outside interests – PR agencies, etc. Therefore, certain artists might not be being pushed solely on the basis of their musical merits (surprise?). The same, perhaps, may happen with Pitchforkmedia, but with the subtle difference being that ‘financial reward’ is substituted for some other nepotistic element.

I don’t know, it’s early and I’m trying to eat Oatibix, which is sometimes difficult. I’m also trying to write a review of Hawnay Troof which has taken a twist, as I finally see some of the genius behind it. His rapping is awful, but the hooks and musical arrangement are pretty sophisticated. I’m just trying to tell it like it is... like Sabrina before she became a teenage witch (Clarissa?).

ME
I think, to a certain extent, moaning about NME and Q (as examples of the mainstream music press) is a fairly redundant exercise. It's not like we're lacking in 'alternative' (whatever that term has been prefigured as now) media source outlets. You can find anyone, any source that will corroborate your view on the world, on a particular music. Don't like NME? Read Pitchfork. Don't like Pitchfork? Read 20 Jazz Funk Greats. And so on. They are all of course charged with their own orthodoxy - some could cast that as an aesthetic, others as a yawning predictability.

I guess that means that nothing is really, truly underrated. You can find something somewhere, if you look hard enough - although I suppose you need to know what you're looking for.

That means that the term 'underrated' is always constructed in lieu to seeking mainstream approval , or at least the recognition of a certain larger audience. And that's a redundant process too. Populist appeal is not vindication in itself. There's that classic indie response to quickly denounce something that transcends the indie ghetto, its position at the margins. We hate it when our friends become successful, right? So then why do we need canonisation, why do we need to speak in this language? Man is a herd animal, I suppose and music is social, even when it's an alphabetised bedroom wank fantasy...

LIAM
The flipside of the herd mentality is the bedroom fetishist – they want something they and they alone can own – these guys (and they are predominantly, if not exclusively, men) will always treasure it more than anyone – they are the curators and anyone else is merely a dilettante.

I’m not moaning about the predictability of NME/Q, but the intentions and motives behind what they choose to champion. Do you not feel that most Internet writing, over time, becoming some sort of homogenous mass? For instance, like you’ve said before, the critical consensus taking precedent over everything else. There also appears to be very little real conflict, but is that a reflection of the subject in hand or, alternatively, a damning indictment of just how far critical faculties have slipped?

You’re right about the concept of what is ‘underrated’ and we’re pretty much agreed that this whole canonisation issue is redundant, to say the least, so what are we to do?

ME
Blogging and the like are all about cheerleading I suppose. Why bother writing and giving platform to something you dislike? There was a absolutely ridiculous article on DiS asking whether 'negative reviews' were relevant anymore in this digital age of self-publishing. That's a question that surely answers itself and it's obvious that considered and relatively objective (as much as is possible) critique is needed more than ever. Orson Welles said something about technological development and how it may change how we live our lives, but it wont change art. It will just create a generation of critics willing to tell us "this is art!". Well, i don't even think that's happening.

The blogosphere becomes this self-perpetuating solipsistic backslapping fest in which consensus accelerates under its own momentum. It's not a question of art, just a question of whether something is popular (within whatever sphere, big or small) or has the potential to be popular or not. It's like an anti-intelletcual self-importance that distills itself to a soundbite culture.

Isn't it weird how the process of writing/discussing something becomes informed by your imagined audience? We're doing it here, because we know this will now be read by others. It's like a form of self-censorship I guess...

LIAM
I just hope you edit out my grammatical errors. I said precedent earlier instead of precedence... if this is going to be blogged, I hope we're not just adding to the already thickly-streamed river of shit English that pervades the majority of blogs.

"It's not a question of art, just a question of whether something is popular (within whatever sphere, big or small) or has the potential to be popular or not. It's like an anti-intelletcual self-importance that distills itself to a soundbite culture" - Yeah, the whole 'one-to-watch' type of journalism falls into that category. That all smacks of self-satisfaction.

I guess our argument always comes down to quite simply ‘what is it worth? And what is your value system based on?’ – would you agree with that?

I’ve talked to Stephanie about ‘perceived audiences’... she says I need to bear it in mind more often. I just find it crippling to consciously attempt to perceive them, although I’m sure, on some level, I am, regardless. I think the best any of us can do is just try to make sense, because that notion self-censorship is ultimately defeatist and can breed dishonesty, which is something that should be avoided at all costs.

ME
That's the question I suppose - What is it worth? There's an arrogance in suggesting that our value system is somehow inherently superior to others. But that's our prerogative to make that call and you can do that within a relatively objective framework. I don't want to fall in to what's ultimately the most crippling of parallax errors, in which I can only see my position and perspective - our opinions change all the time. Just look at the Pandoras Box of musical atrocities that belong to our past. I think this discussion itself is an attempt away from that. But you have to remember, I'm tied to this industry, this culture not just as a consumer, but a producer too and that brings with it its own prejudices. And they're always subjective, even when informed.

Maybe we're dancing too much around the subject now. You know, there are people, believe it or not, who don't really care about music, or art and would see this as typical liberal hot air discourse. But then what kind of existence is that?

Situationists - Onwards and Upwards EP

2008-10-20T10:42:00.003+01:00

We've been really busy since, well, since the last update. Apart from the aforementioned distracting lights of the Friday and London variety, we've been working frantically sending out press packs, finalising artwork and updating all the relevant social media with news of the Situationists Onwards and Upwards EP. Seemingly neglecting this one until now.

The EP, since you ask, is a 4 track vinyl and CD combination building on the sterling freshman effort This City Holds Us All. It contains "This is a Show" - which has just been added to the A playlist on NME Radio - "A Cold Front", "Fireworks" and title track "Onwards and Upwards".

Astonishingly, encouraging early orders have accounted for almost half of the limited 500 pressing. We really do recommend going to www.toughloverecords.com and clicking on that alluring pre-order button. Doing so will generate a magic code giving you instant access to the songs in MP3 format. All you have to do then is sit by the door waiting for the postman.

Launch nights will be held in Sheffield and at our new London-based club night at the Old Blue Last. Details? Coming soon.

What A Way To Make A Living...

2008-09-23T22:23:00.003+01:00

No recent posts doesn't mean no work, y'know. Tough Love isn't all days by the pool and champagne cocktails. In fact, quite the opposite. We don't even have a pool, although the bath is pretty big and has one of those retractable showerheads so you can wash your hair. Not quite pure decadence, but pretty hot for two twenty-something wage slaves. And so the point is, we've been busy with other things. I have been moonlighting at Rockfeedback, writing the odd review and receiving the odd brilliant record for my troubles. There's not really much more I want.

If you're not a frequent reader of Rockfeedback, click on the links below to see what I thought to the new TV On The Radio, The Walkmen and Lovvers albums. It seems everyone loves these records and it's a rare occasion when the consensus is right...

I've also put together a 'mix tape' for the I Say Hi, You Say Bye blog-cum-radio show run by Matteo Disco Drive. You can download it here. Mine's accompanied by a picture of me and a big tree, plus some very kind words from my favourite Italian. It was my first time using Garageband and you now have evidence why I stand behind the camera, so to speak. My mixing skills are a face designed for radio, but the art is in the song selection and yeah, my taste wins.

And very soon, very nearly, the new Situationists EP - Onwards and Upwards - will be with us. It's sounding brilliant. They are brilliant. Self-recorded and produced, there's not much these boys can't do. They've even helped construct the artwork, along with the help of the impossibly talented Alex and Chris double team (see The Sequins, PopShop, Disco Drive et al). You're going to cry when you hear "Fireworks", unless of course you're an awful human being. There's also a Japan-only album imminent through 1977 Records (home to The Horrors and Rumble Strips amongst others). Exciting times.

In less positive news, Katy Perry remains the musical incarnation of a Loaded magazine main feature interview. Well done turning on 14 year old boys and date rapists. It must have been a real struggle.

Shit But I Know It?

2008-09-08T15:39:00.002+01:00

Suffering from insomnia, it's good to have a hobby. Time stretches out to 20 infinities. There's more hours to fill in a day that constantly plateaus . And night is just a darkened room. Imagine that perpetual childhood wait for Christmas but without the pay off, because all a new day brings is a new 24hrs that you wish could be abridged to 16. But thanks to Friday Night Lights, this past week has distilled into a more bearable sequence of time. It's compelling and enthralling and immersive. I find it filtering into the broken fragments of sleep I manage to steal, dreaming of avenue plot lines, when not dreaming of not being able to sleep.

For the uninitiated, FNL is a teen drama adapted from a Hollywood film of the same name, centred around American college football team Dillon Panthers in a football obsessed Texan town. Money and God are omnipresent concerns, family and football the bedrock of social existence. In many respects, it's standard teen drama, like Dawson's Creek, but filtered through American football rather than a thesaurus. But there's something more here. Something I can't intellectualise away and equally can't reduce to a guilty pleasure. It's not good per se, but its emotionally manipulative in a way that doesn't leave me feeling cheap or abused. It appeals on a base level, visceral even. I like winning. I like competition. I like sport. Just like the Panthers (ahem), FNL can't lose on those terms. And it elicits exactly the same feeling I have when listening to The Streets.

I'm constantly surprised to experience the disdain some people - a lot of people - show towards Mike Skinner. Not feeling the same way, I find criticisms of him alien and unwarranted, often veiled behind what is essentially an inherent classism. Indeed, like FNL, Skinner's best (and worst) work reeks of working class sentimentality and the two new songs I've heard - "The Escapist" and "Everything Is Borrowed" - play true to type.

Whereas Skinner has in the past consistently relied upon modern references - texting, Playstations, drug/drink/gambling culture - he's gone on record as saying that the new album represents a conscious effort to move outside of this comfort zone. While his lyrics have lost a certain amount of their characteristic parochialism in favour of a more ambiguous universality, his concerns remain reflective of that very modern twentysomething ennui. Skinner's perhaps used that excuse for a way of saying that his focus has changed, his muse a little richer in gravitas, or at least that's what he's striving for. The title of "The Escapist" is a give away, the song itself charged with alienation and uncertainty, but incongruently sacchrine sweet, coated rich in strings and a faux-soul leit motif with the faint whiff of ethno-yah! trust fund philosophy in the narrative (and that video doesn't really help). It's both predictable and moving in equal measure.

Contrary to what my conditioned critical faculties suppose, I like it. It pulls my heart strings in the same way a Matt Saracen 40 yard pass with slow motion drama does and I make no apologies for that. But equally, there's the distinct feeling that it's a crass, ill-advised mis-step, trying to say something "important" but just coming off stumbling and cloying and laughable. But that's the beauty of Mike Skinner. He does get it wrong, as cliched as he can be inspired. Just like FNL, I can't switch him off even though my inscribed cultural elitism dictates I should. I want to know where it's going and what he's going to do next, because it's stupid and compelling and funny. Given that I've not yet watched The Wire or listened to Burial, maybe this means nothing, but I'm eschewing critical consensus this time. Just this once, mind...

iCon?

2008-09-05T16:33:00.007+01:00

"Ever feel like you've been cheated?". Actually, yes, all the time. New technology is moving so fast, it's hard to know the difference between an iCon and a true icon. Here's some pretty bad offenders...

The term 'Bloghouse'

Is it OK if everyone stops using the word bloghouse to refer to electronic music that people who don't have less intelligence than a below average reality TV contestant like? Apparently. it's not 'proper' dance music if you have to write about it ZZZZZZZZ. Worse than The Enemy.

Lily Allen
And to think I own her album. On vinyl. Well and truly fucking iConned!

Blackberry
Great idea. Now I can never been anymore than no seconds away from my boss, from work, from having to do something other than nothing. Well done. You've just made a rod for you own back. And those twiglets used to poke the screen are about as cool as the Top Gear Cool Wall.

Celebrity Sex Tapes
Just like porn, except "I can't see anything, I haven't got a hard on and I want to cry". About sums it up.

Can you think of anymore?

Waiting To Inhale

2008-09-03T20:25:00.005+01:00

At the end of this month, Situationists are playing with Hot Club de Paris at Flux at the Yardbird, Birmingham. Flux is always a good night, always has well-considered bills, always accommodating and always DJ-ing our songs between sets. I like these people. I like their taste (it's called self-obsession, thank you). I even like the way Birmingham pours grey across grey in a desperate attempt to turn that "2" into a "1". And there's a few great bands helping turn some eyes the wrong way of the capital - Johnny Foreigner, Calories, Shocked Elevator Family, Bee Stung Lips.

But I'm digressing a little here (mainly as I wanted to mention those bands), because Hot Club de Paris should NOT be playing a venue as small as the Yardbird. Their debut album was, so I've been unofficially told, the biggest selling album on Moshi Moshi, and Moshi Moshi is a great label with some relatively successful acts. But you'd be forgiven for not knowing that their sophomore effort, Live At Dead Lake, has been out for nearly two months now. It's been pretty much ignored in most corners of the press, save the odd token review. Where are the interviews? Why aren't they charging out of the radio like idiots at a Next sale? Why haven't Drowned In Sound fallen over themselves trying to get them to write a tour diary? They're the perfect DiS band too. I'm mystified, like INXS.

So, what's going on? Maybe it's a shit record, right? Well, maybe you're a shit record. I've enjoyed few albums this year as much as Live At Dead Lake. At times, their debut left me cold, ambition not quite matching execution, a little too busy where I'd prefer they let one of the numerous riffs stick around long enough for me to be able to acknowledge its existence. But LADL is different. It fuses their more esoteric leanings - math-y, busy, ironic song titles, Minutemen - but remembers that pop music is the best medium for communication. There's no real verses here, no conduits to pay off, no filler. Just chorus after different chorus even if technically that makes no sense.

Most beautifully of all, they've something to say. Thoughtful, deeply parochial and often cryptic lyrics that some how possess a universal appeal are a rare commodity, but they're laced throughout here. They assume an implicit intelligence in their audience. "This Thing Forever Seems To Last Forever" is as near a perfect guitar song as I've heard since I last listened to Talking Heads. And the comparison is fair I think, because they've the same way of shifting the mundane into the fantastic, into the absurd and fashioning the utterly perfect encapsulation of what it is to be stupid, to be smart, to be confused and clear sighted and not even know the difference. The world is pretty fucking weird. People are pretty fucking weird. Pop music, at it's best, should reflect that and Hot Club do so with their spazzy riffs, sea shanty sing-a-long multi-part harmonies and funny weird/funny ha ha words. I guess Hot Club are pretty fucking weird too, but doesn't that make them the perfect pop band?

Intelligence and mass appeal are not mutually exclusive. In fact, their marriage should be the model, the ultimate artistic aspiration. And lots of great bands have achieved it - New Pop was predicated on that very idea. But then again, maybe I'm romanticising the popular. I'm looking for that 'prole art threat', in fact, I'm assuming it exists. And I'm also assuming that people want it. That Hot Club de Paris aren't the biggest band of their type in this country, or at least somewhere on their way to becoming it, means I'm probably a little naive and I'm also probably valuing my own opinion a little highly but... People aren't tricked by the media. Passive consumption is an out-dated concept*. We know what we want and we buy accordingly. We're an active audience. Not so much choosing freely, but free to choose, right? So stop making the wrong choices, please. Sometimes mark makers don't quite make the mark they should on the world...

*I'm putting a simplistic gloss on a more complex argument here, but I'd prefer to keep the anti-intellectual ZZZs to a minimum here.

Orange Crush

2008-08-28T17:43:00.004+01:00

There have been lots of amazing songs this year (I'm looking at you "Black and Gold","The Devil's Crayon", "Sleepyhead"), but I think Camille may well have usurped them all. Never did I think I would write these words and at the risk of sounding like Jools Holland on a 'cool hunt', but the beatboxing at the start is brilliant. I guess that makes me a little too much 1998, but I don't care. And regardless, there are even better parts, such as from about 3:12 onwards, when Camille starts offering out Mariah Carey, in typical ingenue mock diva style of course. That's the "Money Note" right there. That ridiculous "F Sharp 7" has got me all crushed out. French, intelligent, funny and cute; I better slow down before I make myself a hernia baby.

See You On The Other Side

2008-08-25T23:26:00.006+01:00

Situationists on the BBC Introducing stage

Ryan enjoying free Alabama Fudge Cake

A genuine massage parlour and no euphemisms

Vampire Weekend

This weekend was a mini-landmark moment for Tough Love. With Situationists playing Reading and Leeds, it was the first time that one of our bands has played a major festival. Sure, HEALTH and Disco Drive have played numerous festivals and high profile gigs, but that had very little to do with us. We weren't integral to the process. We can't take credit for those achievements. This time it felt different, because both us and the band have grown together, somewhat organically these past six months. And it was a heart swelling feeling. It was a father's pride to see them grace that stage with such confidence, charm and above all, great songs. For them to be there it felt like recognition, like a nod in our direction, that people are paying attention. We don't need their sanction or approval, but it makes a difference when you have an opportunity to reach more people. They certainly received a warm response from the crowd too. I even saw one especially enamored fan request a copy of the setlist. That's fame right there.

The BBC staff were horrendously polite and welcoming, interviewing the band and filming their set for streaming on the site (which you can access here). I'm gushing here, but the whole experience was characterised by friendly faces and open arms. At least at Reading - unfortunately a rather expensive snare was stolen on the Saturday in Leeds. Not cool. Hopefully the free booze and food supplied backstage compensated slightly for that misgiving. AAA passes were an unexpected novelty: a window into an alien world. But I still think I prefer ATP's more egalitarian set-up. I like being able to speak to Thurston Moore without him worrying if I'll steal all of his Doritos and green tea.

Rather than slide too far in solipsism, we also took the opportunity to watch some other bands that I should probably mention here. Well, the good ones anyway. Pulled Apart By Horses were not only noble gentleman, but a fraught and aggressive live act, with a nice line in Bill & Ted phraseology. The lead singer played hard enough to projectile vomit, which is much better than shitting in a towel.

Vampire Weekend were tight and absorbing, perhaps attributable to the fact that we were lucky enough to be stood about 2 metres away from them. From the perspective of the stage, thousands of people singing back every word in blissfully tuneless unison is both utterly terrifying and wonderfully captivating. The new song sounded a bit ropey though, like a poorly conceived version of their Discovery side project.

Flashguns were of the same school of Bombay Bicycle Club (perhaps literally), but with a more engaging frontman. There's a tendency to fetishise youth, as if their tender years some how make the songs better, whilst condescendingly inferring that they'll only improve as they become more adult. It's their youth that instills the songs with charm. These songs couldn't be sung by a band of thirty-somethings. That would be disingenuous, whereas Flashguns have a wide eyed naivety that is tenderly compelling. Apparently Rough Trade have taken note too...

Friendly Fires were the highlight though. "Paris" is one of the pop songs of the year, or last year, or whenever it came out. The specifics are irrelevant, because it sounded as good on Friday as it did the first time I heard it. Ticker tape, a Notting Hill Carnival type troupe of drummers and two Vegas style peacock suited dancers were also instrumental in winning me round. And slinky hips. The lead singer has the most fluid hips I've seen since Boogie Nights. He might like to consider purchasing some clothes that fit him though. Exposed midriffs are so 90s.

And that's about it. Most of the other bands I saw were terrible or unworthy of mention. But I was only there for one day. I'm making a trip to Offset next weekend, giving me ample opportunity to see all the great bands that were spread across the other two days (Wild Beasts are very high up that list).

Situationists have promised to write a post assessing their experiences, replete with pre-requisite rock 'n' roll tales of debauchery I'm sure. Or not, given that they're not awful anachronistic cliches.

It’s Good To Talk

2008-08-21T11:52:00.008+01:00

Whilst it’s never been our ambition to bombard you with posts, I am aware that “its been a while” since my last post. Stephen on the other hand is doing a commendable job and has become the Michael Phelps of the Tough Love Water Cube, nae blog.

To keep you updated, we are busy plotting away in the newly relocated Tough Love Towers and we will shortly have some new releases to tell you about. We’re also in negotiations with a venue to establish Don’t Go Home…London. Here though is an update of some of our bands upcoming activities.

Situationists

Sheffield’s finest are playing the BBC Introducing Stage at this years Reading and Leeds Festival;

Reading - Friday 22 Aug - 1330-1355
Leeds - Saturday Aug 23 Aug - 1315-1340

The sold out This City Holds Us All EP will be followed by a second EP this autumn.

Honeytrap

Honeytrap are in a state of flux at the moment, with half the band in Coventry and the other setting down roots, and god knows what else, in London. The London branch are dusting themselves down - they are chimney sweeps now, you see - in order to play the Vyner Street festival this Saturday.

William

William would like you to buy their album, as would we, in order for the band to begin recording a follow up single/EP/album or tape. If you’re one of those people who need other people to tell you how good something is before you buy yourself then you’re reading the wrong blog. Here's what the press think:

"Blending Pavement with heavier bands that still know their way around a good pop hook 8/10." - Rocksound Magazine

"Rhythmic, overdriven guitars, from one hook straight to the next... and it's decent stuff."- Drowned In Sound

"William create the impression of a young, up-and-coming indie punk band that would be a live revelation." - Noize Makes Enemies

"Vocals that devour your defences and leave you admitting, yes this is a great pop record 4/5." - Subba Cultcha

You can buy that album and our T-Shirt here http://www.toughloverecords.com/

Fear of Music

2008-08-21T00:05:00.004+01:00

Foals @ Cross Kings, London

There's that old adage that you should judge a man (sic) by the company he keeps. If I were to apply that same logic to music, Foals would have been dismissed before playing a note this evening . Playing what they admit themselves is their smallest show in a long time, the less than 300 strong crowd is comprised of the worst of people. Ignorant, fawning and identikit, alcohol bores through their bloodstream and I crave prohibition, or Ian MacKaye and a megaphone full of spite. Maybe I'm bitter or misunderstanding here, but at least I've still something beating in my chest.

As the 'secret', or at least low-key nature of the gig suggests, it's a partisan gathering too. Foals probably don't have to do much tonight save turn up. The opening few songs confirm my suspicions, the crowd lapping up some relatively formless, predictable jams that I very much doubt will make the second record. Yannis himself even acknowledges that they're filler, which makes you wonder why they bothered. That could be a concern for the band, but with the sheer volume of shows they've played in the last year it's hardly surprising they've had little time to write new material.

They do trot out the more well known songs in "Cassius", "Balloons" and "Hummer", but the stand outs are the album tracks that dispense of the clipped-guitar-bouncing-hi-hat formula and breathe a little. Fittingly, "Olympic Airwaves" is the first real highlight of the night, with a warmth and lushness not apparent in their more spiky dancefloor moments. It's songs like these, as with "Red Socks Pugie" that Foals remind just why everyone was so excited in the first place. I think they know it too, hence their decision to omit the popular early singles from the album.

The much documented conflict with David Sitek has shown they're focused and single-minded. Let's hope they can harness that stubborness and turn it creative on their sophomore effort. They're technically talented enough to do whatever they can imagine and their much cited influences alone show they've rich sources to draw upon - can there ever be enough Q And Not U? And it's still the best rhythm section to bother the charts in as long as I can remember.

All attention was obviously on Foals tonight. Even Matt Horne was there, until he got bored four songs in. They went back to their roots (they do have indie kudos via Try Harder, after all) and waltzed through Antidotes with ease, earning sychophancy to spare. It was an easy victory, like Usain Bolt in a empty field. And well deserved, I'm sure. But, there's another aphorism I'm reminded of here: it's a fool that looks at the hand pointing at the sky. Foals reference a lot of great bands and at times they channel the same electric, ambitious impulses of their influences. Although the new material tonight doesn't make this apparent, the newer songs on the album suggest they're pushing in the right directions and stretching out their aesthetic. I suspect however that they might lose a few of the assembled bandwagon jumpers with their eyes fixed firmly on pointed fingers. And thank god. Indie elitism I know, but I want music back. Most of these people don't deserve it.

No Age/HEALTH/Lovvers

2008-08-11T23:59:00.006+01:00

I've often commented on here about our lack of audience, as if we're firing shots behind a soundproof screen. However, on tonight's showing, I'm convincing myself that everyone in the front five rows tonight read my post and decided to prove me wrong. I'm self-important enough for that to stick. As the title of this post suggests, No Age, HEALTH and Lovvers played a gig together tonight at the Scala in London. What the title doest tell you was how excellent it was.

On Friday's showing and with a warning that the sound in the Scala can be worse than terror attacks, I was bracing myself for another night of excellent music played in poor conditions. I needn't have bothered. Filling in for a passport-less and stranded in Portugal Dan Deacon, I arrived just in time to see Lovvers tear through "Wasted Youth" in their typically insouciant, bratty manner. Churning and sloopy, they stumbled and pissed their way through a set so nasty and brazen it could've fallen out of the SST West Coast scene sometime 15-20 years ago. If they don't have a song called "19fuckin'91", then they should really try a little harder. But they do certainly try, as much as they probably like to pretend they don't and they're superb for it, even if the crowd do seem a little scared. There must be an album arriving sometime soon, surely?

If Lovvers (and No Age) look to the past for influence, HEALTH have got their sights firmly on the future. Playing a set heavy on new material, they're the best I've seen them. The new songs retain the aggressive edge of the first album, but there's a little less calculation in their delivery, a little less mathematical in their formulation. Mid-set stand out "Party Zone" is a feel good hit of the summer, fall and winter in waiting, owing a little to Fuck Buttons in its dance macabre, but still undeniably HEALTH in its metallic spikiness. Their new T Shirts are also extremely excellent. They've got the whole Gesamptkunstwerk thing down, just have No Age have, with merch spilling over the table in the lobby offering a firm reminder of their aesthetic. Stood waiting for the band to finish selling to chat 12", I saw about 15 people buy T shirts and not one record was sold. Worrying? The mention of Fuck Buttons is important too, as both them and HEALTH are doing for noise what Mogwai did for post rock (and let's not forget that Mogwai always had great and extensive merch); dragging it into a wider frame of reference without diluting what it's about. It also helps that they look really good.

With HEALTH having played earlier than scheduled, No Age are given time to watch the venue fill and by the time they take to the stage, it's sardines. And this is when the unexpected happened. Gathered at the front are about 50-100 teenagers who precede to go Peter Buck-on-a-plane as soon as No Age start playing. Five songs in, their on stage, spilling beer (naughty naughty: they're all about 12), jerking like electrified synapses and cutting out guitars. No Age love it and thank their "enthusiasm". It's amazing to see such willful abandon (even if it's a little "kneel down and you shall believe"), especially given the cold as ice reception of the too-cool-for-school bores on Friday. More gigs like this please. And when did No Age get so popular? It's deserved though.

I was meant to post some photos of the night here, but as my camera doesn't have a USB port and the memory card doesn't fit in any other camera in the house, they're stranded on the shit thing. Technology really shouldn't be this hard.

And one more thing to add: we just watched HEALTH at Rough Trade. The new songs really are as good as I thought last night. They need to take a rest from touring so they can get them recorded!

2008-08-09T16:41:00.002+01:00

Mirror! Mirror! played at the Old Blue Last (Vice owned London bar) last night and despite it being a free show, a Friday night, a very busy Friday night, the crowd reaction was a little underwhelming to say the least. It was like the 9/11 of enthusiasm. Dead-eyes rolling just enough to be able check if that was still the right thing to do. Such feigned indifference should perhaps be expected in a bar run by Vice, but at least that magazine is funny. I didn't see many people laughing last night. Maybe long time Londoners are spoilt by an embarrassment of riches? Maybe city life is too tiring to muster a simple clapped appreciation? And it wasn't the band's fault. They were typically awesome: the right combination of the visceral, aggressive and playful, fleeing the stage with bare torsos attempting to engage the crowd in some way, any way. And some down the front did dance, let their machismo spill over and got in a bit of a pissing contest. But as soon as the music stopped: silence, save the Tough Love contingent thrusting accentuated claps in annoyed faces. That was funny actually.

I think people need to purge their tired notions of what they think is cool, stop being so self-involved, so self-conscious. I can't think of anything more redundant than pretending not to like something. What's to fear? It's a little ironic that the Vice sycophants (although they'd never like to be classed as such, as that would constitute stating a preference, an affiliation that could be shot down) are so willing to blindly fit a mold shaped by a magazine that coined it's own distinct sensibility. But I can't blame Vice for the hipster Stepford Wives. That's like blaming the Jews for Hitler.

Un-Repeater

2008-08-07T10:07:00.004+01:00

William

Dananananykroyd

Honeytrap

Situationists

Popular Workshop

This has taken far too long. I should have posted these weeks ago. But it's here now. The best of times for sure. I can hardly remember anything from the night other than a vague feeling of elation (thank you, alcohol) and time has helped zero in elucidating the memory. Thank you, then to Gary Keenan for documenting what my brain was too weak to recall. Some truly fantastic images. Despite said memory lapses, I also somewhat hazily remember Dananananykroyd surfing the stairs outside Taylor John's, the lead singer of Mirror! Mirror! eating 4(!) burgers, a step ladder, the HOTTEST room in the history of temperature, the worst turn-ups and the longest long boat, and "Aperture". Thank you to everyone that came. We're planning on starting something new in London, but where and when is yet to be decided. I've also posted a link to Danananananykroyd's video tour diary, which includes some special footage from the birthday party, including said stair surfing. I wish I was able to use this blog properly and arrange the photos in some sort of order after this message, but I cant as I'm stupid....I feel obsolete

And now, buy the T-shirt

2008-07-18T21:16:00.004+01:00

Tough Love now has it's very own T shirts.

If you like what you see (you should if you have eyes/taste), then you'll have to be quick as there's only 50. They're £10 and printed on American Apparel as only the best will do. And we're ethical, if that's still cool.

Thanks to Pea Math aka Patrick Mather for his awesome design work.

See you at the birthday party.

Tough Love is 3. All Dayer.

2008-07-15T13:45:00.002+01:00

Saturday 26th July @ Taylor Johns House

As all things have a beginning, so they must have an end. For us, Saturday 26th July marks the end of 3 years of putting on gigs in Coventry before we defect to LDN where the streets are paved with gold and our pockets lined with the air of absent money. To go out in style, and continuing the tradition of marking our birthday, we've assembled the best line up we've ever put on. It's £5 in advance, with tickets available from www.thetinangel.co.uk or The Tin Angel itself if you want to purchase them in person, or £6 on the day. Doors open at 4:30PM and close at 2AM. Rather excitingly, we'll also have prints of the very first official Tough Love T-shirts, which will be strictly limited in number. The line up;

Dananananaykroyd
Honeytrap
William
Situationists
Mirror! Mirror!
Popular Workshop
Wintermute
Calories
Lionface

See you all very soon.

DJs Get Debts

2008-07-11T11:51:00.011+01:00

Tonight, me and Liam, AKA Tough Love DJs, AKA Art School Scum will be DJing at the Rockfeedback night at Cross Kings in Kings Cross, London. We're travelling all the way from Coventry to grace them with our scratched CDRs and seamless mixes, Chiltern Railways style on a tight budget of Polish lager (the one with the Wildebeest on the front) and sweaty intentions. I'm surprised they asked us, frankly.

Shaming us by virtue of their possession of talent, or at least an ability to do something that's slightly more complex that pressing play and willing lasers to work, Eugene McGuinness, Post War Years, Gideon Conn and, rather amazingly, William are all playing live. I've heard a rumour it's all going to be filmed for Channel 4 for the Rockfeedback TV programme.

It's probably a little pointless posting this link so close to the actual event, but if you're interesting in joining the party (which you really should be) you can buy tickets from here. They're £7 and doors open at 8PM and close at 2AM.

Given that I move to London in under two weeks, this is pretty much my last night of fun before the impending financial apocalypse reigns destructively over me. Never have the words "guestlist" and "rider" been so alluring.

Rise Above, Again

2008-07-10T15:43:00.005+01:00

Seeing Coldplay recently atop the charts for the first time in what is still an extremely commercially successful career, started me thinking about Radiohead and all that In Rainbows panic. It all seems a little overblown now. That paradigm still looks pretty much the same to me. So' i've boiled it down to the following.

Three schools of thought:

The first:

Year Zero: October 10th 2007. We all awoke to crumbling infrastructure, to zombie-like A&R staggering sun-blinded by the dawning of a new era. The peasants had stormed the palace. Radiohead staged a coup, killed a monster; slaying the evil beast of commerce while opening the door of possibility. We felt the ground move and we paid nothing for it. Unless we wanted to. But we were part of it. We collectively prodded that anachronistic monolith across the plank with its own sword. And we didn’t even need to leave our desk. We celebrated as a new pirate economy took charge, that was decentred, that was as much our own as we wanted it to be. The potential was limitless. It was easy, it was cheap, we went and did it. “The king is dead“ chimed the message boards and the press soon followed suit, because they follow us. We are the new power.

The second:

Fast-forward eight months and, funded by a somewhat derailed EMI, Coldplay stand imperiously at the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic for the first time in what no one would claim a commercially unsuccessful career. Oasis have freshly signed a three album deal with Sony BMG. No one can remember when the Charlatans or Nine Inch Nails last released a record they’d listen to if paid. And if you want to see Radiohead live having missed their last-however-many sold-out tours, there are plenty of tickets still available despite the apparent success of the In Rainbows business model. As confusion abounds, we – us, the loyal fan, the keen consumer - are pretty much left exactly where we’ve always been: at the wrong end of an oligopoly. Nothing has changed. Except this time, we’re deluded by the smokescreen of progress and agency. We see what was once wrong and as we log into iTunes, stream video content on YouTube, upload ourselves via MySpace and tell our friends all about it via Facebook are certain that we’re an instrumental, nay, an interactive part of this brave new world and need be dictated to no more, unaware of the blinding contradiction.

And the third:

None of the above matters.

If this all seems a little polemical, it’s because it’s the very same seductive rhetoric that has characterised the discourse built around the advent of digital media technologies and the Internet. The release of In Rainbows has been canonised as a watershed moment in the democratic evening out of a once ill-apportioned industry. And yes, superficially, Radiohead have challenged the incumbent powers in their bypassing of traditional industry models. Album sales do slide ever closer to oblivion, along with the brick and mortar retailers that afford the opportunity to purchase them, while EMI is haemorrhaging staff like a suicidal haemophiliac. And this is a good thing, right? So, how have Coldplay singlehandedly saved thousands of jobs, making only the foretold death of the music industry redundant? Surely the tide can’t turn both ways?

What this debate ultimately equates to is not that of an industry in flux; of an industry maybe in its death throes, maybe in stasis before reforming anew, maybe somewhere in between. It’s all too unclear, too apparent, all too corporate to be the main concern. Less clearly, what we see here is the process of production positioned as the fetish object; a fetishisation that permeates throughout a culture obsessed with itself, determined to reveal its mechanisms but surrender nothing. It’s apparent in the release of In Rainbows yes, but also there in The X Factor’s factory line, in DVD extras documenting The Making of… something or nothing, even present in advertising that so very carefully demonstrates how x plus y equals something we really don’t need but really must have because it’s real. It’s this very ideology that positions Radiohead as arbiters of a democratised new order, a paradox in itself and one that disguises why we should care in the first place.

Purposefully, there’s something missing in this argument thus far. Culture isn’t totalised. We are not a passive audience. We do have the agency to say no, to say yes, to switch off or make it our own. The public gets what the public wants and if it doesn’t, takes it regardless. Radiohead’s “Nude” remix competition has shown that, despite relying on the Apple affiliated iTunes and Garageband software. But if interactivity is merely the ability to choose what we consume, what’s the consequence of the ruse? The fetish of production celebrates the messenger and ignores the message. There is no art, only context, only ways of receiving it. The medium is tedium, indeed. What does this render the notion of art, or more specifically, music as art if not mere circumstantial noise?

That’s a depressing assertion, but not one without foundation. In Rainbows may have been critically lauded, hailed another addition to an already significant canon, but it’s all fluff when stood next to Radiohead the band; egalitarian doyens of change, golden hearted millionaires, the Captain Planet of industry and us their Planeteers. In Rainbows is significant because of its origins, because of how, not what it communicates. The conquest of art is now the conquest of successful mediation and the distinction between artists and entrepreneurs is purely ideological. Democratic potential can quite easily give way to neo-liberal opportunism and it’s difficult to distinguish between the ‘punks’ and the ‘punk capitalists’ because they look like the same person, carry the same signifiers, share the same end goals. The ideology of resistance is filtered through a capitalist logic of production, independence merely the freedom to decide how, not if you sell yourself.

Reading Richard Wagner’s The Art Work of the Future recently, I’m reminded here of his notion of Gesamptkunstwerk: the construction of ‘total art works’ in which disparate aesthetic practices combine to create immersive worlds of experience. Wagner was inferring the need for unity so as to enhance artistic expression, yet we now see this rationale subverted in the digital age. Radiohead have long furnished an insular world, one that In Rainbows has invited us to inhabit, but only on their terms, only at their will. In Rainbows still functions as a one-to-many communication model, we just now get to pick our own seats. The addition of the Scotch Mist YouTube videos and “Nude” remix competition have only furthered their aesthetic, cast their net wider, more tightly (re)defined what it is they are. Radiohead have supplanted one pre-existing monopoly with another: their own and we’re all implicit in it. If they were lone renegades, I’d acknowledge an anomaly. That they’ve apparently set a precedent, coins a sensibility and the connotations of the verb are purely intentional. What this signals? The death of the music industry, if that’s not too gauche a phrase, is the rebirth of the author. And the author is always tyrannical now matter how they choose to assert their power.

That said, that James Houston video is nonetheless pretty special. Radiohead must be beaming. Feel free to do exactly the same to any one of our songs.

Don't Fart On My Art

2008-07-03T20:10:00.003+01:00

British culture doesn't recognise intellectual labour. There's a debilitating climate of anti-intellectualism which greets that which isn't quantifiable, that which isn't measurable by a capitalist rationale of success as somehow irrelevant, as a curio rather than a purposeful endeavour. Try explaining the purpose of an independent record label that isn't based on making money to the lay person; like cucumber into my mouth, it just wont go.

Regardless, it's this same logic that posits art-based pursuits as inferior to the sciences. Its an unfair distinction, which anyone who's studied fine art will attest. You can walk a business degree with little to no effort if you're just a little more than half an idiot (and no disrespect), but you can't really fake art. The proof's there, right in front of you. You've either laboured hard or you've nothing to show. And there are no rules that you can learn, no formulas to memorise that wont lead to anything other than transparent plagiarism. I guess it's the struggle for originality, to create something that hasn't gone before, that wont entice scorn or ridicule from peers. Art is hard, but it's worth it. And I know this post is self-important pseudo intellectual shite, but you knew it would be before you clicked the appropriate buttons, so stop laughing at the naughty child if you don't want your hair setting on fire.

To anyone that would bother to read this, what I've argued may well be obvious. I'm preaching to the choir, or turning away non-believers. So, what's the point? Well, I'm no artist, in anyway, mores the pity, but I think that I, we (Tough Love) have always strived towards making our records a bit more than the songs themselves. Like Factory, maybe. Not that I'd align us with their legacy, but there's an influence for sure. Often we've been credited for this, but perhaps unfairly, the actual artists who worked so hard and so long for so little have been overlooked, or at least relegated to the side lines. That's really quite unfair. Confused as to what I do, someone asked me last week what my running of the label entailed and I couldn't provide an answer that wasn't either boring or a lie. Instead I chose to point at someone elses art and pretend it had something to do with me. So this post is in recognition of all those that have made me look better. That's not an easy thing to do. They are genius and they should be honoured as such. And this is me publicly calling myself out.

Check 'em out:

Alex Ostrowski - impossibly talented all-round everyman who designed the Disco Drive 7" and T-shirt along with that rather magnificent Sequins album. It's also worth investigating his band kotki dwa and admiring his punk spirit

Chris Clarke - Introduced to us via Alex, with whom he shares a house and ridiculous work ethic. Worked on both the Popular Workshop 7" and T-shirt and helped with the Honeytrap album and HEALTH 12"

Rose Blake - Flicking through a Guardian supplement a year or so ago, I saw a T-shirt designed by Rose that made me hunt her down on the web and part with my money immediately. Her colourful and right on-point illustrations on the Honeytrap album make the fact she's Peter Blake's daughter irrelevant in an instance. Peter Blake is Rose Blake's father you know...That's the way I remember it.

Nous Vous - Leeds based collective that not only produce beautiful and thoughtful art concepts, but also play in about a million bands all of which sound pretty sweet to me. Their work on the Situationists 10" was instrumental in its success, of that I'm positive.

Pea Math - We kind of stumbled across Pea Math's (aka Patrick) work retroactively having taken on the Mirror! Mirror! project in its final stages, but I'm glad we did. Not only a true gent, but also an inspired artist who's currently working on some AMAZING Tough Love T-shirts...

Round of applause please. And if you want to furnish their pockets a little, then I can't recommend them highly enough, the smart fuckers.

The Takeover

2008-06-29T16:45:00.003+01:00

I'm an idiot because I intended to post this just before it was way too late to say in normal everyday conversation with people that don't listen to music, for fear of being branded a bit, you know, passe. But now it is too late and I'm as on point as that Channel 4 programme about independent music. But here it is anyway, because it's still true.

"Noel Gallagher must now feel as bad as I do every time I hear one of his records. Jay Z-ee/-ed is no saint, not even someone I listen to a lot, in fact I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to one of his records, but what a way to raise two fingers to the music Nazis. Fuck you, Noel Gallagher. Actually, wait a minute, you already fucked yourself. "

Something for the Weekend

2008-06-26T23:14:00.004+01:00

With Stephen already monopolising our imagined audience I thought I better pull my finger out. Unfortunately, I don't really have anything to say. Now there's a reason to keep reading...

And so my thoughts turned to this weekend. I'm looking forward to it with equal amounts of excitement and dread. The excitement comes in the form of our friends first gig. Not the first he is attending you understand. He's crossing the line. Joining those brave, or stupid, enough to put on a gig. At least in Mirror! Mirror! and Untitled Musical Project he's putting on two amazing bands with some of the most grounded folk we've had the pleasure of putting on. Even if the former drummer of Untitled Musical Project did once say to me that he had yet to discover one interesting or satisfying aspect of being in a band. I'm sure he was just being droll.

As they say round here "Fair fuck's to him for having a go. I like those bands. I wont be there myself, got something on, but good luck to him." Which is probably the most frustrating attitude you can encounter as a promoter.

Oh and the dread is because of a visit to the dentist for a filling. An injection into the roof of the mouth, the weirdest tasting solution ever and £200 for the privilege. Take care of your teeth kids.

The Road To Hell

2008-06-25T15:41:00.003+01:00

Tonight/tomorrow morning, the Situationists make their national TV debut on Channel 4 at 12:05AM as part of the final few rounds of the Road to V competition. I'm still unclear as to how this process works, but having been selected from thousands of other applicants, Situationists along with 13 (I think) other bands are now being pitted against each other to see who deserves a slot at V Festival this year. Regardless of the outcome and I offer that caveat now to avoid accusations of bitterness when the results are announced, Situationists are far too good to deserve to play V. I'm too good to deserve to play V and I'm rubbish.

Apart from Glastonbury, it's pretty much the worst festival in the world. While there are far less mouldy haired drug casualties writhing in mud facing a non-existent stage ("hello, over here") at V than the aforementioned worst offender, it's still over-populated by Q magazine rocklite atroscities and a crowd of tourists living out of picnic hampers. The Situationists don't deserve that, but they do deserve to be heard by thousands of new people however sickening they may be and they deserve to be paid for it. Because even musicians need to eat.

If you can stomach the gauche idea of music as competition and if you can tolerate a panel of "experts" patronisingly qualifying what's good and what's not, it's worth watching tonight. In fact, it's worth watching regardless, because Situationists are law and the the whole premise is crime. When they rule over it, it'll be a victory for everything that isn't shit about music (i.e. the bit when it sounds good)

In other news, Tough Love is now officially moving to London on Saturday 20th July. We have a house and everything. What we don't have is enough money to pay for luxuries such as heating (fuck it, it's summer), water (fuck it, it's the British summer) and food. If you must, you can donate to the cause by buying some records. I have a suspicion that Apple are rich enough now...

Non-Celebrity Art Party

2008-06-22T18:48:00.005+01:00

Thank you to all that turned up turned-out and turned-on on Friday. My ears are still ringing, my heart still swelling. Of course, all the other band's were great, amazing in fact, but it was all about William, all for them. The cover of "Psychokiller" was fairly unexpected and quite choice. If anyone has any live footage, I'd love to see it. Same applies to photos. As you would expect, the night descended into chaos as it turned into day and while I fell fast asleep with sweaty legs, dreaming of living in the black, others made trouble on pub roofs. That's the way it should be. It's the way it will be. You can take the boys out of Coventry...If you're at all interested, you can buy the William album, Self in Fiction direct from our website for a mere £8.

In between playing said William album to death, I've also been listening to fellow Londoners, Favours For Sailors just that little too much. They mine quite similar influences, if a little more Pavement and a little less Dinosaur Jr. They feature a (I think) ex-4 or 5 Magician now too and it's added some nice scuzzy texture. It's 1993 again and as long as 1994 doesn't follow any time soon, I can't see any problem with that at all.

As is perhaps obvious, I haven't quite grasped how to post MP3s or photos, but one step at a time. It's a slow education. So, the best I can do is post this link www.myspace.com/favours4sailors and advise that you bother to care now before people more important people than I give you no choice in six months time.

Not Much Water Coming Over The Hill

2008-06-20T10:22:00.001+01:00

It's clear we've not quite engaged with this blog format on any significant level, least not a level significant enough to draw regular readers. But just as I like the sound of my own voice, I like reading what I write and the process in itself is a means of gaining fresh understanding. If I'm preaching to the choir, then so be it. There's a lot to be said for posterity, especially as my memory seems to have stopped recording information since around 2001. And it's that same bad memory that contributed to me forgetting to post my ramblings about ATP. They're a little incomplete and Ryan's neat summary in the previous post seems to have covered most bases, but nevertheless, I've copied them in anyway:

"Two ATPs in successive weekends is an Olympic effort. It should be considered a sport. London 2012 can host a satellite event in Minehead, surely? Needless to say, I'm fried and wired; ears like I've lived a life in a bathysphere and a head like an over-shaken snowglobe. And that was before I sat down to watch Werner Herzog's "Burden of Dreams" in the early hours of Monday morning. But, I wouldn't change any of it, except perhaps Saul Williams' misjudged and frankly out-dated sub-industrial mess of a set. He did look good kitted out in white feathers and Grace Jones shake appeal though.

What of the highlights? Friday was a little lean on interest for me, save Sunset Rubdown who choose to stumble endearingly between mid-West anthemics (I do know they're Canadian, btw) and some rather regal prog-like tendencies. Spencer Krug seems to possess an astute awareness of what his best songs actually are, or at least agrees with me. So, a two year wait for "Shut Up I'm Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings" was happily brought to an end. Now if only I could work out what he's actually chiming on about... In fact, the beauty of ATP is that if i'd really wanted to find out, I could've quite easily got it from the horses mouth. There might well be a VIP area somewhere, but it rarely appeared as if the bands were aware of it. After watching Okkervil River, with guest Wren Charles Blissel on guitar, condense a whole lifetime of Mojo rock cliche into a literate, fiery and Springsteen-sharp hour, Will Sheff then hung off my shoulder for the entire National set. Save a pickled few, no one was walking away from this performance prematurely. And performance is the appropriate word. Stately and under-stated in equal measure, Matt Berringer has a voice deeper than Butlins' pockets and enough great songs for that to not even be the highlight. They're surely one Glastonbury TV performance away from Arcade Fire-like reverence.

But of all the heart stopping (Jens Lekman), synapse melting (Battles, Animal Collective) performances on offer, the fan boy in me couldn't help but be over awed by the Silver Jews and in particular, the defiant and stately grace of D.C. Berman, who now appears to finally nailed the frontman schtick. Those lyrics always hinted at a comedy genius, but the last tour saw him nervous and unsure of his own words. Not so this weekend. I'm still unconvinced he can play a guitar or plug in a microphone, but he (just like The National, Jens Lekman, Okkervil River and Sunset Rubdown, to their credit also) made light work of what's generally been seen as a pretty shitty stage to play in that infinite ceiling-ed, service station-like setting. It's that academic charisma that only comes from the smartest, most difficult, slightly wayward older gent that shone through and past the food court hall and black curtain walls. Not far off being a greatest hits set, there can't be many that walked away from that performance feeling disappointed or underwhelmed. The moment when he turned to face Cassie to sing the final lines of "Random Rules" (No one should have two lives, now you know my middle names are wrong and right. Honey we've got two lives to give tonight) was pure country theatre. And 59 shows in 41 years may be pretty inefficient, but we'd all trade quantity for quality, right"

So, that's what I thought about ATP. I really should've done the same thing for Primavera now, but that's so far back in the past now that it's like it never happened, although my internal organs keeps throwing up little memories. Scarring is a form memory.

So, back to now. Today/tonight/early tomorrow morning is a rather exciting prospect. Although a little prematurely, we’re celebarting the release of William's debut long player, Self In Fiction with a launch party this coming Friday on 20th June. The debauchery begins at 8:30 and takes place at their local haunt, The Fox in Lewisham. William, along with stable mates and friends Popular Workshop and Honeytrap, and a band we know little about The Kill Raimis will all be playing. It’s going to be quite a racket.

If Facebook is to be trusted, then we’re expecting a full house, so arrive early or be prepared to queue. Entry is £4, with DJs Simon No 9 and Catholic Girls on hand to respectfully decline all your requests. I’m bringing my American Heartbeat CD just in case…

If the Honeytrap album launch of two weeks ago is anything to judge by, I'm expecting a messy and sweaty and slightly silly night. In fact, I should just mention that the Honeytrap night sold out. People were turned away on the door. Now, while I don't like to see people miss out, maybe it's proof that you shouldn't take what they and we do for granted. Perhaps buy a ticket next time?

See you all tonight and by 'all' I mean you, Ryan.

So, an update.

2008-05-28T19:04:00.003+01:00

ATP2 passed of without any horrible injuries. Still, the expected but nonetheless brilliant highlights included The Silver Jews, The National, Okkervil River and Sunset Rubdown. As ever, the whole ATP experience was enhanced by an introduction to a few wild cards. Namely, rum and ginger ale, Soft Focus and Werner Herzog's masterpiece Fitzcarraldo (via the equally brilliant Burden of Dreams)

The HEALTH records are in our grubby mitts. To celebrate I'll share this link with you. With Stephen off to complete his third weekend of festival madness at this years Primavera it was left to me to do a quick update and that's what I've done.

We'll back soon enough with some Honeytrap launch party news. And some more words.

Walking On, Walking On Broken Glass

2008-05-14T19:24:00.004+01:00

Proving one half of the Tough Love moniker to be rather apt, I managed to survive a viscious broken bottle attack at ATP last Saturday long enough to be able to provide a much needed update to this blog. Far from as dramatic as i've made this sound, while playing football between the chalet lines, I somehow managed to step flat-footed and flesh-exposed straight on to the bottom of a inconveniently placed Grolsch bottle. And completely sober may i add. I blame my poor touch and a high proportion of unwanted jocks. Needless to say, I'm still alive and soon to be kicking again. Next time though, I'll wear shoes.

Fortunately, there's far more important things to talk about, namely the release of two more records on Tough Love.

The first of these will be familiar to all those who have followed Tough Love from the start. William, having issued two 7"s through us in the last few years, have finally got round to recording their debut album, Self In Fiction, which is scheduled to be released on Monday 9th July. Picking my favourite release on the label is like deciding between children, but if pushed, I'd be happy to claim this our finest. They recall plenty of bands that I, and pretty much anyone else with ears and a brain, love (Van Pelt, Dinosaur Jr, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Sonic Youth circa 1991, early-period REM) but I don't think they actually sound like any one of them in particular. Perhaps that seems a little lazy in its description. Perhaps you're better making your own mind up. Either way, it's a fantastic record and the way Gavin tears at his guitar on the closing track is pure voltage written in sound. If there's a more feral, raw, energetic debut record released this year, do let me know. I'll want to buy it.

The second release is a rather unexpected 7" from Mirror! Mirror!, due out on Monday 9th June. I say unexpected, as we were approached by the band after the label originally scheduled to release it, On Dry Land had their money seized when the manufacturers they were using were closed-down as a result of DVD piracy issues. The drama. We were more than willing to take on the project, given song titles such as "Aladdins Rave" and, a personal favourite "My Brain Is Jassive". I've tried jassive on Scrabulous. Apparently, it's not a word. I wouldn't fancy telling the lead singer that. Pure torso and a tongue like Mark E. Smith. You can hear that same rapier wit on the single; all healthy-living tips and sex education. It's a public service broadcast as imagined by a drunk weightlifting idiot savant kitted out in Crass dogma. If that doesn't make you want to listen, you're an idiot sans savant. Thanks must also go to Holy Roar Records, who've helped the band immensely with the digital side of the release.

Both records are available to order from the product section of our site now: www.toughloverecords.com

ATP Mk 2 is now emerging over the end-of-week hill and I'm not one to ignore its drunken siren call. If i return this time with a missing limb I'm bringing photographic evidence with me. A small scar just doesn't elicit the appropriate amount of sympathy.

We Give A Fuck About An Oxford Collapse

2008-04-25T16:34:00.002+01:00

Maintaining a blog is almost as much hard work as maintaining a small-to-nohing independent record label. And this is only my first post. Who would've thought, apathy and indignance from the get go? But i guess it only seems like a chore as we've a million different plates spinning at once at the moment. I wonder if Sisyphus complained this much? He probabaly would have if he had a blog. In fact, if he had a blog, he would've got bored with that rock a long time ago.

Anyway, rocks, plates and mixed metaphors aside, there's something rather exciting about to occur and even though no one other than me and Ryan is reading this, it's important to record for posterity at least. We've always considered our monthly boozefest Don't Go Home... to be a lot less than shit, but the gigs we've organised this year have been especially not shit. That's to say, really quite excellent. The Johnny Foreigner/William/The Sequins blastoff in February had me smiling like i'd never had my heartbroken, while the bank holiday follow up of Youth Movies and Rolo Tomassi broke my heart for all the right reasons. I think that balances itself out. And why do blogs and heartbreak keep jumping into bed together? Needless to say, we're aiming for a triple crown run with Saturday's forthcoming line-up.

Fresh off the back of a support tour with We Are Scientists (and don't hold that against them) Oxford Collapse will be gracing the inappropriately-sized Taylor John's stage on Saturday 26th April. That they're signed to Sub Pop should be indication enough of their pedigree, but that they also share the same initials as a certain Orange County (there's a clue) teen drama/joke should tell you more about their Seth Cohen in tight shorts sassy-ness. The good thing though is that this particular OC leave behind the mawkish sentimentality that afflicts their namesake and just bring the heat and hot threads. Tough Love's very own Situationists and Mirror! Mirror! will also be playing, which is equally exciting given that they're two of the best young bands in the country. It's true that of course i would make such a claim, but it's also true that it's true and it's hard to argue with the truth.

So, here are the details for those to lazy to read the above:

Don't Go Home...
Saturday 26th April
Oxford Collapse
Situationists
Mirror! Mirror!
Taylor John's House, Coventry
8:30PM-2:00AM
£4/5

See you all Saturday and by all I mean you Ryan.

TLV 020 HEALTH - Triceratops//Lost Time + Remixes

2008-04-23T22:42:00.006+01:00

Released 19th May 2008

We’re still reeling slightly from the news that HEALTH want to work with us, so it’s with great excitement that we can announce the release of a limited edition 12” from the LA-based four piece. Featuring “Triceratops” and “Lost Time” from last years self-titled DiS Top Ten album of the year, it also compiles together a number of remixes from their DISCO pseudonym. They’re pretty much the best remixes we’ve heard in the three years the label has been in operation. Thanks must go to Alex Ostrowski for helping out with the artwork.

In case you’ve been walking around with your eyes closed, HEALTH have been getting props pretty much everywhere, from Pitchfork to VICE to Plan B. Just look at their number of plays on MySpace: www.myspace.com/healthmusic. Always an indication of brilliance, possibly… So good are they in fact that their forthcoming May/June UK tour is being sponsored by the ever-on-the-ball Drowned In Sound. They’re also playing Primavera for any of you heading out there in late May. We hope to see you at one of the dates:

30th April – Wheatsheaf, Oxford
1st May – Luminaire, London
3rd May – Charlies Nightclub, Manchester
4th May – The Brudenell, Leeds
5th May – Portland Ardms, Cambridge
6th May – Bodega, Nottingham
9th May – Whelan’s, Dublin
10th May - Captian’s Rest, Glasgow
11th May – End Bar, Newcastle
12th May – Freebutt, Brighton
9th June – The Joiners, Southampton
11th June – Liverpool, Korova

TLV018 Honeytrap – Follies in Great Cities

2008-04-17T21:19:00.011+01:00

Released 9th June 2008

From the very first Tough Love live show back in the summer of ’05 when they were known as Mawda and listened to the Lion King on repeat for months at a time, the prospect of a full album from those same four slightly off-kilter oddballs, now under the Honeytrap moniker, has always been rather exciting. Recorded in both an old coal vault and a bathroom, Follies In Great Cities delivers on that early promise and with great aplomb. Featuring ten tracks, including re-recorded versions of both “Mussolini’s Son” and “Death Before the Silver Screen”, it’s a wildly ambitious tour de force. The violins and horns leave me a little breathless I have to say.

Artwork comes from the wonderfully talented Rose Blake and we can excitedly confirm that T-Shirts based on the design are in the pipeline. Thank you so much Rose for all your hard work. You all really should investigate her other work.

To celebrate the release we’ve organised a launch party at Taylor John’s House on the 6th June, featuring not only Honeytrap but the new band from ex-Dead! Dead! Dead! members and some close friends from Norway. Keep your diary free or join the Facebook event.