The beauty of Pagan Wanderer Lu isn’t that no two songs sound the same, it’s that no song ends the same as it begins with each track a miniature musical journey. And while your tour guide may be full of charming and witty anecdotes about places of local interest, driving the bus is an escapee from a high security institution coming down from a six week bender. Thus the energy of Fight My Battles For Me is motorway pile-up of musical styles and ideas.
Fanfarlo
Q&A: FFS emails Fanfarlo
Fanfarlo frontman Simon Balthazar took a break from their UK tour to answer FFS’s questions.
Single: Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes
‘Summertime Clothes‘ is one of the best tracks on one of the best records of the year, Merriweather Post Pavilion. If you don’t own the album, stop reading now and go and buy it. The real challenge for Animal Collective now is to make the single worth getting as well.
Album: Parliament of Owls – Crow
As the achingly beautiful strings of the intro to Parliament of Owls’ debut Crow swelled beneath the singing of birds and a David Attenborough-like voice began to speak, I was stunned into awed silence. Any looming dread about having to review a two-disc album disappeared in one magnificent surge of music and, as commanded by the voiceover, all I could do was “wait and listen for the first songs to begin”.
FFS Interview: Butcher Boy
Butcher Boy have had quite a year. Their second album React or Die received rave reviews across the board with the Times rock critic Pete Paphides declaring “Butcher Boy have set a standard against which every other release this year must surely be judged”. The band are set to fulfil a long-held ambition this month by performing a live film score to Cocozza film Chick’s Day at Glasgow Film Theatre. Songwriter and frontman John Blain Hunt kindly agreed to answer our questions…