Sofar, meet Brighton. Brighton, meet Sofar.

Yes, that's right. It's finally happening. You don't need to have been to the city on the coast to know that Brighton has quite the burgeoning music scene. It hasn't spawned such great artists as Bat For Lashes, Blood Red Shoes and The Maccabees and played host to the Brighton Festival and The Great Escape over the years for nothing. And given that we at Sofar are enticed to burgeoning music scenes like flys are to light bulbs, it was a love story waiting to happen. You could even go Sofar as to say it's a modern day Romeo & Juliet. But, of course, we at Sofar like to do things a little differently (who ever thought doing a gig in a living room would be a good idea?), so instead of our Romeo and Juliet coming to a wholly premature poison-fuelled ending, they are to walk hand in hand along the Brighton Pier and live happily ever after (it's what dear old Willy Shakespeare would've wanted). Although with a little help from our friends at The Great Escape festival we've had casual forays into the city before, and in the process brought the luscious tones of such talented musicians as Trophy Wife, We Were Evergreen and even our co-founder David J. Alexander to those who were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, the time has come for Brighton to stake a much overdue claim in Sofar history all of its own. Unsurprisingly we've got a great line-up set up, and the magical moment not so indifferent to spacehopper Neil Armstrong's little venture is set to happen towards the end of this very month.

If you're not as excited as we are about this, 1) check your pulse - Sofar is coming to one of the greatest musical cities this world has to offer after all and 2) read this - our recently appointed Head Local Blogger down in Brighton, Adam Wilson, reconfirms for us why the Sofar movement is so significant. Didn't even have to ask him to write the article, or pay him for that matter. I leave you with one of Shakespeare's most famous lines:

To Sofar or not to Sofar? There is no question about it.

Picture: Steve McCallum

If you think your city has a music scene crying out for some Sofar lovin' and we're yet to get to you, give rafe@sofarsounds.com an e-mail. If you like what you see and want to get involved in the editorial side of Sofar, give me an e-mail at nick.beaver@sofarsounds.com. If you think you have what it takes musically to create some Sofar history all of your own, or think you know of an artist or band that have the potential to do so, send your recommendation to sofarsoundsmusic@gmail.com.

Because Monday mornings are just as hard as Sunday evenings

We're all in this together. Sunday evenings: the time seemingly created so the nation can collectively weep at the demise of the fun and freedom that came with the now ending weekend. Believe it or not, but whilst we at Sofar put on brave faces and great secret gigs for you guys, we feel your pain. That's why we - or, more specifically, Tom Lovett of our Sofar Creative arm - teamed up with the lovely lot at Twenty Something London to make it all better. Much like a hug for your heart, the result was TSL's first ever Sunday Music Mix. And whilst it might not be Sunday any longer, it's Monday morning - there is still a battle to be won. Feeling that your multiple cups of coffee (with notably more teaspoons of sugar) just aren't hacking it? Still daydreaming of the times when you didn't get a pang of guilt if you didn't, God forbid, check your e-mail every fifteen minutes? Then check out Sofar's attempt at TSL's Sunday Music Mix or click play on the playlist below and you'll be likening Monday mornings to Friday afternoons in no time.

Love, the ever-helpful Twenty Something London and the ever-sleepy Sofar x

Have The Vaccines really 'Come of Age'?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Going from discussing something as deep and philosophical as what The xx represent and don’t represent (see my last blog post) to a band as one-dimensional as The Vaccines (see, well, this blog post) is a bit of a dumbing down in all senses of the word, but I’ll have you know the depths to which my musical discussions have plummeted are not as low as you might think. I’ll admit, I – along with many, many others, I imagine – wasn’t expecting this record to be a life-changer. One of the reasons why I wasn’t such a fan of their first, What Did You Expect from The Vaccines?, was because it was so far away from being a life-changer (but maybe that’s me being overly pretentious and expecting something from a band that they were never going to give?). I just found there were absolutely no layers to the album (figurative, not literal – unless, of course, your What Did You Expect from The Vaccines? was an onion) and had a very short expiry date as a result (how this onion analogy has continued, I have no idea) – there were the vocals, the guitars and the drums and nothing else. And if the two singles taken from Come of Age so far were anything to go by (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_3eEPpmKwE and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFUKrsDDChE), along with the band’s new American rock’n’roll image (think denim waistcoats, leather boots and shoulder length hair), it would appear that they adopted the attitude of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ (and ‘broken’ it certainly wasn’t – within seemingly no time at all they were playing to God knows how many thousands whilst supporting Arcade Fire in Hyde Park and had their debut at No.4 in the charts). But we all know what I think about bands barely changing their sound between albums (see my previous blog post-come-rant about The xx’s ‘new’ LP if not), with my frustration/opinion being only heightened were bands as simple as The Vaccines to do so (at least The xx have their rather distinct sound going for them; The Vaccines sound exactly like who knows how many stereotypically indie bands out there).

One might expect the lyrics on the new album to be the game-changer, then, the element that prevents the blog post being more ‘rant’ than ‘review’. Maybe lead singer Justin Young went all Rou Reynolds (of Enter Shikari) on us and started ranting and (quite literally, in Rou’s case) raving about politics and the suchlike? But then given that the band’s image went from decidedly English to decidedly American in between album No.1 and album No.2, maybe not the politics idea so much. Accordingly, a good deal of Come of Age’s lyrics could well fit on the band’s knowingly no frills debut; the chorus of If You Wanna from their first (“But if you wanna come back it’s alright, it’s alright! It’s alright if you wanna come back!”) is almost as revolutionary as that of Bad Mood off their second (“I’m in a bad, bad mood, a bad, bad mood!”). The band being as creative and inspirational with their lyrics as they are with their song titles, then (sarcasm has always been hard to convey online).

But as alluded to earlier, I can appreciate that it isn’t fair to judge a band’s work in general on how life changing their lyrics are when the band in question never set out either to be life changing, nor produce lyrics that would be remembered for years to come. The Vaccines know that they amount to not a whole lot more than a straight up rock’n’roll band and consequently don’t pretend to be anything else, and for this they have my respect.

What, then, is preventing this review from being a mere declaration of frustration? Those who graduated from spy school will have spied with their little eye that, apart from one brief occasion, there’s an element fairly instrumental (cringe) to most albums I am yet to discuss – the actual music. It is this that prompted me to write this review. (Notice I use the word ‘review’: as mentioned in my last blog post, I feel that when it comes to reviewing albums, it’s best to adopt the attitude ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’ – this then prevents the possibility of one slating an album for the simple reason that it isn’t to their taste, which I feel amounts more to a ‘rant’ than it does a ‘review’ and is massively unfair.) A couple months back, I was lucky enough to gain work experience with The Fly (@THEFLYMAGAZINE), a music magazine you might have heard of (it’s the one you can get for free from HMV). Amongst other things, one of my tasks was to transcribe an interview one of the staff writers (@harrietgibsone) had just conducted with Justin Young, the lead singer of The Vaccines. He said a bunch of things you’d expect a lead singer with a new album coming out soon to say (‘we’ve really grown as a band’, ‘this is our best album yet’, you know the stuff), but then he also said a few things which took me slightly by surprise. Firstly, he claimed he’d grown his hair down to his shoulders and now wore double-denim – Harriet was as shocked as I was, The Vaccines were meant to be renowned for their sense of style? But that’s beside the point – this is meant to be an album review, after all. More importantly, Mr. Young remarked at just how good the members of his band were at playing their respective instruments. Now, you’re probably a little taken aback by my saying this was a bit of a surprise – I’ll admit saying so is a little harsh, and I completely understand that given that I don’t have a musical bone in my body I’m not really in a position to make such brash remarks – but I’ll explain. At the time of the interview, all I’d heard from The Vaccines was their first album and (I think) the lead single off their yet-to-be-released second album, No Hope, most of which was simple-as-can-be indie, occasionally verging on a bit punk rocky (take the intro and verses of If You Wanna (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQKjI6395iU), for example). In my opinion, and I appreciate that my music taste might well have an influence here, creating music like this doesn’t require skill as such – as mentioned, I’ve not a single musical bone in my body and yet I feel I’d get far closer to banging the drums and strumming the chords like The Vaccines do on their first than I would, say, finger plucking with real intensity or creating an immersive atmosphere (i.e. creative methods that, in my opinion, require real artistic skill). Hence my surprise when Justin spoke of the skill of his remaining band members. But on the occasional song on Come of Age, The Vaccines’ choose not to bang their drums and thrash their guitars as if they were an indie band trying to be a punk rock band and it is this that makes all the difference for me – it is that that shows that they are not a one trick pony, with their only ‘trick’ being able to bang their drums and thrash their guitars as hard as possible (slight exaggeration). I Always Knew shows that the band are aware a chorus can still be catchy even if it doesn’t go at a rate of knots; All In Vain shows that the band acknowledge that mellow can still be cool; Aftershave Ocean features the highly difficult but much appreciated tight fingerwork previously mentioned; heck, Lonely World is bordering on a ballad (but I guess this can only be so much of a surprise with a title as emo as that)! It is these realisations and advancements on the band’s behalf that show they have undertaken the all important evolution that was so needed since their first album, and it is these realisations and advancements on the band’s behalf that turns them into the band they initially promised to be way back when. You could even say that the band have Come of Age (because who doesn’t end their review with a cringeworthy cliché these days?).

Review of The xx's 'Coexist' and a few entirely relevant digressions

Now, I’m relatively certain I’m not the only person who reviews music on a fairly regular basis. I’m also relatively certain I’m not the only person who reviews music on a fairly regular basis who reviews music even when he/she doesn’t have to. To help illustrate this, I’ve a little anecdote: Channel 4 have just started a recent series called 999: What’s Your Emergency? (bear with me on this) which, unsurprisingly, is all about 999 calls. In a recent episode, a police officer man confesses how, so long has he had his job, he is simply incapable of ‘switching off’ as if it were – this is what it’s like for us music reviewers, and I think you’ll agree who’s job in hand is more important, a thank you very much. The reason I bother with this seemingly irrelevant anecdote is because I didn’t go into listening to The xx’s Coexist hoping to review it and yet here I am? Those who have my Twitter feed as their homepage (@wgsa_musicblog, highly recommended) would have spotted I listened to Coexist for the first time whilst on a walk on an appropriately gloomy afternoon (you can count the number of colours The xx like to feature in their fashion sense on one finger and that’s only, of course, if you consider black a colour) – I was meant to be listening to this big new release only for pleasure and yet I found myself making notes on my phone whilst plodding (walking would suggest I’m far too happy) along? After some quite rigorous note taking on my phone (‘rigorous’ because I for one can admit a man standing dead still in the middle of the countryside texting looks a little suspicious – anyone for dogging?) and coming to the end of the LP, I noticed two things: 1) I had quite a few notes and 2) I had just been on an emotional rollercoaster (here’s where the whole ‘album review’ part comes in). Get your tissues ready, because this review has more up and down than not only your typical everyday Hollyoaks episode, but also a Hollyoaks Later episode.

My listening experience starts off so well with lead single, Angels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nW5AF0m9Zw). Ah, what bliss it is to hear a band who are quite content to take their time and not rush (I really could do a whole blog post about how much it annoys me that, should you turn on the radio – I’m talking Radio 1/Capital FM etc. – there is a 99.9% chance there’ll be some happening rapper/Flo Rida doing his ‘thang’ over a nerve breaking as it is repetitive generic electronic beat, but I’m not going to as it would amount to a rant far more than it would a structured blog post, and I’ve always tried ever so hard not to be that guy). I had a bit of a moment to myself a couple weeks back where Greg James played Angels in between two songs where a ‘happening rapper/Flo Rida did his ‘thang’ over a nerve breaking as it is repetitive generic electronic beat’ that he’s inclined to play, and I can confidently say that to describe those 2 minutes and 53 seconds The xx provided as beautiful is a massive understatement. When it comes to The xx, for me it is not so much about what their music sounds like, rather it is what their music represents – it’s important to me as it is a break away from the norm in that a whole song by The xx is unlikely to reach the amount of decibels Flo Rida is in his first three seconds. But what means the most to me is that, despite pretty much everything about The xx being popular culture’s worst nightmare (try to imagine Nicki Minaj in Jamie xx’s dress sense? Exactly.), they are still very much a part of popular culture; take the anecdote I told a couple sentences back, for example – The xx was on Radio 1! Could I be drastic enough to say that such occurrences still give me hope about pop music as we know it today? Yes, I think I could.

Getting my way through the album, I feel a bit of a theory that would (hopefully) help to illustrate what Coexist is all about coming on. Sure there’ll be a few anomalies along the way, but I do feel the relevant lead singles of both the band’s self-titled debut and their follow-up in question are fairly representative of each album as a whole. For their Mercury Prize-winning xx, they started proceedings with Crystalised and, as aforementioned, for their most probably Mercury Prize-nominated Coexist (nominations are being announced later today) they first marketed it with Angels – Crystalised is bold and exciting (heck, it almost even has a drum roll in it!) whilst Angels is more relaxed and content to allow the music do the work (sounds a little harsh, but I’m inclined to say that once you’ve heard the first 30 seconds you’ve heard the whole song). The unfortunate thing about is that I can apply this rather damning bracketed opinion to the whole album. It was always going to be interesting where The xx were going to go with new material; such is the uniqueness of their sound they were somehow rather restricted as to which direction they could go (they were hardly going to turn to gangster rap, were they?). Having had a good few listens of Coexist now, it appears that the drastic new direction The xx have gone in to keep things fresh and exciting is quiet. ‘Quiet?’, I hear you ask. Yes, ‘quiet’. ‘But they were already quiet?’ I hear you carry on, and quite rightly so, and it is exactly here where I feel the problem with Coexist lies. xx was a very quiet record (I’m sure I’m not alone in regarding The xx as a ‘headphone band’, meaning you can only really hear, let alone appreciate, what is going on whilst listening to them through headphones – should there be such background noise as the flapping of a butterfly wing, you simply won’t be able to appreciate the gentle humming bass line in the background that makes all the difference) – given that I’ve proposed the new direction in which The xx have gone with Coexist, one can appreciate just how ‘nothing’ the latter is. It is once I got towards the latter half of the LP that it started to dawn on me that there’s only so much that one can do with ‘nothing’, even for the band who must be considered the purveyors of such a genre. I could not have really gone from one extreme to the next any more! As was reflected in this review, at the start of the album I might as well have been proclaiming The xx and their new album to be The Saviour, a modern day Jesus who’ll save us from hearing the same electronic drum beat night and day (Friday and Saturday nights I can understand, but is there anyone who actually enjoys being subjected to the likes of Will.I.Am before midday?), and yet coming towards the latter stages I’m thinking The xx – or Coexist, at least – are just as bad as those I was previously blaming for the decline of humanity. Sure there are some differences – The xx can produce music, Will.I.Am cannot, for example – but what worries/annoys me the most about popular music is the one-dimensionality of it all. I hate to do this, but it must be asked: why does The xx doing the same thing over and over again make them any better than, say, David Guetta doing the same thing over and over again? And then answer is: it doesn’t. Of course I wasn’t looking for anything too drastic from Coexist (I’m a big fan of their first and I can appreciate that neither ‘drastic’, nor ‘change’, is going to be vocabulary that features in the day-to-day lives of The xx all that much), but I was at least expecting a few, what can only be described as, ‘magic xx moments’ – the moments where the song finally comes to its climax and everything starts to make sense; the moments which put a sly smile on your face where everything just clicks; the moments which make you think ‘Thank God for The xx’. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out their first album – it’s full of these ‘magic xx moments’. If you’re lazy and want your hit straight away, just check out the first song of their first album, unsurprisingly called Intro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ktYpaGVUe0 – great fan made video to boot) – it’s pretty much a 2 minute long ‘magic xx moment’. Nothing too ‘try hard’ about it, nor anything particularly loud – when deconstructed, it merely adds up to a simple riff, a simple bass line, a simple drum beat and some simple vocals. This isn’t to say all of these elements needed to be bonded together to compile a ‘magic xx moment’, it’s to say a lot isn’t needed. And yet despite this, as try as I might to find one, a ‘magic xx moment’ never really arrives on Coexist? Sure Angels is pleasant, and things seem to come together nicely on Swept Away (around the 1m30s mark), but other than that the album never really seems to get going, it all feels that The xx are quite content – too content – to wallow around in its murkiness and mystery. Then again, perhaps it’s harsh for me to compare their follow-up to their debut? When a debut is as successful as xx, the band in question is somehow, and admittedly rather unfairly, thrown into a lose-lose situation: make a follow-up different to their first and people will complain it’s lost the magic of the first; make a follow-up similar to the first and people will complain the magic they displayed on the first is all they’ve got (after all, there ain’t the phrase ‘the difficult second album’ for nothing)! Given that I haven’t strayed too far off the mentality of ‘old album = good, new album = bad’, for much of this review/discussion, I’d be the first to admit that I probably am clinging on to The xx of old and thus consequently it most definitely was a bad idea to even consider comparing the two albums. But no matter how many albums deep a band are into their career, it’s always tricky to comment on an outfit as successful and well received as The xx: whilst the little boy inside of me (figurative, not literal) tells me I should get sucked up into the hype just like everybody else (reviews I’ve read and the ever faithful Wikipedia indicate that people seem to like Coexist), the hipster inside of me (probably a bit more literal) urges me to believe that the hype surrounding The xx and Coexist is just that – hype. Given that it would be far too hipster/egocentric of me to say that all those who consider Coexist a triumph are wrong (I actually just laughed at such a angst ridden suggestion), the possibility that perhaps The xx simply aren’t for me any longer must be considered. After all, as made clear in the latter half of this review I personally see a distinct gap in terms of quality between their debut and follow-up, and yet Wikipedia tells me that critics are lapping Coexist up just as they did xx. Whilst it is the sparseness of this album that irks me so, Puja Patel of Spin magazine, for example, says, in fact, it is exactly this that transforms the music ‘into something alive and dynamic’? Were The xx to no longer be to my taste, I’d understand that I wouldn’t be in a position to comment (I denied myself the chance to be in The Fly magazine during my time there due to this belief – I was asked to review The Chapman Family’s Cruel Britannia EP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ISud-0Ynf4&feature=plcp) but as it wasn’t my kind of thing I elected, perhaps wrongly, to put morality in front of my career and passed on the opportunity), but given that a couple weeks back I was ranting and raving about Youth Lagoon’s The Year of Hibernation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC0UtEH2Su0), which isn’t so far off The xx in terms of musical style, I feel that my love for melancholic timidity hasn’t passed me quite yet and I am thus in a position to not only have an opinion about The xx’s Coexist, but to also express it as strongly as I have here. So, in conclusion, I’m (rather surprisingly) going to use aforementioned pro-Coexist critic Puja Patel’s words to finally establish how I feel: Mr. Patel says that the ‘stylised sparseness’ transforms the music ‘into something alive and dynamic instead of merely sleepy.’ I couldn’t disagree more.

Review of Bloc Party's 'Four' and a few discussion points

I think it's dangerous to judge an album soon after it's release (Four was only released the Monday just gone), but at the same time I think it's good to discuss an album soon after it's release as that's when your emotions are all over the place like a typical Skins episode. Block Party's new LP, Four, could not be more of a case in point.
Those who follow me on Twitter (@wgsa_musicblog) would have seen I wasn't the most enthused about the new release from Bloc Party. I started proceedings Tweeting about the new single Octopus, saying 'Really not convinced, not a fan at all. It just feels like something is missing? Lacks 'oomph'.' My next Bloc Party-related Tweet was about the other song they unveiled before the LP came out, Day Four: 'If this and Octopus are anything to go by, I'm no longer looking forward to Bloc Party's new LP, Four. Very ordinary.' And then lastly, ever the optimist, I Tweeted '4 songs in and Bloc Party's new album is going to have to do a hell of a lot for me not to consider it a disappointment. It sounds confused?'
Now, the bizarre thing is, is that although I still think two of my three aforementioned Tweets ring true (which I'll get to later), my opinion of the album has changed. And changed dramatically. I still maintain that Octopus is a bit rubbish (credit where it's due, though - it certainly got people talking) and I still maintain that Day Four is very ordinary indeed (perhaps it was to show that Bloc Party still had their Bloc Party sound and not all of the album was like the slightly deranged Octopus), it's my third and final Tweet that is of the most importance - because my word, this album's a grower.
This is not to say, though, I no longer think it's confused. I'm very undecided about albums that chop and change in a major way and, unfortunately for my sanity, I've been discovering a few as of late. Whilst Gotye has the just as depressing as it is famous Somebody That I Used To Know (I've no need to insert a YouTube link here, do I?) on his Making Mirrors LP, he also has I Feel Better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRC--2qC_Qs) that could well be a Cee Lo Green song in disguise. Cee Lo Green, of course, being the man who made a revenge song as cheery as this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU). And then there's Internet Explorer man Alex Clare, and his The Lateness of the Hour LP, who fooled us into thinking his album was going to be full of big dubstep drops and hard drum and bass beats (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYXjLbMZFmo), whereas really it was closer to being something which mothers can be put their children to sleep to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Jr4xIc-Zs), especially the latter half. I'm massively of the opinion that what you listen to is determined by how you're feeling, and what use is a pretty song about hummingbirds (see previous link) when you want to get down and skank with your mates (see song before previous link)? But at the same time I'm also of the opinion that bands who do an album which doesn't extend beyond three chords are dangerously close to going from talented to talentless. The phrase 'one tricky pony' has good reason to exist, after all. Granted very little time has passed between the two albums and it was always going to be difficult to reach beyond the very inward thinking genre they now form a very big part of, but I feel desperately sorry that so little has changed between The Vaccines' first album (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VI3q4T-1Jc) and their incoming second album (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFUKrsDDChE). Listen to the first album the whole way through and the tracks do eventually seem to magically merge into one.
But back to Bloc Party's new LP. Whilst there is much to suggest it is really a rather hard rock album (opener So He Begins To Lie, Kettling to a degree, Coliseum, We Are Not Good People are all on a par with Talons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTwFE_8v8Bc) when it comes to rocking out and inevitably doing appropriate amounts of damage in the mosh pit), there are several other tracks which suggest quite the opposite; Octopus is just plain odd, Real Talk is clean-cut, refined and sophisticated, Day Four is just plain dreamy, you'd struggle to find a chorus more cheery than that of V.A.L.I.S.'s, and The Healing just plods along slowly but surely, much in contrast to the aforementioned infuriated as it is infuriating We Are Not Good People that follows and in turn finishes the album rather abruptly.
In conclusion, then, I feel Four can only be regarded as a grower. To start, it's a little intimidating - due to it's 'all about the place' nature, initially it's difficult to pin down and really love. But give it a good few listens and this will soon start to disappear as you start to get familiar with its slightly crooked ways. But although it's the complexity of the album that prevents it from being samey, it's also what prevents one from really being able to love it and grow attached to it - like a dysfunctional family, the songs work if you take them individually (or even as pairs or threes and fours), but put them together they just don't fit. But perhaps this was always going to be the case, given that the band were not so far away from being my metaphorical dysfunctional family themselves (http://www.nme.com/news/bloc-party/59330)? Yeah, I'm definitely using that 'dysfunctional family' line again sometime.

Would be good to know people's thoughts, be it about the album itself or anything I've discussed in this post, so catch me on Twitter (@wgsa_musicblog) or on the comments below.

Quick update and Best Coast article

Those who are eagle-eyed will have noticed that although I've been fairly active on Twitter (Tweeting about anything and everything, it seems), this blog hasn't received the most lovin' as of late. As in getting-on-for-two-months 'as of late'. There goes my 'I'll update my blog regularly' idea. It's because I've been rather busy. Now that I've graduated (strangely enough, my last post was written just a couple days after the big day), I've been embracing what some people like to refer to as 'real life' and, strangely, enjoying it. Over the last two months or so, I've been working at various magazines in big ol' London Town. I started off at The Fly ( http://www.the-fly.co.uk/), which was cool because it was the first time ever I was experiencing office life (the closest I had been to before that was an interview for an internship at Dazed,  http://www.dazeddigital.com/). Then came FHM ( http://www.fhm.com/) - absolutely incredible, had an absolute blast there (as you'd expect). Highlights have got to be going to a typical FHM photoshoot, if you catch my drift (every boy's dream, but keeping it strictly professional, of course?), and not only making an appearance in the magazine itself, but having a whole page of me (albeit ludicrously sweaty) surrounded by the word 'epic' ( https://twitter.com/wgsa_musicblog/status/231316332401016832). Then came FourFourTwo ( http://fourfourtwo.com/) - great fun, especially scoring the last minute equaliser in Thursday lunchtime's office football and what with the new season very much up and coming. Then, lastly, was T3 ( http://www.t3.com/) where I got to write about such things as what should be on Football Manager 2013 and what the ten best zombie video games are (hardly counts as work, does it?). I only finished there on the Friday just gone, and they worked me very hard, so you can see a good lot of what I've written online. T3 was my last bit of work experience of what felt like a summer of work experience, so now I've got a fair bit of spare time I hope to write for this blog a good deal more, in between searching for more longer term things, such as internships and 'real life' jobs.

Thought it'd be good to get some writing on here so you'll find below a piece I wrote for a new magazine called tmrw. Great little mag (the editor, Joe, has just released it's first ever issue, which you can get at http://www.tmrwmagazine.bigcartel.com/) - it's all about new music and men's fashion, which is pretty much everything you need ever. Unfortunately my piece didn't make the cut this time around (Joe and I only discussed me doing a piece literally the night before the print deadline), but hopefully I'll be in the next issue. I gave him a bunch of ideas and he liked the idea of me discussing/introducing Californian surf popsters Best Coast (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y18C089tt9Y&feature=plcp) from a British perspective (our 'great' British summer makes sure surf pop isn't the easiest of genres to relate to) the best, so that's (unsurprisingly) what you'll find below. I've got a lot of ideas flying around at the moment (currently really enjoying music in general), so be sure to check back sometime soon.

'Us Brits do have it hard when it comes to the season that is Summer. First, of course, there is the issue of it being fairly non-existent (kind of essential). Second, when the glorious rays finally feel like hitting our shores, we’ve no music to accompany them! Sure there’s The Kooks but... Well, they’re The Kooks. And then there’s our old failsafe, Jack Johnson, but he hasn’t released anything substantial for a good couple years now. Which means we’re going to have to take the plunge and see what our friends from across the pond are licking their melting ice creams to. Now, given that the beats of the likes of 2 Chainz and Childish Gambino aren’t really appropriate and it’s probably best to steer clear of anything even resembling the catastrophe that is Nicki Minaj for fear of catching something, the safest bet is probably with surf pop. But still our dilemma is not entirely resolved. Take the band who many regard as the face of surf pop, The Drums, for example. First, there’s the lyrics – I might be mistaken, but I’m not convinced much, if any, of our dear population can really relate to Jonny Pierce’s pleas to go surfing (as demonstrated, unsurprisingly, on their 2009 breakthrough single Let’s Go Surfing). And then there’s a few components of the actual music that I feel would not go down so well – given that over the years we’ve produced such gutsy rock bands as The Rolling Stones and The Who, it’s likely that most would prefer to avoid outfits who sound like they’re playing their drums and guitars with sprained wrists (again the reference to The Drums’ Let’s Go Surfing comes in handy). It is at this point I can happily introduce the answer to everything ever, Best Coast. The band over two albums – 2010’s debut Crazy For You and this year’s follow-up, The Only Place – have demonstrated that surf pop doesn’t have to be all flimsy and lacklustre (their breakthrough single, Boyfriend, was even verging on being rather rocky). This is made only more remarkable when it is considered lead singer Bethany Cosentino only has Bobb Bruno on the drums for company. Sure there are a few differences between the band and us, the British listeners, that have potential to alienate (the band’s lead single from their recent LP is an almost three minute long ode to their native California), but what matters is that the band play their instruments with conviction and yet still we can reap the rewards of Best Coast essentially remaining a surf pop band. So not only do we have one over our American brothers in that we get to pick and choose what music of theirs we actually like, our hands do not become all sticky due to our ice creams melting because it’s simply not hot enough. No wonder it’s called the great British summer.'

My Polaris Music Prize short list

I'm a little late to this (I've just finished university FOREVER, so I've been rather busy 'living up' the remaining student days whilst they lasted) but a little more than a week ago the long list for the Polaris Music Prize was announced (which you can find at a very cool website http://polarismusicprize.ca/ - why exactly they went for a robot theme, I too am not entirely sure). If you're not sure what the Polaris Music Prize is, it's basically the Canadian version of our Mercury Prize (hoping, of course, that given you are reading a predominantly music based blog you'll know what the Mercury Prize is). I know, I hear you. "Canadian?!", I hear you ask, "Who cares about Canada?". I appreciate that Canada tends to get a lot thrown at it, but I firmly believe a good 99% of it is unnecessary (why the remaining 1% is necessary you only need to go to the fourth word of this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelback to find out). Of course I joke (although admittedly I'm hardly going to say Nickelback are my favourite band of all time any time soon), but I feel Nickelback bashing has some parallels with Canada bashing - it seems that once upon time Nickelback/Canada were used as a scapegoat and what feels like everybody jumped on the bandwagon and simply haven't looked back since. When you come to think of it, though, it's hardly fair, is it? I just so happen to go against the grain and regard Canada very highly, both as a country and a producer of music; I spent an academic year at the University of Calgary and enjoyed every minute of it - some of their countryside (that is, of course, if you can still classify scenes like this (http://blog.cellep.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/the-rocky-mountains.jpg) as 'countryside') really is beautiful (trust me when I say you need to see it for your own eyes to really get what it's all about). And my surname's Beaver (handy) so my classmates over there were always going to have a natural inclination to like me, which I'm sure helped matters somewhat. Whilst I was over there, and as weird as this might sound, I also had a great time musically. For one, I met a girl from Leeds over there who had a very similar music taste to me (meaning I was introduced to a bunch of artists and bands who I now can't imagine living without), which is always nice (I am still very good friends with her almost two years later - coincidence?), and for another, Canada supplied me with one of my favourite gigs by one of my now favourite artists; the artist was, and still is, a man who goes by the name of Dan Mangan and the gig took place on a cold, snowy evening inside a big church. Warning: a sentence pretty much entirely made out of cliches incoming. Soft indie-folk on a crisp, cold Winter's evening, Tim Horton's in hand, inside a venue with acoustics from Heaven. Just perfect. As if to make use of the amazing acoustics availaible for all their worth, Mr. Mangan even finished with an entirely unplugged, a cappella version of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwwfJ-oNMVs), using the couple hundred of us (the audience) as backing vocals - as cringeworthy as it is for me to say this, it really did provide me with a musical moment I'll (probably) never forget.
But onto the main purpose of this post! Although the official short list of the Polaris Music Prize isn't to be unveiled for a while yet (not until July 17th, anyway), I had a look at the artists and bands which made the long list and picked out the ones I liked - this post isn't about the ones who I think will win, it's about the ones who I personally liked. Once the shortlist is unveiled, I'll do a review of the album by the artist/band who I think will win (rather than who I think deserves to win), and, if my prediction is wrong, I'll review the album that wins. Which is annoying because it feels like I am the only person IN THE ENTIRE WORLD who doesn't really rate Grimes.
In no particular order, here's my short list. In brackets is a YouTube link to (in most cases) a fairly recent song that I feel represents the respective artist/band quite nicely. Yes, they might all be Canadian but there's some really good music here nonetheless (it'll be worth powering on through, I promise); some, if not most, of which I hadn't even heard of before I took many a musical adventure on YouTube prompted by the releasing of the long list, so do please take at least a quick look at all of them. And most importantly, enjoy!

Dan Mangan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzawkvDmERA)
Rich Aucoin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkuWgXhzxg4)
Bahamas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A65BbJMCyA4)
Mark Davis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJmfBrtc5gY)
Great Lake Swimmers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doK3qHLyRsI&feature=plcp)
Sandro Perri (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7AC3FgI1Aw)
Joel Plaskett Emergency (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnb4SmSafQ)
PS I Love You (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHAOBhg9Ybo)
Bry Webb (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kG5JoKSnpc)
Yukon Blonde (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBA0f2lSB64)
The Barr Brothers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JU4T9iqNTo)
Parlovr (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liiCvzRpU1w)
Cadence Weapon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74cyPQkSQ6s)

More on this when the short list is unveiled on July 17th.