I was going to report on the Jesse Malin gig in Oxford, possibly with pictures from my new camera. However when I got to the Academy I wasn’t on the guestlist as promised by the record company so I came straight back home.

I’ve been listening a lot to Home by Tom Stevens recently. I wasn’t too sure what to make of it at first and it has taken a long time to get into it. Now I have the album in my car and enjoy every time it comes around. It is very American - a man with a guitar and a few songs (think Chuck Prophet or Tom Verlaine) but no histrionics or theatrics. Most of the songs are Roots Rock but one which always makes me swoon is the Countrified In The Basement. It is maudlin lyrically and musically so fits straight into my taste for a touch of reflection and regret.

In The Basement(clip) by Tom Stevens

I’ve just found the video to the song Getaway Car by The Beat Maras. This was on their Huaraz EP a few months ago and really impressed me with the distorted guitar and vocals.

The Beat Maras - Getaway Car

I got Consolers Of The Lonely by The Raconteurs on the strength of the reviews and the fact I like Jack White. It has led me to question whether I should trust reviews again. In fact the only ‘good’ review was in The Times and that said “the presiding maxim … is, when in doubt, turn it up and shout”. Now, that tells me the opposite - there will be some good tracks here. In truth there are only four tracks I like and those are pure Jack White/White Stripes sound alikes. Some of the other songs have me hitting the skip control because they sound like out-takes from a Dennis Waterman album. I’m probably being cruel but some of the lyrics and rhymes are just embarrassing.

The saving grace is the song Carolina Drama. It is a tale worthy of Nick Cave, mixing poverty, violence, and the American way of Life and Death. The mother’s boyfriend is no good and one day is seen beating up the Preacher (”that must be my daddy”) and Billy grabs the nearest thing, a milk bottle and uses it so “the boyfriend fell down dead for good”. The family is reunited and Billy proposes heading off to Tennessee. Then, the moment that will have audiences jumping and singing along, the 10 year old walks in holding the milkman’s hat and a bottle singing “La la la la, la la la la, yeah”. Bloody genius.

Carolina Drama(clip) byThe Raconteurs

I started my vinyl conversion series with the Glaxo Babies so this track follows on from there. Rob Chapman was the vocalist with the Babies in their early days (on Who Killed Bruce Lee and Christine Keeler) and they went downhill fast once he had left. But Rob moved on to the Transmitters and produced this startling track on their Hunting For The Ugly Man EP.

Although often too obtuse and chaotic for their own good, everything came together for this classic track. I appreciated the railing against the mediocrity of every day life and commercialism at the time but now I’m more interested in the mention of Manchester “where people have no faces” and of course the reference to Sandy Richardson. I assume most of you have no idea who Sandy Richardson was or why he should walk. I don’t want to ruin the mystery or explain why it’s such a cute line.

The Ugly Man by The Transmitters

This is the second release I have been sent by Jezus Factory Records featuring Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences. It’s now sinking in that there is a maverick talent on the loose and if he’s coming to a town near you then look out - most people will want to run away but a select few will revel in this chaotic ranting (me included).

I Believe In Karma (clip) by Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences

For me it’s that moment when Paul Hawkins sings “I can’t even remember how the next line goes, La La LaLa La La La” that makes this song (like that wonderful moment in School’s Out when Alice sings “I can’t even think of a word that rhymes”). The other track on the promo is the slower, more considered My Darling Frankenstein. It’s a tale of a man who has built a perfect woman (or monster as others call her) to reproduce the best of previous girlfriends such as ‘I see Serena in your movements, I see Sophie in your eyes, you’ve the same expression Claire once had when I used to tell her lies’. A twisted, funny, and perverted solution to the pain of lost love.

I won’t be lazy and just pick on the influences mentioned on MySpace - comparisons with a current figure like Nick Cave just don’t explain much. At times I think it sounds like an angry John Otway, but really the vehemence in the vocal and musical delivery is more like the sort of thing I could imagine the late, great Alex Harvey doing if he had grown up listening to Punk.

Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences

It was quite a shock to my delicate musical constitution to start listening to this album and suddenly be confronted with harmonies from a lost age. It took me a while to believe it but there were vocal harmonies of the sort last touted by Steely Dan. Despite some lingering affection for that band’s Pretzel Logic album I was unsure I wanted to hear more of the same. I needn’t have worried, the music includes loads of alt guitar that Bob Mould would have been proud of. As the album progresses, it takes on its own special character of songs of experience and artistry.

She’s Upset (clip) by Black Cow

The album is a labour of love that has taken many years to write and record in between “births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and piano lessons”. But this is not self-indulgence with guitar parts being added incessantly, instead there is a lightness of touch, a paring down of each track until every note is just what is needed to approach perfection. It is so beautifully put together that you have to just sit back and admire it. More importantly, you are rewarded with a stunning meld of musicianship and melody.

Black Cow on MySpace

Once upon a time (76-79) in New Yok City there was Lydia Lunch. With her co-conspirators she stripped music down to its bare essentials: a beat, thrashed guitar, and a wailing vocal. The complete recordings add up to around eighteen minutes of music but the shock waves arried on for much longer.

They made Punk sound over-orchestrated and overblown. The way her voice cracks on the word “mediocrity” is still one of the finest moments in Rock music. If you take more than 82 seconds to make your point, you are just wasting everyone’s time.

Less Of Me by Teenage Jesus & The Jerks

Two big reasons to mention The Scaramanga Six: a new single and I finally saw them live!

I went to The Wheatsheaf in Oxford on Friday where they were the support act so it was a bit of a curtailed set but plenty long enough to make a judgement. That judgement is this is a great live band. What the live performance added to their intense music was a sense of humour and playfulness. From the opening intro of “We have come from up North to teach you the chord of E” (which they proceeded to do) to the last moments of I Wear My Heart On My Sleeve they entertained and energised.

Towards the end a select group of people, who I recognised as being there to see the other bands, were dancing - although dancing to the Scaramangas is not that easy since they mix crescendos with silences but a valiant attempt was made and underlying rhythms were picked up on before the head twirling could begin again. It was a compliment to a band that can move you in many ways.

The latest single is Walk Through Houses. The title track reminds me of the early iLiKETRAINS singles with its prevailing sense of paranoia but with all the panache and variation that The Scaramanga Six always provide. I Can See A Murder is a near-hysterical story of a killer with Tex-Mex guitar and vocal harmonies that could have come from Phantom Of The Opera.

Walking Through Houses (clip) by The Scaramanga Six

Sometimes as I listen back to the last thirty plus years of music I bemoan the fact that many bands today lack ambition and keep to a very narrow agenda and don’t explore what wonders can be done with harmonies, thunderous guitars, and changes in rhythm. No-one can ever accuse The Scaramanga Six of lacking ambition and exciting you with every musical trick in the book.

The Scaramanga Six