Carnival - Fog On The Tyne

Sittin' in a sleazy snack-bar snuckin' sickly sausage rolls... No, not the Lindisfarne hit once destroyed by a 90s football hooligan, Fog On The Tyne is Part A of the new Carnival release to arrive recently in the Frequency-Ireland postbox. A punktastic pop pleaser with as many hooks and as much punch as any bubble gum pop you are likely to hear on the waves today.

With the surprising success of their debut single Andy's 15/Tunnels, produced by the award winning producer Kramer, the band's new release is another step in the right direction, offering both variety and substance. While the opener bears more than a subtle nod to 70s punk pop, with all the get up and go of Eddie & The Hot Rods, the vocal vigour of Debbie Harry, and the vibrancy of vitreo, Part B takes a nod to Neil Young with a touching ballad of how the wicked plunder on the fragile soul. Alas, amped to immodest proportions, Precious Ground has overtures of 80s indie-rock, with that obligatory guitar solo thrown in for a measure just when you thought it was safe to hear it through to the end unscathed. More appealing is the rather less overstated b-side, Shooting Blind, a folk political allegory that wears its 60s Dylan idealism on its sleeve in noughties dystopia, and a fine track worthy of more than b-side status. The EP rounds off with a quaintly colloquial radio interview on KCLR FM featuring in studio performances of Tunnels and Precious Ground. Recommended, warts and all. 8/10.

Related Links:

http://www.myspace.com/comejointhecarnival

http://www.carnivalmusic.bebo.com/

The Revellions - Amped for a Point Break

Psychotic garage surf merchants The Revellions are primed for a debut album later this year after roughcasting their sound playing the circuit here and abroad over the past few years. Always raucous, primitive, and a touch off the rails, The Revellions play with that grit-edged garage sound of The Chocolate Watch Band and others of that ilk. An old school rampant garage rock found in recent track Walking Away, a highlight of the material available online, that claustrophobic paranoia of all from The Zombies to The Cramps can be heard, and even a touch of The Doors can be found within the swirling organ sounds of Have It All. While perhaps not one of a kind, even on the Dublin circuit, The Revellions do have it all.

With the band currently in the latter stages of mixing for their forthcoming debut album, expect the as yet unnamed works to see the light of day on this side of summer. Meanwhile, they can be caught live at the Amsterdam Beat Club in Dublin on 28th Febraury, and in London at The Dirty Water Club on 14th March.

Related Links:

http://www.myspace.com/therevellions

The Brothers Movement

After some four years of MAINLINE pushing the boundaries of all that could be achieved in that psychedelic guitar rock sphere of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Black Angels and The Morning After Girls, the band are now regrouping as The Brothers Movement to take a new direction. It's early days yet, but what can be made of the new material currently available online?

You said if you want peace then prepare for war, because I'm tired of fighting and I want no more...

In both War And Peace and Comin' Home, we have a more reflective, stripped down country rock leaning than what has gone before with MAINLINE. One also can't help but pick up on the bewildered war weary pitch of it all too. Whether The Brothers Movement will be one with a political message, we will have to wait and see, but in an era where the US Military has waged wars that seems to have no direction and no end, its soldiers shipped out with false hope and shipped home in body bags, it would not be a first, or a misplaced agenda. One wonders what has happened to the land once known for embracing the values of liberty, fraternity, and equality, that land of hope and opportunity for the disaffected? Perhaps a noise from Dublin in the shape of The Brothers Movement is now searching for it.

The band aim to bring out a début album later in 2008, with more material sure to be unveiled between now and then. Although apparently on the softer side of psychedelia now, still expect influences along the BRMC axis to permeate through brush-ins with The Verve and a country rock soul taking it all the way back to The Stones. Agenda or not, this is sure to be a movement worth listening in on.

Related Links:

http://www.myspace.com/thebrothersmovement

A Plastic Rose - Silence You EP

With a glance north of the border overdue for some time here, a mention now for the Belfast-based band A Plastic Rose, a band whom have started to venture south on the live circuit on the back of their Silence You EP released last October.

As their second self-released studio EP within twelve months, the band have quite a lot of momentum behind them, and this three track race through angst ridden melodic rock is an altogether edgier affair than their previous release. All You Know And Love Will Die is quite an attention grabbing title for the lead track, and its substance does not disappoint, where a superbly angular rhythm lifts into a frantic anthem of notable merit, and not surprising it has made its way to national radio play in recent months. In the second track, from which the EP takes its name, we have quite an attention grabber, where charred emotions gripping on hope through to ecstasy, as the song opens 'for fucks sake keep your eyes on me' sets the tone for a mantra of 'this five second stare means so much to me, fuck it my heart don't need company'. The boys know how to use their french in a lyric to good effect. The EP closes off with This Colour Blue, where the influence of post-hardcore bands such as The Appleseed Cast and Sunny Day Real Estate can perhaps be heard most, and all in all this is an EP which is a progression into an edgier direction from the earlier release. A full Irish tour penned in for this side of summer. One would expect it to be very well received. 8/10.

Related Links:

http://www.aplasticrose.com/

http://www.myspace.com/aplasticrose

http://www.aplasticrose.bebo.com/