Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody has been putting his fingers to keyboard to write about the bands that are rocking his world at the moment. Here is Gary's second despatch ....
Gary Lightbody's Band of The Week - Week 2: The Phantom Band
Although some beauties were released this week I’d like to go back to the start of the year for this week's ramblings. Scotland’s The Phantom Band brought out Checkmate Savage in January but it didn’t get the fanfare it deserved, in my opinion.
It is a fascinating and fantastic record of wild imagination. The album has a bonkers energy and ceaseless adventure that refuses to let it be pigeonholed. In fact I’ve seen them compared to The Magic Band in a few reviews; no higher valuation of its levels of experimentation, surely? I would argue they are less wilfully erratic than Beefheart and much more tuneful to boot. Quite beautiful in places, actually. Listen to Island: “And the sand on your back, long I’ve waited that.” Songs like this make me glad to be alive.
The Phantom Band find themselves part of a new 'Golden Age of Scottish independent music' (just the twentieth or so Scotland has had in the last 30-odd years). Bands like Frightened Rabbit, Sons And Daughters, The Twilight Sad, Dananananakroyd, Marmaduke Duke and plenty more making dark pop music, none of which can easily be explained, nor can be readily compared to one another. The sign of a healthy scene when so many bands are going their own way, inspired more by their contemporaries and predecessors' imagination than their sound.
If I made a compilation of the songs of the year so far the first song on Checkmate Savage would be the first song on it. The Howling is simply stunning. All squelching Moogs, Krautrock drums, nagging guitars and Rick Anthony’s cello-hewed voice like the chocolate sauce on a funky sundae. Oh the voice, the voice! Some people are blessed with magic and he’s one. The lyrics help of course. As good as a voice is, if the lyrics aren’t good enough, I won’t fall for it as hard. Anthony has magic in both his pen and his vocal chords. “Something nameless, a creeping unrest/Hard as we have tried to be blessed/Always we ended up with less than we started with.” You know you’re in for something you’ve not heard before, right from the first verse of the first song.
And that is the essence of my love for this record: I’ve not heard much like it this year. Or indeed for a few years. It was something similar to hearing the Super Furries for the first time, again more in its flights of fancy than its sound; and each time I listen, I have a new favourite track, another sign of greatness. Right now it is the wonderfully titled Folk Song Oblivion with its killer line “you’ve got a voice so loud you break the mountain side.” In a way the whole record is aptly summed up by that track name: Folk Song Oblivion! Let it happen.
Til next time, lovely people, lots of love.
Gary.
You can also see a gallery of behind-the-scenes shots from the Snow Patrols tour here.
5:36 PM | 15/05/2009
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I love reading what you write,
love you Gary ^^"
Posted by Diana at 4:37 AM | 18/10/2009 | Report Abuse
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