An Indie Chart For Indie Music!

There has never been an official indie chart that properly represented indie music. You might find they have some Fat Cat Records band or Asthmatic kitten show up in there but they're generally swamped in main stream marketed indie, bands i dare not even name... so it's about damn time that an effort has been made to kick the big 4 labels out of Indie.


As of today, the first truly official indie charts are being published in the UK. these do not contain any artist on any of the big 4 and more importantly no record lable that is any less than 50% owned by an independent source. we may actually see the first time when the big 4 can't buy themselves into a chart!

The Independents Breakers charts as they are known will rang both singles and albums, and as i said the first charts will be released today. sadly they appear to have a non-existent web presence. which will change i hope after a little while, so do your best to support that newest way to find great indie music, and perhaps finally kill off the major label monopoly

Remember The Distillers?

I sure do, and how I loved them. And after their 2006 demise, they left a bit of a gap in the music scene. Trust Brody Dalle and Tony Bevilacqua to come up with something, and something good at that. Now add Jack Irons (former drummer of Pearl Jam, amongst others) and Alain Johannes (one of the many former guitarists of Queens of the Stone Age), and the result is Spinnerette.

I only heard the album last week, and was quite impressed, though looking at my desk there's a copy of Kerrang from March which raves about these guys (note to self, clean my desk). Incidentally, never trust anything anyone says in any magazine, it's just nice to read though.



But back to the music, just think of Queens of the Stone Age, with a female vocalist (who incidentally can't sing as high as Josh Homme, though that says more about him than it detracts from her). The music is quite well composed, heavy distorted bass, heavy drums, and very, very grungy guitars. Brody's voice suits the music perfectly.

The one negative thing I will say is that some of the songs (namely "Geeking" and "Sex Bomb") seem a bit long and repetitive. If they were a bit shorter, they'd be perfectly fine. That being said I'll let it go, the rest of the album is brilliant. The best songs have to be "Ghetto Love" and "Baptized By Fire" both available on their Myspace for your listening pleasure.

A few unrelated things... A review of Gregory and The Hawk in Whelans will be up on my last.fm page soon. It was pretty awesome.

A belated thanks to our friend Robin at Forward Music for his kind words earlier in the month, who's blog is now year old and who's new website puts ours to shame (stay tuned for a whole new design soon. I'll get around to it eventually).

And thanks to something.from.nancy for the awesome picture of Spinnerette today. She's Female, she's taken, and she sells clothes on ebay. So check her pictures and the clothes out.

God Help Belle

Well Belle and Sebastian have been pretty quite for a long while the last thing they released was just an album of stuff they did with the BBC. Turns out Stuart Murdoch has been writing songs for a girl group he decided to create. which makes a lot of sense, Belle and Sebastian has always been a bit let down by the range of their female vocalists. So what God Help The Girl seems to be is a load of songs Stuart wrote as an excuse to hang around with 3 beautiful women. Good for him. They have a nice little sample playing on their myspace page, Come Monday Night is a lovely little number here's the video


If i was to be cynical about it i would say that it's basically just Belle and Sebastian being re-branded with some added sex appeal. But i'm not cynical, just jealous that i could never go around asking girls to be in a new band i'm forming without coming across like a bit of a weirdo.

A Last.fm Alternative

It may be finally time to leave last.fm. It hurts me to say it, but it's true. Unless you are one of the lucky few who live in the UK, the US or Germany (those lucky few numbering in the several hundred million), you may have noticed you have to pay now to listen to music on last.fm.

This trend was started last year when Pandora decided to block all non-US listeners. Pandora was quite the useful tool in finding new and interesting bands, but since it didn't have the social aspect to it, never had the same appeal to me as Last.fm did.

In fairness, last.fm are only charging €3 a month to listen, so it's not that bad, but that's still infinitely more than free. Though all the rest of the site (the charts, the gig listings, the whole social side of it) remains free.

One interesting alternative, is Deezer. Deezer seems to be quite similar to last.fm in many ways, except it's a little flashier (There's a pun in there for all you web nerds). Although I like it, it just doesn't have the ease of use that last.fm does and although I'm not sure, it doesn't have half the cool awesome indie people.

So I might just stay with last.fm anyway. It mightn't be free, but it's home. And home is where the indie is after all.

Dying to be heard

Alight, after a few weeks off fighting for indie in the Irish elections we're back and here to inform you of the next band you should already know about.

The Dying Seconds are Electro-Indie-Pop band from Dublin. It's a very experimental sound, which I won't even bother to attempt to describe. Now in their second year together they'll be releasing their second EP, "Some Grand Romantic Gestures" next Tuesday in Whelans.

Their last.fm page has all the songs from their first EP "Seconds" available for free download, which already puts them in my good books. The fact the music sounds awesome makes it even better. So get yourself their music, and get yourself to the gig. I know I will.