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I haven't read 95% of this thread, but a ctrl-f seems to indicate that nobody has mentioned that it was started by a forum member whose current name is mocking the idea that a former member of Supergrass could have made a good LP this year - and nobody seems to mind. That would go down very differently on drowned in sound.
― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Wednesday, January 20, 2016 4:01 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 20 January 2016 16:39 (eight years ago) link
three months pass...
one year passes...
At the Gaz station
Gaz Coombes — also known as the Great Monkey Man from Oxford Town — first rattled the rock'n'roll cage as the frontman of '90s Brit pop band Supergrass.
music Updated: Jul 13, 2012 23:49 IST
Indrajit Hazra
Indrajit Hazra
Hindustan Times
Here come the Bombs
Gaz Coombes
Hot Fruit Recordings, CD Rs. 395; LP 995
Rating: ***
Gaz Coombes — also known as the Great Monkey Man from Oxford Town — first rattled the rock'n'roll cage as the frontman of '90s Brit pop band Supergrass. Apart from their debut 1995 album, I Should Coco — with knock-out tracks like 'Alright' and 'Caught by the fuzz' — being the highest selling album for Parlophone since the Beatles' Please, Please Me, Supergrass was jampacked with the sheer chutzpah and loopy fun of the early Beatles. So it doesn't come as a total surprise that Coombes's solo record, Here Come the Bombs, sounds remarkably like a Beatles solo album, most particularly that of 1970s George Harrison.
The opening track, 'Bombs', is a lame-ish tickler. Perhaps Coombes is keen here to establish the fact that he doesn't want to be super-goofy any more. Thus the heavy strain of luscious strings that accompany the words, "I cannot see through the space and time/ but there's others over here/ you're not on your own."
But my worries about this being a Roger Waters tribute album are dusted away when I get to the dynamite 'Hot fruit'. It starts as a guitar scab that builds up and catches you like a fire. Coombes drives through a blizzard beat with "In the silence we move through the city of light/ I'll make my way through that look in your eyes/ our lives in slow motion like an endless dream/ I wonder where can the madman be". Great vocals, great guitar, great drums and fab bass — Coombes on all the aforementioned instruments.
The pumped up rock-pop takes on a similar manic form in 'Whore'. The heavy thuds of drum'n'bass have a prog rock signature. The melody isn't strong and after a point the song dissipates into general clashing sounds and chorus. Which isn't the case with the eerie, gaseous 'Sub-divider', a rhythm guitar strum rising above the fog. Coombes has a Billy Corgan whisper fitted to this track that exactly midway changes direction (and key) with surprisingly beautiful consequences. As he sings, "I found myself where only dogs survive/ I want to set this world alight", we share his vision of a beautiful apocalypse. Or at least a damn good mind trip lying on the couch.
In 'Universal cinema', we hear an injured big animal dragging itself along the ground with the riff of the Beatles' 'Come together' buried inside its DNA. 'Simulator' that follows is far more stimulating. Riding a fast-and-slow circuit in the song, Coombes has a half-shimmy hit-half-pumping chords rocker in his pocket.
The Spanish guitar strumming thing happens in 'White noise', replete with an MOR beat that flows rather aimlessly as Coombes tells someone that he's always tried to tell you "I've got problems/ that I can't work out". Try going easy on the reverb and lose the xylophone, perhaps?
It's 'Break the silence', which comes after the phat synth-soaked 'Fanfare', that has the bompity-bomp required to adapt itself on the dance floor once remixed. Is it just me or does Monkey Man here sound like Paul McCartney-meets-Bono?! Skip the filler ('Daydream on a street corner') and you're at the end with 'Sleeping giant', a lullaby you can put your pet monkey to sleep with.
Here Come the Bombs has a genuinely lingering sound that doesn't go away after a couple of listens — especially when you're listening to it on vinyl. But at the same time, there aren't any stand-out 'I can't get it out of my head' tracks either. But with Coombes swinging again — and this time unafraid to make music that's not always natter-fun — I'm keeping a look-out for when the Monkey Man's out on his next prowl.
― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 10 January 2018 13:18 (six years ago) link
three months pass...
makes u think
https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/B4FD/production/_101133364_gaz976.jpg
Supergrass singer Gaz Coombes releases World's Strongest Man, his first new music since his Mercury Prize-nominated Matador, and it's addressing issues like masculinity, ego and anxiety attacks.At first glance, an album called The World's Strongest Man seems to suggest a compendium of tracks from The Rock's greatest hit movies, but rather than being a celebration of all things macho, Oxfordshire singer-songwriter Gaz Coombes has decided to subvert the meaning, instead using it as a jumping off point to address topics like ego, mental health and masculinity.
The title was inspired by artist Grayson Perry's book The Descent of Man and subsequent Channel 4 series, which looked at how modern men are struggling physically and mentally under the traditional notions of manliness.
"I thought that book was amazing and illuminating and really important for men to read in terms of what seems to be an in-built way of being for some young men, to protect their territory and be the hard guy.
"It's just difficult, the world's closed up and shrunk and ultimately we're all just human beings. I try not to separate males and females, I know that it sounds idealistic but I do try to look at it like that.
"At first I liked it in the sense of, what if I was the world's strongest man at being a bit weird and bit rubbish at things? Being the greatest at being not complete, it's hard to explain but then I thought it was great, the irony of these ridiculous alpha males, who dominate and cause chaos for everyone."
― Mahogany Loggins (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 3 May 2018 15:12 (five years ago) link
four months pass...
one year passes...
four years pass...