To The Chase - When You Believed

To The Chase are a three-piece Indie/Soul band from Hackney, East London. With a claim to dominance over a myriad of musical styles, the band are releasing a number of singles in the run up to the release of their self-produced debut album, ‘Listen Close’, on their own label. The first single is entitled, ‘When You Believed’.

There is a serious energy to the title track, When You Believed, almost bordering on a fury. The drums are behind this, with drummer Jim Rooney refusing to sit idly by and play one snare/cymbal hit at a time. The sticks bounce of the skins at a rate of knots in each bar of the verse and chorus, relenting only at the stops in the pre-chorus and bridge. The self-produced trio are sure to have put a lot of effort into keeping things tight and it shows.

Complimenting the drums, the bass and guitar playing is equally as tight on the track, guitar screeches giving the intro some edge before the band fly into the indie-pop verses. The level of edge and intensity of this track in a much needed progression from the typically laid-back approach that many indie bands still cling to, and . The track is definitely more of a grower than a shower. The indie elements stand out initially, but the more energetic and intriguing elements shine through on further listens. Perhaps not the most interesting song in the world, but it’s an infectious one nonetheless.

On the flip side, we have the brass infused The Return. Sounding almost like the theme-tune to a cheesy 70’s detective show, the track revolves around the edgy three-note guitar line and the stabs of brass. It’s not all cheese however. In keeping with the more ‘poppy’ A-side, singer Aaron Kravitz keeps the vocal melody light, contrasting with the almost overpowering instrumentation.

This track seems to give a more ‘live’ feeling than When You Believed, serving to give the listener an inkling into the band’s live performance with the prominence of the brass section. First of five singles running up to the release of their debut album, it’ll be interesting to see if the band can push the genres any further. The band tells us, “each of the song’s are very different, you won’t hear any repetitive sounds here”. Well, we’ll see…

Published on Drop-D.ie, 22nd April 2011

Hurray For The Riff Raff - Hurray For The Riff Raff

Sometimes the term ‘Americana’ doesn’t seem like a genre that we’d be terribly familiar with and its name alone almost suggests that it wouldn’t be a genre that would stand up in our country. But with its origins in folk and blues, we are in fact very much familiar with ‘Americana’ as a genre, and Hurray for the Riff Raff is indeed a perfect slice of everything you would consider the genre to be. Right down to the biography of the band. It reads;

Hurray For The Riff Raff began when a teenage Alyndra Lee Segarra started hopping freight trains across the USA to satisfy a yearning to explore its mythical small towns and backwaters…She hooked up with The Dead Man Street Orchestra, a home-made family of young, itinerant music makers living on the edge of the American dream.

That says it all really. The heart of this music is placed in the romantic dreams of turn of the century America with its wide, open plains barren save for the railroads and it’s sparsely populated towns.

It’s easy to be cynical about the foundation myth of the band, after all, I come from a very cynical country. However, once I put my cynical tendencies aside, what’s left behind is a beautiful body of music, spanning two albums, and five years of chasing the American dream. Well, in name at least.


The album opens with ‘Meet Me In The Morning’, a instrumental that sounds like it should accompany a love scene from a turn of the century silent film, and it leads into the album’s strongest song, ‘Is That You?’. Frontwoman, Alyndra, croons over banjo strums and the drones of an accordion, “I saw your ghost at the grocery” being the lead sentiment of the song. Toms and snare bang in and out, taking the track up and down as the accordion grows ever more frenzied.

In one of the dips of the song, Alyndra lifts a verse from the great, troubled singer Daniel Johnston and his song, ‘Some Things Last A Long Time’. She sings, “Your picture, is still, on my wall. The colours, are bright, as ever”. As a fan of Daniel Johnston, I’m happy to see his music influencing more musicians, and references to him seem to be a rite of passage, (see Kurt Kobain, Conor Oberst).

‘Is That You?’ is a beautiful start to an album, but sadly, the rest of the record stays in the same vein. Songs like Daniella, Little Things, and Take Me are quite lovely, and add to the atmosphere, but the album refuses to go anywhere new. Don’t get me wrong, Hurray For The Riff Raff is a marvelous album, beautifully crafted, and doesn’t possess a single disappointing song. But I feel that it’s more of a coffee table album, an album for the background that doesn’t require a lot of attention.

I will listen to this album again, as a fan of the Americana genre, and I will enjoy it. But not because Hurray For The Riff Raff have opened my mind up to something new, but because I’ve heard it all before.

Drop-D Rating: 8/10

Published on Drop-D.ie on April 20th 2011

Vita - Oh The Beautiful Bovine

Vita are an incredibly interesting band and they’ve just released their debut LP, Oh The Beautiful Bovine.. Fronted by ex-Ilya K guitarist Niall Cuddihy, their music still carries a good deal of their charm. I must say, I was a big Ilya-K fan back when they were together. Went to many a gig, and devoured their LP, Anaesthesia ad Infinitum, when it came out so I was interested to see where Niall would take their sound. As it turns out, he’s taken it in a pretty natural direction. The album still has the stompy guitars and crashing drums of DeKay’s sound, but the classical, folk and electronic elements that were seeping into Ilya K’s later material have found their home on this record.

The album opens with the heavy ManFaith. The pattering arpeggiator that begins the track hides the battering that follows. A brooding, quasi-blues riff heads up the verses here, with lead singer Niall almost groaning his lyrics over the instrumentation, “I bruise like a fallen angel”. The vocals, mixed with the guitars reminds me of Mark Lanegan era Queens of the Stone Age. Next up is the introspective My Father’s Mean, which takes the emotional tone of the album right down to the ground from the heady opener. Indeed the album in general mixes the pounding of Niall’s Ilya K work with the more tender and emotional work the features throughout the LP.

The third track, Runner Beans, keeps the atmosphere edgy and ethereal. Samples spin off behind a whirling organ and it segways into the brilliant Ray Davies Sais. For me, this is the stand out track on the album. The “Na Na Na Na Na Naaa” chorus and pumping verses drive the track along in a really strong way, with guitars that stab in here and there to give it more edge. The beautiful Hazeldark soon follows. It sits at only a minute and a half, but it’s grace and elegance stay long after. I found myself going back to this simple track again and again. Niall sings“Dream afresh now your past has died, simply goes when theres love inside” and this just goes to further the introspective side of the album that contrasts the brash tracks that balance it.

Stand out tracks for me have to be ManFaith, Ray Davies Sais and Hazeldark although there are moments in album that are a bit lacking for me. I found myself humming a vocal line in the song Dirty Silhouette and a vocal never came. Not that that’s a big problem, but I felt there were not enough full on songs in the album and a few too many instrumentals for my liking. That said, having been a fan of Niall’s previous work, I was quite impressed with the album, and as an album in itself, it works beautifully. Definitely one to check out. You can download the album from their Soundcloud page.

Drop-D Rating: 7/10

Published on Drop-D.ie, April 1st, 2011

The Bastard - The Bastard

About a year ago, this writer read an article by the well respected Irish Blogger and editor of State Magazine, Niall Byrne, a.k.a. Nialler9, on the subject of Irish Hip-Hop artists. It took a “light-hearted” look at the state of the genre in Ireland, and the result was none too good. It featured a number of acts ranging from the dreadful to the more dreadful including a group of awkward lads singing about debt collection in front of a Subaru jeep, another few singing about Dutch Gold and Grannies. Others dealt with the age-old battle of ‘Marijuana vs. The Gardaí’.

The comedic element also featured. Naturally, the Rubberbandits headed up the hip-hop parodies, with the Cork-based stylings of Grandmaster Cash gaining an honorable mention (not pictured Dr. Feekinstein). Given that, in late 2009, the above was the state of the Irish Hip-Hop scene, we clearly had a long way to go to gain any sort of credibility and as a genuine fan of the genre, I was disappointed at the turnout. Well, The Bastard AKA Leigh and Blake, as part of the Exxon Valdes collective, have given a much-needed injection of credibility, creativity, and talent into the Irish Hip-Hop scene with their self-titled debut LP. The future of Irish Hip-Hop is here, as The Bastard themselves put it, “The Dawn of a New Era”.

The album eases us into Leigh and Blake’s world with the track Things Are Bad. The opener consists entirely of the infamous “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more” speech from the 1976 film, Network. This track sets the scene for the album; a dark, brooding look at humanity. However, I must get my one major criticism for the album out of the way now. I think the group relies far too heavily on samples taken from film. The first, third, and closing tracks consist entirely of movie quotation, the second track, and the lead off single, The Bastard, is guilty of this too. My reasoning for calling this aspect a flaw is that it shows a lack of creativity in what otherwise is an incredibly creative record. I can see that the chosen samples help the scene setting, but if the sampling had been a little more original, this would be near perfect for me. That mentioned, lets get back to it.

The first meaty song on the album comes with the second track, entitled Keep The Change. Big beats hung on a loop from Swan Lake power this number, the MC layering the dark subject matter on top, “scared to sleep, my demons on the lookout, the one that gets too close usually the one that gets took out”. The next notable track is the fifth, Down In The Hole. To me, this track seems the most complete. I’m not usually a fan of the whole Devil/down at the crossroads style of lyricism, but it just works here. The beat ties in so well with the vocals, and the synth in the second verse just makes it so funky, that I can’t help but get on board with it. Out West follows along in a similar vein to Down In The Hole, in terms of lyric style, taking a country/blues guitar loop and a distant saxophone as its basis. The growing darkness of the LP culminates thematic centerpiece of Memoirs. The spoken word track tells a tale of a man falling from youth and grace into hatred and age, “Night has fallen and the darkness blankets my mind, and not even love can illuminate it again”. The lead off single The Bastard follows. It’s a great track and an ideal first foot forward for the band, as well as people getting into them. The video is down below, and the LP can be downloaded from their Bandcamp page.

Track seven of the album, Memoirs, tells us, “F**k hope” and the speaker is clearly lacking it. I however, am not. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, The Bastard represent the future of Irish Hip-Hop and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

Drop-D Rating: 7/10

Published on Drop-D.ie, March 28th, 2011