The Wolfhounds on Oddbox Records

Track 4 on the A-Side of the infamous C86 cassette released by NME almost 30 years ago now (yikes) featured The Wolfhounds alongside The Soup Dragons, The Mighty Lemon Drops (one of my first shows at a college near where I lived probably 6 years after this came out) and The Wedding Present among others. The definitive document came to represent the 'indie' scene which hadn't been nailed down like this previously. Though this article by Alistair Fitchett sheds an entirely different light on this diverse scene and the mistake of overcategorization...

The Wolfhounds released material through 1990 before splitting up and getting back together for the 20th anniversary reunion of their first single Cut the Cake in 2005. Things must have gone alright and they entertained coming up with new material and here we are at the present where they've released a new single on Oddbox Records 27 years after getting together.

Appropriately enough the first track "Cheer Up" kicks off with that melodic jangle electric picking up right where they left off. It's not that surprising, these guys were doing exactly what they wanted back then and obviously continue to do so with a cheer up / fucking cheer up lyric in a deceptively sunny pop style. The guitar is the essential piece of this sound, a cool laid back strum creating that solid foundation to lay everything else on...the straight ahead beats, and lead layers. David Callahan also didn't skip a beat heading down this shiny positive sounding road with a hint of ridicule. Don't wallow in self pity, get on with it, which they make seem possible in the tracks unpretentiousness.
B-Side's "Security" finds the jangle working against this tom/kick downbeat and David's vocally going to a Smiths kind of place for me here, that headstrong lead vocal that can hit on all sorts of off the path melodies hiding in this seemingly basic rhythm. This stripped down guitar/tom structure builds up verse by verse to an epic chorus with the guitars shifting over to an almost sliding thick shimmer. But if you come up with a decidedly pop stomp beat like this, it's practically writing itself and is infinitely replayable. "The Devil Looks After Her Own" you see what they did there? Flipping expectations again before you even know what happened. Break out the acoustic which is the only backing necessary behind these vocals, at the end of the day, this guy has a great vocal style without going off into obviously trained areas. It's got that simplicity without being self conscious. They even bend these metallic chords and it could be there's been a couple layers of electric here the whole time. This whole electrified thing could just be a passing fad though, we'll have to see.

The Hairs / The Medusa Snare on Oddbox records

Got another one in from the Odd Box Records series, still pressing away the split singles with a soft focus on the precious indie pop...no end in sight out of England, this one an interesting split between more layered fuzzy, The Medusa Snare and straight up pop twee from Brooklyn's own The Hairs.

A-Side from London's Medusa Snare is "Feeling a Lot of Feelings" which comes off as a muddy sort of Jesus and Mary Chain, or that polished canned quality of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine.... layering in the vocals, heavy effects, smoke and mirrors of sounds, creaking out of the crackles and hiss. I have the AC on but that's not it I swear. It just starts in with this sustained guitar and laid back, indie rock feel of something like, Teenage Fanclub... I think its hard when you build up a wall like this to then have to come up with a sound for the solo? Luckily they saved one for right now. There's a seemless transition section right into this chanting of "the radio's not the only thing to fail", over and over slightly changing that chord progression, vocals right up front...letting the instruments do all the work blasting out the crunch and a high pitch hiss, while they layer in vocals at a pretty rapid pace, I think that where this is weirdly going off the rails because of the pace of this. Normally you create a haze and let it slowly hypnotize but instead it's a blur of speed and distortion. The radio's not the only thing to fail? Is it going to be digital streaming tracks now? Have to look into that.

B-Side is from neighborhood band, The Hairs kicking off the B-Side with "I Saw You Look the Other Way" which is acoustic based, real raw, hearing the metallic strings jangling all around. They've got that dual layered vocal going and it's way behind any of this instrumentation. A little sloppy in that precious home recorded way. Bobbing around...it's good to hear this obnoxiously fun rock that's just trying to make it's way in the mean world. Mainline that one note right into your skull, it doesn't have to change though, it can stumble around a bit. Make it authentic. "Hey Hitler" then has a kind of sampled canned backbeat made out of piles of rocks banging together underwater, a trolley rolling on the tracks you can almost see the Michel Gondry for this acoustic strummer. Sunny summer pop, with loads of repetition, because when you hit that stride, you don't want to ever stop.

Get it from Odd Box Records, subscribe to the series and get the other five...should be another batch in the works for the 2013's.

Not from the single, but here's some equally home-y catchy tracks from The Hairs:

The Give it Ups / Santa Monica Swim and Dive Club split on the Odd Box Records singles club

Odd Box Records is based out of London, England and in addition to already putting out a bunch of releases from a bunch of diverse sounds they believe in, they recently launched this 7 inch singles club, I picked this one from the pile, The Give it Ups and The Santa Monica Swim and Dive Club, which is an actual organization who have to be scratching their heads at some of the google results that feature this Saturday Looks Good to Me offshoot project. Using the swim meet as a metaphor in "False Start" they girl guy harmonize in that classic indiepop combination with the help of an understated organ melody. The kind of thing that on the surface has this bubbly sweetness of completely joyous pop, but of course is dealing with an unrequited love, and failure. The sort of track for loveable losers who can't get a break. You've been there of course, and this will make you pick yourself up try again...not a bad soundtrack for Monday morning. It's going to get better, learn from those mistakes...or just keep doing what you're doing, what are you getting all worked up about? Put it on after the Besties, Bearsuit or The Shout Out Louds and get over it!
The Give it Ups blast their guitar ramshackle pop with a bit of post-punk couple of tracks, and "Why won't you go out with me?" yells insults at that guy's girlfriend this lead singer is clearly into. A little echo on the begging frustrated vocal, reminding me of Love is All or even Poly Styrene, with a sort of stripped down minimal jangle guitar. The straight forward beat and deceptively sweet melody is broken by this maniac and her inside voice yelling (let's hope). It doesn't help her that the backup vocal is delivered in a Shangri-La's '60s girl group harmony. She's going after them next.

I love this kind of attitude combined with a Beat Happening raw instrumentation. Like getting a cupcake tatoo, bad ass and not at the same time. "Knives Chau", is a Scott Pilgrim homage track to the character, sung from her point of view by one of the guy members in The Give it Ups, which is delivered in a voice cracking, just out of range vocal. It literally goes through her and Scott's history, also an unrequited love, with catchy harmonies, all working background to this up front gender bending unpretentious pop. I could see Eddie Argos loving this one all the more because it's on a seven inch. I would agree.

All 6 records are still available from Odd Box, everything from The Ketamines to the Gold Bears coming up next, for the very reasonable £24, which will make those shipping changes to the US go down easier. But who wouldn't want these exclusive tracks, from a this variety of completely different bands if the two I know are any indication. I'm not a fan of compilation LP's, it seems to defeat the purpose of listening to an album, but you throw these six records on and you'll have the Odd Box compilation split into singles...which I am totally fine with. It makes no sense... I know.