Putterers of Railroad Orchards,

There’s nothing wrong with daylight savings – in the “spring” anyway. The extra long day is a bonus. Another bonus is the return of satsumas to our supermarket shelves; in this age of globalisation, I wonder why we can’t source them all year round but I guess that it the answer is probably that a particular latitude is needed for satsuma growth and that is disrupted by careless positioning of the oceans.

Satsumas can probably make me healthy again. I think I have some sort of sinus infection and a cold. The extra daylight might help too. A doctor would be a last resort.

Every year, people debate the logic of moving the clocks back or forward. I like moving them forward in the spring so perhaps we should just keep doing that part of the bargain. We gain an extra day every 4 years (in a leap year), and by my strategy, we’d lose a day every 24 years. We can sort something out, make another change in the calendar or arrange for the Earth to go around the Sun at a different speed – whatever’s easiest (depends who is available to help out at the time).

It is wetter this year than it was at this time last year, I only remember because I was wearing football boots with hard ground soles at a similar time. Perhaps 2008 will represent a normal year for weather; it has been reasonably cold so far whereas in 2007, even January was blistering. Our climate is doomed so whatever solace can be taken from minor improvements must be appreciated.

My amateur footballing career goes on. After many years of injustices suffered on substitute benches, I vowed not to continue if my omission from the starting line-up became commonplace. Well, it occurs and it does rankle me. However, I have continued on due to the statistics. Whenever I have been a substitute, the team has always lost. I may be selfish but it’s a record I’d gladly keep up. Unfortunately, the opposite statement doesn’t hold (ie playing me does not guarantee victory) but I have been a part of all the best results and performances. This weekend we lost 2-0 to the best team in the league, we were unfortunate and I don’t think anyone was too disappointed about losing the way we did.

Daylight savings mean that midweek games can commence and Scottish football can all be condensed into a few more weeks such that we don’t play past May and into summer. We will re-emerge for action in the stormy months of winter.

Automatons Waltzing From Conventions,

It had been a long time since I’d been to a gig and I was honestly a bit apprehensive about attending what would turn out to be a fine concert featuring The Young Knives. I was concerned that I had been listening to too much dufferish music of late and that I would find the noise too abrasive for my fine ears. Of course, I know that The Young Knives are the leading artists in the twits and guitars genre, I thought Pete & The Pirates could challenge them but I was wrong (beyond Come on Feet, they don’t have much in their locker).

I made the best preparations I could. I did not listen to duffer music all day – I really missed Bill Callahan and Foxface, despite the merits of Saint Jude’s Infirmary (who can do anything) and garage band, The Len Price 3. I tried to work out who the support band(s) would be and decide whether to try catch them. I printed out maps. I borrowed a packet of Fruit Gums.

Those preparations had limited success. Firstly, efficient transportation had us in Fat Sams, Dundee before the first support band, who I had hoped to miss because I thought they’d be too fast and loud. Secondly, I did not realise there was to be a second support band, who, in hindsight, I would have hoped to miss.

The Get Downs won some sort of competition to entertain us. They epitomise the reason I am scared of three-piece bands and was nervous about attending a Young Knives gig. People can do lots of damage with guitars. Of course, the way not to cause harm is to learn chords and play them, otherwise, save money by carrying out mindless thrashing on a cheese grater. You could not play their songs with chords. They were intolerable; they did not possess rhythm or melody. It was noise. I recognised any words except from those on their “cover version” of Land of 1000 Dances and those were the only “words” on their version, the quotation marks give away what those syllables were.

Worse was to come in the form of Ungdom Skulen, another 3-piece who don’t play any chords, and do the cheese grating thing slower, such that the noise goes on for longer and is more boring. Furthermore, they are Norwegian, and I can forgive them for singing in Norwegian but even so, they should still be able to convey tone and emotion.

For inflicting these two upon us, I was quite annoyed at the Young Knives before they arrived, but with a few seconds worth of She’s Attracted To being better than almost an hour worth of shoddy support bands, I relented. The night included songs from the new album and a peppering of classics. The new album, Superabundance is quite good but I think the new songs sound better live. Henry is almost as clear a vocalist as other top enunciators, Colin MacIntyre and Fionn Regan. Whilst House of Lords is not so clear, his vocal performance has more energy than is evident on the record. Singles from the new album, Terra Firma and Up All Night, sounded great and had the crowd moving. Which football team will adopt “Fake rabbit, real snake, terra firma, terra firma” as their terracing chant? Would the East Fife FC fans be so bold? Having suggested this, Scots don’t really have the accent to pull it off; we’d have problems with the “R”s. The next single is a House of Lords special called Turn Tail, the talent the Young Knives have is to give each song a strong bass line then have a few killer lines amongst the song that can be repeated with gusto and remembered. They urged to “turn tail and run” from the metaphorical sinking ship.

Similarly, Counters is about more hopelessness incurred in the modern world, in this case, resulting in suicide and wistful drifting towards death, it’s good on record and live. I Can Hardly See Them is their “real heavy tune from the new record”, the children are quite patently lost in the towering undergrowth (not a paradox) of noise. Dyed in the Wool was another new song they did. Rue the Days starts off with silly La La Las, they’ll be useful for festivals later, more regrets are mentioned before they came crunching down with the title line “we rue the days”, it sounds better live; on record, it sounds a bit Gomez-ish and it’s a well known fact that Gomez deserve a good pummelling.

They might have ended the main part of the set with Current of the River; it’s a bit of a monster too. Before that we had Rumour Mill and the other singles, all were as well received as they ought to be. Rumour Mill is a bit of genius, it sums up nearly everything that I seem to experience on a daily basis – tall tales, cliques and whispers.

The encore featured a Stand and Deliver cover and The Decision, which again is genius although it seems to mean nothing. The Young Knives were on top form and hugely enjoyable to listen to, they’re definitely on their way to becoming future festival greats, in a Proclaimers-stylee (maybe). A notable mention has to go to the superb to-ing and fro-ing between Henry and House of Lords between songs; it was almost as entertaining as the music.

Resonant Retrievers of Goodbyes,

Ross Clark might not be busy touring the world with his guitar and his band, however, when he received an order for his EP, Anthems in Clams, from a stranger in the Kingdom of Fife, he didn’t really have to take the time and thought to write a short note and throw a couple of extra CDs the way of this stranger.

I’d have been happy just to receive the CD I bought in an envelope. It’s an added bonus when buying a record, when a pause is needed to make time for an “isn’t that nice?” thought. It was nice that Kate Goes coloured in the home-made envelope which they had sent a CD to me in. It is nice that Pictish Trail writes thanks on orders from Fence Records. And so the real indie stars go on.

As far as reviewing goes, comparisons are normal: I’ve alluded to the fact in an earlier article that Ross Clark is one of these indie-folksters and he’s probably of the same genre as Jeremy Warmsley and the like. There is a high similarity between Ross Clark and Bright Eyes - that’s never a bad thing. The themes are simple: adventures of love and life. So far, it could be said that nothing about what I’ve described makes Ross any different from the others, but, and this should make Ross a success in the industry, his songs stick, they cling to brain. Once Anthems in Clams is in there, it won’t go, won’t meet your demands.

Ombudsmen of Musical Talent,

New music is great but too often a bunch of half-baked abrasive rackets by twits and guitars is packaged and presented to us as such by the usual trendy outlets: BBC 6th Music daytime, NME, Zane Lowe and MTV2 etc. I will resist the hype. I will be angered by the hype, currently, The Metros deserve most of your contempt. Sometimes I will be surprised and delighted when the hype translates.

Vampire Weekend’s single A-Punk is the darling of BBC playlists at the minute. If exposed to only the first verse, they could easily be dismissed as twits and guitars peddling another Libertines clone. The chorus, however, features an organ flourish (think of your favourite “flourishes”, there’s one in Telstar by Tornadoes and in the duffing anthem, Recuerdos de la Alhambra around 1:15) giving incentive enough for any proper musicologist to investigate further.

Thankfully enough, that organ is a mainstay of the album. The drumming that goes with it on Mansard Roof is quite something. The song is meaningless but the tempo makes one man’s account of what he can see seem quite important and dramatic. It’s a good song and it made me want to find out what a Mansard roof is. The organ flourish on A-Punk is as cosy as one could ever want. I may live to regret such an adjective. The African influence on Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa really emphasises the depth of this band’s intelligence; ultimately, it’s just percussion but it is different percussion and seriously rhythmic. M79 has some beautiful strings at the beginning; the composition is as good as those of Penguin Café Orchestra. The range of instruments and the way they fit together with their thoughtful verses is just startlingly good. Vampire Weekend can be happy and Vampire Weekend can be melancholy and they do both with a charm that most newcomers just don’t possess.

Challengers by New Pornographers is one that I really should have bought ages ago in 2007. It’s a strange one, I immediately felt familiar with it. I guess that I could pull it apart and attribute sections of it to other records by other bands. The genius of Challengers is that it doesn’t matter and I like it. It’s power pop with loads of instruments. I can’t hear anything I don’t like and I think it’s one of the best albums around for duets or vocal harmonies. The standout tracks are Myriad Harbour, Challengers, Entering White Cecilia and Go Places.

When the Deer Wore Blue by Figurines is definitely worth having too. Childhood Verse is a bold start, it wanders mysteriously, the tinkling of pianos and glockenspiels gives this a chilling edge. This continues into The Air We Breathe, one of the best tracks, where the Beach Boys have met Mercury Rev and Brandon Flowers with a favourable outcome; the song wraps itself warmly around the ears and soothes. Hey Girl is the current single, the variation in tone, fluctuations in from high to low pitches in quick steps (musicians will have the proper term to hand) characterise the song nicely. Let's Head Out is a pop tune that could have been made in the 1960s by the Beatles or those of their ilk but probably better, it's a delight. The vocals on Good Old Friends sound like those of Neil Young at times, this song is a bit solemn but the vocal styling continues into Drunkard's Dream, where a hopeless husband protests to his wife over the strength of their relationship. Angels of Bayou is as glorious as wist can get, "can you feel in the air that you never belonged?", the chorus line, is delivered in such a lazy, throwaway manner that it has more meaning than it would if delivered with blatant passion. Figurines may well be Denmark's export of the year.

I have bought many more CDs in the last few weeks, it's due to that imbecile, George Lamb. I need something to listen to that isn't infuriating. Thankfully, I can be introduced to new music at other times of the day within the 6th Music schedule, but that's still no excuse for giving this clown airtime.