{"id":1019,"date":"2010-10-10T19:16:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T18:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2010-10-10T19:16:30","modified_gmt":"2010-10-10T18:16:30","slug":"the-soundcarriers-celeste-melodic-records-2010-mel0070cd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1019","title":{"rendered":"The Soundcarriers. Celeste. Melodic Records 2010 (MEL0070CD)."},"content":{"rendered":"

The sound of Nottingham\u2019s Soundcarriers<\/a> seems both right and wrong. One can hear in the opening bars of their second record, Celeste<\/em>, their interests and influences from the contemporary to the obscure: early Stereolab<\/a>, Birmingham\u2019s underappreciated Broadcast<\/a>, the cool Kosmische Musik of Neu!<\/a> and Can<\/a>, the psychedelic era of Italian composers Ennio Morricone<\/a> and Piero Umiliani<\/a>, and the gamut of 70s jazz-funk from the cinematic music library (one reviewer has mentioned the Pentangle<\/a> as well, but I don\u2019t hear it). Perhaps the time is right for bands to look in this direction, to hear sounds from another side of the record store, to discover (I would say re-discover, but much of this music has never seen the light of day given to full-fledged mainstream releases) the music the counterhip themselves are listening to: that not-much-discussed subcultural group who oppose trendy taste and suggest alternatives at every corner. You like the Velvet Underground & Nico<\/em>? Rubber Soul<\/em>-era Beatles? Try listening to the Monks\u2019 Black Monk Time<\/em><\/a>. You like Love\u2019s Forever Changes<\/em>? May I present for your listening pleasures The Millennium<\/a>\u2019s Begin<\/em>.
\n


\nNow that girl groups (Vivian Girls, Best Coast), classic American rock (Fleet Foxes, Midlake), and post-punk orchestras (Arcade Fire, Joanna Newsom (trust me)) rule the indie airwaves, there\u2019s sonic surprise in the ground the Soundcarriers are exploring. And there\u2019s much to be found, and plundered, that is neither under scrutiny by the mainstream musical press nor supported by the trend-making blogosphere.
\n


\nWhat\u2019s wrong is more complicated. Their weakness is not that they sound the same as these other musics \u2013 they are, like so many others, the sum of their influences with the added x-factor of not being their influences \u2013 but that they sound the same as themselves over and over again: the same cool boy-girl vocal combination occurs on almost every song, the drums are always sharp and upfront in the mix, the keyboards are bright, the bass thick and the guitar thin. All of this works on a number of key tracks, including \u2018Step Outside\u2019, \u2018Long Highway\u2019, \u2018There Only Once\u2019, and the stand-out, \u2018Signals\u2019, throughout which co-songwriter Paul \u2018Pish\u2019 Isherwood\u2019s bass rumbles with a virtuosity and grooviness that falls somewhere between Holger Czukay and Carol Kaye (which is to say I can\u2019t praise it enough). But overall, listening to Celeste on repeat on whatever iThingy is your fancy, samey-ness and repetition become the band\u2019s most coherent signature. All this suggests that while they have the right sound, they haven\u2019t written the right songs to present it to listeners with.
\n


\nThere\u2019s an ep\u2019s worth of good, interesting music here, and some great playing and sounds throughout. But nothing mandatory, nothing demanding of the listeners attention over the length and through the heart of this one-hour recording.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sound of Nottingham\u2019s Soundcarriers seems both right and wrong. One can hear in the opening bars of their second record, Celeste, their interests and influences from the contemporary to the obscure: early Stereolab, Birmingham\u2019s underappreciated Broadcast, the cool Kosmische Musik of Neu! and Can, the psychedelic era of Italian composers Ennio Morricone and Piero […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15],"tags":[58,104,149,196,239,259],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Soundcarriers. Celeste. 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He is the author of Later Emperors (Carcanet 2020) and The Barbarians Arrive Today: Poems & Prose of C.P. Cavafy (Carcanet 2020).\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=37\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Soundcarriers. Celeste. Melodic Records 2010 (MEL0070CD). - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1019","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Soundcarriers. Celeste. Melodic Records 2010 (MEL0070CD). - The Manchester Review","og_description":"The sound of Nottingham\u2019s Soundcarriers seems both right and wrong. 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