2010
Galaxie 500 – ‘Today’, ‘On Fire’ & ‘This Is Our Music’
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‘It’s unfair to ask once-precious music to retain its life-or-death significance after two decades,’ asserts David Cavanagh in his re-assessment of Galaxie 500’s three studio albums, due for imminent rerelease by Domino Records. While I have some sympathy for this notion, in the case of Galaxie 500, he is simply wrong. All three of these albums resonate just as intensely as they did when they were first recorded.
Twenty years ago they sounded like no-one else; now, the whole dream-pop movement – Grizzly Bear, Here We Go Magic, Papercuts, Beach House – is built on the blueprint laid down by the New York trio.
It’s easy to forgot how unique Today, the band’s debut, was at the time of its release. Viewed in the context of the two albums which followed it’s tempting to see it as merely a signpost of what was to come. Listening to the cover of Jonathan Richman’s Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste is the best way to disabuse yourself of that idea. Nobody else in the late 1980s made music even remotely like this.
By the time the band released On Fire, the sound had changed. It was almost imperceptible but it was there. The album’s producer, Kramer, captured the mood best when he signed off his sleeve notes to the original release with ‘come ride the fiery breeze’, somehow distilling the very essence of the band into those two final words. Their music was as fiery as anything that was coming out of Seattle at the time but its power was expressed gently – a breeze can do anything a hurricane can, it just takes a little while longer.
Dean Wareham’s songs on this album are almost hesitatingly introduced – a single chord strummed slowly, softly and repeatedly before a second, and sometimes final, is introduced. Naomi Yang’s bass meandering through the track with little or no attention to what the guitar is doing and Damon Krukowski caressing rather than beating his drums. Over this are Wareham’s slightly nasal vocals and his taut, tense guitar solos, an essential counterpoint to his hazy rhythm playing.
Live, they managed to almost literally mesmerise an audience. In his sleevenotes for the reissued Today, comedian Stewart Lee describes seeing Galaxie 500 in concert as a ‘transcendental experience.’ I only saw the band once, 14th November 1990 at the International in Manchester and it was then, and remains to this day, the most absorbing performance I have ever experienced. As we filed away into the Manchester evening, the crowd spoke only in whispers.
By the time that what transpired to be their final album, This Is Our Music, was recorded the band had begun to tear themselves apart – Krukowski and Yang, a couple as well as a rhythm section, pulling in one direction, Wareham the other. The tension and regret, these three had been friends through school in NewYork and then at Harvard University, is documented in the lyrics to the album’s stand out track Sorry, ‘Seems like everything is business, and we’re sorry all the time’. This Is Our Music is a more polished affair than its predecessors but loses none of the intimacy that Galaxie 500 managed to engender in their sparse sound.
All three albums are released with bonus CDs. Today features Uncollected (rarities from the band’s entire career, from pre-Today demos to outtakes from the last recording sessions), whilst On Fire comes with all collected Peel Sessions and This Is Our Music comes complete with Copenhagen, a live recording of the band’s last ever European show.
This Is Their Music – Come ride the fiery breeze again.






Of all of the current crop of bands who could be described as chamber pop, Brighton quintet The Miserable Rich stand out as that which embrace the concept most whole heartedly. While other bands use the chamber pop sound to add an extra dimension to their folky or indie backbone, The Miserable Rich are as pure as they come. Strip James De Malplaquet’s timbrous vocals from the mix and what you have here could easily form part of the soundtrack to a BBC period drama, so baroque is their sound.
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Frustrated by too much of the same old same old, and inspired by childhood memories of listening to his dad play the White Album and Harvest, James Riggall decided to make some music of his own. The Broken Broadcast is an alias for that music; fractured, melancholic and blurry.
Even with a sore throat, James de Malplaquet sings like Ella Fitzgerald. Hoarse and whispery in conversation between songs, The Miserable Rich singer’s voice never once falters while in full flight during this, the opening night of their current tour.
In 1994, Elliott Smith was joint lead-vocalist with forgotten indie rockers
Simplicity is the key to success at the moment for First Aid Kit. On the face of it, there’s nothing especially remarkable on show here. Sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg play a very straightforward folk music – simple melodies; glorious harmonies, it’s comfortingly familiar stuff. And yet, there’s something of an air of greatness about them.
More folk than tronic these days, the new Tunng album is a decidedly more pop orientated record than previous affairs. Don’t be surprised when opening track Hustle crops up on a mobile phone advert; such is its chirpy, skipping like a stone on the water charm.