VV Vroom

VV Brown
Travelling Like The Light

Known to her friends as VV Brown, Vanessa Brown from Northampton has exploded onto the UK music scene like Gladiator contestants bursting through the paper wall at the end of the travelator. But I can’t help and wonder – what does the extra V stand for? Vivacious? Vigorous?
Judging by her debut album Travelling Like The Light either of those adjectives would fit the bill. The record, self-described as “musical mashed potato” due to it’s borrowing of a myriad musical styles, is ace. She’s not lying with her description, as the album flows from motown to punk to do-wop to 60s pop. It’s a veritable rollercoaster of the last 40 years of the British music scene.
Thankfully none of the tracks make you want to dance the mashed potato, but they do make you want to dance. Whether it’s the bombastic “Game Over” – a goodbye kiss wrapped in a funk-blues bundle – or the catchy “Crying Blood” – the hip-swinging, 60s-style, poptastic penned effort tinged with the sadness of another failed relationship.
Her songs are ostentatious and loud, just like their author, and most tell an unashamed story of love, either lost, rejected or won.
The only thing letting Brown down is the lack of depth to her lyrics, which are less cryptic than many of her UK indie peers, and more direct – “You’re stupid and you gotta do it – leave!” she screams, but when the message is so passionate and bold, decent semantics don’t really mater anymore.
No ambition is too big for Brown, or stage for that matter, with the 26-year-old keen to move into writing scores for films and like a fat kid in a cake shop window, she’s got a finger in more than one pie. Brown has already started a vintage clothing label and has also co-produced a comic, no less.
Researching her background is like discovering one of your friends has been spying for MI5 for years – the stories just keep on coming. But, like her music, each turn is a welcome surprise. I never found out what the second V stands for either.

Hush Puppies

Like Vines by The Hush Sound

It’s not often a band’s name is such a blatant lie, but the Hush Sound are anything but quiet.
Smashing piano keys with the force of an angry Ben Folds and banging drums like Animal from the Muppets, this quartet from Illinois don’t really have a low-decibel moment.
Especially during their 2006 album Like Vines, which is like being musically punched in the face, but instead of it hurting, it makes you start dancing.
The album explodes to life with We Intertwined, a song about love with band founders Greta Salpeter and Bob Morris’s lyrics embracing each other like the characters in the song.
The two, who met in High School, share lead vocals throughout the album and switch over with effortless ease, like tag-team wrestlers.
Sweet Tangerine and Lions Roar are other stand-out tracks on the album, crashing into your ears and sounding like musical numbers, backed with big bang-style orchestral bigness.
Even during the so-called softer songs, the strength of the instruments and voices makes it anything but background-music.
Maybe it’s the strength of Salpeter and Morris’s voices, maybe it’s the array of instruments used to bolster each song – an accordian here, a flute there – maybe it’s just good production skills. Whatever is it, it works.
I feel like I’m listening to the soundtrack to a west end play, Salpeter and Morris dueting with pitch-perfect voices. In fact, The Hush Sound – The Musical could work. They already have the songs, just scribble some script about Salpeter and Morris being star-crossed lovers or something and you have a play on your hands.
My friend Kirstine sold me the album off the back of We Intertwined but warned me “the rest of the album isn’t really like it”. She lied.
One slight criticism: Many of the songs are quite samey. I found myself humming one of the songs the other day and going straight into the chorus of a different song.
Sounding strangely like Ok Go, although sadly lacking the treadmill skiing skills to produce anything even close to a music video to match the Chicago-based rockers, The Hush Sound still rock my world. Check ‘em out.

N.B. The band have a newer album out – 2008’s Goodbye Blues. I have it somewhere and have only spun it a few times, but from memory it rocks also. Will review it soon.

I See London, I See Francis

Robert Francis @The Fly, Camden 9/11/09

The mystery that surrounds Robert Francis is how he manages to turn from socially awkward agoraphobe to passionate singer with the strum of one chord.
The Californian Emile Hirsch look-a-like wanders up to the stage like a man carrying the burdens of 1,000 souls, and fiddles around with his instruments like a 13-year-old before a music recital.
But once he starts playing a different Francis emerges – still tormented, like a prisoner recently released from 30 years incarceration – but a confidence flows out of him while he delivers his White Lies-esque mellow folk pop.
The most striking things about Francis and his band at The Fly in Camden last night was their apparent insistence to look like one another, all decked in plaid shirts with messy indie haircuts and David Beckham it-looks-like-I-haven’t-shaved-but-actually-I’ve-spent-ages-sculpting-this beards. It was like standing outside a GAP window.
Ignoring the appearance faux pas, Francis served up soulful sounds that lent a little of everything, at times sounding like roots blues from deep Mississippi and then flowing into country rock, all served with a dash of self deprecation and humility.
Which is less than can be said for Francis’ mid-song demeanour, a confidence, bordering on arrogance, that unfortunately manifested itself in more than enough cum-faces-during-guitar-solos than is necessary.
What is undeniable was the boy Robert’s voice, pitch perfect every song, and hauntingly chilling during each tormented verse. Coupled with melodically memorable songs and pretty boy looks, Robert Francis has potential. Just enough with the weird faces, my friend.

The Boy Dennen Good

He may blur the lines between masculinity and feminity when he dances, but Brett Dennen can certainly turn out a decent song.
On stage, the ginger singer-songwriter who looks like the offspring of Carrot Top and Ellen DeGeneres (or Norwegian footballer John Arne Riise), has a knack for churning out soulful, catchy, melodic pop that makes you want to move your hips in a very inappropriate manner.
Which is exactly what the 30-year-old Californian does when he is on stage, gyrating in his skinny jeans, giving anyone in the front row a very clear view of his groinal area.
But most don’t care, because they are lost in his tuneful pop, a sort of Ottis Reading meets John Mayer.
His latest effort, 2008’s Hope for the Hopeless, is an 11-song, head-nodding, collection of love songs, each one flowing into the next with easy-listening beats, memorable lyrics and catchy hooks.
It’s the sort of album you could listen to walking the streets of San Francisco, or hear as the soundtrack to an independent film where the hero strives mercilessly to win back his one true love. Probably set in San Francisco too.
And ‘San Francisco’ is the name of the album’s opening track, a smooth, motown-esqu track that almost grabs you by the hand for a slow dance. Gyrating your hips is the only way you can dance to this track.
The rest of the album gently takes you by the shoulder and leads you to the dance floor. Some tracks are slower than others, like ‘So Far From Me’ a slow-winding track that almost cradles you as it plays.
Others are more upbeat, almost jazzy, like the sing-a-longable ‘World Keeps Turning’. Each song with it brings it’s own message of love won, love lost, or love yearned.
Voted one of Entertainment Weekly’s One to Watch last year and a touring bill with Jason Mraz this year makes the future look good for Brett Dennen.