This was supposed to get here two weeks ago. This was also supposed to contain different bands to the ones I review this week. Essentially, nothing has gone right.

Eight months ago I changed from a PC to a Mac. I needed to acquaint myself with Final Cut and my PC at the time was very low spec. Eight months is all it lasted before the hard-drive died. The reason why I’m talking about a laptop in a music review column is because I had written a Musical MySpace article I was particularly proud of, but before I could send it to anyone… well, Apple fucked up. Considering I vowed to review EVERY band that sends me a friend request, you would think I need to go back and write my views on these musicians again, right? Unfortunately, MySpace apparently deletes friend invites after about a month, and despite the fact that I had the band URLs saved in a document, well… I’m boring myself with this already.

Needless to say, if all that information can be retrieved, I will get back to it and publish it here – but in the mean time, I’m still getting friend requests, so I need to review the new batch at the very least. I owe it to them! I owe it to these musicians to tear their hard work apart with snide remarks and poor wit. Where would the world be if I didn’t?

It’s a new year, a new decade, a new way of backing up my files (move it along, Aaron), but bands are still using MySpace as a way of getting noticed. Let’s see if any of them are worth noting.
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ABACAY
www.myspace.com/abacayie

Abacay are the duo of Melany Morganstern and Miles Torrance. I probably won’t be talking about their music much. They make vanilla seem like a party in your mouth. Bland. She can sing ok, I guess, and the music sounds like you’ve heard it before, in an elevator. Or from The Lighthouse Family. Your mum would probably love it.

What interests me most, however, are some of the things on their site page.

First of all, there is a song called “Madonna”, and another named “Moby”. Neither have anything to do with the musicians of the same names, it seems, but this confused me at first when it had the words “Sample” in brackets on the titles. I probably got the wrong end of the stick entirely with the lines “Please, I’m on my knees/ please, Madonna please” too. Oo-err missus!

I got a massive giggle from the little question and answer section on the sidebar. Not just for the broken English (this kind of electro-pop-crap music could only be done by our European brethren) but also for this quote “Are Melany and Miles living together? No. Are they in relationships and will the public get to know more about? Melany and Miles please to repect their privacy.” WOW. Not only have they left the glaring misspelling of “respect” (Aretha would not be pleased) but… WHO THE HELL CARES?

All this does is make me want to find out more about these two. Why did they bother to include such a thing if nothing was going on? What have they got to hide? Who is moving around in the attic? I’m 6 foot, why can’t I dunk in basketball? It’s all madness! Despite it being none of my business and of no real interest, it’s still ten times more fascinating than the music on offer here.

When reviewing musicians for this article, I like to play their songs on loop for a while so I can soak it all in. Not once could I tell the difference between any of these songs – and there are 10 available. It’s musical wallpaper.

Presentation = 3/5
Content = Outside of the bad interview there is nothing outside of the norm
Music = 2/5
Friend Request = DENIED!

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FREDDY WILLIAMS
www.myspace.com/dikshunary

Hear me now! It’s gospel-reggae! You can’t beat it. And if you do beat it, you’re going to hell… Or Jamaica. I haven’t decided which, yet.

Freddy Williams, AKA Alantonio Reggae/Soca – I’m not lying it says so in his blurb – has apparently been plying his trade for over 20 years. I’m a little confused by this statement, however, as it also says in his “about me” that he has had a 15 year musical hiatus and has only been performing/recording for 6 years. First off, if you don’t do something for 15 years, it’s not a hiatus anymore. You just stopped doing it. Secondly, if you’ve done something for 6 years, you’re not allowed say that you’ve done it for over 20. That maths just don’t work, even if Jesus likes you. Jesus knew his maths. You had to be good at maths to sort out the loaves and fishes for a large party deal. Get it together.

Freddy seems like a good guy. His songs are full of positive sentiments and melodies. Lots of joy and love is being shared. Good to his Mammy (just listen to his song “Mama’s Love”) and good to his woman (any other song). Just not good to my ears.

It’s not that he’s not likable, in fact he has got that quality in abundance. The problem is that he doesn’t have any originality. If you’ve heard the soundtrack to Cool Runnings, you’ve heard any one of Freddy’s songs. And this is not a slight on reggae music – there is some fantastic stuff out there – it’s just a slight against making stereotypical reggae music. This is like listening to genre by numbers. Steel drums and all.

Presentation = 2/5
Content = Just some music and a lot of bullshit about himself.
Music = 2/5
Friend Request = DENIED!

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5 SADOWS
www.myspace.com/5sadows

You know, it’s getting tough to do this. It’s the “about me” section that is getting to me this week. To prove my point regarding what I’m up against here, I’m going to directly quote 5 Sadows:

“5 Sadows were created back on 2003, by Greg, the band started as a cover band, with the name ‘Venus’ back then, covering mostly ‘HIM’ songs. Later Greg and Man P, decided to take the band to the next level with a new name, ‘5 Sadows’, and with a new plan, they started to compose their own songs. The band had a name and some songs, but there was an empty space, the band didn’t had a personal sound, so Greg decided to keep the old fashioned Fuzz distortion pedal and combine it with some Octave, and the band used the Octafuzz distortion pedal as a basic sound for the guitars, but the lyrics were too sentimental for such a noisy guitar sound and Greg decided to use some more melancholic and ominous keyboards. The actual idea behind the band is the dark atmosphere with lyrics that will make people think what is Love and Hate, Life and Death, Dark and Light, and take people to a beautiful journey though the Gardens of ‘5 Sadows’.”

Now, tell me how enthusiastic you are to listen to the songs after reading that shit. If there is one piece of advice I can give to a band, considering I’m not a musician, it’s to keep those things straightforward and honest. Keep the pretension at home, or limit it to what you tell girls at parties to try and impress them. Unfortunately, the music is just as pretentious.

What worries me most, however, is that all the sample songs (he we are with samples again, sigh) have over 850,000 plays each. WHAT THE FUCK?! Really? 5 Sadows are from Athens, Greece and are seemingly a big deal. Who knew? Also, who new Greg was a common name in Greece?

It seems whiney goth rock is just as popular in Greece as the rest of the world. Zeus damn it. I wonder if they get how appropriate “5 Sad-ohs” is as a name.

Presentation = 4/5
Content = Nothing in full, I’m not even sure the words are full, they’re probably also samples.
Music = 2/5
Friend Request = DENIED!

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FEMMEPOP
www.myspace.com/femmepop

oooOOOoooo. Interesting.

The current music scene around these parts is littered with female singer/songwriters, from the excellent and Irish Cathy Davey and Lisa Hannigan to Britain’s own Duffy and Adele. Femmepop, or Margaret O’Sullivan as she’s know to her mother, could fight it out with this bunch without any need of a handicap.

Her songs range from the slightly tougher, darker tones of “Good” to lullabies like “Kick”. Her site features quotes attributed to the likes of Hotpress magazine and Phantom radio DJ Edel Coffey. “Kick” also holds my favourite lyric of the week, with “Nothings are getting started”. Simple yet interesting in a lot of ways. A description that can also be used to describe Femmepop as a whole.

If I was to level a complaint, it would be that there is possibly too much sweetness here. The music is jangly and light. Accompany this with a voice that could ice a cake and you can be put on overload. Despite a hint of rockier influences, there is little edge to be found in Femmepop’s songs. There is nothing wrong with that. We need some light to counteract the shit that is available out there, but I think this is the reason why I probably won’t be coming back for seconds.

The problem is that, and especially with the mission I have set myself with this column, sometimes you can find a musician that you can see is talented, that you can tell is enjoyable, and that you could recommend to someone you know, but just isn’t for you. I don’t connect with Femmepop. I don’t relate. But I know a couple of folks who will, so I’ll be passing her name along. Sorry Margaret, this isn’t personal, but I’m clicking the Deny button on you.

Presentation = 3/5
Content = An EP’s worth of songs but no videos or many pictures.
Music = 4/5
Friend Request = DENIED!

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THE AIRPLANE GAME
www.myspace.com/theairplanegame

This six piece band from Reno describe themselves as being rock/breakcore/pop-punk. I have no fucking clue what breakcore is. In fact, I have such little knowledge of it I went and wikipedia’d it. “Breakcore is a style of electronic dance music largely influenced by hardcore techno, drum and bass and industrial music that is characterized by its use of heavy kick drums, breaks and a wide pallet of sampling sources, played at high tempos.” Remember kids, every day is a school day.
There are some good elements to The Airplane Game. The have a great drummer, for one. They play well. I was listening a couple of times while multitasking and my foot did tap along. A good sign indeed. The big picture at the top of their page made me smile. Their guitarist Jessie Gonzales has an excellent paedophile moustache (see John Waters), which is always a winner in my book. “Sign Your Pity” is a good song, although that could just be my penchant for crowd participation sing-a-long parts, which this clearly has.

There are a few things I don’t get, though. Why do they need two vocalists? I can understand when a guitarist or bass player will add vocals, but to have two people who only sing seems… unnecessary. None of the songs I’ve heard sounded like they needed that extra person. I don’t see the merit. Especially when they sound SO much like every other singer in their genre. Why must you whine so? Is it required for this form of rock, or just a coincidence? Also, if you can sing, stop screaming at random intervals.

I can’t really tell the songs apart, either. There are some moments from each song that I really like, especially the breaks that I guess make this “breakcore” (by the way, tomorrow in work I’m going to be taking breakcores all day long, no more tea-breaks for me, it’s tea-breakcoring all the way) but if you asked me which song these moments belonged to I would have to look it up.

I guess I missed the boat with this sort of thing. I realize reading back on all this that I sound like an old fart trying to describe The Airplane Game. I’m only 26, but they make me want to shout “darn kids!” every time.

Either that or they’re shit. You know, for the sake of my self esteem, lets just go with that.

Presentation = 3/5
Content = A video, some songs and not too much ranting about themselves.
Music = 3/5
Friend Request = DENIED!

-If anyone would like to be a part of Aaron’s Musical MySpace Tour just send him a friend request over at www.myspace.com/aaronhbp. Be warned, he’s a cantankerous man and will most likely make fun of you.

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