new New

From Manson overlays to Danny K, kids are gonna eat New Holland's new album for breakfast every day this season.

photo by the equally talented but often unseen Mark Reitz for www.bitocreative.com/about

(more rock stars and some other sexy local scenes the way you've probably never seen them at http://markreitz.blogspot.com/)

It started with a very pop single that prompted a little wordplay on my part and a lot radio play on theirs. “For a high speed chase across Exploded Views” I mused, “start with a little Coldplay and bring in The Killers and you've got Freedom, son.”

After that I had this to say

And then the lovely Liny snatched the nicer of my lines for the press release. I wonder, was that becoss iss true or because nobody else had written anything about them lately? Are the journalists really paying attention to local music? This band is going to be big. But where’s the buzz about them? In short, in the piece, I wondered about (wandered about) the role of decent commercial music in the collective psyche and chatted about why I think The Kings Of Neon are set for success. (It’s in the song structure)

Anyway

then Albert Dupe Lassie from Rhythm leaned over to me last night at the raunchy launch (seems to be happening a lot lately, makes me feel like somebody’s listening) and offered an insight while Katrina or Anna or Natalia spread her legs wide so I could get one last shot. This album he said (I’m paraphrasing) has a bit of everything in it. The whole top forty. Whatever you like.

Which is exactly what we were saying at breakfast (not the royal we, the wild we), a Jackal, a Jill and a Jezebel. Something for everyone. IF you like hit radio. I don’t (and neither do my breakfast companions), but I like this album(and so do they. Or, let’s say it’s two against one, and the band still wins). Of course, I’m no puritan - I was brought up on radio, and still have a somewhat soft spot for its (better) material.

New Holland is only one of two bands this year not to disappoint when it comes to a second album. They’re right, really. You only get one chance. (and Foto, if you disappoint, I’m gonna kick your arty asses and howl like a lost puppy). New Holland don’t blow theirs, they start by grabbing your gullet with the first track. It could have been the title track (if they’d totally sold out to sales), but that would be a tad TOO self referential, and subtlety has always been companion to their confrontational sentiments.

So. a breakdown of Exploded Views.

Freedom! is the first track, and the next hit single. It’s infectious, hopeful, and scattered with minor chords that make it mature despite bopping drums and chopping strings. Can’t get it out of my head, and I’m quite happy for it to stay there. Our anthems are better off inspirational. We’ve had enough darkness this last winter.

I’m not a huge fan of The Son, though I see what they’re doing (or where they’re going – right into indie rockers pockets). The lyrics are lovely and give it all its meaning, but it’s messy. Nail in the foot kind of messy, I guess. But very necessary all the same – it seems from the songs coming out of the rock scene that our parents don’t know we’re over propaganda from the pulpit… I guess (sigh) we’ll just have to tell them over and over again. (doesn’t that sound familiar)

In Silence is Coldplay before fame made him lame. It’s a dirge of disenfranchised youth with a three-note intro that carries through, contains it, and keeps it from becoming too weighted and dark. Like the lyrics say, a great song for sad drives through the abandoned annals of your heart. The kind that goes on repeat while you sob into your scarf. (but wait! It’s spring!)

As a (sort of) consolation, These Are The Best Days is brighter but still stark. It’s is not what you’d expect from the song title (but that’s probably why they put it here, and Freedom! first). It’s a slow, simple song littered with languorous keys and a bit of electronic punctuation. I don’t like the vox effects and electronic overlays. They seem unsagely synthetic, a bit passé and a lot less integrated than they are on the last song on the album. But it wasn’t written for me, anyway. And before some smartass points out that even my broke-backed Bon Iver uses those vox effects, I will secede and say that the two elements I don’t like actually suit each other. (and on the subject of Bon Iver, when is someone going to break his heart again so we can get another awesome album?) If we are a bit behind the times down in sharpest Africa, this song will be right on time. If not, we’ll smile and call it a learning curve.

This(is)home is the next hit. Also an anthem. I’ve never enjoyed spelling so much. The Killers would be proud, methinks. Nice falsetto, too. One of the key songs on the list.

Hiatus is just that - something of a smoke break. Kind of feels like it was played with one hand. But then, that’s what we like about the simple genius of their melodies, isn’t it? I like the celestial echo at the end.

In Hurricane , the voice of New Holland speaks about something other than itself. It’s a song about fucking and finding oneself (or not), replete with the blunt-tongued lyrics we love New Holland for (even if we don’t say poes around our parents) - from town to town she's just passing through shifting gears with her laced up boots. .. she won't take you very far, but what she'll do, she'll fuck you like a hurricane'. Lost souls and sex always make great platforms for contemplation and SA is a hard place if you’re big hearted and horny and it's right here in the middle of the me-ness mess that New Holland have something to offer everyone.

SA is torrid with a horrid history, tasty yet testy with an abiding mystery in the lives and loves of its livers and lovers. We grow up watching our backs, and often seeing our asses while we try to get our rocks off in one way or another. It’s called Freedom, isn’t it? (when the answers aren’t given to you on a razor edged plate.) What New Holland does is speak directly to the people in charge of tomorrow– the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of post pot hate depression, gaily skipping on the skirts of a looming recession armed with nothing but thoughts and fingertips. I like that they’re crude at times, and always honest and often poetic (in a new way, A.D.D. haiku would not be far wrong a phrase to lash the lyrics with). They’re doing something that other SA pop rock bands are perhaps too old (or just too tired and uninspired) to do – seducing the budding passions of its teens in the language that they use. Can anyone say Fuck Yeah? Very Lolita, Teejay, preying on the smallest. ( did you remember to kill Humbert?)

A little less lonely is the surprise winner. Hendrix strings, grunting bass, tempered drums. Totally different to the other tracks. Jaw dropping to see live. Hope there’s more of that on the way…

Thank You, Gautama is Simon & Garfunkel bonking Sufjan Stevens on ecstasy. It’s so good it’s bad. Uncluttered, uncomplicated, acoustic. I wouldn’t be surprised if very young mothers play it to their toddlers.

Something To Believe In is bubble gum for free. Happy tum tum. If it didn’t have the signature progressions, I would puke at all the cute keys. The lyrics give me the finger, anyhow, with lines like ‘I’m not doing it for you’. Also, have you noticed that it’s only the good albums that have ONE song that grates? The Guns did with Cutting Heads. Taxi Violence with The Turn, too. (no, I’m not telling which ones)

Collection of relatively true statements is my favourite. It’s not catchy, but it stays with you. it’s not melancholy, but it makes you reflect. It’s also wise, and winding, and the longest song title on the album. And it’s the one that will be with me longest, I suspect.

But the quintessential song on the album is not the unbruised hits, or the bits in between. It’s the one that tells the New Holland story tritely and rightly and it’s aptly titled No Disguise. The song has it all – their unmistakeable melodies, unmasked vocals, simple fingering, inobtrusive rhythm and cutting, courageous lyrics, (“I tear your head from your heart and your leg from your bone. Should you resist for much longer I might just go coz I won’t let you swallow me whole”). It redresses clichés (a fucking halo) and reminds me (at least lyrically) of A Perfect Circle’s Noose.

21 is the middle child. It doesn’t really stand out, except that it’s naked, and this makes you notice the new in New Holland. On a picky note, there’s a line that sounds like it’s been borrowed from aKING (words and notes), but it’s probably just an oversight. Or is subversion not below these boys? They certainly treat those few notes differently. It opens out into a Nintendo version of soft-boiled electro house which gives it some scope and humour. Like Collection Of relatively True Statements, and No disguise it’s compositionally at ease with itself and it finishes the album off sweetly and suitably. Think about that for a momen - how do you finish off an album like this easily? Not that simple. But perhaps that's their winning formula -they’re always seem to be at ease.

Which brings me to a point about the live performance and the (inter)face of the band - the star, the dark prince. He’s comfortable on stage moving between one thing and the next with an unfettered fluidity that made the audience's sober awkwardness at the launch seem silly. He’s guaranteed to take his top off (perhaps that’s why we didn’t see m/any gigs this winter?) which only tops the sex appeal that swims around the room through the music (“you see that girl there, with the red blouse?” I heard a pair of pumps postulating, “she wants him too”. I didn’t look up to see who was who while i weaved through glistening bodies clutching sweating glasses, but there was more than one woman in that room with a red blouse, that’s for sure! And more than one woman without a blouse, too… (and a true sign of the band’s infectious energy is that they got those bored-looking, bare boobed girls to bop on stage instead of bear their beavers as per usual). A front man with a voice and a body is about the best thing for a band with the musical breadth to humour the party animals and convince consummate music appreciators alike. Like what I’ve said? Go buy it and give yourself something to sing about this summer.

Other kudos

Well produced @ coffeeSTAINEDvinyl (nice to see standards picking up in independent studios),first 1000 discs have album art that uses an insert-not-fold format, which means you can stick them on your wall. (Or swap them with your friends!)

The twitter take
(http://twitter.com/_jezebel_)

Around the world in a party daze, @NewHollandband move easily from 1 sound to another&never let you go. Chameleons with their clothes off,ja.

Bottom line

Mixing timeless melody and contemporary pop icing, Exploded Views blows up expectations to become the sound of summer 2009. Play it loud and drive fast. (sorry, Wad. You asked for it)

I leave you with a trick question. What would we do if Teejay changed his hair? Put your answers below…

Wresterlerish – sjoe!

Crap. I did it. I bought a band T-shirt in a sudden flurry of fanaticism. I was totally sober. In my defense, I was also drowning in my lungs, but that’s no excuse for breaking a vow to never get the T-shirt (seeing as I get everything else, including the rude names). i sat, deliriously, impatiently, through a tedious Jeff Buckley tribute (voice has promise, the songs need narrative), and a mellow man-and-guitar with more charm than charge last night at the Waiting Room. (ha. yes. Touché.) I should have been in bed. I’d come anticipating that the hype about Wresterlish isn’t hollow because people I trust said it was worth it. (tip. If you want to know what’s what musically, ask serious musicians, Miles, Chris, someone who represents decent bands or decent design and marketing). The funny thing is, there’s all this buzz about the band, but most people need a lesson to say their name, let alone to read it, which just gets messy. Pronounced, I suppose, “Ress-ler-ish”, it’s a mouthful from a happy handful of hopefuls, and by my merry little ears, I declare the hype has heart. (at least, for me)

Months ago someone wanted one of them to come and crash in my lounge on an impromptu tour that never came about. we only shook sweaty (his), feverish (mine) hands after the gig, but our online introductions (via a certain red-bekked debenite) were quite candid. And cute (for two peole who've never spoken). It went something like this :

(To the viking)
hi werner

yes. as i am in the business of music, and a gypsy at heart, i know what it's like to be homeless and hopeful, so do come and stay at mine if your feet don't smell. i know your bum smells, but i'm not a dog, so we're ok there. are you down for ramfest, or what?

i heard your music today. tis beautiful. and i'm not that easy to please. (ok. so i have a weakness for voice and guitar. it's my mother's fault, she brought me up on simon and garfunkel and cat stevens and that other hairy guy)(o wait. that was a girl. ja, but anyway, you get the idea)

jezebel

(from the Viking)
hello from the dry heat that is pretoria!

so after a week of trying to scrape together a couple of shows around ramfest. i am bummed to say that we failed. BUT luckily we have hooked up and started organizing an amazing tour for the end of april! so if everything goes according to plan we'll be in both your towns around then!

jess! big digital high 5 for the simon and garfunkel! i recently bought the graduate sountrack on vinyl and fell in love with them all over again! thank you very much for the kind offer of possibly housing this cowboy!

roger! you are a legend! thank you times a billion for all the contacts and effort you've put in for us! may you be blessed with a thousand (legal aged) aKING groupies! ;)

ENJOY RAMFEST!!!

werner

I did. Almost as much as I enjoy “Cocoon”, a wonderful, wailing track from Werner’s previous aural incarnation as a shu. Its long been on my hit list of favourite tracks to drive irritably through traffic to. (I have lists for all sorts of things, not all of them as inane as this one, but then this was for girls who need a map to find their own clitoris). [note to self –ask Neil about the subliminal sonic structure in the timeless power of certain songs.] And before you start rolling your eyes at my odd taste in music, the way Zeno does about my loving Dear Reader, remember what the one thing the Blk Jks would like to ask detractors. “what makes you think somebody else won't like it just because YOU don’t?” (that's Mpumi)

Well, now. How about me thinking that somebody else might like it because I do? Problem...

Basically, for other bands, Wresterlish is Bad News. I’m borrowing a bit from their wit here. i mean it metaphorically, but Bad News is also the name of their newest single, an apt (if exceptionally cheerful, yet strangely self critical) sonic summary for a band who’d better put out an album pronto, or their journey is going to be slower and harder than it needs to be(grab the bull by the balls, if you will). They’re solid, diverse within their desired genres, and damn do they know how to put on a show, even WITH a kak rig . They’ll steal aKING’s mellower fans (while New Holland will steal the testier, younger ones), and become the next band to have tattooed on your butt. Why?

Because they’re the kind of musicians who are genuinely pleased and surprised every time the crowd roars or squails in response. Because they have a generous on-stage energy, an intensely engaging presence that proves that closed eyes are not a sign of insecurity. Because there are qualities in those vocal chords you only hear when it’s loud and live. Because the lyrics are intelligent. (“if nothing ever dies then why do I feel buried alive?... I let you take me alive”). Because the compositions are nipped and tucked and clipped and plucked in all the right places. Because their songs can be silly or serious without being static, because they’’ll arm the drums with four sticks like it’s a joke (when actually, it works), or leave a song to strings and breath alone that has you holding yours till it suddenly ends on a high note. Because they know how to prep a set list so that you get the best of their country/rock/pop arrangements and succinct compositions, and slide through it like a pro, not a wide-eyed amateur. Because they left the Waiting Room wailing for more like cats on heat.

Anyway, that’s it. got the T-shirt. I’m a wrestler. Ish.

Catch them where you can…

3 Sept – Klein Libertas Theatre with The Plastics and 3rd World Spectator - Cpt
4 Sept – Deer Park Café with The Lottery Tickets - Cpt
5 Sept – Puma- Rudolf Dassler Schufabrik Side –Projects at &Union in Heritage Square - Cpt
12 Sept - Firkin with Zebra and Giraffe - Centurion
3 Oct - Aardklop - Potch
10 Oct - Rocking the Daisies - CPT

P.S. Just before you get all clever on me, my Guns wifebeater doesn't count as a T-shirt; it's a collector's item (and besides, it doesn't have sleeves).

why New Holland deserve their superiority complex

New Holland. They’re an odd mix of humble-bumble and self conscious disdain, they’re a pop rock party band with some of the more crass and sassy one-liners (‘call me callous call me something that you’re not/ spread your legs wide so I can get one last shot’) and they’re the band whose 2008 album became part of beached, bleached teens’ seaside summer holiday soundtrack (after Kings Of Leon, of course. We really killed that one). They’re also incredibly accessible, almost overtly so. Conclusion: besides being half-naked, nice to dance to and nubile, they’re nothing new. Né? Maybe not. Maybe my take is stale, and it’s time to spring clean it. It’s true I was there singing and dancing along to every song last summer, but I didn’t listen to it back home when the vodka wore off and reality set in.

The reality is that they’re going to be big. This was never in question, not, at least, in my mind. While I have a special affection for music that charms the masses (except that chick whose milkshake brings all the ploys to the lard), i also understand the advantages of patience. Getting big sometimes takes as much time as getting thin (if there aren’t hearts involved and you don’t have the latest eating disorder). Having more hair and less angst in their suburban brilliance, New Holland were obliged to stand in line scratching their VIP pass till aKING aggregated awesome into something a little more average and became a national commodity. Now that the Dutch courage has run out, the deed is said and sung, there’s space at the top of the pop rock playpen for more mass musical magic. Bigger. Newer. Samer. Especially if you judge their forthcoming album by their new single. Should you, though? It’s a tot rock track, yes - catchy, cool and clean, and they know it. It was a premeditated release, they mean business. There are promises that the rest of their material is magic, but not so mainstream. Perhaps we hang on to perceptions until we have proof otherwise. That’s probably wise. And whether or not the masses will negate management claims, here’s why dissenters of decent mainstream music shouldn’t be offended by whatever they bring out next:

Number one. New Holland is reliable for all the right reasons. They have an anomaly for a lead lad, recluse, autistic, artistic – choose your adjective, choose your addiction. They have catchy tracks that won’t sit back and let you settle down. Their lyrics are a buggered mix of self-involved Dear Diary entries and dark, fiery sentries at the doors of perception (you can roll your eyes and stare at the same time, basically).

Number two. They know where their strengths lie (or maybe they just don’t know any different) Despite GHD’s protests, New Holland is its vocals – soft and easy and everyday, almost androgynous, but not camp enough to get the backs of the uBoere up. And when it’s time to make a point, they’re powerful - soaring, sliding, sexy, skinny. Ja. We like. We and many many many many others. Which brings us back to our bugbear. Hold out a bit, though – third time lucky:

Number three. While there’s nothing holy about whacking out well worn pop rock formulae, there’s nothing evil about simple, single-note melodies, either. Especially if they hit you where it hurts. We forget this, that when Mattie lays the manyfingered ebony and ivory on us, we call it art rock, we swoon and Muse, and forget that he’s mostly just practising his scales at our expense (or pleasure). Simple or knotty, it’s all in the mix.

Which is what makes New Holland’s trademark tameness so wickedly workable. You know there’s more to them; somehow, you just don’t know when they’re going to grow into it. And that’s ok, because the masses have to grow into it as well. And to the mainstream conscious’s credit, most people really only have one thought and one emotion at a time. And sometimes they mix them. Which is what New Holland does to decent effect.

But they’re also unreliable for all the right reasons. Which is what makes the waiting so exciting. Take, for example, their new key treatment. According to the new synth effect, we’ve gone fast forward retro - decorative, delightful, and dated. It makes Kidofdoom look darker and more dangerous, if that’s possible. And if forefinger synth detail is growth, then New Holland has grown. But maybe more accurately, they’ve grown closer to themselves, which has integrity that no ego-esque independent act can easily criticise because whether you’re the girl next door or Joe Soap on a jol, easy will always sell.

New Holland is on their way to the top forty. You know what that means. They’re never coming back. It’s up to you whether that matters, whether they’ve got something for you to believe in. Either way, they’ve got nothing to prove.