“Aim Higher” by House of All

The 2023 self-titled debut from House of All – redemption songs by survivors of The Fall – was what we in the trade call “A Grower”. The thrill of two thundering drummers (Paul Hanley and Simon Wolstencroft) and the gravitational pull of those neutron star bass riffs (Steve Hanley) underpinned a collection of exuberant and irreverent songs fronted by (totally) wired guitarist/ poet/ singer/ exhorter-in-chief Martin Bramah that became more and more joyful and memorable the more times they hammered into the listener’s skull. At the time of its release Bramah hinted there was more to come from the group. Here’s the first offering from second album “Continuum”, called “Aim Higher”.

House of All leader Martin Bramah (Blue Orchids, Factory Star) was a founding member and style-creator of The Fall from 1977 to 1979 and the only sacked member (there were lots of those) to rejoin The Fall (for the “Extricate” album 1989-1990) and then be sacked again by Mark E. Smith.

The best way for survivors of The Fall to pay tribute to the late curmudgeon Mark E. Smith is to do something he would disapprove of (House of All), but to do it so well that, were he still alive, he’d be even more enraged about not being part of it.

For reasons best known to Bramah the chorus of “Aim Higher” appropriates the chilling phrase “step we gaily, on we go”, the opening words of Sir Hugh Robertson’s appropriation/ re-writing of John Robert Bannerman’s 1930’s song “Mairi’s Wedding” (also known as the “Lewis Bridal Song”) with his own faux-traditional lyrics. The garbled language of this opening line comes across as something that might be uttered by a deranged Celtic Yoda. To add insult to injury, in 1959 James B. Cosh devised a Scottish Country Dance to the tune, thereby blighting the life of many a child during the 1960s and 1970s bizarrely forced to dance to it and other Scottish Country Dances at school in New Zealand and possibly other parts of the Anglosphere world as some kind of weird colonial cultural conditioning.

Anyway, I digress. Despite the triggering connotations of the phrase, Martin Bramah’s regular exhortations to “aim higher! aim higher!” crack the manic music master’s whip, and the crew of fellow recovering ex-Fall members power their way through another brilliant hard-edged pop tune with expressive storytelling from Bramah. “People thought I was off my head!” he shouts in this song, typical of the chemistry of the infectiously enthusiastic weirdness and mischief of House of All.

For House of All completists there’s a fun live/ re-mix album as well called Bay City Pistols “including the crowd fave Wet Leg / Can cover, “Ur Mum” / “Uphill”, which lasts over 10 minutes”.

“Somethink” by Fazerdaze

Fazerdaze – photo by Si Moore

Day 8 of the May Month of Madness Marathon for NZ Music Month is “Somethink”, the quietly reflective closing track from PopLib’s favourite find of 2014 – a 6 track EP by Auckland’s Fazerdaze.

“Somethink” shares the same perfect, unfussy pop simplicity of the rest of the EP. There’s magic in the way the guitar parts and voices gradually layer up to create something special here.

As you can see by the Fazerdaze bandcamp page a lot of people around the world have discovered this EP, taking Fazerdaze creater Amelia Murray a bit by surprise. The CDRs she stamped and assembled herself in handmade sleeves sold out within a few months but you can still download the EP.

UPDATE: “Fazerdaze EP” now has a CD issue/ re-issue. Looks fabulous… and back on sale via Fazerdaze bandcamp.

‘Dim the Droog’ by Mavis Gary

Out of nowhere (or downtown Dunedin – same difference) comes latest Dunedin pop underground luminary Mavis Gary.

What? I have my ear to the ground in this town and I’d never heard of Mavis. Suddenly there’s a single and an album ready for release on cassette via The Attic (Dunedin’s top floor ‘underground’ arts/ music, general loafing cooperative space).

Turns out Mavis Gary is the name given to a side-project of shy Dunedin DIY pop auteur Adrian Ng. As I’ve seen Adrian almost every week this year, and he’s spent days at my place recording the debut album by his main band, Trick Mammoth, I’m surprised I knew nothing about this. Although he did ask if he could borrow a bass guitar a couple of weeks ago and he has hung onto my SM57 microphone for months – an upgrade from his old SingStar microphone, famously used for those Trick Mammoth demos

The combination of a creative flood of songs and being bored now that the Trick Mammoth album recording has finished meant he used his mid-term break week to self-record an album as Mavis Gary. I’ve heard the whole thing now – it’s extraordinary. There’s a whole new dark side of what I can only describe as post-punk glam rock plus more of the glorious woozy melodic pop I know and love from Trick Mammoth. In fact Mavis Gary even covers three Trick Mammoth songs – two old ones and one new one (‘Candy Darling’ the ‘B-side’ to the ‘Dim the Droog’ single).

I presume Mavis Gary is named after the Charlize Theron character in the 2011 film ‘Young Adult’ – a cynical feel-bad movie about the delusions of early adulthood. Some of the songs seem metaphors for the sickly-sweet jumbled up confusion and dark undercurrents of life lived halfway between a cheerful and positive surface image and a darker clandestine reality.

‘Dim the Droog’ is one of the songs that stuck out most on first listen, possibly because it strays far from Adrian’s usual palette of songwriting. It is dark, angular, mysterious and brooding, but in a kind of saturated colour cartoon kind of way. I love it. As always he uses the contrast between rhythm guitar chords and chiming lead parts and there’s the expected killer pop hook chorus.

The ‘B-side’ ‘Candy Darling’ is a song that Trick Mammoth have been playing live for the past month or two. Another cracker, and Mavis Gary does tend to blur the lines between a kind of testing ground for emerging Trick mammoth songs as well as an outlet for Adrian’s darker, skewed pop.

I’m looking forward to the cassette. Not often I say that these days…