MohobishopiBeatbox, Swansea

Fed up with bands being built up just so they can be knocked down when they drop out of fashion? Well, here’s a novel idea; how about knocking them down before they’ve even discovered the bottom rung of the ladder? Let’s not even give the fuckers an opportunity to work out how to climb out of the doldrums in the first place.

Mohobishopi are V2’s new little darlings, but then they live in Wales, so that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. But wait, before you cry ‘oh no, not another safe, dull, mediocre rock band who never even deserved to make it onto the pub circuit’ you should take a couple of minutes to listen to the singles again, because on record, Mohobishopi sound like Ten Benson forming a tribute band who can’t decide if they want to be Magoo or Mercury Rev. The buzzing effervescence and saccharine coated pop of ‘Smoke Yourself Thin’; the Flaming Lips homage (or libel case, depending on your point of view) of ‘Fingers Are Cool’; and the trash-punk aesthetic of ‘Kate Is Cool’ may even lead you to concede that Wales has finally been partly responsible for creating a band who see that John Cale as having had a more significant impact on music than Tom Jones could ever have hoped.

All sounds good so far doesn’t it, so where’s the catch? When does the backlash start? Well, right here and right now unfortunately. After arriving late for the gig and then soundchecking forever, you’d expect Mohobishopi to set out to prove that there’s more to their oeuvre than hysterical hype, empty rhetoric and other people’s tunes. But it seems that even such a simple task as gaining the crowd’s attention is beyond them. If we must play music journalist games – and as that’s what I’m not getting paid for, I suppose we must – Mohobishopi sound like a flight of stairs falling down …, well, just a flight of stairs falling down; a jumbled mess of notes, a tuneless clatter of instruments and a few pained yelps in the background contributing to such a ramshackle cacophony that, instead of one of the most talked about new bands in Britain, leaves Mohobishopi somehow conspiring to sound like fifth-form art students rehearsing in a bread bin.

Within the space of three songs they’ve already lost the crowd, and the only time that they are able to prise a reaction from the listless audience is when Martin trips over his amp, unplugging the guitars and bringing a much appreciated respite to the embarrassing spectacle unfolding in front of us. When the debacle has finally abated, Mohobishopi mutter their goodnights, and slouch off, feigning nonchalance, but even the thick layer of arrogance and pretension that they’ve slapped on as liberally as their eye-shadow can’t have hidden the fact that their departure was greeted by complete silence, with not even the slightest spattering of applause or heckling.

If this was had been an early gig by a bunch of incompetent unknowns then maybe you’d let them off, suggest that maybe nerves and a desperate need for affection had got in the way of their talent and ability. You’d ignore the fact that they just seem to be trying too hard, that their wacky outfits, carefully rehearsed posturing and fake American accents leave them looking about as contrived as Westlife. As it is, V2 seem determined to throw money at them, but if tonight’s performance can be considered typical, then rotten fruit (or perhaps tinned, if you’re feeling particularly sinister) would be much more appropriate.

It appears that Mohobishopi can’t really be bothered, so in that case, why should we? As with most people so eager for your attention and adoration, it’s maybe best to ignore them and hope that they fuck off back home to cry in their bedrooms, surrounded by the records that they’re so desperate to imitate, until they learn how to behave themselves in public. If you see Mohobishopi in the street tomorrow, spit on them – eventually they might get the message. For now, they should just try and remember that if they insist on sticking their head up their arse, then they’re just going to smudge their make-up.

Yo La Tengo'Summer Sun'

You always remember the good summers, and you always seem to look forward to the next, hoping that it will be as good as the summers past that you still hold so dear. Which just means that you leave yourself wide open to disappointment when they don’t live up to your hopes and expectations. Yo La Tengo albums are a bit like summer. It doesn’t seem to matter how good and nice and pleasant each album is, somehow it always pales into insignificance when compared to their 1997 classic, “I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One”. I wish it wasn’t this way but every time I listen to “Summer Sun”, I find myself yearning for “I Can Feel The Heart…”. What makes this even worse is that ”I Can Feel The Heart…” isn’t even the direct predecessor to this record; it’s the one before the one before.

I had problems last time round, with “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out”. But I had hoped that it would be different this time. A late contender for last year’s single of the year, Yo La Tengo’s cover of Sun Ra’s “Nuclear War” was little short of solar-fried genius. I got my hopes up again, and once more I find them brutally smashed asunder.

“Little Eyes” and “Season Of The Shark” hint at what once was, but “Summer Sun” never seems to deliver what it, albeit briefly, promises. The album is too gentle throughout: where there used to be squalling guitars in between the moments of calm, now there’s just more mild whimsy.

I don’t want to sound greedy, but there’s an imbalance in this relationship. In the past, they’ve given me genius and I’ve reciprocated with my love but it feels like I’m the only one willing to make the effort. Six years ago I was in love with Yo La Tengo, but now it looks like I have a hard decision to make. It’s time to take a step back and try to just be friends, you see, they just don’t seem able to touch me the way in which they used to.

Low'Things We Lost In The Fire'

Sometimes the strangest partnerships can be the most rewarding. Some people swear by peanut butter and jam; Edmundo and Romario helped Sao Paolo win the inaugural World Club football Championship, even though Romario had previously banned his striking partner from his bar following a feud which started within weeks of their first playing together; and Low have once more enlisted the production skills of Steve Albini. But, as with the p&j sandwich and the silky skills of Brazilian football’s most troublesome pair, this unlikely combination of the slowest band since Galaxie 500 and post-hardcore noise-nik is also proving to be a winner, having already resulted in the seemingly effortless beauty 1999’s ‘Secret Name’.

As such, we pick up here where ‘Secret Name’ left off. Loaded with understated beauty and a depth of sound that slowly builds in power in spite of the funereal pace that prevails, ‘Things We Lost In The Fire’ evokes an almost spiritual grace, gradually overwhelming you as the voices of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker draw you further into their world.

Following the classic Low blueprint, ‘Things We Lost In The Fire’ finds a balance between the bass-heavy resonance of ‘Whitetail’ and ‘Whore’, and an affecting sublimity, characterised by the rumbling opulence of ‘Sunflower’ and former single ‘Dinosaur Act’. Album closer ‘In Metal’, reminiscent of much of their recent ‘Christmas’ mini-album, even manages to challenge ‘Immune’ as the archetypal Low song, with Mimi’s yearning vocal (“wish I could keep your little body…in metal”) carrying you over the droning guitar and pounding drums as they gradually rise to cacophonous levels, leaving no doubt that Low have managed to make a record that is every bit as wondrous as ‘Secret Name’, and continue to inject a spirituality into their music that is both breathtaking and life-affirming in it’s vitality.

Sonic Youth'NYC Ghosts & Flowers'

When we last saw Sonic Youth at All Tomorrow Parties, they had just stuck their guitars so far up their arse that they practically had to open their mouth and reach down their throat to detune them, so you will be forgiven if you approach ‘NYC Ghosts & Flowers’ with a touch of apprehension. However, with their more experimental material now being released on their own SYR imprint, you can put your fears to one side you because the Youth have got their passports out, and are in the customs line for planet listenable.

While the days of such art-rock pop gems such as ‘Schizophrenia’ or ‘Sugar Kane’ may be gone, ‘NYC Ghosts…’ is Sonic Youth’s most accessible, and most concise, record since 1994’s ‘Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star’. From the insistent urgency of ‘StreamXSonik Subway’ to the Velvets chug of ‘Renegade Princess’, this is the sound of Sonic Youth’s reinvention, taking its cues from ‘A Thousand Leaves’, but offering a much more refined sound, full of sparse instrumentation and measured dissonance.

The sonic turbulence that had been displayed at Camber Sands is not entirely absent from the record, but is carefully restrained, utilised rather that indulged, and it’s only on the closing ‘Lightnin’’ that they allow themselves to disintegrate into a barrage of white noise, completely devoid of tune or melody, as a wailing trumpet ekes out a sorry existence amid Kim’s mutterings.

Alongside ‘Side2Side’, which echoes the chiming guitars and lyrical simplicity of their ‘Confusion Is Sex’ debut, ‘Small Flowers Crack Concrete’ shows how far Sonic Youth have come, how far they have pushed themselves over the last two decades. Where they previously wrote songs in dedication to their recently dead idols, Thurston’s beat-poet narration on 'Small Flowers…' could have easily been culled from the psychosis-driven, stream of consciousness prose of William Burroughs or Allen Ginsberg themselves, as he monotonously depicts a New York city of Warholian proportions (“narcotic squads sweep thru poet dens / spilling coffee and grabbing 15 yr old runaway girls … mystery plays of shit and nothingness … death poems for the living gods of America / plastic saxophones bleat, bleed for nothing”).

When you add to this equation the artwork (drawn by Burroughs himself, natch) and Jim O’Rourke’s co-production, ‘NYC Ghosts & Flowers’ is the sound of Sonic Youth casting aside the pretenders and charlatans that have sought to depose them, and reclaiming the throne we feared they might have carelessly given away. The only true disappointment is that, at just under 45 minutes, the album comes in a bit on the short side, but as the old adage goes, you should always leave them wanting Moore.

Check Engine'Check Engine'

Every now and then, a band comes along that completely blows your mind; a band that leaves you desperately searching for the superlative that sums up how they make you feel; that leaves you grasping the edge of your seat and gasping for air. Check Engine have just become that band.

As with most bands that take your breath away so succinctly, they remind of many people, yet you fail to find a comparison that fits just right. There’s more than a hint of Sweep the Leg Johnny – hardly surprising when Check Engine can count Sweep’s very own Steve Sostak and Chris Daly among their number – but Check Engine fit songs into 30 minutes where Sweep would have found room for only four. Essentially, they’re a jazz-punk band in a similar manner to Soeza, but while Soeza seem to draw from the swing of New Orleans, Check Engine owe much to the frantic sounds of New York. Let’s just say that they sound like Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins locked in a room with Fugazi and leave it at that.

Rhythms shift at random, the guitars are calm and sedate one moment; at each other’s throat the next, while the saxophone spirals through exuberance and despair as the mood takes it. But Check Engine never stray into unlistenable territory, their songs are never unwieldy, just their titles (‘She Asked Me Some Questions & I Answered Them’, ‘So, We’ve Got Balls Can Balls, What Else We Got?’).

Check Engine are like a David Lynch film. They make the complex sound simple, and turn the simple into something very complex indeed. They don’t always make sense first time round. But the more effort you put in, the more you find. The incomprehensible tempo changes and disparate vocals begin to come clear. And then the more that you find, the more you realise that this is a record that you will hold onto forever.