Far from the Standard Fare

Really enjoyed this second album from British prickly pop band Standard Fare...reviewed yesterday at Blurt.

Standard Fare
Out of Sight, Out of Town
(Melodic)

This second outing from the Sheffield trio is just as bright and brash, just as cockily confessional as The Noyelle Beat, but a good deal better groomed. Singer Emma Kupa (sometimes spelled this way, sometimes as "Cooper") remains a distinctive element, her voice crackling with boisterous energy, as she confides life's triumphs and obstacles in the most detailed way. Yet this time, Danny Howe seems more of a presence, in the gleeful, ska-tinged guitar mayhem of "Half Sister" and "Suitcase," the blaring fuzz of "Kicking Puddles," and in the jaunty, poppy vocals of "Bad Temper." Maybe it's clearer production that shines a brighter spotlight on Howe's playing, as well as the rackety, continuous explosion drumming of bandmate Andy Beswick. In any case, this time the instruments seem less like a foil for Kupa, more like a cohesive element of the whole.

More

"Suitcase"

Track, life and Standard Fare

I’m in the midst of track season again, so much more harried (get it?) than usual. This is my first year coaching a team that doesn’t include my son Sean (I coach middle school and he’s moved on to high school), so I was wondering how that would go. Turns out, it’s been pretty good. We’ve got a really nice group of kids, a very large percentage of whom actually want to run. We’ve been doing two small-ish runs on the trails pretty much every practice, with 10 to 15 kids participating, many of them in both. They also stay together better than earlier years, so there’s not so much circling back and making sure the slower kids don’t get lost. We had our first actual meet on Saturday. We were supposed to have one on Wednesday but, bizarrely, were snowed out.

Anyway, I’ve been doing that in the afternoons and running on my own account in the mornings (I’m running another marathon at the end of May), and feeling just kind of dragged out and vaguely ill, but I think I might have turned the corner. I had a pretty good week last week…five reviews, a bunch of work projects and, as I mentioned, a pretty heavy schedule of extra stuff. I ran 18 miles yesterday.

I also had a review of Standard Fare’s Noyelle Beat up on Friday at Blurt which I liked for the way it “matches twitchy jangle pop to defiantly cheerful rants on love gone awry.” Here’s the rest of the review if you’re interested.



Also a very amusing song called “Fifteen”