N.E.R.F.

Caracal - Last Night at 12 I Felt Immense. I remember an old joke, someone thought it was called Last Night at 12 I Failed A-Maths (advanced math in secondary school). This is a newish version, or maybe it isn’t, I haven’t visited their MySpace in forever — but anyway it’s new compared to the bootleg, unmixed copy I’ve had for ages, and even though it’s 99% the same song, some minor tweaks, a different drumroll here, a couple of chord changes there, I felt alienated at first — where are the slow pumping bass kicks at 0:25? I was literally lost there, until the music started again — like meeting your best friend from years ago and finding they’d hardly changed at all and yet were totally, subtly different. They’d been places and seen new sights and met new people and you, you were still looking for the same person of yesteryear.

Until Chris goes ‘cause when you do then you will know, and the high was the same one I felt when I first heard this song, and I decided then that I would stop lamenting “early” Caracal, because indie emo rock Caracal is clearly alive and kicking butt. It’s been too long since I’ve seen these guys, and I hope the rumours are true — I hope they experiment the shit out of their music, and I hope you won’t write off their new material as jumping on the post-rock bandwagon, but rather as putting some extreme rockets on said wagon and bringing us places we have no genre labels for.

Eden State - Crash Into You. Excellent easy-listening rock with some nice chops. Smarter than your average *scape rockers. I wonder if they’re looking for a drummer to replace their software kit… :P These guys will be on Live ‘n’ Loaded at 8.30pm, Channel 5. For This Cycle is on tonight’s show as well, together with Vertical Rush and A Vacant Affair.