| The Human Body EP Out now on Truck (UK) and Better Looking (US) |
|
Buy the (U.S.) EP from Better Looking (with extra track The Captain) It's worth the money all of which goes to charity. Truck says: The Human Body EP was released on 5.12.05. You could hear it on the XFM evening playlist, may have heard it on Huw Stephens' Radio One show or may have noticed nice reviews in the papers. NME said that the EP is "Monu-mental". Where as the Sunday Times says that there is "...complexity and beauty in evidence here" and goes on to describe the release as laudable. The record is in HMV, good indies, on Amazon etc. Also available on iTunes. Everybody Wants (6.56) Kick In The Teeth (2.56) So Much Love (1.45) Alex White: Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Percussion, Keyboards, Glockenspiel. Also Phil Sumner, Cornets on 4. Tracks 4 and 6 were recorded on an 8 track at home, Spring 2005 (Everybody Wants & So Much Love) Or in other words my attempt to translate their beautiful reviews (they loved it!!) Also translations by Carole and theghostchild. blog.myspace.com/etherboy An intermediate release from last year to keep fans fed while they perfect their next album, The Human Body Ep is everything you want from ESP. Passion rock and great tunes. Beating Heart is a great little number as is Everybody Wants and the epilogue of So Much Love. sweepingthenation.blogspot.com Blimey, the Electric Soft Parade are still going. As far as we can tell Tom White's spent the last two or three years attempting to record with every single musician in Brighton, on top of his and Alex's sterling Brakes work (new album being recorded at the moment, we hear), but the parent band is signed to the estimable Truck Records and are playing their festival in three weeks' time. Cold World comes from the recent The Human Body EP and sounds nothing like the Britpop-manque of their brief chart flowering. Think Skylarking-era XTC, Paul McCartney's early solo stuff, Ben Folds and the sort of thing that, again, would normally be all over radio if daytime radio sounded like this any more. powerpopaholic.blogspot.com A honest opinion and some reviews of Power Pop music: Being in a pyschedelic mood after listening to The Flaming Lips, I was told about this little gem. This 6 song EP has got lots of great riffs and wavers between the bands, The Beta Band and Coldplay mixed with a bit of Todd Rundgren. It was all too short and my favorite song "Cold World" has a bouncy feel of some classic pop song before it ventures in "Beta" land. This nice little block of songs is on emusic for you. ratingfreak.com on Cold World: This is what happy Brit Pop should sound like. Everybody Wants: A beautiful symphonic track ... a rare successful combination of Independent Rock and Symphonic Prog. last.fm/user/Sylviofurtado/journal (8 April) I´ll tell in this journal how 10 songs became my Top 10 songs, and why I love them so much! Electric Soft Parade - Cold World: One of my favorite british bands had a perfect debut album released in 2002, and a very strange sophomore effort in 2003 that pratically throwed them into obscurity. For my felicity in the dawning lights of 2005 they´ve released an independent EP called "The Human Body EP", with 6 stupendous tracks. One of them is this perfect moment of pop, with great everything (lyrics, production, vocals, intruments...). I can´t stop listening to it, and maybe it will be up the charts in the next months! And is the perfect song for listening while driving, as I sing-a-long very loudly, and people looks at me from outside and laugh, I love this moments. God, I hope Electric Soft Parade release an album full of this quality stuff!!! -> Favorite moment: 0:37, when the White brother (never know which one is singing) puts the chorus for the first time. He doesn´t change the pitch or the melody. His voice is so smooth, and what he´s singing has lots of meaning for me. -> Favorite lyric: "And in the middle of the night you'll worry about it, and it'll never go away, You understand it all and that is way much more, than you should ever have known, I will wait I will hope and pray that you'll be there" <- Could there be something better? Gorgeous! Human Body EP by Sylviofurtado (23 February) If there´s a band my heart beats very fast with happiness and joy, that must be The Electric Soft Parade (ok, there are others, but I love it)... Once the next best thing when they released Holes In The Wall (one of the best debut albums ever), second album didn´t have the stuff reviewers like to listen, and then ESP was dropped by its record company and I almost thought they had split... The White brothers formed another band, Brakes, but it wasn´t the same thing as listening to This Given Line or Bruxellisation... But then, out of nowhere, a release! 6 new songs in EP format with the magical name attached, The Electric Soft Parade! I´m just listening to it over and over again and I can guarantee they are back in top form... Everything that was beautiful in Holes In The Wall and everything that was rock and progressive in The American Adventure is back in perfect mix, with great production value, greatly executed and repeatedly listened by this avid fan... My favorite track for now is Cold World, but all songs are really nice and remind me of this very special time in my life it was when I first listened to Empty At The End (2001) to the moment I listened to Holes In The Wall in full (middle 2002)... I just can´t have it back, but don´t need it, because they are back playing something for 2006! NY blog Tiny Idols covers "obscure, out-of-print, and/or unheralded gems from 1967 to now". Blog Roundup - The Best of February and March: On Cold World: Download this now. Electric Soft Parade is a great, underrated band from England who were supposed to be hot way back in 2002 but ended up drifting into the same no-man's land populated by the likes of Gay Dad and Starsailor. Like all good underdogs though, ESP is bouncing back with a new album to be released in May on Better Looking Records (That's the U.S. Human Body EP) Here's some thoughts on the new songs live from the tour last year at spaces.msn.com/afcmikeage/blog The set opened with a song off the new EP (which I now own!!) “Beating Heart” seemed to be a good solid track and was a great introduction for what looks set to be a great “album”... (then) came the song that guaranteed I would be buying the new EP “So Much Love” this song really has a touch of genius to it and is a truly brilliant ballad and was sung by Tom with real feeling ... yewknee.com on The Human Body EP "I can not stop listening to this. Constant rotation. Incredibly good". And of ESP's Nuno's show @ SXSW: "No if's, ands, or buts - I must see this..." EP review @ absolutepowerpop.blogspot.com Just in is the latest release from a band that had an impressive debut as any I've heard back in 2002 with Holes In The Wall. I'm talking about the UK's The Electric Soft Parade... ESP have the ability to sound like a number of different bands; at times they have a more 60s-70s Beatlesque sound; and at others they have a more modern Teenage Fanclub/Blur/Oasis sound. Highlights on the EP include "Cold World" and "Stupid Mistake". jbrhapsody.blogspot.com on The Human Body EP: ESP create inspired, sometimes wacky and always engaging noisy pop. The downright addictive "A Beating Heart" employs a single steady beat to pace meditative, mantra-like vocals; "Cold World" oozes McCartney with its rollicking, pop-propelled piano; and "Stupid Mistake" pulses with the same dreamy droning as Swervedriver. Human Body review @ myselfmyself.com You can also download Cold World (9.5 MB) & Silent To the Dark (12.5 MB) "...After a bit of silence, they reappear as part of hot new Brit band “Brakes.” Brakes album gets big and suddenly I’m wondering if we’ll ever get another shot from the brothers White. No sooner do I think this than a new Ep appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and re-establishes the boys at the fore of my musical memory. The Human Body EP is splendid, well-crafted, a bit scattered, and totally gorgeous, sonically speaking. I’ve posted “Cold World” here, as it is the catchiest thing I’ve heard in ages... I’m also posting a track from their first album, “Silent To The Dark.” I defy you not to listen to all 9, (yes, NINE), minutes of this song. It is simply breathtaking, and it illustrates perfectly why everyone was so buzzed about them a few years back. With a new record label and an album in the works, it looks like we’ve not heard the last of ESP–and good thing. Their latest effort proves they’ve not lost their knack for quietly assuring us that well-crafted pop music is in good hands, at least across the pond, anyway. Cheers" Human Body EP by Alan No.8 out of 30 2005 releases - "The fact that this isn't a proper album, and only six songs long, is the reason it's not up higher. As this is yet more great stuff from the masterful brothers White. They should be a huge band, and it is a cruel record industry they exist in. But their time will come, and this shows that they still have what it takes if only somebody would give them the chance" Tom and Alex talked to The Skinny before their gig at Cabaret Voltaire. ‘The Human Body’ is your third release. What’s changed musically in the last two years since 'The American Adventure' came out? Tom: I don’t know. I think the biggest change was between the first two records and ever since then I don’t think we’ve really achieved exactly what we set out to do with the second record. We really kind of wanted to get what we attempted on that record right. The EP’s kind of done that in terms of how we’re recording stuff. Seeing people's reactions to those two records and how they are different, it should have worked in ways that it didn’t on our second record. I think the EP and the stuff we'll be recording for our third album perhaps will be more what people were expecting on the second record, but you can never tell. You are with Truck Records now, how have you found being on an independent label compared to BMG? Tom: They are quite small even for an indie so they are not massively involved in the way a major would - certainly not in the way BMG would. They basically just let us get on with it and it’s all exactly how we wanted to do it. Alex: Yes, we delivered the record - basically the artwork, the recording and the mastering, we did the whole thing really. We delivered it to the label and that’s what you’re supposed to do. We never did that with BMG because there were lots of other people involved. Tom: We both did the EP art although we didn’t actually use our own artwork we used drawings from a medical journal on the sleeve. Alex: Tom had this idea of using the human body and the connotations of using anatomy. What were those connotations? Alex: For me it was about being factual and removed somewhat. Tom: I thought ‘The Human Body’ was a pretty strong title for the EP and I also didn’t want to name it after one of the songs, I wanted it to be a little bit more oblique than that. If you had to describe the new EP as a colour or a shape what would that be? Tom: It’s probably like a white circle. Is it a shit business? Tom: No, once you get out of the business it’s not shit business. Alex: It’s so easy to get sucked into thinking about money. Do you feel less pressure with Truck records? Alex: Definitely - there is no pressure really, we create the pressure on ourselves before a show , and we don’t have anyone breathing down our neck to get things finished. We arranged the whole tour, there’s no agent or manager we are basically just doing it ourselves. (White) Brotherly Love, December 28. Reviewer: dfedigan from Cardiff. This EP has been eagerly awaited (by me at least) and is no disappointment. A Beating Heart is an astonishing song. It starts as a mantra-like drone over a percussive drumbeat obviously replicating a heartbeat then breaks into frantic guitar and keyboards. The lyrics seems to be about the human need for power. Cold World is a flawless diamond of a tune with Strokes-like guitar licks and a well plonked piano. Stupid Mistake is a lovely understated song about regret at the ending of a relationship. The guitar playing is reminiscent of the Smiths and the lyrics show a level of maturity way above ESP's previous songs. Everybody Wants is a 7 minute epic with orchestration and whispered lyrics. Kick In The Teeth is a great rocker with angry lyrics about the inequaltities of society. And last but not least, So Much Love is a short but perfectly formed acoustic number with Tom and Alex singing in perfect harmony. Simply Superb, December 19. Reviewer: jonrodge from Brighton. Why ESP aren't bigger than they are I'll never know. After two superb albums finally the boys have got a deal and are back with this superb new e.p. Standout tracks for me are Stupid Mistake and Everybody Wants. All six tracks are superb though, Cold World is incredibly catchy and should be a single. If you liked the American Adventure or Holes In The Wall you will not be disappointed, Tom and Alex's vocals get better and better. Bring on a new full album in 2006! EP review @ comfortcomes.com It's great to have the boys back. They always had a certain something to their music that set them apart. This EP is ambitious, daring and simply great from start to finish. They have done it again and let’s hope they keep on doing it. EP review at Artrocker Thanks to Dan F (click link for full review) The Electric Soft Parade are doing something different, as this EP blindingly proves. From the QOTSA meets Gorecki in 'Kick In The Teeth' a song as guttural as it is symphonic, through to the acoustic John Barry-esque score 'Everybody Wants' this is a yearning release that can walk the timeline throughout musical styles and history... They're now on the impeccable Truck Records and they're stronger, more interesting and certainly more vital than ever. This six song EP throws more ideas into one cohesive body of work than the 'rock revolution' has done in the last five years. Don't believe me? Jonathon Falcone. Fan Review by Ian (click link for full review) ...But what about the new EP I hear you say? Well, if you were a fan of their previous two albums then there’s no doubt you are sure to find a place in your heart for this new recording... the boys have matured impressively in sound and song writing since we last heard from them. And yes, that’s a very good thing indeed. ‘Cold World’ skips along nicely in a Paul McCartney like fashion with a bouncing piano line and some chiming guitars that are somewhat reminiscent of The Strokes... this is a truly brilliant track that will be going around your head for days on end after a few listens. Easily one of the best things the band has written. ‘Stupid Mistake’ is the tune here that’s probably most similar to their older guitar rock material. It's classic sounding Soft Parade stuff but with an added influence here and there of Guided By Voices for good measure... The spirit of the late Elliott Smith is hovering around on the touching acoustic number ‘So Much Love’, while the sweeping seven minute epic ‘Everybody Wants’ features some big orchestration and psychedelic effects that Jason Pearce of Spiritualized would be mighty proud of. Sit back and enjoy the wonders of this EP while you wait for the new full length album some time next year. One thing for sure is that Truck records have picked up a gem. They tell us ESP produce their own records, do their own artwork and that Tom sings all the vocals on the EP of which they say: "...unabashed pop-madness, set to befuddle (and hopefully inspire) its audience once more" Tom: It still confuses the fuck out of me, trying to define the kind of music we play! I guess at the moment, it's trying to emulate Robert Wyatt, Pet Shop Boys, Neu and the Mission of Burma all at once, though that's no pigeon-hole... Tom: Of course I love playing with Brakes and it's some kind of release for both me and Alex, definitely, but I write my own songs, and that is where my creativity lies, personally... I think art that has no external influence, or isn’t made 'more palatable' generally comes from a more honest place and reaches somewhere deeper (Obviously referring to what on earth BMG did to their songs) We always make sure the instruments are full takes that last the length of the song - something I've always believed to be impossible to replicate using Pro-Tools or any other tricks. Also, I think rock and roll, or whatever you want to call it, needs to be seen again as an unquantifiable thing - too many bands dress up or record in a way that ends up "explaining" the song or idea they're trying to play too explicitly, not just presenting it, naked, to an audience. Stereo Effect: Do you feel your music progresses? What's the difference between your music now and when you started? Tom: The individual parts are certainly more complex than before, and I think our vocals are stronger now than on either of the previous albums, but the overriding feeling for me is that, more and more, we are able to compact our ideas into songs in a much more refined way, rather than just throwing stuff together. Stereo Effect: I believe you have a massive backlog of releasable material, how did you choose the track-listing for this EP? Tom: Like everything else we've put out over the years, you just look at what songs you've got ready to go at the time, what ideas for a sleeve you've got knocking about - it's not as if you're writing a novel. I guess we always just seem to have songs lying about at the right time. Stereo Effect: Certain songs on here sound like they could be massive chart successes (Cold World, Kick In The Teeth) are you aiming to climb back to the top of 'the market’? What are your aspirations now, having had such a large amount of success so early on? What do you think looking back on your past, and how does it affect what you want to achieve? Tom: I think once you've been on a major, it's very hard to give a shit about any of that stuff. The way you're kind of offered this success and money as if they're the things that matter here, we were naive to think that it was the right place for us, and we were wrong. Right now I'm just loving the fact that Brakes has kind of taken our minds off things whilst going through a bad couple of years, yet as soon as we went into the studio to have a go at some new stuff this September, we boshed out the best thing we've done so far, in five days!! K: Who influenced you on the new EP? The songs seem more epic. ‘Cold World’ is a lovely, catchy song. Is there an art to making the perfect pop song? TW: I don't think anything influenced us particularly on this EP. I definitely put a lot of time into orchestrating "Everybody Wants", and I think that song achieves a kind of size, sound-wise, that we hadn't reached before. As far as there being an art to writing pop songs, I think, as a writer, you're either in one of two categories - writers who let the writing happen unconciously, and writers who force their work into a certain shape. I think by writing unconciously, you let influences in that you would perhaps sneer at, were you scrutinizing everything you write down, and, for me that is the key to writing something that truly reaches out to people. K: Can you explain the artwork for the EP? TW: All of the sketches on the sleeve are from an 1800's medical journal that my friend Mervyn (who we design all of our sleeves with) had lying about his house. I was just looking for something that added to the meaning of the title, but also took it into a different, darker place. (buy it for a better view) K: Why did you call the new EP ‘The Human Body’? TW: I just felt that human life has become a rather disposable thing in modern times. I'm not religious at all, but I guess I wanted to say to people that I think the human body is beautiful and, in a way, sacred, and that you can hide behind your faith or your fucking money or whatever dumb shit you think matters, but there is probably not anything more to life than this one. K: Are any songs on the new EP going on the new album? TW: Well, we've had our third album written and ready for about three years now, but what with all the shit that went down with our old label after the second record, I guess we kind of wanted to see if our skills were still up to scratch!! Also, we're both advocates of songs being released as soon after they're written as possible, and we had a chance to do that with Truck Records. To answer your question though, probably one or two, though the third album is rather sweet as it is! K: How are preparations for the new album going? Any release date yet? TW: Preparations are going fine, thank you!! It'll be out as soon as it's done - hopefully in the first half of next year. NME review "Wonk-pop wonders relax into cultdom". Like a Slimfast, Magic Numbers or a teetotal Towers Of London, ESP were too skewed for the mainstream. While ostensibly a bedroom post-Britpop outfit, they dealt in skewiff melody lines that made them a gangly figure on 2001's Strokesian catwalk. So here they are exorcising their orchestral pop wobbleness on this Truck records six-tracker, and a mighty fist they make of the opportunity too: "A Beating Heart" rocks like the Birmingham Philarmonic playing in Elbow's outside lavvy, "Cold World" is an ace Ben Foldsian plink-fest and the ghost of a big pop Spiritualized casts a spectral pall across the rest. Monu-mental. MB. The Sunday Times The Brighton siblings knocked off this mini-album in just a week: laudable if the (six) songs were middling, but amazing given the complexity and beauty in evidence here — and a real indictment of the bloated studio budgets and artistic sprawl that produce the curate’s eggs that clog the charts. Songwriters, necessarily perhaps, are prone to self-doubt, but surely writing something as perfect as the early-McCartney-like Cold World causes the opposite feeling: “There. Nailed it.” And they have. Three stars. The Stereo Effect ...they’re back, they’re on an indie label and they seem far more comfortable, the true ‘mad scientist’ nature of their music coming to the fore. As a five track EP, like all their releases, there’s a restlessness of style but there’s also great coherency. "A Beating Heart" opens with orchestral dynamics, a descent into a musical world of glorious madness, the opener flitting from one style to another mid-song, under-played, subtle, song writing becoming synth stabs and thrash guitar without warning. The production throughout is crystalline clear, and there’s some real chart material here, the second song, "Cold World" shines with all the doe-eyed romance of the Strokes at their heart-string tugging best, smeared with a healthy dose of Ben Folds harmonies that leaves most of today’s indie market a vapid, ashen series of unmelodic drones with spiky guitars in comparison. "Everybody Wants" is the almost-to-be-expected epic number on this release, a song that escalates throughout, it’s comparable to John Barry’s orchestral arrangements for the Bond films, it’s expansive and engulfing in the depth of sound portrayed and cinematic, or even theatrical, nature of the arrangements. The Electric Soft Parade have always struck me as a band who view their music as a series of compositions, or arrangements, more than ‘songs.’ Everything sounds impeccable, nothing musically remains stagnant or is allowed to become complacent and there’s an over-riding edginess here, a frustration with music period and an evident desire to try and achieve as much as possible. So it’s impressive that a band can do this so well when the yard-stick is held so high, which leaves this as one of the finest releases to come out this year. Review @ Myspace Fresh from their foray as two quarters of the stupendous Brakes, the brothers White once more march their Electric Soft Parade through what has become a drab and deserted world in their absence. Bursting with more ideas and invention than most manage in an entire album, The Human Body’s mere six tracks proves that time really is the ultimate sculptor, the intervening absence seeming to have conjured ESP’s best work to date. Most notably, Cold World skips along like a Paul McCartney-penned Strokes track (better than it sounds); and Everybody Wants, a sweeping epic of a song that punctuates this band’s enduring ambition. Anatomically, The Human Body is like a perfectly formed embryonic soul foretelling the coming of ESP’s prodigal son. Extra-Sensory Perfection. (9/10) Stephen Brolan Tom White at Comfort Comes Well, I kind of thought, what with me and Alex going off and doing the Brakes record and coming back to the band anew, a lot of other people might be doing that as well, so I'm definitely looking at it as a kind of re-introduction. Musically it's about as close to a perfect middle point between our previous two records as you could possibly imagine. To someone who's never heard us before - Psyched-Out, Beat-Up, Real-Life, Non-Cynical, More-Chord-Changes-Than-Pete-Doherty-Could-Manage-In-A-Fucking-Lifetime..... and it rocks. Truck records on the EP The brothers White return to sparkling form with the release of a new 6 track EP. In a continuation of the back-to-basics approach the band adopted on their second LP, The Human Body EP was recorded at Brighton's Metway studios in just six days, with artwork again designed by the band. The resulting EP finds the band at a perfect middle-point between the guitar-pop rush of their first album and the studied, symphonic arrangements of their second. With more than enough ideas for a 3rd full-length LP in the new year, this is a taster of great things to come from Brighton's favourite psychedelic sons!! If you're used to putting the Brakes on, be prepared. In true Electric Soft Parade style, one song on The Human Body EP is 7 minutes long. With one foot in the American Adventure's territory whilst at the same time leaving it far behind (but not far enough for some reviewers I should think) After the fun they've had with Brakes, the melancholy you once fell in love with is back and you're glad. This is what you've missed the last few years. This is why you've got so annoyed reading about bands you don't care about in the NME or having to watch them on tv knowing your favourite band is so much better. And it doesn't matter it's only you that thinks so. Knowing the long, often fruitless, wait to release their new songs adds to the effect playing this EP for the first time has on you. Standout track is definately Cold World for it's sheer beauty (vocally and lyrically) If reviewers are in any way offended by it, they must be jealous because they didn't write it. It's more Paul McCartney than The Beatles, and although John Lennon would've slated this if Paul wrote it, that'd only be because he was jealous too. Recent live reviews have included Beatles references ("the best tunes since Lennon & Mc Cartney") I always knew they could write songs but I was actually blown away by Cold World. If you didn't know it was the Electric Soft Parade, you'd have to ask who you were listening to. I'm not sure I'd have known and I've been listening to them for over 3 years. To say their sound has matured is an understatement. I wanna get rid of this feelingThe very last track So Much Love is totally acoustic apart from some strings and is the most beautiful song of the EP. They sing like angels (there's no other way of saying it) Did the Beatles ever sing this well? As a long time Beatles fan even I'm not sure. I don't think there's ever been two vocalists to beat the ESP for harmonies. Also the sentiment of the song is pure inspiration. They could have filled the whole EP with cynical lyrics after their (not so) wonderful experience at the hands of the record industry but instead leave us with a moment of optimism. We need tunes like this to brighten the cold world we live in. So much love could drag you downOn title track, A Beating Heart, they truly rock out two thirds of the way through and release their frustrations (and ours!) Lyrically it could be about the politics of war (and how one man is making all the decisions regardless of what anyone else thinks) But that's just one interpretation. What starts as make believeStupid Mistake portrays shattered illusions almost with relief - "Could've been different, should've been so perfect, I was so young, but I'm much younger now". The seven minute track Everybody Wants is a slow love poem. The moment you play the EP you realise it's really a mini album and this is a classic album track. At the extreme end of the scale to the pure QOTSA rock of Kick In The Teeth; they refuse to stick to one musical style just so they can be packaged for mass consumption. There's a panic sweeping and whether right or wrongElectric Soft Parade finally made the music they want to make on a decent indie label. I think they should send a copy of this EP to their old record company just to remind them what they've lost. |