Reviews of Welcome to the Mid-West by Forest Giants.

Whether this Blackpool-based label called themselves Cherryade with the idea of sending out Cherry sweets to their reviewers in mind I don't know but it worked. Forest Giants shot up the review pile while I chewed on my cherries and admired their fruity stamp. The 'Giants are a Bristol four-piece featuring members of 90s indie also-rans Beatnik Filmstars who present this, their debut album, 'Welcome to the Mid-West' (possibly a cheeky reference to their label's North-West location or maybe just a backup to the cover's Ice Cream in a desert artwork). Their sound is a fuzzy indie style of the type brought to us by the likes of Ride and Seafood. Undoubtedly at their best on tracks like the Grandmaster Flash paean (only joking) 'The Message' where violinist Paula Knight lends her sweet, Mo Tucker-like vocal. In fact her contribution, with skilled violin-work throughout gives the album an edge which makes them definitely worth investigation.

1st LP from the Bristol act formed around 2 former Beatnik Filmstars. ‘I Don’t Think You Understand’ opens proceedings, being a charming lo-fi fuzz crawler, and pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the record. ‘So You Think You’re Unhappy?’ has a chirpy fizz, twinkling beneath the effervescent wall of sound. ‘Hurtful’ clatters amongst breezy guitars and breathy keys while ‘Wasted’ is a real shiny beast.

Skif for Vanity Project.

In my review of the Beatnik Filmstars’ latest album In Great Shape, I wrote that one of the reasons why I didn’t mention them in my reviews as much as I do Boyracer and Guided by Voices, despite the fact that I hold all three bands in equally high esteem, is that the music that the individual Filmstars made with during the band’s seven-year hiatus wasn’t good enough to uphold their legacy. Shortly after the review was posted, I received a MySpace message from Filmstars guitarist Tim Rippington that half-jokingly said, “I hope that my band wasn’t one of those dodgy solo projects you were referring to!” The message made me feel bad, but not bad enough to fully retract what I wrote. As much as I liked his other band the Forest Giants’ debut In Sequence, I knew that it didn’t hold a candle to any of the Filmstars records I owned. Two months after I wrote that review, the Giants' new album Welcome to the Mid-West appeared in my mailbox — and from the very first listen, I promptly started eating my words.

The most common criticism that I’ve seen leveled against In Great Shape is that it doesn’t bring the noise like previous Beatnik Filmstars records did. I don’t have a problem with that, but I could see why others would. If you are one of those people, though, you definitely need to pick up Welcome to the Mid-West, as it is the most massive-sounding record any Filmstar has been involved with since 1993's Laid-Back and English. Every instrument is liberally coated in distortion and reverb. Between Tim’s layered guitars and bassist Ruth Cochrane’s busy playing, many of the songs sound like they’re being played by 10 people instead of four. However, Mid-West has none of the arty tomfoolery that disrupts the average Filmstars album. The Forest Giants state on their website that “the idea behind the album was to make an old-fashioned 10-song record with all proper-length songs, no weirdo fillers, [and] one overall sound.” They definitely succeeded. This album boasts a concision and consistency that can go toe-to-toe against similar noise-pop juggernauts like the Wedding Present’s Seamonsters and Yo La Tengo’s Painful.

Like those two albums, many of Welcome to the Mid-West’s songs explore relationship woes with plainspoken reserve. The rhyme schemes are facile (“Everything is on fire/Falling apart at the seams/Everyone is a liar/Nothing is quite what it seems”), but the hooks do most of the talking anyway. “So You Think You’re Unhappy?” is the album’s first standout, a slice of heavenly electro-pop in which Tim mocks an ex for not having moved on yet from their breakup. “Why Wait” is the kind of song that Boyracer could knock out in their sleep, which is a compliment. Three verses and 100 seconds is all the band needs to get the song stuck in your head. The mosh-worthy three-chord grind of “Planes Fly Overhead”’s lives up to its name by sounding like it was recorded in an airplane hangar. The album isn’t all strum and drang, though. On the “Dear John” ballad “The Message,” Paula Knight’s cheesy organs and sweet voice are placed front and center. A few tracks later, Tim and Paula sing the love song “Stars” together: “Let’s go to live in where the stars shine, darling...I know you can’t stand it anymore.” His unsteady croon and her pitch-perfect sigh sound great together, and I’d like to hear them harmonize more on future Forest Giants material.

Since I received Welcome to the Mid-West in the mail, I’ve listened to it at least twice a day. I can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone who reads this, whether you’re a Beatnik Filmstars or not. I wouldn’t have been as dismayed about the Filmstars’ hiatus as I was if I had known that I’d get TWO great bands out of it in the long run. This foot doesn’t taste too good in my mouth, but the Forest Giants certainly sound good to my ears!

Sean Padilla for Mundane Sounds.

Unpeeled.

With Welcome to the Mid-West, Bristol's Forest Giants release their debut album on the wonderful Cherryade label. Nevertheless, the band are not newcomers, with members belonging to the quite successful Nineties combos Beatnik Filmstars and Blue Airplanes. Like those bands, Forest Giants excel at fantastic, imaginative powerpop.

Friedrich Reip for Bloom.

There is something unashamedly retro about this release from Bristol's Forest Giants. There is the continuance of the scuzzy guitars and roughed-up vocals from their earlier EP's. In fact the vocals have become so roughed up that a lot of the time they are hardly recognisable as words, merely appearing as an abrasive oral backdrop to the music. But you would be hard pressed not to identify an affinity with the likes of Jesus and Mary Chain running through the album. That whole wall of sound thing is pretty much consistent with the odd exception of the Nico-esque track 'The Message'.

Not to say that there isn't the odd pop tune thrown into the mix as well. It's just that mostly the vocals and guitars are so warped that the only sentiment which floats to the surface of a sea of distortion is one of bitter sweet resentment. It doesn't exactly make you want to jump up and kiss your neighbour, you are more likely to end up drinking on your own in the corner of a smoky pub after listening to this.

SB for Tasty.

Forest Giants hail not from the Mid-West of prairies, creamed corn and dust bowls, but the mid-west of trip-hop, the Mendips and the mighty Clifton Suspension Bridge. Despite their roots, there isn’t much evidence of the Bristol Sound in their music at all, as they seem to draw more influences from the 90’s shoegazing movement and drone pop. First track ‘I Don’t Think You Understand’ plants a foot firmly on the fuzz pedal and stays there for the duration. ”I can’t seem to find a way of getting through today” intones singer Tim Rippington in his nasal, well-enunciated tones, sounding uncannily like the love-child of a West Country Lou Reed and The Lightning Seeds’ Ian Broudie. Unfortunately, he can’t seem to find a way of getting to a memorable hook either, and for all the overdriven dynamics on show, the tune is curiously forgettable.

The band crank things up a notch with the charming distorted thrash of ‘Why Wait’, which, like all the best pop songs, delivers a simple, immediate melody and slips in respectably under the 2 minute mark. In fact, the band seem to show their best side with the more stripped-down, subtler material. Both the gentle lull of ‘Stars’ and spare delicacy of ‘The Message’ are standouts. The latter, featuring vocals from violinist Paula Knight, perhaps plunders a little too heavily from the style of Galaxie 500, but its looping fiddle and chugging guitars ensure it never descends into blatant homage. Elsewhere, the excellent ‘Namesakes’ sees the Giants in morose mood, adopting a looser feel with lethargic drums and frail keyboard perfectly enhancing Rippington’s bereft delivery.

There are portions of this record where you can shut your eyes and suddenly be transported to the early 90’s – and whether you see this as a positive effect or not, there’s no real new ground being broken here. However, it’s undeniable that when Forest Giants lay off the fuzz and set the metronome to 20bpm, they have the potential to produce some corkers.

Phil O for Sounds XP.

Lancaster-based Cherryade Records steams ahead with its fourth release, 'Welcome to the Mid-West' by Forest Giants.

The album is a collection of brilliantly catchy pop songs in the style of Magoo, with churning guitars and pumping keyboards. The songs are incredibly easy to get into. It is hard to understand why bands like this don’t get more recognition on radio or in major music publications. The mind boggles.

In any case, there are three main reasons why I really like this album;

1. Because the songs are so dense with instruments, there’s something different to focus on with every listen.
2. Because it’s easy to dance around like an idiot to them.
3. Because the band sound like they’re enjoying making the record.

There’s nothing more infectious than when the band playing the songs sound like they’re having fun playing them, and these guys sound like they’re having a ball.

I’d pick some stand-out tracks, but to be perfectly honest I like every track as much as the others. Earlier Cherryade single ‘Planes Fly Overhead’ is a high-point, but opener ‘I Don’t Think You Understand’ and ‘So You Think You’re Unhappy?’ are equally pop-tastic. The slower, and female-lead, ‘The Message’ is a really good midway point to the record, a really sweet sounding track that gives you a chance to catch a breath from all that dancing you’ve been doing.

This album makes me think that Forest Giants would be a tremendously fun live act, and I wait with baited breath for them to play some shows near me. I’ll get my dancing shoes out and ready.

Jamie Rowland for Pennyblack Music.

Right. Every review of the Forest Giants starts with mentioning the bands they used to be in. I'm gonna skirt that (hey, I once reviewed Tender Trap without referring to Talulah Gosh, and I love Talulah Gosh) because the reason you need to buy "Welcome To The Mid-West" is nothing to do with any other bands and everything to do with the fact it is the year's brightest reminder that guitars can still sound great and ache and echo and contort and dance and summon up all kinds of feelings to reflect love and life and pain. Yes, guitars, the same instruments used by Dirty Pretty Things, Kaiser Chiefs et al: I certainly needed reminding of it. And "WTTMW" is a dense, fuzzy er, forest of the things.

"I Don't Think You Understand" is the claustrophobic opener, and one of the heavier songs, a distorted vocal giving way into a pounding chorus. Its shadowy texture and booming bassline can't help but bring to mind Joy Division: ditto the kinda Hannett-ish laser effects that encircle the increasingly fractured singing, before everything culminates in a sorta pretty rolling haze of Fallish vocal barbs and six-string disarray. But the feel of the LP as a whole is perhaps better set by the succeeding tracks - more bitter lyrics, but duelling with jauntier hooks (such as the "Inbetween Days" motifs of "So You Think You're Unhappy ?"), and crafty, dogged New Order style guitar lines allowed freeish rein amidst yet more pummelling chords. Plus that gift that the Wedding Present always had, of lyrics you can empathise with and that trail off just at the right time, leaving instrumental swells to ram home the anger and regret. Witness the single "Planes Fly Overhead", which fits uber-snugly into the album's cross of noisy nihilism and peeping melodic optimism. We should have learned the lesson long ago that sometimes you need a few slabs of reverb and distortion to properly capture emotion, and that's probably the reason why some of the Mary Chain comparisons have got wheeled out.

Then comes "The Message", second best song ever of that name. Deviating frighteningly from the template, it glistens flirtatiously, all super-Sarah Records balladry: I can almost imagine it on that shimmering, mightily underrated Rosaries 7", although they wouldn't have added the keyboard glow and violin that make it sound like, ooh, Vinyl Japan recording artists Slumber, if you remember them. Paula's crystal-clear vocal starkly counterpoints Tim's fuzz-painted voice of the opening five tracks, and bridges the two halves of the album beautifully. It's blip not trend though, because then the shambling old-skool fuzz of "Wasted" (er, second best song ever of that name) even musically recalls peak-era Flatmates (shhh) or "Don't Talk Just Kiss"-era TWP (please remember that, to me, these are near-unbounded compliments). The next track is even better - for the guitars on "Closure" make me want to wander out into the street and hug random passers-by, even as the disgust and vituperation in the lyrics suggest quite the opposite response. And still they come - "Stars" picks out all the things that made "Darklands" so desolate yet beautiful and drapes them matter-of-factly around Dean Wareham's soul inside. Killing the pace of previous songs in favour of a well of shimmering guitars, the melodies are given all the excuse they need to jump up and around the longing and melancholy of the words. The guitars weave their way rapidly skyward once the vocal disperses. And then we drift into the slow burn of "Namesakes" - a very barren, rainsodden song, pointing fingers, upset, lyrically abrupt, musically delicate. Her new friends are so much plastic. The bass and keyboards compete to wrest the song from the simple jangle of guitar that underpins it all. They kind of get there in the end.

"In Sequence" saw them feeling their way, and had some great songs, but "Welcome To The Mid-West" attacks in formation, hints more at darkness, and well repays a few listens (it was on the fourth that it really hit me, somewhere in the middle of "Stars", on the top deck of the 37 as it bombed it down towards Battersea Rise). When a whole generation is giving up on guitar music because of what the NME is pushing these days, it's as well to have such moments of rediscovery.

In Love With These Times, In Spite of These Times.

A treat from start to finish. Peel championed pop pickers Forest Giants have been ploughing their own furrow of deliciously over fuzzed indie for a number of years now and "Welcome to the Midwest", the bands latest album, serves as a great recap of previous glories while pushing into new territories.

As a set, the tracks here give a consciously more upbeat and live feel than some of the shoegaze-tinged efforts of yore and offer a great glimpse of what a visceral indie rock outfit these guys could be live. Touching base with the likes of Superdrag, Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride and even New York based anglophiles Ambulance LTD, the guys have hit on a new dynamic and the new songs would seem to suggest the flame is burning brighter than ever before.

Opening in the hazy buster of "I Don't Think You Understand" the albums template is set out early with walls of chiming guitars and fuzzed up bass powering an introverted shoegaze vocal over the finishing line. The tempo never shifts much as the band plough through an Interpol indebted opening section of the album featuring highlights "Why Wait" and the stunning "The Message".

The mix throughout is heavy and muddy yet somehow melodies appear in the haze like a mirage of a candy machine before disappearing as quickly as it arrived, sucked into the claustrophobic mix like quick sand.

Closing with the downbeat "Reverse Outro 3" (all minor chords and staccato lines) the album feels like a complete package with songs written with others in mind.

This is not just a collection of songs were dealing with but a dense package designed to be downed in one with a fuzzy aftertaste. Musical pepto bismol if you will. But a whole lot sweeter.

So come on down to the Midwest, you might like it!

Ben M for The Mag.