Ben: Oh man, how is it already late October? I kept thinking it must be about time to do a checkout post for September and it’s managed to slip me by entirely.

TS Eliot be damned. September is the cruelest month, not April.

What have Dan and I bought over the past month?

September was a month for me to explore. It’s an interlude between the big releases of the summer and those of Christmas so it’s ideal to branch out a bit to see what else is out there in the big wide world. I went looking specifically for unsigned bands and eventually found four. Two of those had recently released EPs for sale (the other two didn’t: Mr Cheapskate‘s sixties-ish, Bees-ish pop should find a new EP release soon, as should Maple Leaves‘ Jens Lekman-inspired story songs).

First up: Talulah Does The Hula‘s Bad Boyfriend EP. I bought this pretty much solely because it was partially founded by the two girls formerly of The Chalets. Whilst The Chalets were all pop and upbeat harmonies, Bad Boyfriend and b-side Those Girls are both quite downbeat and, frankly, not fun. Shame. I’ll be watching them with interest because I don’t think this EP shows off what they can do.

Secondly: The Good Natured‘s EP. A textbook example of coincidence – recommended to me by a Twitterer in Edinburgh, The Good Natured (aka Sarah McIntosh) lives in a village about five minutes’ drive from me and, on the day of my discovering her, released her proper debut EP. And my word, is it brill. It’s very of the moment in a twitch-electro-pop way but the vocals and lyrics are to die for. I want her to be huge. She should be huge. Please – go and explore.

Elsewhere I’ve been very conventional in my purchases. I inevitably purchased three Beatles albums – Sgt Pepper, Revolver and Abbey Road. Sgt Pepper sounds particularly lovely in stereo but the real highlight of that triumverate is Run for your Life. Lennon’s misogynist rant at the end of Revolver is now transformed into a stereoscopic harmonic masterpiece. If you’ve not explored the remastered collection yet, it’s a good place to start.

Dan: I’ve not actually bought anything else in September except the expensive, expansive Beatles box set. But if that had been all I listened to I’d probably have gone mad by now. So instead I’ve been exploring too.

Ben mentioned The Good Natured and Maple Leaves and that’s where we overlap this month. While I haven’t bought anything by either of them yet I did pinch their free downloads and they really are rather special. Unfortunately I don’t seem to be able to find The Good Natured’s free EP download link any more so I can’t pass it on. Sorry. Maple Leaves’ offerings are still available though and in spectacular fashion. You can download 2 of their tracks here in formats ranging from bog-standard mp3 to FLAC and Apple Lossless. Well worth a listen.

Other recent discoveries include Noah and the Whale’s second album, First Days Of Spring. It’s a glorious, lilting, orchestral record that I’ll be sure to pick up in the future. I’m not so fussed about seeing the video it comes with. Another band I’ve finally found through Spotify is Saint Etienne. After an afternoon listening to London Conversations, their ‘best of’ collection, I’ve been clamouring for their back catalogue. Their albums have just been re-released in spectacular double-disc deluxe editions, which of course means they’re too expensive for me to pick up at the moment. I also can’t afford Wilco’s latest album, uh… Wilco. I tried listening to it when it came out and I wasn’t smitten. Since then I heard You Never Know from the album and was knocked over. It’s great, and I now need the whole album.

Lastly, a quick word on some albums I’ve re-discovered in September. The Shortwave Set’s The Debt Collection is much more magnificent than I remember it being, particularly the tracks Is It Any Wonder? and Repeat To Fade. I have to confess to Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 getting another spin as well. It’s been 2 years since it was released (obviously) and it’s still as brilliant as it was. It’s possible it’ll still be cool after the end of time. Continuing the pysch-funk-techno-pop theme is The Postal Service’s Give Up, which is also just as amazing as when it was released. As it’s now Autumn, Ben Folds, Jens Lekman and Sufjan Stevens have also slithered their way back into my  iPod. They provide the perfect soundtrack for scuffing up leaves on the long walk home.

Our Favourite 5 Tracks of September

Got Spotify? Listen to 4 of the above 10 songs by clicking here! (Unfortunately,  most of our selection is too indie for Spotify this month – sorry!)

Dan: The choice of video this month is The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights. I’ve chosen it not only because the song is great, but because the video is pretty brilliant too.

So many great songs, artists and albums seem to be passed over entirely. Left of Centre aims to highlight music which should have reached a bigger audience than it did. In this edition: The Chalets.

Ben: During a dark Glasgow evening late in 2003, I was idly flicking through record label websites looking for bargains, news and free mp3s. I went to Setanta Records’ site hoping that they might have some old vinyl pressings from The Divine Comedy. Disappointed by the lack of anything of note in their online shop, I looked at their current artists roster.

That’s where I stumbled across the best pop act of the last decade. Ladies and gents, let me talk to you about The Chalets.

Like most of Setanta’s acts, The Chalets hail from Northern Ireland. They met at All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2001 where they ended up sharing a chalet, hence the name. They consist of five members – Pony, Peepee, Chris, Enda and Dilbot.  No, those aren’t their real names (mostly) but they give an idea of the band’s playful sense of humour.

Sense of humour? Oh yes!

After Britpop imploded in the late nineties, it became illegal for any musical group to smile or be silly. As a result, the early years of the new century were filled with lots of po-faced, serious, introspective acts – Damien Rice, David Grey, Turin Brakes, Starsailor etc etc ad infinitum. It was unthinkable to release a record that people would joyfully dance to without branding yourself as some messianic cult. You were either a serious artist singing soulfully about your deepest feelings or a childish novelty act. In mainstream music, there was no happy third way.

The Chalets were a direct reaction to that. They crafted songs based on the old punk and pop idiom of thrashing through three minutes of guitars and moving onto the next track quickly. They fused the eclecticism of punk with the bubblebum artpop of The B-52s and Devo. They developed close girly vocal harmonies, call and response song structures, brilliant videos, throwaway imagery and (gasp!) girls dancing on stage.

They took the best bits of everything they loved and made them into their own.

They teased a few limited edition 7″ singles for a few years, only managing to release an EP in 2004. But what an EP it was! The four-track Nightrocker EP (rubbish title) bowled over everyone who heard it – Hot Press legendarily exclaimed “where the hell did this come from?”. From being a live act with some scruffy 7″ records under their belt, they produced four very polished, very catchy songs onto a crowd expecting very little. Two of the tracks – Nightrocker and Sexy Mistake – ended up being used on Grey’s Anatomy.

Even more importantly, closing track David Boring makes it onto almost every mixtape I ever make.

The debut album Check In was released a year later and only further cemented how well-rounded and fun a group they’d become. Suddenly the number of people attending their gigs  exploded. On one memorable occasion, I caught someone whistling Feel the Machine in a lift (no mean feat!) and struck up a conversation about how good The Chalets were and how their next album would see them hit some dizzying highs.

Sadly after demoing some tracks for the second album and doing some warmup gigs, the band announced they’d split.

Despite getting some recognition amongst us artrock-loving types in Dublin, Glasgow and elsewhere, they struggled to get any attention in the mainstream. I’ve read that there were issues about them not making enough money and that they all had other interests/jobs to be getting on with. This is certainly true of Chris – he’s now quite a prolific graphic artist. In the course of writing this article I emailed him and asked why they disbanded whilst demoing. He said:

It’s a real shame we never got to release a second album but by the time we finished touring the first one we hadn’t made much money and we were suddenly all in our 30′s. It was a tough decision to make but I don’t think we could have continued.

Perhaps those rumours of a remake of This Life based on The Chalets wasn’t too far off the mark?

The band’s legacy extends to four singles, one EP and one album. Given that unique sound, it’s genuinely heartbreaking that there is no more to listen to and that there’ll be no more in future. The girls have formed a new band called Talulah Does The Hula which is interesting but lacks the pop and the punch of their past musical selves.

The petition for the release of the album two demos begins here!

As Ben no longer has regular iPod access, he’s making do with one ‘big’ album a week, posting summary reviews every Monday. This coincides nicely with the #musicmonday meme on Twitter. How serendipitous!

Ben: Still in a bit of an ‘alt-country’ mood after last weeks’ Hungry Bird, I kept off the beaten track this week and listened to Piney Gir’s latest release, The Yearling. You’d be forgiven for saying ‘Piney who?‘ – she’s not the most well-known of artists and save for a single mid-afternoon festival slot I’ve not seen or read much about her either. A chance encounter with a cheap copy of her new album combined with my rather pedestrian listening of late (did I really need to buy three Beatles re-releases?) meant that I jumped all over the skirt-swishing, violiny Ms Gir (aka Angela Penhaligon).

Clever move or not?

Weeeeeell, not too sure. It’s an odd one, certainly.

At times it is the most glorious Magnetic Fields they never made. Say I’m Sorry sounds a lot like a brilliant reimagining of very early Magnetic Fields songs like Love is Lighter than Air which is no bad thing in my book – a few drum machines, some twinkly guitars and some great vocals. Like other Magnetic Fields tracks, Piney Gir’s not afraid of a little quirkiness – Blixa Bargeld’s Bicycle, a song about someone moving to Shanghai, is the one track that indicates that.

I don’t think the Magnetic Fields influence is deliberate though – in fact it’s quite possible that Piney Gir has never heard of Mr Merritt and co. Their big similarity is the cheap production costs – The Yearling is a collection of sixteen tracks that, unlike Hungry Bird, seem to have been recorded very quickly and very cheaply. It’s got a raw energy about it and has no coherant musical or lyrical theme which makes for some nice variety. It’s hard to imagine another artist putting Blixa Bargeld’s Bicycle on an album with the swaying, Suzanne Vega-esque Oleanna.

It’s cheapness is also the album’s big downfall. With a limited budget this album all too often goes for distracting and unnecessary quirky ploys. It betrays a lack of confidence in the songs – a great shame because shining underneath are some great songs and, potentially, a great album. Stuffing a release with sixteen tracks and putting drummed Tupperware noises over the top shows a lack of an experienced producer. It’s so uneven – it just needs a sterner hand and someone to tell Ms Penhaligon to tell her that she’s good.

Look past the oddities and some really great tracks shine through.

Dan: As you might recall in our previous Beatles post I’d not had much exposure to their work until a couple of months ago. I had never really heard more than their early Love Me Do stylings and as such I didn’t explore any further. Interestingly enough this seems to be the same position as most of the people I know who also dislike The Beatles. With my position being reversed after hearing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Rubber Soul and only having The White Album on CD, I decided to invest in the new stereo remastered collection released on September 9th. I shall make comparisons to the non-remastered versions where I feel I can but for the most part this is an account of my introduction to all thirteen studio albums and the Past Masters.

Upon receiving the glorious box set I made a decision to listen to the albums in chronological order. It’s the order they’ll appear in here. Before we begin and as I also bought the recently released and brilliantly fun Beatles Rock Band, treat your eyes to the opening cinematic:

Despite all my rants about The Beatles’ early work, I actually kind of like Please Please Me, their debut album. It’s not brilliant and definitely not a record I can get excited about but I really like the feeling the album has. As it was pretty much just a recording of all the songs they enjoyed playing live it has a great sense of fun and poppy ambition. The lyrics are saccharine and the music isn’t highly accomplished but as a first album by a group of newcomers it certainly has its charms.

With The Beatles sounds exactly like what it is. The first album had been a hit so it makes sense to deliver more of it. Fourteen more tracks hastily written and recorded. No development in terms of music or lyrics – just a repeat of their first album. There are a couple of tracks which are better than others but mostly they’re all distinctly average. These first two albums are also rather limited in ‘remaster-able’ scope. Vocals are sent right while the music stays on the left speaker. There’s not a lot they could do but I’m sure the mono mixes are the superior option.

It’s at this point that I think the Beatles albums can be paired stylistically. A Hard Day’s Night is, as with With The Beatles, a repeat of their earlier work. More quick-churned songs to appeal to a mass market that tie in to a movie for extra money and exposure. Nothing epitomises this more than the sickly Money Can’t Buy Me Love – a mindless pop song written for the purpose of being a hit, it sold well but it’s impossible to enjoy.

During their next two albums you can hear the Beatles’ talent grow and the lyrics start to collect layers. Beatles For Sale still has the same desire of continued success as a motive and this is reflected in the dumb-love lyrics in Baby’s In Black and Every Little Thing. But the highlights are to be found in (probably my favourite ‘early’ track) Eight Days A Week. I know it’s full of shallow lyrics but as a pop-song it works. It isn’t stretching anything and it knows it. But crucially, it enjoys itself – the way all good pop music should work.

Help! continues their desire to develop lyrically and musically and it succeeds in places. It might have been better had it not been created around a movie. The first half contains all the songs used in the film and it feels flat and commercial. The second half see some more experimentation with instruments and feels fuller. The stereo remastering starts to show its benefit here.

These next two albums are possibly the two most important in the whole of The Beatles’ catalogue. The band developed in almost every way very quickly. The step up in quality between Help! and Rubber Soul is incredible. Last month I said that Rubber Soul was good, but not brilliant. That was after I’d heard the original vinyl pressing. With the stereo remaster sat in my hi-fi system, I was blown away entirely. It sounds incredible – crisp, clear, full and utterly amazing. Every note is played with pin-point precision and presented as such too. The songs are marvellously accomplished, with musical dexterity and layers of lyrical intricacy – Michelle and Run For Your Life take a darker turn and really stand out because of it. Of all the remastered albums, this is the one I keep coming back to which has surprised me somewhat.

Continuing the theme of development from simplistic pop to artistic rock is fan-favourite Revolver. Whilst this album is full of great tracks (Eleanor Rigby, And Your Bird Can Sing, etc) I find it harder to love than quite a few of their other albums. Where Rubber Soul really flowed as an album, this feels more to me like the ‘collection of songs’ style of their first five albums. The songs themselves also feel closer to their earlier work – as if this album should have come before Rubber Soul.

A quick thought on two songs of note: I have hated Yellow Submarine since I was 6 and suffered it being played several times in school for some god-forsaken reason. Here I have learned to accept and tolerate it though I don’t exactly ‘enjoy’ it. Tomorrow Never Knows seems to be a divisive track to Beatles fans. Some like it, others absolutely loathe it. I fall into the former camp – It’s the most experimental song on the album, and as the last track on the album it really works as an intro to their next record.

Where can you start with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? What can I possibly say that hasn’t been said before by someone else? It must be at least a contender for the most discussed/analysed album of all time. Nearly every second is beautiful, imaginative and bold. Miles from the beaten track which the Beatles are partly responsible for laying, Sgt. Pepper lives in his own world of glorious technicolour audio (technisound?) I listened to this on vinyl a number of times and the remaster works wonderfully in places, bringing out hidden details and refining others. In other places though it seems remarkably close to my vinyl copy. That said, it’s a terrific album and you can discuss it all you want – I’m happy to just listen. The only real negative point is that this album will never be perfect until it has been remastered in a way that leaves When I’m 64 off completely – such an abominable, simple dirge shouldn’t exist, let alone be present here.

Magical Mystery Tour is basically an album b-side to Sgt. Pepper. The experimentation is still present (This is fairly obvious as it contains I Am The Walrus) and the quality is still very high. While the first half again gathers the songs that appear in the movie tie-in, the second half is where some of the best tracks appear. Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane provide two of the band’s most well-known tracks but it’s Hello Goodbye that catches me every time. Another upbeat and rowdy song that makes no effort to do or say anything of value, it’s a perfect example of what a good pop song should be. And as long as we all ignore the last track this is a great album.

The Beatles (The White Album). There’s too much content here to go into detail,so I’ll pick out significant points. The remastering is great in places, really opening up and expanding tracks such as Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey and Cry Baby Cry. The former is improved significantly and now sounds like a proper song you’d want to listen to, whereas the latter has been defined to a new level of perfection – it was one of my favourite tracks on the album before but here it’s even better. Unfortunately The White Album still has it’s down points. No amount of remastering can save Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Piggies or Revolution 9 from stupidity, mundanity or pointlessness. Thankfully for the most part The White Album is still a joy to listen to, though perhaps not all at once.

Released shortly after The Beatles (The White Album), Yellow Submarine is another movie-related record. Unfortunately it’s almost entirely rubbish. Of the 12 tracks only the first 6 are Beatles songs, the rest being instrumental pieces used in the film composed by George Martin, The Beatles’ long standing producer (and my candidate for the title of ‘Fifth Beatle’). Of the 6 Beatles tracks, 2 are recycled from earlier albums – both of them average at best. Which leaves 4 new songs on a ‘new’ album. Unfortunately, they mostly feel like White Album rejects and with good reason. The only song worth listening to here is Hey Bulldog, which I feel should have been included on…

Abbey Road. It would make much more sense for Octopus’s Garden to have been on Yellow Submarine and have Hey Bulldog in it’s place. Oh well. At least the rest of Abbey Road is glorious. John Lennon bursts in with Come Together before George Harrison steps up with the beautiful Something, equally matched by Here Comes The Sun which appears later on in the album. It’s hard to find a bad track here, which is shocking considering it’s the last album they recorded. Bands usually keep going until they dry out which makes Abbey Road’s supreme quality all the more astonishing. Along with Rubber Soul it’s a high contender for the title of Best Beatles Album. The way the second half flows is gorgeous, and concludes with the best 3-track-outro I’ve heard since Gorillaz’ Demon Days. Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End seem to be the most perfect, fitting end to The Beatles. It seems to sum up everything they’ve done and say “That’s it – your turn now”. I don’t include Her Majesty in the outro as it’s nothing more than a discarded track re-introduced as a ‘hidden’ bonus half-minute curio. It seems a bizarre choice to keep it at the end of the record instead of either keeping it in its original place (between Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam) or just discarding it altogether.

The real end is of course found in the other album recorded in their awkward last sessions, Let It Be. Having not heard the original album I can’t say how improved the controversial Phil Spector production is on the remaster. Apparently it’s much better than it was and I actually don’t think it’s that bad. It’s excessive in places, particularly on The Long And Winding Road but overall it sounds good enough to me. Then again I’ve not heard Let It Be… Naked, so maybe my opinion will change when I get it (and get it I will, along with Love, now my curiosity’s piqued). It’s another strong album with amazing tracks such as Across The Universe, Let It Be and I’ve Got A Feeling being standouts along with the brilliant closer Get Back. In fact the only real problem here is the pointless bookends to Let It Be - Dig It and Maggie Mae. These two tracks are both less than a minute long and disrupt the flow of the album for no reason. Otherwise it’s a strong finish for The Beatles. It doesn’t shine as much as other albums and the tracks may not be so engaging as others but they’re still undoubtedly great.

Of course, there are a number of tracks and oddities not available on the studio albums. These are collected on the two-disc package Past Masters, which showcases everything else from The Beatles’ back catalogue. It spans their entire career, covering original versions, German versions, alternate versions, singles and b-sides. Disc one is full of songs written during their early albums and contains ‘popular’ tracks such as She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. It also has the German versions of those two songs from the vinyl-only Rarities album. Most of what’s on offer here is dull and almost entirely skippable.

Disc two moves into their better stages and presents classics such as Get Back, Don’t Let Me Down and the proper, fast-paced, rockier Revolution. Along with slightly different versions of Let It Be and Across The Universe this disc is good enough to listen to on its own. Most collections of a similar nature to this are best suited to cherry-picking and whilst you can certainly do that with disc one, disc two could work as another album. There’s guaranteed to be something here you’ll like, and the remastering is of the same high quality it is on the studio albums – crisp, clear and defined.

One more thing…

Each album has a ‘mini-documentary’ included on the disc. If you get the big box set you get them all on one separate disc as well, which makes it much easier to watch considering they’re only about 5-10 minutes long. As you’d expect from the short run time they’re not exactly insightful. They contain very little more than what you can find out by reading the much nicer sleeve notes. The sleeve notes are decorated with lots of high quality photos too, rendering the videos even more pointless.

While I’m ashamed I took so long to investigate properly, I’m glad I waited until the remasters came along before I saw the error of my ways. And what an error it was – their earlier, overplayed tracks are a million miles away from the genius of their later albums. Overall it’s a fab package.

What? There had to be a pun in there somewhere!

Ben: Yes, Ben’s mystery teapot! I was given a teapot by my brother, and, well, I made a video.

The teapot is weird. Properly weird. You might be impressed. You might not.

Video and a few additional comments after the jump.

The music is (mostly) The Magnetic Fields’ If There’s Such a Thing as Love from the mostly-lovely album i. Here’s a Spotify link to the whole thing should you feel that way inclined.

I don’t have any other teapots of this calibre sadly (sadly?). Dan has a lovely glass teapot with an amazing story though. I’m hoping he’ll write about it at some point.

As Ben no longer has regular iPod access, he’s making do with one ‘big’ album a week, posting summary reviews every Monday. This coincides nicely with the #musicmonday meme on Twitter. How serendipitous!

Ben: There’s a long-running joke between Dan and I. Whenever we meet, we ask how the review of the last Clem Snide album is coming along. Released way back in the depths of the new year, Hungry Bird was the much anticipated album that, for complex label and legal reasons, was assumed to never be released. After we did the discussions of Franz Ferdinand and Andrew Bird, Hungry Bird was meant to be next on the list.

We never got round to it.

Consider this wee post a review in the memory of that never-written post, and hopefully an end to the stupid joke.

In all honesty, there’s a big reason why we never ended up writing about this one. Clem Snide – more accurately, singer-songwriter Eef Barzelay and a rotating grab-bag of musicians – have produced some of the finest music of the past fifteen years. At turns insightful, acerbic and witty, Eef’s songs are wonderfully inventive country-tinged tunes which no-one else seems to write nowadays.

If you’ve never heard any tracks from 1999′s seminal Your Favorite Music please do yourself a massive, massive favour and purchase it right now. It’s less than eight English pounds in most online retailers. You’ll thank me later.

As great as Your Favorite Music and countless other tracks scattered across half a dozen albums are, the legacy does not live on in Hungry Bird.

See, Hungry Bird was conceived as a big opus, something that Eef had been working on for years as opposed to most of his albums which are recorded and released in quick succession. Rather than being full of the peppy tracks he’s known for, pretty much every song on Hungry Bird is a bloated, meandering mess, with many retreading the same musical feel and tone. It’s easy to listen to the album and not think about where one track ends and another begins.

It does has its moments – Me No is a great opener and long-time live favourite Pray (For the Non-Believer) finally sees a proper release – but the rest is too inconsequential to really bother with. Pray is very nearly ruined too – about the faithful praying for their non-believing brethren to be punished by the divine, it’s all choral soundscapes and scathing lyrics for four and a half minutes. Though it effectively finishes at 4:35, still it trudges on with a slower, acoustic, boring and unnecessary coda until 7:57. The Franz Wright narrated Encounter at 3AM completes the trio of ‘good’ songs on the album. The rest, really, are immensely disappointing.

If you’re interested in Clem Snide – and you really, really should be! – don’t start here.

Dan: The delightful people at ATTIC Tea (All The Tea In China), a café hidden away somewhere in Bristol, sent us some samples to sip – one of which is their Silver Needle. You may remember that Silver Needle is one of my favourite white teas and one of my favourite teas overall. Despite having reviewed two different version before I’m going to do so again and with good reason.

A mountain of needles with no fuzziness

One of my favourite things about teas is the smell. I think it’s often overlooked because it’s only a small part of the whole experience of making a cup. But that first whiff of the dry leaves can reveal a lot about the tea you’re pinching into your pot. The smell of the dried leaves often comes close to the taste of the drink and it’s a wonderful indicator of flavour and texture.

I’ve always had a fondness for the smell of dried tobacco leaves (can’t stand them once they’re lit, though). It’s not just the ‘flavour’ of the smell that’s pleasant but the ‘texture’ of it too. The crisp dryness that comes with cuts through the air and delivers a direct hit of the scent to your nose. It’s reminiscent of hay that’s been reaped and left to dry in the sun over the long summer months, only less dusty. I mention all this because it’s what the texture of the smell of this tea reminded me of when I opened the bag.

Possibly the oddest angle for a teapot photo ever?

Obviously the flavour of the scent is different – it’s quite grassy as most white teas seem to be – but that clear-cut, well-defined feel is there. Coupled with the fact that the leaves aren’t fuzzy like the previous silver needles I’ve tried I was intrigued. It was the same, but different.

And the flavour reflects this perfectly too. When it’s hot, it tastes like the silver needles I’ve tried before – notes of cucumber, hints of wheat, etc. But when it cools it takes on its own sense of laid-back refinement. The flavour is very, very slight which may put off some people (I’m sure Ben would find it too non-descript), but it’s the texture where it shines.

The leaves cling to the side of the pot

The mouthfeel is incredibly smooth compared to the fuzziness of other silver needles – and  that is what makes it special. As I said before the texture is what supports and directs the flavour and here it makes its mark spectacularly. While the flavour is much lighter, you get a better sense of the leaves’ delicacy and individuality because it knows what it is. Attic’s Silver Needle is more confident and as such it can afford to relax more. This is the whole point of white teas – effortless cool that captivates and intrigues.

Dan was drinking Attic’s Silver Needle, available at £5.50 for 50g.

Dan: Jing sent us some tea-making items recently - you may remember Ben discussing his prized tea-iere here. They also sent through their one-cup teapot set, consisting of a teeny teapot and glass cup and saucer. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now so it’s about time I told you about it. Alas, Jing have no demonstration video for this so instead you can have a look at this picture of it I took and I’ll add some more as we go along. I’m going to shamelessly steal Ben’s review style and bullet point the pros and cons too – he’ll love that.

Ben: Style-stealing cad!!

The Good

The first thing to note about this is how simple it is to use. It’s impossible to get it wrong it’s so obviously straightforward. You take the lid of the pot and pop the leaves in. You add water and the tea infuses. When it’s ready you pour it into the glass. The fact that there’s no demonstration video is probably because it doesn’t need one. If you’re getting this wrong you probably think tea should be addressed as ‘Mr.’ (as opposed to Mr. Coffee).

As well as being easy, it’s a pleasure to use. You can see every step of the infusing process – the unfurling leaves, the depth of the colour - unlike other teapots which conceal the leaves in plastic infusers, nothing is hidden from view. Every tea you put in this teapot will show off all its little secrets and workings and you’ll never be confused as to whether or not the tea is ready.

It’s easy to clean. It’s not full of bits and bobs to take apart and clean individually, nor is it created in such a way that there are rims for grime to collect under. Even if there were, you’d see them as it’s all made of lovely thick glass. That sturdiness is great too – the heat stays in and the cold stays out.

The Bad

Once you’ve made your tea you’re left with some leaves stuck to the metal filter. These are not the easiest thing to get out. Generally it takes a few solid shakes over the bin to get the majority of the leaves out but the stubborn ones will need a swirl around in some cool water before being tipped down the sink. Not a major problem but it’s still an inconvenience.

The spring filter is, for the most part, great. Really simple but massively effective. However there is generally always one small leaf that will wiggle its way through and into the cup. One leaf is not a bad result I’ll admit, but as long as I’m being picky, it’d be nice to be bump that success rate up a percent and stop everything but the water getting through.

That filter has another feature. It can unclip from the pot (I realised this when I came to wash it for the third time and lost it in my washing up bowl – maybe I need that demo video after all?) which is great for cleaning and getting the last tangled leaves out. Its downfall comes when you’re shaking the pot to get the leaves out as I described earlier. With its design incorporating a spring it’s easy for it to pop out – straight into the bin with the used leaves. Fortunately it’s easy to put back in (after washing). Drop it in the pot with the spring down the spout, push on it with your thumb and clip it back in place with your other hand.

The conclusion

The negatives here are nothing more than minor foibles I’ve picked up on while using it. It seems extremely picky to even list them here as ‘bad’ points. There’s nothing here to get angry or upset about – the most they’ll evoke is a small sigh before you get on with drinking your tea or cleaning the pot. The leaf-removal process is something you’ll find with every teapot and the filter could be improved with slightly tighter coils and an extra clip.

Everything else about it is brilliant. Simple, quick and useful. If I had been using it at work, I’m sure my only problem with it would have been the cleaning stage but again that’s to do with available facilities rather than any fault of the teapot. The cup is nice to handle and exactly the right size to hold everything you put in the pot.

I’ve been using it every morning before I go to work. It’s a clever and almost perfect design which makes brewing a joy again. No fiddly plungers and no stainable infusers means that this is currently my favourite way of making tea. If you regularly make loose-leaf tea for one, you’d be wise to get one for yourself.

Dan was drinking tea from Jing’s One-Cup Teapot and Glass Tea Cup and Saucer, available at £18.50 and £9.05 respectively.

Ben: Tragedy! A few weeks ago my iPod finally died a death. The battery had been on its way out for a few months until it got to the stage it’s at now – half an hour or so of use followed by silence – unbearable silence. I’ve explored replacing the battery but sadly the model I’ve got was built to combat eager amateurs like myself opening it up (as a sweary hour and a fraught fiancé will testify).

It’s a bit of a blow for someone that relies on an iPod to listen to the majority of their music: whether I am in the car, at the office, wandering the streets or mooching at home, I normally have my iPod in tow.

Had my iPod in tow.

I’ve had to change how I listen to music entirely. I’ve developed a coping strategy – have one main album I listen to all week and supplement it where possible with random EPs and MP3s. Every Monday I choose a new album, take it to the car for my daily commute and listen the hell out of it over the next seven days. Fortuitously, this coincides with the #musicmonday meme on Twitter so, I thought, why not combine the two? Until I can afford a new iPod (hmph), I’ll do a new one of these posts every week detailing what I’ve been listening to. This time, it’s Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight.

~~~

Long time readers will know that we discussed Franz Ferdinand in detail at the time that this album came out at the start of the year. The intervening eight or nine months have mystified me. By all rights, this album should be huge – properly huge. It’s a great album full of potential single material, trailed in an iPod commercial, poppy with a sinister edge and varying from the very rawky to the very acoustic and heartfelt.

Back in February I expressed concern that I wanted to like the album more than I did. A few months later it all clicked. It’s a masterstroke. It’s full of wonderful pop nuggets like the Apple-endorsed No You Girls whilst in turn still being a bit silly (Twilight Omens), a bit heavy (What She Came For) and a bit beautiful (Katherine Kiss Me).

It’s an absolute joy. I get very enthusiastic for the band’s eponymous debut – it built its own niche and populated it with some of the best songs from the past decade – but this album feels more rounded, more complete. After the so-so second album, this isn’t so much a return to form as a reinvention.

I guess that the music buying public suffered from Franz fatigue and left this one on the shelf. The band were really over-exposed, especially during the second album’s promotional tour. The singles seemed never ending and, frankly, a little samey by the end. Their seclusion to record Tonight should’ve rectified this but rather than releasing a great lead single they opted for the plodding, radio-unfriendly Ulysses. As a result, Tonight sold amazingly poorly.

Which is a proper waste of a great album.

It’s been an absolute joy listening to it again over the past week. If you never got round to giving it a proper listen, perhaps today’s the day to do so.

Don’t despair though. There’s a few things coming up shortly – an oft-delayed music post, a video(!) of a black tea and some more discussion of teaware.

Hey look, it’s sunny outside! Why not make the most of it?