Paul Schiernecker

Tag: music

  • Carousel EP – a review.

    From the opening strains of Show, it is clear that Southend-on-Sea’s very own Carousel have a goal in mind, and that’s to lift you up. There is nothing to stop the smiles spreading as their sublime vocal melodies explode and their joyous mix of folk and blues push on like clockwork. Their take on Americana is infectious.
    Carousel are Thomas Eatherton, Chris Hobart, Sarah Holburn and Toby Shaer

    It takes a lot to stand out in this age of music being available everywhere and nobody giving a shit about artists who are actually doing something, playing instruments, trying hard. It’s not particularly “in vogue” to be in a band. There are plenty of bands doing it, especially locally, so when you hear something that actually makes you feel feelings, makes you feel like you might be an actual human being, why not go for it.

    You may be familiar with Dead Horse, which has been doing the rounds on Facebook ahead of the EP launch. It sounds like a road trip soundtrack song. It drives itself and you should too. Again, the vocal melodies rise up during the chorus which features painfully relatable lyrics.


    Porcelain, the middle child of the Carousel EP family, is the slow, considered ballad  in the midst of the thriving city soundtrack. Like the title’s subject matter, it’s beautiful and fragile. Sarah takes the lead on vocals to devastating effect. I’m not crying, there’s just something in my eye. It’s followed up by Throw Me To The Wolves, the polar opposite. Packed with distorted guitar and a layer of scuzz to the vocals, it’s a stand out track for me. It’s all well and good to be able to craft something melodic and sublime, but to show you can still have an edge is an exciting prospect. It’s Carousel Go Electric.

    Comfortable Skin closes the EP like it is wishing you goodnight, Thomas’s lyrics about staying true to oneself matched in tone with backing melodies to make your hair stand on end.
    If you’re looking for range and you’re looking for treatment, then you’ll want to get in with Carousel.

    Carousel EP is out on 22/09/2017.
    You can find out more here.

  • Davey Hal – Materials Logic

    It would be fair to say that our little seaside town is not short of talent. That’s why I was pleased to see that one of the most prominent voices on the local scene, Davey Hal, was working on his first solo album, and enthralled when he asked me to give Materials Logic an exclusive listen.

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    From the piano run on Soothe The Grey, the opener, you are invited into Hal’s world, a heady mix of late night love stories in a cocktail lounge. The harmonies present are ethereal, almost medieval in tone, grand. It’s strong without ever being overstated. The piano accompanies and underpins lyrics on royalty and death. This is immediately followed by Night Walking, a song with so much jazz club funk to its bassline that it forces a waltz quickstep into your feet as you attempt to move to the beat. It’s here that Hal’s voice is given the chance to sour, on a chorus that has been stuck in my head for at least the last fortnight.  The song that was played on TIME107.5FM last week, finally bridging the gap between those who love Materials Logic and those who are yet to hear it. It has a In The Wee Small Hours.

    White Walls sounds closer to the Davey Hal you might have seen at one of the many performances he blesses upon our town. A simple guitar track, with a strange likeness to something High Flying Birds would produce. It’s a song of attempted escape, an ode to love. The album takes a moment to recover with the instrumental track, Berdou, before Davey can pick up his guitar again and ask you to Run With Me. It’s the first real pop song of the album. It sounds like an instant classic, something beautiful and familiar. There’s a Paul Simon influence in there at times and yet another chorus worthy of being sung back by thousands of voices. Album title track Materials Logic slows matters down considerably, like a villain’s exposition in a performance, Hal’s voice starting out in a low chatter that sounds like it’s creeping before he soars, showcasing his range, crying out for an answer. The key change into the final refrain is particularly chilling.

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    “Head up, left foot against a wall” he begins on Fingertips before listing attributes of a lover in a seaside town. It’s equal parts affectionate and scathing, figuring that the subject is human anyway and does her hair while he’s asleep. Your Stone is close in tone to the title track, again going through the trials of some mystery woman Hal is observing and inspired by. Up Into Her Clouds is a straight-up love song, drawing on weather in the way only an Englishman can in order to explain his amore for anyone. The jaunty piano solo in the middle is reminiscent of something on Rubber Soul before Hal reveals that his admiration proved too much and turns the mood sour in the way love often does.

    Dear Mary creeps in like another performance piece, sung in the early hours and utilising everything Hal has to explain the situation to his Mary to the point of his own frustration. My Senses ambles in after her, the final thoughts of a man who has given everything of his own over eleven tracks and 42 minutes. It is close to Turner’s Submarine EP in production, nothing to overcomplicate and draw from the raw talent that is Davey Hal and the showcase of this that is Materials Logic.

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    Materials Logic by Davey Hal is available on iTunes now.

  • Mazel Tov Cocktails.

    I have heard a lot of Christmas music this month. You don’t get a lot of Hanukkah music. Here’s my input.

  • Workbook

    In February 2016 I spent a week in a gypsy caravan where I recorded twenty songs in the hopes it could become my first album. It was bitterly cold and I had to turn off the storage heater in between takes. I brought home those songs and let them sit for a little while. Then I started tinkering.
    This week I finally finished tinkering and am happy to announce that my first fully-functioning album, Workbook, is available now.
    You can download it for free. All I want is to share my music and enjoy the fact I’ve managed to get this project together. I’m immensely proud and enjoyed the process so much that I’m already planning a follow up.

    Workbook
    I love the idea of now making videos for the tracks. The first of which, for the opening song, Sometime Later, is here.

  • Love You Better: an essay

    Love You Better: an essay

    Love You Better or Why losing The Maccabees is a massive blow to the music scene and to me, Paul Schiernecker.

    When I was seventeen, indie was king. I can remember working a Sunday morning in Sainsburys at Rayleigh Weir, feeling like absolute shit because I was fronting up Babybels on three hours sleep. The store didn’t open until ten on a Sunday because Jesus so we had Radio One on. Suddenly this juddering guitar part started hammering through the supermarket and my hungover body. It wasn’t The Maccabees. That would be too hammy an introduction for such an important band. It was Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand. An anthem for the era. I had to ask one of the cooler, older boys (Rik) that I worked with who it was. By the end of my lunch hour I had bought the album. That purchase symbolised a nosedive I have never been able to recover from. I wanted it all and I was just getting into things at the right time.

    NME became my bible. Everything was THE. The Strokes. The Cribs. The Libertines. The Bravery. The Killers. The Vines. The White Stripes. The Rakes. The Long Blondes. The Paddingtons. The Fratellis. The Horrors. The Futureheads. The Coral. It completely changed the cut of my jib and the cut of my jeans.

    By the time I walked away from the exciting world of supermarket replenishment to study at university the whole scene was in full swing. I spent my weekends getting as pissed as possible and my weekdays waiting for Wednesday so I could buy NME and then waiting for the weekend again. Everyone wore too much denim and leather. None of my t-shirts fit me. I felt someway towards understanding something.
    I remember Colour It In.


    Oh how I remember Colour It In. What an absolutely sublime piece of work. I was fascinated by this bizarre group of names that made up the band. Who the fuck was called Orlando or Hugo or Rupert? What was that voice? The ache and the cuteness and the pain in it.
    First love. Last love. Only love. It’s only love.

    When I started DJing, because that’s what you do when you’re a student with no money but don’t want a job, X-Ray was in every single set. I was learning to play guitar at the time and was sure people would be impressed by my attempts at their songs. I just couldn’t get the magic. I recall listening to Toothpaste Kisses on repeat while I was studying. I couldn’t get enough of the whistles and the sweeps of it. I knew this was really something.

    There were so many flash in the pan indie bands around at the time – still waiting for Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong to drop that album – that it didn’t seem possible any of it could be followed up. The difficult second album as they say. Then came Wall Of Arms.

    Holy hell. What a follow up. I listen to this album routinely. It’s to my mind their best work. It came at a time when I had finished university and my friends and I started a band. We wanted to be The Maccabees. We also wanted to be The Libertines, The Cribs, The Strokes, The View and The Vaccines so you can see why it was due for failure. For a while we considered using Maccabees-esque names. I believe mine was Fabrezio.

    That tracklist though. Love You Better, which I will probably get tattooed. Wall Of Arms. Bag Of Bones. Young Lions. No Kind Words. NO KIND WORDS.
    I went to see them for the first time when they headlined the NME Award Tour in February 2010. The line up for that show was The Drums, The Big Pink, Bombay Bicycle Club and The Maccabees. We couldn’t believe our luck. We had the best time. Me and the band and some of our friends. I remember spinning in circles with my friend James as we slopped Red Stripe everywhere while we shouted the lyrics at one another. That night we stayed in a hostel somewhere and all took the walk of shame home together the following morning through south London.

    I remember having a number of conversations with Mike, who played bass in our band, about how they should have been the biggest band in the world. We liked the fact they weren’t. It meant there was something special for those of us who were in on the trick. Who knew what was going on.
    When the band weren’t touring they seemed to be very quiet. They weren’t a tabloid headline band by any stretch. They didn’t have a Doherty-type frontman. They didn’t seem to have drama or hassle between them. They were friends and they were doing it for the love and it was an absolute joy to watch and listen to.

    I was lucky enough to see them again that year when they played the main stage at Reading Festival. Again I couldn’t believe my luck. The line up for the Saturday was Gaslight Anthem, Modest Mouse, The Maccabees, The Cribs, Dizzee Rascal, The Libertines and Arcade Fire. I couldn’t have curated something better myself. My friend James and I parked ourselves against the barriers and stayed there for the day, enjoying the weather and the vibes and the music.

    We started talking about what would come next. We got excited about it. It was an event for us when a new Maccs album dropped. Given To The Wild didn’t disappoint. I remember news working its way around our group via work email that there was a new single, Pelican, which had dropped. By this stage we had all graduated and were working in the city. We were growing up and having to get on. We still held out for those strange and fantastic occasions when we would get to do something we could truly embrace and enjoy. There it was.


    The main thing I remember about the album is pain. When it came out I had made the brilliant decision to quit smoking and take up running. Every run I went on I would listen to Given To The Wild. I slowly got fitter and was eventually running until Pelican came on. I marked my improvement against the tracklisting. It seemed like a longer and more complex album. They were adventuring away from the jangle of guitars, I suppose a lot of people were at the time.

    Again, things went quiet. My friends got promoted. Some of them bought their own places. Things changed and it was difficult to pin anyone down. Friendships boiled down to Whatsapp messages and very little else besides. Still we waited on the next Maccabees album – Marks To Prove It.


    The lead single was good. Really good. It reminded me of everything that had come before, in their music and my life. It made me think of good times and good friends. It helped. I was amazed that I got tickets to see them at The Coronet before the album even came out. I stood at the back with my friend Antony and we sipped beers and watched and it was good but I felt so removed from it all.

    I guess what I am trying to say is thank you. Thank you to a band who have been around through some of the best times of my life. Who helped me find my way in the world. Who soundtracked so many good nights out. You will probably never fully understand the impact you were able to have to so many people. In twenty years time I could be taking my kids through the music daddy used to listen to when he was a teenager and your work will be up there as the high-tide mark of the scene and the time.
    I feel fortunate to have seen you live a number of times and to have enjoyed those gigs with friends. Those experiences will stick with me in a way a number of other things could never touch. You’ll burn bright forever. Thank you for the music.

  • Platform Farewells

  • Turn that punk shit down Tchaikovsky!

    I spend a lot of time thinking about the future.
    I imagine what I will be like in twenty, thirty, forty years time.
    I wonder how I will live, and where I will live, whether I’ll be happy or not.
    Those are the key details.
    Once you get those established in your head, you move on deeper into that same cave.
    I think about music a lot.
    I wonder if I will play my songs to my children.
    I think about what they’ll make of it, in the same way I would listen to my Dad playing bits of twelve-bar blues on his guitar when I was little and dance around his bedroom with my brothers.

    This week I have been thinking about the phrase – ‘turn that bloody noise down’.
    It’s something which has echoed through a couple of generations, and I wonder how much worse music will get for us to shout the same things at our children. Is it just a part of growing up? I know my own music tastes have changed from where they were a decade ago, softened even.
    I try to think of what bands of our generation will be carried on, to burn as the defining sound of the 00’s.
    I wonder if we will be sat watching TOTP2 in twenty years time saying ‘now The Prodigy, they knew how to write a song’.
    It’s true of course, they do.
    It’s hard to imagine The Libertines or The Strokes being described as ‘classic rock’ by the next generation, or even to think about who or what will follow. I can’t imagine what sound defined us, because we are still living it. Hindsight may clear the whole issue up.

    I struggle with being a part of my generation. Sometimes it feels like I was wired differently, but I know that is just my attempt to be seen differently, and to feel as though I’m a unique little snowflake. The majority of the music I like and listen to is the music of the 60’s and 70’s which will soon be considered ‘grandad music’ I suppose. I find it hard to believe my great aunt and uncle who trained under the maharishi and were part of the flower power hippie movement are grandparents. It doesn’t seem enough time has passed.

    As a child I wasn’t really aware of what was happening to music at the time. On the whole I guess it was a little contrived and dull (until grunge kicked in), so I listened to a lot of glam and punk and metal and thought it was just the most incredible thing. Listening to pop music has never done anything for me. I can see why people like it but it just seems so cheap and plastic and disposable to me.

    I hope in twenty years time I am sorting through the loft of my mansion and come across a stack of CDs.
    ‘What’s that Dad’ my son will say, pulling his little raggedy head of curls and his dungarees up through the loft hatch.
    ‘That’s real music Huxley, that’s real music’ I’ll say.

    I think about the future so much I struggle to think of what I am doing now.