Album Review : Full Time Hobby - Hobbyism
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
Full Time Hobby here give us another budget priced compilation of some label highlights (following on from the Full Time Hobby 7" five years ago and 2008's Not Doing It For The Quids, with which it shares pretty much all the acts featured). At only eight tracks it could be supposed that the credit crunch has had some impact on the amount of material available to promote this perenially resiliant, upstart label but it succeeds in not only making the source albums desirable but in leaving you in hope of a part two, so well chosen is the song order and the mood resultant from it.
Kicking of with Erland & The Carnival's 'My Name Is Carnival' you're immediately into a Coral-like region of jangly psychedelia, with a hint of Lee Hazlewood. This segues smoothly into Tuung's 'It Breaks', from their And Then We Saw Land album from March this year. It sounds just like you'd expect from Tuung so no surprises or shocks there. Track three comes from Micah P. Hinson's gravelly larynx as the Texan-based singer imparts his knowledge in '2s And 3s'. Things get back to a more spacey place next with the excellent 'Babelonia' from School Of Seven Bells fantastic Disconect From Desire album – the best bits of Stereolab and Slowdive all rolled into one.
At the mid-point comes moody old Malcolm Middleton with the poignant 'Carry Me', featuring one of his best observed slices of life lyric strings, from 2009's Waxing Gibbous. Following that things get a bit funkier, although by no means livelier, as Fujiya & Miyagi don their 'Taiwanese Boots' and mooch forth from the speakers. Taiwan apparently has over 60 tanneries but I've no idea what's so special about their boots. The penultimate track takes us back to more atmospheric, folky territory as The Leisure Society let you in on how wasted they were on 'We Were Wasted'. Rounding off the proceedings come White Denim (who sound pretty wasted themselves) with 'Mirrored & Reversed', which starts off like Blondie's 'Heart Of Glass' but within seconds is a shambling, mumbling beast backed by an underlying propulsive drum track and marked out by occasional quick guitar solos and a suitably smooth fade out and return.
This'll do the job for a fiver and if you don't buy at least one of the albums represented on it then you probably need to consider changing your listening habits to a diet of talk radio.
