Fortuna Pop!, originally based in Leicestershire and now relocated to London, is another of today's most important indiepop labels. I've got a batch of releases from them which ideally I should have written about a long time ago but got held up with househunting and so forth, but as said elsewhere, if music is good it matters not that it's not brand new, so on with the reviews.

The Butterflies of Love have had a number of releases out on Fortuna Pop!, the latest I have being The Mutation/Crazy Mad single, available on 7" and CD. That's right, both formats feature exactly the same tracks. It's a lot fairer to do this than the more usual practise labels have, of putting extra tracks on the CD. The Mutation reminds me a lot of The Tyde's more laid back moments; non twee indiepop that manages to sound contemporary whilst also having a strong 60s influence. Crazy Mad is heading towards 60s ballad territory but with a warped guitar sound that you wouldn't normally expect to hear in a song like this.

Nottingham band The Chemistry Experiment have a 7" with the bizarre title of Round The Corner Dutch Zebra. None of the songs are actually called that, but the titles are mostly just as off-kilter. Don't expect off-the-wall experimental music though, The Chemistry Experiment are essentially an indiepop band. Gulag Arpeggio is excellent indiepop-meets-synthpop with a strong melody. Anti-Glacier Song mostly has a much more minimal arrangement with just acoustic guitar and low-key synth, but is occasionally fleshed out with choral-style vocals and noisy twiddly guitar soloing. The Elusive Ryan Davey is a big, dramatic song with fairground organ and woodwind.

Mark 700 have their debut album Cohiba out on Fortuna Pop!, following 4 singles. Named after a 70s keyboard and having titles like Domestic Electric Disco (the name of their first EP), you would be forgiven for expecting either disco-punk or retro-futuristic spacepop. You will definitely not get any of the former, and whilst the music occasionally hints at the latter, it is overall a much more diverse album. At one end of the spectrum there is the more popular kind of indie music, with a swaggering rock n' roll attitude; at the other end there is 300 Light Years From Home, a 30 second atmospheric cello instrumental, and Lunar Canine Boogie, a 24 second experimental jam session. Also here are a couple of tracks which are the indie rock n' roll that seems to be most typical of the band, but showing a jazz influence with the added saxophone. One Inch Punch is very good lo-fi pop, my favourite side of the band I think. Space Country has an appropriate title - the sort of spacey keyboard sound you'd expect to come from a band called Mark 700, and whilst not out and out country, there is an underlying country influence evident here. You Are The One is a mixture of old and new style indiepop with additional cello and saxophone. The first track here led me to expect an album of commercial 'alternative' rock, but throughout the album there are actually signs that the band are unafraid to experiment with different genres, and this is of course a good thing.

Tender Trap, whose Film Molecules album is out on Fortuna Pop!, are the latest incarnation of Talulah Gosh/Heavenly/Marine Research, featuring Amelia Fletcher, Rob Pursey and DJ Downfall. Talulah Gosh have been described as one of the 100 most influential underground bands of all time - this I can believe. A big difference between this band and the previous ones is its more electronic nature; whilst there's guitars here there are also keyboards, programming and sequencers. They are also more musically diverse and sophisticated than Talulah Gosh or Heavenly. Fin has a rather shoegazer/dreampop/spacey sound; Oh Katrina is guitar based indiepop with a great strong tune; You And Me combines Spanish-y guitar strumming, janglepop and noisier indiepop, with even a psychedelic touch towards the end; Face of 73 is 80s-ish synthpop, a bit like Freezepop but less happy sounding; That Girl is a catchy and cleverly written song about a teenage feminist music fan ("Her record collection separates women from men [...] That girl thinks that Travis are boring, Le Tigre are smart"); Talk In Song is stylish and a little bit 60s; Chemical Reaction hints at mod and punkpop; Dyspraxic is a mixture of synthpop and 80s hard rock. I like this album a lot, it's both fun and sophisticated and has lots of diversity.

Also with a Talulah Gosh/Heavenly/Marine Research connection is the Would-Be-Goods, whose guitarist is Peter Momtchiloff. The band is based around songwriter Jessica Fletcher and also includes Orson Presence, formerly of The Monochrome Set. Following records on él and Japanese label Polystar, the Would-Be-Goods returned after a few years with an EP on Matinée, a 7" on Fortuna Pop! and now the Brief Lives album which is a joint release between both of those labels. The music and lyrics are sophisticated, classy and witty, peppered with historical, literary and highbrow musical references, and the occasional French lyric. This all gives the air of being penned by a songwriter who is well educated and perhaps upper middle class (Jessica's accent is certainly suggestive of both of these). The music is indiepop, but with FAR more sophistication than is the norm in this genre, and which sometimes nods towards other styles such as jazz, rock, folk, easy listening and Spanish music, but without actually becoming any of these. The more usual indiepop instrumentation appears alongside piano, organ, harpsichord, vibraphone, strings and mandolin. I have always loved the sound of the harpsichord and have often thought that if I was in a band there would have to be a harpsichord player and probably also a violinist. The use of harpsichord, along with a string section, in Rich and Strange, is very effective. I first heard Dilettante on the Matinée Summer Splash compilation, it was one of my favourite tracks there, so it's great to hear it's on here too. Whitsun Bride includes mandolin, courtesy of Jessica's mother Jackie, which gives a trad folk feel to the song. Again I find this effective, especially due to the fact that traditional folk is one of my very favourite kinds of music.
Perhaps a touch too 'posh' for many, Jessica's lyrics describe characters and lifestyles that would no doubt be alien to the majority of people who were educated at yer average comprehensive school (that'd include me then). But whilst Jessica doesn't sing about things we can all identify with, I must say I like her music a lot. Grim and gritty urban realism this isn't; if this is what you want from a band, the Would-Be-Goods are not the band for you. But if it's witty escapism for grownups you're after, look no further. I believe there is another album out shortly, again a joint Matinée and Fortuna Pop! release, which I'm very keen to hear.

In stark contrast to the Would-Be-Goods is Milky Wimpshake, who are very much punk, in politics if not entirely in music. Coming from a very left-wing angle, their songs poke fun at intellectuals, Tories (or those with Tory-ish politics), middle class people and so forth.
Pete from Milky Wimpshake used to co-run Slampt. The basic idea behind this label and their Fast Connection zine was very pro-underground and they believed that zines should be something very different from the mainstream press. I totally agree with this. However they took this ethic a bit too far for my taste and often came across as indie extremists, eg boycotting all records with barcodes in case they were secret major label releases. They also had a feature on tape labels in one of their zines, which classed the people that run them as 'geeky boys' - a very worrying generalisation. Even so, Pete's fervent support of underground bands is to be applauded, even if he was a tad exclusionist in his support for underground music for my liking. In my view it is possible to be pro-underground without being anti-everything else; the way my own zine works is with a big emphasis on true independent music, but if I hear something on a big label that I like (which to be honest rarely happens), I'll write about that too. I myself am extremely sceptical of the 'money before music' attitude and the obsession with image and fashion the majors have, but if a band I like signs to a major I'm not going to give up on them just like that. I'm perhaps too much of a music fan to be overtly political about music. The only time I would ever let politics get in the way of my views on music is if a band were racists or some other sort of bigot. Then I would want absolutely nothing to do with them. This isn't to say zines SHOULDN'T be political about music though, it is of course a good thing that there is a diversity of opinion in the zine scene. Expressing my own opinion on zines should not be interpreted as dictating that all zines should have the same attitude as my own!
Milky Wimpshake's Lovers Not Fighters CD on Fortuna Pop! has guess what on the cover - a BARCODE! This itself proves that not all labels that use barcodes are funded by multinational companies. A few years ago I'd probably have accused Milky Wimpshake of hypocrisy for having a record out with a barcode, but perhaps it's actually a case of them becoming less militant as they have got older, or perhaps the barcode was entirely Fortuna Pop!'s doing and the band had no say in it? Otherwise the cover looks straight out of a 1980s fanzine with its typewritten text littered with crossings out, and its Letraset titles - this must be the first record I've seen with Letraset on the cover since the early 90s. On the front is the distinctive artwork of Rachel Holborow, one half of Slampt.
I once read an interview with Pete in which he said he liked The Sea Urchins - now that's a sign of good taste! And Milky Wimpshake are themselves a good band. There are two cover versions here; the Spraydog song comes as no surprise, the Phil Ochs song does, but they make both songs sound like their own. They have a song called Second Generation Middle Class Dropout, which is described as autobiographical. Seems then that Pete's disdain for the middle classes comes from actually having experienced that background himself once. Musically Milky Wimpshake do upbeat, melodic, fuzzy pop. It's a lot of fun. They might not be too fond of intellectuals but this doesn't mean they can't turn out songs with an intelligent sense of humour. Whilst it's witty it's not pretentious, the subject matter deals with everyday life - romance, getting drunk, the UK political scene, and stereotypes of people we have all experienced. A handful of songs deviate from the band's normal sound; Lovers Not Fighters is a kind of 'hillbilly indiepop' with banjo and violin, and the banjo also puts in an appearance on White Liberal Guilt. Then there's the acoustic protest song Jack Ass, which comes down on Jack Straw like a ton of bricks. Lyrically it's typical of the band, it's just the arrangement that's a little different. All in all, a really enjoyable album.

Contact elpresidente@fortunapop.com for more info on the label.

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