We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

U Can!

from Can't Get Started by Pete Um

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £1 GBP

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    17 track selection by NOCHEXXX of various Um works with hand screenprinted sleeve, lyric sheet and sleevenotes in thick PVC sleeve.

    Pete Um
    Can't Get Started
    Grist 0005

    It takes a while to enter Pete Um's world: his songs are brief, dense and ramshackle; he revels in a reviewer's dismissal of his live act as "grindingly awkward shithop", and wears his self-doubt on his sleeve. Can't Get Started is an ironic title, for Um is prolific across videos, blogs and music. But this 10", a condensed Best Of, is a remarkable, coherent document, an excellent introduction to Um's misfit creativity. Whoever compiled this, possibly associate Nochexxx, interviewed alongside Um for an article mapping the Alternative Cambridge music scene (The Wire 325) - has selected melancholy gems rather than eccentric freakouts. These 17 songs don't waste your time, and repeated listenings underscore Um's talent for crafting poetic vehicles carrying memories of Holger Czukay and Syd Barrett.
    One of Barrett's last songs was "Wolfpack", and here is Um's "Wolves", in which the pursuing pack seems to be music itself. In spite of its howling and chanting, the song is delicate, a study of vulnerability. The subject recurs in "Built To Spill", and "You Will Never Let Me Fall" has Syd-alike vocals, bathed in reverb and quivering guitar: "I'm a slow bomb, I'm a sad boy, but I will cure myself before you cure me." Once you accept Um's ad hoc working methods, realisation dawns that there isn't a weak track here, and if there's a fault, it's that everything is too short. Um has an answer for that too: the sexual innuendo of "That's Too Close", in which a girl with sparkly lipstick chides him for not making his songs longer.

    Clive Bell in The Wire

    Includes unlimited streaming of Can't Get Started via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 2 days
    edition of 250 

      £9.99 GBP

     

lyrics

If you feel you value truth
I would advise getting loose
If you want to do a song
Just try not to take too long
You can jam by yourself
You don't need nobody else
We all individual
You can edit out the smell
You can fuck with luck
You can walk like a truck
You don't need to follow fashion
With your pants full of passion
You can show them where to go
By walking out the door
You can smile like a knife
You can change somebody's life
You can, you can, you can.

credits

from Can't Get Started, released June 19, 2012

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Pete Um Cambridge, UK

"A master of the miniature electro-acoustic song-poem, a form he has more or less invented and crystallised himself, his work displays a sardonic wit combined with a healthy misanthropy, in marvellous micro-collages of voice, instruments, samples, and electronics."

-Ergo Phizmiz
... more

contact / help

Contact Pete Um

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Pete Um, you may also like: