It's basically just sex music

Crude Futures - So So Modern

2010-03-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

So So Modern's live shows are a thing of calculated, intense beauty. Taking to the stage in primary colours, clad in shamanistic cowls and cloaks and with banks of primal synthesisers in front of them they tap into our collective cultural memory banks in an almost quasi-pagan ritual of Day-Glo pantheism. Playful and subversive, these Antipodeans have been kicking around the UK and Europe for a while now and released a singles and EPs compilation in 2008 (Friends and Fires + 000 EPs which was also released via Transgressive), but this is their first album proper. Having toured extensively they have honed their skills across the best part of a thousand shows, and their music is predictable tightly rendered as a result. Herein lies the perennial question surrounding the majority of over hyped, strategically positioned modern music; can an exciting live proposition bridge the gap and deliver on their promise and make a first album that doesn't quell the hype or incite the naysayers?

Across the album a template emerges of taut, angular post-punk interspersed and lacerated with driving polyrhythms, gang vocals, Afrobeat guitars and math-rock pretensions. If we're going to be cruel, So So 2005...there is even some woodblock hitting malarkey on 'Be Anywhere' that wouldn't sound out of place on a Rapture record. But to paint them as revivalists would be disingenuous and unfair. Immediacy is the key on tracks such as 'The Worst Is Yet To Come', which is a blast of off-kilter synths and cacophonous vocals, like Liars on uppers, which slowly convalesces into something much prettier and harder to pin down. The drone of noise that welcomes 'Be Anywhere' offer a dislocated, unhinged texture while the gleefully humanist approach of 'Island Hopping/Channel Crossing' is nicely counterpointed by a breakdown that slows and regresses the song to its core element.

Where the album really makes sense is on the longer, more progressive tracks. Opener 'Life In The Undergrowth' possesses tautly meshed guitar lines that are underpinned with a disconcerting wash of synthesis that gradually weaves in and out of key. Oscillating bleeps of noise, pulsing bass and a reverb soaked guitar figure add to a sense of tumultuous decay. 'Berlin' is the touchstone, the heart of the album. Rhythmic sequences of motorik arpeggios collide, eliding time. Euphoric rushes of synthesis and guitar rise to meet each other before a subtle key change stretches and elongates the song, eventually completely folding it in on itself, providing a glimmering layer of sound that expands then contracts. It captures the mechanised, industrialised pulse of a city; white lights on grey concrete, the sense of movement and of being part of something but also the converse of this - the 'lack' that is at its heart. Connection with the environment around is is promoted but there is a stilted emotional distance present. 'Dusk And Children' is in comparison languorous in tone, structured around a deceptively simple combination of harmony, melody and samples that eventually surges into a crescendo of optimistic rapture.

Music can be an aurally coruscating experience, and this trio of songs feature an ambivalence of melody and emotion that is both invigorating and perplexing. In their words the album "explores the burden of optimism in a constantly 'apocalyptic' reality". Without wishing to further burden the arid wasteland of semi-intellectualism their music is a response to the pressure of postmodernity and its incumbent cultural practices. It's all about togetherness. Or something like that.

Crude Futures is an album of immense promise and satisfaction that is contagious, fun and involving while the signposts for exciting new tangents are also evidential. There are blemishes and rough edges, but that is part of their charm, and amongst the differing and varied musical spheres traversed here they are on their way to finding that elusive sonic identity all of their own.

This article was originally produced for http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/. To view the music review of Crude Futures by So So Modern and to explore the rest of the site, please click on the article title.

Valentine's Day.....

2010-02-14T06:45:00.000-08:00

So yeah, it's Valentine's Day. Daniel Snaith knows where it's at. If you like this then go here to listen to a new mp3 provided by the lovely people at The Line Of Best Fit.

Shameless, abhorrent self-promotion - Jairus promo vid

2010-02-14T06:28:00.000-08:00

Yes yes yes it is disgusting and a throroughly despicable act but someone has to do it. We've all stuck our own name into Google at some point, this is basically the same. So here is a promo video for my band Jairus' EP which will be due out in 2010. The song is called 'Turn, Heel', I'm tickling the ivories and it is fun fun fun.

Rotten Pear - Andrew Vincent

2010-02-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

Andrew Vincent is proof positive of the sheer abundance and quality of the music scene in Canada over the last decade, ably demonstrated by The Line Of Best Fit's very own regular feature Oh! Canada. Little known outside his homeland, Rotten Pear is Vincent's fifth album and the first after a five year recording hiatus. Bereft of his former backing band the Pirates, the album is lent an air of intimacy by being recorded at home in Toronto with producer Jarrett Bartlett.

The album veers between gently plucked accoustic numbers and a reconfiguration of garage rock, replete with primal stand up drumming and scratchy guitar, which is counterpointed with Vincent's baleful vocals. Occasionally rambling lyrivs are wedded to subtle subversions of the construct of 'rock' music across the album, culminating in the friction between the subject matter of 'Going Out Tonight' and its breezy, soulful execution. Elsewhere the gossamer thin strands of melody that shift and sway during 'Sleep To Dream' offer a subtle change of pace, as does the cello and woodwind driven title track. Perhaps the only misstep is the cover of Kate Bush's 'Hounds Of Love' which closes the album. The ubiquity of both the original and the Futureheads version mean that while the song isn't 'untouchable' subsequent versions will have to bear comparison. Woozy and somnabulant the song is stripped down to its core elements. A diverting if not entirely successful version, but Vincent has plenty more arrows in the quiver across the album.

Rotten Pear is at its strongest in its striking use of narrative, shifting seamlessly between different modes and themes throughout. The narrators are good time boys with a beer in hand and a quick quip on their lips, losers, drifters, vagrants while the songs are populated by acne scarred youths, wannabe songwriters and down at heel drug addicts. There is a filmic sensibilty to the songs, portrayed in the diner scene in 'Diane' and the barely contained violence of the bar brawl in 'Under Your Thumb'. The existential tension of 'Going Out Tonight' and the irony laden 'Canadian Dream' display a keen sense of Vincent's personality, a Canadian Sisyphus watching a clay covered beer can roll back down to the plain. But while the songs display a weariness and melancholy, Vincent always conjures the right turn of phrase to add warmth to the most desperate situation.

The songs find expression in an emotional, tragic-comic vein. Vincent writes intelligently with clarity of purpose and melody, and across the breadth of the album proves himself adept at capturing the sensation and minutiae of a situation. It is this precisness of the record that lends it such warmth.

"In a sports bar in the middle of town, all the guys gather round, With their sweat pants and acne scars, one by one, they ask you out" ('Hi-Lo')

Vincent's voice has a delightfully lived-in appeal, full of a gentle old-fashioned naivete and the album is testament that a good song and melody needn't claw at the face of your consciousness but can gradually envelop you with a sense of beauty and control. Self-deprecating, funny, occasionally adventurous, nostalgic and beautiful - Rotten Pear proves to be Vincent's most satisfying and complete release to date, mining a deep seam of emotion and experience which deserves a wider audience for his work.

This article was originally produced for http://thelineofbestfit.com/. To read the music review of Rotten Pear by Andrew Vincent and explore the rest of the site, please click on the article title.

Boys of Summer - Andrew Vincent

2010-02-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

This is a little treat for all of you that may occasionally happen upon this blog and find it a right laugh-riot. Things in the real world took their toll as 2009 got old, so I haven't been able to write anything for a long time. However somewhere above this beautiful ukulele cover of Don Henley's magnificent 'Boys of Summer' there is a review of AV's latest album, and a wonderful little pindrop it is in the world of processed, mechanised sounds. Enjoy.

Part Chimp - The Bar Below, Folkestone 18/09/09

2009-10-11T05:04:00.000-07:00

You know what you will get with Part Chimp. Noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise...Noise like a vacuum, sucking and bellowing. Guitars so overdriven they sound as if they have started oscillating. Thunderous, frenetic drums above a groove-laden fuzzed up, fucked up bass sound. Monolithic riffs. Instruments and equipment that looks archaic, as if they’ve been dredged from another era, perfectly matching their primal sound. There is succinctness and clarity of purpose to their noisemongering. The fat is trimmed, expunged, obliterated. Within that vacuum, there are waveforms of noise you can lose yourself in. Imagine how your testicles would react if confronted with me in pink lingerie. There's a picture on my profile. Check it. That’s right; they would shrivel and try to burrow into your prostate. Or if you're a lady, your lady parts would die. A similar reaction occurs to your ears when confronted with Part Chimp live; they attempt to invert themselves against wave after wave of sound, to find solace within your cranium. The same is true of other ‘noise’ bands, but Part Chimp are different. Secretly they would like to a pop band, because secreted in every song is a melody of transcendental harmoniousness. You just have to wallow across the sonic mire to get to it. But it’s there, waiting.

New material is aired and sounds great, alongside earlier songs like 'God Machine' which was fantastic; the chiming guitars and upper-register vocals showcasing their more melodic side. Of the new songs the trio of 'Dirty Sun', 'Sweet T' and 'Tomorrow Midnite' all possess that dirty ass groove and grasp of dynamic that make Part Chimp such a good band.

Get Color - HEALTH

2009-09-26T01:32:00.001-07:00

The inference is present in the album title: GET COLOR. On their debut record HEALTH appeared wilfully obtuse, ready to astound us with their noise credentials and communal sensibilities. On their follow up they leave behind to an extent the harsh and occasionally atonal metallic passages of noise and bombast, massaging them instead into stricter structural frameworks. It could be said that they eschewed beauty in their earlier work. Now splashes of colour and warmth are added to the dislocations to great effect.

The signs of this were first sown back in March with the release of ‘Die Slow’ as a single. On release I was unsure as to whether it is a continuation of the work started by remix album Disco or a signpost toward a brave new direction. It sounds not unlike NIN without the chest-beating, or if somebody had enervated Drum’s Not Dead era Liars from their (beautiful) but somnabulant tone poems. This tells only part of the story. It stands alone but is perfectly absorbed within the album. Techno-metal sounds like the worst subgenre on earth, but it isn’t that far from the truth. A dirty arpeggiated synth announces the track before being overpowered by a pounding beat and bestial guitars. This is then juxtaposed with the prettiness of the hook laden chorus that drags it from sounding inhumane to something much more carnal and elementary.

Suitably wrong footed by HEALTH displaying an unabashed commercial nous on ‘Die Slow’ (they admitted in interviews that it was written to be a “Top 10 single”), the rest of the album is a refinement of their aesthetic. Opener ‘In Heat’ commences with a hazy, amorphous, indistinct passage of noise that is brutally interrupted by tribalistic drums and glass-like guitars.

HEALTH’s output is industrial music in the way that This Heat or Throbbing Gristle could be considered industrial. ‘Death+’ takes an agglomeration of samples then adds shimmering synths, descending and traversing and playfully interacting with the rest of the song. Cut and shut noise, barely audible processed screams – the whole thing becomes a vast, dissonant edifice of sound. This is explored further on ‘Eat Flesh’, with harsh slabs of metallic noise that sound like the death cry of a T-1000, gradually ossified beyond recognition. These intrusions are perfectly amalgamated into the mix. The abrasions are still intact but with a greater accuracy and precision and beauty. A simple dichotomy it may be, but it is clear and present on tracks like 'Nice Girls', with its aching melody ripped apart by thunderous drums and face-ripping shrieks.

The album contains many beautiful moments amongst the abrasive elements. The sunclouds of noise and dream like plateaus of ‘Before Tigers’ are echoed in the brief interludes of ‘Severin’ (named after the Banshees bassist or the ex-Aberdeen midfielder perhaps?) and the fathoms deep, dub-like moments of ‘We Are Water’. Both latter tracks contain exhilarating guitar breaks like shards of broken glass that wouldn’t sound out of place on Metal Box. Album closer ‘In Violet’ is the longest song on the record and throughout its six minutes fourteen seconds of ambient drones, glistening electronica and spectral atmospherics it conjures vast panoramas and open spaces before slowly being consumed by looped synths. Austere, fragile, beautiful.

There is a detachment in the melodic abstractions of Jake Dzusik's vocals. Amidst the chaos they appear ethereal and heavenly – processed, mutated, androgenised and amputated from their source. A layer of texture rather than a focal point, they anchor the music and provide respite from the uncompromising nature of the music. Unfathomable though the lyrics may be, the melodies are resonant and have a humanist element to them.

Impeccably programmed and arranged, Get Color is the moment that it all makes sense. Nine defined songs that both standalone and combine seamlessly. Their debut was self-recorded over nine months at LA venue The Smell, whereas this time around they have taken the traditional route and recorded in a studio with an engineer. Whether that has led to a newfound clarity of purpose is unclear. Spending nine months of your lives obsessing over pitch correction and drum sounds can probably take it out of you after a while. What is a surety is that HEALTH have stepped up on this record, and released an exciting, cerebral triumph of an album. It really is THAT good.

This article was originally produced for http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/. To view the album review of Get Color by HEALTH on the site please click on the article title.

Everything Goes Wrong - Vivian Girls

2009-09-25T10:31:00.001-07:00

Comprised of a trio of female Brooklynites, Vivian Girls' eponymous debut was over in twenty one minutes, a heady reconfiguration of girl group harmonies, garage rock and 80s era bands on the Sub Pop/SST rosters forged into an identifiable whole. It sold out on their own label Mauled By Tigers in less than ten days, leading to a re-issue by California based label In The Red. On their sophomore release they promise a longer and darker listen, and to a certain extent this is realised. At thirty six minutes it isn't a stretch, even by modern attention spans and it is only marginally more introverted than its predecessor.

A hazy chord doused in reverb announces the album opener 'Walking Alone At Night'. So far so C86 you may think. What stops it sounding like some form of cultural artefact is its overarching energy and dynamism. Each song contains a cacophony of melody that hits you from every side and points you towards a new primitivism. There is something thrilling about that classic 'rock' lineup, especially in the right hands, and this record proves that such limitations are easily surmountable. From the four drum clicks that announce the song proper I'm hooked. By the time the second track 'I Have No Fun' breezes past barely three minutes have elapsed. The old one-two. Cassie Ramone's vocals trip out of her mouth, hardly legible – but that's not the point. The words create a sensation, a feeling, rather than containing some didactic message or truths. Vivian Girls possess the ability to make me realise that the gap between my current self and my teen self is ever widening, and that remembrance of those times is receding at a furious rate.

Everything Goes Wrong contains various songs that are, for want of a better phrase, torch songs. 'Tension' is the most obvious Spector-esque tune on display, albeit a homespun, lo-fi version; those pounding, rhythmic toms are offset by echo laden vocals, stretched to breaking point and minor key guitars. 'The End' features the most sultry harmonies on offer over an exhilarating, opiate rush that more than echoes Hüsker Dü at their best. Ramone's vocal is especially beguiling, while the ramshackle guitar break could have been lifted from any early Meat Puppets recording (see also that four, maybe five at a push, note guitar break on the jangly 'Can't Get Over You'). The chord progression, awkward vocal phrasing and slow beat of album closer 'Before I Start To Cry' will have you scratching your head while picking up a copy of Weezer's debut and thinking; “What the fuck happened to these guys, why can't they write songs this good any more?”

While listening to the album many different influences clamour for your attention but it never becomes derivative. Music that obviously channels past influences creates a doubled image – inside the reception of the music lie false memories, attempts to commute with the past and recover what is lost. This will always be the case with acts that have revivalist tendencies (that isn't the backhanded compliment that it sounds like), but while others may convey an elegiac relationship with the past Everything Goes Wrong is alive. Despite the properties you can attribute to it, the album is nostalgic without being reverential. Recent releases by Deerhunter, Crystal Stilts and others point to the fact that the locus of 60s girl groups is still hugely influential (especially in the States) and this is evidenced in the teen melodramas of Vivian Girls' songs. But it is testament to the songwriting that you no longer just think of the Shangri La's filtered through Nuggets-esque garage rock when you hear them, but think instead of Vivian Girls.

The thirteen songs on display may be variations on a theme, but they are an expansion of their excellent debut. By their second album Vivian Girls have carved a sonic niche for themselves which may be limiting and the frames of reference borrowed but it is one that remains evergreen. Questions linger on whether they are authentic/inauthentic, but when music is this good you forget everything else and just wish you were watching them in some salubrious Brooklyn joint.

This article was originally produced for http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/. To view the album review of Everything Goes Wrong by Vivian Girls on the site please click on the article title.

Fiction Of Her Dreams - Dial M For Murder

2009-09-17T02:06:00.000-07:00

I am going to clear the decks at the start of this review because otherwise it will become suffused with comparison and analysis of Dial M For Murder's fine debut album will be irreparably damaged as a result. And yet...they are heavily indebted to a slew of reference points and similar sonic palette to an American band whose name begins with 'I' and whose singer has recently released a solo album under a pseudonym. There, the weight is off...

On their debut Fiction OF Her Dreams Swedish duo David Ortenlof and Andy Lantto have conjured an album of (in their own words) “dark wave indietronica”. Think brooding, plangent minor key guitar chords, tired synths and clipped vocals infused with a surprising lightness of touch. As the album progresses there is a gradual widening and contrast between the dolorous haze of the lower key numbers and the deft indie-pop of previous single 'Oh No' and songs such as 'Hell No', all fuzztone driven bass and angular, jagged guitar.

What Dial M For Murder capture so clearly in their songs is a sense of emotional vacuity, of sleaze, of the underbelly of a dark sepulchral city someplace in the frozen north of Europe. Aesthetic is obviously important for this duo and they capture that sense of claustrophobic, somnabulant chiaroscuro perfectly throughout the record, with the swirling atmospherics of the maudlin 'NYC (Now You Care)' in particular perfectly matching its tale of disconnectedness and isolation.

If I was cruel I would say that this album has arrived five years behind the curve. Brevity is the trick; the ten songs that comprise the album are over in less than thirty minutes. This may sound self-effacing – after all if an album's good surely it should last longer. But structurally the songs are simplistic, and having dispensed with a drummer the lack of naturalism and instinctual feel are replaced with a military precision which suit the short rushes of music.

Comparisons between Dial M For Murder and other bands of this ilk are valid, but unfair and injudicious. It may lazily anchor a review but it is not as if Dial M For Murder are completely hamstrung by their sonic references. It also fails to appreciate that Fiction Of Her Dreams is an album of ten excellently realised dark indie goodies.

This review of Dial M For Murder's debut album Fiction Of Her Dreams was created for the lovely chaps at www.thelineofbestfit.com. Wanna see the review on the site? Click on the article title and then explore the rest of the excellent posts on display.

Seasons In The Sun - Nirvana

2009-09-10T17:44:00.001-07:00

This is amazing, why haven't I seen this before...I love how ramshackle it all sounds, the obvious timing issues, Cobain's rudimentary drum pattern and cracked vocals. The home movie footage is pretty aces too.

Part Chimp begin tour in Folkestone 18/09/09

2009-09-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

Part Chimp begin a new slog round this sceptred isle in support of their new album Thriller (released 21st September) in sunny ole Folkestone at The Bar Below on Friday 18th September. I for one will be attending. Come without ear plugs if you're a masochistic motherbitch. It will be aces.

All Wheels That Have Turned

2009-09-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Frank could not tell what was perturbing him more; the fact that his car would not start, or the body strewn across the bonnet. Fear gripped him, leaving him shaking and stricken with terror. It made the most mundane of tasks seem insurmountable to him, a feat too great for a mere mortals hands. Eventually a semblance of calm began to stake its territory in his troubled mind, led his trembling limbs and guided his hand to the key still in the ignition. Start the car, reverse, and drive away. It seemed so simple, so casual, and yet so remote.

He tried not to look at the face inches from his. He already knew that the boy was dead. Fear lingered at the edge of his consciousness, terrible and pervasive, refusing to be cowed into submission. His hands gripped the steering wheel. It left his hands bleached a deadly white pallor. He felt the blood coarse through his veins, rushing at the temples. His body had never felt so alive and so inactive. Short though his breathing was he still felt as though all his other senses had been heightened.

But this passing fancy soon left him. Frank felt a broken husk of a man, a withered shell. With the greatest of efforts he undid his seatbelt, opened the door and stepped out. The fresh air hit him immediately. It enlivened him; the sound of the breeze rushing through the leaves had never sounded so melodious. He took a deep draught of the air and felt his chest expand and contract as his breathing returned to him.

He pushed the door to, fearful that the sound of it clanging shut would disturb the still of the early morning. Frank looked around him. He had come to a halt on a narrow country road, wooded on both sides. The trees were dense and no light yet penetrated them. He had driven all night, paying no heed to his road. He had no clue as to his whereabouts.

The sun had not yet risen fully, but in the cold gloom Frank could make out enough details to give him an inkling as to where he could be. Above him was a narrow red brick bridge. Its cold austerity was purely Victorian. Frank could perceive a path, faint yet distinguishable, from the road that led upwards.

He made for the path and, after his jaded legs had become accustomed to the incline, made it to the apex of the bridge. Here he found blighted relics of a railway line that had once passed through the woods, rusting and forgotten. But not by all. He peered forth and as his eyes became inured to the murky light he saw that deep rutted paths led from the old line, which was raised from the woodland floor. Here and there lay agglomerations of leaves, which Frank absent-mindedly stumbled into, but no other sound pierced the silence. He turned and walked to the edge of the bridge. Below him was his car, with the body of the young boy spread across the bonnet and windshield. Had he knocked him down or had he jumped from the bridge? He could not remember.

The empty and silent wood unnerved him. Frank scrambled down the slope and moved back towards his vehicle. The gloom was lifting. Somewhere the sun was shining on a verdant field but as yet no shaft of light invaded the copse.

Frank was not a big man, in fact he was probably of below average build, but as he approached the car he seemed to shrink even further. It was as if he was willing his body to fold in on itself, to withdraw from the terrible scene in front of him.

Yet curiosity is a terrible thing. It has destroyed men, caused the ruination of countless lives, led to death, disease, starvation and, eventually, dust. Men of much greater moral fibre, fortitude and application than Frank had been laid low by their curiosity. It had led them into dark holes, places populated by sullied peoples, to dim avenues of the mind and soul.

The sensible course of action was laid out in front of Frank. It would mean an admission of culpability, of guilt, a stain on his persona. His whole life thus far had been an attempt to predicate his existence and control all outside his events. Though a wholly impossible and futile exercise, he felt it important and completely necessary to achieve this.

The sensible and proper course of action was one phone call away. A divulgence of fault that would lead to acts of contrition between himself and those that he loved. His public and private faces would have to meet. He pulled his phone from his pocket. No signal coverage. Frank turned his head to look at the boy. He was slim and couldn’t be more than sixteen. His body possessed that terrible fragility of adolescence. Frank saw himself in the stalk like limbs and shuddered. He reached out his hand; it quivered as it touched skin. The boy was still warm, but it was a fleeting trace. Soon it would drain from the body until there were no last vestiges left.

Frank walked away from the car, rubbing his fingers. Where they had made contact with skin they itched. He felt revulsion subdue him. He looked at his hand. It looked as if it had been blanched by the contact. The morning gloom was lifting. As it cleared glimmers of light would soon fill the wood and road. Far off Frank heard the echoing of birdsong, twittering as they awoke from slumber. The gentle, pealing sound had a palliative effect on him. His heart rate reduced and he felt the blood in his veins begin to flow a little easier.

The road rose as it approached the bridge, so that by standing under it he found himself on the crest of a hill. Looking back the way he came he couldn’t see far, only the road for a few hundred yards twisting into the dense wood. Yet before him the wood opened up and he could see across miles of farmland, green and brown and yellow like a vast checkerboard. Already on the horizon was a dim haze, testament to summer’s intrusion into the autumn months. Frank shivered. His skin felt thin and paltry, he was sure he has never felt as cold as he was now. Gathering his jacket about his shoulders he had a faint fantasy of escaping into the sunshine that slowly spread across the land. He felt a chill within his bones that seemed to attack his very core.

Frank felt the need to think, to be alone. What was to be his course of action? He started walking down the hill, his movements slow and peculiar, until he reached the edge of the wood. The sun was continuing its inexorable rise, zealously striving for the heights. Frank wished he could still its course, so that all remained in darkness. Out there all the land was laid bare; it seemed as if there was not another place of shelter for miles. Frank turned back to the wood. Inside was a haven. He lowered his gaze to the floor in order to avoid looking at the car. Feet guiding him blindly he walked back into the trees.

(This was a piece of writing I submitted for a short story competition a couple of years back, thought y'all might like to read it)

Temporary Pleasure - Simian Mobile Disco

2009-09-01T14:50:00.001-07:00

The second album from Simian Mobile Disco duo and producers James Ford and Jas Shaw brings with it the familiar baggage of heightened expectations and a plethora of guest vocalists. The division between the electroclash mixes and the purer dance tunes of their debut Attack Decay Sustain Release are now more clearly demarcated. Indeed their albums betray their past allegiances in indie band Simian as they both inhabit a traditional album format, rather than their wide-ranging, scopious DJ sets. This has always been the problem with 'dance' records – stranded from the 12” format most songs feel isolated, a collection of songs rather than a seamless whole.

Moroder-esque throbbing synth bass welcomes the album on 'Cream Dream' before Gruff Rhys continues the electronica work he began with Super Furry Animals and carried throughout the recent Neon Neon album. The retro stylings pulsate and resonate. Groove, texture and rhythm are instantly asserted across the album, but while the dynamics are all in place it feels listless and forced.

On an album such as this the quality and performance of the guest vocalists is paramount. After Rhys' crooning, Chris Keating's stream of consciousness delivery on 'Audacity of Huge' is a welcome change of pace and his Patrick Bateman-esque lament just about stays the right side of satire. Beth Ditto, in a move reminiscent of Hercules vs Love Affair recruiting Antony Hegarty for 'Blind', discovers her inner Candy Staton on 'Cruel Intentions' amidst glistening and perfectly realised programming. It is the standout track, and Ditto's fine vocal turn is far better than anything off the latest Gossip album. Elsewhere Alexis Taylor and Telepathe guest on 'Bad Blood' and 'Pinball' respectively but both songs lack the requisite tension, drama or release to hold your interest.

'10000 Horses Can't Be Wrong' is the best of the three tracks without a guest vocalist, with its glitch beeps and cascading analogue synths. By the time you get to 'Synthesise' however the lack of variety on display starts to wear the listener down. An album shouldn't be a chore to listen to, should it? In the past SMD haven't just blended genres as much as they have ravaged and pillaged leaving hulking husks in their wake, but here they tread a variety of well worn dance furrows.

As an album Temporary Pleasure provides just that; a glossy, unadulterated, voluminous façade covers the work, but it fails to engage beyond this on either an emotional or structural level. Again, it feels forced rather than instinctual. There is nothing wrong with the production work, but song structure, melody and a sense of excitement and narrative are desired in a record and these are only provided on rare occasions. Much of what is on offer is muscular and metronomic dance, supposedly designed to be played in sweaty Balearic clubs or amongst the dross and bilge of city bars. But sneak on a Chemical Brothers record after this and you'll see where Ford and Shaw are going wrong.

This album review of Temporary Pleasure by Simian Mobile Disco was written for the lovely chaps at The Line of Best Fit. Click on the article title to read the review on the site, or go to www.lineofbestfit.com.

BARCELONA!!!

2009-08-16T03:46:00.000-07:00

I've just spent the last week in Barcelona, hence no posts, but have plenty in the pipeline so expect regular updates soon.

Pebbledashed with idiocy

2009-08-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

Could these avaricious bastards be any more retarded? I have watched this video so many times this week, it is full on car crash television.

Reasons why I hate this;

It took them eight years to write this shit. Ooh it's about shared experiences, and at one point they had to get jobs in admin as they couldn't get jobs in the music industry. That is probably due to a chronic lack of talent chaps.

In five minutes they namecheck (in relation to their sound); glam, late 70s soul (ie the glossy, proto-disco soul), punk, Iggy Pop, James Brown, David Bowie, Shirely Bassey, The Smiths and Brian Eno.

They describe their approach to music making as "knocking up some beats...mashing a hybrid of styles". Oh I cringed deeply. Then they go on to say they're like"Delia Smith style, PsycheDelia Smith". That probably took him years to think of. "Oh I'll definitely throw that pithy comment casually into the first big interview we do because I'm a massive spaffcock". Then they talk of how they made sure they were all in their tiny studio together, even if they didn't need to be because they weren't playing a part. Umm...that's what bands are supposed to do numbnuts. They surely are the most moronic band I have ever had the misfortune to watch be interviewed.

Sony BMG banned this video when first posted, and the original has the best quotes - including one about how they're about having fun and liken themselves to going to work in fancy dress or drinking mojitos at 11am. The frontman also likens himself to Brian Eno in that he is not a musician and just goes in and bashes around with things until he gets a sound.

There is a fifth member somewhere, but she seems to have been erased from history. Only some arms and bangles still exist in the video.

'Just Because' and 'Lord Forgive Me' are apparently quasi-religious odes with all the allegorical depth of a pool of concrete.

Someone's put them up to this - the whole video is a stream of buzz words and themes, namechecks and hyperbole. It has to be a viral. Because otherwise they are the biggest cast iron idiots in the world.

To Be Still EP - Alela Diane

2009-08-04T09:43:00.000-07:00

Nevada City is a township of just over 3,000 in rural Northern California but one that has been populated by artists, hippies, Senators, actors, poets and writers. It also was the home of the first Californian Gold Rush where a huge seam of gold was discovered by prospectors, “found by the old buzzards who roamed the hills” like those in Central City from On The Road.

Alela Diane is one of the souls that inhabit Nevada City. This is important because Diane's music is rooted in traditional forms of American music. Her ouevre is an evocation of pine covered mountainsides, miners shacks, campfires with beans and franks cooking, plateaus and plains. The Sierra Nevada is deep in Steinbeck country, so these associations aren't unwarranted and Diane certainly draws upon the topography of California. There is something so evocative for a non-American of these paradigms of Americana that is hard to keep from being swept along by utterances such as “California hills could surely welcome us back home”.

'To Be Still' is the title track from Diane's sophomore album and is a meditative and lyrical evocation of folk pastoralism. This isn't to say that Diane is a revivalist concerned only with antiquity and content to trade on folkisms or archetypes. Instead Diane uses the frameworks of folk and blues without becoming reverential, yielding poignant narratives all told by that beautiful, plaintive voice. 'Fat Mama' sketches a tale of a housewife in a faded backwoods town - “she cooks and she washes and carries on all day long” and acts as a companion piece to 'The Ocean' from To Be Still. There is a similar honesty and depth of interpretation at its heart.

The sparse melancholia of her debut The Pirate's Gospel has been augmented by an increase of, in her own words, “instrumental filigree”. This is particularly the case on 'To Be Still'. Woozy sighs of dreamlike pedal steel guitar accompany Diane's vocal, as clear as still water, alongside finger-picked guitar and mallet drums.

Despite this newfound ornamentation there is an economy in phrase and execution across the three tracks. Diane's diction is less cluttered and an unhurried approach to production and songwriting yields great results. Yes, heritage acts are marketable right now (see also: Fleet Foxes, Joanna Newsom etcetera ad nauseum) but the quality of Diane's work allows her to also transcend any attempt at positioning or typecasting.

This article was originally produced for http://www.thelineofbestfit.com. To view the music review of To Be Still EP by Alela Diane please click on the article title.

Wave If You're Really There - Wave Machines

2009-08-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

2009 has been characterised in it's musical output by a rejection of homogenised, male guitar music. Electropop has become an increasingly important and privileged genre, but one that has its own rules and conventions that few choose to bend. For some genre is an article of faith. Not so Liverpool's Wave Machines. With their background in art collectives and interest in reclaimed instruments (ie obsolete, broken and toy instrumentation) they set out the songs as high-concept conceits.

Electronic and dance music has always possessed a sense of otherness, and Wave Machines capture this sensation intermittently. My initial appraisal of Wave If You're Really There is that it is an album by a band divided in their sense of purpose. They seem unsure whether they want to be a traditional 'indie' band replete with live instrumentation and 4/4 time signatures or a far more rhythmic, sequenced, danceable and electronic affair. I'm not sure that at the end of the album they or I or you will have a definitive idea either.

The album starts with the minimal electronica of 'You Say The Stupidest Things', a lovelorn paean and the considered and infectious 'Carry Me Back To My Home'. Vocalist Tim Bruzon's lyrical witticisms and unconventional delivery mark out these early tracks.

But after this downtempo and somnabulant start the album is polarised by the electro songs such as 'I Go I Go I Go' and 'The Greatest Escape'. These are perfectly serviceable as homages to Heaven 17 or early Depeche Mode, and as long as they are viewed as kitsch they can be enjoyed. We've all read/watched American Psycho, and they are treading the line at times.

It's when they move into late era Orange Juice territory and when they step outside of the naturally limiting boundaries demarcated by the two genres they have chosen to work in that Wave Machines find greater success. The title track combines the two disciplines to a better extent, while the organic throb and hum of closing track 'Dead Houses' captures the reflectivity of the lyrical imagery perfectly. The falsetto of 'I Joined A Union' sounds painful, but the blissful euphoria of the track offsets the wilfully oddball (and bold) vocal style.

But it is 'Keep The Lights On' that is the standout track on evidence here. The air of resignation is tangible as evidenced in the tired synths and syncopated drums, a sense of drama and tension beneath those quiescent and subdued vocals. Then out of nowhere 'Punk Spirit' arrives with its trad chord sequences, washes of piano and Bruzon mournfully lamenting the loss of his “punk spirit”. It is a fine song, but desperately out of character with the surrounding material. It isn't always a bad thing that an album sounds like a mix tape, but going from Arab Strap to the Pet Shop Boys is a leap of faith too far.

Overall then an album of glossy instantaneous delights, strange sequencing and eclecticisms that promises much for the future.

Like this review of Wave If You're Really There by Wave Machines? Then leave a comment, or check out the band's MySpace http://www.myspace.com/mywavemachine.

Sea Sew - Lisa Hannigan

2009-07-30T01:55:00.001-07:00

Those unfamiliar with the name of Lisa Hannigan prior to her nomination for the Mercury Music Prize will almost certainly have heard her vocals, adding lustre to the harmonies of Damien Rice on his albums O and 9. Tales of an acrimonious split are unconfirmed, but veiled comments in interviews with Rice cite the old clichés of a breakdown in communication and a gap in their artistic goals.

Sidling into the limelight, Hannigan for the most part eschews Rice's spartan approach, instead choosing to flesh out her songs with brass, piano, strings and various other vintage and esoteric instrumentation. However she does retain certain structural schematics that fans of Rice will identify; slow building crescendos, a predilection for atmospherics, texture, mood and nuance. But there is a lightness of touch in the arrangements and lyrical themes, and a refusal to correspond to a Celtic archetype, that sets her apart.

What is also evident is the change in Hannigan's vocal work now that she is recording under her own name. On O and 9 her voice was cracked at times, with an incredible amount of drama and tension invested in it. But Sea Sew contains an immediacy and playfulness that is partly down to Hannigan's conversational tone. Hannigan's vocals are also extremely malleable, able to adapt to a broad spectrum of styles. This is important because as the album develops it becomes clear that it falls into three distinct shades; winsome folk, sophisticated pop and dark alt-country.

“I don't know if you write letters or if you panic on the phone, I'd like to call you all the same, if you want, I am here...” So goes 'I Don't Know' and it is an unashamed love song that screams POP CROSSOVER at you in a hysterical voice. Marketing and PR guys and label bosses and award ceremony bigwigs and Barclaycard must be rubbing their hands and eyes and cloacas and visceras and other varied body parts in glee. It is a harmless ballad with a big chorus, but I was left questioning its authenticity. In fact after the opening folk gambit there are various songs that demonstrate pop sensibilities. The best of these is 'Keep It All' - a brooding, pulsing pop song situated somewhere between Feist and Bat For Lashes, with Hannigan's dark vocal take playfully subverting the previous track's unashamed 'pop' proclivity.

The enjoyment of an album often relies on lots of small elements, and this is particularly the case on Sea Sew. The polka feel of 'Sea Song', the brass, banjo and breathy vocals that end 'Splishy Splashy', the wheezing harmonium of 'Lille', the contrapuntal pizzicato violin on 'Keep It All' and then the droning and discordant string work with a glockenspiel playing the counter-melody on 'Courting Blues' aren't just disparate elements but taken together they add to a confident and composed performance.

Hannigan's songs are naturally introspective and concentrate on an inward-looking, self-referential world . This homespun approach, further evidenced in the kitsch crocheted album sleeve, can be charming at times but is unmistakeably twee. The lyrical imagery is peppered with whimsical non-sequiturs, quaint turns of phrase and references to mundanity (knitting, food and tea). Which brings us to the Mercury nomination. What Hannigan has produced is a deeply personal work and it is a shame that she is being desperately shoe-horned into a particular category as a result of the nomination, for it is a strong debut that showcases her delicate voice and imaginative syntax.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/. To read the music review of Sea Sew by Lisa Hannigan on the site please click on the article title.

A Casa Verde - Terry de Castro

2009-07-29T01:46:00.000-07:00

A Casa Verde is the debut solo album from The Wedding Present's American bassist and confirmed Anglophile Terry de Castro. The twelve songs contained on the record are all cover versions, each one originally written and performed by a friend or previous musical collaborator. Released via frontman of The Wedding Present David Gedge's label Scopitones, it is an album that is irretrievably in thrall to its influences yet subtly reworks and reinvents the source material.

Whether a vanity project or a way for an artist to recognise and pay dues to their influences collections of cover versions are an intriguing yet not always successful concept. An obvious antecedent to A Casa Verde would be David Bowie's Pin Ups, a collection of songs by his late 60s contemporaries many of whom he had shared stages or played in studios with.

De Castro refines the original material through her own aesthetic; the sonic palette on each song is extended to include brushed drums, piano, banjo and steel guitar which augment the original framework. And the overall effect is unmistakeably American in its aspect. That de Castro should have chosen such a palette is not surprising, despite the fact that she has spent the best part of the last two decades dividing living between Britain and America. Migrants traditionally suffer three dislocations; loss of roots, linguistic and social. So it is no surprise that for her first solo effort de Castro remodels the majority of these songs with the wide-eyed innocence of Americana.

The album opens with 'Dalliance' and is a case in point. The Wedding Present's original, the opening track from 1991's Seamonsters, was produced by Steve Albini and is in equal parts taut, wiry, frenzied, vascular and rapacious. However de Castro's version reduces the urgency and intensity settling instead for an intimate depiction of the lamentation and heartache that is at the song's locus. Acoustic and pedal steel guitars are gently layered alongside de Castro's hushed vocals which are at once feminine and masculine. The song itself reverses and interrogates gender roles, with Gedge in the original version singing from the viewpoint of a jilted mistress.
This sets the tone for the remainder of the album. The songs occupy a sphere of dark country tinged ballads ('Glorious', 'The Sun Is Always Sweetest' ) or upbeat indie-pop ('America in '54', 'The Great Avalanche'), while torch song 'To Love You' by Goya Dress (who de Castro also played bass with) closes the album. The album is most successful during these quieter and reflective moments, particularly when Astrid Williamson (one of the songwriters de Castro pays homage to) lends her ethereal backing vocals.

A Casa Verde is an attempt to document and interact with a life spent working as a musician. The extensive annotated sleeve notes reveal an intricate web of personal histories, while the whole project is suffused with nostalgia as it peers into and then honours the past. As a listener it was also nostalgic to read band's names long forgotten...Cinerama, Drugstore, Goya Dress, Downpilot and other 90s alternative staples. Suddenly being 15 and reading fanzines you got by sending £1.50 and a stamped addressed envelope to a remote part of the British Isles (more if they sent a cassette) feels a very long time ago.

It must be said that de Castro is comfortable enough in her capabilities as a musician to not be awestruck by either the song or the songwriter's own personal mythology. This means that she is able to sufficiently adapt the relevant songs to her strengths. Making sense of life through music is the spirit of the album, and it is an ethos to be commended. Covers albums are rarely essential but Casa de Verde does standalone as a charming take on myth and an appreciation of the songwriting tradition.

This article was originally produced for http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/. To view the music review of A Casa Verde by Terry de Castro please click on the article title.

Lounge On The Farm 10th - 12th July 2009

2009-07-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY

Music festivals are strange beasts. Don't listen to what anyone tells you, they are the worse place for listening to new music. Stuck inside a diaphanous tent, sides flapping, surrounded by people who have made their own clothes in an attempt to look like Oberon and Titania that are lost in an eddying swirl of hallucinogenics. All this while attempting to listen to a group of people desperately trying to convey their 'sound' to a disparate bunch of half-interested spectators. It isn't the most conducive atmosphere to discover or actually hear new music.

Spread around Merton Farm high above the cathedral city of Canterbury, Lounge on the Farm (LOTF) has grown into a bustling family-orientated festival. Children's wristbands have a space to write their name and their parent's mobile number on. What a lovely idea. And it is actually on a farm. You peer through rusted fences to see men in luminous jackets shovel dung and feed cows. The main stage is in a cowshed. Albeit one that has a bar and vintage chandeliers hanging from the rafters. But still smells of excrement. A strange choice, as you can't just grab a drink and sit and idle away the day watching the main stage acts in the sunshine all day. Hohum.

Things get off to a slow start on Friday. After orientating myself around the small site I settle upon the Sheep Dip tent, the lineup of which promises a whole host of alternative goodies. After the post-rock stylings of Up C Down C fellow Men of Kent Kid Pang's mini-narratives of degenerates, dead rappers, pikies, revolutionaries and varied other pariahs and factotums are welded to a sound that takes its cue from a clutch of great American hardcore bands then fetters it to something much more British. But not in a prosaic or parochial Union flag waving sort of way. It's British in that it looks at the giant morass of shit and flaccidity that we find all around us and laughs in its face. Like Peter Cook fronting Shellac, but not quite.

Casiokids' blend of perfectly honed Scandinavian pop gives way to a euphoric and heady rush that provokes a wellspring of devotion from the crowd. They are the first band to make this feel like a festival, packing out their tent and getting a great reaction from the crowd with their groove-laden-elastic-analogue-bliss. Their live vocals are staggeringly good, particularly on 'Fot I hose' and 'Togens hule'. Over on the main stage Wild Beasts ply their portentous, swollen and frankly risible indie-soul. While the lead singer's efforts to mimic Antony Hegarty are laudable, I have a sneaky suspicion that his vocal affectations cover up a significant lack of talent.

Canterbury is a pretty liberal city, with two large universities and a strong history in progressive academia but because of it's small size and ecclesiastical tradition it has always been seen as a cultural backwater. BBC South East seem to be keen to redress this imbalance with many features appearing of late on the counter-culture scene of the late 60s/early 70s that spawned Soft Machine, Caravan and Gong amongst others. LOTF is the perfect launching point for this campaign of revisionism as Gong headline the Further Field. Formed by Aussie Daevid Allen, they peddle through a back catalogue of vaguely psychedelic soft rock. I was going to stay for the first hour of their set but after a couple of songs decided to grab a drink before watching the headliners in the Cowshed.

The Horrors' second album caught a lot of people off guard. We are so used to bands arriving almost perfectly formed (shaped by PR/marketing firms), drowning in hyperbole, that it is a genuine shock for a band to re-cast themselves. Their gradual evolution from Farfisa organ led Victorian horror schtick to one of the most genuinely exciting British bands was a surprise, but in unshackling themselves from the staccato Gothic shocks of their debut they have become a genuinely exciting band. Don't be fooled by claims that their songs are mere composites.

Tonight's set draws largely from that sophomore album and the band are on it from the start. A drone of oscillating feedback announces 'Mirror's Image' while the squall of guitar and Faris Badwan's commanding yet languid vocals are captured perfectly live. And heck do they look the part. Striding around the stage, black clad and brooding. The dark romanticism of 'Who Can Say' and 'I Only Think Of You' are aired, while the pulsing 'Three Decades' encapsulates the nightmarish vision of their first album but updates the sound. The motorik bass and clipped drums of 'Sea Within A Sea' close the set, with the wash of immersive synthesis accompanying the band as they exit the stage.

There is a desire for acceptance and camaraderie, with frontman Badwan revealing he was born in Sidcup and therefore has Kentish roots. Little does he know that the majority of Kentish folk see Sidcup as nothing but an appropriation, a grey hinterland of tower blocks, grotty newsagents and second hand car dealers before you get into London proper. They also acknowledge that the distance between the crowd and the band contributes to a poor audience reaction, mainly due to the biggest photographer's pit I've ever seen. The only misstep in terms of songs played however is 'I Can Only Think Of You'. On record its dark melancholia is delivered through droning waves of saw-filter synths, but live it becomes dirge like and leads an exodus for the bars and other tents. Shame, because a lot of people missed their now usual encore of songs from Strange House. The energy of 'Count In Fives' and 'Sheena Is A Parasite' eventually transmits itself to the crowd, but despite a strong showing most wander listlessly to the camp site.
SATURDAY

Saturday is also off to a slow start as the site wakes up from the excesses of the night before. Jeremy Warmsley and The Wave Pictures both feature in the Sheep Dip tent and their aching, tender, heartfelt take on indie is both endearing and beautiful. The Temper Trap hail from Melbourne and are fresh from a potentially career-breaking performance at Glastonbury. Expect a big push from their label, but they are a cut above the usual NME/Radio 1/TopShop endorsed indie tripe doled out to the masses. 'Sweet Disposition' may sound like U2 on helium but it has a wonderful vocal performance from frontman Dougy Mandagi and the rest of their set is equally accomplished and hook-laden.

The Aliens are a curious band, capable of producing luxurious and spatial psychedelic sounds while also being incredibly frustrating due to their singular lack of restraint. But tonight they are on form. Early singles such as 'The Happy Song' and 'Magic Man' are performed with aplomb alongside songs from their latest album Luna, a less accessible but by no means less enjoyable collection. Snatches of sets by DJ Format, Tom Middleton and DJ Food in the Hoedown tent are also all enjoyed before heading on to the main event.

Do you remember UK hip hop? Besides Big Dada's excellent stable of artists, there really isn't much out there to recommend now that the scene has fractured and distended and everyone is pretending they knew all about dubstep and grime ages ago. The truth is that hip hop in the UK is the victim of it's own success, conflating to the point of mediocrity. But there is some alabaster in amongst the shit, shining through. Rodney Smith takes the stage, outsized sunglasses, outsized couture tracksuit jacket, outsized....you get the picture. “I've seen the future and the culture seems corroded” is the refrain from opener 'Again & Again' and its loping dub melody finds the crowd unsure. The majority are, slightly sadly, here because of Run Come Save Me and its singles 'Witness' and 'Dreamy Days'. Such is the lot of headlining a festival, and Manuva takes it in his stride, knowing full well what folk have come to hear. After a brief dalliance with that bass intro, 'Witness' is unleashed and the crowd goes predictably mental. Hopefully more of those will investigate Slime And Reason because it is a great record.

Manuva's work is suffused with dread and a sense of dub heaviness. This ensures that those ebullient dancehall singles stand out, but he still manages to sneak in the sonically darker and more developed 'Movements' from his debut. Didactic, playful, imaginative, allegorical – despite being beset with sound problems tonight the set proves Manuva remains one of Britain's brightest talents.

The crowd, much larger than for the previous night's headliners, stumble out to try and catch some of the remaining nightlife before the midnight curfew. My night also took a turn for the worse, but I'll save that for the autobiography. Lets just say it ended watching pig farmers who were high on a combination of amyl nitrate and metholone load massive hogs into giant furnaces. Feeling as though I was Dante teetering on the precipice of the Inferno I stumbled away to sleep in the boot of my car, dreams of porcine faces and knuckles pressed against glass haunting me.

SUNDAY

Sunday can be described in one word: pain.

But beyond the physical and mental sensations I was experiencing there was a lot of music to cover, starting with Alessi's Ark on the Bandstand. Shorn of the fussy ornamentation that threatened to consume Notes From The Treehouse her songs are allowed space to gently weave their magic. Sitting on a haybale nursing a coffee, it is the perfect start to a Sunday.

But here lies the problem with the festival. I now have roughly 5-6 hours to fill before anything of note is on again. So after catching a little bit of Mr Scruff's marathon six hour DJ set I head home for sustenance and to sleep.

Billy Childish is a personal hero of mine; artist, poet, author, photographer, moustache wearer, critic, journalist, publisher and musician. Much like The Fall and Mark E. Smith, he's spent the last 30 years deconstructing rock and roll. Riffs and ideas are purloined from 'rock', then decentred and purified. His belief in amateurism and the elemental is fundamental to his work. So the ramshackle performance of staccato garage rock by Childish and his backing band The Members Of The British Empire is not surprising, but the tracks from their album Thatcher's Children are raucously greeted by a boozy (and noticeably more middle aged) crowd. Whether Childish would appreciate some thick-about-the-middle types pretending they know what constitutes punk is a moot point. Anyway, just to hear Childish's Medway twang over the primitive clatter is a genuine pleasure. He has become an irascible iconoclast railing against modernity (and postmodernity) across the years, and tonight proves he hasn't lost his bite.

Edwyn Collins is a brave man. A stoke in 2005 left him without the majority of his motor functions. He had to teach himself to perform all of the everyday tasks we take for granted, and then those extra ones which make him such a gifted songwriter and musician. That he was able to overcome such a gruelling period of rehabilitation, and then the MRSA which he subsequently contracted, is testament to a strength of spirit and conviction that we could all learn from. When his solo song 'Girl Like You' is performed, there is a genuine warmth from the audience towards this man. And what a glorious song! It still sounds great, like a Scottish Elvis impersonator covering a Northern Soul tune. 'Rip It Up', his first band Orange Juice's signature song, is played and I couldn't keep the smile from my face. The feet don't lie, it got me moving. The performance is wistful and tender, while the absurdist message remains the same.

You have to feel a little bit sorry for Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip. They seem to be the victim of a form of inverted racism from the mostly white, liberal, middle class music press. Every review essentially poses the question; what can two white boys from Essex know about hip hop? It is a pertinent question, and a lot of the opprobrium sent their way seeks to address this issue. Scroobius Pip is still enthralled of his heroes (KRS-ONE, Sage Francis, Mos Def, Eric B) but if he is allowed to develop the subject of his ire it may eventually become less obvious and better directed. Hip hop is a means of expression; who expresses it shouldn't be determined by the listener, only its merits and qualities.

Rant over. They start with 'Beat That My Heart Skipped', and the tone of righteous indignation continues throughout with 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' drawing the biggest cheers of the night. The call-and-response structure, the rampant listomania of the track, deconstruction of deities and the acute observations of modern social mores are all perfectly performed. New material is aired tonight and despite no-one having had a chance to hear it yet it provokes a great response. They always look like they're having the time of their lives on stage and play with passion and skill.

While it may never challenge the 'heritage' festivals, LOTF can continue to grow into its niche of a small, family-friendly festival that is mercifully free from advertising and the patronage of varied music/radio celebrities (Jo Whiley, take a bow...). The attempt to position the festival within a local musical and cultural tradition was commendable, but misguided and redolent of provincialism. Greater thought needs to go into the planning of the acts – the headliners themselves were all fine additions,and the Hoedown tent was full of excellent DJs and acts but the problem is in attracting a more consistent level of artist that will attract punters beyond the locals. But then what makes a festival – the acts on display or the 'experience', however hackneyed and commodified that notion may be? Or is it the £85 weekend price tag...

The review of Lounge On The Farm was orignally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk. To view the article on the site please click on the title.

What I be listening to now

2009-07-22T17:56:00.001-07:00

Writing is going pretty slow at the moment, but this is what I'm listening to right now.

KID PANG
At some point there will be a review of this album on the blog, but for now you need to be heading to their last.fm page and checking out the album. Then downloading it while you wait for the physical release, obvs...Click on the article title to check it out

ZOMBY

I'm loving this. He was supposed to be at Lounge on the Farm last week but pulled out. Fecker.

MARK E. SMITH

I've been listening to The Fall all day in the car and was going to try and find a live video to post, but then I remembered this. Gillingham won as well, cashback.

Contrapasso: the Mercury Music Prize and its excruciating show of weakness

2009-07-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

When Lauren Laverne and the panel for this years Mercury Music Awards are all in Hell they will walk with their heads on backwards. For this years nominations are not a case of rewarding progress and innovation but are a case of rewarding fiscal success. We all know that awards ceremonies are self-serving, a shot in the arm for the industry, and are wholly redundant. However what is different about this years is that tastemaking is as high on the agenda as artistic merit. There are the usual anomalous entries, which are frankly ridiculous as this event is squared mainly at the mainstream Radio 1 market. Gone are the days when Roni Size or Talvin Singh could win it. Who decides these lists? Rather than judiciously root out the chaff and choose the most invidious and rewarding listens from the last year, they have more than half an eye on the mainstream and the rest on what will be popular over the rest of the year. Vested interests mean that this is no longer really an award that rewards artistic merit, or am I going to be really surprised? If any of the NME approved acts win, you know the answer...Mercifully they resisted the urge to include White Lies, but I think that excluding Doves was disingenuous. Because of Elbow's success last year they were proclaimed as favourites, but I believe the judges wanted to avoid falling into a trap of handing out awards due to sentiment. Kingdom Of Rust has its merits, but it falls short of the high watermark that their first two albums set and is simply not good enough to win this award.

Brand awareness; the awards are now sponsored by Barclaycard and will be broadcast by the BBC. Expect Jo Whiley and Zane Lowe to get in on the act and promote the fuck out of their favourites.

Nominations were announced today, and it is comfortably the weakest collection of albums proposed for some time. It is also completely spineless. Here be an annotated list.

Glasvegas – Glasvegas

Barbed social realism delivered in a fug of J&MC-esque noise. Heard it all before, but it's nae bad.

Bat For Lashes – Two Suns

Disappointing follow-up to a promising debut. Needs to stop listening to Tango In The Night-era Fleetwood Mac.

Lisa Hannigan – Sea Sew

Formerly Damien Rice's muse; beautiful voice, nice arrangements but a little too cloying in parts. Too mannered however to really make a lasting impression.

The Horrors – Primary Colours

Probably the most impressive progression by any recent band.

Kasabian – West Rider Lunatic Pauper Asylum

Nod to the establishment.

Led Bib – Sensible Shoes

Ah, the "Who the fuck?" nomination. Oh they play jazz music. I have no idea if they play it well. Oh actually they are good. Prog-jazz.

The Invisible – The Invisible

These guys are actually really good, much better than all those awful and lazy TV on the Radio comparisons suggest.

La Roux – La Roux

Can't sing for toffee. Awful stick thin reedy production. This shouldn't win, it is just dressed up noughties pop (much like Lady Gaga).

Friendly Fires – Friendly Fires

Three great singles does not a great album make I'm afraid boys, even though 'Paris' is the perfect encapsulation of our aspirational, borrow now pay later generation.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Twice Born Men

They remind me of Tuung's somnabulant folktronica. Quite nice.

Speech Debelle – Speech Therapy

Slime and Reason by Roots Manuva is a better album if we're doing the whole "Let's pick one hip hop album released this year that somehow represents the whole of black and urban music, because those guys have totally got the MOBOs, selfish bastards...", but that tune with Michachu is aces. The fact that this is here showcases how spineless the list is, the ticking of boxes and cross-referencing of demographics must have taken them hours.

Florence and The Machine – Lungs

She'll probably win, despite being a third rate Tori Amos impersonator.

The awards ceremony takes place on 8th September 2009. I can't wait for some dunderheads to tell me what was the best British album over the last twelve months.

Apollo 11

2009-07-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

The fortieth anniversary of the Moon landings will be at around 4am GMT tonight. Incroyable!

The Horrors - Lounge on the Farm, 10/07/09

2009-07-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Some photos I took of The Horrors during their headline set at Lounge on the Farm. Press passes are pretty handy!

Marlon Brando

2009-07-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

Essential
Apocalypse Now (1979) – The high watermarks of Brando's early career make recommending Francis Ford Coppola's atmospheric and lyrical reimagining of Joseph Conrad's novella The Heart of Darkness as essential seem strange. But everything about this film is perfectly realised, an incredible feat considering that Coppola shot millions of feet of film, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack and they started principal photography during monsoon season. From the stark opening sequence of 'The End' by The Doors sound tracking a napalm airstrike, to Martin Sheen's haunted countenance and those incredible cameos by Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper the film draws you inexorably inward. In Conrad's post-modern novella Kurtz is a lucid commentator on the barbaric reality of colonial Africa, whereas Brando translates this into a series of quasi-philosophical and barely comprehensible vignettes. As an exploration of the insanity and horror of modern psychological warfare and neo-colonialism it stands alone. Initially Brando's performance drew criticism, but his disassembling of various acting techniques now makes perfect sense. In the context of the film it can be seen as a continuation of his method style of acting. The Redux version ties together various plot strands and adds linking scenes which contribute to the depth and power of the film, while the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a fascinating insight into the making of the film.

Approach With Caution
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) – Marlon Brando took on directorial duties on this post-modern Western after removing Stanley Kubrick, while early drafts of the screenplay were worked on by Rod Sterling (The Twilight Zone creator), Sam Peckinpah and Calder Wallingham before being completed by Brando and Guy Trosper. Yet another Brando film with a troubled gestation period, but it certainly has it's moments. The title comes from a line Brando (Rio The Kid) utters to Sheriff Longworth (played by Brando's lifelong friend Karl Malden) - “To these people you're a one-eyed jack, but I've seen the other side of the card”. Brando directs in a straightforward, unfussy fashion that allows the action and scenery to dominate. While what he was trying to achieve is clear (a subversion of Western generic conventions and exploration of psychological drama through Freudian devices) it feels strangely unrewarding at times, with curious lulls between episodes of hyper-real violence. I'd rather watch Brando as Stanley Kowalski slowly being driven mad in a claustrophobic apartment in steamy New Orleans than staring moodily out at the Monterey shoreline. He was always good as a caged animal, barely able to restrain his rage and disgust. Of note: It was the only film Brando directed, Paramount's last feature shot in VistaVision and the brothel in Twin Peaks was named after the film.

Avoid
The Island of Dr Moreau (1996) – Uncontrolled adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic SF horror mashup, in which Brando stars as the eponymous doctor who is experimenting on animals in order to make them more human. David Thewlis, Val Kilmer and Fairuza Balk add support to what could have been an interesting allegory on the morality of genetic engineering. Instead the tone of delirium, awful acting and heavy-handed direction from Richard Stanley (who was replaced mid-shoot by John Frankenheimer) contribute to a terrible film experience. Stanley was apparently banned from visiting the set so came back disguised as an extra in order to see what was happening. He should have stayed away. Thewlis plays his part as if this was a period (ie 19th century) adaptation, while an overweight and unprepared Brando is horrendous. Watching it again felt like rubbernecking at the scene of a tragedy.

This article was written for culture zine The Dish. To view the article on the site please click on the title.

The Hangover playlist

2009-06-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I can't seem to find any sort of cure or palliative for my hangovers. Short of hacking open my head and scooping out my brain with a spoon ("Why a spoon? Because it will hurt more") I can't think of anything that really helps other than feeling sorry for myself and desperately trying to get rid of the taste of last night. Inspired by the film I have compiled a playlist that captures all the somnabulant moods, sensations and general nausea I encounter. Expect a smattering of singer-songwriters, subtle electronica, dub and the occasional woozy moment where you think you may be sick in your mouth.

Click on the article title to check it out.

Alan Sugar

2009-06-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

I have never watched The Apprentice, but I think I might tune into the next series. Kudos to http://cassetteboy.wordpress.com/ for taking the time.

Rainwater Cassette Exchange - Deerhunter

2009-06-06T03:50:00.001-07:00

Prior to the release of Microcastle, Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox professed a deep love of the more obtuse end of 1950s/1960s 'pop', and spoke of how he planned to integrate this into Deerhunter's forthcoming album. While this didn't quite work out what it did highlight was that on Microcastle, after the disturbed and emotionally cathartic squall of their early releases, Deerhunter discovered a new found simplicity.

They have entered a stage in their career development where identifiable musical traits are evident. Vocal harmonies and double tracking, the use of vocals-as-texture, repetition, elliptical song structures and narratives all backed by a propulsive rhythm section have become familiar tropes. The EP is split between the sumptuous avant pop of 'Rainwater Cassette Exchange' and 'Game of Diamonds' and the garage-rock of 'Disappearing Ink', 'Famous Last Words' and 'Circulation', and all these traits are in evidence. Commencing with choppy, reverb-soaked guitars and syncopated bass notes, Cox's fascination for pre-Beatles pop (doo wop and girl groups) is heard in the saccharine opening harmonies of 'Rainwater Cassette Exchange'. This allure takes an increasingly classicist route on 'Game of Diamonds'. Gentle brushed percussion, a languorously strummed acoustic guitar and elegant piano combine to provide a sumptuous backdrop for what is potentially Cox's most beautiful, and most frail sounding, vocal performance committed to record so far.

'Disappearing Ink' and 'Circulation' offer a reconfiguration of the garage rock template, and sound as if the Strokes had added a dose of wistful melancholia to their output rather than degenerating into cod Guns N Roses numbers and karaoke Pogues parodies. The former is relentless, galvanised by Moses Archuleta and Josh Fauver's vigorous rhythm section antics with Cox keening vocals searching for the meaning in words, while 'Circulation' takes this approach but augments it with a dolorous coda.

Nostalgia is a key component of Deerhunter's appeal. There are familiar and obvious antecedents to their 'sound', yet it is the combination of these varied strands of alternate music history that make Deerhunter such an intriguing prospect. Time is frozen, elided, refracted and decelerated, memory is doubled and captured, woven into the very fabric of the recording through the use in 'Circulation' of a collage of radio broadcasts. Hell, the EP has even been released on a cassette format. This reverence for an apparently long abandoned technology displays an attempt at preservation of more fragile and outmoded practices. But these guys are just as comfortable recording on laptops as on tape; they understand the relevance of their influences and lineage and absorb this without allowing this reverence to become too cloying.

Bradford Cox's health issues are well documented (he suffers from Marfan Syndrome, a rare degenerative disease) it is true that it informs the lyrical preoccupations. Or more correctly, it informs our reading of his lyrical preoccupations. Running throughout the EP is an absorption in mortality and disease. The title track, much like 'Agoraphobia' from Microcastle, contains a plea for passive annihilation (“Destroy my mind and my body” is much akin to the plea for the disembodied audience to “Cover me, cover me, comfort me, comfort me”). This predicates the listener as an uneasy spectator, drawn into Cox's stark memories. Mortality and death are approached in lyrical fragments (“Ashes and cinder...I've counted every grain of sand”). This makes the doomed romanticism of statements such as “Do you believe in love at first sight” all the more evocative. The whole edifice is teetering on the point of consumption, which becomes literal in 'Circulation', and particularly its coda. Fragments of found sound and the phantasmagoric descending notes of the organ slowly, inexorably consume and asphyxiate the song.

An EP implies transience, slightness, a place to capture experimentalism. The LP is the place where artists make their mark, make bold artistic statements. But Deerhunter are aware enough to realise the cultural import of the EP, and what role it has historically in an artists development. Just as Fluorescent Grey developed the themes of Cryptograms while simultaneously pointing in a new musical direction, Rainwater Cassette Exchange streamlines the deceptively straightforward sensibilities of Microcastle. The spectral, luminous fog that descends on the middle section of the album is enhanced by dub influenced tape hiss and a similar grasp of spatial possibilities.

While Deerhunter seem to have temporarily expunged the experimental side of their music, no surprise given that both Cox and Pundt have used their respective side projects Atlas Sound and Lotus Plaza as outlets for the more esoteric side of their creativity, Rainwater Cassette Exchange offers a simpler and more unreserved joy. Across their short yet prolific recording career they have already offered a distillation of 50 years of American guitar music. Stunning.

The Sunlamp Show EP - The Aliens

2009-06-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

Further evidence, if any were needed, that probably the most influential man in music at the moment is Brian Wilson. There is a giddying amount of baroque/chamber/sun-drenched music at the moment, all informed by The Beach Boys pop sensibilities. Some artists spread their wings further and soak up different influences, but a lot of the joy and sheer unadulterated bliss that can be found on albums released this year such as Merriweather Post Pavilion and Veckatimest can be attributed to Wilson.

The Aliens are a band who understand the obsessive nature of the creation of music better than most. Having spent the last decade making music with The Beta Band, John MacLean and Robin Jones joined founding member Gordon Anderson (he left The Beta Band after bouts of psychiatric illness), who had himself made furtive and occasional solo albums as The Lone Pigeon and began noodling away on their debut. Small wonder then that Wilson would hold such sway and influence on their work.

Commencing with clipped piano and a rolling drumbeat, 'Sunlamp Show' begins to weave its summery magic. Much of The Aliens work hinges on delirium, a near hysterical acceptance of music's tangential and tumultuous offerings. But unfortunately 'Sunlamp Show' often ventures into pastiche, with the hint of theremin and Anderson's McCartney-esque vocal cadences the chief culprits. Not that this is necessarily always a bad thing, but it is an affliction which has affected their short career, with far too much time given over disparate and derivative influences. 'Pernickitty Jack', the only new song on offer, is a wailing garage track smothered in distortion and MacLean's dirty organ runs, but it sounds at times like The Beta Band covering The Libertines and at nearly eight minutes it almost outstays its welcome.

Parent album Luna was a more psychedelic affair, and it is with this in mind that you should approach the three remixes available. The first remix of 'Sunlamp Show' by Disco Bloodbath reconfigures it into a baggy, acid-tinged affair that literally reeks of 1992. Now that shouldn't really work, and I should find the funky piano riff that kicks in around the five minute mark horrendously naff and yet...And yet it really works. It teases out the trio's instinctive knack for a groove and a beat. The remix by Manmouse (MacLean's pseudonym) is is a darker work, that adds glitch and subtle electronica to the song's closing chords. Again the focus is on groove and rhythm and showcases their instinctive grasp of how to create this. The Roman Noise (Robin Jones' alter ego) remix of 'Boats' re-imagines the song as a somnabulant, downbeat song coloured with textured vocals amongst the descending chords before its phased outro. A luxurious, spatial and beautiful track that adds lustre and gloss to the original without ever becoming fully divorced from it.

As with most EP releases it has the feel of an inbetween effort, a document of a band not content to stand still and one that is keen to remodel and reference their own material. With one album track, three remixes and one new song The Sunlamp Show EP is a slight release and perhaps not essential unless you're an Aliens completist, but has moments of clarity and beauty that compensate for the band's occasional lack of self-constraint.

200 Tons Of Bad Luck - Crippled Black Phoenix

2009-05-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

Prog, in its contraction, has become a journalistic shorthand for musical excess. 200 Tons of Bad Luck, the second release from Crippled Black Phoenix following 2006's A Love of Shared Disasters, is a contraction of two albums (The Resurrectionists and Night Raider which are still available to buy via their label Invada as a deluxe box set) and is an album that has progressive tendencies. I mean that in the best possible way. Grouped around Justin Greaves, Crippled Black Phoenix are a revolving collective that attempt to realise his vision. They have been described as a “post-rock supergroup”, mainly due to the fact that Dominic Aitchison, bassist in Mogwai, is involved and Greaves' own musical past. Having been the drummer in Iron Monkey and Electric Wizard, Greaves is consciously attempting to distance himself from any scene and instead has created a pulsing, cinematic release that celebrates the unbending human spirit, shot through with flashes of humour and positivity.

The progressive tendencies are most starkly realised on the 18 minute suite 'Time of Yer Life/Born for Nothing/Paranoid Arm of the Narcoleptic Empire', beginning with a sampled motivational speech by Evil Knievel, given while visiting a school, over plaintive minor key chords before building on these themes and moving seamlessly between movements. Knievel comes across with all the false bonhomie of the confidence trickster, a sinister presence rather than an enlightening one. The second movement is announced with a simple guitar figure before descending into an Isis-esque breakdown, and then finally abandons itself into arpeggiated synths and a (whisper it) guitar break worthy of Gilmour. At 18 minutes it is by some distance the longest track on offer here, but is never ponderous or lugubrious. All the familiar post-rock tropes are in place, but they are not dealt with in a hackneyed way. It characterises much of Crippled Black Phoenix's work; uplifting and stirring, with no bleakness or negativity.

Then there's the stoner rock elements in songs such as 'Rise Up and Fight' and '444' which both combine desert blues with the sort of quadraphonic synthesiser sections that sound as if they were programmed by Alan Parsons for the Dark Side of the Moon sessions. '444' also contains several Eastern-influenced chord progressions which are a common aural theme throughout the album, and comes across as Eastern drone filtered through QOTSA. The reverb soaked guitars of 'Wendigo' are similarly slowly consumed by strings, horns, the drone of a harmonium and then finally an Eastern motif.

There are various tone poems included on the album. 'Crossing The Bar' utilises a sawed cello and intricate, finger-picked guitar before the pulsing beat subsides to a skeletal piano motif that drifts dreamily into a synthesised ending. The hymnal plainsong of 'A Hymn for a Lost Soul' takes a group vocal over a simple piano motif, but it in its simplicity the tenderness and heart at the centre of the hymn shine through.

There is a black humour at work here. It can be evidenced in the song titles, the lyrical themes and the snippets of carnival music and other textures that contribute to the album. It can be evidenced in the spoken word samples chosen to illustrate various sections of the album (“We gotta loudspeaker here and when we go into battle we play music very loud...” from '444' and the aforementioned Evil Knievel speech). Considering Greaves' battles with post-traumatic stress disorder and varied personal problems this black humour is not unexpected.

Post-rock implies some form of rejection of rock's ethos, which makes their description as a 'post-rock supergroup' a falsity. They embrace a number of splinters from various 'rock' genres and weave them into the fabric of the album. This is why, essentially, an attempt to classify their music or relate it in terms of the personalities involved is futile. To describe them as a supergroup belittles the talent and skill on show; it implies a triumph of ego, whereas the album is about a sublimation of ego. On an album such as this there has to be a willingness to let go on the part of both performer and listener. Learning to forget.

The album rewards patience, and at 70 minutes it is long by modern attention spans, but stick with it. On their second album Crippled Black Phoenix liberally mine a wide range of genres and musical ideas. A good album should be a journey, should demand patience, and 200 Tons of Bad Luck does just that.

This article was originally produced for www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk. To read the music review of 200 Tons Of Bad Luck by Crippled Black Phoenix please click on the article title.

Deerhunter - Scala, Kings Cross, 18/05/09

2009-05-21T12:57:00.003-07:00

On record Deerhunter invoke a sense of wilful and selfless abandonment, a hypnotic, chiming effervescent fog amongst ambient drones and distorted walls of noise. From the garage squalls of Turn It Up, Faggot! and Cryptograms to the growing sophistication of Microcastle/Weird Era Cont and the sumptuous 'pop' of Rainwater Cassette Exchange and varied other recordings, their canon contains a wistful and doomed romanticism. For a group who constantly sound as though they are on the brink of being consumed or obscured by the music they create, the task at hand will be to create something tangible live.

First band to perform on the night were Maryland based trio Baby Venom and they do so with an unmistakeable verve. Unfortunately they are let down by technical proficiencies and the formless nature of some of their compositions which undermine their otherwise charming naivete, although they slowly begin to win over the sparse crowd. Extra Life hail from NYC and peddle a combination of Gothic avant-pop and progressive post-rock. No amount of labels placed on them can describe how painfully awful they are as a live proposition. The first line intoned by frontman Charlie Looker is “I remember when you couldn't cook your own dinner...” They never really recover. Looker's vocal affectations place him somewhere between Maynard James Keenan and Mark Greaney of JJ72. In a strange sort of cultural exchange the vocalist talks with an American accent but sings with an Irish inflection. The over elaborations of their set are not matched by technical ability, and much of what they are striving to achieve doesn't come off.

So after two underwhelming (and unrelated – neither band are on tour with the main act) support acts Deerhunter take the stage to Bruce Springsteen's classic outsider anthem 'Born To Run' and immediately conjure up walls of shimmering, ethereal noise. The intensity is not slackened at any point during the early numbers, as songs bleed mercilessly into one another. Vocals as texture, rhythm, repetition – these are all key facets of Deerhunter's recorded output and are equally as vital to the live 'experience'. Sound design (courtesy of their sound engineer) allows them to add space and dynamic to the performance, for Bradford Cox's vocals to be drenched in reverb, elongated and subsumed within the soundscapes. 'Fluorescent Grey' and 'Wash Off' are particular highlights.

Biggest cheers of the night go to the Microcastle material, with previous single 'Nothing Ever Happened' the first to be aired. Driven by its propulsive rhythm the urgency and immediacy provoke the heartiest response from the crowd. The new tracks aired provide further evidence of the growing maturity of the Deerhunter sound. Given that both Bradford Cox and Lockett Pundt have used side projects (Atlas Sounds and Lotus Plaza) as outlets for the more experimental side of their musical personae it is no surprise that the new material has a more straightforward sound, although the demarcation is not as obvious. The title track from their latest EP Rainwater Cassette Exchange is played, showcasing their appropriation of various strands of 60s psyche-pop, doo wop and girl group into their song structures. 'Saved By Old Times' is stylistically similar in both mode of delivery and sonic adventure, until the outro is drowned in a sea of noisy melodrama which is near deafening.

After a brief interlude they retake the stage and launch into 'Cover Me (Slowly)' and its companion piece 'Agoraphobia', which is sung live by Bradford Cox rather than Lockett Pundt who sings the album version. 'Agoraphobia' in particular is a real gem, with the harrowing tale of constriction and abandonment translating successfully to the live arena.

Deerhunter are gradually settling into their role as an important band, with an impressive back catalogue to draw from. They truly were on top form, with Bradford Cox keeping the crowd constantly entertained with banter and breaking into half-formed cover versions. However it is the band's effortless renditions of the waking dreams their songs inhabit that is the star attraction.

This live review of Deerhunter was written for www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk

Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free - Akron/Family

2009-05-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

A frayed, tattered American flag adorns the cover of Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free, with the fifty stars of Old Glory replaced with a cosmic, tie-dye swirl. This is important, because in Akron/Family's work the constant friction between collectivism and individualism is at large, and much of their work concerns itself with interconnectedness between nature and humans. When questioned on how they view their music Miles Seaton (one of three multi-instrumentalists in the band) replied “The music functions simply as a sound or a sonic story of a communal structure”.

This sense of togetherness, of how we relate to each other, is experienced in the chaotic group vocals of opener 'Everyone Is Guilty'. Phrases are repeated until they become mantra. Full of throat and heart, they almost cling to each other, no surprise given that after 2007's Love Is Simple founding member Ryan Vanderhoof left to join a Buddhist centre. One of the less imperceptible lyrical fragments on the album is “Last year was a hard year for such a long time”. Losing a founding member has that effect on bands, and you could forgive them for untethering themselves in the aftermath of an admittedly amicable split, but in this case it has re-enervated Akron/Family. Seth Olinksy moved from Brooklyn back home to rural Pennsylvania (also the childhood home of third member Dana Janssen), and in doing so the band have discovered a sensitivity and optimism. The response to the line goes “This year's gonna be ours”, and the whole album is imbued with this sense of hope.

Musically they oscillate between styles, from the heavily percussive, Afro-inflections of 'Everyone Is Guilty' to the pastoralisms 'Set 'Em Free' and the more mood based programmed electronic subtleties of 'Creatures' to full on hypnotic psychedelia on 'Gravelly Mountains Of The Moon', a heroic and non-ironic prog song title, to the fuzzed-up freak garage on 'MBF'. They can lithely and quickly switch between these styles and genres, a key component of the multi-instrumentalist's arsenal. The overall dynamics of the songs contribute to a much broader and coherent aural canvas, and the constant segues and juxtapositions between styles are well rendered, with an impressive breadth of influences that are all subtly woven into the mix. Previously their releases were de-centred, while Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free harbours a focused approach throughout, although there are still incongruous elements that don't quite sit right in the middle section of the album. A minor gripe, but one that stops the album getting a higher score.

There are obvious similarities to Animal Collective, in both name and deed, and these comparisons are inevitable. Listening to 'River' you are drawn almost inexorably to this conclusion, with it's combination of shimmering atmospherics and military rhythms. But listen again, and beyond the approach to sound collages, subject matter and melody there is a rawness, a keening and bruised sense of hope. The rousing finale of 'Sun Will Shine' and 'Last Year' is where the album's bliss almost reaches a tipping point.

Their third release finds Akron/Family conceptually less constricted than before, less wilfully obtuse, and the new found freedom allows them to be even more creative than before in their search for self-definition. The challenge has always been there for Akron/Family to harness their improvisational tendencies and sense of community and togetherness on record, and with their latest they have succeeded to an extent. For a band with such a chaotic (and always evolving) live sound and a keen improvisational bent, getting the songs down on record is always going to pose a challenge, yet Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free is a satisfyingly coherent snapshot of where they currently are. It's not a release that attempts to be definitive and provide answers, remaining cryptic until the end. Togetherness is the key. Don't worry, if there is hell below we're all going to go.

This article was originally produced for http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/. To read the music review of Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free on the site please click on the article title.

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear

2009-05-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

This is disgustingly good. They are mining a purer vein of pop music on their latest album Veckatimest, and when it's this good that can only be a good thing.

Veckatimest is out May 26th.

So, the new Mars Volta album has leaked online already...

2009-05-17T05:52:00.000-07:00

It is titled Octahedron and appears to be developing the emotionally wraught and (whisper it) more commercial vein that appeared on Bedlam in Goliath. I'm not going to tell you where you can listen to it now, or link an illegal leak, but urge you to wait until 22nd June and judge for yourself. Chances are it will probably stream on MySpace or Spotify the week before the release date. It sounds great, and I will be purchasing it with my filthy coin. They've lost a lot of fans with their last few releases and I hope that this recoups a few, they deserve it purely by dint of releasing one of my favourite albums of the last 10 years (and one of the best debuts ever) back in 2003 with Deloused In The Comatorium.

More news on their official site.

Maiden post for The Line of Best Fit!!!

2009-05-14T14:53:00.001-07:00

This is already on the blog, but you can read the review of Wavering Radiant by Isis by clicking the article title. It's a very good album. Check out the studio footage below.

Posthumous Success - Tom Brosseau

2009-05-11T11:58:00.001-07:00

After the sparse arrangements of Cavalier Tom Brosseau returns with a fuller and more joyous release. Posthumous Success partly abandons the solo recordings of old for a full band lineup which lends the album a sense of verve and immediacy. However the album is interspersed with sparse solo numbers that eschew over elaboration, settling on a melancholy evocation of mood and timbre. Half the tracks were recorded in upstate New York by Adam Pierce and the other by Ethan Rose in Portland, Oregon, but are sequenced so that the album becomes a seamless whole.

Brosseau's voice quavers above the mix, occasionally cracking with emotion, weaving itself around the gentle finger-picked guitar and additional instrumentation. The intimacy of the recording creates a wonderful live sensation and this sense of authenticity lends an understated gravitas to the recording.

The album is bookended by two versions of “Favourite Color Blue”, a clever narrative device that reprises the themes, both lyrical and aural, of the album. The opening version is sparse while the closing version adds oscillating, undulating synthesis to create new spaces and areas of melody. But throughout it all Brosseau's vibrato vocal and rustic guitar lines shine through, creating a dialogue with the opening version.

Musically he is closer to contemporary troubadours such as Bright Eyes and Willy Mason, but thematically he is positioned alongside the anti-folk movement. The ability to combine both disciplines is something Nick Cave has long been a master of, and in the gradually developing verses of “Favourite Colour Blue” Brosseau combines a similar sense of devilry and irreverence, romantic innocence with carnal desire, poetic observations of banal, everyday occurrences with more spiritual considerations.

The traditional aspect of his songs would leave us to believe that he is a man desperately out of time, a renegade from the Winsonian Anthology of Folk Music, but his influences are more contemporaneous than this as he adds vocal textures and subtle electronic touches (“Boothill”) alongside processed drums and lo-fi fuzz guitars (“You Don't Know My Friends”). “Youth Decay” is just Brosseau and an electric guitar, gently coaxing minor key cadences from his instrument. “Chandler” adds splashes of colour to the sonic palette but the overall impression is the same – the faint tremolo, ultra clean guitar tone and reinvention of 50's harmony group songs aren't a million miles away from what Bradford Cox is achieving with his varied musical output. And when he delivers lines like 'I want to drive her to Reno, in a stolen El Camino' the air of railroads, crossroads and dusty saloon bars is inescapable.

Brosseau remains insightful at all times, his songs full of small town melodrama, downtrodden yet celebratory and insurgent. The album's title is a faded joke, full of careworn bonhomie, borrowed from a biography of Albert Camus. There is a dichotomy at play in Brosseau's work. Fittingly for a boy from Grand Forks, North Dakota that has settled in Los Angeles he doesn't know whether he wants to make us laugh out loud or cry at the rich vein of emotion that courses through this body of work. Posthumous Success sees Brosseau begin to make sense of the rich musical tapestry and cultural inheritance to which he belongs with confidence and skill.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/. To read the music review of Posthumous Success by Tom Brosseau on the site please click on the article title.

Expecting To Fly - The Bluetones

2009-04-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Britpop began as an oppositional stance against the prevailing 'American' cultural trends that dominated much of music in the early 90s. By focusing on Britishness and identifiably British reference points, bands were able to distance themselves from these 'American' cultural phenomena. Yet the whole scene quickly became a byword for affectations, nostalgia and cretinous opportunism by a certain section of London-centric dilettante socialites. The idea of 'Britishness' was a façade, a cleverly constructed artifice, that slowly revealed itself as a suburbanite fantasy of England.

Britpop was also arguably the last time that a musical movement gripped not just the nation's record buyers but left it's own cultural imprint; Cool Britannia, Blur vs Oasis, the use of the Union flag, Select magazine's Britpop issue and other varied ephemera, Britart/the Sensation exhibition all made their mark. It was the point at which alternative/indie guitar music made a dash for the limelight. It was also the last time that print music journalism was massively consumed, hence the fact that various hacks have relentlessly backed whichever horse they feel will bring them back to those halcyon days.

In amongst the rush of recent Britpop reunions, The Bluetones announcement of a Don't Look Back style performance of their debut album was slightly overlooked. After all, they had gently slipped under the radar rather than gone out with a bang, and had produced albums since Britpop imploded. Technically they hadn't really been away at all, meaning they attained the rather unflattering “Britpop survivors” tag.

It's easy to forget exactly how popular they were; “Slight Return” was only kept off the top spot in the singles chart (when it really still mattered) by one hit wonders Babylon Zoo, whose single “Spaceman” was guaranteed number 1 status by an appearance on a Levis advert. The Bluetones' debut Expecting To Fly hit number 1 in the album chart, displacing Oasis, and was a platinum seller.

The fey and slightly winsome nature of The Bluetones' music always aligned them with the C86 movement, far removed from the laddish swagger of Oasis, the traditional English bent of Blur or Pulp's interrogation of modern sexual proclivities and mores. They always seemed slightly out of step with their peers, an impression reinforced by their videos and photo shoots. Britpop was dogged by nostalgia and a reverential treatment of the past, and The Bluetones' reimagining of jangly indie (from early American roots in The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and REM through to a very British interpretation courtesy of The Smiths, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses and The La's) cast them as doe-eyed, dufflecoat wearing retro merchants. They certainly weren't averse to lifting a phrase or two from rock history – “Expecting To Fly” is a Neil Young penned track from Buffalo Springfield's sophomore album and “Slight Return” is an obvious nod to Jimi Hendrix.

The Bluetones were a product of their time and place. Fittingly for a band from Hounslow the album begins with the sound of a distant aeroplane passing overhead on “Talking To Clarry”. Their name, by it's very essence, implies a keening melancholy and the album rings with a very defeated English air. Again, C86 and it's spectre of twee and underachievement loomed. In 1996 this wasn't a compliment.

What is also striking is how tonally similar the whole album is. Each song occupies a very similar structure, with similar chord changes and ringouts, and Mark Morriss' vocals rarely leave the same key. But despite the odd deficiency the album works it's charm on the listener. “Slight Return” was the song that introduced them to the masses, and it's maudlin charm hasn't waned. The opening refrain 'Where did you go, when things went wrong for you...' over languidly strummed guitar still sounds great, while I truly believe that Morriss never sounded in better voice than on this track especially when he intones that he is 'coming home, but just for a short while'. It was released as double A-side with “The Fountainhead”, which is a wistful and dreamy track. “Bluetonic” is a far more upbeat and less morose affair, while “Cut Some Rug” fairly rocks. What you also have to remember is just how influential John Squire was as a guitarist in this period; Adam Devlin uses a lot of Squire-esque techniques, and he wasn't the only one. It wasn't until Blur's eponymous fifth album that Graham Coxon really exorcised the ghost of Squire from his playing, while Noel Gallagher, Nick McCabe and countless others would admit his influence on their style.

The second disc rounds up various BBC sessions including the obligatory Peel session. Interesting, but non-essential, as it doesn't provide a document of the band in motion, especially as most of these cuts have already been included in different versions on their BBC Radio Sessions set, and Early Garage Years provides a much more definitive version of The Bluetones' initial genesis and development. For all the claims that this is a 'deluxe' release they could have added early single “Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?” and 1996's non-album single “Marblehead Johnson” (the one with the obligatory comic video of the lads in fat suits) onto the album with some B-sides and kept this to one disc.

So Britpop can be boiled down to a few keynote releases, a handful of decent singles and a slew of record label pushed cash-ins that deserve all the opprobrium that they have received in the intervening years. Expecting To Fly is a decent album, one that withstands the ravages of the last thirteen years and stands comparison with a fair few of the likely lads in modern 'indie' bands. Britpop has led to a horrific succession of conservative, Luddite, male oriented guitar rock bands playing to a boozy gallery, which The Bluetones' wide-eyed charms manage to escape. While Expecting To Fly is a deeply traditional 'British' indie record, it might be time to dig out your old cassette copy from that battered shoebox in the garage. Or if you've sold it at a boot fair/given it to a charity shop, invest in this package.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/. To read the music review of Expecting To Fly by The Bluetones on the site please click on the article title.

Notes From The Tree House - Alessi's Ark

2009-04-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

Notes From The Tree House is the debut album from the preciously talented 18-year old Londoner Alessi Laurent-Marke. Leaving school at 16 to pursue a career in music was a brave move, but one that has proved to be very successful with a large MySpace following leading to a record deal with EMI. Not many young artists would be afforded the luxury of picking their own producer, but Laurent-Marke was and requested Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes whose most recent production credit was M. Ward's Hold Time.

Her songs inhabit a sensory world of horses, libraries, asteroids, of counting stars and freckles, magic and most importantly love, all delivered with Laurent-Marke's breathless and idiosyncratic enunciation. They are whimsical exercises in orchestral pop, full of sweeping melodies and perfectly nuanced atmospherics. From the baroque madrigal opening of “Magic Weather” to the lush, symphonic “Constellations”, replete with wistful keyboards and a raised seventh that is emotionally revealing, the album begins to weave it's spell. Singles “The Horse” and “Over The Hill” are sequenced together, and this adds a strength to the opening quarter of the record. “Ribbon Lakes” and “Memory Box” are perhaps the most traditional 'folk' arrangements on evidence here, with a distinctly rustic Bright Eyes approach to dynamic and melody. Closing track “Glendora”, written while Laurent-Marke was 16, adds additional layers of sound that threaten to drown the song (especially the cheesy guitar solo) but the song's coda is otherworldly and unnerving, the most haunting moment on the album.

What is increasingly apparent is that despite the apparent innocence of the lyrics and their delivery this is a sophisticated take on modern folk music. But this is a collection of songs that is rooted relentlessly in the fleeting stretches of imagination and it is a singular take on love and life that is occasionally too saccharine. The one major complaint with this set is that her voice is not allowed the space to soar, constricted by an overbearing proclivity to drench every last moment in strings, unusual instrumentation and other aural embellishments. Note the similarity between “Over The Hill” and later track “The Dog” - the chosen arrangement only serves to heighten the surface resemblance between them. The songs work best when they are sparse, allowing the innate melodiousness of the songs to escape, and when Laurent-Marke evokes a darker mood that is fraught with tension.

Alessi's Ark descends from an identifiable lineage of fellow female songstresses (Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Cat Power, Feist, Joanna Newsom, Jenny Lewis, Laura Marling, Bat For Lashes). Staking a claim on such over-saturated ground is always going to be tricky, but Notes From The Tree House is a captivating listen that bodes well for the future.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/. To read the music review of Notes From The Tree House by Alessi's Ark on the site please click on the article title.

Favourite Color Blue - Tom Brosseau

2009-04-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

I keep having the same dream about Dave Grohl

The one where he's drumming in Hole

They've got him wrapped in rusty chains

I think I'm supposed to free him

But I haven't got the brains

I went to church last Sunday and let me tell you what

When I got through it gave me back my strut

It makes me want to move down South

Every time I smile or raise a white bandana to my mouth

I'm secretly in love with my best friend's older sis

And I have been ever since I started doing the twist

I really believe she's the lock and I'm the key

Oh, but holding it all in is really killing me

Lyrics taken from "Favourite Colour Blue" which will appear on Tom's new album Posthumous Success, released by Fat Cat Records on May 11th.

Interim post #2

2009-04-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

"Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined..."

I haven't posted on here much lately, mainly due to a two week stretch without the internet. It was shocking to realise just how reliant I am on the internet. Without I felt like I was paralysed, unable to work effectively. While I haven't been posting much lately I have been thinking about what I want to achieve, particularly in terms of music criticism.

If a degree of critical distance is not included in music criticism then music journalism could just be boiled down to a series of recommendations, and the reviewer a cheerleader for their own subjectivity. Whereas this can be valid and relevant, without positioning music within a broader social and cultural context or investing any level of critical inquiry then you can't tell your audience what really counts.

I'm not necessarily purporting that all music need take an oppositional stance – it is essentially there to be enjoyed, and it can be hard to take an objective view on something as cerebral and subjective as music. But music constantly evolves, retrocedes – there is no reason why music journalism cannot do the same. So much journalism these days is lazy; the internet has killed off objective reportage. Music is essentially a discovery of self, and music journalism I believe should initiate the same interrogation of self. Cogito ergo sum and all that.

So, sometime in the near future this blog will find a tangible home. It will exist in cyberspace in order that my various writings have a forum, but a physical object you can hold and love will be appearing this summer.

I also have had a couple of short trips this month that have encroached on my writing time; one to Falmouth, Cornwall where I spent three years studying and another to Euro Disney.

Disney should stand for everything I find detestable, and that my rational side should not enjoy. But here lies the nub – suspension of disbelief. In the Magic Kingdom a nefarious magic is at work. Enjoying Disney is learning to forget. Once inside you are infantilised as the endless procession shuffles around the parks. It is experience imprisoned, a simulacra. Memory is a double image; inside our own memory, memorialised on film, another memory of a culture experienced through film and television is secreted. Western frontier towns are recreated. Jingles implore you to 'Remember the magic'. As if we would forget. Nostalgia has a geometrically precise, physical location and it is Main Street, USA. I dread to think how insane the park in Tokyo is. I suppose it doesn't matter – the whole point is that you could be anywhere geologically, as long as you are transported to a specific point in liminal memory. But I will be back, amongst the mullets and bumbags (or fannypacks if you prefer). I am a sucker for memories. Even constructed ones.

PANG!!!

2009-04-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

Friends of the blog and all round dudes Lakes have changed their name to Kid Pang. Click on the article title to check out their MySpace and have a listen to their excellent music.

Atlas Sound

2009-04-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

Go to http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/ and download the new mateial, and then listen to it a thousand times until you forget that all other music exists. It is that good. Going to see Deerhunter next month at the Scala and review it for God Is In The TV which I am really excited about.

Wavering Radiant - Isis

2009-04-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

The fifth album from Californian progressive metal band Isis finds them expanding on ground laid by previous releases. To stand still, to stagnate, is anathema to them. Each album has it's own aspect, their own facets to explore and this is particularly the case with Wavering Radiant. It is more focused than it's immediate predecessor In The Absence of Truth, but in the same instance adopts the desire to avoid classification that they have occupied throughout their career. These progressive tendencies are highlighted by Adam Jones, guitarist in Tool, following bandmate Justin Chancellor's guest appearance on ITAOT by lending his technical prowess to two tracks.

There have been endless discussion over where to position Isis in terms of genre, but what is more important is their inclusive attitude to music. The character of Isis' music is largely indefinable; there is a precision to the songs, but it is not one of geometric exactitude. The churning, primordial walls of noise that characterised Oceanic and Panopticon have been replaced with a more ethereal and poised release, catharsis with melancholy acceptance, that does not sacrifice emotional fortitude.

Twenty seconds into “Hall of the Dead” the growing ambience is disturbed by buzzsaw guitars, but these are restrained. This restraint is symptomatic of the album as a whole; emotions are kept firmly in check, which allows them to provide brief interjections of anger and rage, which are all the more surprising and effective when they do interrupt the flow of the album. Aaron Turner alternates between a growl of painful (dis)articulation and clean vocals throughout, with the clean vocals sublimated in the mix to provide a sense of texture, the ghost of melody, rather than a focal point. “Ghost Key” continues the vein of exploration of rhythmic textures, anchored by Jeff Caxide's bass line. The song begins as an analysis of mood, nuance and tonal possibility, before being pounded by monolithic guitars. Album closer “Threshold of Transformation” is the song which most obviously pays its metal dues, but such is their ability to transform and transfigure their own material that after five minutes of complex riffery the simplicity of the Fender Rhodes break temporarily wrong foots you. This idea is then developed over the remaining four and a half minutes of the song, building to a crescendo before ending with Turner and Michael Gallagher's guitars gently guiding the song home in stately fashion.

For their fifth studio album they decided to work with Joe Barresi and the clarity of his production work allows the instrumental passages to be fully realised. It is in these lengthy instrumental passages that the album finds it's disposition. These sections possess a tactile and hypnotic quality, with electronic synthesis playing a lager part in the overall sonic architecture than on previous releases. The title track, by some margin the shortest track on offer, is one minute and forty eight seconds of ambient electronica, with the sound rolling over the listener in undulating waves, gradually receding and folding in on itself before seamlessly seguing into “Song To Wake A Serpent”. Wavering Radiant is less drone oriented, but Isis' music still inhabits certain characteristics of drone. Notes are isolated, manipulated, elongated, time is decelerated providing a temporal dislocation. The overall edifice is deeply layered, with complex time signature changes amidst the subtle organic/inorganic soundscapes and melodic chorus laden bass lines that interlink effortlessly with the guitars.

Isis are on of the few contemporary pioneers amongst heavy music, not content to rely on metallisms or purely generic devices. In common with Tool, Mastodon and Sunn O))) they create a sense of malleability, and with Wavering Radiant they continue to expand the form and language of metal beyond the constrictions of orthodoxy without ever fully divorcing themselves from the genre. Audience expectations set the bar high for them, and they continue not to disappoint.

Antibodies - Sky Larkin

2009-04-20T04:16:00.000-07:00

Leeds three piece Sky Larkin's sound is somewhat hard to position. They possess elements of twee revivalism, and given their links to Los Campesinos! amongst others it would be a reasonable conclusion to situate them in this tradition that is recently becoming a growing concern, but they harbour a more muscular edge and have certainly heard a few Sleater-Kinney records in their time. These alt-rock stylings are married to a more accessible and identifiable 'pop' structure, although this perception may be constructed through having a female vocalist. Certainly Sky Larkin's edges are smoothed by Katie Harkin's silken vocals.

Commencing with a bluesy, Pavement-esque guitar figure, before being dissected by an ascending chord structure, 'Antibodies' is an energetic and enervating release. Harkin's guitar playing and the combination of rhythm section Doug Adams and Nestor Matthews create a tight framework around which the song is structured.

Parent album The Golden Spike was an album about commemoration of places, situations, emotions. “Antibodies” is a song about long distance love (their very own “500 Miles” apparently), with it's refrain of 'Sentiments stretched over sediment and soil' evoking the melancholy of yearning. It is a song of elliptical repetition, and repeated listens reveal its craft and charm.

Their influences are all worthy wells to draw from, and these are skilfully balanced by the band. Sometimes a song well played and written will hit the mark, no matter how derivative it is. Within the boundaries of genre you can find moments of great invention. Producer John Goodmanson has completed an admirable job in evoking the sound of varied alt-rock outfits, and in common with these retrograde ambitions the single is to be released as a C60 cassette. But here lies the crux; the band have crafted a well conceived and poised set of songs on their album, and it works well as a coherent body of work. But isolate any of the songs and it becomes apparent that they lack the relevant dynamics to catapult them from cult concern to genuine contenders. Yet.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/. To read the music review of Antibodies by Sky Larkin on the site please click on the article title.

Metro Station - Metro Station

2009-04-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

Do Metro Station actually exist? Like the first Gulf War there is a case to be made against their actual corporeality. They appear as an illusion, Californian ciphers, bloodless purveyors of teenage angst. It's not even the chronic lack of originality that is the problem, they are the musical equivalent of Stepford Wives – it is music designed purely for someone else's pleasure with no individuality. They may as well be automatons.

Metro Station represent all that is reprehensible about American popular culture. They are indicative of how marketing and promotional companies appropriate subcultures and different social conventions in a desperate attempt to gain an edge, to stay ahead of the curve and look cool to 14 year old girls. So what emerges is a tangled web of signs and codes – emo, tattoos, hardcore, breakdancing, hip hop, and skate culture. It's all fair game. The medium is the message – it doesn't matter what music is provided for the target demographic, just as long as something is released. The package is just as important as what it actually contains.

Formed by Trace Cyrus, brother to Miley and son of Billy Ray (erstwhile new country star of “Achy Breaky Heart” fame, although for me his career high was his cameo in Mulholland Drive) and Mason Musso, older brother to Mitchell. They met on the set of Hannah Montana in which both of their siblings star, in a meeting engineered by their mothers. Quickly gaining a huge following on MySpace they attracted the attention of Red Ink, a subsidiary of Columbia Records. Further proof that social networking groups have replaced the art of the A & R representative as the recruiting ground for most majors and that it has become a key part of their business model in terms of talent spotting and marketing. So, Hollywood connections and a large friend list on MySpace have led this group of privileged young men to international fame and, perhaps more importantly, sales. The album was first released in 2007 and created little stir, but is getting a new belated push in the UK due to 'Shake It' hitting the Billboard Top Ten.

Divesting yourself of all prejudice, you can make pretend that their eponymous debut album is pop music pure and simple. But it is badly executed pop music with little attention to song development or structure. “Seventeen Forever” sets the template; electro inflected energetic pop, power chords, the urgency of youth, a hint of sex, the peculiar urge singular to teenhood of wanting to be older but wanting to be embalmed at that age. These are themes that resonate through the ages to the early dawn of pop music, but go and listen to “Satisfaction” by the Stones and compare how tame the supposedly barely restrained sexual longing is. “Control” claims to be about, well, losing control but there is no drama, no narrative beyond the admittedly energetic track. “Shake It” is a chorus with a song bolted on, albeit a naggingly infectious chorus. Musso and Cyrus' vocals lack depth or dynamic, which is particularly evident on the appallingly flat backing vocals, and they go in for horrible accentuation and breathy delivery. The subject matter and lyrics may as well have been generated by some form of randomiser as they are completely interchangeable – boy meets girl, girl rejects boy, boy crashes Hollywood aftershow party to impress girl, girl eventually accedes, girl takes clothes off. Although not if she had listened to one of the questionable ballads on display. “Kelsey”, sadly not about Kelsey Grammar, is a particular offender, with it's refrain of 'I'll swim the ocean for you, the ocean for you, woah-oh-oh-oh Kelsey'. Elsewhere “Wish We Were Older” updates The Beach Boys' “Wouldn't It Be Nice” with a truly horrendous Europop backing track and some curious yodelling on the chorus, while“Tell Me What To Do” possesses the sort of lameass rap last perpetrated by Robbie Williams.

Tedious, turgid, wearisome, monotonous, weak, gauche, self absorbed, totally and utterly devoid of any content. Hype and positioning have granted Metro Station a position that their music certainly doesn't befit. There are a raft of electro pop purveyors around who write more original and interesting songs but that probably won't sell a tenth as many records. Actually, make that a hundredth. Perhaps Bill Hicks should have been granted his wish and Billy Ray Cyrus be hunted and killed, but that's stretching a point. The transient nature of pop music means that in a year this will hopefully be forgotten.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk. To read the music review of Metro Station on the site please click on the article title.

Klang - The Rakes

2009-04-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

After an uncertain second album The Rakes return with a laddish swagger for their third long player Klang. Their sophomore album Ten New Messages was an attempt to broaden their scope, which was especially evident in Alan Donohue's lyrics, but the overall feeling was that the band were hampered and constricted by this approach.

They left behind grey, industrial, sepulchral London for grey, industrial, sepulchral Berlin to write and record the album, disillusioned with the vapidity of the London music scene. Anyone expecting a Reed/Bowie/Iggy/Liars style reinvention however will be disappointed. Although they have expanded their lineup, The Rakes have streamlined their sound to a palette of clipped disco drums, chugging bass and skeletal guitars augmented with the occasional vociferous piano line. There is nothing wrong with stripping a song back to it's core elements – The Fall have made a career from deconstructing the base components of rock music, albeit with wonderful stylistic reinventions and phases along the way – and The Rakes clearly have a template which the band is comfortable with. Ten New Messages was shrouded in an air of melancholy, with Donohue's lyrics affected by London post 7/7. The outbreak of racist discourse and the media's response to the attacks were clearly things they felt uncomfortable with and explored in depth on the album. In fact Ten New Messages was weakened when it left this narrative cycle, with the more knockabout songs depressingly feeling more like artifice. On Klang they retrocede to the wry, weary social observations of their first record rather than grand social statements.
Capture/Release, released in 2005, was one of the keynote releases of the first wave of indie bands but it felt too clearly demarcated, it's influences clear and perfunctory while the polite deferences to working and drinking in the city presented a London-centric worldview. The lack of a specific context or conceptual framework for these songs left the whole movement open to criticisms of vacuousness. While they captured the emptiness of this working environ beyond the singles they sounded like a band who had been rushed into the studio far too early. Where Klang supersedes these previous releases is in it's cohesion. 10 songs, clocking in at less than 30 minutes with the longest song being 3 minutes 21 seconds. Every song is taut and muscular - like the onomatopoeic album title, the album is full of metallic harshness, a spiteful malevolence. And my Lord, is it cocking great fun.

Opener “You're In It” sets the tone for the rest of the album with its staccato, angular rhythms and pithy lyrics. “That's The Reason” and “Bitchin' In The Kitchen” are ostensibly songs about having a good time, but their combination of mod stylistics and sleazy late 70s era Rolling Stones guitar lines allow them to transcend the basic subject matter. Leadoff single “1989” could have been titled 2005, such is it's surface lack of progression from their debut record. But the chiming “Hong Kong Garden” guitars and lazy background vocals show a development in songcraft. What emerges from these collection of songs is a less polished, dirtier version of Franz Ferdinand. They even throw in a few filthy couplets worthy of Kapranos and co - 'You are exceptional at being sexual' etcetera – that would have seemed out of place on previous releases. Of course The Rakes' version of romance is a drunken fumble after a heavy night out rather than the glossy seduction of Franz's latest. And with Franz Ferdinand moving into more synth led territory there is a sizeable gap in the market for a band like The Rakes to capitalise on.

Alan Donohue's vocals will probably divide listeners, but he belongs to a great tradition of non-singers as vocalists (think Lou Reed, Mark E Smith, Martin Bramah) and while his range hasn't improved greatly (baritone to a keening yelp) his presence as a frontman certainly has. He initially gained attention for his curious mixture of Ian Curtis and David Brent moves when they played live, but whereas before he would mumble and seem embarrassed by his central position he now enunciates each vowel, warbles away and generally bestrides each song.

Are The Rakes' regressive ambitions a depressing indication of the lack of social awareness of modern indie bands or is their consistent approach to melody and subject matter an admirable stance? They tried to diversify, realised it wasn't apt and have returned with a focused, melodic and accessible album. The unity of purpose outweighs any criticism of their lack of progression or fixation on certain tropes – that modern life is rubbish, we are all victims of the aspiration deficit, the emptiness of the endless cycle of partying, having a detestable job, and the futility of trying to attach meaning in an increasingly mechanised and insignificant decade. 'Sometimes you can't smell the shit 'til you're in it' is perhaps a more prescient indictment of our current malaise than some lengthy, verbose and outwardly worthy protest song.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk. To read the music review of Klang by The Rakeson the site please click on the article title.

Beg, Steal or Borrow # 3

2009-04-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

I don't really listen to a lot of heavy music these days, and tend to be quite choosy about what I do listen to. Mastodon's fifth album Crack The Skye is amazing, a heady rush of oneiric mysticism, Icarus mythology and personal tragedy which is complemented by the increasingly melodic and progressive tendencies of the band. Highly recommended.

I Might Be Wrong #1 - Jade Goody and the media

2009-03-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

“The planet itself is becoming it's own dustbin...” - Jean Baudrillard

Ostensibly this is a music blog, but I felt compelled to concrete my thoughts on today's news into words. I was genuinely saddened by the death of Jade Goody. The manner of her passing from cervical cancer, it's untimely nature and the fact that she left behind a young family were all deeply unsettling elements to the story.

What does the exposure given to this story say about Britain? It reinforces our mortality and fear of death, providing a reminder that we can be taken at any time, and this was surely one facet of the media's fascination with Goody's illness and this humanistic element will prolong the longevity of interest in it for the forthcoming weeks, months and maybe years. Who knows – the media's attention span is like that of a schizophrenic five year old, constantly wavering and uncertain. She was just a year older than myself, and died just seven months after being diagnosed with cancer while on Big Boss, the Indian version of Big Brother, so it certainly connects with myself on this level. But beyond this lies a darker, more unsettling tone, that of our almost hysterical epistemological desire to know everything about the lives and inner workings of celebrity. And I don't mean a celebrity in the singular sense, but that of the construct, the artifice itself. Jade Goody's adult life was lived in front of TV camera crews and paparazzi, which for an unremarkable woman from Essex whose sole achievements were giving a public blowjob and making racist remarks, both on the 'normal' and 'celebrity' versions of reality TV show Big Brother, was a remarkable achievement in itself.

Contrast this thirst for knowledge on celebrity and it's nature with the gradual narrowing of the media's range and depth – 24 hour news coverage has weakened our response to news, with the rolling bulletins which aim to cover every angle instead providing a fractal and dissolute image of the news. We as a nation are becoming slowly more depoliticised – reality TV shows, and the depressing advent of the return of 70s style variety programmes such as Britain's Got Talent are becoming opiates for the masses. The level of critical inquest into anything is embarrassingly and intolerably low in most quarters, with vast swathes of the media seem content for the viewer to be dispassionate observers. News broadcasts become a cut and paste job of white teeth, hair, personality, Brit murdered abroad, human interest story – blurred and unfocused images that add up to a distorted and inconsequential whole. Truly symbolic and important events are sidetracked by commodification. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised – whatever the tourist board tells us Britain is a nation of service stations, transport cafés, dirty canals, and abandoned gasworks as much as it one of sun dappled waterways, cathedrals, castles and prehistoric ruins.

We don't innately need these 'stars', but have constructed them anyway. Jade Goody was constructed by the media, which made a star of her personality alone. From inauspiciuous beginnings (she was much hated after her first appearance on Big Brother) she somehow became a figurehead for England. But she went wrong, one of many white contestants who racially abused Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty on the celebrity version of Big Brother. She had strayed from the script so the press completed a hatchet job on her and she became bigoted Jade from Essex again. Only when near to death does a different portrayal arrive, that of the loving mother and wife. This new portrayal was lovingly orchestrated by Max Clifford, a process that Goody wilfully participated in. Realising early on that she was “famous for nothing”, she utilised our seemingly insatiable appetite for insight into the lives of celebrities in order to sell the rights to her recent wedding to fiancé Jack Tweed in order to raise funds for her family after her death. So, in true post-structuralist terms, the media has been misled, waylaid, misrouted by an apparent desire for knowledge on celebrity and the depiction of reality that our quest for a perceived notion of reality becomes a fruitless quest for a paper tiger.

You get the media you deserve, they are there to provide an outlet for the populace. I'm not proposing a return to a didactic delivery of news, but proposing that newsgathering should continue to be wide and varied. Rather than telling us what to think (or not to think, as is the current vogue) we should be invited to think for ourselves. And I don't mean in an ITV News style "text in if you've got an opinion on the banking crisis" bollocks way. Jade Goody's legacy, such that it is, will be a greater acknowledgement of the threat of cancer to the young. But it could also provide a clarion call to the media, a chance to realise the puerility of it's output, and it's treatment of the reality 'stars' it creates.

Muppet death metal

2009-03-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

Okay okay, this is a cheap post - but there was something about the way this Muppets episode was synced up to Mutant Christ that made me laugh uproariously. And John McCririck is playing the bass guitar. Awesome.

Sea Within A Sea - The Horrors

2009-03-19T15:29:00.001-07:00

The Horrors ditch the thin Farfisa organ driven, artifice heavy pastiche of late 60s psychedelia for an altogether different beast; elements of beat era psyche remain, but drenched in a lush, gauzy synth dreamscape that is conjoined with the minimalism of post-punk pioneers such as Pere Ubu.

Clocking in at around 8 minutes, it is taken from their upcoming sophomore effort Primary Colours that was produced by Geoff Barrows of Portishead. In the arpeggiated, motorik synths that dominate the latter half of the song, and it's indistinct and obscured vocals you can hear the influence of Portishead's latest album Third. You can also hear the musical progression of the band, and in particular the side project of Spider Webb and Tom Furse. Music is about hidden associations and forging new identities - it is at once malleable and capable of being completely controlled while also being an untamed force - so this new direction shouldn't come as a surprise. It will be interesting to see if they can pull this off live.

"Sea Within A Sea" is a great song that has excellent portents for their second record. Their debut felt too contrived, all surface and no depth, whereas this new sound is arcane and devious. It is the sound of a band that has grown up and is coming to terms with their abilities. The video, directed by former Jesus & Mary Chain bassist Douglas Hart, is equally cool.

Go to http://www.thehorrors.co.uk/, as the band have allowed it be downloaded for free. All you need to do is sign up to their mailing list and they'll send you a free mp3. Simples.

Mystery EP - BLK JKS

2009-03-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

BLK JKS were formed in 2000 by guitarist Mpumi Mcata and vocalist Linda Buthelezi, childhood friends who had grown up in the tough locale of Spruitview in Johannesburg's East Rand. After adding Tshebang Ramoba on drums and Molefi Makananise on bass (seasoned musicians from the townships of Soweto) they set about creating a slow moving word of mouth buzz, bridging racial and social divides, and eventually catching the attention of an on tour Diplo which in turn led them to being signed by Secretly Canadian and recording the Mystery EP with Secret Machines' Brendan Curtis at the Electric Lady studios in New York. All this after a misadventure with an album recorded at South Africa Broadcasting Company (After Robots) that is still abandoned in the vaults.

Attempting to describe their sound is like attempting to elucidate a mind map; schizophrenic, messy and ultimately futile. You can draw a line through Bitches Brew, Fela Kuti, Jimi Hendrix (in particular the energy and dynamics of the Band of Gypsys), Lee 'Scratch' Perry's output at the Ark, Zulu blues, jazz fusion, mbaqanga right up to Deloused in the Comatorium, perhaps the closest contemporary record in terms of the scope of its sound and influences.

Despite the amalgamation of genres and sound design BLK JKS' sound doesn't come across as a compromise, not does it seem like a calculated attempt to meld traditional African rhythms and sounds to a standardised alternative blueprint. Instead the nebulous, psychedelic sound they create effortlessly traverses the restrictions of genre and ethnicity in much the same way as Abe Vigoda do with their 'tropical' punk until it becomes unclassifiable, a different sound altogether.

The scattershot drums and dread heavy bass of “Lakeside” gradually subside into joyous chants, whistles and harmonies, while the BLK JKS love of the possibilities of the jam is apparent in the opening moments of “Mystery”. The track's polyrhythms and percussive drive, based around an initially cyclic guitar figure, are entrancing. “Summertime” is the most dub influenced song on the album; Mcata's guitar sounds though it has been processed through a thousand Echoplexes, creating a cavernous wall of sound before Buthelezi's harmonious vocals and Ramoba changing pace on the rimshots pulls the song back from the edge. The murky ambience of the song belies the lyrics' fixation on the darker side of summer, where the sun is the bringer of cancer and birds are fanged creatures. There are so many ideas in these first three songs as the band constantly change direction, refusing to indulge the grammar of 'rock' music. This is evidenced in the song encompassing hi-life and kwaai kwaito beats as Buthelezi implores in Zulu for the taxi driver taking him through JoBurg to let him out and escape the heat. EP closer “It's In Everything You'll See” employs no drums, just layer upon layer of guitar and ambient atmospheric noise, and while structurally it is less complex it is no less arresting for that.

There is a suspension in their music, that creates discord and irregularity. Melodic lines submerge themselves in the mix before emerging later in the song, twisted beyond recognition. Syncopated rhythms and varied time signatures are used to great effect, and like the Band of Gypsys they utilise the jam. But they don't find themselves waylaid down blind alleys; every note, every nuance, every stroke seems like an extension of the band and is completely vital to the whole.

They use linguistics as a tool of escaping the limitations of melody; by flitting between English and varied African dialects (Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana and Pedi) it allows them to expand their phonetic range. The combination of the metre of Buthelezi's vocals and the free association of his lyrics create a fragmentary, allusive and poetic dynamic to the vocal performance.

Hype and positioning are key elements in promoting/breaking new acts, so how to promote a black South African rock act? BLK JKS react against the slow commodification of African music by in turn appropriating the white alternative sphere. Their rejection of the strategies of segregation which genre and classification place on artists links to a growing pan-African consciousness in the 21st century and a rejection of conservative South Africa's divisions along social, political, economic and racial grounds. By appropriating 'white' music they are reclaiming “the music of the enemy”,and this adoption can be read as a political statement. But in adopting 'white' music they also play with it's conventions, refusing to stick to the script and adhere to the traditional musicology of alternative music. A refusal to compromise cost them the release of lost album After Robots in South Africa, but by sticking to their principles they have found a new audience. This flagrant disregard is as telling as any grand statement or grandstanding from their lead singer. You don't need to nail your colours to the mast or be explicit to make a lucid, articulate political statement.

Mystery is a soulful, invigorating and cerebral release that interrogates the varied intersections between race, politics and music in the Rainbow Nation. But more importantly amidst a tangled web of influences they have created a coherent and timely EP that speaks to us all.

This article featured on www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk. To read the music review of Mystery by BLK JKS on the site please click on the article title.

Jarvis Cocker

2009-03-15T14:02:00.001-07:00

Ex-Pulp vocalist, champion of DIY ethics, festival curator, arse flasher and all round good egg Jarvis Cocker is releasing his second album Further Complications in May. And it has been produced by Steve Albini. Perhaps an incongruous pairing, but then again Cocker did put on Sunn O ))) at the Meltdown festival in 2007.

Cocker's debut solo record Jarvis was a quiet joy, shot through with his trademark caustic wit. Few lyricists can get to the heart of a situation quite as pointedly as him.

Fat Children

Last night I had a little altercation
They wobbled menacingly, under the yellow streetlights it became a situation
Well they wanted my brand new phone with all the pictures of the kids and the wife
A struggle ensued, and then fat children took my life

Fat children took my life...

"Fat Children" was a definite highlight, while the Walker Brothers inspired "From A to I" (a distant cousin of Blur's "To The End") and "Baby's Coming Back To Me" showcased Richard Hawley's skills on the guitar.

I also really like the Lodger inspired sleeve and Jarvis' beard.

Further Complications is released on May 18th 2009.

Why?

2009-03-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to Clouddead a lot lately, and this inspired me to explore more of Why?'s output. This song, from Elephant Eyelash, is brilliant.

Their latest album Alopeica is a more restrained affair, showcasing their genre-bending to excellent effect alongside the abstract imagery of Yoni Wolf's lyrics, which are as dark and caustic as ever. Sex and death loom large. I cannot recommend this enough.

Summer Palace - Sunny Day Sets Fire

2009-03-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you know what a record will sound like before you even hear it, and from the very first bars of opener “Wilderness” the multinational multi-instrumentalists that make up the lineup of Sunny Day Sets Fire don't disappoint. They trade in a euphoric rush of upbeat, psychedelic pop which should see them feature heavily on many a summer themed mixtape this year.

Obvious reference points are Apples in Stereo or The Flaming Lips, but frontman Mauro Remiddi's vocals evoke the same wide eyed innocence of Syd Barrett which coupled with a slew of Beatles-esque chord structures and Beach Boy harmonies combine to construct a pervasive evocation of late 60s psychedelia which is nicely measured without becoming revivalist.

Much of Summer Palace is awash with romantic, wistful melodies but where it works best and is at its strongest is the brooding melancholia of “Mandarins”, the surf rock twang of “End of the Road” or the whimsy of “Wilderness”. “Adrenaline” and “Brainless” aim for instant gratification, but both result in a cloying pastiche of The Magic Numbers.

Unfortunately the album as a whole is too one paced, with only the reverb soaked “Siamese” stripping back the songs to reveal that there is more beyond the layered guitars, keyboards, glockenspiel and vocal harmonies that envelop and threaten to consume each song. Their over-ambition means the majority of songs end with spiralling codas, which eventually becomes a self-effacing affair when every song on the album possesses one.

There are a plethora of acts currently attempting to reinvest pop music with a sense of worth and relevance, but this release lacks the cohesion and hooks of a classic pop album. Summer Palace has its strengths and merits, but after nigh on one hours listening time of such resolutely chipper music it is an album that leaves you desperately searching for the shade.

This article was originally produced for http://www.themusicmagazine.co.uk/. If you would like to read the music review of Summer Palace by Sunny Day Sets Fire on the site then please click on the article title.

Tell Me It's Not Over - Starsailor

2009-03-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

Starsailor prospered in the post-Britpop years, with their debut album Love Is Here capitalising on ground laid by the Verve, Doves, Elbow and Travis by selling more than 1 million copies. Pre-conceived wisdom has these years penned as a wasteland, brought to furious life by two enervating and hedonistic early releases from either side of the Atlantic; Is This It by the Strokes and Up The Bracket by the Libertines. While this revisionist appraisal imposes a false genealogy on modern music history, it has to be said that during the period from the end of Britpop (generally considered to be 1997) to those Rough Trade releases in 2001/02 alternative music had become increasingly genre bound, and Starsailor’s music adheres strictly to generic conventions.

Starsailor have always suffered from poor timing. As alternative kids everywhere were getting off to increasingly esoteric and danceable forms of post punk, new wave and mutant disco in indie clubs they released the lumpen “Four to the Floor”. Designed to be their very own “I Am The Resurrection”, it sounds bloated in comparison to the groove heavy Stone Roses song. While a band’s merits should not be assessed on how culturally relevant they are, their audience has more than likely moved on during the interim and it is hard to see how their new release will recapture them.

Their sound is at it was in 2001, preserved in aspic. Minor key piano chords announce the song, at once strident and cowed, while the lack of any sort of tempo change, riff or syncopation and the bland instrumentation hardly inspires. The song is emotionally overwrought while strangely lacking in emotional clarity. The song’s narrator finds his partner in bed with another, providing the track with its narrative thrust, but the situation is too clichéd and contrived to convince the listener of its emotive depth. The simple arrangement and limited sonic palette of the song is there to showcase frontman James Walsh’ vocals, which is possessing of its usual quavering baritone. It will surely soundtrack the departure of Premiership managers on Sky Sports News and the end of pubescent relationships on Hollyoaks.

They have always struggled in comparison to those other sons of Wigan the Verve. While the basic elements are the same James Walsh lacks Richard Ashcroft’s shamanistic flair for narrative and vocal phrasing. Starsailor are firmly set within the boundaries of genre, content to exist within their constrictions. While the Verve channel a sense of mystic and epic fervour, Starsailor are limited to the structural demarcations created by themselves. What is strange is that they have lost the atmosphere they created on early tracks such as “Love Is Here”, replacing it with a prosaic and heavy-handed approach to subject matter and timbre.

Striving to depict inner turmoil and anguish they inspire nothing but entropy. While the song is consummately performed, no surprise given that they met at a Music College, the song becomes white noise, an undignified mess of minor chords, misplaced sentiments, hyperbole and hand wringing that leaves you feeling sensory deprivation. Eventually it washes over you, instantly forgettable yet leaving a searing and unmistakeable pain; a fleeting, backwards glimpse at a musical past you thought long consigned to ruin.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/. To read the music review of Tell Me It's Not Over by Starsailor on the site please click on the article title.

On Writing

2009-03-07T13:09:00.000-08:00

The first and hardest obstacle to overcome when writing about music is the sense of deja vu. Even though the thoughts originate from inside your own head you can't escape the sense that you have heard them somewhere before. It seems that today radical or revolutionary thought has been all but obliterated by an overreaching perception of comfort and safety. Because of this it becomes increasingly hard to extend the limit of human endeavour or thought because of that self same cognisance of deja vu. By accepting that you are travelling down a path well trodden you can begin to explore its nuances and more esoteric sights.

Time of the Assassins - Nickel Eye

2009-03-01T03:46:00.000-08:00

Since the Strokes went on hiatus in 2006 Albert Hammond Jr has released two solo albums, Julian Casablancas has collaborated with Pharrell Williams and Santogold on a song for Converse (“My Drive Thru”) and Fab Moretti has worked on side project Little Joy (which sporadically featured Nick Valensi). Bassist Nikolai Fraiture follows a furrow well ploughed by his bandmates in releasing his début solo record, under the groan-inducing moniker Nickel Eye.

There are many noticeable things about the album, chief of which is the fact that Fraiture does not play bass. Instead he covers vocal and guitar duties, with British band South brought in as backing band to add flesh to the bones of his songs. There are also a raft of guest appearances, including Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Regina Spektor, but this does not detract from the overall ebb and flow of the album with each guest keen to sublimate themselves within their role and cede to Fraiture.

The tight, locked in groove and sinuous guitar line of “Intro” may support the notion of this being a low end heavy workout from a moonlighting bassist but the rest of the album is more pastoral. “You and Everyone Else” combines a strident Violent Femmes-esque guitar line with a winsome and breezy melody, while “Back From Exile” bears more than a passing resemblance to Bob Dylan's “Hurricane”. “Fountain Avenue” carries this idea of evocation even further, with Fraiture's vocals echoing the karaoke version of Shane MacGowan that Julian Casablancas delivered on “15 Minutes” from the Strokes' third album First Impressions of Earth. “Dying Star” increases the tempo and is the song that bears the closest resemblance to the Strokes, aided by Zinner's tremolo picking over the clangorous garage chords.

Sonically much of Time of the Assassins sounds like a raft of acoustic troubadours (Dylan, Cohen, Young, Kristofferson) filtered through 80s post-punk (REM, Mission of Burma, Meat Puppets, Violent Femmes, various elements of the 4AD and Sub Pop catalogue, The Pogues). In that we find comfort and nostalgia, playing on our sense of collective cultural memory. and a curious sense of languor and yearning urgency. This sense of inward reflection is resonated through songs such as “Providence, RI” and its myriad of lost highways, wilderness and waterways.

Yet this is what stops the album short of making it's own mark. In merely evoking recollections it adds nothing new to the already burgeoning genres and sub-genres from which it draws its influences.

Time of the Assassins is much like the old shoe box of poems and memories that apparently inspired Fraiture to write much of the material on here, with hidden surprises secreted amongst the things long since consigned to the vagaries of remembrance. The album is awash with a sense of nostalgia that is attractive, as Fraiture constructs a temporal and spatial dimension, pining for a lost country and time that can only be visited by memory. Fittingly for an album so obsessed with the past it closes with a version of Leonard Cohen's “Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye”. Homage is a precarious technique in music, occasionally covering a lack of originality, and this is the one area that Time of the Assassins fails on, but overall Fraiture has delivered an album rich in emotional honesty.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/index.php. To read the music review of Time of the Assassins by Nickel Eye on the site please click on the article title.

The Century of Self - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead

2009-02-23T13:55:00.000-08:00

The Century of Self is the sixth album from …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead and it finds them in an uncertain position. Having parted from record label Interscope amidst much bad feeling (and a very public war of words between frontman Conrad Keely and label boss Jimmy Iovine) and relocated from long term base Austin, Texas for Brooklyn, currently the hippest area in New York, they find themselves releasing the album through their own imprint Richter Scale. After following up 2002’s high watermark Source Tags and Codes with the critically lambasted and ever diminishing returns of Worlds Apart and So Divided, they have ejected their long time bassist Neil Busch, fought onstage and generally fallen into all the clichés of the band that has fallen on hard times. Considering the trajectory their career is currently leading there is a feeling that they have to deliver on this album.

It is important to recognise that the band are a very different proposition to the band that recorded Madonna and Source Tags and Codes. Early in their career they harnessed the corrosive dissonance of Sonic Youth and trapped it within a more traditional song structure. Since 2002 Trail of Dead have become increasingly progressive. As is now customary the album begins with an instrumental, but whereas before this would have taken the form of a simple piano motif or experimental noise collage “Giant Causeway” is an overblown spectacle, replete with portentous piano and synths. Only in the last 15 seconds, as the song rings out, does a ghostly piano motif that is so unmistakeably Keely-esque flit near the surface of the song before being sublimated by the feedback that announces “Far Pavilions”. The call and response vocals, heavy tom work and the sheer tempo and exuberance of the track begin to justify some of the claims that they are back to their best. But the mid-section’s chorus of vocals, chiming piano and lead synth line are grandiose and inappropriate, more akin to something Andrew Lloyd-Webber would have written than Thurston Moore and co. This says a lot about Trail of Dead’s progressive intentions, something they announced by covering Genesis’ “Back In New York City” (a song also tackled by Jeff Buckley) for their 2003 EP The Secrets of Elena’s Tomb. “Isis Unveiled” commences with a guitar line that is eerily reminiscent of “Catacombs” by At The Drive-In before morphing into a galloping Muse-esque stadium rock stomp. The structure is similar to “Far Pavilions”, with an extended mid section that is more successful mainly due to the post-rock styling of the guitars and the wistful delivery of Keely’s vocal. Just when you think the song has ended the main riff kicks in, far from seamlessly. Further evidence of the perverse logic that informs much of the songwriting – they have a killer song that is an obvious single candidate but some of the choices in terms of structure blight the song as a whole.

Sequencing also afflicts The Century of Self. There are five songs longer than six minutes on the album, and four of them are placed in the first five and are probably amongst the strongest present. This means that the second side of the album is awash with mid-tempo piano led songs that, while pretty enough tend to meander aimlessly. The torpor of the second side is rescued by “Ascending”, but even this feels like a parody of their earlier work. That is not to say that all of the second side is a failure; “Luna Park”, nominal drummer Jason Reece’s sole songwriting contribution, is an affecting and atmospheric song while “Inland Sea” carries on their tradition of Eastern mysticism with the song focusing on transcendental meditation.

The songs are multi-layered, but Trail of Dead’s songwriting has changed so they are now unapologetically anthemic. The minor key arpeggios and deft interplay between guitars is gone, with the piano becoming a much more integral part of their sound. There have been claims that this album heralds a return to their roots, chiefly prompted by Keely and Reece playing as a duo last year, The Century of Self has more in common with World’s Apart in terms of lyrical theme, song structure, titles and artwork. But the problem with the newer works is excess – they have always had a penchant for bombast but the last three albums in their oeuvre have drowned in overdubs and over-orchestration. Unable to rein in their more excessive elements they have lost the quiet/loud dynamic that they previously used to such success. This isn’t helped on The Century of Self by the sonic compression that envelops the album, layering the album in an indistinct fug.

Comparing an artist’s new release to a previous one will always be a self-defeating exercise. The album’s title intimates the triumph of the ‘self’, that the pursuit of happiness and satisfaction are mankind’s ultimate goal. Free from major label pressure regarding their output, both aural and visual, Trail of Dead are obviously making the music that they enjoy but the feeling is that increased quality control wouldn’t have gone amiss. There are some excellent moments, but the album lacks cohesion and fails to sustain these, and overall it is a missed opportunity for Trail of Dead to be re-established amongst the forefront of alternative music.

This article was originally produced for http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/. To read the music review of The Century of Self by ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead on the site, please click on the article title.

Chaccaron Maccaron - El Chombo

2009-02-23T02:14:00.000-08:00

This is genuinely one of the best things I have ever seen. And the song is great.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead

2009-02-22T12:33:00.000-08:00

I'm currently writing a review of Trail of Dead's new record, which is a hit and miss affair, and it got me thinking. Between 1999-2003 they were on top of their game, releasing two albums and one EP of premium quality. Since then they have faltered, although Worlds Apart from 2005 is an underappreciated record, it just happened to be not as good as Source Tags and Codes, while So Divided from 2006 is a flawed and ostentatious record.

So I have decided to compile an annotated mixtape of sorts.

01 - Invocation (Source Tags and Codes, Interscope 2002)

As this is Trail of Dead, we have to start with an instrumental and this haunting piano motif is the best.

02 - Richter Scale Madness (...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Trance Syndicate 1998)

Still a live favourite, its blend crashing drums, angular guitars and high octane vocals make this an essential cut from their debut.

03 - Mistakes & Regrets (Madonna, Merge 1999)

For many this was their introduction to the band. I still remember seeing the video on M2 (the precursor to MTV2, before it went all commercial maaan) and being intrigued by their mixture of Eastern mythology and the psychedelic visuals. Musically they had come a long way from their debut, with a rich and organic sound that was heavily textured. The interplay between the guitars, the strident bass and trademark tribal drumming are perfect and Conrad Keely's vocals, at once hushed and then a yelp of anguish, have rarely been bettered. And the lyrics are great too.

04 - Another Morning Stoner (Madonna, Merge 1999)

The video, above, was shot while they were in London which is only one of the plethora of reasons which make this song amazing. Again trademark heavy tom work, and the minor key guitar lines which wend their way around you, entwining you in the song before reaching the heights with its soaring string finale.

05 - Relative Ways (Source Tags and Codes, Interscope 2002)

If you could distil Trail of Dead into one song it would be this or "Mistakes and Regrets". The tension it creates is incredibly powerful.

06 - It Was There That I Saw You (Source Tags and Codes, Interscope 2002)

Seguing from opener "Invocation", this song provides Source Tags and Codes with its initial headlong rush, frenetic and exciting.

07 - Will You Smile Again? (Worlds Apart, Interscope 2005)

The best song on the album by a stretch. It's epic without inflating itself, unlike the rest of the album, its pummeling 5/4 riff and percussion cover up the strangely flat vocal performance.

08 - Intelligence (The Secret of Elena's Tomb, Interscope 2003)

Not strictly a Trail of Dead song, as it was co-written by Tyler Jacobsen of Jason Reece's other band A Roman Scandal, it takes their emotional post-hardcore and melds it perfectly with glitchy, beat heavy electronica. A great song and a really unexpected pleasure.

09 - Totally Natural (Madonna, Merge 1999)

Breakneck.

10 - Blight Takes All (Madonna, Merge 1999)

I love the slowly descending piano motif, beautifully offset against the melodic guitar lines. It also has a brilliant opening line..."Just another Poland pose, with this new haircut, oh what, am I to do?"

11 - Caterwaul (Worlds Apart, Interscope 2005)

Probably the most straight up riffing on this playlist.

12 - Mark David Chapman (Madonna, Merge 1999)

If it weren't for "Mistakes and Regrets" this would be the key song on Madonna, its eloquent mix of harmonics and Sonic Youth style guitars builds into a pounding crescendo.

13 - Crowning of a Heart (The Secret of Elena's Tomb, Interscope 2003)

The standout track on this EP, its soft-focus, languid verses slowly drawing you in before the mid-section's simple guitar motif that wrenches all emotion from you.

14 - How Near How Far (Source Tags and Codes, Interscope 2002)

Just a beautiful song.

15 - Source Tags and Codes (Source Tags and Codes, Interscope 2002)

This song is the summation of everything the band were striving for at this point, but is like a boozy barroom version of the song. Check out the way "Relative Ways" segues into "After The Laughter" and then this track. Great sequencing.

16 - The Summer of '91 (Worlds Apart, Interscope 2005)

I sometimes think that Worlds Apart has been unfairly treated, and this simple piano ballad is a great mixtape closer.

Check out the playlist at: http://open.spotify.com/user/sexmusic/playlist/52Bm4XhRpCiM3N4ATKrqQ7

They are on tour to support their new record in April. These are the dates (taken from the official website)

04.14 -- Portsmouth, England -- Wedge Rooms
04.15 -- Nottingham, England -- Rescue Rooms
04.16 -- Manchester, England -- Academy 3
04.17 -- Glasgow, Scotland -- Oran Mor
04.19 -- Newcastle, England -- Academy
04.20 -- Birmingham, England -- Academy
04.22 -- Bristol, England -- Thekla
04.23 -- London, England -- Electric Ballroom

http://www.trailofdead.com/

Drum's Not Dead - Liars

2009-02-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

February 20th marks the third anniversary of the release of Drum's Not Dead by Liars. Slowly but surely it is becoming an increasingly watershed release, with more and more acts adapting their use of structure and synthetic texture. In 2001 this wouldn't have seemed plausible, as a group of four Brooklyn hipsters (including one Antipodian stowaway) release their critically acclaimed, little promoted debut record They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top that pushes them to the fore of the post-punk revival along with peers such as TV on the Radio, The Rapture, Liquid Liquid, Yeah Yeah Yeahs etcetera. Deciding that this sound, this scene was not for them they disband, only for frontman Angus Andrew and guitarist Aaron Hemphill to reunite the band with friend Julian Gross on drums. Their first release as a trio was Atheists, Reconsider, a split EP with Oneida which found them experimenting with sound collage and musique concrete. They then moved to the wilderness of the woods in upstate New York to record their second album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. In late 2004 they move again, this time to Berlin to begin work on their third album.

Drum's Not Dead is a beautiful, austere record that is full of life, hope and sensitivity. At its heart lies beauty and fragility. In the layered guitars, ambient drones and falsetto vocals, amongst the atonal and percussive scree Liars have created an abundant sensory world. Their previous work had eschewed the notion of beauty, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned in particular concentrates on the brutality and visceral nature of generic fairy tales. The end result is a poetic and allusive album that is at once pictorial and fragmentary, elegiac and jagged. It’s ethereal majesty transcends the manifest world, yet the tribalistic drumming which dominates the record is a device that means they remain rooted in the uncertainties of this flaccid decade.

Drum's Not Dead opener "Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack!" commences with an arabesque and fractured wave of sampled guitar, which is fluid yet taut, suspending the melody. Angus Andrew's flyaway vocal sits between the layers of sound, seraphic and entranced. The melody is unmoving, yet when it ascends a key you feel swept up and completely enveloped in the sound. At the timbre's breaking point the melody is disrupted as it segues into the group yells that open track two "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack". Employing an electrified drum kit to create a primal, hedonistic, industrial rush the song is reminiscent of This Heat's mechanised freakouts but also recalls a raft of earlier experimental works - from The Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" to the motorik of Can, Faust and Neu! through to the caustic dynamics of Aphex Twin. The last gasp of the vocals and the clattering of drumsticks harks the beginning of third track "A Visit From Drum", showcasing the two kit setup they were utilising. Slower and more atmospheric, it's hypnotic rhythm and gently cadenced vocals lull the listener, slowly dragging you into its cerebral heartland.

If the opening triumvirate is the clarion call for the album, perfectly setting the tone, then the remainder of the album provides flashes of clarity, as if they are somehow trying to catalogue ephemera, or the drift of memory. The treatment of sound - scratched strings, broken glass, random piano stabs interspersed with militaristic drumming - is a key and constant component of the sound architecture throughout the album. The woozy and unhinged delayed guitar that starts "Drum Gets a Glimpse" is slowly consumed by washes of percussion, found sound and reveals how dense the arrangement of the songs is.

Drum's Not Dead is wonderfully sequenced, building up tension before letting it spill out at the seams, culminating in the somnabulant and eerie "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" which is a simple and moving ballad, structured around a simple guitar motif, lending weight to the simple sentiments of the lyrics. The only song that feels like an intrusion into the carefully composed edifice is the appropriatley titled "It Fit When I Was a Kid" which initially sounds like a renegade from They Were Wrong with its insistent tribal beat, before morphing into something much darker and atmospheric as Eno-style synths take over.

The album was recorded in Planet Roc in Berlin, a studio designed by Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich. It is a labyrinthine structure, and much like the resulting work itself is full of lost avenues and compartments. This offered them different atmospheric nuances and sonic possibilities that they capitalised on. There is a sense of temporal and geographical dislocation at work in the early part of Liars output, as they shift around the globe finding new reference points. Much like David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop before them they tap into the creative atmosphere of Berlin.

With their second album Liars had already expounded the idea of a story or cycle album, with the thematic conceit drawing heavily on Middle European witch folklore (particularly Walpurgisnacht) and non-fictional accounts of witch trials. Considered by many to be an artistic left-turn, it is a bold and atmospheric piece of work, its paean to paganism the sound of those drunk on the sun. Symbolism and metaphor are equally employed on Liars’ third album. Drum’s Not Dead concerns itself with the universal battle between an artist’s insecurity and assertiveness. This is established by two characters - Mt. Heart Attack is pessimistic and apprehensive, while Drum is instinctive and self-assured. While Mt. Heart Attack glories in an acceptance of diffidence, a notion that could be given credence if the Large Hadron Collider proves there is no grand plan to the universe, Drum rails against this defeatism with authoritative valour. This battle is characterised on the album's touching stone "Drum Gets a Glimpse". Eventually Drum wins, a victory that symbolises the triumph of their intuitive creative processes.

In keeping with the record’s Germanic influences there is a strong Brechtian impulse on the record, particularly in the sleeve notes. Instead of a lyric sheet, the make and model of the guitars used, string gauges, tunings, effects utilised, diagrams of the modifications made to drum kits (based on Chris Cutler’s electrified kit with the kit being amplified and then run through various effects before then being routed to a mixer to create multi layered drones) are all displayed. Brecht propounded the idea of verfremdungseffeckt, the idea of distancing or alienating the audience from their emotional responses to the action before them - that art should not serve as an escape hatch but as a mirror. By deploying this technique in the sleeve notes (as well as assisting any wannabe sound manipulators) they draw attention to the fact that all recorded music is an illusion, the end result of physical constructs.

The album is not perfunctory – too many albums are made today that tick boxes, that promote no emotive or critical response. It is also a question of access; there is a saturation of music with so many bands to choose from. If somebody recommends a band you can check their My Space and have access to their whole discography on Spotify almost instantaneously. It has changed our listening habits, so that if the music is not immediate it is discounted. The album has been dismembered, disassociated - why buy a whole album when you can listen to teasers and download the ones you really like? A lot of this is down to hype and positioning on the part of the labels and mechanisms of promotion associated with the music industry.

Drum’s Not Dead forces you to re-engage with the art of the album. It is not a collection of songs but a seamless whole that ebbs, flows and gloriously crystallises emotion. Drum's Not Dead may be read as a study of interior space and how to politicise and enervate the personal, but more than that it means that audience cannot be complacent, showing that modern music can be artful and still exude a boundless unbridled ecstasy. Therein lays the album’s strength and Liars’ victory.

Long Hot Summer - The Style Council

2009-02-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

Though it may snow outside, in my heart it will always be summer in the 1980s.

I love the Jules et Jim and Brideshead Revisited treatment, with strong undercurrents of homoeroticism. Although Mick Talbot doesn't look too impressed with it. I really like this video; you can almost feel Paul Weller throwing off his Angry Young Man image. Throughout his career he has continually recast himself, producing facsimiles and mirages so that it's hard to pin down the real Weller. His latest solo effort 22 Dreams was a creditable release, and an imaginative attempt to create a lasting work, easily the best thing he's released since Stanley Road. The problem is for every good tune on the album it is accompanied by a lumpen and unimaginative brother, a trait that has dogged his solo career.

Even though The Style Council are the sort of music that Patrick Bateman would listen to I really enjoy them. Their aesthetic was very modernist and I feel a critical reappraisal is due. Soon-ish.

The Wytchwood EP - Blacklands

2009-01-29T09:32:00.000-08:00

Written in Berlin and recorded in a farmhouse on the wild North Yorkshire moors The Wytchwood EP combines a sense of perceived detachment, propagated by its post-rock influences, within a pastoral and more intimate folk tradition.
The brooding, post-rock introduction of opener “The Wytchwood” is hauntingly evocative mix of synths and strings before being consumed by the more traditional instrumentation of the verse and chorus. The glacial ambience of “Comes Sad Light of Dawn” is a distant cousin of Radiohead’s “Exit Music for a Film” courtesy of the gently picked acoustic guitar and the synthesised choral vocal, yet the lyrics concentrate on the melancholic and all-consuming power of obsessive love rather than the stark dehumanising effect of technology on society. “When The War Began” is a simpler work, with Murphy’s double tracked vocal belying an approach to folk more in common with acts from the other side of the Atlantic. The gentle lullaby of “Listen to Me in Your Heart” closes the EP amongst low-key grandeur.
Blacklands revolves around Al Murphy, a musician and also a very successful commercial illustrator. But Blacklands is no vanity project. The autumnal hues of The Wytchwood EP are slowly intoxicating, gently enveloping the listener in its texture. Blacklands have many forbearers, most noticeably Tunng, Iron and Wine, Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, yet they avoid being derivative and add to the always evolving, non-linear folk tradition by incorporating different elements and qualities within their work. There is a proliferation of acoustic troubadours currently vying for attention from the record buying public yet few acts handiwork will be as sophisticated and subtle as The Wytchwood EP.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of The Wytchwood EP by Blacklands on the site, please click on the article title.

Ain't Nobody - Rufus & Chaka Khan

2009-01-27T09:56:00.000-08:00

I love the idea of pop music, the mono no aware nature of the three minute single. Release one then move on to the next, production line style. While this can be a cynical and contemptible exercise, there is something beautiful in the transience. Nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect are the three central tenets of wabi sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of the acceptance of transience. Songs are memetic documents however and live on as paradigms, serving to provide templates for future songs.
From amongst threads of memory lies “Ain’t Nobody” by Rufus & Chaka Khan. I fervently believe this song to be one of the most perfectly constructed pop songs recorded. From the opening synth bassline, to the lead line that comes in, to the phrasing of Khan’s vocal during the verse and the unadulterated bombast of the chorus. While it may have become a clarion call for drunken middle-aged ladies everywhere to forget their inhibitions and wail along to the chorus, it has artistry and power that has allowed it to transcend this savage image. There is something miraculous about the pop song’s ability to last; this song was written by keyboardist Hawk Wolinski and added as a bonus track on live album Stompin’ at the Savoy, but so very nearly became a part of Thriller due to Quincy Jones’ interest in the track. It could have become buried due to the argument over who should perform the song, left in the vaults for future compilers to release but the song prevailed and Wolinski gave the song to Khan rather than Michael Jackson.
It’s funny how you forget songs, how cultural baggage can obstruct enjoyment of the song, how various assumptions, concepts and values can impede a listener from truly recognising how great a song is. “Ain’t Nobody” is one of the best pop songs ever, and I don’t care who knows.

Ulysses - Franz Ferdinand

2009-01-27T06:19:00.000-08:00

You can live or die by a maxim. When Franz Ferdinand burst onto the alternative music scene in 2003/04 declaring they wanted to make “music to make girls dance to” it seemed entirely apposite – cool, wry, irreverent, and arch. They appeared to have arrived perfectly formed, a continuation of Britain’s rich art school heritage, self-aware, culturally and historically conscious and steeped in the coolest of influences. Careers can be built on such foundations, yet Franz Ferdinand’s desire for critical approval and to be elevated to the canonical heights of their musical heroes’ means that by album number three they have to deliver something more than angular post-punk and a few pithy comments strung across a verse/chorus structure. This is particularly the case for Franz Ferdinand after a disappointingly inconsistent second album You Could Have It So Much Better which, though smattered with excellent singles and songs that hinted at a darker and more melancholic edge (such as “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” and “Walk Away”), was mired with songs that came across as unplanned and underdeveloped. There has also been a backlash against the indie explosion of 03/04, with many acts that made their name at the time being dropped by their label or experiencing poor sales return (see Razorlight). Franz Ferdinand are far too popular for this to happen, and will shift many units purely through curiosity, but after three and a half years away from the fray they still need to be seen as relevant.
Their third album Tonight has had a troubled gestation period that saw Franz Ferdinand holed up in Govan Town Hall, an ostentatious and grand former civic building, with three different sets of producers (Dan Carey finished the album after abortive sessions with Erol Alkan and Xenomania, the production team behind Girls Aloud). New single “Ulysses” starts with a languid drum and bass intro (further showcasing the fact that bassist Bob Hardy has improved beyond all recognition since their debut) belying their white funk influences, while Alex Kapranos urges us to “get high”.
The most noticeable aspect of the new material is the use of synthesisers. This isn’t exactly new to Franz Ferdinand; “Auf Achse” from their debut was heavily influenced by 80s synth-pop (Ultravox, OMD etc) while their second album also utilised them. The difference here is that they have been thrust centre stage, carrying the melody rather than supplementing it. And while the broadening of the sonic palette is welcome Tonight is not the Low-esque journey into synthesised soundscapes that was originally purported. A desire for continuity with their back catalogue so as not to alienate their fanbase and a crucial lack of experimentation hinder the album. While they may appreciate that culturally the guitar is being replaced in popular conscience this year by the synth, their efforts come across as ornamentation rather than melodic innovation.
“Ulysses” itself is a perfectly serviceable song, but it’s not as immediate as anything from their first or even second albums. By this time in their career they should be making bold artistic statements, not just music that will sound good in a club. The only song on the album that approaches their previous heights is “Lucid Dreams”, a seven minute long song that begins with a taut and funky riff before exploding into the chorus. It also possesses a synthesised coda where it seems all four members abandon their normal instruments as the song transforms into a Moroder style disco stomp. Unfortunately the rest of the album fails to meet the quality of this track.

My Girls - Animal Collective

2009-01-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

This is the video for "My Girls" by Animal Collective from their latest album Post Merriweather Pavilion. It is a beautiful and joyous record, hazy and indistinct before becoming blisteringly intense. It is far from the homogenised mainstream that alternative music has collapsed into through a succession of marketing strategies, opportunism, rank conservatism and pure laziness. When I have had enough time to digest it and process meaningful thoughts regarding it I may post a review, but this is my favourite song from the new album. It matches "Fireworks" in terms of woozy, hypnotic beauty. There is an elusive quality to their best work, as the waves of sound blend with your own thoughts and you feel all cognition ebb away in a Pantheistic haze. That much of the lyrical content concerns itself with domesticity and personal values only reiterates the basic humanity that runs through much of the record, as they find joy in the most prosaic of subject matter.

"I don't mean to seem like I care about material things, like a social status, I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls..."

Lullaby - Keith

2009-01-22T10:08:00.001-08:00

The latest single from Manchester based band Keith sees them expanding on their eclectic debut Red Thread with a more focused approach and sound. While “Up in the Clouds”, the first single from second album Vice and Virtue, sounded like Kasabian covering “Elevation” by U2 their new release sees them venturing into the area of upbeat, intelligent pop inhabited by acts such as Guillemots. Taking a scattershot approach to genre and a non-elitist approach to influence it posits them with other acts that propagate this ‘new’ pop. The tight locked-in groove of the drums and elasticity of the bassline recall early post-punk pioneers A Certain Ratio before the descending piano melody that provides the song with its leitmotif intervenes. Guitarist Mark Nicholls adds splashes of colour, effortlessly counterpointing the melody before adding jazzy chords to the mix.
Brayston’s caterwauling vocal pronunciations inhabit the same style as the so-called ‘Brit’ school by way of Morrissey, although disappointingly they are not region specific. Producer Dan Carey, who has previously remixed CSS, Hot Chip and Franz Ferdinand, layers the track in shimmering electronica which lends an ethereal and aspirational aspect that Brayston’s keening vocals mirror and build on.
The whole edifice is consummate and well crafted but ultimately lacking in punch to really render itself in your cranium. The escapism of the lyrical content is too staid in the images drawn to capture the listener. But across the three minutes of the track there is much to commend sonically. With a keen ear for texture the band and producer Carey have constructed an interesting artefact that will lend itself well to remixers.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Lullaby by Keith on the site, please click on the article title.

2008: Rant and Celebration

2009-01-04T09:19:00.001-08:00

2008 has been a strange year for alternative music. It has fragmented and dispersed. Many genres and sub-genres have been reanimated this year, such as electro, IDM, shoegaze, techno (of the minimal variety) and various other slumbering leviathans. Of course, the majority of these ‘genres’ are simply all encompassing labels half-heartedly and lazily applied to new acts, in particular if a new act references a previous canonical act. There is a huge difference between being influenced by someone and ripping them off. The problem I have with revivalists is that they lack any sense of context; Rubbish Band 2008 may dress like The Specials or Madness circa 1981, but their songs lack any sense of social or political comment leaving them as empty ciphers, an attenuation of the original genre.

World music has also enjoyed a renaissance this year, being dragged from the domains of the wholefood cafe into the popular sphere. This is mainly due to the use of Afrobeat polyrhythms by Foals and the numerous name checks for Peter Gabriel by Vampire Weekend et al.

Many of the bands that arrived in the first wave of the indie explosion in 2003-04 have either disappeared or produced disappointing follow ups. The whole industry is beset by short-termism; acts are marketed and promoted heavily on the back of one or two singles. The hype and pressure is immense, and invariably the resulting album is dissatisfying. Bands are pushed into the studio with little real experience, little songcraft. Fashion and hype have distended the alternative music community, but this perversely has its upsides. A real sense of DIY has slowly crept through over the last few years, inspired no doubt by the success of The Smell and other US meta-venues, and this can be attributed to the dissatisfaction and alienation many feel from the appropriation of alternative music.

2008 has also been the year in which the technological advances of recent years have allowed artists to step out of their bedrooms and release their records. There is a huge proliferation of ‘bedroom’ artists out there at the moment – whether they be electro acts, acoustic performers, singer/songwriters, DJs – that have been unleashed in the last 12 months. One thing that has also been noticeable is that there are various artists who are reclaiming the label of ‘indie’ – that is independently released music, with little or no involvement or interference from major labels. Of course, the music industry is a corporate beast, and beset on all sides it resorts to dirty tricks to ensnare its audience and make us part with our filthy money. Thus the knuckle-scraping monotony of ‘landfill’ indie, coffee table indie, mortgage indie that is peddled to a receptive audience who listen to the songs in indie discos and hairdressers. Most of these acts are ELEMENTAL, interreferential and more interested in ticking boxes and appealing to a set demographic – asymmetric fringes, skinny jeans, leather jackets, jangly guitars, closed hi-hats – than providing any depth or intensity. I call it record collection music; bands cannibalise various ‘canonical’ acts so that the end result comes out as paint by numbers effort. Music has a grammar and a teleological design, and this can be shamefacedly ransacked and appropriated. Example: About eight seconds into “Obstacle 1” by Interpol a chiming lead guitar line enters above the minor key riff. This lead ‘style’ has been purloined by many bands, but none so obviously as by the Pigeon Detectives. In almost every of their songs this lead guitar ‘style’ is utilised. But hopefully things are changing. What is also apparent from the last 12 months is that the audience themselves are evolving and maturing – those fans that would once have been happy with a Killers album in their Christmas stocking would have been requesting M83, or Deerhunter, or Cut Copy or Crystal Castles, or Welcome to Mali by Amadou and Mariam, or a minimal techno mixtape.

We as humans have an innate desire to catalogue, and alternative music fans have a greater desire than most it seems to immerse themselves in ephemera. End of year lists are subjective and slanted, frankly rank and full of absurdities. I tried to avoid compiling my own. But there were many things last year that have rocked my boat. Here’s a small subjective list, in no particular order.

The return of Portishead
If I’m completely honest, I had forgotten about Portishead. I own their two studio albums Dummy and Portishead and the subsequent live album Roseland NYC Live, but hadn’t listened to them in a long time. If it hadn’t been for Third they would forever be linked in popular consciousness to trip-hop, 90s dinner parties and This Life. But it turns out they had been busy pursuing solo careers and other projects before reconvening to write for this album, rejecting whole swathes of material, agonising over the final content before re-emerging with this behemoth of a record. There is a theme of separation, of dislocation that runs through the entire record that living in a city as rich in cultural history and the history of segregation as Bristol (racial/social/economic) can only exacerbate. Yet they haven’t escaped the cultural formations of human community, and their return is welcome. There are many crucial cuts on Third, from the tribal drums of opener “Silence” to the familiar chiaroscuro of “Hunter” and “Plastic”. Yet this isn’t Dummy 2 as much as Beth Gibbons voice provides a dialogue and continuation with their past, and this is proved irrefutably by two outstanding tracks, both of which convey a sense of mechanised humanity. “Machine Gun” sounds like New Order with all the heart and soul ripped out, the euphoric hope of redemption stilted, ossified, and is relentless in its brutal disarticulation. But it is “The Rip” that is the central song on this album, with its portents of junctures, breaks, death (RIP), and ruin. It is as pastoral folk bleeds seamlessly into motorik synths, as Gibbons’ vocal is elongated across the divide that I knew this would be my favourite moment of 2008. In fact it was so good Radiohead covered it.

Eraser - No Age
I was turned on to No Age by a friend (who knows his music) while we were chatting about Liars, who No Age were supporting at the time. I duly bought Weirdo Rippers, which I thought was good, and awaited their debut proper expectantly. There is something heroic about a two piece band, and this is particularly true of No Age. Every song sounds massive, tumultuous but they juxtapose this with passages of noise and harmonious melodies. “Eraser” is the most perfect song on Nouns, the opening choppy guitar bars delaying gratification before exploding into the verse. The progression in production values and songwriting is noticeable, and Dean Spunt does more than just shout over the top of the songs. Underneath the spiralling walls of noise laid down by guitarist Randy Randall lays an acoustic guitar, gently picking out a counter-melody. They are punk rock, but so much more. They are the closest a band has got to the credence laid down by Hüsker Dü and Mission of Burma, that you can create a right racket while underpinning it with the sweetest of melodies. No Age is deconstructive, reductive yet slowly rebuild on each track. The whole effect is exultant, psyche-hardcore. A real triumph and a rare instance of a band living up to their hype.

Lakes
Not many people know about this band yet (I only do as I am a Kentish lad, and they have been involved with Unlabel, a fine record label based in Royal Tunbridge Wells). During 2008 they have endured line up changes and began recording a debut album. You can find a split EP with fellow Men of Kent Honey Ride Me a Goat on Unlabel’s site here. I’m going to try and avoid the usual slew of hyperbolic verbiage, but they are a very good band, combining the minimalism of post punk with the more expansive sounds of US hardcore. Key track on the split is “Van Ritters”. Starting off with a discordant chord ringing out, the spoken word refrain is inscrutable, de-centred. Guitars are taut, brittle, heavy but without heavy use of distortion. Lakes throw stark relief upon the alabaster face of flaccid uncertainty of this woebegone decade. Their fractal, dissolute mini-narratives are perfectly suited for this age, combining grit and subtlety. Their songs aren’t purely a list of elements or influences; in a postmodern age where the very notion of authenticity is constantly brought into question they attempt to escape questions of categorisation. By refusing to compartmentalise their art they escape formula. Expect big things in 2009.

L.E.S. Artistes – Santogold
However much you may question her motives (and it is true that artifice does loom large on her eponymous debut) “L.E.S. Artistes” is an unquestionable triumph, cold and remote in its refined majesty. Maybe it’s the image of Santi White bestride a horse in the video that lends this song its aloofness, but as White disseminates the idea of creativity and authenticity it is impossible not to be cowed. The title recognises the derogatory term of ‘artiste’ – traditionally the idiom used in the film/entertainment industry to describe the talent, and implying the sense of procurement and ownership the industry has over the artistes. The song propagates the eternal struggle against objectification, being pigeonholed and attempting to remain creative under this pressure.

Minimal techno
2008 was the year in which the influence of minimalism in music (and in music criticism) began to be realised. Foals name checking Steve Reich at the start of the year, as has every other pseudo-intellectual music publication (print or web) since. Skeletalism vs Massification. Structural repetition. There’s something liberating in losing yourself in a particular layer or groove, in the fabric of a song. Check out Robert Hood, Audiojack, Perc, and Kompakt. Listen on the internet, go to a club and get involved.

Radio Heart – The Futureheads
I have a lot of love for The Futureheads’ debut album; its jerky, angular rhythms and tightly layered vocals (performed by all four members) were concise, brittle, and perfectly formed. Fifteen tracks came in at around 35 minutes. XTC, Gang of Four, Wire and many other post-punk bands were frames of reference, but The Futureheads made the sound their own due to their region specificity (they were Mackems and proud of it) and the aforementioned vocals; the a cappella “Danger of the Water” sounded more like the The Flying Pickets than Devo. After the rush of their debut their follow up News and Tributes was savaged by many journalists simply for being different. It is a strong album, dowsed in a wistful melancholia that showcased their pop sensibilities. But it is clear listening to their third album This Is Not The World that their sound has changed. The minor key guitar lines and erratic cadences of before have been replaced with choppy, major key power chords. This isn’t always a bad thing, as “Radio Heart” testifies. A glorious song that manages to be both strident and introspective simultaneously, that apparently they just threw together in twenty minutes during recording sessions with producer Youth.

Street Horrrsing – Fuck Buttons
As was perhaps intended Fuck Buttons first came to my attention (like Holy Shit and Fucked Up) through the absurdity of their name. Checking them out on Youtube (research tool of the gods) I found a camera phone video for “Bright Tomorrow” and was instantly entranced. I then saw part of their set when they supported Battles at the Astoria in May. Equal parts My Bloody Valentine, drone, electro and ambience they are another act who distil everything I think and believe about music at the moment. Reflective and then coruscating they construct beautiful ambient passages and then defile them with overdriven keys and atonal dissonant noise. Gossamer strands of twinkling keyboards are clawed back from their cerebral peaks by more earthbound synths. Produced by Mogwai’s John Cummings and Tim Cedar from Part Chimp, the duo have created a subterranean delight. Yes they have embraced by the cool set, but don't hold it against them.

My Bloody Valentine
Truth be told, MBV reunited in 2007, yet it is in 2008 that their reformation began to be fully noticed and appreciated. For years they had appeared as a spectre, the band that almost made it, the Banquo’s ghost of the alternative scene and the creation myths that surrounded the genesis of 1991’s classic set Loveless are legendary. Yet last year their cultural importance began to be felt once again – they were referenced constantly by the music press, and any band that bore even the faintest resemblance to the hallmarks of MBV (waves of distorted guitars, gently nuanced vocals sublimated within the mix, unfocused dreamstate passages, ambiguity) were instantly branded as their natural successors. Thus the dreaded ‘nu-gaze’ term was born, but as usual this was a misnomer. 2008 was a good year for reformations, reissues, re-releases and has provided a healthy jab in the arm for the music industry; in terms of both CD and ticket sales (see my earlier piece on this cult). What has also happened is that there has been a revival in interest of other bands that either echoed or simply appropriate MBV’s core elements. Some are good, such as Ride (a mooted reunion is apparently blocked by a clause in Andy Bell’s contract with Oasis), but others such as Slowdive were simply Johnny-come-lately bands riding on the tailcoats of their more illustrious predecessors. None could touch the almost imperial majesty of Loveless though, and for this reason 2008 could be said to be MBV’s year.

Microcastle/Weird Era Cont – Deerhunter
Every now and again an album will come along that will possess you, an album that you cannot stop listening to, cannot stop thinking about. Microcastle was that album for me in 2008. It is a distillation of everything I like about music. At some point I will post a full review of the album, but for me it was the best guitar record released last year.

I Will Possess Your Heart – Death Cab For Cutie
I have never really been a fan of this act, but as soon as I heard this song I was bewitched. The tumbling piano chords, rolling bass and echo laden guitar of the four minute intro captivated me; maybe it’s the bravado of releasing an eight and a half minute song as an opening single for their sixth album Narrow Stairs, but it’s a spectacular rebranding.

Receivers – Parts & Labor
More expansive than previous outings, their third features a new guitarist who adds extra layers of textural tension, heightening the drama on each track. A very good album.

Skeleton – Abe Vigoda
Coming from the same LA scene as No Age, HEALTH, Mika Miko et al has proved a blessing and a curse for Abe Vigoda. Sometimes being associated with a scene can detract from the reception a band obtains, but it also provides a necessary leg up. Their second album is less abrasive than their debut, and contains lush ‘tropical’ (to use their term) punk. The whole sound is so organic and tactile and is a major development in their career.

Real Magick
Thames Estuary ‘scenesters’ These New Puritans began 2008 in a flurry of activity. Their debut album Beat Pyramid was released in January, held over from 2007. There is a plurality of sounds and influences in their music, codes, numerology and cryptograms that need to be deciphered. The very name Beat Pyramid implies a geometric precision to the (macro) music. Consider the precise beats and samples of “Swords of Truth”, and how this washes into the ethereal “Doppelgänger”. The album starts and closes with the same piece of music in a cyclical fashion, so the album could be looped forever, drifting slowly to infinity. This idea of repetition is perhaps derived from The Fall. Listen to Jack Barnett’s colloquial regionalism, the way they attempt to create their own lexicology, and then listen to Hex Enduction Hour. Images of the uncanny and images of banality are prevalent in both. “Elvis” is a reductionist pop song, perfect in every way and showcases TNP’s ability to write a gorgeous chorus (check “Numerology AKA Numbers” for further proof). Their scattershot approach and the collage like effect of the album don’t always strike the target but they are genuinely one of the most interesting British bands around.

David Andrew Sitek – Praise Be!
Responsible for producing two of the best albums of the year (Foals debut Antidotes and his own band TV on the Radio’s Dear Science) as well as the surprisingly good Anywhere I Lay My Head by Scarlett Johansson, Sitek became the most sought after producer this year. He worked on Telepathe’s debut Dance Mother (released 26th January 2009) and I think his intelligent use of space and dynamic will work well on their dub heavy sound. The Foals album is good, I think the band have a lot of potential although I wouldn’t consider their music to be as leftfield as many in the music press as there are definite rockist elements to their songs. But Sitek has covered the cracks in this record with a glossy sheen, and the use of horns in both records is particularly effective.

There have been so many good releases this year that I haven’t been able to touch on – Oxford Collapse proving there is life in the post-hardcore dog yet, This Town Needs Guns and their other Big Scary Monster brethren, Visiter by Dodos, Beck’s eerie and apocalyptic return Modern Guilt with Danger Mouse behind the desk, the insanity of Pulled Apart By Horses, Kong, Department of Eagles’ In Ear Park providing solace for those waiting for the next Grizzly Bear album, the baroque Americana of Fleet Foxes, Shearwater, The Raveonettes continued reimagining of Spector/Jesus & The Mary Chain, the Animal Collective EP, M83’s nostalgic look at growing up in the 80s, Cut Copy, Wolf Parade, Crystal Castles 8 bit robot love songs, Jaguar Love, David Byrne & Brian Eno’s wonderful return, and Little Boots and Lykke Li showing that even if Björk or Goldfrapp make a bad album there is more than enough synthesised female-fronted pop around to suffice – to prove that all things considered 2008 has been a good year for alternative music. Beyond the shallow hype and calculating marketing there is a lot out there, not all of it London-centric as there are vibrant scenes emerging all over the country. Embrace and enjoy.

RIP Davey Graham 1940 - 2008

2008-12-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

This guy could play, but never made any money from music. Life is not fair.

The Cult of Reformation

2008-12-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

So, Blur have reformed and joined the ranks of all those other museum pieces that will be gracing vast corporate arenas and the great parks of this sceptred isle. When their reformation was announced their web forum received 60 hits per second and the 45,000 tickets for their initial show in Hyde Park next summer sold out in two minutes. An additional date has been added due to its success.
Blur went on an indefinite hiatus after touring their seventh record Think Tank (guitarist Graham Coxon had left the band halfway through recording to continue with his nascent solo career, branding singer Damon Albarn an “egomaniac”). Since then Albarn has acceded to his wanderlust and been involved with the Gorillaz project, the Monkey: Journey to the West stage show, the Africa Express revue, Amadou and Mariam’s album and The Good, The Bad and The Queen group (whose eponymous album I believe to be one of the finest this decade). Coxon has continued his solo career with mixed success, bassist Alex James is a farmer and writes a column for The Guardian on his exploits while drummer Dave Rowntree is a prospective politician.
The problem with reformations is that the majority of music fans will have a frozen image in their mind, a snapshot of an artist suspended in time. So when they have drained the aspic from themselves, how do we react to the reformed band? There is huge demand to see ‘classic’ bands in a live setting, and in the very recent past there has been a rash of bands that have reformed. Our collective cultural nostalgia means the bands are effectively fetishised. My own image of Blur is that of a young band on the brink of releasing Parklife, arguably their career high and the album that entrenched them in popular cultural memory (via the Britpop ‘war’ with Oasis).
The history of rock is an illusion; its historicism presents such a narrow viewpoint, surrounded by mirages, becoming a double aspect rather than a singular truth. Blur will always remain thus in popular consciousness: estuary twang,” Woohoo!”, Blur vs Oasis, cocaine addiction, the Mogwai t-shirt. In all probability they won’t be able to escape this image, and will have this imprint of a collective cultural memory superimposed upon them for ever more.
Blur’s reformation is mainly due to a deal struck with the American promoter Live Nation, who have extensively transformed the landscape of the music industry. Realising that the real money was to be made in the live arenas from ticketing and merchandise, they sign artists but not in the traditional sense. They sign the artist as their promoter rather than as the owner of the copyright of the material. It suggests that Blur have reformed for money rather than for their art. The power of promoters such as Live Nation, the demand to see classic artists or even the whole of a classic album, and the flexing of the spending power of the music fan (even in these constrained times) means that this trend for reformation will continue unabated.
What is depressing is that it smacks desperately of corporatism. There may well be unfinished business for Albarn and Coxon, but the people that buy the tickets will be going to see Phil Daniels mug his way through “Parklife” and not to hear new material from Albarn and co. Do we wish to be infantilised by the cult of reformation? The success of recent reformations and the Don’t Look Back series of performances suggest we do. Alongside big acts such as The Police, Take That, The Spice Girls countless alternative acts have reformed, from My Bloody Valentine to Dinosaur Jr. It seems that money and a receptive audience can melt even the staunchest of grudges, the largest of “over my dead body” rifts. Even perennially optimistic English pop-punkers A are rumoured to have reformed. I mean, what is so bad with the current crop of bands that has allowed this bunch of American punk aping no hopers to lumber (or pogo) back into view is beyond me. Music should be about genesis, evolution, forward movement – yet this cult of reformation will only lead to stasis and inertia.
I genuinely hope that Blur’s new material extends beyond the inevitable specially recorded new songs that will be bundled on the end of a repackaged greatest hits collection, to a full length album that showcases the best of their talents. Only time will tell.

Keep Me In Mind Sweetheart EP - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan

2008-12-18T15:08:00.000-08:00

Musical history is littered with anomalous musical pairings. Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan always appeared one such pairing – she the ethereal siren who featured in Scottish folksters Belle and Sebastian and he the world weary troubadour of Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age repute. Traditionally the male is the dominant party, the aggressor, while the female plays the part of his muse but this traditional delineation is inverted by their partnership; in many of their narratives Lanegan plays a tormented soul, tortured and led on by Campbell in a psychological war of the sexes. The songs are written primarily by Campbell, with Lanegan’s baritone taking lead vocal. With such a pairing it is hard to escape an air of contrivance, yet the juxtaposition between them has always been arresting. The tracks on their latest release Keep Me in Mind Sweetheart were recorded at the same time as their latest album Sunday at Devil Dirt, but this EP reveals itself to be more a companion piece than craven cash in.
Opener and title track “Keep Me in Mind Sweetheart” is the only song to be taken from this year’s earlier long player and it is an affecting acoustic lullaby sung by a lachrymose Lanegan. The easy melodicism of “Fight Fire with Fire” employs barroom piano and brushed drums beneath Lanegan’s Waits’ like croon, while the lyrics deal with the differences between two lovers. He opens by proclaiming “Wild is the night that keeps me from you” but goes on to say “When I see grey, I know you see black, I dig the Stones you dig Sheer Heart Attack”. Campbell’s delicate vocals wash over Lanegan’s leathery tones, intertwining and caressing them. The lamentation of “Rambling Rose” showcases their fascination with Americana and the West, the rolling backdrop propelling the song down a dusty Lost Highway. There are undercurrents of unresolved tension between the two singers, and this interplay between them remains one of their key potencies. Closing song “Hang On” features Campbell alone, and shorn of Lanegan’s mournful baritone the track feels aimless while instrumental “Violin Tango” is neither long enough nor developed enough musically to fully engage the listener.
Lacking the darker themes of their Mercury nominated debut or the seedy motel feel of their sophomore album, this EP suffers from a somewhat staid approach to the rootsy passages. Their evocation of a lovelorn past comes across as artifice, and at times on this EP they feel constricted and strangely joyless. The intimacy of their arrangements and the combinations of their vocals mark out their best songs, but these highpoints are not as evident on this release.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Keep Me In Mind Sweetheart by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan on the site, please click on the article title.

Godspeed - Jenny Lewis

2008-12-17T15:02:00.000-08:00

Basking in analogue warmth, “Godspeed” is the second single taken from Jenny Lewis’ sophomore album Acid Tongue. Lucinda Williams, Patsy Cline et al were obvious frames of reference for this retro-styled piano ballad which proffers counsel to a female mired in a dangerous relationship.
“Godspeed” is an elegantly poised torch song blending various alt country influences with the more mainstream FM sound of their forbearers. The album was recorded using analogue technology rather than modern digital applications, and the effect is stunning. The space afforded to each instrument and vocal brings to mind Phil Spector’s best productions. The fact that the chord progression of the chorus and walking bass lines echo a late era Beatles arrangement does little to discourage this sentiment.
There will be a temptation for many to simply dismiss Lewis’ new sound as adult contemporary, yet her vocal performance and the impeccably judged nature of this track demand attention. True, it is not as idiosyncratic and is steeped in tradition rather than presenting a blueprint for future pop as anything on Rabbit Fur Coat or Rilo Kiley’s latest work. Shorn of the ethereal backing harmonies of the Watson Twins the song could also be perceived as lacking in dynamic but the songwriting is of the highest order and pulls it through.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Godspeed by Jenny Lewis on the site, please click on the article title.

Say Aha - Santogold

2008-12-12T04:36:00.000-08:00

Santogold (née Santi White) is a music industry insider, so it is no surprise that her musical output be so polished and consummate. It would be unfair to describe her oeuvre as ‘pop’; Santogold has a contemporary aspect on music, bestriding various genres and approaches. What she is trying to achieve is an eradication of genre, of classification. Her music challenges the notion that you cannot find art in the stultifying confines of a genre, particularly one as traditional and conservative as ‘pop’.
Latest single “Say Aha” is a bass heavy, groove oriented dancehall meets pop number, ornamented with ska style 2 Tone keyboards. It has a sound vaguely reminiscent of No Doubt or Gwen Stefani’s solo work, but the production captures the space and echo of Ark style dub. They certainly share many of the same reference points (new wave icons mixed with 80s sirens such as Grace Jones) and Santogold’s raucous vibrato vocal line strikes a similar chord.
Keenly aware that repetition is the key to any successful pop song, “Say Aha” sticks to the form. Santogold’s songs are brimming with ideas, but “Say Aha” is lacking in the invention that characterises her other works. The overall impression is strangely clinical, as if the song is a mere essay in the formula.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Say Aha by Santogold on the site, please click on the article title.

Electric Arguments - The Fireman

2008-12-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

Paul McCartney describes his side project with producer Youth “The Fireman” as electronica and that it promotes “pure musical possibilities”. The Fireman exists as an avatar for McCartney to explore looser song structures and less traditional instrumentation, and their first two albums (Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest released in 1993 and Rushes from 1998) were explorations of instrumental post-ambient soundscapes. This is abandoned on new release Electric Arguments, which opts for the pop structures and sensibilities of McCartney’s 2007 solo album Memory Almost Full.
Electric Arguments takes its title from a line in an Allen Ginsberg poem, and McCartney admitted that he utilised a William Burroughs’ style cut approach to the lyrics. The idea that this will be a lo-fi experimental release is forsaken by the opening bars of opener “Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight”. McCartney was persuaded by Youth to add his distinctive vocal to the album. On this Zeppelin-esque blues stomp, McCartney truly hollers over the top. You only have to listen to “Lady Madonna” to know that he once had an impressive pair of lungs, but like many of his peers they have sadly diminished.
Where the album excels is in its more low-key moments, where McCartney’s vocal is sublimated into the mix. “Two Magpies” is a hushed acoustic number, reminiscent of “Heart of the Country” from Ram. “Travelling Light” is a pretty folk number, with McCartney’s vocal low in the mix amongst the commingled acoustic guitars, brushed drums, flutes and strings before showing the extent of his range in the chorus. It showcases just how consummate a songwriter McCartney is, and how a good producer can bring out the best in him. “Light From Your Lighthouse” takes a stomping country tune and adds a soaring gospel vocal melody. Elsewhere “Sing The Changes” has Youth’s trademark ‘Big Sound’ all over it, from the cavernous vocals to the reverb laden guitars, while “Sun Is Shining” is the most Beatles like cut on the album. There are few better at this type of transcendental, sky scraping pop than McCartney. Considering the upheaval he was going through, it is a surprise that the album is not a maudlin affair. While certainly there is a melancholy, keening air to some songs (such as the cry to fill his life with passion on “Lifelong Passion”) there is always a chance of redemption.
Along with the opener there are a few low points – “Highway” never escapes sounding like some session muso workout, “Universal Here, Everlasting Now” ruins two minutes of well observed aural texture with a drum beat and guitar sound from 1985, while the pan pipes that herald “Is This Love?” were an unnecessary addition on an otherwise well crafted song.
Recently McCartney has displayed a worryingly revisionistic view of his ‘legacy’ – witness the Lennon/McCartney, McCartney/Lennon authorship fiasco. The current notion proposed by McCartney himself that he is a pioneer of electronic music in Britain is yet another example of him purporting to be the experimental Beatle. His place in the canon of great 20th century songwriters and as a cultural icon is already assured, but this latest claim for the experimental high ground is both unnecessary and irrelevant. The public perception of McCartney – bowl-cut hairdo, Frog Chorus, two thumbs up – is so entrenched it is surely too late to be changed. John Lennon called him the best PR man in the business, and that belief still rings true. Electric Arguments is not the deconstructive album it professes to be, merely a continuation of McCartney’s recent dalliances with a looser version of pop. Despite the odd weak moment, it shows there are still few finer purveyors of the genre.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Electric Arguments by The Fireman on the site, please click on the article title.

Rest In Peace Oliver Postgate 1925 - 2008

2008-12-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

IBJSM loves Bagpuss, and so should you. It mixed whimsy and anarchy perfectly. As a tribute please click on the article title to watch the video to "There, There (The Bony King of Nowhere)", the Bagpuss referencing single from Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief.

The conservative impulse of modern indie; or, kill the NME

2008-11-28T17:48:00.000-08:00

Any institution that makes money from music, or is a by product of this commercial process, cannot lay claim to protecting artistic integrity. The NME treats music as a commodity, and has replaced critique with sales promotion. Their conservative impulses towards new music and how to ‘break’ and ‘source’ artists mean they can lay no intellectual claim over the preservation of music as an artistic conceit. It has also led to a unified, bland genre of music.

The following three case studies are to illustrate this point.

Case Study 1 – New Rave
Now that it is over, it is clear that the creation of new rave owed as much to the vagaries of contemporaneous music journalism than to musical invention. It was a movement with no soul, no historical context, and no core. It arrived fully packaged and commoditised. At its heart lay no music label, band or promoter that it grouped around. A disparate group of bands were amassed under the banner, with little direct linkage between them. Instead there was an emphasis on stylistic tendencies, as if it was an excuse to sell clothes rather than records. This mainly came about due to the preponderance of the music press and also its union with the fashion industry. Note NME’s links to the Arcadia group, amongst others.

Case Study 2 – The Brats
In the late 90s the NME launched the Brats as a subversive riposte to the mainstream Brit Awards. Their original oppositional stance has receded into conformity and languor. Considering they are owned by IPC Media, a large conglomerate with a huge multinational marketing reach, this transition is not unexpected.

Case Study 3 – The Pigeon Detectives
The most tuneless, godawful band I think I have ever heard. And they owe all of their success to the patronage of the NME. A hopeless bricolage of every half decent act that has been popular in the NME over the last 5 years. This homogenised rubbish is symptomatic of everything that is currently wrong with British alternative music, and that the NME have helped to create. There is frankly a multitude of excellent music currently being made in the UK that is soundly ignored because it wouldn't appeal to a certain demographic.

It’s no surprise then that the NME has been superseded by community based websites such as Drowned in Sound and Pitchfork. While they revel in their hipster status, they do promote a good model for a modern music publication (whether online or print) combining high level criticism with community based musings.

The NME has become an irrelevance. User derived content, free mp3 files on band's websites and the proliferation of community websites have lessened its influence. The parameters of its musical base are so narrow that they are constrictive. The editorial remit appears to be to give as much saturated coverage to certain favoured artists who will sell the magazine. The inability to review new artists without referencing a canonical (in their eyes) artist is akin to product placement. The record industry is notoriously a closed shop, and it frankly smacks of nepotism. Whilst this is sound business sense, in the long term they are alienating a core section of their readership.

The question that must be posed by all of those disillusioned by the publication’s fall from grace is whether too much is expected. In its current guise I would say that is the case. There is a place in the mainstream for an oppositional voice, one that places music criticism within its contextual environment and can appraise without subsiding into clichéd, postmodern, ironic malaise. But the NME have come to represent the mainstream, and big business. Their conservative impulses and failure to evolve with their readership means it will eventually fall on its own sword. The vapidity of it's journalism makes it a question of when and not if.

4:13 Dream - The Cure

2008-11-19T05:31:00.000-08:00

Across the breadth of thirteen albums The Cure have created a sensory world, full of dense rhythms, melodic lines supplied by six strings basses, agitated vocals, lush orchestration and baroque touches such as woodwind and timpani. They have always had a masterly control over song dynamics. Each song is drenched in chiaroscuro. This aesthetic makes them instantly recognisable and is in firm evidence on new album 4:13 Dream. The usual thematic concepts are also perceptible. Robert Smith’s lyrics are imbued with existential tropes as he examines the binaries that make us human – life/death, reality/fiction, and fidelity/infidelity.
This is important because if you are to treat The Cure as a genre in themselves there are certain conventions that they cannot break and are not allowed to by their faithful following. 4:13 Dream, and indeed any Cure album from Disintegration onwards, suffers in comparison to past works. This is due to the reverence in which they are held and our own nostalgic memories of them. Memory is composed of both personal and collective memories that are not seperable, so our own personal response to The Cure's music is coloured by their ritualised coverage in the music press.
The Cure’s follow up to 2004’s eponymous release has had a lengthy and apparently torturous gestation, as Robert Smith edited the track listing from an initial thirty three track double album to a more palatable thirteen track single disc. The original press releases for the album slated it as moody and brooding, akin to Disintegration. Opener “Underneath The Stars” certainly has the same ambience, opening with crystalline glissandos before a post-rock wall of noise descends, threatening to consume all, including Robert Smith’s reverb laden, barely there, withdrawn vocals. The feeling of translucency, of lack, is very appealing and credit must be given to producer Keith Uddin for creating this aural environ. “The Only One” is vibrant and upbeat, with Smith’s familiar yelping vocal line eschewing the joys of what his beloved does to him (becoming more and more salacious as it develops from verse to verse) while “The Reasons Why” uses a chorus laden six string bass riff and Porl Thompson’s choppy guitar motif to underpin the song. “The Perfect Boy” is a standard Cure pop ballad, but is saved from becoming twee by Smith’s cries of “I don’t want to be innocent”. “This. Here and Now. With You” takes a minimal, post-punk approach to a similar song structure but uses synthetic texture and chiming guitars to create an impassioned entreaty. Of the two closing songs “The Scream” creates an eerie soundscape, with scattershot drums and synths building up the tension as Smith declaims “I can’t wait to break apart this dream” while “It’s Over” features an almost prog-punk twin guitar attack.
But for every good song on the album there appears to a damp squib to hold its hand. The brevity of “Freakshow” and “Sirensong” hardly endears them to the listener, coming across as half good melodies that couldn’t be fashioned into a full song. “Switch” would have worked well if the wah-laden guitar had been edited, because the piano melody that counters the guitar works well. A missed opportunity. “The Real Snow White” is frankly risible while “The Hungry Ghost” is certainly pretty, but so doused in compression and studio devices that it struggles to raise its head above the mire.
Like a fly trapped in amber The Cure struggle against the weight of expectations and the power of their own back catalogue. 4:13 Dream finds them in stasis, caught between looking back and looking forward while showcasing only their reductive impulses. While not amongst their best offerings however the album does augment their lengthy back catalogue without embarrassment.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of 4:13 Dream by The Cure on the site, please click on the article title.

Human - The Killers

2008-11-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

The Killers deal in universals in a mawkish attempt to connect to everyone. If you continually speak in universals without attempting to to fully interact with them then you cannot fully appreciate them. The words in themselves become meaningless, a mantra without depth or context. Universals in themselves explain nothing, but must be explicated and disseminated in order to provide meaning.

By abandoning the story based songs of their previous albums and dealing purely in universals and attempting to appeal to the Everyman they only succeed in alienating those who were drawn in initially by songs such as the 'Murder Trilogy' ("Midnight Show", "Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine" and "Leave The Bourbon On The Shelf") or "Mr Brightside".

In terms of the actual tune itself, it is passable synth pop that references so many 80s artists it would be laborious to list them. It sounds dangerously like a retread of "Read My Mind" from Sam's Town, which was a lovely Springsteen meets Erasure impression. Perhaps coming from Las Vegas explains the ersatz nature of the Killers' art. Semantics aside, "Human" is a less than edifying experience.

We Can Breathe In Space, They Just Don't Want Us To Escape - Enter Shikari

2008-11-17T10:11:00.000-08:00

Enter Shikari are an odd proposition, blending post-hardcore with exultant trance-like synths. Imagine Dave Pearce remixing Vision of Disorder. On paper it sounds incongruous, but repeated listens deliver comprehension. The sweaty atmosphere of a hardcore show and a club in Ayia Napa aren't too dissimilar.
The song structure of their comeback single “We Can Breathe In Space…” is generic post-hardcore, replete with breakdowns, time signature changes, and harmonised vocals. The song works well when the band keep it simple. The chorus is catchy, with a nimble guitar figure that snakes it’s way into your subconscious. However the transition from verse to chorus is a time signature change too far and sounds slipshod. In common with many of their new rave peers (or those other disparate bands who were branded new rave by a slavering music press and the ingratiates in the industry desperate to sign them) the emphasis on stylistic tendencies looms – the grunted backing vocals, the first breakdown with sampled dialogue, the euphoric synths – and this detracts from the song as a whole.
You get the feeling that until Enter Shikari learn to rein in the more excessive side of each of their conflicting styles, their songs will always sound ungainly and cumbersome. Too often their songs sound like a list of elements that have been crossed off a list. "We Can Breathe In Space..." hasn't broadened their sonic palette, but there are elements in the mix that bode well for their upcoming sophomore album.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of We Can Breathe In Space, They Just Don't Want Us To Escape by Enter Shikari on the site, please click on the article title.

The Monster Song - Psapp

2008-11-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

Beloved of advertising executives and television producers, London-based duo Psapp return with new single “Monster Song”. Credited with inventing the toytronica genre (elements of synthetic music combined with on toy instruments), they have enjoyed immense success in America. US licensing deals aside, “The Monster Song” is more organic than previous releases and certainly more sophisticated a production than many would give them credit for. More conventional instruments replace the rubber bands, chickens and household objects of old, albeit that alongside the guitars and strings lie the oud and Bontempi organs. They all combine to compliment the gentle layers of Galia Durant’s elfin vocal. While pretty enough, the song is prosaic in structure, ambition and scope. What saves the song from falling into a morass of twee recollection is the subdued and introspective coda.
When listening to Psapp it is hard not to imagine two children locked in their childhood music room. Their songs are reclamations of childhood, which explains their appeal. Psapp exist somewhere on the edge of our subconscious, with their songs of monsters, rockets and animals played on a mixture of toy, electronic and traditional instrumentation. Ultimately though the song, like the band, remain an inoffensive curio, capable of moments of extreme splendour and delicacy but also equally of saccharine insipidity.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Monster Song by Psapp on the site, please click on the article title.

Beg, Steal or Borrow #2

2008-11-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

Deerhunter - Microcastle (2008)
Loveless - My Bloody Valentine (1991)
Honey Ride Me A Goat/Lakes - Split EP (2008)
Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade (1984)
Slint - Spiderland (1991)

Get 'em.

Seaspray/22 Dreams - Paul Weller

2008-11-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

Being classed as a venerable music institution means that our perceptions of an artist could be framed, especially when their best material is always whispered to be 25 years behind them. For Paul Weller, obtaining a lifetime achievement award from NME just short of his 50th birthday, it must have seemed an apposite time to rest on laurels well earned.

Weller released his best solo record for over a decade this year with the song cycle 22 Dreams. “Seaspray/22 Dreams”, the second double A-side released from it, showcases Weller’s talents and influences perfectly. “Seaspray” is very reminiscent of Wild Wood‘s bucolic, English psychedelic folk. Mandolin, lush woodwind and horns blend with acoustic guitars and Weller’s careworn vocal line to create a Faces meets Nick Drake style ballad.

“22 Dreams” is a tangled mesh of beat style guitars, and demonstrates Weller’s assertion that “catching the feeling” was the most important element on this record. Whereas the rockier numbers on previous albums sounded synthetic this track is much more authentic, with the grunted backing vocals and Motown horns reaching a blaring crescendo while Weller muses on saving his soul. Lyrically both songs exist as transcendental fugues, embracing oneness with nature and the power of the subconscious.

Much like Oasis on their new album, Weller appears to be fixated on late 60s/early 70s rock. He blends the mod guitar thrash of The Who to the more pastoral elements of Traffic and the vibe, groove and drone of early Krautrock artists like Can. But there’s much more to these songs, hidden layers of aural texture that wash away memories of a decade’s underachievements. Sang with an air of tender resignation they reassert Weller’s position as one of England’s pre-eminent songwriters.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Seaspray/22 Dreams by Paul Weller on the site, please click on the article title.

Next Year In Zion - Herman Düne

2008-10-29T05:57:00.000-07:00

The fifth studio album from French duo Herman Düne was recorded in the legendary Exile on Main Street studios in Southern France, where the Rolling Stones decamped in 1971 to avoid paying taxes and finish the album of the same name. Herman Düne recorded the album on the same EMI desk borrowed from Abbey Road that the Stones recorded a large section of their roots influenced classic. Certainly Herman Düne draw upon the same canvas of influences; rock and roll, clues, country and soul.
Musically the album features the jazz inflected guitars, female backing vocals (with June Carter Cash as the archetype rather than the 60s girl group harmonies of the 1-2-3 Apple Tree EP), bourbon soaked horns and clipped drum beats from earlier recordings, replete with beautifully phrased solos and slide guitar that add texture and refinement to the proceedings. You have to wonder why the album was released in September, as its ambience is custom-made for a summer’s evening.
One thing that is immediately noticeable is singer David-Ivar Herman Düne’s delivery. While still a naive, yearning vocal style, tinged with regret, he appears to have grown in stature. David-Ivar’s vocals are less redolent of adolescence. Another improvement is the production. While fellow anti-folk artist Jeffery Lewis’ albums sound as though they were recorded in a bedroom with one guitar and a suitcase for drums, Next Year in Zion showcases a growing sophistication that distances them from their peers. What has always shined through on their tracks is their humanity, but on songs such as “When the Sun Rose up This Morning” or “On a Saturday” this is married to the sheen of the production.
There is one detrimental aspect to this emergent erudition. Previously they were a trio, until guitarist André Düne left after the recording sessions for previous album Giant, not even staying to tour the record. The songs on Next Year in Zion are perfectly crafted, but they do lack the musical complexity of the songs he would contribute to the band. A minor gripe, but it is clear that as a band Herman Düne are a very different proposition to the anti-folk band they started out as nearly a decade ago.
Instead Next Year in Zion belongs to a cultural and musical tradition that can be traced from Delta Blues, to Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, and Leonard Cohen. However Herman Düne filter these traditional influences through Jonathan Richman-esque wry, observational lyrical preoccupations and Daniel Johnston’s grasp of melody. Thus a song such as “My Baby Is Afraid of Sharks” takes a traditional song structure, yet inverts our perceptions with the lyrical content.
John Peel was an ardent admirer of Herman Düne’s, and he is normally a good barometer for a band’s qualities. They recorded six sessions for Peel, including one at Peel Acres (a rare honour), while “Drug Dealer in the Park” featured in his Festive 50 countdown from 2000. Previously they have occasionally failed to live up to their billing, yet Next Year in Zion is a well produced gem of an album, focused and coherent, that firmly places them in the canon next to their idols. It is hard to find a weak track amongst the dozen here; the only slight complaint would be aforementioned uniformity between the songs but when they’re this charming, idiosyncratic and well crafted it appears curmudgeonly to carp. Next Year in Zion is avant-pop music for those who think Sticky Fingers, The Modern Lovers and Brighten the Corners are amongst the greatest albums ever produced.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Next Year In Zion by Herman Dune on the site, please click on the article title.

Beg, Steal or Borrow #1

2008-10-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

The basic premise of this segment is to publicise important new releases that I believe everyone should listen to, no matter how, then to counterpoint those with albums that may have influenced them in some way. Here goes.

Department of Eagles – In Ear Park (2008)
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (2008)
TV on the Radio – Dear Science (2008)
Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska (1982)
Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Airplane Over The Sea (1998)
Bon Iver – For Emma Forever Ago (2007)
Beirut – The Flying Club Cup (2007)
Talking Heads – Fear Of Music (1979)
Saul Williams – Amethyst Rock Star (2001)
Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue (1977)

Happy listening.

Drugs - The Music

2008-10-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

When The Music released their debut album in 2001 they were a hotly tipped new act, drooled over by the music press for their mix of baggy vibes and bluesy riffing. At the time rock and dance music were considered mutually exclusive, yet fast forward seven years and the two are combined in ever increasing ways. Music fashion being the cyclical beast it is could The Music be considered relevant? It seems unlikely that they will grace the cover of NME at this stage in their career, having been usurped by younger, unsullied acts.
Since their debut they have released a stodgy sophomore effort (2004's Welcome to the North) and singer Robert Harvey has undergone rehabilitation for drug and alcohol addiction. Harvey’s experience and his battle to escape these dependencies inform much of the new album Strength in Numbers’ lyrical output.
The Music have updated their sound in the intervening years. There is a welcome subtlety on the third single from Strength in Numbers, “Drugs”. Gone are the Zeppelin-lite, bluesy riffs of earlier releases. Sonically, the single is more refined and textured than the output on the first two albums. “Drugs” is awash with synthetic texture, much like The Verve’s recent single “Love Is Noise”. Harvey sings in a lower register on the verses, creating a sense of intimacy and vulnerability, before opening up for the anthemic choruses. Combining an emotional starkness with a stadium-ready chorus is nothing new, but it works.
The pantheon of rock music is littered with those thrown by the wayside. Credit The Music for escaping the darker aspects of fatalism and enthrallment to substances and producing a solid third album. “Drugs” is a laudable effort, but you get the feeling that it won’t convert any new fans.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Drugs by The Music on the site, please click on the article title.

The Geeks Were Right - The Faint

2008-10-21T10:11:00.001-07:00

Omaha five piece The Faint return after a four year absence with new single “The Geeks Were Right”, taken from parent album Fasciinatiion. The song begins with angular guitars, before building in a fat synth bassline and vocodered vocals. It certainly ticks all the boxes of a guaranteed floor filler at your local indie disco, but it is let down by poor attention to structure and some genuinely lumpen musical segues featuring hilariously inappropriate arpeggiated synths.
Todd Fink claims the lyrics were inspired by Futurism; certainly lyrically The Faint has always shown the future as present past. The phrase “The geeks were right” in itself appears to be a separatist claim of the underdog, fighting the corner of those with “thin white legs” and initially the lyrics appear to be celebratory, revelling in the conquest of the “eggheads”, but further inspection reveals that they are striking a warning note, decrying the need to “Watch what the humans ruin with machines”. Like the music backing these nebulous sentiments, it promises much but says little. Instead of celebrating the future that they have seen, they hark back to a time pre-machine while Futurism espouses the triumph of technology over nature.
When first they arrived in our consciousness in the late 90s they heralded a new musical genre, electroclash. Unfortunately for The Faint upon returning they’ve found that there are new, more relevant bands occupying their place. They have become a parody of themselves, lacking energy and new ideas. Their second album Danse Macabre promised much, but having returned to the fray in 2008 it appears they have little to add to their own canon let alone the genre they work in.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of The Geeks Were Right by The Faint on the site, please click on the article title.

Oblige - I Concur

2008-10-06T09:34:00.001-07:00

Latest release from the Leeds based four piece was recorded by Tom Woodhead of ¡Forward Russia! This is an interesting place to start; Woodhead is a much feted and sought after producer, yet the production here is flat and uninspired, failing to lift the songs beyond the humdrum.
“Oblige” begins with a jangly, minor key guitar refrain. Keyboards fill out the sound, harmonised vocals sweep in and out of the mix. Despite their best efforts, they can’t divert you from a feeling of torpor. The song strains for a crescendo, but it is not attained. Part of the problem is the flatness of the vocals; they are delivered in a perfunctory fashion, but do not have that sense of urgency or immediacy that marks out a great vocal line.
B-side “Captors” better demonstrates their grasp of song dynamics. The song is in constant flux, building, receding before it reconstructs once more. The track lurches forward propulsively, driven by the rhythm section while the angular guitars interweave.
The single and its B-side are less grandiose than their earlier efforts, with guitars heavier and far more prominent. The ambient aural swirls of “Lucky Jack” and “Build Around Me” are replaced with turgid guitar work. The straightforward approach suits them not. “Captors” hints at a level of sophistication and musicality that they are obviously capable of but don’t meet on this release.
In an attempt to meld the sweeping grandeur of Interpol with the downtrodden, hometown melodrama of The National, I Concur wear their influences compulsively on their sleeve. At this moment in their progression there exists a gap between their own perceptions of the music and the actual musical output, but as they themselves intone, “Have patience...”

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Oblige by I Concur on the site, please click on the article title.

Wendy - Attic Lights

2008-10-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Beach Boys influenced orchestral pop meets Graham Coxon-esque guitar work on Attic Lights’ latest release “Wendy”.
Whilst “Wendy” is a well honed pop song with an infectious melody, it is hard to escape the sensation that we have heard the song before. It is certainly fun, good knockabout stuff, but the musical stylings adapted by the Glasgow band are a well ploughed furrow. Recent acts such as The Rumble Strips, The Thrills and even The Feeling have produced similarly wistful pop music. It wouldn’t sound out of place on a Supernaturals album, or any other Britpop band of the era. The Britpop stylings are perhaps explained by the presence of Teenage Fanclub’s drummer Francis Macdonald in the producer’s chair, whose own band also had a canny way with a melody and a 60s West Coast style harmony.
While this vein of songwriting tradition may affirm the melody’s timeless quality, this is a double-edged sword. With such precedence for this arch and wry take on the pop song, the song itself has to transcend its particular genre. But whereas a band like Ben Folds Five would deconstruct the pop song, strip to its bare elements and still stimulate you with their grasp of songcraft and wordplay, “Wendy” is a charming song with little depth.
The overall impression of “Wendy” is of an accomplished, proficient pop song with a melody designed to burrow slowly and insidiously into your cranium. The close harmonies are a highlight, as is the aforementioned guitar work from Jamie Huston and the strings scored by Bjorn Ytlling of Peter, Bjorn and John. But beneath the polished surface lies a band that is still a work in progress.

This article was originally produced for http://www.clickmusic.com/. To read the music review of Wendy by Attic Lights on the site, please click on the article title.

The Headmaster Ritual - Radiohead

2008-10-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

Radiohead cover "The Headmaster Ritual" by The Smiths, which opened their seminal album Meat is Murder. Please click on the article title to watch, as it's great.

Work - Blue Orchids

2008-10-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

“Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work...” goes the exultant cry.
Blue Orchids were formed by Martin Bramah and Una Baines, both former members of The Fall, in late 1979. They were famously named by John Cooper Clarke, punk poet and survivor of the sixties, who imagined them as 'a bunch of haemophiliacs raised by Alsatian dogs on a council tip'. Bramah and Baines, the axis around which the band rotated, were joined by Rick Goldstraw on bass and Ian Rogers on drums and spent much of the following year working on material.
At a time when Bruce Springsteen was celebrating the blue collar worker in America and thus affirming (according to Marxist idioms) man’s eternal right and desire to ‘work’, the Blue Orchids were painting a very different picture. Instead of revelling in tales of working life they paint a picture of a dislocated society. We are all “golden salmon, swimming against the tide of life”. On their debut single “The Flood” they had sang about the overwhelming sensation hallucinogens had on the system, but on their second 7 inch they were addressing the quandaries facing the nation.
While Britain had 3 million unemployed, Martin Bramah invoked the power of work. Not long beforehand the winter of discontent had seen 1 million trade union members laid off. Employment was an emotive issue. The song is a spiritual cousin of The Specials’ “Ghost Town”, an indictment of the failure of government to provide for its populace. Both released in early 1981, they highlight the desolation going on in the inner cities of the United Kingdom, be it Coventry or Manchester.
Musically Blue Orchids took the chilled out, drug influenced West Coast sound of bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors and filtered them through the grim, sodium lit, urban decay of late 1970s inner city Manchester. The band’s music invokes a kind of spiritual wanderlust, sensual and boundless, but rooted endlessly and irrevocably in Manchester. However they are less furious than Joy Division, less raucous than The Fall. Their songs are labyrinthine, a myriad of guitar lines and keyboards interlacing above a steady backbeat. On their debut album The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) this psychedelic tradition is evident, yet on “Work” the soundscape is darker, spiteful, denser, colder, and has much more in common with the East Coast pioneers the Velvet Underground. Their link with the Velvets is well known; they worked as backing band for Nico, the Belgian chanteuse who appeared with the Velvets in the late 60s. There are many who feel that becoming her backing band, and the hard drugs it opened them up to, ended the band as a creative force for many years. Being a band for which recreational drug use was par for the course, the absence of work was seen as liberating.
“Work” is a far darker piece of music than appeared on their debut album released just three months later. Bramah traces out discordant patterns on his guitar, constantly picking out a lead motif that is constantly evolving, fluid, not fixed. Una Baines organ soars above, freewheeling above the tight mesh of the rhythm guitars. The whole sound is tense, stretched taut over the structure. Bramah’s voice stretches too, cracking as it strains to reach the notes. Skittish, dub style drums clatter and thrash in the background. They had taken the sound of psychedelia and inverted it, infusing it with a barely restrained fury, redolent of Germanic acts such as Can, Neu! and Faust.
The song ends on a celebratory note, guitars ringing out as Baines’ organ soars. The celebration of not going to ‘work’, the celebration of individuality, the celebration of liberating oneself from society, the celebration of drugs, the celebration of dissidence and the celebration of the soul that endures. “Work” is one of the few pieces they recorded that hint at a greater social awareness; the majority of their canon is insular, introspective in which the personal becomes political.

An interim post

2008-08-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

It's basically just sex music is sick of bands who think by using a particular band as a reference point they can justify their awful music.

In Rainbows - Radiohead

2008-08-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

After the release of Hail to the Thief in 2003 and the accompanying EP Com Lag (2+2=5), Radiohead were released from their contractual obligations with Parlophone and its parent company EMI, ending their long association which stretched back to their debut Pablo Honey. Upon leaving the company Thom Yorke described the traditional record industry as a “decaying business model”, a notion supported by EMI’s purchase by venture capitalists Terra Firma. They are not the only artist to speak out against them; Blur criticised them in the song “B.L.U.R.E.M.I.” long before the equity firm bought them out, while more recently Lily Allen has blamed the redundancies enforced by the new owners for the delay in releasing her sophomore album. Against this milieu they decided their seventh studio album would initially be available as a download only, and the price would be determined by the buyer. Ten days before it was released digitally they announced on their blog on official page Dead Air Space that it would be called In Rainbows, a curiously childlike and wondrous title. Obviously this brought a lot of media attention. According to recent analysis of the digital downloads by music rights holders, and despite the fact that theoretically it was available for free, the album was still heavily pirated online. The album was released physically in December 2007 by XL recordings for those who still hankered after a tangible object. A deluxe disc was available for £40, aimed at the vast number of Radiohead completists who owned all the Japanese imports. In the early rush of press releases and commotion surrounding the album’s public entrance, there were various utterances attributed to the band espousing the belief that this was their Revolver, their definitive collection. It certainly feels concise in comparison to Hail to the Thief, which had at least two too many songs on it.
The primary themes of the album are ones of alienation, paranoia, of temporal and emotional dislocation. Each song on the album is an encapsulated narrative, a self-enclosed world into which you are cast adrift. Ten perfectly formed songs comprise the album, while the discbox houses a second CD of bonus material. Because of the songs structure I find it best to approach each song individually in order to come to some form of comprehension of the whole.
A processed drum rhythm announces the record on “15 Step”, with Yorke declaiming “How come I end up where I started”. So far, so post-OK Computer Radiohead. Skittering rhythm - check, paranoid vocals – check etcetera. However on 23 seconds Phil Selway’s hypnotic acoustic drumbeat kicks in, all tight snare and clipped hi-hat, mirroring the processed drumbeat, building on it, enveloping it. On 43 seconds, the first guitar line of the album commences. Jonny Greenwood’s guitar phrase is a complete revelation; the warmth of the tone, the subtle nuances and the intricacies of his playing are breathtaking. Those more used to his bombastic playing on earlier records will be surprised. Greenwood junior has always been Radiohead’s secret weapon, from the moment he joined his elder brother’s band. His ability to take a song and completely unhinge it, taking it into new and exciting avenues has never been in question. That is why this phrase, so simple and yet so rich and perfect in execution, is such a joy. Around the two and a half minute mark the song breaks down, the processed beat rejoins along with found sounds, sampled children’s speech and Yorke’s schizoid vocals. Then the rhythm section propels the track forward with Colin Greenwood’s effortlessly funky bass line and Selway’s drum beat. The whole song is so well cadenced, with the various layers interwoven perfectly.
“Bodysnatchers” is another surprise. Hail to the Thief was hailed by many because it was perceived as a return to Radiohead’s earlier musical ventures. Essentially this comes down to them ‘plugging in’; Britain’s musical press is rockcentric and ultimately fears electronic music, both aurally and ideologically. Since OK Computer there has been a noticeable aversion to guitars in Radiohead’s music, although it has to be pointed out that both Kid A and Amnesiac feature many tracks that contain guitars, but that are just utilised in different ways. They are textured, layered rather than providing the focal point for the song. Hail to the Thief opened with “2+2=5”, which itself begun symbolically with the sound of a guitar being plugged in. “Bodysnatchers” is the heaviest, most frantic on the album and is probably the most frenetic since “Electioneering” on OK Computer. It starts with a fuzztone driven, dropped D riff. Once the whole band kicks in it sounds not unlike a dirty revved up version of White Album era Beatles, ending with half a minute of furious riffing and Jonny Greenwood emitting frenzied, strangled notes from his Telecaster. To put it bluntly, it rocks.
“Nude” began life in 1997, and has gone through various permutations before finding itself on In Rainbows in its new guise. It is a wonderful example of a songwriter, dedicated to his craft, refusing to let a good melody or idea go. It begins in a swirl of strings and descending vocal lines, with Phil Selway’s rimshot snare and a glimmering glissando guitar joining before Colin Greenwood’s dub influenced bass line begins. The track is heart rendering, aching, and yearning. The clean guitar refrain resembles nothing more than cracked Philly soul. Yorke’s voice soars and freewheels above the mix. However the boy meets girl scenario of classic soul is replaced with cautionary tales of not getting any big ideas. On 3 minutes 14 seconds the multi-tracked vocals reach for the heights. Strings, full of tension, strive to match Yorke all the way. The eternal paradox surrounding Radiohead is that how can something so well crafted and beautiful sound so close to collapse.
“Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is the song in which all the ideas that Radiohead possess about their sound is distilled to the most success. Selway counts them in with four taps of his sticks, before starting a perfunctory solid drum beat. Ed O’Brien’s guitar motif of four minor key finger picked arpeggios is mirrored by Jonny Greenwood. It’s not the same refrain however; it intertwines with it, creates a new space, a fresh narrative for the song. Colin Greenwood’s bass is solid root note fundamentals, underpinning the guitar work.
“In the deepest ocean, the bottom of the sea.....”
The song builds and builds, it is claustrophobic, as though it has been submerged. Yorke’s vocals sound as if they have been recorded at the bottom of the ocean, yet the second (and third) guitars and Ed O’Brien’s backing vox intersect with them opening new vistas of imagination. It feels so organic, as if it hasn’t been written by five people but trapped in a net. As the song advances it yearns for a crescendo. One of Radiohead’s key traits is their control of song structure and the creation of tension within the construct. Unlike many of their contemporaries they are able to deliver the pay off. Just after the three minute mark Yorke declares “I get eaten by the world, and weird fishes” and the guitars are replaced by Greenwood’s intricate playing on the ondes martenot (an early electronic instrument). The electronic music swells into a new section on 3 minutes 41 seconds with disturbing white noise, electric glissandos that glisten beautifully, fade and decay while the first guitar refrain repeats.
“All I Need” begins with Phil Selway’s syncopated, clipped drum rhythm and a wash of synthesis, before a 5 string bass line introduces the main melody of the song. Radiohead’s devouring of all things electronic (particularly 20th century composers such as Reich, Glass, Messaien, Stockhausen and the output of Warp records) is evident on this track. The ambience is pure Boards of Canada, and is genuinely disarming in its beauty and frailty. This song highlights the feeling that has been growing and becoming more palpable on each track; the sense of a beating human heart lying beneath the sentiments. They had previously been criticised for their apparent reluctance to create a dialogue with their audience, preferring to use obtuse wordplay to convey complex emotions and politics. Universal themes and heartfelt emotions are perceptible, rather than the fragmented lyricism that normally characterises Yorke’s writing. The song is elegiac, but due to its sentiments becomes the album’s pulse, its touchstone. Yorke proclaims that he is “an animal that just wants to share your life”. Found sounds, sampled fragments contribute to the fractured soundscape which is lightened by plaintive glockenspiel. On 2 minutes 46 seconds minor key piano chords enter, cymbals crash and the vocals soar and undulate before returning. “All I Need” presents the album’s bruised face, a tarnished and blemished heart, a soul that wants to be loved. A soul that cannot change.
On first listen “Faust Arp” appears to be the weakest song in the collection. It begins with a B minor chord and is structured around this key. Its lyrics are nonsensical, yet further listening deepens and enriches the experience. Gently bowed strings and Yorke’s downbeat delivery conspire to drag you further in. While the song’s meaning is unfathomable, again it is the quality of the songcraft that stops this being a mere throwaway track. It is bucolic, pastoral and has more than a hint of Nick Drake about it. This resemblance is particularly enhanced by the version on “Scotch Mist” (the webcast they made at their Oxfordshire studio on New Year’s Eve 2007), where Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood play the song on a hillside in the country. By the last draw of bow on cello it has ensnared you but such is the track’s brevity by the time it has worked its charm it has gone, clocking in at a mere 2 minutes and 9 seconds.
“Reckoner” opens with strident drums, with heavy use of the crash cymbal. After 10 seconds the main guitar phrase begins, three simply picked chords. Thom Yorke’s vocal on this song is tremulous, soaring, gospel like. Much like on “Nude” and “All I Need” it transports the listener to a different plane away from the complications of our everyday, humdrum existence. It ends with a rousing string coda, backed with aspirational jazz inflected guitar chords.
“House of Cards” begins with the couplet “I don’t wanna be your friend/I just wanna be your lover”, intoned over a serene guitar line. There is a lot to surprise on this album, and that is high on the list. The couplet could have come from any one of a number of pop songs, so its use in a Radiohead song is strange. In the past it could have been perceived as being subversive, using the lexicon of pop to comment and create discourse on the subject, yet on this album it truly feels sincere. The vocal register that Yorke uses is deeper, richer with less of the caterwauling to be found on Radiohead’s edgier material. It has soul. This newfound candid nature could be perplexing to diehard fans but I find it refreshing. Yorke’s vocals are swathed in reverb, while Greenwood uses an Ebow on his guitar to create an ethereal, haunting effect over the song. The accompanying music video, filmed using a geometric mapping visualisation technique to capture three dimensional close ups of Thom Yorke singing and multiple lasers to create remarkable cityscapes, is truly groundbreaking as it used no conventional film equipment in its production. Seven albums in and it appears that there is no comfort zone for them, they consistently utilise technology to push the envelope in terms of the band’s presentation.
If “All I Need” is the album’s love song, then “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” is the albums seduction song. It begins with an acoustic guitar picking out a chord pattern in an open D tuning, gradually descending. The song is a caustic tale depicting a one night stand as a nightmarish conceit. The guitars interlace while backing vocals swoop and soar over the top. On the Scotch Mist version Jonny Greenwood uses the ondes martenot to harmonise with the vocals, but this unfortunately is not included on the album version. The song drives inexorably onward to its logical conclusion, and after the redemptive spirit shown on earlier songs the mistrust and ache exhibited is something of an intrusion.
“Videotape”, funereal and distant, closes the album. The lyrical theme concerns a person at the “pearly gates” of heaven reviewing their life captured on home movies, debating their worth and what they have achieved. It is a beautiful piece of music, and the album version is augmented with glitch-style percussive beats and flicks. Despite its austere nature it is an incredibly moving song, based around a simple piano theme. It showcases long time producer Nigel Godrich’s effortless skill in melding together layers of acoustic and synthetic sound.
In Rainbows is a beautiful album that allows it to transcend discussion of the ethics concerned in its release. The experimental sections are firmly wound into the melodies of more traditional song structures. It does appear to be an epithet of everything they have ever wished to create, the logical conclusion of their previous records. The combination of post-rock, electronic bricolage, patterns, pop, dub, jazz, synths, strings, acoustic instruments, frenzy, restraint, dreams, beauty, frailty, pain, anguish, schisms, fragments, paranoia, rock and roll, hope and fear is well measured and delivered in exemplary fashion. By this stage in their career Radiohead are so consummate in the studio I would back them to deliver at the very least an interesting record; but this is so much more. It is perfect on every level, and they can only get better from here on in.

Modern Life Is Rubbish - Blur

2008-08-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

In the mid 90s there were no dedicated twenty four hour ‘indie’ television channels. The most you could expect was the indie chart rundown fortnightly on ITV’s Chart Show on Saturday mornings, or the occasional Super Furry Animals or Supernaturals video. Whilst certainly not a barren spell for music, the coverage was poor. Pre-internet meant scouring teletext (nominally Channel 4’s Planet Sound) for demo and gig reviews, and forums. To keep in touch with underground music from other locales in the UK meant sending 50p and a stamp addressed envelope to obscure villages in Derbyshire, or £2.50 for a badly recorded four track demo. That sometimes came with a badge. The prevalence of ‘indie’ as a fashion, as a sound, as a preset construct means it is easy to forget about these leaner times. It is also easy to romanticise them.
Against this backdrop Blur released Modern Life Is Rubbish in 1993. It is usually credited with starting the Britpop movement, and while this can be debated the album’s influence cannot. Its highest chart placing was 15, and was critically well received on release but didn’t shift enough units to be considered a success by EMI, the parent company of Blur’s record label Food. The British sound which it expounded traced a direct line through The Kinks, The Who, The Jam, ska, skinhead, and shoegazer. It was Village Green Appreciation Society for the early 1990s. Using these antecedents as reference points allowed them to distance themselves from the baggy movement which their debut Leisure had been lumped in with, while also dissociating them with grunge. Although they would later adapt an American sound on Blur and 13, at this stage in their development (and particularly after a torturous American tour) they wished to put as much open water between them and the sound from across the Atlantic.
The ideas of Britishness, both as a notion and as a construct, are central to the album. It informs debate about the album and its merits, and why it is still an important recording today. One of the promo photos for the album’s release showed them in a mixture of mod and skinhead gear, with a pitbull and the phrase “British Image 1” on a brick wall behind. The best place to find members of Britpop bands was hanging out in some greasy spoon or pie and mash shop in London’s East End (until the dawn of New Labour when membership of the Groucho club became de rigueur). While this can be argued to be an affectation, the ethos that fortified it is more problematical to scrutinise.
What this album rails against is a general malaise that affected the nation at the time; the dissipation of traditional Britishness. The decay of modern culture (ie 20th century modernism) is posited against the milieu of globalised popular ethos. 19th century industrialisation had woven itself into the texture of inner city life in Britain, yet by the 1990s the idea of community had dissolved. The traditional British image has receded. Britishness is something that can be learnt; indeed has to, if you are applying for citizenship. National identity isn’t concrete, it is malleable and fluid. The album provokes debate on the construct of national identity, if it is still relevant, and examines the signifiers of nationalism itself.
The inhabitants of Blur’s songs are insulated. They feel uncomfortable in working class communities; the traditional post-compulsory education route was via heavy industry not the social mobility offered by higher education. Thus Damon Albarn writes about middle managers, such as Colin Zeal, and the pressure on Julian as he pushes trolleys in the car park. This Is Middle England. The banal and mundane are not taboo subjects. They are embraced, allowing them to adopt a microcosmic viewpoint which embodies this sense of frustration with the 1990s. For further elucidation on their thoughts of the decade, listen to “1992” from 13. It says it all.
Blur are modernists in the truest sense of the phrase – their music is a reaction against the rise of mass culture, which is perceived as formulaic and a superficial novelty. The lyrics are full of references to advertising, billboards. It was a time when advertising wasn’t so pervasive, so the novelty of American style marketing hadn’t yet worn off. “Advert” begins with the phrase “Food processors are great!” The Andy Warhol phrase “Buying is much more American than thinking” lurks underneath. Globalisation has shrunk the world, has shrunk time. According to Paul Virilio, “We live in a time of intensely tiny units of time. The real world and our image of the world no longer coincide”.
This album marks the initiation of Damon Albarn’s obsession with London. As usual it is the frontier lands in the suburbs that take precedence, fitting for a boy from Leytonstone. Along with other correspondents from London working in the latter half of the 20th century, he finds solace in these areas. They stimulate and engender thought in a way that the tourist filled centre could not. Thus the protagonists live in Emperor’s Gate and plan trips to Primrose Hill; they travel into the centre on the underground, they live in fragments of history. They drink sugary tea in hovels and buy trainers (with air cushioned soles) from Portobello Road market. They inhabit the places between places, that can’t be mapped, that are ever shifting.
The spectre of vaudeville raises its head on “Intermission” and “Commercial Break”. This link to music hall was something The Who had explored on Tommy, so it wasn’t new for a British band to explore this area of cultural tradition, but it’s embracing on the album is important in entrenching the idea of Britishness that permeates.
The problem with Modern Life Is Rubbish’s version of Britishness; it is Anglocentric, particularly biased to the south, and it is easy to see how a group of five beer swilling Mancunians armed with songs that married the bombast of the late era Beatles to the urgency of the Clash could challenge their place for Britpop primacy. Retrospectively Blur’s songs seem twee in comparison, but they possess an ironic, post-modern heart truly in keeping with many of their art-punk heroes and predecessors. “Sunday, Sunday” (a distant cousin both thematically and structurally to “Just Who Is The Five A-Clock Hero?” by The Jam) is the most ‘British’ song on the album. Colour supplements, TV guide, Sunday roast, Songs of Praise, war heroes, Mother’s Pride; all traditional ‘British’ imagery referenced in the opening verse. Yet the CD booklet introduces the song as “Legislated nostalgia: to force a body of people to have memories they do not actually possess”. This is coupled with the cover artwork; at a time when the rail network was being touted for privatisation, the image of a steam locomotive was an uncomfortable reminder of bygone days. The idea of the traditional British Sunday is shown as collective cultural amnesia, a fallacy, a construct. Britishness as national identity is erroneous. Blur were aware enough in their adoption of the signifiers that they were utilising were on the way out, yet they enabled them to comment on our national character and deepen the discourse surrounding it.
There is a real dichotomy in their songwriting body, and this is particularly evident on Modern Life is Rubbish (as well as its companion piece, Parklife). Bombastic songs, such as the singles “Sunday, Sunday”, “Chemical World” and “For Tomorrow” sit alongside more reflective moments such as “Blue Jeans”, “Miss America” and the beautiful album closer “Resigned”. A precursor to “This Is a Low”, its restrained tremolo laden guitar and melodica interweave before culminating in one of Blur’s classic outros. Much like the closing section of “Beetlebum”, every last fragment of emotion is wrought from a few simple chords. Beautiful. Graham Coxon’s guitar work is immense throughout, layering the songs with shimmering motifs over major and minor chord structures.
Despite its flaws this is still an important album. It is more than just a forerunner for Parklife, and in terms of its social impact and importance I believe it has a greater resonance. There is prescience in the title which allows it to transcend the generational gap. 15 years later the twentysomethings that Blur would have appealed to still experience the aspiration deficit. In 1993 Britain was in the grip of recession and an unpopular government that had begun to outstay its welcome was steadily sinking the ship. But in 1993 you couldn’t watch identikit indie bands 24 hours a day. Oh, for simpler times.

Ten New Messages - The Rakes

2008-03-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

One of the main problems with the post-2004 indie explosion is its decided lack of substance. The mix and match musical stylings of most of the genres progenitors are without suitable context or conceptual framework, thus leaving it open to accusations of vacuousness. While The View sing about wearing the same pair of jeans for four days in a row, which may have resonance for a large section of its fanbase, you have to ask yourself: WHERE ARE THE ISSUES? Which bands are railing against the injustices of the world, the social inequities? Many assign themselves with charities and fundraising events, which has to be applauded (although the cynic within us sees it as a purely self-serving exercise), yet which artist explores these issues within their music? Time and again we are told that our generation is the least politically aware, the most apathetic, yet no artist seems prepared to voice their concerns. If they do they are met with derision. It seems that we don’t want a statesman.
One of rock criticisms’ key aspects is its revisionistic tendency. Whilst seen in some quarters as a pitfall, others revel in its fluidity. This malleable characteristic means that popular opinion of an album is never fixed. It often transpires albums that are now much lauded and considered part of the musical canon weren’t well received when initially released. It is also often the case that albums released to (the hated term) “critical acclaim” are now vilified. The Rakes, whose debut Capture/Release was one of the keynote releases in the first wave of indie darlings and was well received on its release in 2005, are one such band. The last three years have been less kind, and the singles apart, it now leaves behind the impression of a band that weren’t yet ready for the studio. Having formed only a year beforehand this was hardly surprising.
This is why Ten New Messages is a welcome step forward, both sonically and thematically. Whilst still capturing the sensation of being a twentysomething living and working in the capital, the album has a heart and social conscience absent from their debut. True, the jerky rhythms of their debut were ready made for the indie disco, and in Alan Donohue they had a frontman who was an intriguing mix of Ian Curtis and David Brent. As with many bands that ploughed a similar musical furrow (identikit post-punk/art disco. Key influences: Wire, Joy Division, XTC, the Postcard bands, Buzzcocks/Magazine, The Strokes) it all felt too clearly demarcated – they wrote songs that ticked all the right boxes but were purely perfunctory. “22 Grand Job” and “Work, Work, Work (Pub. Club, Sleep)” were polite deferences to the cycle of working and drinking in the city that, whilst capturing the emptiness of this traditional working environment, lacked a wider appreciation of social issues.
Opener “The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect” is a less than veiled indictment of this scene and their dissatisfaction with it, though this is slightly tempered with the knowledge that it was originally conceived as a backing track for a Christian Dior fashion show. There is a melancholy air that shrouds the album, making it a more sombre affair than their debut. Perhaps it is a question of timing, because Donohue’s lyrics are particularly affected by the spectre of 7/7. The three bombs that detonated within 50 seconds of each other affected more than just the 52 victims and their loved ones. The lack of public inquiry affected public confidence; the economic impact was huge but more important to Donohue is the media response to the attacks. In the immediate aftermath of 7/7, as in 9/11, there was an outbreak of racist discourse in certain sections of the media that they obviously felt uncomfortable with, examined on “Suspicious Eyes”. The track uses many voices, a clever narrative device that allows them to investigate the racial tension that overshadows life in London these days from multiple perspectives. Laura Marling joins Phil Morais and Raxstar, plucked from MySpace obscurity, to provide backing vocals. On “When Tom Cruise Cries” they detail the anxiety of searching for a loved one in the immediate aftershock of the bombings. Since 9/11 this scene has entered the cultural lexicon, informed by images of faces on billboards, flowers on sidewalks, a cloud of dust billowing down a street, tear stained faces appealing for information, for anything, as the local newshound attempts to keep it together.

Where the album fails is where it leaves this narrative cycle; leadoff single “We Danced Together” is, as the title suggests, a knockabout song primarily designed to fill the dancefloor at your local indie night. It’s as if they’ve adopted Franz Ferdinand’s maxim of “music to make girls dance” and taken it too far – spiky guitars and disco drums combine on nearly every track, with little to break the uniformity. Admittedly they do try and disrupt this (Lethal Bizzle guesting on the reissue of “22 Grand Job”), but depressingly the songs feel more and more like artifice. The Rakes' endeavours to wrestle with various issues on this album is welcome, but as of yet they lack the songwriting craft to supplement Donohue’s lyrical preoccupations.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen

2008-03-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

The main problem that a ‘supergroup’ will face is to make music that exceeds the sum of its parts. Supergroups tend to go down one of two routes: the first is that they become a star vehicle, ruled by the cult of personality and a complete lack of restraint in terms of musical excess. The second is to adopt a reductionist strategy and attempt to sublimate themselves (and more importantly their egos) within the body of work. Both paths are fraught with danger, and while both are well trod they seldom end in success.
The Good, The Bad and the Queen fall somewhere between these two stools. In presenting themselves as a raffish East End Last Gang In Town they attempt to establish credence for the notion of themselves as a musical entity entirely separate from their predecessors. Indeed the band themselves claim to have no name and that they are together to perform music, pure and simple, shunning the traditional band mentality. Yet when you take a roll call of the incumbents’ previous musical projects (Blur, The Clash, Gorillaz, Mali Music, The Verve, Fela Kuti and Afrobeat), the sense of musical history and legacy becomes hard to ignore and each member’s past pervades the album. This personal history led Albarn and Simonon to choose venues for their debut tour that they have an affinity with. This idea of a specific place, both isolation and association with, is a key theme on the album. The album itself takes on the form of a loose concept album, united by its core themes, in which Albarn takes on the role of a psychogeographical explorer, corresponding relentlessly from the emotional hinterland that their music occupies. Albarn has often used London to map complex emotions, and this latest work is no different. He uses the topography of the city to create a narrative of unease, of malaise, of despondency in the gasworks, canals, empty places and unseen histories of the city that is genuinely disarming. The drift of memory is a constant presence, from the Victorian painting by Thomas Shotter Boys of the Mint burning inside the walls of the Tower on the cover, to the attempts by the writer to document his escape from his past.
Which brings us to the music. Like an old LP the album is split between two distinct sides. The first six songs are the more dynamic on a purely surface level, whilst the second side is less upbeat. The first side is denser, the whole mix pervaded with a sense of dread which jars with Albarn’s vaudevillian sensibilities. It is a trait that has been evident in almost every project that he has been involved in as a major song writing partner, from Leisure to Demon Days. This finds its voice principally on opener “History Song” and “80s Life”, the former building on a sparse yet exciting guitar line to create an organic music hall meets dub structure, while the latter possesses wonderful doo wop vocals, swooping harmonies and excellent muted arpeggios from guitarist Simon Tong. Tong’s playing throughout is understated, perfectly restrained and phrased. Rhythm section Simonon and Allen create a rocksteady foundation, with Allen taking a backseat on the majority of the second side, augmenting the sound with flicks and sparse beats. The synth line in “Northern Whale” is perhaps the most danceable melody I heard in all of 2007, while “Kingdom of Doom”, with its promise of ravens flying overhead, continues to create the environment of dread. “Drink all day, coz the country is at war”, Albarn intones. Considering the context in which it is made, it is an admirable sentiment.
The standout track on the album is “Herculean”, the band’s first single release. The layered vocals, processed sounds, synths, Tong’s measured minor key guitar motif and the scattershot drums offer the most fractured, somnambulant and eerie soundscape the album has to offer. It is also the track that best exemplifies producer Danger Mouse’s alchemic skills at the desk – from such simple stock a track of wonder is created. “Behind the Sun” is the most Gorillaz-esque song on the album, an effortlessly bucolic song that points to the remainder of the album in its final moments with a wonderful string refrain George Martin would have been proud to put his name to.

What is evident when comparing The Good, The Bad & The Queen to the early Blur albums is that Albarn has stripped the music back to its barest. This is witnessed in both the sparse lyrics, with oblique references replacing the vignettes of life in England that dominated in his early writing. The sonic palette is also reduced, and while this has led to criticism in certain areas I strongly believe that the tonal consistency adds coherency to the whole album. Whilst unmistakeably a bleak record it contains elements of light and beauty. It is an album that looks back to its references yet is resolutely grounded in the here and now, with all the preoccupations of this flaccid, turbulent century. Welcome to the dread zone.