These New Puritans, Hidden
Angular/Domino
Two amazing albums in one month? And I haven’t even had time to listen to Four Tet, Vampire Weekend, Beach House, or Magnetic Fields, et cetera and et cetera, yet. (Note: Yeasayer is out in February, officially. But who cares about official release dates, right?)
Is January turning into a perennial bumper crop of music in the same way as it always is for cinema, with movies trying to cash in during awards season? Too bad these awesome albums are preening and posing for an awards ceremony that doesn’t exist. Sometimes it’s kind of sad that the Brits and the Mercury Prize are so pathetic (and that there’s no real alternative since NME took its finger off the pulse about five years ago), but on the other hand it’s distinctly satisfying that brave and innovative albums like the one I'm about to review aren’t lowered to competing on a shortlist with La Roux or The Killers for a hollow golden token which serves only to place a full stop at the end of a career spurt while allowing hacks to move on to the Next Big Thing.
Well, These New Puritans were The Next Big Thing a couple of years ago; I was totally in love with their debut Beat Pyramid and pissed off that so much criticism of the band was based around them being pale, angular and from Southend, which in a pre-Primary Colours world was still a joke ("Look at those naff provincials with their pretentious sixth form ‘philosophy’ and ironic love of Wu-Tang Clan", etc).
Well, no. They’re just weird. Like the many of the genuinely great musicians, composers and artists of the past 50, no – 100 years? 200? Not that I’m pushing the whole ‘tortured genius/mad artist in his garret’ thing, which is one of those ridiculous clichés that means nice and talented people are seen as ‘lesser’ in comparison to bastard miserly megalomaniacs with vast and delicate egos, like some of the sainted ‘legends’ of rock and pop sneering at me from the semi-matt covers of respectable music monthlies. Naturally, I digress.
So, Hidden. The second album from These New Puritans. But first: did you hear that Blakroc record? Where the Black Keys teamed up with Wu Tang, Ludacris and Mos Def to play hip hop with live instruments? Well, turn that concept inside out. Invert that shit. This is electronic beats, razor sharp production and white boy vocals, nasal and half-mumbled – and oh yes, did I mention the bassoon motif popping up throughout the album?
‘We Want War’ is the single; you may well have heard it by now – make sure you soak up the gorgeous video embedded above. Bear in mind that it's the first single, and it's seven minutes long. The production is really what hits you first. Though Beat Pyramid showed a lot of flair and innovation from such a young band, TNP have clearly made staggering leaps ahead. The silvery shrrrring! of a gleaming sword pulled from its hilt couldn’t be a sharper contrast to the cavernous gravity of the bass and beats, showing that the band’s production sensibility is first and foremost a hip hop one, focused on pristine sounds and rigid rhythms, with vocals taking a supporting role.
The beat on ‘Thought Rush’, for instance, a track on the Rough Trade bonus CD, is very, very much like that 2003 number ‘Never Leave You (Uh Oooh Uh Oooh)’ by Lumidee, which, interestingly, is a much worse version of the Ol' Dirty Bastard track 'Welcome Home' - no doubt TNP had both those songs very much in mind. It’s also weirdly sparse and more ‘live’ sounding than any track on the album proper, and also includes some brilliantly inappropriate bassoon polyphony near the end.
Also on the extra CD, a competent dark and techy remix of ‘We Want War’ ticks some boxes, but I’m sure it’s only the tip of the iceberg for dissecting Hidden into dozens of incredible remixes. The inclusion of an instrumental version of the track – thoroughly listenable in its own right, so well produced is it - is surely a canny move. Also, an alternative mix of ‘Hologram’ offers a cleaner, stronger vocal performance and a captivating piano arrangement which is about 94,758 galaxies away from the usual ‘piano song’ on an indie album, and in fact reminds me a touch, what with Jack’s half-spoken Estuary lines, of a couple of the almost jazzy arrangements on Original Pirate Material (the ones that had less to do with Mike Skinner, we must assume).
‘White Chords’ is also ripe for a seriously good remix, with a Thom Yorke style vocal and light and dark elements flashing in and out; a girlish ‘ooh’ reverberates and glitchy buttons ripple as the bass spreads out thick and spacious over a dubsteppy beat.
‘5’, the album’s coda, is weird, subtle and oddly affecting, and sees Jack Barnett try his hand at pure composition. Apparently he had to learn notation and write the bassoon sections ‘deaf’, as it were, before the band travelled to the Czech Republic to hear it played to them for the first time by a 13-piece brass and woodwind ensemble. A number of influences make themselves known, including, I suppose, Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar, as the band has mentioned in interviews, but there's also a Reich/Riley-esque minimalist phrase played (I think) on tubular bells and sounding like nothing less than the soundtrack to The Exorcist – which is then butted out by a ghostly children’s choir and Jack Barnett’s sombre, quiet monotone.
Like the rest of Hidden, it’s like nothing I've ever heard - and it's exquisite.
As a final word – please do buy this record. It’s really not going to sell that many copies and this band very much deserve to make another album. Sermon over.
Endnote:
Imagine how good it would be to be a youngish indie fan who’s been learning bassoon for years ‘cos his parents made him, and all he wants is to be Johnny Thunders – wait, this is 2010: Ezra Koenig? – but then he hears this and he’s like, Wicked, now I can be an indie star too, I’m gonna start a band!, etc etc. Cue new generation of proper weird pop, a true post punk revival.
[On a related note, this is of course the reason why a disproportionate amount of girls are into twee. It’s not that females are naturally programmed to prefer pretty ickle tunes with earnest lovesick lyrics (obviously), it’s that it gives bored 15-year-olds a chance to be in a band and put to use those ridiculous violin/flute/piano lessons that Mummy forced on them for 10 years in some sickly remnant of a 19th century ladies’ education, all of which seemed so incredibly boring before but now turns out to be an excellent way to get foppish lads from Upper Sixth to write earnest lovesick lyrics about their wavy red hair and awkward smiles that they hated until they realised their true cultural value in Twee Land. Cue girls on keys/flute/harp etc in twee bands. I'm not sure it's The Answer, but it'll do for now]
Friday, 12 February 2010
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Yeasayer, Odd Blood
Yeasayer, Odd Blood
Secretly Canadian
Do not adjust your set. Two voices, twisted and treacly, ooze out of the speakers over bubbling synths and booming drums. What the hell? Check to see if the track is corrupted – everything seems okay. Well, what did you expect from a band like Yeasayer?
Weird and brooding opener ‘The Children’ gives you an inkling of where these Brooklyn experimentalistas want to take us with their second album, Odd Blood – a retrofuturist prog-pop journey which stands on the shoulders of their acclaimed debut LP All Hour Cymbals, travelling deeper into the realms of the uncategorisable and becoming an early contender for 2010’s album of the year in the process.
As part of a wave of U.S. bands defining a new pop aesthetic influenced by African rhythms, Eastern scales and other sounds that used to be lazily described as ‘world music’, Yeasayer have always stood out as the village elders of the scene, with their extravagant and meticulously crafted songs and live performances.
The first single from Odd Blood, ‘Ambling Alp’ (released last year) is a perfect example of the band’s refined ear for detail, with their trademark hollow, artificial drums and funky, clipped bass underpinning a whole palette of unidentifiable noises dropping in and out over Chris Keating’s acrobatic gospel-tinged vocals. It’s about the most certifiably bonkers a band can get within the four-minute pop song framework. Your brain latches on to the almost embarrassingly earnest, sing-along lyrics (“Stick up for yourself son/ Never mind what anybody else done”) while the music sneaks in round the back, and by the second or third listen ‘Ambling Alp’, and the rest of the album, seem instantly familiar.
‘Madder Red’ in particular, with its chanted opening, off-kilter melody and colossal enormo-drums, is completely weird but totally immediate, with a minor key chorus that might as well be Duran Duran – it’s immaculate, dazzling pop.
Just trying to pay attention to each sound – with every verse and chorus different to the one before – is hard work. ‘Love Me Girl’ starts somewhere between commercial trance and the YYYs’ ‘Heads Will Roll’, but mutates into a pulsing, jerking electro gem so sleek and polished you can see your face it. Is it prog? Is it electro? Is it pop? Erm. It’s bloody odd, that’s what. And I’ll put money on it – Yeasayer have made one of the best records you’ll hear this year.
Secretly Canadian
Do not adjust your set. Two voices, twisted and treacly, ooze out of the speakers over bubbling synths and booming drums. What the hell? Check to see if the track is corrupted – everything seems okay. Well, what did you expect from a band like Yeasayer?
Weird and brooding opener ‘The Children’ gives you an inkling of where these Brooklyn experimentalistas want to take us with their second album, Odd Blood – a retrofuturist prog-pop journey which stands on the shoulders of their acclaimed debut LP All Hour Cymbals, travelling deeper into the realms of the uncategorisable and becoming an early contender for 2010’s album of the year in the process.
As part of a wave of U.S. bands defining a new pop aesthetic influenced by African rhythms, Eastern scales and other sounds that used to be lazily described as ‘world music’, Yeasayer have always stood out as the village elders of the scene, with their extravagant and meticulously crafted songs and live performances.
The first single from Odd Blood, ‘Ambling Alp’ (released last year) is a perfect example of the band’s refined ear for detail, with their trademark hollow, artificial drums and funky, clipped bass underpinning a whole palette of unidentifiable noises dropping in and out over Chris Keating’s acrobatic gospel-tinged vocals. It’s about the most certifiably bonkers a band can get within the four-minute pop song framework. Your brain latches on to the almost embarrassingly earnest, sing-along lyrics (“Stick up for yourself son/ Never mind what anybody else done”) while the music sneaks in round the back, and by the second or third listen ‘Ambling Alp’, and the rest of the album, seem instantly familiar.
‘Madder Red’ in particular, with its chanted opening, off-kilter melody and colossal enormo-drums, is completely weird but totally immediate, with a minor key chorus that might as well be Duran Duran – it’s immaculate, dazzling pop.
Just trying to pay attention to each sound – with every verse and chorus different to the one before – is hard work. ‘Love Me Girl’ starts somewhere between commercial trance and the YYYs’ ‘Heads Will Roll’, but mutates into a pulsing, jerking electro gem so sleek and polished you can see your face it. Is it prog? Is it electro? Is it pop? Erm. It’s bloody odd, that’s what. And I’ll put money on it – Yeasayer have made one of the best records you’ll hear this year.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Get a pen - it's tips for 2010
Right, I've gone and done it - as if you needed another list of hot! up and coming! fresh! new bands. Well sod that, here's a few that I like and that you might too.
Esben and the Witch
I saw Esben and the Witch supporting Josh T. Pearson at Cargo in December, and despite only catching the second half, I was genuinely captivated by this odd little Brighton trio.
Using guitars, laptops, DIY drum kits and various percussion instruments, Esben… (named after a creepy Scandinavian fairytale) create a dark, romantic atmosphere of nocturnal journeys, wild creatures and black magic, without resorting to obvious Kate Bushisms or twee lyrics. In their live set especially, they use electronics and heavy drums and bass to prove they’re not aiming for folky and delicate but dark and stormy – much more Snow Queen than Snow White. Fans of Bat for Lashes and Patrick Wolf will definitely be enamoured.
Their track ‘Eumenides’ is, according to an interview with the band, inspired by Aeschylus’ Oresteia via a Francis Bacon painting, with lyrics influenced by Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Yikes. If that sounds too pretentious for you, they also do a cover of Kylie’s ‘Confide in Me’ (see above). They mostly reminded me of Portishead, with their use of bass-heavy electronics and singer Rachel’s expressive and very English voice bearing a resemblance to Beth Gibbons’. Her note-perfect performance managed to completely hush the audience without any stage gimmicks – in fact, they’re still finding their feet on stage and struggling a bit with the amount of instruments and things going on around them. Given a bit more time and a brave producer (Geoff Barrow would be the obvious safe bet), I think they could be pretty special.
The band’s EP, 33, can be downloaded for free here
Warpaint
Warpaint is three girls (and, I think, a fourth changeable member) from Los Angeles playing smoky, strung-out post-rock topped with wispy, velvety harmonies. Imagine if the XX had misspent their youth on the beach smoking pot around campfires instead of setting alight skate park bins – add a splash of gothic psychedelia, and you’re there.
More importantly, Warpaint are exactly the kind of band I’d love to be in, although clearly they have a pretty strict America’s Next Top Model-approved application process. Never mind. They blatantly have ‘shroom-fuelled sleepovers watching The Wicker Man and running amok in the neighbourhood, hatching plans in their treetop clubhouse and sneering at boys.
Their exceptional debut EP Exquisite Corpse was released by Manimal Vinyl and now they’ve been snapped up by Rough Trade and are touring with Yeasayer and Akron/Family. Going by tracks like ‘Elephant’, with its twisted vocals, shuffling drums and bouncy post-punk bass, we can expect an excellent debut long-player in 2010. Check out the video, above – girls, guitars, wind machines, awesome. I also like how the camera keeps zooming in on their instruments – look! They can play! No, really! Ha. Lots more good tracks on their Myspace.
Gold Panda
Next up is producer and sound collager Gold Panda who, aside from being my ideal man in oh-so-many ways, produces dreamy splice-ups of charity shop records and video tapes over Four Tet-style percussion clicks and bleeps. Which is interesting, ‘cos he’ll be playing with Four Tet and James Holden at Fabric in a couple of weeks and – oh! I’m going to be there. Stalking him.
‘Quitters Raga’ (no apostrophes, apparently, but brilliant title nevertheless) is a choice cut, if you’ll excuse the MixMag terminology, with a muffled bass drum underpinning cut-up raga sitar and singing while the beats blurt in and out in a very Border Community-approved manner. However, he's also been making his name at the controls for Little Boots and Bloc Party remixes, ensuring him some real crossover potential.
Hilariously, Gold Panda has made it on to the BBC Sound Of 2010 list, which probably does him no favours and only serves to boggle the minds of 50-quid men hoping to update their record collections. A five-track CD-R, entitled Miyamae and released on electronic and dubstep label Various Production, will set you back the meagre sum of £5. Check out his other tracks on Myspace, too.
Ellie Goulding
I’m just going to say a little something about Ellie Goulding because she’s appeared on all the major tip lists and has clearly been lined up as the next in a seemingly endless line of washed, prepared and ready-to-serve electro starlets.
One thing to love about Ellie Goulding, regardless of how you or I might feel about this seemingly endless line of ready-to-serve electro starlets, is that she’s clearly on the Little Boots end of the spectrum – obviously gorgeous and young and blonde and all, but also a bit…rubbish? In the way that Little Boots, though pretty and zippy and zappy with her glittery eyes, sparkly pop and Matthew Williamson frock, is still very much a lass from Blackpool who’d out-rave you all night and then be sick on your shoes.
Ellie’s vid for the single ‘Under The Sheets’ (not allowed to embed it, but the vid above is from Jools Holland), a really quite decent pop song helped out by oh-so-now production (massive drums, catchy electro chorus), sees her wandering around the set slightly awkwardly wearing a very 2010 outfit of slouchy hoodie over spangly top. Sometimes one Ellie will have a little go at dancing, and then other Ellies sit in the corner strumming guitar and looking much less uncomfortable, and then there’s a fuckload of splashy crashy glitter coming out of the drums at the end. Joyous.
I give her my total support, but somehow fear that she’ll do a Little Boots over the next 12 months, with annoying Marina and the Diamonds taking Florence’s spot as the favoured starlet.
A moment to mention Marina too – now, I’m *sorry*, but: So awful! So horribly produced! She’s described as ‘quirky’ and ‘flamboyant’ and yet, according to the BBC Sound of 2010 poll, she gets her inspiration “by studying DVDs of Britney Spears,” and she also “covers Gwen Stefani on stage.” She’s not Kate Bush-kooky, she’s Katy-Perry-kooky – all hot and tight and cheerleader-y and ironic and backed by a major record label. That kind of kooky.
Other shit tips from the BBC poll include Owl City, with an absolute lolocaust of a track which at first only reminded me of Nizlopi until I realised it was Maroon 5 doing nursery rhymes as community service. Is he using autotune or is his voice that disgusting without any help from a machine? It’s the kind of song that makes my friend Sam wince like he’s pissing blood.
The Drums
The Drums however, I can kind of dig. In case you haven’t heard them yet (it won’t be long – they’re on the cover of NME), think Girls and Washed Out and that whole chilled, surfy, Californicated fuzz that’s been coming out of the US lately, but make it a tad more ‘accessible’ and ‘tastemaker-friendly’.
Check out this commendably simplistic video for commendably simplistic track ‘Let’s Go Surfing’. Sadly, some of their other songs strike me as Cure rip-offs and not really that good, but that’s the joy of our disposable digital culture, eh? You can ignore them. Oddly, the BBC website seems to think that there’s something “unconnected” about a song that sounds like Iggy Pop or Lou Reed covering a 60s girl group (which none of The Drums’ songs do anyway, shame), as though Mr Pop and Mr Reed would turn their noses up at that kind of music. Dumbasses. Who gets paid to write that shit? Have a look at The Drums' Myspace for more.
And a final tip, thankfully not on the BBC list:
Perfume Genius
Apparently Perfume Genius, otherwise known as Mike, lives with his mom in Seattle and paints furniture for a living. He’s been compared with Antony Hegarty, for reasons that will become clear when you listen to this, as well as Neil Young, but I think Daniel Johnston is a good reference point too.
He’s clearly recording at home, on his own, his high-pitched voice sounding even more fragile breaking through the lo-fi murk. He’s signed to Transparent, home of Washed Out, and apparently makes his own videos too. Almost certainly he’ll finish the year as the least known of this little selection but, to be quite honest, I think he – and we – will be absolutely fine with that. Listen to more of his stuff here.
Esben and the Witch
I saw Esben and the Witch supporting Josh T. Pearson at Cargo in December, and despite only catching the second half, I was genuinely captivated by this odd little Brighton trio.
Using guitars, laptops, DIY drum kits and various percussion instruments, Esben… (named after a creepy Scandinavian fairytale) create a dark, romantic atmosphere of nocturnal journeys, wild creatures and black magic, without resorting to obvious Kate Bushisms or twee lyrics. In their live set especially, they use electronics and heavy drums and bass to prove they’re not aiming for folky and delicate but dark and stormy – much more Snow Queen than Snow White. Fans of Bat for Lashes and Patrick Wolf will definitely be enamoured.
Their track ‘Eumenides’ is, according to an interview with the band, inspired by Aeschylus’ Oresteia via a Francis Bacon painting, with lyrics influenced by Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Yikes. If that sounds too pretentious for you, they also do a cover of Kylie’s ‘Confide in Me’ (see above). They mostly reminded me of Portishead, with their use of bass-heavy electronics and singer Rachel’s expressive and very English voice bearing a resemblance to Beth Gibbons’. Her note-perfect performance managed to completely hush the audience without any stage gimmicks – in fact, they’re still finding their feet on stage and struggling a bit with the amount of instruments and things going on around them. Given a bit more time and a brave producer (Geoff Barrow would be the obvious safe bet), I think they could be pretty special.
The band’s EP, 33, can be downloaded for free here
Warpaint
Warpaint is three girls (and, I think, a fourth changeable member) from Los Angeles playing smoky, strung-out post-rock topped with wispy, velvety harmonies. Imagine if the XX had misspent their youth on the beach smoking pot around campfires instead of setting alight skate park bins – add a splash of gothic psychedelia, and you’re there.
More importantly, Warpaint are exactly the kind of band I’d love to be in, although clearly they have a pretty strict America’s Next Top Model-approved application process. Never mind. They blatantly have ‘shroom-fuelled sleepovers watching The Wicker Man and running amok in the neighbourhood, hatching plans in their treetop clubhouse and sneering at boys.
Their exceptional debut EP Exquisite Corpse was released by Manimal Vinyl and now they’ve been snapped up by Rough Trade and are touring with Yeasayer and Akron/Family. Going by tracks like ‘Elephant’, with its twisted vocals, shuffling drums and bouncy post-punk bass, we can expect an excellent debut long-player in 2010. Check out the video, above – girls, guitars, wind machines, awesome. I also like how the camera keeps zooming in on their instruments – look! They can play! No, really! Ha. Lots more good tracks on their Myspace.
Gold Panda
Next up is producer and sound collager Gold Panda who, aside from being my ideal man in oh-so-many ways, produces dreamy splice-ups of charity shop records and video tapes over Four Tet-style percussion clicks and bleeps. Which is interesting, ‘cos he’ll be playing with Four Tet and James Holden at Fabric in a couple of weeks and – oh! I’m going to be there. Stalking him.
‘Quitters Raga’ (no apostrophes, apparently, but brilliant title nevertheless) is a choice cut, if you’ll excuse the MixMag terminology, with a muffled bass drum underpinning cut-up raga sitar and singing while the beats blurt in and out in a very Border Community-approved manner. However, he's also been making his name at the controls for Little Boots and Bloc Party remixes, ensuring him some real crossover potential.
Hilariously, Gold Panda has made it on to the BBC Sound Of 2010 list, which probably does him no favours and only serves to boggle the minds of 50-quid men hoping to update their record collections. A five-track CD-R, entitled Miyamae and released on electronic and dubstep label Various Production, will set you back the meagre sum of £5. Check out his other tracks on Myspace, too.
Ellie Goulding
I’m just going to say a little something about Ellie Goulding because she’s appeared on all the major tip lists and has clearly been lined up as the next in a seemingly endless line of washed, prepared and ready-to-serve electro starlets.
One thing to love about Ellie Goulding, regardless of how you or I might feel about this seemingly endless line of ready-to-serve electro starlets, is that she’s clearly on the Little Boots end of the spectrum – obviously gorgeous and young and blonde and all, but also a bit…rubbish? In the way that Little Boots, though pretty and zippy and zappy with her glittery eyes, sparkly pop and Matthew Williamson frock, is still very much a lass from Blackpool who’d out-rave you all night and then be sick on your shoes.
Ellie’s vid for the single ‘Under The Sheets’ (not allowed to embed it, but the vid above is from Jools Holland), a really quite decent pop song helped out by oh-so-now production (massive drums, catchy electro chorus), sees her wandering around the set slightly awkwardly wearing a very 2010 outfit of slouchy hoodie over spangly top. Sometimes one Ellie will have a little go at dancing, and then other Ellies sit in the corner strumming guitar and looking much less uncomfortable, and then there’s a fuckload of splashy crashy glitter coming out of the drums at the end. Joyous.
I give her my total support, but somehow fear that she’ll do a Little Boots over the next 12 months, with annoying Marina and the Diamonds taking Florence’s spot as the favoured starlet.
A moment to mention Marina too – now, I’m *sorry*, but: So awful! So horribly produced! She’s described as ‘quirky’ and ‘flamboyant’ and yet, according to the BBC Sound of 2010 poll, she gets her inspiration “by studying DVDs of Britney Spears,” and she also “covers Gwen Stefani on stage.” She’s not Kate Bush-kooky, she’s Katy-Perry-kooky – all hot and tight and cheerleader-y and ironic and backed by a major record label. That kind of kooky.
Other shit tips from the BBC poll include Owl City, with an absolute lolocaust of a track which at first only reminded me of Nizlopi until I realised it was Maroon 5 doing nursery rhymes as community service. Is he using autotune or is his voice that disgusting without any help from a machine? It’s the kind of song that makes my friend Sam wince like he’s pissing blood.
The Drums
The Drums however, I can kind of dig. In case you haven’t heard them yet (it won’t be long – they’re on the cover of NME), think Girls and Washed Out and that whole chilled, surfy, Californicated fuzz that’s been coming out of the US lately, but make it a tad more ‘accessible’ and ‘tastemaker-friendly’.
Check out this commendably simplistic video for commendably simplistic track ‘Let’s Go Surfing’. Sadly, some of their other songs strike me as Cure rip-offs and not really that good, but that’s the joy of our disposable digital culture, eh? You can ignore them. Oddly, the BBC website seems to think that there’s something “unconnected” about a song that sounds like Iggy Pop or Lou Reed covering a 60s girl group (which none of The Drums’ songs do anyway, shame), as though Mr Pop and Mr Reed would turn their noses up at that kind of music. Dumbasses. Who gets paid to write that shit? Have a look at The Drums' Myspace for more.
And a final tip, thankfully not on the BBC list:
Perfume Genius
Apparently Perfume Genius, otherwise known as Mike, lives with his mom in Seattle and paints furniture for a living. He’s been compared with Antony Hegarty, for reasons that will become clear when you listen to this, as well as Neil Young, but I think Daniel Johnston is a good reference point too.
He’s clearly recording at home, on his own, his high-pitched voice sounding even more fragile breaking through the lo-fi murk. He’s signed to Transparent, home of Washed Out, and apparently makes his own videos too. Almost certainly he’ll finish the year as the least known of this little selection but, to be quite honest, I think he – and we – will be absolutely fine with that. Listen to more of his stuff here.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Food + Vladislav Delay, Union Chapel, 12th November 2009
Food + Vladislav Delay, Union Chapel, 12th November 2009
Union Chapel is one of a handful of London’s holy buildings to have reinvented itself as a live music destination in recent years, with performances spanning jazz, electronica, avant-garde and experimental artists, acoustic shows and all kinds of music that requires people to shut up, stop fidgeting and LISTEN.
Tonight the chapel hosts Vladislav Delay, one of the many working names of Finnish electronic artist Sasu Ripatti, whose latest album Tummaa is out on The Leaf Label. Commonly described as a ‘clicks and cuts’ artist, Vladislav Delay is a more fluid, atmospheric exploration of that tag, where timbre and rhythm take precedence over melody and harmony.
Ripatti is accompanied by jazz musician Lucio Capece, who explores the unexpected sounds of soprano sax as well a couple of bespoke instruments. Avoiding jazzy phrases, Capece keeps his input minimal but engaging, making breathy percussive sounds using a drum mallet and violin bow which are then processed and warped by Ripatti, using drum pads and lashings of delay to create conflicting feelings of intimacy and distance.
Where Vladislav Delay is primarily an electronic music project, headliners Food take a more transparent, organic approach to their improvised tracks, combining astonishingly inventive percussion (largely played one-handed as drummer Thomas Strønen uses his free hand to add loops, layers and effects) with minimalist melodic lines from saxophonist Iain Bellamy, mutating with repetition and recalling experimental composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley as much as free jazz.
Electronic music and jazz have obviously always been musical boundary-pushers, so it makes sense that the two should become acquainted through experimental artists like Vladislav Delay and Food. The relationship seems to be mutually beneficial too, with electronic music opening new horizons for jazz – which even in its freest, freakiest forms is still getting on a bit as a musical style – while jazz pushes electronic music away from dehumanised programmed rhythms and into more abstract and improvised territory, using real instruments played by real people.
Tonight’s show is like a sneak preview of future sounds, leaving us still and silent while our inner ears chatter with unthought thoughts and new beginnings.
Union Chapel is one of a handful of London’s holy buildings to have reinvented itself as a live music destination in recent years, with performances spanning jazz, electronica, avant-garde and experimental artists, acoustic shows and all kinds of music that requires people to shut up, stop fidgeting and LISTEN.
Tonight the chapel hosts Vladislav Delay, one of the many working names of Finnish electronic artist Sasu Ripatti, whose latest album Tummaa is out on The Leaf Label. Commonly described as a ‘clicks and cuts’ artist, Vladislav Delay is a more fluid, atmospheric exploration of that tag, where timbre and rhythm take precedence over melody and harmony.
Ripatti is accompanied by jazz musician Lucio Capece, who explores the unexpected sounds of soprano sax as well a couple of bespoke instruments. Avoiding jazzy phrases, Capece keeps his input minimal but engaging, making breathy percussive sounds using a drum mallet and violin bow which are then processed and warped by Ripatti, using drum pads and lashings of delay to create conflicting feelings of intimacy and distance.
Where Vladislav Delay is primarily an electronic music project, headliners Food take a more transparent, organic approach to their improvised tracks, combining astonishingly inventive percussion (largely played one-handed as drummer Thomas Strønen uses his free hand to add loops, layers and effects) with minimalist melodic lines from saxophonist Iain Bellamy, mutating with repetition and recalling experimental composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley as much as free jazz.
Electronic music and jazz have obviously always been musical boundary-pushers, so it makes sense that the two should become acquainted through experimental artists like Vladislav Delay and Food. The relationship seems to be mutually beneficial too, with electronic music opening new horizons for jazz – which even in its freest, freakiest forms is still getting on a bit as a musical style – while jazz pushes electronic music away from dehumanised programmed rhythms and into more abstract and improvised territory, using real instruments played by real people.
Tonight’s show is like a sneak preview of future sounds, leaving us still and silent while our inner ears chatter with unthought thoughts and new beginnings.
Karen O And The Kids, Where The Wild Things Are OST
Karen O And The Kids
Where The Wild Things Are Motion Picture Soundtrack
DGC Records
If your ex-girlfriend was the inimitable Karen Orzolek – besequined screechbag and noted friend to children (see also, Tiny Masters of Today, her pre-teen punk protégés) – you’d know who to call when it came to soundtracking your blockbuster kiddie monster movie. With some inevitability, director Spike Jonze turned to Karen O and The Kids to add music to his forthcoming film Where The Wild Things Are, an adaptation of the classic US children’s book.
The kids in question turn out not be the spaghetti hoops and Sesame Street kind (probably for the best) but a selection of Karen O’s musical compadres, most of whom are well-known enough to have been credited more explicitly: her YYYs bandmates Nick Zinner and Brian Chase; long-limbed Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox; Dean Fertita of QOTSA and The Dead Weather; his bandmate Jack Lawrence, also of The Raconteurs; and multi-instrumentalist songwriter Imaad Wasif.
Often recalling Show Your Bones-era YYYs, the troupe of kidults contribute organ, marimba, bells and acoustic fingerpicking on gentle campfire songs and the occasional moment of Arcade Fire-style marching joyousness. A few bursts of kiddy chorus and a tinge of Americana almost tip proceedings into ‘wholesome’ territory, but the musicians’ punk credentials and Karen O’s yelped nursery rhyme lyrics serve as a balancing oddball factor.
The heartbreaking cover of Daniel Johnston’s ‘Worried Shoes’ is easily the standout track and should be bought by anyone with an interest in keeping their heart beating. Karen O’s voice – cracked and vulnerable, sweet but steadfast with that strong twang on her R’s – captures perfectly the childlike nature of both the film and Johnston’s songwriting.
Across the 14 tracks there are only a handful of proper songs, with some tracks barely making it past the minute mark and often reprising previous sounds and ideas – a typical soundtrack approach, but as an album it could do with turning those snippets into coherent songs like the tubthumping single ‘All Is Love’ or the wistful ‘Hide Away’. Still, like the film itself, the record has the difficult task of trying to appeal to everyone who loves the book, from adults to teenagers to toddlers. For that reason alone, Karen O and The Kids did good, making a record that goes beyond the call of duty and stands as a pretty ace album all by itself. A must-buy for fans of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Daniel Johnston, wistful indie-rock and huge shaggy monsters.
Where The Wild Things Are Motion Picture Soundtrack
DGC Records
If your ex-girlfriend was the inimitable Karen Orzolek – besequined screechbag and noted friend to children (see also, Tiny Masters of Today, her pre-teen punk protégés) – you’d know who to call when it came to soundtracking your blockbuster kiddie monster movie. With some inevitability, director Spike Jonze turned to Karen O and The Kids to add music to his forthcoming film Where The Wild Things Are, an adaptation of the classic US children’s book.
The kids in question turn out not be the spaghetti hoops and Sesame Street kind (probably for the best) but a selection of Karen O’s musical compadres, most of whom are well-known enough to have been credited more explicitly: her YYYs bandmates Nick Zinner and Brian Chase; long-limbed Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox; Dean Fertita of QOTSA and The Dead Weather; his bandmate Jack Lawrence, also of The Raconteurs; and multi-instrumentalist songwriter Imaad Wasif.
Often recalling Show Your Bones-era YYYs, the troupe of kidults contribute organ, marimba, bells and acoustic fingerpicking on gentle campfire songs and the occasional moment of Arcade Fire-style marching joyousness. A few bursts of kiddy chorus and a tinge of Americana almost tip proceedings into ‘wholesome’ territory, but the musicians’ punk credentials and Karen O’s yelped nursery rhyme lyrics serve as a balancing oddball factor.
The heartbreaking cover of Daniel Johnston’s ‘Worried Shoes’ is easily the standout track and should be bought by anyone with an interest in keeping their heart beating. Karen O’s voice – cracked and vulnerable, sweet but steadfast with that strong twang on her R’s – captures perfectly the childlike nature of both the film and Johnston’s songwriting.
Across the 14 tracks there are only a handful of proper songs, with some tracks barely making it past the minute mark and often reprising previous sounds and ideas – a typical soundtrack approach, but as an album it could do with turning those snippets into coherent songs like the tubthumping single ‘All Is Love’ or the wistful ‘Hide Away’. Still, like the film itself, the record has the difficult task of trying to appeal to everyone who loves the book, from adults to teenagers to toddlers. For that reason alone, Karen O and The Kids did good, making a record that goes beyond the call of duty and stands as a pretty ace album all by itself. A must-buy for fans of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Daniel Johnston, wistful indie-rock and huge shaggy monsters.
Monday, 13 April 2009
Dirty Projectors + Polar Bear + Lucky Dragons, Scala, 2nd April 2009
Dirty Projectors + Polar Bear + Lucky Dragons
Scala, 2nd April 2009
A pile of junk is neatly laid out in the middle of the room, a spotlight shining down on it. Looking closely it still doesn’t make sense, like being drunk or taking off your glasses; the objects look half-familiar but your brain finds it impossible to alight upon their meaning or purpose.
Kids with beards, chunky cardigans, specs, plimsolls, checkshirts - all the necessary accoutrements of London scenesters - sit in a Brownie Guide circle, cross-legged and curious-bashful. Lucky Dragons appears – a youngish wiry guy – kneels in his exposed electronic playpen, and starts up.
The first five minutes he’s laying out his wares, seeing where he can go, dipping our ears in the possibilities. A laptop and a box of buttons and faders are discernible – they conduct throbbings, hummings & tweetings, skittering and shaking sounds melting together and crumbling apart. The second five minutes and this melodica-panpipe-stick emerges, through which he conjures some free riffing. Hmm.
It’s getting worringly ‘ambient’-slash-Sounds of the Amazon Vol. I, and I’m just about to turn to my compadre and call it bollocks when:
Mr Dragons starts shaking what we’ll call a ‘shakeysticknoisemaker’, dancing around with it, cobra-necking. He hands the shakeystick to someone nearby, picks up another and starts handing out a whole bundle of them, more and more, until the inner ring of spectators has become an instrument in itself, shakeysticks cracking and coming together spontaneously in-and-out of rhythm.
Cynicism dies.
The music goes on. Mr Dragons gives the people freedom without direction, and they respect the project. It’s too right-on for words.
Next, the shakeysticks are gathered in and what we’ll call toyrocknoisemakers are given out. This time there are dozens of them, it seems, and they work like magnets over a central box of conduction/magic, a bit like an E bow for a guitar but totally unfathomable to my brain. Later there’s the snakecordnoisemaker which comes alive when people grab its ‘tails’ and then lock hands, connecting circuits and chiming chords and sweet dischords, reaching across the circle in search of new sounds. It’s somewhere between a physics class and an autism therapy workshop – people are re-learning sounds, lights, shapes, each other.
It’s not music, man, it’s a sound-connection. It’s for hippies, dead simple, and maybe we all want to be.
Polar Bear, for the uninitiated, are a typically couldn’t-make-it-up Upset The Rhythm band – two sax, one drums, one double bass, one guitar/laptop/balloon/Xbox controller (it certainly looked like one), and one afro.
Exploring an invigorating seam of jazz/noise, they freefall into free jazz, almost abandoning harmony and melody at points, and scare you up with rubber pink balloon vs sax face-offs before shaking you up with madcap time signature wacky races, finally falling back into a groovy pulse - yes, groovy, which in their hands becomes a satisfying reprieve of Yow! funkiness after a section of skronking brainmelt.
Overall, it’s like having a pipe cleaner go in one ear and out the other. That, is a messy headfuck with squeaky clean aftertaste. Fresh.
I had forgotten quite how charming Dirty Projectors are. How can anyone in their right mind not fall for them as they knock out these gift-wrapped slices of crispy genius, barely breaking a sweat?
Dave Longstreth’s fingers glide over the strings, his left and right hands each apparently using their own brain, at a speed so fast it makes rhythm more like spasm, only accentuated by his Mother Goose neck-jerk moves. But it’s all perfect, incredibly perfect.
And the girls! Nothing is quite like a DP harmony performed live. How they get that kind of purity of tone, note & timbre live I just can’t understand.
Dirty Projectors have such an unadulterated streak of originality that you can never forget you’re watching a former Yale composition student and (possibly certified) genius here, even when he forgets how to play ‘Rise Above’. Only for a minute though.
Scala, 2nd April 2009
A pile of junk is neatly laid out in the middle of the room, a spotlight shining down on it. Looking closely it still doesn’t make sense, like being drunk or taking off your glasses; the objects look half-familiar but your brain finds it impossible to alight upon their meaning or purpose.
Kids with beards, chunky cardigans, specs, plimsolls, checkshirts - all the necessary accoutrements of London scenesters - sit in a Brownie Guide circle, cross-legged and curious-bashful. Lucky Dragons appears – a youngish wiry guy – kneels in his exposed electronic playpen, and starts up.
The first five minutes he’s laying out his wares, seeing where he can go, dipping our ears in the possibilities. A laptop and a box of buttons and faders are discernible – they conduct throbbings, hummings & tweetings, skittering and shaking sounds melting together and crumbling apart. The second five minutes and this melodica-panpipe-stick emerges, through which he conjures some free riffing. Hmm.
It’s getting worringly ‘ambient’-slash-Sounds of the Amazon Vol. I, and I’m just about to turn to my compadre and call it bollocks when:
Mr Dragons starts shaking what we’ll call a ‘shakeysticknoisemaker’, dancing around with it, cobra-necking. He hands the shakeystick to someone nearby, picks up another and starts handing out a whole bundle of them, more and more, until the inner ring of spectators has become an instrument in itself, shakeysticks cracking and coming together spontaneously in-and-out of rhythm.
Cynicism dies.
The music goes on. Mr Dragons gives the people freedom without direction, and they respect the project. It’s too right-on for words.
Next, the shakeysticks are gathered in and what we’ll call toyrocknoisemakers are given out. This time there are dozens of them, it seems, and they work like magnets over a central box of conduction/magic, a bit like an E bow for a guitar but totally unfathomable to my brain. Later there’s the snakecordnoisemaker which comes alive when people grab its ‘tails’ and then lock hands, connecting circuits and chiming chords and sweet dischords, reaching across the circle in search of new sounds. It’s somewhere between a physics class and an autism therapy workshop – people are re-learning sounds, lights, shapes, each other.
It’s not music, man, it’s a sound-connection. It’s for hippies, dead simple, and maybe we all want to be.
Polar Bear, for the uninitiated, are a typically couldn’t-make-it-up Upset The Rhythm band – two sax, one drums, one double bass, one guitar/laptop/balloon/Xbox controller (it certainly looked like one), and one afro.
Exploring an invigorating seam of jazz/noise, they freefall into free jazz, almost abandoning harmony and melody at points, and scare you up with rubber pink balloon vs sax face-offs before shaking you up with madcap time signature wacky races, finally falling back into a groovy pulse - yes, groovy, which in their hands becomes a satisfying reprieve of Yow! funkiness after a section of skronking brainmelt.
Overall, it’s like having a pipe cleaner go in one ear and out the other. That, is a messy headfuck with squeaky clean aftertaste. Fresh.
I had forgotten quite how charming Dirty Projectors are. How can anyone in their right mind not fall for them as they knock out these gift-wrapped slices of crispy genius, barely breaking a sweat?
Dave Longstreth’s fingers glide over the strings, his left and right hands each apparently using their own brain, at a speed so fast it makes rhythm more like spasm, only accentuated by his Mother Goose neck-jerk moves. But it’s all perfect, incredibly perfect.
And the girls! Nothing is quite like a DP harmony performed live. How they get that kind of purity of tone, note & timbre live I just can’t understand.
Dirty Projectors have such an unadulterated streak of originality that you can never forget you’re watching a former Yale composition student and (possibly certified) genius here, even when he forgets how to play ‘Rise Above’. Only for a minute though.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
The Horrors, 'Primary Colours'
The Horrors, Primary Colours
XL, Out May 5th 2009
So the Resurrection Men return, this time stitching their musical Frankenstein from fragments of the mid-70s onwards – Kraut, post-punk, acid – and leaving behind the psych, freakbeat and garage rock drawn on so heavily for the Horrors’ debut Strange House.
Opener ‘Mirror’s Image’ sets out the new sound immediately: Krautish start, segueing into a tight bassline before even tighter drums throw you into a swirling epic featuring the most blatant My Bloody Valentine-‘inspired’ guitars you’ve ever heard (they even pan right to left, making your brain the calm centre of the maelstrom when listening through headphones), followed with a simplistic post-punk riff and a pulsating atmosphere of foreboding just like all your favourite moody bands of the ’78-’91 period.
I’m gonna pre-empt what you’re thinking with a little aside, here.
This kind of volte-face, if you will, can make it easy to dismiss a band. If you do garage rock, you gotta stick to it, right? Billy Childish would never ‘go all artsy’. Such a dramatic evolution can come across as insincere. Garage rock revivalists are unashamedly nostalgic, with an almost reverential treatment of the ‘real stuff’, the Golden Oldies and the obscure nuggets on 45s. To hear that the Horrors have moved on from the garage rock sound seems to show an ambivalence towards the Real Stuff - even a heretic attempt to better it.
In turn, this makes their new(er) influences seem almost arbitrary, like bored teens shopping for influences on a whim, scanning the racks for another sound to rip off now they’re bored with three chord frenzies. This behaviour is totally against the rules of garage rock, because three chords are all you will ever need in life if you believe in the Real Stuff.
On the other hand, you could (and I would) argue that the Horrors are merely following a thread of British rock created from what Bill Bailey calls a “wistful melancholy” brought on by 52% of our days being overcast. Added to that is the Britrock habit of ploughing the past to put it back together in new ways, as well as the more clichéd ‘eccentricity’ that British bands love to live up to. Strange House emerged from exactly this pool of rock (rockpool?), combining various elements of British R&B and freakbeat, the proto punk of the Sonics and the trash goth aesthetic of Nick Cave (to name but a few). In this light, the leap to Primary Colours looks much smaller.
The Spider and the Flies side-project had already pointed towards the new Horrors sound with their Something Clockwork This Way Comes EP, a record which sees Tom and Rhys playing jigsaw with Cluster/Harmonia knob-twiddling, half the Mute Records roster and miscellany from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. As the pair responsible for bass and keys, it’s only logical to discover that the authentic 60s organ has been pushed out in favour of magic analogue boxes and pulsing bass guitar has come to the fore.
So, that’s the New Sound explained for you.
Visually, this produces some problems. Will the capes and cravats go in to storage? It used to be that changing your look with each album only added to your star quality, being part of an overall artistic ‘journey’ or ‘vision’ or somesuch - Bowie being the classic example. But now, to see a band like the Horrors choosing to follow a different route, aurally and sartorially, just feels silly. Our postmodern sensibilities just laugh at their ‘popstar’ pretence. Check them out on the cover of NME – they look odd. Pastier? Ah, no eyeliner. Live at Rich Mix a couple of weeks ago they were still clad head-to-toe in black, but there was no sign of polka-dotted waistcoats or crushed velvet, just simple, serious, beatnik uniform. But what else can they do? Dig themselves deeper into their unfair ‘cartoon band’ reputation? Or just throw on a leather jacket and get on with it?
Let’s get back to the record itself.
You certainly can’t fault the raw ingredients. As a band they are so reliably tasteful that ‘Joy Division’ actually means something as an influence in the way it doesn’t for, say, White Lies. Their flair for their instruments (not so much skill and talent as an intuitive curiosity and inventiveness that comes from not being virtuosos) is pretty phenomenal for young band on their second album. The guitar work is identifiably the work of a physics graduate, while the clever layering of parts is subtly Spector-influenced, notably in the middle eight of new single ‘Who Can Say’ where the Wall Of Sound is gently alluded to with a spot of tambourine and kick drum before Faris’s sleepy, ironical voice intones, “And when I told her I didn’t love her anymore/ She cried […] And then I kissed her/ With a kiss that could only mean goodbye,” a nod to the teen heartbreak melodrama pop of the Shangri-Las and the Crystals. Impeccable.
On ‘I Only Think of You’ that drum-tambourine part resurfaces, but with added layers of dronescape and an uber baritone that combine to put me in mind of the current London skyscape with its endless network of cranes elegantly arching into the haze. Have you ever noticed how many cranes there are now in London? I advise you to have a look next time you’re roundat someone's tower block flat. It’s terrifying, and this song is its soundtrack.
The album’s simpler, starker aesthetic is continued in Faris’s lyrics, which work largely within the rhythms now, abandoning the wild garage rock shrieks and screams. In fact, they’ve abandoned altogether that trash aesthetic that's embedded in garage rock. The Horrors were never comfortable with the rockabilly beer-swilling hoedown stuff in the first place, and it does them good to shake it off.
Finally, there’s ‘Sea Within A Sea’, the seven-minute album outro used as a taster for Primary Colours on the band’s website. Don’t misunderstand the length - there are no freewheeling freak-outs here. Sounds are programmed, locked-in. And menacing too, until halfway through where it shifts up a gear and sounds, as they said in a recent interview, like going to the top of a hill on a summer’s day, “taking a load of really good E and then running down the hill really fast…”
With Strange House, there were complaints that the Horrors on record didn’t sound ‘free’ enough, didn’t capture the energy of roughneck garage rock or the velocity of their live show. They’ve now sidestepped that problem by writing songs with less freedom. By treating the Real Stuff with the ambivalence it deserves, and dispassionately abandoning the bits that didn’t work while seizing upon new ideas and new sounds, they’ve tightened up and pared down to create an album that genuinely grows on you, revealing more with each listen - and it's catchy as fuck to boot.
I mean, what else could they do?
XL, Out May 5th 2009
So the Resurrection Men return, this time stitching their musical Frankenstein from fragments of the mid-70s onwards – Kraut, post-punk, acid – and leaving behind the psych, freakbeat and garage rock drawn on so heavily for the Horrors’ debut Strange House.
Opener ‘Mirror’s Image’ sets out the new sound immediately: Krautish start, segueing into a tight bassline before even tighter drums throw you into a swirling epic featuring the most blatant My Bloody Valentine-‘inspired’ guitars you’ve ever heard (they even pan right to left, making your brain the calm centre of the maelstrom when listening through headphones), followed with a simplistic post-punk riff and a pulsating atmosphere of foreboding just like all your favourite moody bands of the ’78-’91 period.
I’m gonna pre-empt what you’re thinking with a little aside, here.
This kind of volte-face, if you will, can make it easy to dismiss a band. If you do garage rock, you gotta stick to it, right? Billy Childish would never ‘go all artsy’. Such a dramatic evolution can come across as insincere. Garage rock revivalists are unashamedly nostalgic, with an almost reverential treatment of the ‘real stuff’, the Golden Oldies and the obscure nuggets on 45s. To hear that the Horrors have moved on from the garage rock sound seems to show an ambivalence towards the Real Stuff - even a heretic attempt to better it.
In turn, this makes their new(er) influences seem almost arbitrary, like bored teens shopping for influences on a whim, scanning the racks for another sound to rip off now they’re bored with three chord frenzies. This behaviour is totally against the rules of garage rock, because three chords are all you will ever need in life if you believe in the Real Stuff.
On the other hand, you could (and I would) argue that the Horrors are merely following a thread of British rock created from what Bill Bailey calls a “wistful melancholy” brought on by 52% of our days being overcast. Added to that is the Britrock habit of ploughing the past to put it back together in new ways, as well as the more clichéd ‘eccentricity’ that British bands love to live up to. Strange House emerged from exactly this pool of rock (rockpool?), combining various elements of British R&B and freakbeat, the proto punk of the Sonics and the trash goth aesthetic of Nick Cave (to name but a few). In this light, the leap to Primary Colours looks much smaller.
The Spider and the Flies side-project had already pointed towards the new Horrors sound with their Something Clockwork This Way Comes EP, a record which sees Tom and Rhys playing jigsaw with Cluster/Harmonia knob-twiddling, half the Mute Records roster and miscellany from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. As the pair responsible for bass and keys, it’s only logical to discover that the authentic 60s organ has been pushed out in favour of magic analogue boxes and pulsing bass guitar has come to the fore.
So, that’s the New Sound explained for you.
Visually, this produces some problems. Will the capes and cravats go in to storage? It used to be that changing your look with each album only added to your star quality, being part of an overall artistic ‘journey’ or ‘vision’ or somesuch - Bowie being the classic example. But now, to see a band like the Horrors choosing to follow a different route, aurally and sartorially, just feels silly. Our postmodern sensibilities just laugh at their ‘popstar’ pretence. Check them out on the cover of NME – they look odd. Pastier? Ah, no eyeliner. Live at Rich Mix a couple of weeks ago they were still clad head-to-toe in black, but there was no sign of polka-dotted waistcoats or crushed velvet, just simple, serious, beatnik uniform. But what else can they do? Dig themselves deeper into their unfair ‘cartoon band’ reputation? Or just throw on a leather jacket and get on with it?
Let’s get back to the record itself.
You certainly can’t fault the raw ingredients. As a band they are so reliably tasteful that ‘Joy Division’ actually means something as an influence in the way it doesn’t for, say, White Lies. Their flair for their instruments (not so much skill and talent as an intuitive curiosity and inventiveness that comes from not being virtuosos) is pretty phenomenal for young band on their second album. The guitar work is identifiably the work of a physics graduate, while the clever layering of parts is subtly Spector-influenced, notably in the middle eight of new single ‘Who Can Say’ where the Wall Of Sound is gently alluded to with a spot of tambourine and kick drum before Faris’s sleepy, ironical voice intones, “And when I told her I didn’t love her anymore/ She cried […] And then I kissed her/ With a kiss that could only mean goodbye,” a nod to the teen heartbreak melodrama pop of the Shangri-Las and the Crystals. Impeccable.
On ‘I Only Think of You’ that drum-tambourine part resurfaces, but with added layers of dronescape and an uber baritone that combine to put me in mind of the current London skyscape with its endless network of cranes elegantly arching into the haze. Have you ever noticed how many cranes there are now in London? I advise you to have a look next time you’re roundat someone's tower block flat. It’s terrifying, and this song is its soundtrack.
The album’s simpler, starker aesthetic is continued in Faris’s lyrics, which work largely within the rhythms now, abandoning the wild garage rock shrieks and screams. In fact, they’ve abandoned altogether that trash aesthetic that's embedded in garage rock. The Horrors were never comfortable with the rockabilly beer-swilling hoedown stuff in the first place, and it does them good to shake it off.
Finally, there’s ‘Sea Within A Sea’, the seven-minute album outro used as a taster for Primary Colours on the band’s website. Don’t misunderstand the length - there are no freewheeling freak-outs here. Sounds are programmed, locked-in. And menacing too, until halfway through where it shifts up a gear and sounds, as they said in a recent interview, like going to the top of a hill on a summer’s day, “taking a load of really good E and then running down the hill really fast…”
With Strange House, there were complaints that the Horrors on record didn’t sound ‘free’ enough, didn’t capture the energy of roughneck garage rock or the velocity of their live show. They’ve now sidestepped that problem by writing songs with less freedom. By treating the Real Stuff with the ambivalence it deserves, and dispassionately abandoning the bits that didn’t work while seizing upon new ideas and new sounds, they’ve tightened up and pared down to create an album that genuinely grows on you, revealing more with each listen - and it's catchy as fuck to boot.
I mean, what else could they do?
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Peter Doherty, Troxy, 28th March 2009
Peter Doherty @ Troxy, East London, 28th March 2009
Pt I
Redwhiteandblue lights like bunting and Union Jacks as towels.
Pete ‘Peter’ Doherty in three piece suit and hat and looking – older? Not quite. Confident though. Focused enough to tie a tie. Flanked by Graham Coxon, who sips Coke from a can and rips up a ‘Time For Heroes’ solo graceful and raw, giving the song the service it deserves and has never really had with Babyshambles.
Adam Ficek on drums, Drew McConnell on bass, “the hardest-drinking string section in the country” at the back. Stephen Street wearing a Native American chief’s headdress, Dot Allison on ‘Sheepskin Tearaway’, someone taking care of organ (nice) and melodica (wrong), Mik Whitnall for a split second, Wolfman and Lee Mavers of the La’s, who does a pre-encore of ‘There She Goes’ but seems otherwise surplus to requirements in this village fete-cum-variety show-cum Pete Doherty: This Is Your Life flypast.
Old stuff: Pete opens with ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’. There’s a middle acoustic section with ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’, ‘The Good Old Days’, ‘For Lovers’. He’s remembered how to play guitar. ‘Time For Heroes’ and ‘Fuck Forever’ are the final, bruising encore.
Some of the new songs work well with Stephen Street’s production/arrangements, like the village band Chas’n’Dave type numbers which are twee but done with enough conviction to be reasonably successful. But other new efforts feel weighed down, too decorated. When Street produced Morrissey, he created a solid support for an expansive, resonant voice. But Pete’s is fragile and mercurial, punctuated with shrieking, whispering and mumbling. His lyrics are just as vital as Morrissey’s, but it’s always been hard to hear Pete when he’s singing live and his voice (and words) are squeezed out now by melodica, strings and the heavy Babyshambles bass that used to be necessary to keep the whole thing on the rails and now just feels impolite. Even Coxon’s sexy guitar squall feels a mite unnecessary, though some of us get perverse pleasure out of what he does to his Tele.
Pt II
Sonic Youth said to Kill Your Idols but in the end your stomach still tightens for ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’ as you remember how Pete’s words cut through the sad small town life of yours years ago, offering a taste of love and meaning and shared or imaginary-shared moments with an English thorn in your side.
But now of course there are the Lads, the Shambles army, the polo-shirted, arms-round-shoulders terrace singalong Lads who love Pete – how? Why? (And is the new additional ‘r’ an attempt to shrug off the advances of the Lads and their beery man-love?) And more: there are their ironed-hair girlfriends and the forty-something-till-I-die brigade; and the selfish cunt inside you who wants Peter and his words all to yourself is angry and can’t believe all these people, these people who talk through songs and go back-forth to the bar, laughing in your ear, you can’t believe all these people could possibly feel all that you feel/t hearing “alarm bells ring when you say your heart still sings when you’re with me/ Oh please forgive me…”
But the Lads are here, and so we move on, and the idol is floated out on a pyre and you’re left with a new album of old songs, embellished like a creased old tart dripping in gold baubles picked up through the years, painted over but not so you can’t still see old beauty through the cracks. And it’s okay, because at home in a bottom drawer there’s a handful of scratched-up CD-Rs of those sessions where Pete + guitar + coughs + “Got me nuts?” = EQUALLED everything, once.
Pt I
Redwhiteandblue lights like bunting and Union Jacks as towels.
Pete ‘Peter’ Doherty in three piece suit and hat and looking – older? Not quite. Confident though. Focused enough to tie a tie. Flanked by Graham Coxon, who sips Coke from a can and rips up a ‘Time For Heroes’ solo graceful and raw, giving the song the service it deserves and has never really had with Babyshambles.
Adam Ficek on drums, Drew McConnell on bass, “the hardest-drinking string section in the country” at the back. Stephen Street wearing a Native American chief’s headdress, Dot Allison on ‘Sheepskin Tearaway’, someone taking care of organ (nice) and melodica (wrong), Mik Whitnall for a split second, Wolfman and Lee Mavers of the La’s, who does a pre-encore of ‘There She Goes’ but seems otherwise surplus to requirements in this village fete-cum-variety show-cum Pete Doherty: This Is Your Life flypast.
Old stuff: Pete opens with ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’. There’s a middle acoustic section with ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’, ‘The Good Old Days’, ‘For Lovers’. He’s remembered how to play guitar. ‘Time For Heroes’ and ‘Fuck Forever’ are the final, bruising encore.
Some of the new songs work well with Stephen Street’s production/arrangements, like the village band Chas’n’Dave type numbers which are twee but done with enough conviction to be reasonably successful. But other new efforts feel weighed down, too decorated. When Street produced Morrissey, he created a solid support for an expansive, resonant voice. But Pete’s is fragile and mercurial, punctuated with shrieking, whispering and mumbling. His lyrics are just as vital as Morrissey’s, but it’s always been hard to hear Pete when he’s singing live and his voice (and words) are squeezed out now by melodica, strings and the heavy Babyshambles bass that used to be necessary to keep the whole thing on the rails and now just feels impolite. Even Coxon’s sexy guitar squall feels a mite unnecessary, though some of us get perverse pleasure out of what he does to his Tele.
Pt II
Sonic Youth said to Kill Your Idols but in the end your stomach still tightens for ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’ as you remember how Pete’s words cut through the sad small town life of yours years ago, offering a taste of love and meaning and shared or imaginary-shared moments with an English thorn in your side.
But now of course there are the Lads, the Shambles army, the polo-shirted, arms-round-shoulders terrace singalong Lads who love Pete – how? Why? (And is the new additional ‘r’ an attempt to shrug off the advances of the Lads and their beery man-love?) And more: there are their ironed-hair girlfriends and the forty-something-till-I-die brigade; and the selfish cunt inside you who wants Peter and his words all to yourself is angry and can’t believe all these people, these people who talk through songs and go back-forth to the bar, laughing in your ear, you can’t believe all these people could possibly feel all that you feel/t hearing “alarm bells ring when you say your heart still sings when you’re with me/ Oh please forgive me…”
But the Lads are here, and so we move on, and the idol is floated out on a pyre and you’re left with a new album of old songs, embellished like a creased old tart dripping in gold baubles picked up through the years, painted over but not so you can’t still see old beauty through the cracks. And it’s okay, because at home in a bottom drawer there’s a handful of scratched-up CD-Rs of those sessions where Pete + guitar + coughs + “Got me nuts?” = EQUALLED everything, once.
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Titus Andronicus, The Airing of Grievances
[published Feb 2 2009]
Wipe down the wet patch Pitchfork left after their groin-thruster of a review and wrap your ears round The Airing of Grievances. It’s what they call a ‘blogosphere hit’.
Titus Andronicus are some guys from New Jersey who want you to know that they read lots of books and are, like, cultured. This here is their debut, and on first listen it’s a pain in the ass. Every song seems to be struggling under muddy overdubs and crappy distortions that they probably thought sounded like shoegaze. Kevin Shields would laugh these pups out the room. Actually, no, Kevin Shields would just make a noncommittal ‘mmph’ and get on with whatever he was doing before in Shieldsland.
‘Arms Against Atrophy’ has an admittedly fantastic fiddly guitar solo that could’ve come straight from the frets of Albert Hammond Jr., but really if you wanted that kind of stuff there are five separate full-length albums featuring the real thing available in a record shop near you. ‘My Time Outside the Womb’ also treads the fine line between referencing and karaoke, especially with singer Patrick Stickles’ mumble-shrieks and general Strokes-y rhythms.
And weirder: the psychology of Abraham Maslow mentioned in a song titled ‘Upon Viewing Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”’? It should be wrong, but...it kind of works followed up with ‘Titus Andronicus’, a neat slab of ‘White Riot’ riffing that ends right when it should at 3:13. The way Stickles crams in lyrics so they bulge awkwardly off each line is pretty charming too, especially when they go like this: “Life's been a long, sick game of ‘Would You Rather’/ So now I'm going to medical school, as a cadaver.”
By third listen the songs are really laying down roots and the next day I've got that beery chanting glued to my inner ear. TA have clearly done their required reading - but next semester they should consider wearing their influences, musical and literary, further inside their sleeves and let their words take the music somewhere new. And maybe watch some bad movies.
Wipe down the wet patch Pitchfork left after their groin-thruster of a review and wrap your ears round The Airing of Grievances. It’s what they call a ‘blogosphere hit’.
Titus Andronicus are some guys from New Jersey who want you to know that they read lots of books and are, like, cultured. This here is their debut, and on first listen it’s a pain in the ass. Every song seems to be struggling under muddy overdubs and crappy distortions that they probably thought sounded like shoegaze. Kevin Shields would laugh these pups out the room. Actually, no, Kevin Shields would just make a noncommittal ‘mmph’ and get on with whatever he was doing before in Shieldsland.
‘Arms Against Atrophy’ has an admittedly fantastic fiddly guitar solo that could’ve come straight from the frets of Albert Hammond Jr., but really if you wanted that kind of stuff there are five separate full-length albums featuring the real thing available in a record shop near you. ‘My Time Outside the Womb’ also treads the fine line between referencing and karaoke, especially with singer Patrick Stickles’ mumble-shrieks and general Strokes-y rhythms.
And weirder: the psychology of Abraham Maslow mentioned in a song titled ‘Upon Viewing Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”’? It should be wrong, but...it kind of works followed up with ‘Titus Andronicus’, a neat slab of ‘White Riot’ riffing that ends right when it should at 3:13. The way Stickles crams in lyrics so they bulge awkwardly off each line is pretty charming too, especially when they go like this: “Life's been a long, sick game of ‘Would You Rather’/ So now I'm going to medical school, as a cadaver.”
By third listen the songs are really laying down roots and the next day I've got that beery chanting glued to my inner ear. TA have clearly done their required reading - but next semester they should consider wearing their influences, musical and literary, further inside their sleeves and let their words take the music somewhere new. And maybe watch some bad movies.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Cildo Meireles, Tate Modern
Cildo Meireles
Tate Modern
‘Volatile’ is a mystery reserved for four people at a time. The final work in the Cildo Meireles retrospective at Tate Modern requires you to take off your shoes and socks and brave the step into darkness. What you find, when your eyes adjust, is Meireles’ work at its most dangerous and its most achingly beautiful.
In a nutshell, Meireles’ work pours cold water on our contemporary artistic fixations. His concept of Conceptual is not to re-present objects in a way that frames some clunky, inflexible academic idea, reducing it to a full stop at the end of a train of thought, but to open up our responses with something playful that nevertheless conceals a darker heart.
Dynamic narratives are created from everyday objects like Coke bottles, pennies, radios and rulers – personal objects we all own that are laden with symbolism. From these nuts and bolts he explores political corruption, time and space, the subversion of authority and the concept of infinity. ‘For me,’ Meireles has said, ‘the art object must be, despite everything else, instantly seductive.’
In ‘Mission/Missions (How To Build Cathedrals)’, a pool of copper pennies invites you to dip your hand and rake the shallows, evocative of blood drip-dripping from the mausoleum of bones above you. A string of communion wafers ascends towards some higher spirituality, ironically offering the body of Christ in a bid to eradicate the cannibalism of the indigenous people of
The viewer – or, more accurately, the participant – is required not just to think but to feel, to hear hundreds of radios whispering in your ear, or the sheer volume of a room where every object is red, or cold shivers down your neck as glass cracks beneath you. Some mysteries are best left unexplained.
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