Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Abstract Fury: Tim Berne's Paraphrase @ The Vortex, 27th March 2007

Tim Berne has been a leading creative force (and a fiercely independent one too) in the New York free jazz scene for over 20 years, but only familiar with the last Big Satan album (‘Souls Saved Hear’), I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this performance. Then again, that’s surely half the point of free improvisation anyway and if it becomes predictable, it risks losing its impact.

There seemed to have been a slight change of plan for this performance. The last of three shows at The Vortex, it had been billed as a battle between Berne’s two trios Big Satan and Paraphrase, but actually ended up as two sets from the same combination of both groups.

As tends to be the custom with free jazz gigs (proving that even the most spontaneous music can develop its own conventions), the two sets were both extended, continuous improvisations veering between furious powerhouse grooves and lengthy periods of quiet abstraction. To my ears, the band proved far more adept at the former rather than the latter, benefiting greatly from Marc Ducret’s extraordinarily visceral guitar squall (and dexterous soloing), and Tom Rainey’s masterful drumming. Rainey really is world class, dominating the first set with his polyrhythmic explorations and colouring the second with a rich variety of timbre, playing an intriguing solo with his hands.

Acoustic bassist Drew Gress had an impressive empathy with the rest of the group, and the ability to deploy intriguing effects (bowed playing, detuning the lowest string and tapping the body of his instrument). Similarly, Ducret had a good ear for sound, frequently generating unusual noises through the use of his lead as much as his strings.

At its best, this was an instinctive and intuitive performance, veering away from the purely theoretical in favour of toe-tapping but occasionally confounding rhythms. Kurt Vonnegut has described the free improvising group as the clearest expression of the equal collective in action, and there was plenty of evidence of that ideal on display here.

Less successful were the ventures into abstraction, where Berne himself occasionally proved the weak link, relying far too heavily on forced sounds from the upper register of his saxophone, a sonic extreme that no longer sounds particularly original or provocative. This was a particular problem towards the end of the second set, which definitely outstayed its welcome, and ended with a lengthy soporific period leading into two minutes of complete silence.

Elsewhere in the set, though, Berne demonstrated the more sensitive and thoughtful side of his improvising, deploying effective descending figures and even some surprisingly lyrical and melodic lines.

Throughout the show, Stephen Byram and Jonathan Rosen provided visual stimulus with their film-work, the worst of which struck me as banal, the most interesting of which inevitably detracted my attention from the music. Byram and Rosen describe themselves somewhat pretentiously as ‘practising synaesthesiologists’ and, whilst I’m entirely open to multi-media performances involving the marriage of sound and vision, I wasn’t particularly convinced by this particular example.

On balance though, this was a powerful and mostly engaging performance, and one that seems to have proved popular with London audiences. This was one of the more polite and receptive audiences I’ve encountered recently, and the venue was packed out. This unfortunately rendered the atmosphere extremely hot and somewhat claustrophobic – but I guess that’s a small price to pay for a challenging and fascinating evening of music.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Genius Of Warren Zevon

The three Rhino CD reissues of Warren Zevon albums released this week seem to have been in the pipeline for ages and ages. It also seems that Zevon reissues are like buses – you wait a couple of years for them, and then they all come together (in May, Artemis, the label for which Zevon recorded his last three albums are putting together a 2CD compilation of pre-1976 material for which they’ve somehow managed to secure the rights). Given that these reissues have taken so long to prepare, it’s a shame that they’re not more lavish – cheap jewel cases, and a mere four additional tracks (including relatively unnecessary alternate takes) on each CD. I suspect there must have been more material on the cutting room floor. Still, at £6.99 each, they’re certainly a snip, and more than worth the investment, especially given the entertaining and incisive inlay notes that come with all three. ‘Excitable Boy’ (actually Zevon’s third album, but commonly referred to as his second following his disownment of ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive’) will be familiar as Zevon’s biggest seller and home to his only sizeable hit in ‘Werewolves of London’. 1980’s live album ‘Stand In The Fire’ and 1982’s ‘The Envoy’ have long been considered holy grails among Zevon fans, so long have they been left criminally unavailable. Both now appear on CD for the first time.

It might be accepted wisdom, but ‘Excitable Boy’ probably remained Zevon’s creative high watermark. Although he recaptured some magic with ‘Sentimental Hygiene’, his 1987 collaboration with REM, and the late albums are excellent, this is as fine a collection of songs as he produced. Whilst some of the 80s material is understandably marred by unpleasant synthesisers and pounding drum sounds, Jackson Browne and Waddy Wachtel’s production here is sensitive, naturalistic and unobtrusive. The songs and their remarkable arrangements are allowed to breathe, the playing throughout is masterful, and the superb backing vocals from seasoned professional Jennifer Warnes and The Gentlemen Singers resound brilliantly.

The variety and sheer invention of Zevon’s vision is at its fullest expression on this album. Zevon recognised the poetic qualities of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon et al, but noted that America did not yet have the John Updike or Norman Mailer of songwriting. It is the literate quality of Zevon’s writing that stands out, a preoccupation he would continue through collaborations with his author friends Carl Hiaasen and Hunter S. Thompson. So, we get the title track, a marvellous satire on Attention Defecit Disorder before the term even existed; the majestic and bizarre ‘Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner’, a ghost story of Congo mercenaries co-written with David Lindell, himself an ex-mercenary and the utterly hilarious feckless criminal on the run story of ‘Lawyers Guns and Money’. The opener ‘Johnny Strikes Up The Band’ is one of many great songs Zevon wrote about the art of rock and roll itself, a surprisingly difficult subject for a songwriter to approach without sounding ham-fisted or self-referential.

At the heart of the album is the peculiar juxtaposition of ‘Werewolves of London’ (built around an insistent and repetitive descending chord sequence) and ‘Accidentally Like A Martyr’. The latter, with its seemingly nonsensical title, is one of the most extraordinary ballads in pop history, the technical mastery of its harmony and arrangement betraying Zevon’s classical training at the home of Igor Stravinsky. It is a song that dares to suggest that time in fact does not heal (‘the hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder’) and Bob Dylan took the line ‘Time Out Of Mind’ for the title of his deeply solipsistic and moving 1997 album. ‘Werewolves…’ effectively made Zevon a one-hit wonder, but it’s worth recognising what a funny and inventive song it is, as fine a portrait of a predatory ladiesman as has been written and full of great lines (‘I’d like to meet his tailor!’).

In fact, ‘Werewolves..’ won a BBC Radio 2 vote for greatest opening line in rock a couple of years ago (I’m sure Chinatown restaurant Lee Ho Fuk’s were equally grateful for the plug), but I wonder whether ‘Lawyers, Guns and Money’ (perhaps my favourite Zevon song) might actually surpass it. It’s a tragicomic confessional, told with ribald glee (‘I went home with a waitress, the way I always do/How was I to know that she was with the Russians too?’). Its central plea (‘send lawyers, guns and money/Dad, get me out of this’) never fails to raise a wry smile. That’s before we get to the playful ending, with its masterful breaks (dig the way Zevon grunts ‘huh!’) and superb guitar line.

Of the bonus tracks, the alternate take of ‘Werewolves…’ is interesting only to the most completist of fans, given that it buries the vocal too deeply in the mix and features some unnecessarily busy playing from the rhythm section that smothers the song. They definitely went with the right take in the end. There are two reversions of songs from ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive’ – the solo piano version of ‘Tule’s Blues’, an exceptionally moving break-up song, is powerful and effective, and Zevon’s own string arrangement for ‘Frozen Notes’ is subtle and desolate. The core of Zevon’s genius is contained succinctly within the mere 50 seconds of ‘I Need a Truck’, two verses of a reworked blues delivered accappela. The lyric is masterful, referencing Zevon’s hard-drinking and hell-raising ways (he nearly killed himself early in his career, falling off a stage when drunk) – ‘I need a truck to haul my guns to town/I need a truck to haul my bad thoughts around/I need a truck to haul my Percodan and gin/And I need a truck to haul all my trucks in’ – as deceptively simple and intelligent a verse as any songwriter has written.

The most well-known songs from ‘The Envoy’ are musically less subtle, and betray the mutual appreciation society building between Zevon and Bruce Springsteen (Springsteen is credited as co-writer for ‘Jeannie Needs A Shooter’, which featured on Zevon’s superbly titled 1980 album ‘Bad Luck Streak at Dancing School’). Interestingly, much of ‘The Envoy’ captured that big, behemoth ‘Born in the USA’ sound before Springsteen even got there. ‘Ain’t That Pretty At All’ and ‘Looking For The Next Best Thing’ are intelligent songs perhaps slightly undermined by their production values, whilst the pounding approach works much more successfully for the fascinating title track, perhaps the most startling example of Zevon’s ironic approach to world politics.

Zevon himself may well have appreciated the playful irony that the album is at its most effective when at its least bombastic. The closing ‘Never Too Late For Love’ boldly risks descending into cliché, but ends up more inspiring than sentimental (‘You say you’re tired/how I hate to hear you use that word’) and may well have provided the direct reference point for REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’. ‘The Hula Hula Boys’ is a delightfully mournful ballad, and ‘Jesus Mentioned’, stripped back to just guitar and voice, stands with Gillian Welch’s ‘Elvis Presley Blues’ as one of the best songs about Elvis’ death, his inspirational power and his unshakeable influence. ‘Let Nothing Come Between You’ tempers the synths with a quieter, less intrusive backbeat and some pleasant jangly guitar work.

It may be slightly uneven, but on balance ‘The Envoy’ is a powerful album that maintained Zevon’s wit, wisdom and songwriting invention. The bonus tracks included here are rather less illuminating. ‘Word of Mouth’ is an instrumental and pleasant enough, the cover of ‘Wild Thing’ is ragged and rough, and the alternate take of ‘Let Nothing Come Between You’ is superfluous. The one substantial song is ‘The Risk’, which most clearly demonstrates the influence of Springsteen on Zevon’s work at this time.

The real revelation of this series is ‘Stand In The Fire’, the 1980 live album that captured Zevon over five nights at the Roxy in LA. It’s remarkable for documenting Zevon as a vivid and incendiary entertainer, making playful alterations to his lyrics and delivering most of the vocals in a gutsy and gritty style. Even Zevon’s great friend Jackson Browne apparently expressed surprise at Zevon’s conjecture that ‘if you’re not entertaining, you’re not doing anything’. Browne had always considered Zevon to be too intelligent and too original for mere entertainment. With these shows, Zevon proved that the cerebral and the visceral need not be mutually exclusive. Here, they are entirely complementary.

For his backing band for these shows, Zevon hired a solid rock group that amusingly specialised in Warren Zevon covers. The result is blisteringly intense and rarely subtle, but it’s precisely this bludgeoning quality that gives much of the material its brutal impact. ‘Werewolves of London’ and ‘Lawyers, Guns and Money’ are rendered fresh by being taken and slightly slower, heavier tempos, and there are even a handful of hilarious machine gun fret-tapping guitar solos. ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead’ from the self-titled album becomes an almost Bon Jovi-esque trudge, whilst ‘Mohammed’s Radio’ is rendered with savage passion.

The album is perhaps most interesting for the two tracks that Zevon composed especially for the shows. The title track is another impassioned rock ‘n’ roll testimony, whilst ‘The Sin’ is an elaborate and compelling prose poem with a striking opening (‘The time that you were cruel for cruelty’s sake’), and a complex web of guilt and intrigue.

Throughout, Zevon is riotously inventive. ‘Werewolves of London’ perhaps undergoes the most significant lyrical adjustments, the key line being replaced by the gleeful bellowing of ‘and he’s looking for James Taylor!’. Jackson Browne also gets a mention (‘I saw Jackson Browne walking slow down the evenue…his heart was perfect!’) which raises a cheer. Zevon gets completely wild on ‘Excitable Boy’, even enjoying some kind of barbed Elvis impersonation mid-way through.

Of all three reissues, ‘Stand In The Fire’ is the one most enhanced by its bonus selections. In fact, it’s difficult to comprehend why these were ever omitted from the original tracklisting. The album came accompanied with a Thomas McGuane quotation claiming ‘the dog ate the part we didn’t like’, but in this instance it would appear that the dog was not entirely helpful. There are superbly energetic takes on ‘Johnny Strikes Up The Band’ and ‘Play It All Night Long’, the latter a gloriously deadpan take on Southern country rock (‘Sweet Home Alabama, play that dead band’s song’ rings the chorus, and even nastier is the zesty ‘there ain’t much to country living: sweat, piss, jizz and blood!’). Most significant though are the two concluding tracks played solo at the piano – a vivid, rambling ‘Frank and Jesse James’ and a beautifully forlorn ‘Hasten Down The Wind’, during which he asks for the house lights to be turned up (‘I think I’ve found the ones who are my friends!’, he cries, in reference to the song’s central lyric). These songs not only provide much needed balance, but also a sense of serious finality evaded by the Bo Diddley medley that originally concluded the album on a much more playful note.

If some people find the show’s pre-encore finish (Zevon going down in gunfire and being stretchered offstage), a little incongruous with his literate and cerebral profile, then they are neglecting the man’s sense of humour, which was both zany and profound. When told of his terminal lung cancer in 2002, Zevon claimed he had just one ambition left – to see the next James Bond film (Die Another Day), an ambition he did live to achieve. When asked what his overall plan was for his last months, he responded dryly ‘I’m gonna enjoy every sandwich’. A man that witty and courageous in the face of death richly deserves these fitting tributes and more.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Up All Night

Apostle Of Hustle - National Anthem of Nowhere (Arts and Crafts)
El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead (Definitive Jux)

A couple of albums have emerged in the past couple of weeks that could be serious album of the year contenders (although 2007 is, like the previous two years, offering such rich pickings that I’m not sure there will be one clear standout).

Oddly, given the belated chorus of approval for Toronto’s Broken Social Scene last year, nobody here seems to have noticed that one of their contributors, Andrew Whiteman, has just released a second album under his Apostle of Hustle guise. I wrote in praise of his first record, ‘Folkloric Feel’ a couple of years ago, although I now suspect that my admiration for that album had more to do with its sound and musical sensibility than the quality of Whiteman’s songwriting. ‘National Anthem of Nowhere’ makes big strides in achieving a greater equilibrium between ideas and memorable tunes – this is a consistently excellent set of songs.

Much like ‘Folkloric Feel’, the songs here deploy Whiteman’s burgeoning interest in a variety of music from across the globe, but most particularly the rhythms of Cuba. Whiteman has been remarkably successful in merging these ideas with a more conventional indie-rock template, and where Apostle of Hustle stand apart from a number of their counterparts is in the sheer quality of playing and arranging. Whilst this is very much Whiteman’s project, it sounds like there’s a real group dynamic here, and there’s never any bland strumming patterns or monotonous chugging. Instead, we get the atmospheric and infectious ‘Cheap Like Sebastien’ (a close relation of Wilco’s ‘Handshake Drugs’), the sea-shanty roll of ‘Haul Away’ and the Afro-Cuban groove of ‘My Sword Hand’s Anger’. There are even two Spanish language songs.

There are also a number of moments that will be instantly familiar to any BSS fan. ‘The Naked & Alone’ uses an ascending bass pattern that resembles ‘Stars and Suns’ from ‘You Forgot It In People’, whilst ‘National Anthem of Nowhere’ echoes the grander concerns of the eponymous BSS album with its introduction of an effervescent horn section. Yet, whilst BSS revel in fuzzy, sometimes incoherent production textures, there’s a much greater clarity of sound here that may well elevate this album above and beyond the achievements of the supergroup. Also, Whiteman’s voice sounds confident and commanding here, whereas Broken Social Scene’s vocals tend towards the unfocussed (sometimes burying their best singers – Leslie Feist, Emily Haines etc too deep in a sound fog). BSS are a remarkable band, and there’s something very exciting about the flexible collective approach they adopt – but let’s pay attention when there’s real clarity of vision from their less well known individual members.

It feels like a long time since I’ve written anything substantial about a hip-hop album (although I did briefly comment on Ghostface Killah’s outstanding ‘Fishscale’ in my albums of the year list). Producer and Definitive Jux label supremo El-P has been involved in some of my all time favourite rap records, including Company Flow’s masterpiece ‘Funcrusher’, and the terrifyingly dark netherworld of Cannibal Ox’s ‘The Cold Vein’, a real Urban record if ever there was one. He’s now back with another solo record, following the entertaining ‘Fantastic Damage’ and the brilliant Thirsty Ear jazz project ‘High Water’.

I’m pleased to report that ‘I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead’ is yet another masterpiece, maintaining a standard in production that few others have even come close to matching. It’s darker and heavier than ‘Fantastic Damage’ – if anything closer to the menacing, threatening landscape of ‘The Cold Vein’. It sounds positively dangerous and raw – a musical terrain filled with fear and foreboding. At 55 minutes, it’s mercilessly concise by hip-hop’s bloated standards; there are no pointless skits and no instrumental interludes. Alarm bells sounded when I first heard the guest cast list (including Omar and Cedric from The Mars Volta and Trent Reznor), but not even the mutual backslapping can puncture this record’s distinctive and claustrophobic atmosphere.

Amidst the harsh and punishing production, there is also an intelligence, warmth and emotional resonance that does even more to undermine hip-hop’s stale conventions. How many rap tracks are there with choruses that repeat lines like ‘I found love on a prison ship’? There are amusing ruminations (‘why should I be sober when God is so clearly dusted out of his mind?’) and powerful descriptions of revenge (‘heart of an altar boy molested in confession/who plotted for 20 years then slit the throat of a reverend’). What is most impressive about the lyrics is their preference for half-rhymes and internal rhymes, rather than the more obvious schemes which tend to appear in rap tracks. Even when it hits its most lyrically conventional, as on ‘Drive’, the beats are so relentless and powerful, with rich variety in the sounds and samples that drift in and out. It all coalesces brilliantly on the epic concluding track ‘Poisenville Kids No Wins’, which features subtle vocal interventions from Cat Power. ‘I’ll Sleep…’ is a hard-hitting record with a singular vision – nobody else in hip-hop production is working at this level. It won’t help my insomnia much though….

Further thoughts to come on new albums from Laura Veirs, Willy Mason, Findlay Brown, Maximo Park, Air, Robyn, The Bird and The Bee, Basquiat Strings, Paul Motian and more. I should also take the time to note how great 2007 has been for reissues so far - superb packages from Warren Zevon (with The Envoy becoming available on CD for the first time), Sly and The Family Stone, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Triffids and Nico.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Interactivity!

I spend a lot of time on this blog criticising professional music journalists, unpicking their casual assumptions and questioning the dubious agendas of some of the publications they write for. I'm an amateur writer with no editors or shareholders to answer to, so I can afford to do that. It also means that I really should take more time to identify real quality in music writing when I come across it. Right now, I'm particularly inspired by those professional writers who have embraced the opportunities of blogging rather than joining the Paul Morley school of unreasonable suspicion (Simon Reynolds, Marcello Carlin, the folks over at Plan B). There are lots of flaws in Uncut magazine - but John Mulvey's Wild Mercury Sound new music blog over on their website is brilliant. It's ventures like this which allow writers to build a closer relationship with their readers, and find out what they really think, rather than what the marketing brains behind the publications believe they think. This post on Elliott Smith, written in response to a reader's comments, is particularly fascinating:

http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/index.php?blog=6&p=91&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#more91

I completely agree with the poster Sam about the melodic and harmonic intricacy of Smith's songs, and that his songwriting was a great deal more ambitious than most writers have suggested. The posthumous 'From A Basement on The Hill' collection for example contains a wealth of ambitious writing and dexterous guitar playing that went largely unnoticed as people focussed, understandably, on Smith's troubled state of mind.

The debate on criticism which these comments have prompted is of wider significance, though. Whilst I am a musician (albeit one whose grasp of musical theory is probably more spurious than it ought to be - I will concede I write and play more from instinct or feeling than any conceptual process), I would certainly never argue that non-musicians are not qualified to express considered opinions about music. Indeed, a non-musician writer of real distinction such as Mulvey can avoid being enraptured with technical and theoretical concerns, and really grasp the cultural and emotional significance of music. It does require an open mind, however - and Mulvey undoubtedly has this , as the range of his posts, so far encompassing Rufus Wainwright, Sly and The Family Stone and post-rockers Battles, confortably demonstrates. There's sometimes a tendency in rock critics to eulogise primitive angst, or the rejection of virtuosity. Neither virtuosity nor untutored fury are virtues in themselves - it's much more a matter of how contrasting styles and techniques can be deployed to create an impact.

I try and keep an open mind about music too. A good friend once asked me, slightly incredulously, how a three minute pop song could possibly move me as much as a great symphony. Quite easily in fact, especially if it finds some universal truth with which I can identify. Whilst there's a lot about the techniques of composition that I don't quite understand yet, I can recognise that there are common elements between the best popular music and serious composition, and that's why I'm quite happy to go and see any form of music performed live, performance is often where the true magic really shows.

One forthcoming album that seems to show no respect for classification whatsover is David Torn's Prezens, forthcoming on ECM (thanks to DJ Martian for a heads-up on this one). You can hear a couple of tracks on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/prezens
It seems as much inspired by metal and post-rock as by free improvisation, jazz-rock and electronica. This is clearly a challenging record that occupies its own unique space. I'm looking forward to hearing it in full, not least because it features world-class drummer Tom Rainey, and the outstanding Craig Taborn on keyboards (also a mainstay of Chris Potter's Underground).

I'm hoping that John might give us some thoughts on new albums from Bjork, Panda Bear, The F*cking Champs, etc...

Ugly Iggy

The Stooges - The Weirdness

Oh dear, oh dear. How exactly did we get here? I steered clear of the reunion shows from The Stooges, even when they played Fun House in its entirety, largely through reluctant acceptance that I wasn’t around to see the original deal, and the shows were unlikely to recapture that wild and maverick spirit. I actually heard very good reports – but whilst the reunion should probably have been restricted to a brief moneyspinner, it has catalysed the group (minus Dave Alexander and now with Mike Watt from the Minutemen on bass) into recording a new album that is even worse than could ever be imagined.

In theory, teaming a group that were once the rawest, hardest, most visceral rock and roll group in the world with a producer as uncompromising and confrontational as Steve Albini ought to be a good idea. In fact, neither producer nor band do each other any favours. The sound is dull and muddy, with absolutely no clarity in the bottom end (and when Steve Mackay, who brought fire and fury to Fun House, appears on saxophone, Albini buries him amid the distortion), and the playing is thoroughly uninspired throughout. It’s all four-square heavy rock (without even the crisp bar band dimension of AC/DC), with virtually all the songs based on plodding drumming and thoroughly conventional riffing. Rather than the true originators of punk rock (don’t forget the debut Stooges album was released in 1969!), the new model Stooges sound like an adolescent grunge band. Even The Rolling Stones of Steel Wheels had more vitality and feel than this.

The musicians come away from this admirably when compared with their lacklustre singer though. Listening to this, it’s hard to believe that Iggy Pop was ever an iconic presence in rock. He sounds like he’s sleepwalking through this interminable material, and his frankly embarrassing lyrics don’t help much. He claims that ‘my idea of fun/is killing everyone’, sounding like he’s spent too much time in front of shoot ‘em up computer games. Much worse, on ‘Trollin’, as well as elsewhere on the album, he’s most interested in his penis: ‘I see your hair has energy/My dick is turning into a tree’. A transfer from potential to kinetic energy, maybe? Well, that’s what happens when you take those little pills the doctor gives you, Iggy! When he tries political pontificating, the results are similarly clunky. On the title track, which at least varies the pace, he impersonates Bowie in the most dreadful way imaginable – to think the two once mutually inspired each other!

Nobody can begrudge The Stooges having a little fun, but they could at least bother to make it sound enjoyable. Similarly, nobody could justifiably expect Iggy to be the drug-addled, self-lacerating sex maniac of old. Those days are gone. It’s not, however, unreasonable to expect at least some of the ambition, poise, mystery and anger that fuelled those three masterpieces. There really is nothing whatsoever to link this version of the group to its original incarnation, save its personnel. Sadly, there’s plenty (both in lyrical content and vocal performance) to link it to lacklustre Iggy solo albums like ‘Naughty Little Doggie’ and ‘Beat ‘Em Up’. The album seems to have divided critical opinion, but those who responded positively can only be making excuses. There’s nothing weird or wonderful about this, and it would be pants from pretty much anyone. For my no nonsense rock and roll thrills, I’m going to look to the new album from Dinosaur Jr. next month.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Journeys and Adventures

‘La Maison de Mon Reve’ and ‘Noah’s Ark’, the first two albums from beguiling sister duo CocoRosie have been slowly working their way into my consciousness over the last couple of years, and are albums I’ve been returning to frequently in recent months. In light of this, I’ve been keenly anticipating ‘The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn’, their latest kooky musical adventure. The press release for this album, not officially released until April, is so unutterably pretentious as to warrant quoting here in full:

“The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn is a departure from the obscured blur of stained glass reve to a more self-exploitive memoir. Parts are dreamy and parts are savage, but, as with an opera where death represents a secret heaven, the whole record feels like a black diamond in the snow. From her humble beginnings in the South of France, the saga sailed the Seven Seas all the way to that icy crack in the Earth’s crust just outside Reykjavik. Upon return to her Parisian homeland, she shared a mystical rendezvous with beautiful sailors Pierre and Gilles, the album cover being a consequence of that affair”.

Whilst this might do more to obfuscate than to explain (what kind of memoir isn’t ‘self exploitive’? What exactly is a ‘mystical rendezvous’?), it shouldn’t serve to put listeners off completely. CocoRosie have refined an unusual and original form of electronic folk music which is also theatrical and occasionally camp. The arrangements are skeletal but intoxicating, and, in this context, the Joanna Newsom-esque vocal mannerisms actually serve to bewitch and enhance the mood (and the phrasing is as much influenced by smoky jazz singers such as Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington as Newsom or Devendra Banhart).

Despite its mythical sea journey concept, ‘…Ghosthorse and Stillborn’ is neither as lyrically coherent nor as musically enthralling as its predecessors. Some of the meticulous vocal phrasings have been phased out in favour of a half-spoken style bordering on rapping for the first few songs. This also means there’s frequently a less marked contrast between the two voices (the juxtaposition between harsh and delicate was a major part of the group’s appeal). Also, whilst their previous works merged electronic programming with acoustic instruments (or at least synthesisers that closely resembled traditional folk instruments), there now seems to be a heavier reliance on piano emulators and conventional synth sounds. It’s gratifying to hear them branching away from their comfort zone, but it will require more listens before I’m convinced that this works.

When ‘Ghosthorse and Stillborn’ works, however, it still has a special magic. ‘Japan’ is a vivid, potent sea shanty that sounds something akin to Tom Waits jamming with Bjork, and the occasional interjection of operatic vocals, particularly when juxtaposed with the insular barroom jazz of ‘Houses’, is peculiarly effective. ‘Raphael’ harks back to the sound of ‘Noah’s Ark’ and ‘Sunshine’ is beautifully restrained.

The overall sense is of an album that is a little too content to meander, albeit with grace and beauty. The closing ‘Miracles’, with what sounds like Anthony Hegarty joining in on vocals (my promo cannot confirm this), is a particularly wishy-washy note on which to conclude.

Legendary guitarist Ry Cooder has devised a rather different kind of journey for ‘My Name Is Buddy’, and it’s one that enables him to pursue a determinedly traditional route through the American folk canon, joined by Pete and Mike Seeger and Van Dyke Parks, among other illustrious guests. It’s wonderful that Cooder has rediscovered his own creative drive, after years spent as a supporting musician and marketing outlet for the promotion of ‘world music’ (sorry to use the awful catch-all term). His last album, ‘Chavez Ravine’ was a brilliantly constructed and incisive concept album about the disappeared LA neighbourhood of Chavez Ravine, the source of conflict between real estate developers, government and planning activists, eventually bulldozed as a result of a corrupt deal to build a stadium to entice the Brooklyn Dodgers to LA. It’s the closest Cooder has come to a masterpiece outside his film soundtrack work, beautifully packaged, poignant, empathetic, and superbly executed.

‘My Name Is Buddy’ attempts to pick up where that album left off. ‘Chavez Ravine’ was rather modestly subtitled ‘a record by Ry Cooder’. Even more dryly, ‘..Buddy’ is presented as ‘another record by Ry Cooder. It has similarly lavish artwork and packaging, more closely resembling a children’s book with appropriate illustrations than a CD inlay. This time, though, the overall concept is decidedly more whimsical. Through the eyes of a cat forced to relocate and wander the great American terrain, Cooder takes a wryly humorous but frequently illuminating tour through depression-era 30s America. Buddy, the chief character, meets a number of other crucial figures including Lefty the Mouse (a committed Red and Union activist), The Reverend Tom Toad (who enables Cooder to address the issues of racism and the Ku Klux Klan), and a fat, greedy pig pointedly named J Edgar. Cooder introduces each song in the inlay with a short narrative passage providing the context, and all this does bring back memories of children’s tomes such as The Animals of Farthing Wood or Watership Down, the latter of which at least had broader allegorical points to make. Maybe Cooder wanted to ensure that the project wouldn’t come across as overly po-faced, but in his idealisation of a lost benevolent America, Cooder does have serious arguments which may be undercut rather than enhanced by the caricatures of his animal cast. Perhaps, though, a better reference point is George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, which stated its political case boldly and clearly.

Musically, we’re very much in Woody Guthrie territory, and these 17 (17!!) songs are all authentically rootsy, although much more sedate and less boozy than Springsteen’s outstanding Seeger Sessions project from last year. It’s fascinating that the context of Bush’s squeezing domestic policies and foreign escapades have prompted America’s major musical artists to get historical, and ‘My Name Is Buddy’, however frustrating, is a major contribution to this emerging trend.

The playing is dependably excellent and faithful to its sources, although at 17 tracks, it’s certainly arguable that this is just too long. It’s very refreshing when there is a change in turn, such as on the gutsy blues of ‘Sundown Town’ (with Bobby King guesting on vocals), the Waitsian rasp of ‘Three Chords and the Truth’ (the wonderful title taken directly from Harlan Howard’s masterfully concise description of country music), or the atmospheric, lengthy ‘Green Dog’. The remaining songs are all consistently excellent, and sometimes a lot of fun, but it is something of a challenge to get through the whole album in one sitting. If there’s a problem, it might lie in Cooder’s dry and rather unexpressive singing. Never the greatest of singers, his tone is somewhat monotonous, and ‘…Buddy’ certainly lacks the unexpected passion and variety of vocal performance that Springsteen wrenched out on the Seeger Sessions.

Still, there’s plenty to admire here, and the lyrics are crisp and clever. Whilst it doesn’t quite scale the heights of ‘Chavez Ravine’, it’s still another major statement providing more evidence of just how great it is to have Cooder writing and recording regularly again.

Who Dunnit?

Some thoughts on David Lynch's Inland Empire

First up, a subjective confession: David Lynch is one of my favourite film-makers. I like the fact that his films can be elliptical, unclear and cryptic and that the very point of them may in fact be that they are pointless. I reject the charge of misogyny that many authoritative and respected writers have brought against him, most notably the Chicago Sun Times' Roger Ebert, who savagely demolished Blue Velvet on its original release. Just because you make films in which nasty things happen to women does not logically imply that you hate women, or that you view that degradation as morally justifiable. Lynch explores dark, nightmarish worlds - and with his last three pictures particularly (Lost Highway, the masterpiece Mulholland Drive and now this three hour epic), these worlds are becoming increasingly subconscious and internalised. His films have plenty of forebearers in the art of cinematic obfuscation - Alain Resnais' 'Last Year in Marienbad' springs most immediately to mind, but his style is so singular as to render most comparisons worthless.

Yet, in the case of Inland Empire, for much of its protracted duration a clear parallel formed in my mind. 'Inland Empire' repeats so many of the tropes and ideas of Mulholland Drive that it feels very much like a more indulgent companion piece to that movie, and the relationship between the two films is remarkably similar to that between Wong Kar-Wai's '2046' and its more focussed, masterful predecessor 'In The Mood For Love'. I remember watching the London Film Festival premiere of '2046' with a similarly paradoxical sense of awe and frustration. Visually, I was compelled - but the melding together of scenes across locations and the absense of any coherent narrative drive left me fundamentally confused. Such is the way with 'Inland Empire', and it's clearly Lynch's main intention. Whilst Inland Empire doesn't quite recycle characters from Mulholland Drive in the way that 2046 did with its predecessor (although Naomi Watts and Laura Harring both contribute to the film), its Hollywood setting, manipulation of time and space, erotic undercurrents and surreal mindgames all seem to refer back to that weirdly beautiful film. As with Mulholland Drive, locations are crucial and there are echoes of one place somewhere completely different (which fuels those Lynch followers keen to search for clues to the non-existent solution of a non-existent puzzle), and grand mansions are reinvented in alternate worlds as run down hovels. Most specifically, the cigarette hole through silk material in Inland Empire has a clear parallel with the box that changes everything in Mulholland Drive. Yet where Mulholland Drive did make an unusual kind of sense, if you yielded to its embracing of alternative realities and dream states, I'm not sure there's a real hidden meaning (and certainly not a solution) behind Inland Empire's inherent mysteries.

This film is so much like a dream, or more accurately, a ragingly discomforting, confounding nightmare, that it is undeniably something to be experienced rather than understood. Any attempt at summarising the plot is reductive and banal, and Lynch ratchets up the synaesthetic sensory tricks for which he is justly lauded. Like all Lynch films, Inland Empire has an outstanding soundtrack, with original compositions from Lynch standing alongside great European composers such as Wiltold Lutoslawski. Music is always used to devastating effect in Lynch films - and there's always one scene which will completely transform a famous pop song forever. It's impossible to hear Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams' as a simple unrequited love song after Blue Velvet - it's now laced with an irrevocably sinister poison. Similarly, you won't be able to hear Little Eva singing 'The Locomotion' at a wedding disco anymore without feeling palpably unnerved.

Lynch has spoken of how shooting the film entirely on Digital Video has liberated him, and the film is certainly visually fascinating, relying heavily on peculiar, warped close-ups. The opening shot is bravura, and demonstrates Lynch's admiration for the pure cinematic image - a shaft of dramatic light before a needle is shown descending on a vinyl record's grooves. Laura Dern's expressive, agitated performance carries the film through its entire three hours (whilst I was frequently baffled, I'm not sure I was ever bored), and the deliberately stilted conversation between her and her Polish gypsy neighbour near the outset of the film is audacious but also really quite funny. Dern progresses to master several performances in one, although it's hard to believe even she knew what it was all about when Lynch was directing her. Through her confusion, she elevates her role to something more than just another Lynchian 'woman in trouble' - she's the emotional and theoretical core of the film. There are some brilliant and powerful moments, some genuinely terrifying, others simply mesmerising. There's a real emotional power to the ending too, even if its underlying logic is completely opaque.

Yet, despite all this, there is the lingering sense that the film is both twitchy and patchy. It is captivating, but not at a sustained level. Whilst Mulholland Drive felt like a substantial piece of work that had the wisdom to be moving as well as confusing, much of Inland Empire just seems too bizarre. With its borrowings from short films originally made for Lynch's website, including some very odd sequences featuring a TV sitcom with a cast of anthropomorphic rabbits, it does feel like Lynch is trying to conflate too many ideas here. Where Mulholland Drive enthralled and hypnotised throughout, Inland Empire feels disjointed and fragmented, and in stylistic (if not thematic) terms actually more closely resembles Lost Highway. The central concept of a film-within-a-film (and possibly even another film within that) is hardly his most original construct either. I also felt slightly uncomfortable with the rather dubious connection of the film's sinister, perhaps even evil elements with a Polish contingent repeatedly attempting to penetrate the film's various universes. Yet whilst Mulholland Drive had plenty to say about parallel worlds and the human reliance on conventional ideas of time and space for meaning and logic, Inland Empire feels like a technically dazzling but perhaps somewhat empty mood piece by comparison. When its characters speak in non-sequiturs (I wondered whether most of Harry Dean Stanton's lines were constructed from Bob Dylan references), its easy to feel that Lynch is simply poking fun at his audience and most ardent admirers. Mind you, they're a pretty serious minded bunch of people, so maybe that's no bad thing.

Lynch remains a master of the modern cinema, simply because there is no other oeuvre in which this kind of experiment could possibly be achieved - it's not literary and it's not purely sonic - Lynch has a peculiar inventiveness that requires the careful marriage of image and sound. The title 'Inland Empire' presumably refers to the Hollywood hinterland, but has the obvious metaphorical reference to the subconscious and the interior monologue. Lynch has taken the psychological, subconscious focus to its utmost extreme with this film, and it's hard to see where he can go next, particularly given this film's recycling of previous ideas and themes. Any Lynch film is worth watching though - and Inland Empire is sometimes beautiful and bold.


Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Buried Treasure #2

Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis (Polydor, 1998)

For all the critical rehabilitation of Talk Talk’s extraordinary ‘Spirit of Eden’ and ‘Laughing Stock’ albums over the last ten years, it’s still surprisingly difficult to find incisive writing on Mark Hollis’ debut, and so far only, solo work. It took several years for Hollis to muster the inspiration to record again after ‘Laughing Stock’, by which time Talk Talk had effectively disintegrated. It’s clear that the recording processes for both ‘Spirit..’ and ‘Laughing Stock’ were protracted and both physically and emotionally draining, leaving the group with little coherence or resolve. The results of course speak for themselves – both records are unique musical statements, completely unlike anything else in the British rock canon, with an originality, force and power few artists can muster.

Those major Talk Talk albums existed largely as seamless pieces of music, and made more sense as complete works than as a sequence of songs. They also displayed a steadfast lack of respect for genre boundaries, melding elements of contemporary composition with rock and improvised jazz. Recorded with large groups of musicians in unconventional groupings, they were meticulously arranged, with as much attention paid to silences as the sudden bursts of savage noise. In light of this, it’s tempting to portray Hollis’ solo work as simply an extension of this approach to writing and recording.

Yet there’s a crucial and fundamental difference that sets ‘Mark Hollis’ apart from all of Talk Talk’s output. If anything, this is a more schematic and theorised work, recorded entirely on acoustic instruments. As a result, there are no electric guitars, only upright bass, drums mostly delicately brushed rather than hit, and the overall sound is consistently dignified and restrained. Hollis had already explored a range of avenues in jazz and rock forms, but had now also discovered Eastern European folk music. Explaining his approach to this album on its release in 1998, he stated that he was searching for the common elements between chamber music, jazz and folk. It was also Hollis’ first work without the input of Tim Friese-Greene, instead collaborating with arrangers Phil Ramacon and Dominic Miller.

The result of this questing is a stark minimalism that defies musical convention or easy classification. Sometimes there is genuinely nothing here (opening track ‘The Colour Of Spring’ begins with 19 seconds of considered silence), and Hollis’ voice, increasingly elusive, drifts in and out of focus. The music is hushed, but extraordinary, and it remains staggering how much feeling and texture Hollis and his musicians could wrench from as few notes as possible. Hollis’ famous quotation from this period sums it all up brilliantly: "Before you play two notes learn how to play one note - and don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it." There’s a palpable sense across the whole album that every beat and every sound have been placed in order to be meaningful. This is most notable from the deployment of reed and wind instruments – Flute, Cor anglais, Bassoon and Clarinet, which all serve to layer texture and enhance mood, in unshowy arrangements that reject the temptations of virtuosity.

Hollis is credited with production duties himself, but engineer Phill Brown must surely be the unsung hero of this project. The naturalistic, elemental sound at least gives the impression of a chamber ensemble interacting (although I have no idea whether or not the music was recorded ‘as live’), and there’s no attempt to manipulate or disguise the natural timbre of the instruments. Very few albums recorded in the '90s sounded this pure or convincing. There’s a beauty and clarity to the piano and vocal opener ‘The Colour Of Spring’ that is only deceptively simple, and the lengthy ‘A Life (1895-1915)’ is characterised by subtle and controlled shifts in texture and dynamics.

Hollis’ lyrics are frequently still derided as oblique or frustrating, and whilst it’s true that a literal meaning is not always immediately clear, there’s an elegant flow to the language that complements the music and also contributes to the languid, profoundly reflective atmosphere. The words frequently sound beautiful. The title of ‘The Colour Of Spring’ harks back to the earlier Talk Talk album of the same name, but the Talk Talk of the mid-80s would never have written or recorded anything this quietly intense: ‘And yet I’ll gaze/The colour of spring/Immerse in that one moment/Left in love with everything/Soar the bridges/That I burnt before/One song among us all’. Elsewhere, the lyrics sometimes seem like strands of disconnected words or phrases, but one of Hollis’ great gifts as a writer is to make plangent melancholy by undercutting expectations, such as on ‘A New Jerusalem’, where he sings, so softly its almost inaudible, ‘Summer unwinds/But no longer kind’. The fragmented nature of the language reflects the unusual ebb and flow of the music – with no obvious verses or choruses, these are free flowing songs that follow their own uniquely questing path. By varying the volume and lucidity of his singing, Hollis effectively subsumes his voice completely within the music – rather than something added as a hook or an afterthought, the vocals are an intrinsic part of these arrangements.

In the nine years since this album’s release, little has been heard from Hollis and it is unclear whether or not he plans to record again, although his former Talk Talk colleague Paul Webb was instrumental in the success of Beth Gibbons’ excellent ‘Out Of Season’ album. Hollis is a singular talent with a clear and uncompromising vision, but there’s the increasing sense that this melancholy, haunting work is the last we may hear from him.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

Live: Tilly and The Wall, Broken Family Band, Piney Gir/Peter and The Wolf, Jay and The Pistolets, Noah and The Whale
On Disc: LCD Soundsystem, Grinderman, Herman Dune

Apologies for the lack of a new post here in the last couple of weeks – I’ve been somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer burden of activity in my life at the moment, particularly a brief concentration of gigs of my own. As a result, there’s a massive backlog of albums to comment on, and I’m not sure I’ve got the willpower to write about them all. Inevitably, this post is going to be a little lengthy, but I’ve summarised the contents above for clarity.

First of all, a few gigs need a brief mention. Tilly and The Wall were outstanding at the Scala, bristling with energy and sheer joie de vivre. The venue itself, small by London standards but significant on its own scale, was packed out, largely it would appear by balding middle-aged blokes singing along to every word – it’s quite extraordinary how some bands reach entirely unexpected audiences (or perhaps it’s just that the band features a trio of attractive young women). Tilly are defiantly whimsical but undoubtedly endearing, and whilst the tap-dancing is certainly a gimmick, it’s a pretty effective one. Their best songs (‘Rainbows In The Dark’, ‘Sing Songs Along’, ‘Bad Education’) are perhaps delivered a little too early, but the whole set is perfectly weighted (neither too long nor too short) and they wisely save the touching melancholy of ‘Lost Girls’ until the encore. It’s a spirited show, with the band visibly enjoying themselves. Whilst it’s occasionally slightly ragged around the edges, this probably only adds to the appeal, and it’s a joy to watch.

Have I written enough about the Broken Family Band? Surely not! It’s certainly worth noting that, much like Tilly (albeit it at a more sedate pace), this band have been carried largely by word-of-mouth into London’s grander venues. It’s immensely gratifying to see a band I remember well from tiny Cambridge pub venues suddenly entertaining the masses at Koko.

BFB always pull out the stops for their big shows (Steven Adams, with characteristic dry wit, dubs this one the ‘punching above our weight show’) and for this, they find a new way of organising what is essentially the same set they’ve been playing for the past year or so. Beginning with an increasingly rare outing for ‘The Perfect Gentlemen’, they cover their career so far in chronological order.

There are few real surprises, but rollicking versions of ‘At the Back of the Chapel’ and ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’, along with tender, musically involving renditions of ‘Poor Little Thing’ and ‘John Belushi’ maintain consistently high quality. Sadly, the subtleties of ‘John Belushi’ are destroyed by some inebriated morons talking loudly next to us, and the first few songs are rendered muddy by poor sound, with Gavin Johnson’s bass not just loud but utterly overwhelming. It’s always a bonus when the band utilise the multi-instrumental skills of Timothy Victor – a shame, then, that his keyboards and banjo couldn’t be heard for at least the first fifteen minutes of the show.

Bravely, the chronological structure means the brand new material is left until last. Regular BFB gig-goers will already be thoroughly familiar with the anthemic, noisy blast of ‘Love Your Man Love Your Woman’, and the ambitious, slightly surreal folk ballad meets sludge-rock song with lyrics about a captain was familiar from their show at the Scala last year. More encouraging still was that the two songs I didn’t recognise were outstanding, with ‘Leaps’ (a candid song about sex) proving both infectious and affecting. There’s plenty of evidence that Steven Adams is still maturing as a songwriter.

They encore with a delightfully restrained ‘Devil In The Details’ and an explosive ‘You’re Like A Woman’, during which Jay Williams takes the opportunity to introduce the band in hilarious style (‘You! You cannot play the bass like Gavin Johnson! You cannot play the drums like Mickey Roman! You cannot be Steven Adams!’). Adams defines the band tonight as ‘just a bunch of blokes playing music’. Well, that’s a bit self-deprecating isn’t it? Yes, ordinary blokes playing music – but with increasing musical ambition to match their playful humour, and a batch of songs so consistently excellent that there aren’t really any other UK guitar bands right now who can entertain at this level. It’s still broken, and there’s no need to fix it.

The Howdy Do club night at The Borderline, featuring Piney Gir, Peter and The Wolf, Jay and The Pistolets and Noah and The Whale, was one of the best multi-artist small venue shows I’ve seen in ages. At last, some sensitive and thoughtful programming created a complementary line-up of consistent quality that engaged me from start to finish!

Although I don’t really know any of them well, I can be connected to Noah and The Whale through three different people. They double as Emmy the Great’s backing band (and she joins them on vocals and what I think must have been a harmonium tonight) – Emmy of course regularly performs with my friend Jeremy Warmsley, for whom I briefly bashed the drums in an ill-feted group project. Outstanding young fiddle player Tom Hobden (only 19 years old and apparently already making a reasonable living through music, the lucky git) is friends with my good friend Tom Millar, the two of them having both performed in drunken, filthy, piss-taking ramshackle country ensemble Captain Kick and The Cowboy Ramblers. Drummer Doug Fink currently goes out with the sister of a good friend from school days. The cliché that it’s a small world sometimes holds true, particularly in musical circles! The band did not disappoint tonight, with an intriguing and novel set-up (fiddle, acoustic guitar or ukulele, harmonium, skeletal drum kit with no cymbals, no bassist) and a brief selection of involving and unusual songs. The lyrics straddle the line between quirky and pretentious, occasionally hitting on something rather special (‘last time I saw Mary she lied and said it was her birthday’), but occasionally sounding a little forced and verbose. Still, the songs are melodic and musically focussed, with an authentic feel for folk traditions. There’s something of the wide-eyed escapism of Patrick Wolf here too. It’s an inventive and appealing combination and this band should go far.

Jay and The Pistolets in fact proved to be a lone singer-songwriter. I initially found his voice a little earnest and mannered, but had warmed to him by the end of his brief set. There was one particular song of unrequited love you’d have to be extremely churlish not to find touching. Peter and The Wolf, I believe signed to a new record label set up by Guy Garvey from Elbow, were outstanding, characterised by warm vocal harmonies, rudimentary percussion and the always welcome presence of an upright bassist. These were good songs, perhaps with conventional indie rhythms and melodies, but delivered in a more traditional, acoustic arrangement. This proved quietly inventive and a real discovery.

Piney Gir is always a slightly shambolic performer, albeit in the best possible way, tonight suffering a little from a bad throat. Her outstanding Country Roadshow musicians remain more than supportive, creating a driving and vigorous accompaniment for her appealing songs. At just half an hour, it’s over far too quickly, but is tremendous fun nonetheless.

2007 is turning into a remarkable year for live music in London – I have tickets booked for Bob Dylan, Feist, Band of Horses, The Besnard Lakes, Wilco, Magnolia Electric Co., Al Green, Sonic Youth and Steely Dan!

As for new albums, there are a small clutch of releases currently bringing beams of pure joy into my world. ‘Sound Of Silver’, the second album from LCD Soundsystem, pretty much sounds exactly as expected, essentially further refining the formula James Murphy captured so well on his debut a couple of years ago. It might not break any radical new ground, but ‘Sound Of Silver’ is an excellent record, juxtaposing not just influences, but knowing references with palpable glee and excitement. It’s this real enthusiasm for the history of pop music that makes LCD Soundsystem such a thrilling and captivating project. The ‘songs’, such as they are, are minimal to the point of being threadbare, often depending entirely on just one pulsating, multi-layered chord. On the single ‘North American Scum’, Murphy stretches himself to three, but ‘Sound Of Silver’ will not be remembered for its ambitious harmony.

Instead, it’s all about a slavish devotion to a four-to-the-floor groove which, with added percussion and muted, scratchy guitar, is frequently irresistible. ‘Time To Get Away’ and ‘Us v Them’ will engage the dancing feet as much as the brain, whilst ‘Someone Great’ and ‘All My Friends’, offering a more electro-influenced and reflective sound, add some surprisingly touching lyrical ruminations.

Murphy’s chief concern remains the thorny problem of how to retain the credibility of a musical hipster whilst age advances, and for any musical obsessive from their mid-20s up will easily relate to this. His lyrics are mercilessly concise, and occasionally basic, but he also frequently finds a glimmer of truth (‘we set the controls for the heart of the sun, it’s one of the ways we show our age’ or ‘New York’s the greatest if you get someone to pay your rent/It’s just about the furthest you can live from the government’). He’s a little limited as a vocalist though, mostly sounding in need of a good decongestant, and even resorting to imitating Bowie on the otherwise excellent opener ‘Get Innocuous!’.

This matters little though when the music is so insistent and enjoyable, and the production so crisp and well-defined. There may be instantly recognisable influences all over this record, from Bowie to Arthur Russell, but Murphy has successfully subsumed these within a trademark sound that is very much his own, and his open acknowledgement of his musical heroes is refreshing and playful. It’s essentially club music for people who can no longer be bothered with the mostly horrendous experience of clubbing, and dance music with both head and heart.

Nick Cave has taken a rather different approach to the problem of ageing, raging spectacularly against the dying of the light with the Grinderman project, essentially a streamlined, noisier, more democratic version of The Bad Seeds. Much of the Grinderman album comes across like a musical version of a late-period Philip Roth novel, brimming as it is with bravado, elaborate language, real humour and aggressive sexuality.

Cave has always been that most masculine of performers, and some may balk at lines like ‘all we wanted was a little bit of consensual rape in the afternoon and maybe a bit more in the evening’. Still, most of this album retains the self-mocking and brilliantly constructed humour of his ‘Abbatoir Blues/Lyre Of Orpheus’ double set, and the already notorious ‘No Pussy Blues’ is a brilliant anthem of sexual frustration (‘I read her Keats, I read her Yeats/Even fixed the hinges on her gate/But still she just didn’t want to/She just never wants to….Damn!’). I wonder what Cave’s wife makes of it all…

Musically, Grinderman has been unhelpfully caricatured as a return to the savage brutality and confrontational poise of Cave’s days in The Birthday Party. It’s certainly noisy in places, and Cave’s own untutored guitar playing is appropriately abrasive. Yet, it’s not entirely avant-garde squall, and this is arguably the closest Cave has yet come to appropriating that most traditional and adaptable form of popular music – the blues. Brilliantly, ‘Depth Charge Ethel’ combines the gospel-meets-garage rock of Spiritualized with the lyrical approach of AC/DC. There’s also the call-and-response vocal of ‘Get It On’, the dirty brush drum groove of ‘Electric Alice’ and the slight gospel feel of ‘(I Don’t Need You) To Set Me Free’ as evidence for this. Indeed, for all its machismo and bravado, Grinderman has the kind of primal, feral intensity only recently achieved by female fronted bands – particularly some of the gritty, percussive energy of Sleater Kinney and the sleazy grind of Royal Trux.

Whilst Grinderman certainly eschews the spirituality and musical restraint Cave discovered with ‘The Boatman’s Call’ and extended less effectively to ‘No More Shall We Part’ and parts of ‘Nocturama’, there’s certainly some of the mordant, Leonard Cohen-inspired emotional cynicism we’ve come to expect from him, particularly on the fate-of-the-human-race ballad ‘Go Tell The Women’. I wonder whether Cave has heard Chairmen Of The Board’s awesome 70s funk track ‘Men Are Getting Scarce’?

It’s a matter of subjective judgment as to whether Grinderman really works – some may find it unconvincing from a Christian family man, others may simply see it as a grotesque indulgence. All that rather ignores the visceral energy and the humour of it all though – I don’t think this is in any way po-faced or presumptuous of its audience’s good will. It certainly delivers on its intentions, however dirty and dubious they may be. A guilty pleasure, perhaps.

A very different, but no less enjoyable album is ‘Giant’ from Swiss-American duo Herman Dune. This really does have all the makings of a winsome indie-pop classic. I saw Herman Dune live in a Cambridge pub once, and they brimmed with quirky charm and witty invention. Comfortably, they could have continued rewriting the same song – but for ‘Giant’ they have incorporated some wonderful cooing female backing vocals and an exuberant horn section. Even better are Andre Herman Dune’s brilliantly incongruous but surprisingly mellifluous saxophone solos.

The overall sound frequently reminds me of Aberfeldy’s underrated ‘Young Forever’ album, although it transcends that by virtue of some zesty and extravagant wordplay. ‘Giant’ may be more considered and elaborately arranged than its predecessors, but it doesn’t shy away from HD’s trademark oddball humour. These songs can bring a wide grin even to the face of a relentless depressive with lyrics like ‘And your name’s not Susan but I would call you Sue/To show you how bad I want to be with you’. It helps that the basic patterns underpinning the songs are unashamedly cheesy, with opener and lead single ‘I Wish That I Could See You Soon’ essentially remoulding the harmony from Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’.

There’s still a neat contrast between David and Andre’s songwriting styles, with the former more straightforwardly melodic and infectious, and the latter occasionally veering into more surreal, rambling, Stephen Malkmus-esque territory on the likes of ‘Nickel Chrome’ and ‘Bristol’. At 55 minutes, this is quite a lengthy collection by indie standards, but the quality control is remarkably consistent, and the overall mood is effectively and sensibly punctuated by two Morricone-inspired instrumentals. It’s also not all entirely goofy – ‘Take Him Back To New York City’, despite its peculiar spoken introduction, is delicate and touching, whilst ‘This Summer’ has some of the soulful sensitivity of Nick Lowe circa ‘The Convincer’.

This really is pure pop music that entertains, amuses and refuses to apologise for tugging the heart-strings. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that any of these wonderful songs will be topping the UK Top 40 any time soon, but it’s just possible that this record may elevate Herman Dune from unsung heroes to minor stars.

There's much more to come....

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Pain and Frustration

Lucinda Williams is that most frustrating of singer-songwriters. At her best, she is capable of a sublime artistry of breathtaking directness. At her worst, she is clunky and forced, and risks trivialising some of her intense personal experiences. Her recent albums all seem to have been inspired to some degree by crises, and 'West' is certainly no different, having been composed following the death of her mother and the breakdown of a rather fraught relationship. These personal difficulties clearly inspired Williams to write a wealth of material, and 'West' is as a result somewhat overlong. I could have done without the nine minutes of ghastly cod-rapping on 'Wrap My Head Around That', although arty producer Hal Wilner probably deserves an equal share of the blame for that. The album also opens fairly inconspicuously with 'Are You Alright?', an undeniably pretty song, but with lyrics as cliched as its much-repeated title ('all of a sudden you went away...I hope you come back around someday' etc).

There are other ways, however, in which a case can be built for 'West' as Williams' best work to date. Over the course of her recent albums, particularly 'Essence' and 'World Without Tears', Williams has been gradually abandoning the dusty country rock on which she built her reputation in favour of restrained, floaty and ethereal mood pieces. This sound reaches its apotheosis here, mostly aided by Wilner's production (at least when it's sensitive), and heavily supported by the intuitive and emotive playing of versatile guitar legend Bill Frisell. Another session legend in the form of drummer Jim Keltner offers dependable musical sensibility. There's still variety on display here, but the predominant mood is melancholic and haunting.

There are some wonderful songs here, from the great outpouring of feeling on 'Mama You Sweet' and the deftly poetic 'Words' ('I would rather suffer in sweet silent solitude/Deathly defiant from drowning out/Filthy sounds stumbling ugly and crude/Between the lips of your beautiful mouth' - is this really the same lyricist behind 'Are You Alright?') to the sweetly observed 'Fancy Funeral'. Williams has now mastered her songwriting formula, essentially depending on a careful and considered marriage of words, phrasing and melody for which her gritty, untutored voice is ideally suited. She does not have great range or technique, but there's a wealth of emotion in those cracked intonations, mostly displayed with admirable candour.

As a result, she can do the sultry and lusty as convincingly as the mordant and ruminative. 'Unsuffer Me' and the Neil Young-esque trudge of 'Come On' (all playful self-righteousness and innuendo - 'you didn't even make me.....come on!') are both close relations of the outstading 'Atonement' from 'World Without Tears'. So, whilst many of these songs are intensely sad, there's also a dogged determination for self-preservation too, most evident on the slight beam of hope provided by the closing title track and the endearing, touching 'Learning How To Live'.

Whatever one feels about Williams' inconsistency, there's no denying that, much like the graceful Emmylou Harris, she has really matured as an artist relatively late in life. 'West' is a moving, elegiac story of grief and love lost with which many people will easily connect. Forget the crass, manipulative emoting of Snow Patrol, Keane and their horrific ilk, and discover something truthful and hard won. It may sometimes be a lonely and desolate landscape, but sometimes heading out West isn't just illuminating - it's necessary.