Monday, April 30, 2007

No Progression: The Return of Dinosaur Jr.

There are some bands, perhaps those that display their creative ambitions most explicitly, that we want to push themselves further and further, and we get disappointed when they fail. However, there are some bands that have so spectacularly nailed what it is that they do that any form of change might well spell disaster. Three of my favourite bands fall firmly into this category – Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads and Dinosaur Jr. All three bands make guitar based rock music that makes no attempt whatsoever to hide its simplicity, and with which it is remarkably easy to connect. Dinosaur Jr. perhaps had the most brutally effective formula – a unique brand of scuzzy slacker rock that somehow managed to sound lazy and invigorating at the same time. That their template greatly informed the grunge phenomena of the early 90s is now undisputed.

How appropriate it is, then, that ‘Beyond’, the first album from the band’s original line-up since 1988’s ‘Bug’ should open with a characteristically coruscating distorted guitar solo from J Mascis. It’s clear from the opening ten seconds that not a lot has changed in the intervening 19 years. Well, good. J Mascis has not lost his ability to pen addictive and infectious rock songs, and ‘Almost Ready’, ‘This Is All I Came To Do’ and the jangly ‘Crumble’ are more than worthy additions to the Dinosaur Jr. canon. The Mascis songs on this album don’t do much to develop or progress this band one bit – but they certainly sound like they are enjoying rediscovering their original strengths. Mascis’ double-tracked guitar solos are consistently thrilling, Barlow is rock solid throughout, and Murph’s drumming is simply awesome, always crisp and propulsive, particularly on the relentless ‘Been There All The Time’. Perhaps the one exception to this is the restrained ‘I Got Lost’, which dares to deploy (shock! horror!) acoustic guitars and a cello. As a consequence, however, it’s probably the least immediate track of the set.

The main obstacle to Dinosaur Jr. breaking out of cult appeal probably continues to be Mascis’ voice – a deliberately muffled, throaty, cigarette-stained whine of contempt for obligation and responsibility. Even the song titles carry that weary sense of resignation and negativity (‘I Got Lost’, ‘What If I Knew’, ‘Pick Me Up’ etc). More casual listener might well therefore embrace the two Lou Barlow compositions featured here. It’s a delight to hear Barlow’s tender melancholy bolstered by this band’s furious riffing and inspired exposition, and ‘Back To Your Heart’ and ‘Lightning Bulb’ easily stand up to any of Mascis’ contributions.

Excellent though this album is, and wonderful that it is to see Mascis and Barlow onstage together again, I have to confess to some reservations about this whole project. There’s of course the lingering sense that most reformations have a financial impetus, and given that this one started with some no doubt lucrative festival appearances, there can be little doubt that lucre came into this one too. Nevertheless, one certainly can’t begrudge them earning a little cash, particularly Barlow, who seems to have been largely subsisting throughout his career, a fate that should never befall a songwriter of his quality. I’ve also observed that this reunion seems to have given birth to a rather questionable form of critical revisionism that suggests that the second line-up of Dinosaur Jr. was purely a matter of diminishing returns. Mike Johnson may well have cause to feel a little upset about this, as the later line-up of the band produced three of the greatest singles of the nineties with ‘The Wagon’, ‘Start Choppin’ and ‘Feel The Pain’. ‘Beyond’ is a very satisfying record, but I’m not sure it contains any surefire classics on that level. Still, the fact that there’s still a kinetic and fiery connection between these three is surely enough.

Friday, April 27, 2007

'In those days, they had time for everything...'

…Or so says a line from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons used by Terence Davies in his masterful film ‘The Long Day Closes’ from 1992. The line strikes me as hugely significant given that the film’s young protagonist Bud values the escapism of the cinema. Today, it’s again become difficult to see the kind of classic films referenced here in repertory (unless you happen to live in London or Paris), and we are constantly being told that we don’t have time for great works of art. Just last week, the Newsnight Review panel, were justly lambasting a new series of 'edited' versions of classic works of literature, with the business mogul responsible for this heinous project stating ‘most people don’t have time to read long novels these days’. Speak for yourself, you overpaid berk! I still read a book every couple of weeks on average. I get so infuriated by marketing types telling me what I can and can’t do, and how much spare time I should have. ‘Time management’ must be one of the most odious phrases in the modern English language.

Davies’ films may be concise by comparison with the great novels of Melville and Tolstoy (both ‘Distant Voices…’ and ‘The Long Day Closes’ clock in at around 85 minutes), but they are challenging for audiences who usually respond only to comfortable cinematic conventions. It is perhaps for this reason that Davies, surely Britain’s greatest living film-maker, cannot now get funding to make another film. This is nothing short of outrageous, especially when big production companies like Working Title can effectively saturate the market with a plethora of banal romcoms.

Like Davies’ earlier masterpiece ‘Distance Voices, Still Lives’, the film is an autobiographical work (this time focussing on the life of a twelve year old boy in 1950s Liverpool), composed of a series of vignettes without straightforward plot or narrative that somehow manage to combine a lingering melancholy with the warm glow of nostalgia. It’s this peculiarly unsentimental juxtaposition of sensations that captures the very essence of human experience – life can be hard, but the simple fact of being alive is, in itself, a cause for awe and inspiration. It is all the more remarkable that Davies achieves this through a uniquely cinematic language, marrying meticulously composed images to a soundtrack of period songs (including Nat King Cole, Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds), radio programmes and movies.

There is little in the way of narrative or dialogue but to argue that the film offers no character development or that we cannot sympathise with the family environment at its core is palpable nonsense (interestingly, it would appear to be mostly American writers who have argued this in what little available writing there is about the film online). The songs the characters sing frequently reveal much about their joys and regrets, albeit in much more subtle and controlled ways than conventional dialogue. Where speech plays a greater role, it frequently provides light relief, and there is great warmth to the characters of Edna and Curly.

It’s easily possible to identify with Bud’s love of cinematic escapism, his mother’s understated, yet unconditional love, his confused religiosity born from a Catholic upbringing, and his wide-eyed observation of the world around him. Very much a companion piece to ‘Distant Voices…’, the film is essentially about memory, and Davies is surely right to assert that memories rarely come with a recognisable chronological framework. Whilst the film covers a clear period of a few months between 1955 and 1956, the timeframe is decidedly non-linear.

Through creating a sustained and coherent mood, Davies creates a portrait of that unique time on the cusp of adolescence that is naturalistic and wholly convincing. Bud’s childhood might be free from the violence and rage of Davies’ earlier film (‘The Long Day Closes’ is set a few years after the death of Davies’ father) but it is far from trouble free. There is the disciplinarian rule of the cane at Bud’s new school, as well as the rigorous mundanity of the teaching (a scene detailing a dictation about erosion is hilarious) and the social Darwinism of the playground. There’s also the fact that Bud’s life away from school is mostly lonely and solipsistic, and the film brings to life his self reliance with real panache and elegance.

Davies has claimed that he aimed to capture ‘the poetry of the ordinary’ with these films, and his greatest achievement in ‘The Long Day Closes’ may be the capturing of a childhood sense of wonder and obsession with detail. There’s a wonderful shot capturing the light changing on a carpet, and as a result the audience sees the regular, ordered aspects of the world through Bud’s inspired, imaginative vision. Another wonderful moment shows Bud and his family in the cinema, with a long tracking shot gradually showing the cinema transforming into a Church, thus neatly highlighting the parallels between the ritualistic aspects of moviegoing and worship. The combination of images as extraordinary as this has a cumulative impact, and the final shot of Bud and his friend gazing out at a darkening sky therefore assumes a genuine grandeur.

Whilst it’s tempting to emphasise the comparative lack of hardship or fear in ‘The Long Day Closes’, the film certainly offers hints of troubles to come. There’s a latent homoeroticism to some of Bud’s observations, and his vivid nightmare indicates a sense of underlying unease. David Thomson has emphasised that the film stops short of the time period that may be the most challenging (although Davies did address the difficulties of his young adulthood in his earlier trilogy of short films), but this is surely exactly what Davies intended. ‘The Long Day Closes’ offers a sense of innocence being eroded that is implied rather than stated, and is all the more effective for this.

The Terence Davies retrospective continues next week at the BFI Southbank.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Female Artistry vs. The Marketing Buzz: A bit more on Feist, Mavis Staples and a crass aside on The Arctic Monkeys

It’s immensely pleasing to report that Feist’s ‘The Reminder’ is every bit as wonderful as the sampler I received two weeks ago suggested. Although it is stylistically scattershot, veering from luxurious pop to a languid jazzy folk not a million miles from Jolie Holland or Erin McKeown, it achieves coherence through the carefully crafted nuances of the arrangements and the compassionate emotional insight of its lyrics. Feist’s vocals are exquisite throughout – technically impressive but beautifully controlled, distinctive but naturalistic and unmannered, frequently as interesting for what they reserve as for what they express. The nearest comparison that springs to my mind is the late great Dusty Springfield, a singer consistently underrated in her lifetime, capable of handling a great variety of material, genuinely soulful and emotionally convincing. Gonzales’ piano is also a crucial ingredient, proving that he is as capable of sophisticated musicality as the outstanding novelty rap pop he produced under his own name.

It’s possible that the sequencing may be an obstacle for some listeners, with the album concluding with its most stately and atmospheric tracks. It’s precisely because of this that the album has a satisfying emotional arc though, and repeated listens draw out its subtleties and textures. If there’s an over-arching theme, it’s love and the machinations of the female heart – well-worn subjects perhaps, but Feist effortlessly invests them with new depth and feeling. In addition to the tracks I’ve already discussed, highlights include the gloriously soulful ballad ‘The Limit To Your Love’, and the vulnerable ‘Intuition’, which ponders the difficulty of knowing which relationships might be the ones that last (‘did I, did I miss out on you?’ she asks at the end, with a hint of genuine sadness and regret). ‘The Water’ and ‘Honey Honey’ are both mysterious and minimal, with Feist’s voice given plenty of space to cast its spell. These songs carry the memories of former love affairs, both unrequited and realised, and the album frequently contrasts the heady rush of young love with the changing feelings that come with age and experience. It’s a beautiful album – at once touching and mesmerising.

Showcasing these songs at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire last week, Leslie Feist also proved herself a compelling stage presence, challenging and entertaining the audience in equal measure. Gigs that consist almost entirely of unreleased material can be problematic (the Kings of Leon performance at Glastonbury 2004 seems a case in point), but this worked brilliantly, due at least in part to the quality of the material, but also ably assisted by the subtle and unusual qualities of her malleable musical ensemble.

Equally brilliant, albeit for very different reasons, is Mavis Staples’ collection of ‘freedom’ songs ‘We’ll Never Turn Back’. This is yet another career resurrection from the outstanding Anti label (also responsible for Solomon Burke’s ‘Don’t Give Up On Me’ and Bettye Lavette’s ‘I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise’). Where the Feist album is reflective, melancholy and restrained, ‘We’ll Never Turn Back’ is fierce, steadfast, gutsy and committed in restating the relevance of these songs beyond the original civil rights movement (in which The Staple Singers of course played a crucial role).

Not content with having produced his own passionate but whimsical vision of a vanished America on ‘My Name is Buddy’, Ry Cooder also lends his considerable talents to this project both as a musician and producer. This record simply sounds wonderful – keeping the gospel spirit of these songs by sticking to traditional instrumentation, but with inventive playing and dynamics that give this powerful material a fresh questing imperative. Cooder’s own contributions on guitar and mandolin are dependably crisp and powerful, but Jim Keltner’s drumming is equally significant. Nobody plays a backbeat with the degree of accuracy that Keltner commands, and he invests each of these songs with a relentless force that, as one of the songs suggests, they will not be moved. ‘Ninety Nine and a Half’ even sounds like it could be a dance track – fusing the spirit of folk, gospel and disco. Cooder’s musical backdrops are a consistent reminder of the close links between the American folk tradition, gospel, blues and soul.

Mavis’ sleevenotes show that she is keenly aware of the social injustices and divisions that still characterise modern America, and there are thinly veiled attacks on the Bush administration throughout this record. Cooder and Staples add lyrics to the traditional songs (‘This Little Light of Mine’ now states ‘ain’t gonna fight in no rich man’s war’) and Staples frequently veers out into long half-spoken, half-sung extemporised sermons. The more sceptical among us might prefer to question Staples’ reliance on the Church in this context (particularly given the evangelical commitment to Bush’s administration), but Staples states her form of Christianity boldly and explicitly (‘My God is a loving God…a merciful God’), and this music has the uplifiting and inspirational qualities of the best gospel music. There’s also real insistence to both form and rhythm here, with repetition playing a strong part in ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ and ‘Turn Me Around’.

Staples has lost some of her power and range in recent years, but in this context, her gritty, emphatic voice, with clear phrasing, sounds just right. The deeper end of her range still has a unique character too, as demonstrated clearly on the title track. This is clearly not just material with which she is familiar, but a collection of songs which can best channel her determination and spiritual commitment. Anyone with even the remotest interest in American cultural and social history should snap this up straight away, but that it also serves as a living, breathing document of America’s current predicament makes it all the more remarkable.

Of course, everyone else is rushing out for the second Arctic Monkeys album. Whilst I have no particular axe to grind against this band, the shape the reviews for this album are taking fascinates me as an example of the more cynical machinations of the music industry. The consensus seems to be that it represents a musical development from the much-lauded debut (not having heard it yet, I can't really judge this), yet it seems to have received a more measured four-star treatment than the hyperbolic five star, best British debut album nonsense heaped upon its predecessor. Paul Morley stated on Newsnight Review that 'Favourite Worst Nightmare' was 'the perfect soundtrack to the self-consciousness of the moment'. What the hell does that mean, Paul? And, yes, of course they were aware that it was their second album when they were making it. If Alex Turner is such a poetic genius, one would also expect him to be able to count. To my ears, 'Brianstorm' is a neat fusion of the limber white-boy funk of Franz Ferdinand with the taut guitar pop of The Libertines. Lyrically, it's characterised by joky rhymes and bad puns. In its observational style, it's hardly all that far removed from something like Blur's 'Charmless Man'. Nothing particularly wrong with any of that, but it's hardly an original vision.

Friday, April 20, 2007

A Song and Dance Man: Dylan Triumphs at Wembley

I’ve been going to Bob Dylan London shows since 2002, and watching with grim fascination as he’s struggled to reinterpret his back catalogue for what has become an undeniably mangled voice. Some of his more ardent followers mourn the loss of the Appalachian subtleties brought to his touring band by guitarists Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton, but thinking back to those shows, they seem more memorable for utterly garbled renditions of ‘Blowing In The Wind’ (with Sexton and Campbell struggling to harmonise with a wayward Dylan) or ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, most of the lyrics rendered incomprehensible with an ambivalent mumble or growl. The softer, delicate arrangements of those days also did little to mask Dylan’s obvious deficiencies.

Not so the Bob Dylan and Band of 2007. Something has undoubtedly been revived in Dylan’s performance since the recording of ‘Modern Times’. Whilst the voice is hardly likely to make a magical recovery, the significant qualities of Dylan’s artistry were always crisp, playful phrasing and a skill for manipulating language and rhythm, rather than the conventions of pitch or timbre. For the first time in what must be many years, these qualities were evident consistently in his shows at Wembley this week. Sunday’s performance came as such a surprise to me that I picked up a ticket for Monday’s show at the last minute from the Wembley box office – an excellent move as it turned out, for Monday’s show was even better. Dylan has, at least temporarily, rediscovered the ability to communicate, and with it, the capacity to move an audience, as was obvious from the rapturous reception from Monday’s crowd particularly.

Although some commentators seem perplexed by it, part of the reason for the increased consistency surely lies in the emphasis on uptempo traditional rhythm and blues over melodic acoustic songs. The hillbilly meets swing and R&B stylings of ‘Modern Times’ provide a much more suitable context for Dylan’s singing (almost like preaching during many of the songs), and also gives his remarkable touring band a chance to spar ferociously, with enviable spontaneity and vigour. Dylan has surely been wise to play six songs from ‘Modern Times’ at each of these shows – he’s clearly committed delivering the material clearly and with feeling, and it allows him to make more judicious forays into his back catalogue.

From the opening lines of ‘Cat’s In The Well’ on Sunday (a slightly perverse opener, but one that actually works well as a curtain-raiser for these shows given its 12 bar form), there’s power and control in Dylan’s delivery. It’s not one of his best songs, but many might opt to read new prescience in its apocalyptic howl (‘Cat’s in the well, and grief is showing its face/The world’s been slaughtered and it’s such a bloody disgrace….Cat’s in the well and the leaves are starting to fall/Goodnight my love and may the lord have mercy on us all’). It sounded propulsive and furious.

What’s proved interesting for many is that Dylan is back on guitar again, for the first time since 2002. He plays four songs on electric Stratocaster, following ‘Cat’s In The Well’ with a chugging, desperate version of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. It’s a song to which he might well have been indifferent on previous tours, now spat out with a newfound confidence and sense of purpose. It’s clear that this is going to be a great show when ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ proves recognisable from its opening lines – there’s no game of ‘guess which song he’s actually singing’ this time round. He ends his four songs on guitar with a blisteringly relentless take on ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, singing the melody entirely on one note, almost rapping, but brilliantly intense. Last time I saw this song performed, the only comprehensible line was ‘even the president of the United States sometimes has to stand naked’, which got a giant cheer, perhaps because the audience had had to wait a good three minutes to work out which song it was. There’s no need for that tonight. Nobody knows exactly why Dylan stopped playing guitar (although the onset of arthritis would seem as likely an explanation as any), but regardless of the superfluity of adding a fourth guitar to the group, returning to the instrument has clearly revitalised him.

He’s then on to keyboards for a snarly, prophetic delivery of ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ and a tender and compassionate reading of ‘Spirit on the Water’ (one of the best of his recent batch of songs). Oddly, it has even more space than the album version, and Denny Freeman (unfairly maligned on Dylan web forums as a poor guitarist for his preference for languid, melodic lines) plays two inspired solos as a result. It swings with a delicate lilt. Dylan’s keyboard playing remains caustic, unorthodox and defiantly off-kilter, and whilst this often works well, I wasn’t quite convinced by the preference for a cheesy Bontempi organ sound over the electric piano used on previous keyboard tours. It did rather make ‘When The Deal Goes Down’ sound like the soundtrack to a fairground carousel ride, perhaps undermining the convincing and affecting vocal performance.

This might just be a retrospective view following Monday’s more intense performance, but there was some degree of deterioration following a crackling ‘Rolling and Tumbling’. A groovy version of ‘Blind Willie McTell’, still relatively rarely performed, and bolstered by multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron’s banjo, enlivened proceedings but, whilst it was a pleasure to hear ‘Chimes of Freedom’ (one of Dylan’s greatest and most complex ‘protest’ songs), he occasionally resorted to the cursed upsinging device at this point. Luckily, an astounding, brilliantly controlled ‘Nettie Moore’, with Herron’s violin adding to the mournful mood, rescued proceedings but things slipped again with a perfunctory ‘Summer Days’ (perhaps surprisingly the only ‘Love and Theft’ song in the set), Dylan forgetting the opening lines to two of the verses (and, if anything, his greater clarity elsewhere made this all the more obvious). ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ provided the standard conclusion, with a rollicking ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ and ‘All Along The Watchtower’ as encores.

At Dylan’s 2005 Brixton show, I was astounded by versions of ‘Shelter From The Storm’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s-A-Gonna Fall’ where all the lines were crisp and clear. The entirety of Monday’s show was performed at this level. It also had the edge of the two shows for the considered judgement of the set list, with a little more variety in pace and dynamic. Whilst there was nothing out of the ordinary for this tour, it was great to get ‘Watching The River Flow’ and a superb ‘John Brown’ (a war song slightly reminiscent of the Irish ballad ‘Mrs. McGrath’, which Springsteen recorded for his Seeger Sessions project last year). I also enjoyed a fiery and almost funky rendition of ‘Ain’t Talkin’ (which replaced ‘Nettie Moore’), with the band sounding particularly tight and inspired.

There was also real interplay and chemistry on display – with Dylan visibly directing the band, seemingly calling on Herron and rhythm guitarist Stu Kimball to play more. This reached its apotheosis with a magnificent, moving version of ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’. Dylan delivered much of the last verse in drawn-out triplets, and the band followed suit in a moment of wonderfully spontaneous group improvisation.

Perhaps it’s because the more animated crowd contributed to the show, inevitably responding ‘Nooooooo!’ when Dylan crooned ‘you think I’m over the hiiiiiillll?’ on ‘Spirit on the Water’, but both singer and band seemed more alive to creative possibilities in this show. Also, Dylan’s posture was less static, and at the keyboards he appeared far less rigid, instead moving in time with the music.

The only real flaw in an otherwise outstanding show was his confusing the lyrics to ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ (‘you used to be…so amused….by the mystery tramp...’ oops!), but again, this simply served to highlight his increased commitment and clarity elsewhere. These were two great shows, delivered with apocalyptic fervour, and constituting a major creative reawakening in the live arena at last. He sang, he even had a little dance.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Inner Child: Panda Bear's 'Person Pitch'

I can remember having quite an in-depth conversation with Emmy the Great about Animal Collective during a car journey from the Brixton Windmill to Camden Town.
I think this must have been around the time the group released ‘Sung Tongs’, something of a leap towards accessibility, but Emmy had their debut album ‘Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished’ on the car stereo. I had ambivalent feelings about this record – whilst it contained flashes of the inspiration the group have since distilled far more successfully, it was also fiercely combative, characterised by noise so high-pitched it induced headaches. I’m all for experimentation, but I wondered whether their electronic interventions need be quite so forced and malevolent. Emmy clearly loved the album, but I feel that the group’s more recent excursions, which have assimilated electronic trickery and improvisation far more comfortably, have proved me right. I haven’t really felt the need to return to that frustrating debut.

Noah Lennox, AKA Panda Bear, is the group’s drummer and singer, and whilst ‘Person Pitch’ is his second solo recording, it’s his first to gather a feverish level of excitement from the cognoscenti. Many are suggesting it is the best record yet from the entire Animal Collective staple. They may well be right. Panda’s debut ‘Young Prayer’ has, with hindsight, been judged as a little confounding and obscure, although I loved its powerful mix of percussive clamour and mantric chanting. ‘Person Pitch’ arguably adopts a much more coherent vision though, weaving infectious melody and even some comprehensible, affecting lyrics into its intoxicating sound collage.

‘Intoxicating’ is a tricky adjective inevitably implying 60s cliché, but despite Lennox’s rejection of mind-altering substances on ‘Take Pills’, this music comes very close to a genuine recreation of the lysergic sounds of the psychedelic era. It’s not just mere homage, as Lennox’s cut and paste use of samples adds a fresh and exciting impetus to the music. If Lennox doesn’t require drugs to achieve this, surely the more interesting it all becomes. The most obvious influence is certainly Brian Wilson, particularly apparent in Lennox’s meticulously crafted harmonies, but there are also hints of The Byrds’ explorations on ‘3D’, The Monkees circa ‘Head’, and in the imaginative collage approach, David Axelrod’s productions for The Electric Prunes.

Many critics described the early Animal Collective material as ‘childlike’, and there’s a sense of awe and discovery here that lends that description weight in an entirely positive sense. The music, constructed almost entirely from samples, is dense and compelling. It has the minimalist ethos of contemporary composition, layering a variety of sounds over what can frequently be reduced to just one chord – it’s far more about texture, mood and atmosphere. This effect is rendered brilliantly on ‘I’m Not’, the album’s summery, swirling centrepiece.

Lyrically, Lennox makes little attempt to avoid straying into whimsy, but this is an intrinsic part of this album’s quirky and endearing charm. On the opening ‘Comfy in Nautica’, he proclaims, with little sense of irony, ‘coolness is having courage’. Well, there’s probably some truth in that sentiment, even if most lyricists would stop short of taking it further than a private notepad. It’s almost as if Lennox is trying to recapture some of the perceptive observations that children can make, many of which get lost in the more mundane routine of adult life.

Lennox creates great impact from altering the mood of his constructions mid-way through. Whilst the 12 minute epic ‘Bros’, daringly released as a single, is hypnotically relentless, it’s the added layers of processed guitars towards the conclusion that elevate the music to a new level. ‘Take Pills’ shifts between a woozy, abstract introduction into something chiming, infectious and almost jaunty. It’s a shift both surprising and satisfying. For all the obvious reference points, ‘Good Girls/Carrots’, another 12 minute epic, is both primitive and disturbingly modern, with its pulsating rhythms borrowed from house music. The tablas that open the track provide this album’s clearest link back to ‘Young Prayer’.

There’s a playful contrast at work between driving rhythms, and the hazy somnambulance of the punctuating mood pieces (particularly ‘I’m Not’ and ‘Search For Delicious’). Lennox arguably saves the simplest, and perhaps the best, for last with ‘Ponytail’. At just two minutes, its brevity comes as welcome relief after the intensity of the album’s main expositions. The lyrics are simple and charming (‘when my soul starts growing, I get so hungry, and I wish it never would stop growing’) It also sounds wonderfully warm, a contented conclusion to a quite remarkable album.

Kurt Vonnegut: 1922 - 2007

It's worth taking some time to mourn the passing, and celebrate the life of one of my American heroes, the great writer Kurt Vonnegut, who has died at the age of 84. Vonnegut had a genius for reducing complex issues and concepts to their starkest, simplest terms and was a master of dry, biting satire. It's perhaps for this reason that he always rejected the 'science fiction' box, although as a scientist-turned-writer, he was in a unique position among the great American writers, and able to highlight the pitfalls of a form of 'progress' that continually threatens to destroy civilisation. As a self-proclaimed progressive socialist and committed member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Vonnegut realised that left wing politics and personal freedom needn't be mutually exclusive, and his experiences as a PoW and of the Dresden bombings also left him a firm pacifist.

Vonnegut was perhaps unique among the great male American writers for his mercilessly concise prose style. The likes of Roth, Updike, Bellow and Ford opted for intentional verbosity, elaborate rants and lengthy sentences. Vonnegut summed up his sentiments in crisp, dry phrases ('So it goes...' etc) and his writing never contained anything extraneous.

Whilst many will remember the superb anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, or perhaps Cat's Cradle or Breakfast of Champions as his best works, it's also worth noting his mastery of the essay and short story forms, as well as his emergence from retirement last year with his extraordinary 'memoir' 'A Man Without A Country' (not so much a memoir as a remarkably cogent and wise summary of where America has gone wrong, and, more impressively, even offering some solutions to put it right). Despite his initial hope for the world turning into pessimism, and his personal battles with depression (he once attempted suicide), Vonnegut still managed to make his allegories and satires blisteringly funny.

It is an extraordinary injustice (and one which we should not begrudge Vonnegut identifying himself in 'A Man Without a Country') that he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. If any writer has better captured the ideals highlighted by the Nobel committee, I've yet to find them.

Many full obituaries will appear in the press over the next few days, but it's surely best to let the man speak for himself. Here are just a few of his edifying statements:

"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon."

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before."

"We are put on earth to fart around, don't let anyone tell you any different."

"I said that only one person on the entire planet benefited from the raid, which must have cost tens of millions of dollars. The raid didn't shorten the war by half a second ... only one person benefited - not two or five or ten. Just one. ... Me. I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that." (1977 Paris interview on the Dresden firebombings)

"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere."

"My last words? 'Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.'"

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. "

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. "

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. "

"Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Identity Parade: Bill Callahan

All this playing with identity is really rather tedious, isn’t it? Following in the pretentious footsteps of Prince and, a more obvious connection, Will Oldham, Bill Callahan has adopted a variety of guises. He started out recording as Smog before rather stubbornly adding parentheses and making the s lower case to become (smog). He has now strangely opted to start using his real name some distance into his career. Aside from the fact that this makes record store managers’ jobs unnecessarily difficult when filing music, what exactly is the change of name meant to signify? Has there been some great change in his songwriting formula? Are there great revelations here that lead to some kind of unmasking or a more intimate, less cynical style? Perhaps (unfairly) he’s become better known as Mr. Joanna Newsom now anyway.

Branding aside, ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’ is his umpteenth album and I have to confess I wasn’t sure I really needed yet another Callahan album in my life. He’s been remarkably consistent, misjudging only with the oblique droning of ‘Rain On Lens’, but his three greatest albums (‘Wild Love’, ‘Knock Knock’ and ‘Supper’) best summarise his main concerns, with everything else simply a bonus. His last album (‘A River Ain’t Too Much To Love’) was dependably good, but didn’t really offer anything fresh or surprising.

After just three listens, I’m already convinced that ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’ is one of those albums reviewers have taken for granted, simply because there’s already a wealth of notable Callahan material out there, and there’ll likely be another one within a couple of years anyway. I suspect the talk of a blunting of his lyrical barbs has been overstated (there might be a line like ‘You bring out the softness in everyone’, but he juxtaposes it with ‘we gather like ravens on a rusty scythe’), but the music has certainly acquired real warmth and attention to detail.

It’s uncharacteristic, given the raw and untamed energy of much of his own music, but perhaps part of the credit for this should go to former Royal Trux guitarist Neil Michael Hagerty, who has been drafted in as producer. It’s also fair to say that this is the most intriguing and expressive group of musicians that Callahan has assembled. The most obvious surprises are provided by Howard Draper’s mournful piano, the unusual backing vocals of Deani Pugh-Flemmings and the neat combination of bass and percussion that underpins the album’s more rhythmic moments.

A handful of the songs stand out among Callahan’s best. ‘Diamond Dancer’ (‘she danced so hard she turned herself into a diamond’) is a sweet and generous song, encapsulated in pithy and concise language, and set to a relentless beat that almost grooves. ‘Night’ begins with Callahan’s hushed vocal set against a lone piano playing a deceptively simple figure slightly reminiscent of REM’s ‘Nightswimming’ – the effect is haunting. There’s also the pleasingly autumnal ‘Sycamore’, with its intertwining guitars, which, to my ears at least, seem slightly out of tune with each other, perhaps intentionally. The all-inclusive closer ‘A Man Needs A Woman or a Man To Be A Man’ emulates the scratchy shuffle of Carl Perkins or Scotty Moore, and features some quite wonderful lyrics. Callahan describes a feminine room, with its ‘legacy of good’ before proceeding to confess that ‘I’m not sure I can uphold it on my own’. The song is brimming with startling firework imagery (‘fireworks are wasted during the day/but I set them off anyway’, ‘and when it’s good and dark/The sky a wet black, like the earth has turned’) and the arrangement swells brilliantly.

Callahan has never been the most melodic of writers, and it’s possible that his half-spoken baritone will remain too much of an acquired taste for the unconverted. Nevertheless, ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’, whilst perhaps more conventional than anything else he’s recorded, is surely in the upper tier of his catalogue – both warm and cerebral, as romantic as it is mordant.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Jogging The Memory: Feist's 'The Reminder'

This isn't a full review, as I've not heard the whole album yet, but I've spent part of this evening listening to a sampler of what looks to be an outstanding second album from Feist. The slow burning popularity of debut 'Let It Die', at least in part due to the appearance of 'Mushaboom' in an ubiquitous advert (but can I remember what the hell it was advertising? No!), might have paved the way for Feist to drift comfortably into the middle of the road.

The opening track on the sampler, and the album's first single ('My Moon My Man'), suggests otherwise. It's pure pop - with its stomping pianos and sultry, expressive vocals. Simultaneously groovy, sexy and seductive, it's one of the the finest singles of the year so far. It also has an absolutely irresistible twangy guitar break. Collaborating with Gonzales, Jamie Lidell and Mocky on this album has predictably directed Feist towards more sophisticated textures and arrangements - much as I like Broken Social Scene, this is about as far away from their sound as it's possible to get.

The five tracks on this disc neatly encapsulate the diversity at the heart of 'The Reminder' - each track takes a radically different approach, but coherence is achieved through the distinctive tones of Feist's vocals and the emphasis on melody. '1234' is also brilliant - another pure pop song for sure, but one that dares to feature banjo and brass without drifting into folk pastiche. It sounds fresh and exciting, and also features some splendid honky tonk piano (presumably from the talented Gonzales).

'Sealion' built on a sample of a Nina Simone chant, has relentless rhythmic drive and an infectious energy that is sure to be a highlight of this month's live shows. It's propelled by layered handclaps, vocals and, again, some superb twangy guitar playing. 'I Feel It All' is similarly joyous, but perhaps a little more conventional in its arrangement, characterised more by strumming guitars this time. It's the layering of the vocals that works superbly here, and when they are set against the delicate chime of a glockenspiel, the effect is particularly charming. The dreamy romanticism of 'The Park', apparently inspired by London's open spaces, is enchanting and its acoustic rustles and plucks work a subtle, spacey magic. I'm not entirely convinced by the birdsong backdrop though - that seems like a rather obvious and unnecessary flourish.

Feist has juxtaposed a vast array of influences with real panache here, creating an amalgam that sounds exciting and intriguing, all dominated by her vocals, which are stronger and more creative here than on 'Let It Die'. Sadly, this sampler does not reveal whether there are any inspired interpretations to rival her take on The Bee Gees 'Inside and Out' or Ron Sexsmith's 'Secret Heart'. It's clear, however, that she has more than enough inspiration of her own this time around. Slowly but surely, Leslie Feist seems to be drifting into serious artistic and creative territory - there's plenty of evidence here to suggest that she could become as singular and unusual a female talent as Bjork. Can't wait for the Shepherd's Bush Empire show now!

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Against The Grain: Subtle Shifts from Kings of Leon and Low

When I interviewed Kings of Leon at Glastonbury 2003, they proved themselves tedious and frustrating interviewees. Barely able to get more than cursory one word answers out of them, I concluded that they probably had little of interest to say anyway. Admittedly, this probably was not helped by the fact that I was directed to limit my questioning to the festival (by my people not theirs!), but I couldn’t escape the view that they set out deliberately to obfuscate their unwitting and inexperienced interrogator. Their set, extraordinarily second only to the headliners (I think it was Oasis that night), did little more to convince me of their value. Debuting new material, but with little passion or conviction, they sounded tired, and already bored with that terribly unpleasant business of playing music to over 100,000 people.

Much has happened in the intervening years to force me into changing my mind. The album that followed that perfunctory Glastonbury set (‘Aha Shake Heartbreak’) turned out to be a vast improvement on their debut, channelling the spirit of Southern country rock with an electric charge drawn straight from the blues. The focus became less on the media spin (their supposed family status, their preacher father, the mysterious Angelo, who may or may not be the creative force behind the band) and more on the kinetic music they were creating, at last justifying the blitz of hype.

Again produced by Ethan Johns (also responsible for Ryan Adams’ ‘Heartbreaker’ among other substantial works) and the aforementioned Angelo, ‘Because of the Times’, poor grammar of the title notwithstanding, is another big step forward. The group have succeeded here in creating a big rock album, inspired as much by The Pixies as Led Zeppelin or Lynyrd Skynyrd, that sounds organic and fresh whilst remaining steeped in the rich history of rock and roll.

Real attention has been paid to the sound of this record. Although it’s still based firmly on a raw, ‘live band’ template, there’s plenty of attention to detail in the arrangements. Guitar lines are carefully interwoven, and the bulk of the songs are built on the sturdy foundations of Jared and Nathan Followill’s crisp basslines and strangely funky drumming. Also used to its full capacity as an instrument is the gritty voice of Caleb Followill which, increasingly versatile in its impact, ranges from the sincerely affecting to the caustic and visceral. Even though his lyrics sometimes seem like a string of bizarre non-sequiturs, he manages to twist the words into powerful and compelling vignettes.

There’s also a surprising level of diversity in the music, and a handful of the songs require a few listens before they really take root. There’s the slow-burning epic opener ‘Knocked Up’, which along with the crunching single ‘On Call’ and ‘Trunk’ deploys atmospherics effectively. ‘Knocked Up’ also veers quite brilliantly between it’s minimal, brooding verses and its powerful, extrovert choruses. Perhaps most unexpected of all is the deliciously groovy ‘My Party’, which quite comfortably beats the likes of Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys at their own wiry, angular game. The explosive ‘Charmer’ is a direct hotline to The Pixies’ ‘Debaser’, although it comes across as homage rather than copycat plagiarism. The superbly titled ‘McFearless’ is both relentless and compelling.

Lyrically, Caleb still devises some peculiar and occasionally uncomfortable metaphors (I particularly like ‘Girl, you’re wanted like a wanted man’ and ‘she shakes like the morning railway’) – perhaps he’s still trying to be a little too clever. When he’s direct, the results are much better. ‘True Love Way’ is a blistering account of frustrated lust (‘She’s a cold one and it hurts me so/ It’s a dark path and a heavy toll’), and, by way of contrast, the protagonist of ‘Black Thumbnail’, whilst deeply affected by beauty, seems afraid of love (‘my cold cold sailor heart says get on your way/I ain’t too proud to say but that’s how I’m made/I’ll be that person til my dying day/I try so awful hard but I can’t change’). Best of all is ‘Knocked Up’ which, as many other commentators have observed, seems like the masculine counterpart to Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, with its young lovers determined to keep their child.

There certainly seems to be much more depth here than on the previous albums, both lyrically and musically. KoL seem to be that rare breed of band – in an era where the earth shattering debut album seems to be all or nothing, and where time is most definitely not on a band’s side, they are slowly maturing and coming good.

Perhaps only the most ardent of Low fans will jump for joy at the prospect of yet another album from this most regular and dependable of bands. Like its predecessor (‘The Great Destroyer’), ‘Drums and Guns’ comes with plenty of talk of a change in direction. The last album actually heralded nothing of the sort, it was simply a heavier, louder take on the same furrow Low have been ploughing for years. ‘Drums and Guns’ arguably offers much more in the way of surprises. Whilst it retains the key elements of Low’s trademark sound – the stark minimalism, the stately tempos and the mellifluous harmonies from Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker (it’s hard to think of two other voices in the contemporary pop landscape that connect so beautifully with each other)- it also adds striking new elements . There are delicate electronic percussion interventions, ambient sound, and a variety of keyboards that shift the emphasis away from rudimentary beaten toms and strumming guitars.

‘Drums and Guns’ is certainly a grower, which coming from a group that is slow burning at the best of times may not exactly be a selling point. The majority of Low albums do have some moments of real immediacy though – a ‘Just Like Christmas’, ‘Dinosaur Act’ or ‘That’s How You Sing Amazing Grace’, for instance. There’s nothing remotely comparable here. It’s not helped by the fact that it starts terribly, with ‘Pretty People’ pitting Sparhawk and Parker against a rather uninteresting backdrop of mundane droning feedback. ‘All the soldiers are gonna die/All the little babes, they’re all gonna die’ they sing, rather portentously, suggesting that ‘Drums and Guns’ will wear its theme of a violent and corrupt world rather obviously on its sleeve (the inlay even features arty photographs of, well, drums…and guns).

Mercifully, things get a lot better very quickly. ‘Belarus’ and ‘Breaker’ are two of Low’s quirkiest tracks to date, and given that the entire album is helmed by Dave Fridmann (who has certainly been guilty of superficiality in some of his previous productions), it’s remarkable how subtle and effective the electronics are here. They add an additional layer of mystery and intrigue to this sombre and reflective music. ‘Dragonfly’ is elegant and haunting, as the group so often are. The work that these tracks most remind me of is REM’s criminally underrated ‘Up’, where the band found a new texture and context for their melodic and harmonic sensibilities. The arrival of new bassist Matt Livingston also seems to have heralded a greater reliance on lower tones and pulsating bass lines.

The two most striking tracks are ‘Always Fade’ and ‘Hatchet’, not least because they represent the closest this defiantly slow group has ever come to producing something uptempo. The latter, with its punctuating guitar figures, brazenly melodic vocals and stuttering beat even reminds me a little of Hot Chip circa ‘Coming on Strong’.

Although there is a somewhat murky period after the shock of ‘Hatchet’ (where individual songs do seem to blur into one a little) the album does coalesce both thematically and musically as it progresses. What emerges by the superb conclusion (‘Murderer’ and ‘Violent Past’ are both album highlights) is a sinister, downbeat and very pessimistic world view, both personal and political. ‘Murderer’ is a particularly striking song in the current climate, with its protagonist offering one last service to God ‘before I go’, suggesting ‘you may need a murderer to do your dirty work’. It’s powerful and edgy.

This album seems to have divided opinion as to whether it’s one of the group’s more challenging or accessible ventures, which is odd, given that it clearly can’t be both. I feel it’s comfortably the most difficult of their recent albums, and probably closer in spirit to ‘Trust’ than ‘Secret Name’ or ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’. It is frequently audacious though, where Low albums tend to stick to their very particular comfort zone. They are now finding new ways to sustain a long-term musical career, and ‘Drums and Guns’ is characterised by a new boldness and confrontational vision.