Friday, August 29, 2008

Too Much Information?

Bloc Party - Intimacy

In this weekend’s Observer, Kitty Empire suggested that ‘Intimacy’ might eventually be remembered as the classic Bloc Party album. For me, this is proof that Bloc Party are being too readily indulged. I do not share Kitty’s confidence that this album will stand up to much critical scrutiny even in five years’ time. I fear Bloc Party might actually be destined to be a prime example of the short shelf life of so many British bands once rashly trumpeted as original creative masters.

Production duties are split between Paul Epworth, who produced the group’s excellent debut ‘Silent Alarm’ and Jacknife Lee, producer of the flawed but interesting ‘A Weekend In The City’. What we essentially get here is a concise juxtaposition of the concerns of both previous Bloc Party albums. Lee here once again overcooks his tracks to within an inch of their lives, whilst Epworth aims at a more polished version of that potent punch the band packed at the earliest stage of their development. On the worst moments of ‘Intimacy’, the band is simply trying far too hard. Even at its best, this is often merely another covering of ground this band has already traversed.

For the most part, this is an atavistic and cold album that doesn’t match the thematic preoccupations implied by its title. The opening ‘Ares’ is clearly intended as a bold statement of intent – some kind of declaration of the group’s radical experimentalism. For all its transparent intentions though, ‘Ares’ is a very inauspicious start. Unfortunately, it sounds exactly like The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Setting Sun’, a record released more than ten years ago. The band throws every gimmicky noise and production trick at the wall here in the hope that something will stick. Okereke’s shouty vocals help render the track unbearable, and it’s hard to believe that he’s thrown the line ‘get fucked up!’ into the song, even if it is ironic rather than sincere. ‘Mercury’ tries similar tactics with more coherence – the brass sounds are menacing and confrontational and that repeated processed vocal successfully straddles that fine line between insistent and irritating. Some of the more conventional moments, with a taut and precise sound (‘One Month Off’ particularly) end up sounding worryingly close to Green Day.

Many critics have found Kele Okereke’s romanticism clunky and ham-fisted, but I initially welcomed the prospect of ‘Intimacy’ moving to the personal after the less than incisive socio-political analysis of its predecessor. The warmth and candour of tracks such as ‘I Still Remember’ and ‘Kreuzberg’ from that album made more impact on me than the ugly rantings of ‘Uniform’ or ‘Hunting for Witches’. Yet Okereke’s preoccupation with sex here comes across as rather dislikeable and self-pitying. ‘I’m sleeping with people I don’t even like!’ he bellows triumphantly on ‘Mercury’. Well, why are you doing that exactly? The psychological aspects of sex and sexuality can be fascinating and important subject matter (as the films ‘Shortbus’ and ‘Lust, Caution’ have recently proved) but statements without analysis lack depth or interest and ultimately come across as shallow.

There’s obviously genuine feeling here – some of the lyrics seem to be focussed on bringing a lost lover back from the dead - but all this soul-bearing often doesn’t seem to get beyond basic cliché (‘the world isn’t kind to little things’). Sometimes it’s just completely cringe-inducing. The lyrics that open ‘Trojan Horse’ - ‘you used to take your watch off, before we made love, you didn’t want to share our time with anyone’ - don’t even make much sense. You could reasonably remove a watch so as not to be aware of time during sex but how exactly does wearing one mean you’re sharing that time with someone else? It’s all rather perplexing and the image of a Jarvis Cocker-esque voyeur hiding in the cupboard monitoring the duration of Okereke’s erotic activities is not a particularly pleasant one.

For me, the album works best when the group grasps for a musical delicacy to correspond to these windows into Okereke’s private sphere. ‘Ion Square’ is a brooding, minimal, slow-building epic that at least has some sense of mood and atmosphere. ‘Signs’, with its pulsating heartbeat and lightly percussive backbone, represents a genuine and positive diversion from the band’s back catalogue but its determinedly linear and repetitive structure prevents it from ever really taking flight. I need to listen to the bizarre electro-choral beast that is ‘Zephryus’ a bit more – I can’t decide whether it’s the boldest track here or an example of insufferable pretension. The choir is certainly not as incorporated as effortlessly as Bjork managed with ‘Vespertine’ (incidentally, a record so often unfairly dismissed as cold and uninvolving – but so much more intimate and moving than this). One thing I certainly admire about this track is the restraint the group exercise. Whereas the dark, mysterious atmosphere of ‘Better Than Heaven’ is destroyed by an all-too-predictable explosion of drums and guitars, ‘Zephyrus’ maintains its dreamlike but detached poise. ‘Biko’, so incongruously titled as to be offensive and nothing to do with the Peter Gabriel song, is sweet-sounding and vulnerable, although the entry of programmed beats quickly and irrevocably punctures its serenity.

Whether they are attempting to craft something edgy or affecting, the Bloc Party sound could now benefit from a brighter, more naturalistic treatment. The drums are transformed into a dull thud with every trace of natural resonance removed – whilst the additional effects so often seem tacked on as an afterthought to give the impression that the group are either innovative or uniquely open-minded. The band and their producers are clearly thinking very hard about drama and atmosphere but when the tracks are so over-produced, it’s hard to find the original feeling or spark. Ultimately, there is nothing here that the band didn’t capture with greater power and clarity on ‘Silent Alarm’, mostly doing so without resorting to trickery.

Unfortunately, with his voice more exposed here than on previous Bloc Party albums, Okereke is revealed as a dull and imaginative vocalist, perhaps a bigger problem than the poor quality of his poetry. When he’s not plagiarising from The Cure, he’s repeating his own tricks. Many of the melodies here sound regurgitated from previous Bloc Party songs (sometimes the music follows his lead – ‘One Month Off’ repeats the dual guitar assault of ‘Helicopter’). His range is limited and his sense of timing and phrasing curiously lacking. Sometimes he stretches syllables to fit the melodies in a way that sounds unmusical and forced. Too often, his lyrics simply do not scan. Whilst no-one will approach a Bloc Party record in search of diva acrobatics, they might reasonably expect some form of expression to match the album’s clearly stated theme and certainly something more than the same notes endlessly reformulated.

Some reviews will no doubt herald the band’s toughening of their sound, and the addition of new elements from the worlds of electronica and even hip hop. Beneath the surface gimmicks though, ‘Intimacy’ really presents a band that has run out of ideas. Even the most energetic, aggressive moments here somehow sound sterile. ‘Halo’ should hit all the right buttons with its attacking barrage of guitars but it comes across as more calculated than spontaneous. Perhaps ‘Signs’ and ‘Zephyrus’ offer some positive signals for the group but they clearly ought to have taken more time to develop these new paths. Okereke often seems articulate and persuasive in interview but currently seems incapable of reproducing that intelligence on disc. This is also a remarkably one-dimensional view of human intimacy – one which emphasises intensity, trauma and dependency rather than fun and mutual fulfilment. Perhaps that's another reason why, for all its grand designs, 'Intimacy' is something of an anticlimactic letdown.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Two For The Price Of One

School of Language – Sea From Shore
The Week That Was – The Week That Was (Memphis Industries, 2008)


It would be tremendously gratifying if this intriguing new business model from Peter and David Brewis, the lead creative brains behind Field Music, were to be as fruitful and influential as what has become known as ‘doing a Radiohead’. Despite praise from critics and bloggers, the Brewis brothers recognised that Field Music had failed to become an economical proposition and put the band on extended hiatus shortly after the release of the outstanding ‘Tones of Town’ album last year. I initially had the group unfairly cast as a poor man’s Futureheads, whereas they were actually a much more inventive and maverick proposition than that – their songs crisp and melodic but full of unexpected twists and turns.

Now the brothers have worked on separate projects, both conceptually and musically self-contained whilst sharing some common character traits. Whilst the (possibly temporary) demise of Field Music is something to mourn, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes we now have two examples of that increasingly rare beast – imaginative and enjoyable British indie-rock. By refocusing on writing and studio recording as opposed to fruitless touring, the Brewis brothers are playing to their considerable strengths.

Released this week to a surprisingly appreciative fanfare, Peter Brewis’ contribution to the new Field Music Productions banner as The Week That Was is clearly benefiting from the lion share of the press attention. I was certainly pleasantly surprised by the featured album of the month review in the current edition of Mojo, which should at least give the album’s sales a small boost. What a shame it has emerged too late for the Mercury Music Prize shortlist.

It would seem a pity that in finally coming to these projects a little late in the day, the music press condemn the other contribution, David Brewis’ School of Language, to relative obscurity. Released back in early February, but something I’ve delayed digesting properly until recently, it’s one of 2008’s unassuming treasures (and one that was probably never on the radar of anyone judging this year’s Mercury, much to the shortlist’s detriment).

Brewis largely recorded the album solo, playing a bewildering array of instruments to an impressive degree of proficiency. There are numerous appealing melodies peppered throughout this record, which more than demonstrate Brewis’ pop sensibility, but his wilfully subversive streak usually seems to win out. There’s a skittering, tetchy, nervy and unsettled feeling to many of these tracks – but Brewis manages to turn his short attention span into a virtue.

This is mainly because the album, whilst concise, is meticulously structured and composed. The four parts of the splendid ‘Rockist’ suite, with its consistent underpinning vocal sample and clattering percussion, serve as supportive bookends for the generally more abstract music found across the rest of the album. In between, there are signs of more pastoral leanings on ‘Marine Life’ and ‘Ships’, and an intelligent discipline on ‘Keep Your Water’ which stays subtle and restrained for four minutes until some deranged guitar improvising finally breaks through.

The almost ludicrous arrangements of ‘Disappointment 99’ and ‘This Is No Fun’ are, like much of Field Music’s best work, strongly reminiscent of the quirky drama of XTC, although the latter has interruptions of something more lavish and grand – perhaps Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips. It’s clear that Brewis is an acute and clever musician, brimming with ideas and rapidly developing the means by which to express them.

Download Peter Brewis’ contribution as The Week That Was from iTunes, and the bonus track reveals a remarkable similarity in conception and construction to that of his brother. The extra track, The Week That Was Overture, essentially takes small segments from the album’s tracks and rearranges them, with remarkable ease, into a complete whole. There are sounds and thematic preoccupations to which Brewis returns throughout the work, which give it something of a crafted, composed and arranged quality.

It has a slightly different personality from the School of Language album though, the emphasis here being on 80s production techniques, big drums and spiky string arrangements. An obvious reference point is that big Fairfisa/Fairlight Peter Gabriel 3 sound, although my girlfriend also astutely spotted hints of Simple Minds’ big hits (in fact, the intro of ‘Scratch the Surface’ more than closely resembles ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’). It would be unfair to categorise this simply as an 80s throwback though. The percussive textures of ‘It’s All Gone Quiet’ give yet another example of the pervading influence of Reichian minimalism on pop music, whilst the longer tracks clustered around the album’s centre are more languid and dreamy.

Brewis brings a distinctive energy, restlessness and craftsmanship to this finely tuned patchwork. It’s particularly interesting to hear string parts deployed more for their staccato rhythmic effect than for swooning emotional manipulation. Indeed, if it’s possible to find a reason to criticise both Brewis’ work, it’s that there are occasions when they sound a little coldly rational. Fortunately, there are enough infectious tunes on both albums to compensate for this tendency. ‘Scratch The Surface’ and ‘Good Life’ on The Week That Was are especially irresistible.

‘The Week That Was’ is ostensibly a concept album about the media and its insidious role in society. This is hardly a new theme and perhaps also a little clunky, but given the recurring themes of the music (this is much more a song cycle than collection of isolated songs), it makes sense that there is an ideological preoccupation gluing it all together.

What’s so impressive about the Brewis Brothers is the way that a single expression of a good idea is never enough for them. They always seem to be striving to develop every motif and technique and build from them consistent threads that make their work coherent in spite of its inherent quirkiness and unpredictability. I actually think that, of these two records, the School of Language one is marginally more interesting, but the greater immediacy of The Week That Was may make it the more commercially viable. There’s a real ambition and creative mania at work here that separates the Brewises from their contemporaries, most of whom seem to be merely treading water.

Although the Brewises are quite stubborn in emphasising the virtues of studio recordings over live performances, both projects have now been taken into the live arena and next week’s Barfly gig (August 28th) featuring both groups on the same bill promises to be something special.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Almost Normal

David Byrne and Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (Download Only from http://www.everythingthathappens.com 2008)

A new collaboration between David Byrne and Brian Eno, the first since the groundbreaking ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ in 1981, ought to be a significant event in the 2008 musical calendar. Perhaps following the Radiohead model, or maybe playing their own version of the modern music marketing game, Byrne and Eno have released this new album via their own website, a matter of a couple of weeks after announcing its completion. The publicity machine is now trying to catch up. I still see this as a massively positive development in the industry – so many bands languish in artistic frustration and boredom when compelled to fall in line with ‘record company schedules’, and then end up touring an album some three years after they actually completed the material. The only problem is that it’s only established, internationally renowned artists who have the financial and creative freedom to do this – the conventional music industry is hardly going to disappear tomorrow.

Those expecting something subversive and challenging in the manner of ‘…Bush of Ghosts’ will come away from this album disappointed. In its least effective moments, it actually sounds dated where ‘…Ghosts’ still sounds remarkably radical. It’s very much a song-based album, whereby Eno sent musical sketches to Byrne, who penned lyrics and melodies and developed them into songs. Eno’s music is decidedly conservative, in spite of the use of electronics. There is no unusual harmony and no alien, unfamiliar sounds. Beneath the burbling, gurgling and occasionally clunky drum programming, there’s actually rather a lot of very conventional guitar playing. One begins to appreciate how comfortable Eno must have been working with the likes of Coldplay, U2 and James.

This doesn’t mean that it’s a record bereft of value or virtue though. Songcraft remains an artform as much as it is a format, and sometimes the combination of Eno’s comforting sounds and Byrne’s lyrical and melodic sensibility does indeed produce something artful. Eno has spoken articulately about the influence of gospel music on this material, not so much as a means of praise and devotion, but as a ‘music of surrender’. On the quietly moving title track and the stirring ‘The River’, it’s easy to hear this appealing theory whirring into action. Eno’s textures, if no longer original, are at least characteristically mesmerising. Even better, the concluding ‘The Lighthouse’, easily the most mysterious and enchanting track of this set, is compelling without ever loudly voicing its intent. Byrne’s intriguing words add a sense of awe and wonder to Eno’s shimmering sounds. It’s a song in which one can slowly, almost imperceptibly drown.

Sometimes it seems as if the gospel foundation leads the pair into rather uncomfortable cliché. Another hymnal song called ‘One Fine Day’ hardly adds anything new to the popular music canon (Elbow have traversed very similar ground already this year with their terrace anthem ‘One Day Like This’). ‘Home’ and ‘My Big Nurse’ begin the album on a strangely underwhelming manner, both tracks sounding safe and secure, but lacking any real sense of adventure. Perhaps that’s necessary, at least in the first example, to underline the themes, but it’s unusual to hear Byrne sounding so unengaging.
The tracks with the most immediate impact are those where Byrne’s recurring preoccupations cut through. It’s easy to see why the lithe funk of ‘Strange Overtones’ was selected as a taster – it’s infectious and immediate without being saccharine. More inventive is the outstanding ‘Poor Boy’ which, with its series of chants, is the only moment here where Byrne’s interest in music from around the globe really becomes transparent. For all the talk of gospel, Eno’s preoccupations seem resolutely stuck within a western pop tradition for much of this set. Even the weird and wonderful ‘I Feel My Stuff’, a little more unpredictable and adventurous, is closer to Radiohead or the REM of ‘Up’ than anything Byrne might release through Luaka Bop.

Perhaps this method of detached collaboration, which worked so fruitfully for Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard as The Postal Service (with all due respect, two lesser creative talents), has not worked quite so consistently for Byrne and Eno. ‘Everything That Happens…’ is intermittently fascinating, but never quite as imaginative as expectation might dictate. Those who have already heaped knee-jerk praise on it are arguably indulging Eno’s middle-aged comfort zone. He’s not really pushing himself compositionally here – there’s not much experimentation with either form or content.

Byrne, by way of contrast, is continuing to push himself vocally, stretching his range, tone and quality of sound. He is getting the most out of that quirky vulnerability that people either love or loathe and really using his voice as an instrument. He elevates every track here, sometimes to the extent that Eno’s wispy blandness is superseded by something much more arresting. On this evidence his next solo step, freed from these constrictions, ought to be worth some investment.

Friday, August 15, 2008

An Impressive Cast

Okkervil River - The Stand-Ins (Jagjaguwar, 2008)

Sometimes I associate particular bands or specific albums with times and places. Okkervil River, about whom I’ve enthused rapturously here several times, are inexorably linked with my visit to Toronto, where I purchased their outstanding ‘Black Sheep Boy’ album on a whim (mostly because I adore the Tim Hardin song that inspired it). That album, with its literary brand of songwriting, made virtues out of melodrama and excess, in a way that the more photogenic and well-promoted Conor Oberst clearly aspires to but, for me at least, never quite achieves. ‘The Stand-Ins’, with its frequent allusions to band life and being on tour, is clearly an album intended to be divorced from specific locations, if not from memories.

Last year’s ‘The Stage Names’ again demonstrated Will Sheff’s presentation of songs as miniature novels – squeezing in a wealth of intelligent musings, quirky images and elaborate character portraits. Musically, it was a different beast though – at times veering into a more upbeat and exuberant stomp. ‘The Stand-Ins’ is a collection of songs recorded at the same time but then shelved when it was decided a double album would be too great an indulgence. It’s clearly very much a companion piece, revisiting some of the characters and themes first introduced in ‘The Stage Names’, particularly the acting/movie concept, seafaring imagery and emphasis on songs about being in a band (Sheff shares a lot of songwriting qualities and characteristics with Craig Finn of The Hold Steady). 'Starry Stairs' even continues the story of 'Savannah Smiles' from the previous album.

The initial reaction on the blogosphere seems to be one of mild disappointment, at least when ‘The Stand Ins’ is judged by the band’s so far consistently high standards. On the surface, it’s easy to see the reasons for this. At 40 minutes, including three instrumental interludes, it’s surprisingly concise and there’s little doubt that the group have moved towards something more musically accessible. The Motown stomp that informed a couple of tracks on ‘The Stage Names’ is in full flight here, and ‘Starry Staired’ even flirts with Memphis soul horns.

I’m not underwhelmed by this articulate, moving and intelligently designed record though. If Sheff’s linguistic intricacies can find a wider audience, I’m all in favour of a greater reliance on standard melodies and immediate hooks. His lyrics here are frequently wonderful, often capturing something melancholy or poignant with free-flowing ease. ‘On Tour With Zykos’ movingly details the emotions of a lover left-behind as the touring band move on.

Closer to home perhaps, ‘Lost Coastlines’, on which Sheff duets with the now- departed Jonathan Meiburg, is particularly affecting. The two deploy shipping metaphors to express the inherent difficulties in keeping a band together. Meiburg’s smooth but charismatic baritone makes for some restrained relief from Sheff’s emoting. The final lines sum up life in a band succinctly and perceptively: ‘Every night finds us rocking and rolling on waves wild and wide, and if we’ve lost our way, well no-one’s gonna say it outright.’ When strings and horns enter in the song’s final section, it seems to elevate the song to something vivid and dramatic, but which also emphasises the song’s mournful core.

Sometimes the lyrics are so cutting and insightful that they jar with the jauntiness of the music. The contrast is surprisingly effective on ‘Calling and Not Calling My Ex’, where Sheff ruminates eloquently on resuming contact with an ex from three years ago who has progressed to celebrity status (‘you look the same on TV as when you were mine’). The music veers between a familiar chiming theme and moments of reflective calm.

It’s a song full of hypothetical conjectures, resentment and devastating regret – the sort of intense but futile emotions that are very common human failings. He imagines the girl’s sudden return: ‘…it’s a mixture of dumb jealousy and fear/that I might feel should she appear…as if it hasn’t been three years’. The song is made even more touching because it keeps one rational eye on a more uneventful, mundane reality (life is ‘slightly, disappointingly, just gliding by’). It ends with an inevitable resignation: ‘I remember every instance that you stung me, oh you’re so lovely, you’re so smart/ So go turn their heads, go knock ‘em dead, go break their hearts/And I know you will’. For all his self-absorbtion and self-pity, it’s hard not to sympathise with Sheff’s character’s pain, so artful is his expression of it.

Perhaps most powerful of all is the epic closing track, with its rather unmanageable title: ‘Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979’. Cambell was apparently a gay glam rock artist, whose star shone only briefly, eventually reduced to singing cabaret at parties as Cole Berlin. Suffering from AIDS, he committed suicide in 1983. The song has Campbell weakened, drinking on his own and ‘sick of singing the same songs’. The song’s conclusion would be absurdly grandiose in any other hands, with Campbell being lifted into space (presumably reflecting his thematic preoccupation with aliens).

Elsewhere, Sheff’s concerns are less weighty. ‘Singer Songwriter’ is the kind of snarling character assassination of which the young Bob Dylan could be proud (indeed, there’s more than a hint of ‘Positively 4th Street’ in the song’s nursery rhyme melody and insistent rhythm). ‘I saw your big sis on the year’s best book list/and your brother he manages bands’ Sheff rasps dismissively, before sneering ‘you’ve got wealth, you’ve got wealth/ What a bitch, they didn’t give you much else!’. The song surprises at its end by turning inward – with its cry of ‘your world isn’t gonna change nothing’ subtly becoming ‘our world isn’t gonna change nothing’, as if Sheff is condemning himself alongside his target. This self-reverential irony crops up again on ‘Pop Lie’, a song cynically sniping at songs with choruses designed to get people to sing along. The song itself of course has something approaching a singalong chorus, and a relentless energy that suggests unshakeable conviction.

Sometimes it’s the sheer combination of words Sheff uses that is most imaginative, from the ‘cuts from the Kinks’ on ‘Singer Songwriter’ to this wonderfully florid passage from ‘Lost Coastlines’: ‘Is that marionette real enough yet to step off that set and decide what a dance might mean to it’. Then there’s the conflicting emotions of ‘On Tour With Zykos’, with Sheff convincing in female character – ‘how come I shout goodbye when I just want to make this white lie big enough to climb inside with you’. It gets even better ‘I’m in disgust with desire from the guys who conspire at the only decent bar in town/and they wish they had me like I wish I had fire, what a sad way to be…’ It’s all observed with piercing clarity, but also with disarming tenderness and sensitivity.

Sheff has discovered ways and means of hitting all the right buttons with his arrangements, particularly with swelling strings and horns, that mean his ambitions are no longer forced or overwraught. He always uses the additional instruments to animate the sentiments and feelings of his songs. Listen to the way the organ subtly shadows the piano during ‘On Tour With Zykos’, before dramatically taking the lead as the song takes flight and then itself giving way to the strings.

There will some who will dislike the glimmer of light that fights against the melodramatic darkness the group communicated circa ‘Black Sheep Boy’. They may also dislike the fact that Sheff’s linguistic imagination has been fitted neatly into a crisper, more coherent musical template. But these songs are so much more than mere Motown pastiches – they are as much alive with America’s literary tradition as with its rich pop music heritage. His cast of recurring characters is as reminiscent of Raymond Carver as Bruce Springsteen.

This has been a long review, but Sheff writes songs that can be listened to repeatedly, with language that wraps itself around you and absorbs you completely. They cannot easily be summarised and paraphrased. Something new will emerge from his words and music with every play. This is a glorious record that, for all its emphasis on character and disguise, is very much filled with real life and real feeling. It shines a rare spotlight on those left behind or cruelly ignored, and even undercuts the self-aggrandising image of those putting on the whole show.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Death and All His Friends

Noah and The Whale - Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down (Mercury, 2008)

‘Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down’ is not exactly the kind of enthusiastic, life-affirming title you might expect from a debut album by a group barely into their twenties. Noah and the Whale’s songwriter Charlie Fink is clearly a little more precocious than Tim Wheeler or Gaz Coomes were in the mid-90s. The chirpy optimism of songs along the lines of ‘Alright’ or ‘Girl From Mars’ clearly don’t chime with him.

The twee bubblegum folk of their top ten single ‘5 Years’ Time’ is therefore more than a little misleading of what can be found here. Fink’s biggest themes would appear to be death and a rather self-conscious flight from whatever real love might be. Sometimes his words are eloquent, sometimes they feel forced – as if he’s grasping too hard at profundity. He might be leaving himself very exposed to accusations of cynicism with lyrics like ‘if there’s any love in me don’t let it show’ – but he can be forgiven the occasional lapse into adolescent pretence (especially, as he later asks, in all sincerity ‘when will your hand find itself in mine?’).

Whilst it might risk becoming an albatross around their necks, one can hardly resent the band from leaping to pop status on the back of ‘5 Years Time’. Odd, though, that they have very suddenly eclipsed all their associates in what is increasingly being dubbed as a London arm of the ‘anti-folk’ scene (the group began as backing band for Emmy The Great). The genre classification may in fact be less than helpful. I’m not quite sure what the indie-tronica of Jeremy Warmsley has to do with the ramshackle irreverence of Jeffrey Lewis, for example. Indeed, the reliance on basic strumming patterns as much as plucked ukuleles suggests the folk tag is a little too slippery for NaTW too. Although fiddle player Tom Hobden has clearly absorbed a great deal of the tradition, there are times when the band seems more Belle and Sebastian than Richard Thompson.

The first two-thirds of this album are, in spite of Fink’s preoccupations, mostly concise and breezy pop songs. They are at their best when they make features of Hobden’s incisive fiddle, or of Doug Fink’s unorthodox but sympathetic drumming (at its most brittle and sensitive, his playing assumes as crucial a role as any other instrument here). Even better, the songs are occasionally elevated by further brass embellishments, which emphasise the inherent joy beneath Fink’s self-absorbtion. ‘Shape of My Heart’ and ‘Give a Little Love’ are especially charming.

However, the true extent of what this band might eventually achieve only really emerges during the album’s finishing straight. The title track places Charlie’s slightly mannered voice in its most sympathetic context, and at last his desire to escape the circus of relationships and conveyor belts seems genuine, in spite of some rather unsightly rhymes (‘abrasions/ ‘quotations’ etc). When the song eventually bursts open with Hobden’s delightful violin theme, it achieves something simple but stirring.

On ‘Mary’, Fink allows himself to be a little more elusive and ambiguous and the results are affecting even if it’s not easy to pin down precisely why. The lyric ‘When I last saw Mary she lied and said it was her birthday’ has stuck with me since I first saw the group live, and I’m glad it’s made it on to the album. This song and the title track also seem to have a greater emphasis on development and progression – themes and ideas are expanded and the structures are a good deal less formulaic.

Those expecting an entire album of cute fluffiness may well have switched off by this point, but they’d be missing the burgeoning of a real songwriting talent. The funereal resignation of ‘Hold My Hand as I’m Lowered’ perhaps gives the more accurate sense of Fink’s laudable ambitions, its sombre brass band coda somehow both world-weary and elevating.

There’s a sense that the Noah and the Whale of this album are not yet the finished article (and let’s not forget that this is exactly how a debut album should present a band – with somewhere left to go!). If Charlie Fink can shed some of his po-faced exterior (I remember feeling he spent too long staring at his shoes in live performance), he is clearly capable of writing clear, haunting and mature songs. If this supposed London-centred ‘scene’ is let down by one unifying factor, it would appear to be a tendency towards narcissism. Luckily, Fink already has the able support of a band unique (at least among British chart acts) in their willingness to provide unusual, unexpected arrangements that linger satisfyingly in the mind.

Isaac Hayes 1942 – 2008

Had Isaac Hayes’ career extended only as far as being a session musician and songwriter for the Stax/Volt/Atlantic labels (with writing partner David Porter he composed Sam and Dave’s most memorable hits, including ‘Hold On I’m Coming!’ and ‘Soul Man’), he would still merit a pretty substantial footnote in soul music history. Yet his achievements as a solo performer arguably elevated him to the pantheon of greats.

His 1969 debut album ‘Hot Buttered Soul’ reinvented him as a magnificent arranger and interpreter and included brilliant, interpolated versions of Burt Bacharach’s ‘Walk On By’ and Jimmy Webb’s ‘By The Time I Get To Phoenix’. Both tracks were unashamedly vivid and grandiose, memorable as much for Hayes’ improvised half-rapping as for their flourishes of strings and stylised guitar lines. This lavish approach would greatly influence the later Stax sound that, whilst dooming the label to financial collapse in the short term, has more recently been reappraised for its inventiveness and musical character (particularly see Tony Hester’s arrangements and production for The Dramatics, heavily indebted to Hayes).

Some might have felt he developed the style beyond its logical conclusion with the bloated ‘Black Moses’, but there was actually more genuine emotion there than self-aggrandising. If it was a feat of artistic indulgence, it still stands comfortably with Marvin Gaye’s ‘Here My Dear’ and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ as an indulgence worth tolerating.

Along with Curtis Mayfield and Bobby Womack, Hayes bolstered his career with a major soundtrack (‘Shaft’). Whilst the blaxploitation movies have recently been re-examined with fresh favour as cultural landmarks, there’s still little argument against the contention that Hayes’ instantly identifiable wah-wah theme has outlived the film.

Like many before and after him, Hayes overspent in the immediate aftermath of his fame and filed for bankruptcy in the mid-70s. Unlike others, he recovered from this with dignity and artistic credibility intact, continuing to write and perform throughout the 80s and 90s. An album as recent as ‘Branded’ could claim to be a worthy part of his musical legacy.

He may now be remembered as fondly for his good-humoured role as Chef in the controversial but popular animated series South Park, its somewhat unsubtle ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ single providing him with a late re-appearance in the pop charts. It’s undoubtedly a shame that Hayes could tolerate and even encourage the series’ lambasting of cultural and social targets save only for his hallowed Church of Scientology. The programme’s attack on the religion/cult clearly proved a step too far for Hayes and provoked his resignation from the show. Whilst this doesn’t exactly tarnish his image, it sadly leaves many of us wondering how such a talent could be quite so irrational.

Hayes had been married four times and leaves a pretty impressive tally of twelve children. He obviously lived life with a somewhat reckless intensity. Still, at just 65, he may well have had another grand statement left to offer, although he had apparently already suffered a stroke in 2006.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Every Actor Wants To Sing

She & Him – Volume One (Double Six/Domino, 2008)

This seems to be one of those years for film stars venturing into song. Were it not for David Sitek’s characteristically inventive production, I doubt anyone would really have given Scarlett Johansson’s album of Tom Waits covers any credit at all. Her flat, double-tracked vocalising certainly didn’t rise to the considerable challenge posed by her choice of material.

This collaboration between the lovely Zooey Deschanel and songwriter/multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire M Ward is a good deal more straightforward and unpretentious than Johansson’s peculiar venture. In fact, it’s really rather lovely – a sometimes melancholy, sometimes joyful set of spare and simple songs evoking classic country, dusty soul and, best of all, early 60s girl-pop (particularly on the irresistible ‘I Was Made For You’ and ‘This is Not A Test’).

Deschanel’s voice is unlikely to set anyone’s world on fire, but she sings confidently within her limitations. Most of these songs are originals, and they are both touching and convincing. Perhaps Deschanel and Ward’s affiliation with the sounds and techniques of 60s pop occasionally push the music into pastiche – but it is always handled with sensitivity and affection.

Some have criticised her handling of pop standards as the weakest moments here – and the Hawaii Pineapple treatment of The Beatles’ ‘I Should Have Known Better’ is probably the album’s lowpoint. Perhaps the performance of Smokey Robinson’s ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ is similarly hokey, but there’s something about the vocal interjections of M Ward (the only time his voice appears on the album) that seem to make this version strangely affecting.

Ward’s arrangements are appropriately naturalistic and delicate with minimal embellishment. As a result, there’s a slightly rustic and pastoral feel to this material – perhaps redolent of those wonderful auburn New England autumns. It’s surprisingly easy to relate to Deschanel’s homespun words which are deliberately unflighty (‘I sometimes find what’s beautiful in things that are ephemeral’). It’s a warm and immediate record with a great deal of charm. The title offers some vague hope that there might be more than one ‘volume’ whilst Deschanel has suggested that she views this venture as much more than a one-off side project. Good for her, and for us!

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Cinematic Fraudulence

Some Thoughts On Carlos Reygadas

Somewhere on these pages, I apparently once dubbed innovative Dogme film-maker Lars Von Trier a ‘ludicrous charlatan’ for his laughable and grotesque pretentions in films such as ‘Breaking the Waves’ and ‘The Idiots’. Watching Mexican director Carlos Reygadas’ absurdly over-praised third feature ‘Silent Light’ on DVD last weekend, I was once again reminded of those inadvertently hilarious words. Reygadas must surely be the most generously indulged of contemporary film-makers. Alternately hailed as either an ‘enfant terrible’ or as Mexican cinema’s brightest new talent, Reygadas’ combination of fatuous provocation and pseudo-intellectual meandering actually distinguishes him more as a gigantic fraud than either of these things.

Watching ‘Silent Light’ set me pondering why I immediately like some serious, high-minded and slow-paced films, but am very wary of other films of a similar stylistic nature. Films do not need to have action, plot or a driving narrative for me to connect with them. They also do not need to be judgmental or adopt clear moral stances. I am a self-confessed evangelist for the works of directors as ponderous and ambiguous as Wong Kar Wai (I can think of no more beautiful film in the last twenty years than ‘In The Mood For Love’, slow and bereft of direct action though it is), Bela Tarr (whose ‘Satantango’ is, at more than seven hours, the longest film in my collection) and Tsai Ming-Liang (most notable for his almost complete renunciation of dialogue). Yet I am instinctively wary of languid pacing or technical superiority simply for the sake of it (the best examples of this I can highlight are Alexander Sokurov’s ‘Russian Ark’, Zhang Yimou’s bizarrely lifeless ‘Hero’, David Gordon Green’s ‘George Washington’, an all-too slavish homage to Terence Mallick, and, of course, Carlos Reygadas’ ‘Japon’). The most successful directors developed signature styles that are in service to their broader themes and ideas. Carlos Reygadas seems to use an established cinematic lexicon simply to shout his credentials as some kind of newcomer to the pantheon of great masters.

I’m not quite sure why I felt compelled to give Reygadas a second chance (his debut feature ‘Japon’ is among the worst films I have ever endured in a cinema). Some very favourable reviews of ‘Silent Light’ (particularly a glowing testament from Jonathan Romney in Sight and Sound) encouraged me to give it a try. At the most basic level, the film’s theme of infidelity in a Mennonite community, using real Mennonites rather than actors in the cast, at least appeared to be promising.

Indeed, for at least its first hour, ‘Silent Light’ succeeds in spite of its ponderous pacing. Much comment has already been made about its impressive opening sequence – a single six minute time lapse shot of a sunrise, but such impressive control of the camerawork continues throughout the film. The technique also extends to the intelligent staging of the domestic scenes as much as to the familiar long tracking shots obligatory to any work of contemporary ‘art’ cinema.

Best of all is the film’s extraordinary sound design – without a musical soundtrack, most of the work needed to create its atmosphere comes from the sound itself, which is vivid and intensely loud. The heavy sound of footsteps through long grass, the noisy whirring of farming equipment, the overpowering noise of wind and rain – all capture not just a community and its way of life, but how the physical intensity of human feeling paradoxically both echoes and exceeds the buzz and intensity of everyday life. It also shows the extent to which ritual pervades every aspect of this community’s existence.

Whilst the non-professionals in the film are often blank and deceptively emotionless in conversation, Reygadas creates powerful impact in the scenes where devastating feeling is allowed to break through (the first scene of Johan crying at the family table, the later, considerably more heavy-handed scene where his wife Esther breaks down in heavy rain). Reygadas makes an assured decision to start the film somewhere in the middle of Johan’s story, after his affair has already begun. We are spared any superfluous backstory, or any understanding of how his treacherous attraction began.

More interesting than this, though, is the very non-judgmental way in which Reygadas treats the theme of infidelity. Johan is troubled by his actions and painfully honest with both his wife and father about the affair. One might have expected Johan to be quickly condemned and ostracised by his community, but all listen carefully to his admission of succumbing to temptation. Reygadas is surprisingly confident in both his emphasis on human compassion in the first half of this film.
He even considers that Johan’s family commitment might have been a terrible mistake, and that Marianne might in fact be the woman with whom he feels the greater connection.

The film is considerably more tasteful than the outlandish, provocative and silly ‘Battle in Heaven’, and although her part is inevitably underwritten, Marianne is portrayed sensitively, alive to the feelings of Johan’s troubled wife as well as her own confused mindset. The film is alive to the overwhelming power of physical attraction, even at a time when life’s plan seems to have been entirely determined and when to submit to it might mean the loss of all security.

Yet, even in its stronger moments – the unpleasant whiff of artifice that surrounded ‘Japon’ still lingers. Reygadas continues to develop an interest in religion and spirituality, but only explores this opaquely. It’s vaguely implied that Johan's temptation might be the work of the devil – yet the film’s religiously observant characters also seem to accept (perhaps refreshingly) that these things happen to human beings as a matter of course (his father also confesses to an adulterous desire). It’s also suggested that whatever happens is pre-determined anyway, and all of Johan’s agonising is therefore entirely futile. Such fatalism rather undermines all of Reygadas’ quasi poetic ruminations. The point in setting this familiar everyday story in a religious community seems lost if some of the theological complications are never adequately explored.

In addition to these undeveloped ideas, ‘Silent Light’, like ‘Japon’ before it, is demonstrably indebted to the work of great masters. I’m not an expert on the works of Carl Theodor Dreyer, but Reygadas’ film apparently bears strong similarities with ‘Ordet’. The directorial signature that I most noticed here though was that of the great Ingmar Bergman, particularly in the austere close-ups of faces and carefully framed domestic scenes. Yet the film lacks Bergman’s mastery of tension and claustrophobia, and its confused and fundamentally objectionable conclusion removes any claim the film can make to saying anything profound about either religion or infidelity. Where ‘Silent Light’ echoes Bergman and Dreyer, ‘Japon’ desperately aspired to the languid mastery and spiritual profundity of Andrei Tarkovsky, but fell short of his pioneering and unique language in the most embarrassing of ways.

‘Silent Light’ ends up a good deal more like ‘Japon’ than most commentators have noted (it has been described as a more audacious and mature work, but by its conclusion I’m not convinced that it is). Both films are undermined by unfathomably precious and intellectually flimsy conceits, and burdened by a self-appointed transcendent artistic purpose.

‘Japon’ can be summed up very succinctly, given that it is a film of very little substance. A disillusioned middle-aged man ends up in a small community in the Mexican wilderness – he walks around a lot, paints a bit, and masturbates fervently, apparently trying to rid himself of some unexplained grief or burden. He meets and befriends an old woman, with whom he has unnecessarily candid sex towards the end of the film. The woman then subsequently dies in an accident, the supposedly ‘spiritual’ implication being that she has transferred her life to the man through the act of sexual union. Oh yes, and her name is Ascension.

What an offensive and arrogant proposition this is (the sacrificed female body regenerates an uncritically heroic man) – and one for which Reygadas has never been held properly to account. He has claimed that Japon has no delusions of grandeur, but is merely a ‘simple story of how we help one another in life’. If it’s really that simple, then it’s remarkably trite. If it aspires to something more profound, it presents us with a gratuitously simplistic sexual psychology linking the libido with an urge for death. It also privileges male life above female, whilst pretending to imbue the female contribution with the greater intellectual significance.

Reygadas certainly duped The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, a usually dependable critic, into finding the film’s sex painful, emotional and convincing rather than indulgent and gratuitous. Over at the filmfreak.com website, Travis Mackenzie Hoover even argues that the film’s sexual dimension keeps it ‘out of the transcendent’ (no it doesn’t – in revisiting the age-old conception of the profane act having sacred meaning, transcendence is precisely what Reygadas is aspiring to) and that there is humour in the film's overall austerity (I can’t detect this – unless you count the unsubtly inserted scenes of horses copulating or the masturbation sequence as funny). Yet Reygadas provides no adequate explanation as to why this woman would consent to transforming a plucky friendship into a sexual relationship. There’s no reason why either of these characters would have been attracted to each other and there’s not even a hint that their coupling is mutually satisfying. It’s not even presented as transgressive, which in itself might even have been more interesting, however cliched. What is even worse is that there is no sense that the indulgent male character, who remains a complete enigma throughout, deserves the considerable sacrifice and indignity this woman affords him. It simply happens, for reasons that Reygadas stubbornly refuses to reveal to us.

‘Silent Light’ ends with a similarly forced and unconvincing miracle. Esther’s breakdown and death in pouring rain might be a pompous scene (Reygadas delayed production on the film for over three weeks waiting for a suitable Biblical downpour in which to shoot) but it at least had some convincing emotional resonance. Having tried with extraordinary resilience to be understanding, Esther finally collapses on hearing that Johan has seen Marianne one last time. The subsequent lengthy funeral scenes provide insight into Mennonite customs and death rituals, and would have made for an effective end to a flawed but ultimately intelligent film.

Yet Reygadas is obviously not a man who could ever exercise this kind of restraint, however necessary. The very notion of Marianne resurrecting Esther through kissing her corpse is completely absurd. What life has Marianne within her that she can return to Esther? Why is she imbued with the strength that Esther lacks and what sacrifice is she making here – is it all in the knowledge that her relationship with Johan must end in order to restore Esther’s vitality? Or is it of some wider spiritual significance? Either way, why is Esther reduced to the status of a mere passive participant when she is arguably the most injured party?

I’m by no means objecting more generally to the use of religious or spiritual themes in any form of art. In fact, the ideas of personal religion experience and miracle remain of great interest to me. Yet these are notions that Reygadas has simply attached to his films in their closing moments, as if they somehow explain or justify any self-conscious ambiguities in the preceding two hours. There is the sense that his pacing is deliberately leaden – which, along with his audacious borrowings, admonish his audience into thinking his concepts are weighty and of profound insight. Yet his films say so very little about life, death, grief, faith, repentance or sacrifice, in spite of their lofty ambitions.

Reygadas has absorbed the technical skill and some of the style of his influences without their intellectual rigour, sound editorial judgment or emotional clarity. The predictability of his ideas eventually even undermine the impact of his undoubted technical flair. It seemed grimly inevitable that ‘Silent Light’ wound end with a second time lapse shot, this time of the sun setting once again. These films are the worst recent examples of arthouse style over substance, and the acclaim gifted to them is an affront to intelligent cinema audiences – many of whom could be forgiven for being deterred from seeking out more adventurous examples of great world cinema after enduring such pious nonsense. If Reygadas is grasping to create some kind of iconography, these are modern day cinematic icons that I’d be happy to smash.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Coming in From the Cold

Polar Bear – Polar Bear (Tin Angel, 2008)

In the rather sweet liner notes and acknowledgements that accompany this third Polar Bear album, Seb Rochford apologises for his latest album being so long. In this age of downloading and compiling, perhaps Rochford fears that his audience, maybe broader than your average jazz crowd, might not have the necessary patience or concentration span to digest it. Well, that would be a shame. For those of us who have been following the development of Rochford’s refreshingly original group, we’ve been waiting quite a while for this one, it having originally been scheduled for release by V2, before Polar Bear became a sad casualty of that label’s restructuring and downsizing. The value for money we’ve been offered seems like suitable compensation. V2’s loss, it would appear, is our gain. Great too for the small Coventry based label Tin Angel with whom Rochford is now collaborating for this release.

For those who find Polar Bear hard to appreciate or understand, the most common criticism is that perennial favourite: ‘It’s just not jazz’. Given how unconcerned I am with the precise definitions of musical genres, I can hardly summon the energy to address this argument. Nevertheless, I must concede my most immediate response to ‘Polar Bear’ is to pick up on the wide array of sounds and influences, many drawn from well beyond the radar of most jazz musicians. Most obviously, there’s Leafcutter John’s electronics, performed live and now more closely integrated with the overall musical landscape of Rochford’s compositions. Yet, the powerful opening one-two of ‘Tay’ and ‘Goodbye’ hints at the influence of Jamaican musical forms – particularly ska and dub. ‘Tay’ is ushered in on a remarkably simple but righteously groovy bass and drums figure that could easily have underpinned a Skatelites track. Given how well Rochford subsumes these ideas into a complete whole (‘Polar Bear’ is the group’s most coherent album so far), this seems far more of a strength than a weakness.

If Polar Bear are ‘more pop than jazz’, it shows in the playful exuberance of Rochford’s compositions. This perhaps comes through best on the superb ‘Tomlovesalicelovestom’, written after the happy occasion of Tom Herbert’s marriage and with every bit as joyous a sense of celebration as such a piece might demand. A more cynical listener might sense in the song’s journey into abstraction a hint at the uncertainty and vulnerability of commitment – but so solid and driving is the returning thematic narrative that its mood seems overwhelmingly positive. This is audacious, mostly improvised music without pretensions or any elevated sense of superiority above its intended audience.

The absence of a harmonic foundation allows this group its breathing space. With no textural support from a piano or guitar, the fundamental connection between Rochford’s conversational explorations on the drums and Tom Herbert’s full and clear bass patterns sounds even more significant. Similarly, the dynamic relationship between saxophonists Mark Lockheart and Pete Wareham is exploited to brilliant effect – with Rochford’s themes relying heavily on the careful interweaving of their distinct sounds. It tends to be Wareham who directs the group towards their more aggressive and incendiary moments, with Lockheart’s musicality and thorough grasp of time anchoring them in solid ground.

Whilst all the acclaim and publicity thrown at Rochford can sometimes seem like hype and bluster, the quality of his musicianship more than justifies the attention. Whilst his feel is relaxed and accurate, it’s the sound and timbre of his drumming that take precedence above technical showmanship. This means that his playing can assume a central and creative role without obscuring the contributions of his other musicians. Polar Bear is definitely a band – with all the sense of collective creativity that this implies. This is the group’s warmest, most coherent work to date, however indigestible it may be.