Back From The Brink?

Neil Young's 'Prairie Wind'

It's somewhat appropriate that I should return from Canada just in time for the latest release from one of Canada's most famous artists. Neil Young has been treading water for quite some time now, from the pleasant but unremarkable 'Silver and Gold' to the ludicrous folly of 'Greendale'. Even the dogged 'Are You Passionate?', recorded with Booker T. Jones, seemed to lack inspiration. 'Prairie Wind' is therefore the first Neil Young album for several years that can come with a sticker attached generically describing it as 'the critically acclaimed new album from Neil Young' without breching the trade descriptions act. Sadly, it's arguably telling that they couldn't find anything more interesting to say about it.

In fact, the whole marketing campaign for 'Prairie Wind' has been a bit bizarre. Reprise are promoting it as the concluding part of the the 'Harvest' trilogy, following 'Harvest' and 'Harvest Moon', obviously in the hope of recapturing some of Young's fans lost in the recent years of underachievement. Hang on a minute though - wasn't that exactly how 'Silver and Gold' was promoted? It seems that Young has conveniently forgotten that he ever recorded that album, such is the similarity of 'Prairie Wind' in outlook, style and even artwork. Anyone expecting Young to return to the tempestuous charms of 'Sleeps With Angels' following his life-threatening brain aneurysm will be sorely disappointed with this defiantly nostalgic, reflective and relaxed work. The themes here are dreams, love, and family, all set against that delicate but wide landscape with which we are now so familiar.

Reviewers have hailed Young's vocals here as his most sensitive and affecting in years. To my ears, 'Prairie Wind' demonstrates marked vocal deterioration, sadly not a return to the ravaged growl of 'Tonight's The Night' or 'On The Beach', but in a slight tendency to drift slightly off-key. It's a more subtle change than the complete loss of control suffered by Bob Dylan, but it's worth noting nonetheless.

It doesn't help that the lyrics are largely mawkish and sentimental, however genuine the sentiment may be. Young should not be condemned for making such an unfashionably conservative record as this, but he can surely express his feelings a little more expressively than 'I just want to tell you you sure mean a lot to me/It may sound simple but you are the world to me'. It does indeed sound simple. Elsewhere, he's frequently pining for his youth and his Daddy, from the initial memory of being 'a growing boy rockin' on my Daddy's knee' in 'Far From Home' or, rather better in the title track, 'tryin' to remember what my Daddy said before too much time took away his head'.

The themes of 'Prairie Wind' only carry real bite when they are aligned with the desolate windswept landscape for which Young also harbours sincere affection - from the rolling red river in 'It's A Dream' to the wheatfields and northern sky of the title track and the 'amber waves of grain' in 'No Wonder'. Best of all is his desire to be buried 'where the buffalo used to roam' in 'Far From Home'. There is an evocative language here trying to escape but, perhaps with a sense of mortality hanging over him, Young doesn't quite seem to have given himself enough time to capture it coherently. Young is famous for his frequent political U-turns, but he seems to strive to forget the outside world entirely here. He threads memories of the immediate post 9/11 environment into 'No Wonder', but does so via references to Willie Nelson's rendition of America The Beautiful and some comments from comedian Chris Rock, rather than anything more contentious. He begins 'It's A Dream' trying to 'ignore what the paper says'.

Musically, it has a handful of highlights (although nothing compares too favourably with any of Young's real career peaks). 'No Wonder' benefits from a more beefy, bluesy sound and an intricate vocal arrangement. It's most reminiscent of Young's best work with Crosby, Stills and Nash. Similarly, the title track is also ambitious and powerful, with as forthright a sound as possible with the constrictions of an acoustic band. It sounds passionate and soulful. 'Far From Home' is whimsical, but lifted by the outstanding horn arrangement, whilst 'It's A Dream' features strings strongly reminiscent of Young's collaborations with the legendary Jack Nitzsche. There's plenty of context here, but the ideas are never really developed beyond references or vague memories.

'The Painter' and 'Falling Off The Face Of The Earth' are pretty on the surface, but they are also pretty inconsequential underneath. Young is on autopilot here - we know he can write songs like this in his sleep. Both could have fitted comfortably on 'Silver and Gold', but neither compare well with the more incisive and moving songs he wrote for 'Harvest Moon'. If we can't here another song as good as 'Birds' or 'Harvest', we could at least hope for something of the quality of 'From Hank To Hendrix' or 'One Of These Days'. Instead we get some cliched nostalgia for Elvis in 'He Was The King', a song that has been written so many times, and perhaps perfected by Gillian Welch in her wonderful 'Elvis Presley Blues'.

It all ends with 'When God Made Me', which is either a testament of personal faith or a questioning of fundamentalism, it's lyrics coded in a series of rhetorical questions. The song seems to have caused a great deal of controversy on the other side of the pond, but it's not explicitly confrontational. The music is uncomfortably turgid, which probably only serves to heighten the rather icky nature of the lyric. It's rather an unfortunate note on which to end such an imperfect collection.

I really hope there is another great album left in Neil Young, but whilst his live concerts with Crazy Horse continue to tend towards the indulgent and portentous, his solo work sees him repeating himself once more. Can Young, like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have done, find an incisive outlook on encroaching mortality to reinvigorate his artistry?

Tapping In From Toronto

My first impressions are that Toronto is a great city, although perhaps a little more similar to other US cities than I had expected. There seems to be a very 'open' sense of security among residents in the area where I'm staying, and people seem happy (as long as the house is occupied), to just leave the front door ajar. I simply can't imagine this happening even in the calmest areas of suburban London, at least not without some degree of discomfort or paranoia.

It's very cosmopolitan, but the ethnic mix is very much divided into separate areas (Little Italy, Chinatown, the Portugese area). This certainly happens to some extent in London too, but for all its tensions and stresses, one senses that London's diversity is more successfully integrated. Many people cite this as one of the major plus points in our Olympic bid.

There's also a noticeable clash of architecture between traditional stone buildings and very modern, angular, concrete constructions. Nowhere is this more immediately visible than the University, where the main campus is decidedly old fashioned, and very much how you might expect a venerable educational institution to appear. The library buildings, however, are quite brutal in their design. I rather liked them - but I imagine that Prince Charles would not have approved. Of course, there's also the omnipresent CN Tower. We've yet to ascend it - but that seems like a tourist-y obligation that will no doubt be fulfilled before the trip is over. It's also interesting to note that this is yet another city where celebrity architect Daniel Liebeskind is leaving his mark, with the new glass extension to the Royal Ontario Museum. The museum itself seems somewhat depleted while the work is going on - and the extension looks remarkably similar to the new graduate centre at London Metropolitan University (also Liebeskind designed). I used to be a great admirer of Liebeskind's work - and his angular, highly original design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin (which I have sadly yet to see at first hand) seemed to speak volumes about 20th Century Jewish experience. More recently, however, although my knowledge of his actual techniques is certainly limited, there is the sense that he's been repeating the same idea. We'll have to wait and see what he makes of the new buildings in place of the former World Trade Centre in New York - undoubteldly his most high profile contract to date.

What better example of North American culture than the notorious Honest Ed's store. It's impossible to imagine anything like this springing up in London - a multi-purpose general store on a massive scale, developed by a philanthropic former theatrical impresario. No doubt Ed is a much loved figure in Toronto and at the ripe old age of 95, he's still going strong.

It's great, whilst staying with friends, to just savour living in the city, especially while the film festival is on (even though it looks unlikely that we'll brave the rush lines to secure any tickets - in another year, I'll buy myself a pass). Highlights so far have included going to see the Blue Jays play the Boston Red Sox at baseball - a very slow game indeed, lasting over four hours, but an experience to be savoured. We're going to the Rogers Centre Stadium again on Saturday afternoon, for what will hopefully be a more thrilling match. Our own game of softball proved surprisingly exciting - an impromptu match against some rather rough looking chaps who turned out to mostly be quite sporting, although not without the occasional piece of unwarranted aggression.

Low point so far has to be being dragged to see The Aristocrats, which ranks as one of the worst films I've seen this year. I knew I would hate this film before I went, but hoped that my pre-judgment might be proved wrong. Sadly, my sentiments were only bolstered by what was a turgid and completely indulgent 'comedy' documentary. The best thing by far about this film was its tagline, which promised 'no sex, no nudity, unspeakable obscenity'. This suggested that, in a modern desensitised age, it might be possible to be more obscene by suggestion and implication rather than through depiction. The film delivered nothing of the sort. The film is about a supposedly legendary non-joke among comedians, whereby the comedian relates describing an act to a talent agency. The act itself is as horrible and obscene as the comedian wishes it to be - and can involve all sorts of supposedly taboo-busting behaviour from defecation and incest to paedophilia and necrophilia. The punchline is that the act call themselves 'the aristocrats', or in some cases 'the sophisticates'. This at least finally proves that Americans do 'get' irony, but it makes for a rather flimsy premise for what is repeatedly presented to us as an uproariously funny gag, and it certainly makes for a ludicrous premise for a 90 minute film. It's not surprising that it's independently produced - you can't exactly imagine how they'd pitch this to a major studio.

The film itself is a poorly edited rag-bag of mostly American comics trying out their own versions of the joke, or providing fairly banal insights into the reasons for its success. It is unbelievably repetetive and tedious - a bit like listening to a one note guitar solo for 90 minutes. The same rather limited conceptions of obscenity are resorted to again and again - without being either particularly shocking or funny. They are also pasted together mostly at random, with no sense for exploring themes or coherent ideas. It's also horrendously self-congratulatory, with a successsion of comedians basically patting themselves on the back for being so damn brilliant.

It's not without its moments - but these suggest that the use of obscenity is only meaningful or successful when it has a purpose or a context - it's much funnier when the shock tactics are used to debunk the self-importance of artists such as Maya Angelou or, even more contentiously, entire religious faiths. Best of all were the poor taste situation of child abuse brilliantly constructed by Sarah Silverman, or the hilarious mime sequence (which perhaps indicates that visual comedy works best after all). I will concede that I have an inherent suspicion of stand-up and preference for sketch shows and sitcoms. You have to be damn good to sustain the attention of an audience at stand-up, and crude humour is rarely sufficient to entertain me. The scenes which created genuinely challenging situation comedy, as opposed to mere sucking and f*cking, therefore worked best for me.

The film reaches a rather obvious conclusion 3/4 of the way through - namely that it might now be impossible to shock people as it once was. Yes! This is true! We live in an age desensitised by onscreen violence and internet pornography! Basic shock tactics no longer offend! Why, then, have these people even bothered? This film no more pushes boundaries than I push weights. Would this not have been a much better starting point for the film? What followed could then have been a more entertaining and insightful investigation of how stand-up comedians could shock and entertain their audiences in the modern world. Instead, we end with a truly awful scene of Gilbert Gotfried performing in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. We are told that he brilliantly lightened the mood by deploying the aristocrats joke. Yet his telling is one of the least inventive here and his performance is at a gala event - to an audience consisting almost entirely of other comics. The film resolutely fails to investigate how other audiences react to the joke - we simply have to accept that the directors at face value that it is the stuff of legend.

The film's supporters say it is more about the style of delivery than the content of the joke. Perhaps so - but imporvisation, be it comic or musical - depends on an understanding of tradition and form as much as it does individual innovation and spirit. The film could in fact have told us much more about the individual style and approaches of the comedians it featured, but the one-note focus could not provide the necessary insight. Avoid this one like the plague - it's the cinematic equivalent of being anally raped whilst your father kills and rapes your mother in front of you. Torturous, in other words.

Quirks, Geniuses and Frauds

Well sod the dispute over their leader’s nationality, I’m simply delighted that Antony and the Johnsons picked up the Mercury Music Prize this week. He now joins a small group of deserving winners (including Badders and Primal Scream) and must now count as the most idiosyncratic and unusual winner yet. Perhaps this uncharacteristically brave decision from Simon Frith and the panel of judges may indicate bolder selections to come – perhaps we might get a winner from the fields of jazz, folk or contemporary composition next year? Probably wishful thinking! As for the antics of MIA (apparently walking out in protest as soon as the announcement was made and raising her middle fingers to cameras in the protest), how pathetic! To my mind, her album is extremely unlikely to be remembered favourably in even five years’ time – there’s just a wealth of better hip hop and electro music out there to contend with once the novelty has worn off. Why did anyone seriously think the Kaiser Chiefs would win it?

In light of Antony’s victory, and a whole wealth of music from strange, marginal figures suddenly bouncing into the mainstream, it seems appropriate to now catch up on some of these releases.

I’ve asked the question on these pages before, but I’m going to ask it again. Just what is it about Devendra Banhart that is making critics gush so much? I tried so hard to like ‘Rejoicing In The Hands’, but it was resolutely one dimensional, and many of the songs were simply grating. At least his new album ‘Cripple Crow’ has a crisp title, instead of his usual highly pretentious and verbose rambling. As his first release with a full band, it automatically stands apart from its predecessors.

This doesn’t necessarily make it more successful though. For my money, ‘Cripple Crow’ finally confirms Banhart as a colossal fraud. Rather than being in touch with some sort of psychedelic weird folk tradition, Banhart encapsulates the worst and most regressive elements of the defiantly indie mentality. There’s a lot of warbling and not much in the way of melody on ‘Cripple Crow’. There’s also a lyrical obsession with childhood and a return to youth, the effect of which is, ahem, somewhat crippling. ‘Long Haired Child’, ‘I Feel Just Like A Child’, ‘Chinese Children’, ‘Little Boys’ – even the titles are nauseating in the extreme.

On ‘Cripple Crow’, Banhart and his newly drafted cohorts attempt to cover a wide range of genres, clearly in the hope of producing an esoteric masterpiece. With 22 tracks, there’s just far too much material here and the listener is left with the overwhelming sense that this contains at least two separate albums jostling for position. Therefore what many are claiming as Banhart’s most accessible album to date is actually nothing of the sort – it’s his most confounding. This might be a welcome change from the monotonous ‘Rejoicing In The Hands’, but it’s a lurch from one extreme to another. ‘Santa Maria de Feira’ is a woefully unconvincing foray into Latin American stylings whilst ‘Lazy Butterfly’ comes with a hint of Indian mysticism (and a thoroughly painful whining vocal from Banhart). Worst of all is the horrific title track, where Banhart’s tremulous warble is at its most exaggerated and affected. Later in the album, he even attempts to present himself as a countrified southern soul singer. It would appear the only things missing are a stab at Eastern European Black Metal or some rough and tumble free jazz.

There’s never any sense of innovation amongst these genre exercises though. Much like The White Stripes, it seems clear that Banhart has aimed to make this album sound as aged as possible, and many of these tracks seem founded on the production techniques of the mid-sixties. This would not be too great a problem if these techniques and ideas were being manipulated into a new aesthetic, as Jack White has managed so successfully. Banhart, however, seems more content on simple reconstruction and homage. There’s even a song here called ‘The Beatles’ for heaven’s sake!

Luckily, there are some promising moments. ‘Long Haired Child’ benefits from its driving rhythm and unconventional structure, suddenly switching styles halfway through with no prior warning. The opening ‘Now That I Know’ is delicate and underplayed, but its pretty melody is squandered by Banhart’s opaque mumblings. The propulsive bluesy strum of ‘I Feel Just Like A Child’ might be mildly diverting did it not outstay it’s welcome by at least a minute.

There is something fundamentally self-regarding and galling about Banhart’s assumption of a psychedelic guru mantle that makes much of his work difficult to admire, let alone like. Everything on ‘Cripple Crow’ is imbued with self-importance and superiority, even when glimpses of humour are aloud to seep in. Whilst a number of the arrangements are perfectly pleasant until he starts singing, as soon as he opens his mouth I just want to scream ‘hippy tw*t’! Banhart is not the ‘new Bob Dylan’ and we should not be hypnotised into praising this questionable piffle.

Luckily, Banhart appears to associate himself with rather more interesting musicians, his current girlfriend being one half of beguiling sister duo CocoRosie. There is a genuine sense of drama and sophistication to their music, and much of it is unusual and challenging. New album ‘Noah’s Ark’ follows the nomadic existence enforced on the group as they toured their acclaimed debut. It’s a decidedly weird but brilliantly expressive record. At its best, it resembles the theatrical, emotive and highly feminine creative space occupied by the likes of Bjork and Kate Bush.

There’s a whole world of weird and wonderful sounds here that help CocoRosie realise their own hypnotic, fairytale world, from the toy piano sounds of ‘K-hole’ and ‘South 2nd’ to the idiosyncratic electronics of ‘Armageddon’ and the title track. If CocoRosie have a specific formula, it seems to be to take deceptively simple melodic lines and repeat them incessantly, lodging them in the memory like catechisms or chants.

This is before we’ve even mentioned the vocals, which are at once skeletal, frail, wistful and deeply haunting. Perhaps the best example here of their uncanny artistry is ‘Tekno Love Song’, where the vocals sound like a distorted, freakish reincarnation of Billie Holliday. This is all set to a peculiarly synthetic harp sound that plays the kind of melody commonly found emerging from an old musical box. Their imaginary world is enchanting and enticing, but there’s quiet menace lurking beneath the surface.

Despite their harsh vocal mannerisms, the voices often mesh together with disarming beauty, most notably on ‘The Sea Is Calm’, an extraordinary track where strange, sinister electronics burble mysteriously but never quite pierce the magical sheen. Equally brilliant is ‘Beautiful Boyz’, which sounds beautifully elegiac, mainly thanks to the presence of Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons fame. It’s wonderfully absorbed in its own world, isolated from reality and extravagantly expressive. It’s also possibly the gayest thing ever recorded.

This is a gem of an album – highly original, idiosyncratic, mysterious and bewitching. It inhabits its own peculiar realm with quiet confidence and questing experimentalism.

I should really despise The Decemberists for all the reasons I’m suspicious of Devendra Banhart. They are immensely twee. With their sea shanties and epic balladry, they appear to be coming from another era entirely, and they attempt to inhabit a world of which they can surely have no experience whatsoever. And just look at those ridiculous costumes they’ve worn for the CD sleeve! Yet, like ‘Her Majesty, The Decemberists’ before it, ‘Picaresque’ is such a consistently impressive album that such concerns are thrown out of the window. Colin Meloy’s songwriting is more elaborate here and the arrangements have become more expansive to match his lofty ambitions. There’s wit and imagination here as well as the intention to reconstruct a folk tradition.

‘Picaresque’ is their most coherent and accessible work to date, with an endearing balance struck between introverted, delicate ballads such as ‘Eli The Barrow Boy’ and huge, driving pop songs such as ’16 Military Wives’ and ‘The Sporting Life’. The latter is the band’s attempt, as so many have done, to recalibrate the rhythm from The Supremes’ classic ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’. It’s a strong track but possibly owes a major debt to Belle and Sebastian’s ‘Boy With The Arab Strap’. The former is simply outstanding, with its parping brass and rhythmic insistence. There is a slightly elusive attempt here to move away from the historical narrative and engage with the modern world, although the purpose of the song is not entirely clear. Still, it’s immensely hummable and hugely entertaining nonetheless.

They still love their seafaring of course and, despite stretching to more than 8 minutes, there’s the nagging sense that we’ve heard ‘The Mariner’s Revenge Song’ a few too many times before. The appropriately thunderous opener ‘The Infanta’ and ‘The Bagman’s Gambit’ make for less crude epics. The former is especially thrilling, with its relentless military drumming and rapidly strummed chords. I also can’t think of many better ways to start an album than with a song about the coronation of a child monarch. This is perhaps the best example of the peculiar milieu in which this band operates. For the most part, these are highly theatrical songs buried in a distant past. On the more tender moments, though, chief songwriter Colin Meloy does achieve some genuine human interest, and the deceptively simple ‘From My Own True Love (Lost At Sea)’, the closing ‘Of Angels and Angles’ and ‘Eli The Barrow Boy’ are touching despite the band’s numerous affectations.

The range of instrumentation on display here makes for an impressive sound. The album benefits greatly from the presence of the supremely talented Petra Haden (daughter of jazz bassist Charlie – her recent album with guitarist Bill Frisell is well worth investigating) on viola and harmony vocals. The brass section play with vigour, but also in a manner that is complementary rather than overbearing.

Perhaps the major precursor for the fuzz-folk impressionism of The Decemberists was ‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea’, the masterful 1998 second album from Neutral Milk Hotel, now finally made widely available in the UK courtesy of Domino (clearly putting some of that Franz Ferdinand money to good use by buying up most of the Merge Records back catalogue). Now widely accepted as a classic of its kind, this expansive work veers rapidly from tender understatement to freakish psych rock with gypsy brass band arrangements. It seems to have been a musician’s record, never really achieving much in the way of commercial impact but judging at least from the comments on the slipcase of the CD reissue, inspiring artists as diverse as Franz Ferdinand and Boom Bip.

I was pointed in the direction of this record a year or so ago after I’d heard the Broken Family band’s cover of ‘The King Of Carrot Flowers Pt 3’. Clearly, the band has been massively influential on the writing of Steve Adams. ‘On Avery Island’, the first Neutral Milk Hotel album opens with a song called ‘Song Against Sex’ whilst ‘Cold Water Songs’, the first full length EP from BFB contains a song called ‘Song Against Robots’. The connection, one suspects, is more than mere coincidence. Whereas the BFB version of ‘King Of Carrot Flowers’ is a weary, anguished trudge, the Neutral Milk Hotel original is a scuzzy, unrestrained blast of distorted melody.

Along with Olivia Tremor Control’s ‘Dusk At Cubist Castle’, ‘In The Aeroplane…’ is probably the most significant artistic statement to emerge from the Elephant 6 recording collective. The collective also included the consistently infectious Apples In Stereo, whose Bob Schneider is at the helm for production duties here. The songs flow seamlessly together in an intelligent use of studio resources that serves to emphasise the wild distinctions between the delicate and the frayed and savage. Jeff Mangum’s extraordinary vocals also underlie these contrasts. He’s wistful and reserved on ‘The King Of Carrot Flowers Pt 1’ but harsh and confident on ‘Holland, 1945’.

There is a constant and heavy acoustic guitar strum throughout these recordings, but the imposing songs frequently benefit from more exploratory arrangements. Whilst the structures and chord sequences are deceptively simple, the end result is disjointed but hallucinatory in its effect. The contrast between the bold, ragged ‘Ghost’ and the more sombre and reflective closer ‘Two Headed Boy pt 2’ is impressively controlled.

Lyrically, it’s an elusive, maybe even abstract album that builds and sustains its own mythologizing imagery. Mangum frequently sounds anguished and troubled when singing these peculiar verses, and the effect is weirdly disorientating.

With one foot planted firmly in the classic rock canon (there are hints of The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Pink Floyd) and the other in a pool of more unpredictable influences, including British and Eastern European folk music, Neutral Milk Hotel have crafted an ambitious sound that is difficult to classify. We’re still waiting for the follow-up…

We had better not forget the low-key reappearance of Bjork, following up Medulla with another soundtrack project, this time providing the music for her husband Matthew Barney’s new film Drawing Restraint 9. Barney is a defiant obscurantist and passionate believer in the artistic value of film. It’s no surprise then that both the film and much of the music would appear to be somewhat impenetrable. Bjork did an impressive and effective job with the unfairly maligned soundtrack to Lars Von Trier’s Dancer In The Dark, successfully capturing that film’s claustrophobic fear, disintegration and extreme sadness. Much of Drawing Restraint 9 may prove a challenge to even her most faithful fans.

Barney’s film depicts two guests on a Japanese whaling ship who mutate into whales to avoid drowning when a fatal storm strikes. The music on Bjork’s soundtrack goes some way towards capturing the magical possibilities portrayed in the film, as well as returning to recurring themes within Bjork’s oeuvre, such as the contrasts between tradition and innovation, destruction and beauty. Much like Medulla before it, ‘Drawing Restraint 9’ combines traditional instrumentation and styles with modern production techniques. Unlike Medulla, though, Bjork is frequently a distant, largely directorial presence here, and the emphasis is less on vocals and much more on the uncompromisingly minimalist music. Many of the tracks deploy the traditional Japanese instrument the Sho (played by Miyumi Mayata), and the album focuses more on the unconventional sounds of this instrument rather than relying on Bjork’s preoccupation with programmed beats.

There are moments of brilliance here. The opener ‘Gratitude’ effortlessly melds the soft vocals of Will Oldham with the harp of long-term Bjork collaborator Zeena Parkins. The lyrics brought so vividly to life by Oldham are actually the text of a letter written to General Macarthur, thanking him for relaxing the ban on whaling. It’s an unlikely success, but it has eerie and haunting qualities that cannot be ignored. Equally, the dazzling ‘Holographic Entrypoint’ bears the hallmarks of Bjork’s genius, and also provides some pointers as to where she might go next, with its skeletal percussion and wailing vocals. It’s a remarkably theatrical track, and it sounds completely unique.
Although it is not too long a record, ‘Drawing Restraint 9’ becomes a bit of a chore when taken as a whole. There are a lot of wordless, wailing passages that sound confrontational without ever becoming too aggressive. There are absolutely no pop songs whatsoever – it is very much a mood piece. Taken on that level, it’s undoubtedly impressive (although the brilliant integration of emotional profundity, dazzling musical invention and enchanting mood on ‘Vespertine’ remains unchallenged as her greatest achievement so far). It’s also substantially different from its immediate predecessors, giving advance warning that Bjork still has plenty of ground left to cover in her increasingly unpredictable career. She continues to drift out on her own journeys, now entirely removed from the confines of the mainstream

From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

The sublime being ‘Year Of Meteors’, the fourth album from Seattle singer-songwriter Laura Veirs, an album which, quite unfairly in my view, appears to have divided the critics. An obvious comparison can be made here with the rather lukewarm reaction to Erin McKeown’s ‘We Will Become Like Birds’, demonstrating a clear tendency in the corporate media to castigate female songwriters for attempting to enrich their sound and broaden their appeal. The consensus appears to be that Veirs and McKeown, by embracing what may or may not be a ‘more mainstream’ approach, have diluted their artistry. This may well have been the case with artists such as Liz Phair or Tori Amos in the recent past, but is palpable nonsense with McKeown and now Veirs.

A case can certainly be made that ‘Year Of Meteors’ is a more accessible record than last year’s highly acclaimed ‘Carbon Glacier’ but this is not of itself a criminal offence. ‘Carbon Glacier’ made much of ethereal atmospherics and Veirs’ customary ice and water metaphors, but it also placed greater emphasis on the more abrasive elements of Veirs’ unusual delivery. Here, she sounds softer and more controlled, a style that seems well matched with the delicate pluckings beneath her.

If the songs themselves might be more conventional (and certainly less elusive), this could hardly be said of the arrangements. The wonderful opener ‘Fire Snakes’ crackles and spits delicately like a burgeoning campfire, its subtle interweaving of electronics and acoustics remarkably effective. This track, ‘Black Gold Blues’ and the evocative ‘Parisian Dream’ work particularly well due to the presence of Eyvind King on Viola, who crafts layers of shimmering melody.

Even when Veirs appears to draw reserve from inherited traditions, such as on the Neil Young-esque single ‘Galaxies’, the instrumentation serves to distance her from obvious reference points. ‘Galaxies’ comes alive because of its multitude of keyboard sounds rather than its chugging guitars. On ‘Secret Someones’, a relatively straightforward pop song is imbued with depth by virtue of its offbeat jazzy chords and loose-limbed rhythmic backdrop.

Lyrically, her combination of images of the natural world with memories of love past and present, concealed and lost remains enticing in its directness. For the most part, she avoids pretension, although she is certainly at her best when she avoids overtly ‘poetic’ language. On ‘Year Of Meteors’, her melding of words and music is effortlessly fluid.

Somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous was the strangely low-key, under-attended live appearance from Ian Carr’s Nucleus at Cargo in Shoreditch. A former teacher of mine, and a massive influence on my knowledge of the jazz tradition as well as my musical ability, Carr is finally receiving some of his dues as a legend of British jazz, a gifted writer and composer and something of an innovator. Ian has played a major role in the promotion of British Jazz through his broadcasting and writing (his books on Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett remain definitive, although the latter is still sadly out of print) as well as through his own composition and performance. I therefore couldn’t pass on the opportunity to see his long-promised return to live performance.

Sadly this was not to be. Now 72, and following an operation earlier in the year, Ian Carr has been left unable to perform. Visibly struggling as he announced the band at the beginning of the show, Carr now seems a much frailer figure than the person who was still teaching jazz workshops just six years ago. He introduced Chris Batchelor, the guest trumpet player who would be ‘playing his parts’ (although presumably improvising his own solos). Well, if you can use surrogate mothers, why not a surrogate trumpeter? Ian’s decision not to attempt to perform may have been a wise one – I remember the deeply unpleasant experience of watching a horribly diminished Freddie Hubbard at the North Sea Jazz Festival a few years ago. Still, whilst 72 is a pretty ripe age to still be playing music, it’s sad that some avatars such as Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter are still pushing the envelope at a similar age, whilst others such as Carr, who no doubt wish to be doing the same, are unable to do so.

What initially felt a very strange and uncomfortable experience, as Ian watched the band play from the side of the stage, occasionally smiling and providing directions for effective bandleader and saxophonist Phil Todd, quickly eased into something celebratory and massively entertaining. Featuring longstanding Nucleus regulars such as Mark Wood, keyboardist Geoff Castle (who played with poise throughout) and the aforementioned Todd, the band (re)captured the energy and spirit of Ian’s compositions with considerable gusto.

Never particularly enamoured with entirely free improvisation, Ian Carr tended to prefer groovy, rock-influenced fusions with a keenly felt connection with the blues. Perhaps his intention to refashion the jazz tradition through the spectrum of rock and modern electronics could best be exemplified by the ‘Theme For Jelly Roll’, a tune written as a tribute to Jelly Roll, but written in 7/4 time because, as Ian himself put it at the microphone, ‘Jelly Roll would never have written it like that’. Like many of Ian’s tunes, it’s a driving, playful number with plenty of scope for swashbuckling rhythm playing.

Many of these tunes were staples of the London Fusion Orchestra when I was involved on drums, so it was fascinating to at last hear these tunes played live by the masters. The opening ‘Lady Bountiful’ was a great deal more lush and reflective than we ever played it, although I was pleased to hear the band still rocking out a bit towards the end. The band handled the deceptively simple interruptions of the funky ‘Easy Does It Now’ as if they’d last performed it yesterday, whilst the long ‘Roots’ and ‘Out Of The Long Dark’ had a flowing, almost aquatic vibe. Todd and Batchelor soloed expressively throughout, although the melodies were sometimes obscured by some slightly dubious tuning, probably a direct result of the venue’s excessive heat. The real lynchpin of the group was arguably Geoff Castle, who managed to combine lyrical soloing with punchy rhythmic accompaniments with real aplomb.

Perhaps slightly mis-promoted as a return to live performance from Carr, the small audience mercifully remained highly supportive and appreciative throughout, cheering his infrequent ventures to the microphone to introduce his compositions. The music remains an inspiration to myself and countless other musicians to have passed through his workshops, and it’s greatly satisfying to see DJs such as Gilles Petersen and promoters such as 3Headz bring his work to wider attention and to a younger audience. A line can be traced directly from the exploratory work of new British bands such as Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland back to the jazz-rock fusions developed by Nucleus in the 1970s. 3Headz, who completed a three-year mission in organising this concert, are apparently working on a DVD documentary on Carr’s work, which should see the light of day early next year. Those with any interest in the development of British Jazz should seek it out when it emerges, along with the BGO reissue programme of the Nucleus back catalogue, as well as more recent CD packages of the classic Ian Carr-Don Rendell quintet albums and Neil Ardley’s ‘Greek Variations’ and ‘Kaleidoscope of Rainbows’ (major works on which Carr performs).

The ridiculous is ‘A Bigger Bang’, the first collection of new studio material since 1997 from The Rolling Stones, and surely the guiltiest musical pleasure of the year. Critics appear to be falling over themselves to hail ‘A Bigger Bang’ as a return to the ramshackle and exuberant form of ‘Exile On Main Street’. Now, let’s not get too carried away, it’s by no means a five star classic or anything like that. It is, however, the first Stones album in, well, over twenty years if we’re honest, to really capture the sound of a band enjoying themselves rather than simply turning up to work to complete some kind of laboured obligation. The bombastic sound values that have made their live shows dogged and dependable rather than inspired remain in place (Charlie Watts’ drums are massively loud throughout). It’s also frequently crude and impolite, but the Stones have never really pretended to be anything else.

A number of the tracks are characterised by the familiar Stones blustering barroom boogie of ‘Brown Sugar’ or ‘Honkey Tonk Women’, some more successfully than others. Opener ‘Rough Justice’ is raucous and thrilling, with Mick Jagger steadfastly refusing to grow old gracefully. Its first verse is gleefully hilarious, with Jagger spitting out self-referential lyrics with sheer relish (‘once upon a time I was your little rooster – now I’m just one of your cocksssss!’). Maybe it’s all a little embarrassing, but Jagger at last sounds engaged and spirited again. They repeat the trick elsewhere with the fantastic ‘Driving Rain’, which comes with an explosive Keith Richards guitar solo, and the relentless ‘Oh No Not You Again’.

Sadly, a small handful of the remaining tracks built on the backbeat blueprint are somewhat less successful. Keith’s vocal on ‘Infamy’ is refreshingly gutsy, but the song itself is somewhat undistinguished, whilst ‘It Won’t Take Long’ harbours unwelcome memories of the Steel Wheels era generic rockers, with the Stones once again content to play a second-rate model of AC/DC. ‘Let Me Down Real Slow’ is perhaps a touch pedestrian, but at least has a lingering, mildly infectious chorus.

Unsurprisingly, it’s where they veer away from this overworked template that The Stones achieve their greatest surprises and biggest successes. ‘Streets Of Love’ is at once reflective ballad and stadium singalong. It bears a passing resemblance to ‘Sonnet’ by The Verve, but Jagger’s genuinely affecting vocal elevates it. ‘Back Of My Hand’ is a fearful, apocalyptic blues to rival even some of the best moments on ‘Let It Bleed’. Elsewhere, the band seem to have found a love for the simple groove, with the slinky funk of ‘Rain Fall Down’ (which is enjoyable as long as you don’t find the image of Jagger ‘may-yay-yayking sweet lurrrrve’ a little distasteful) and the exuberant ‘She Saw Me Coming’. The latter sees Jagger once more delight in the opportunity to deliver yet another woman-you-done-me-wrong song. Best of all is the gospel-tinged ‘Laugh I Nearly Died’ where the band at last recaptures some kind of subtlety and nuance.

Luckily, there’s also adequate balance to offset the fist-in-the-air stadium rockers. The rueful, uncharacteristically self-deprecating ‘Biggest Mistake’ is a brilliant country-tinged pop song that may have just rendered the entirety of the last Ryan Adams album redundant. Equally touching is the soulful, emotive ‘This Place Is Empty’, with Keith again handling lead vocals.

There is a great collaborative spirit at work on ‘A Bigger Bang’ that seems to have been sorely lacking on the 80s and 90s Stones albums. Keith and Ronnie’s guitars duel with familiar zest, but Mick Jagger also plays a great deal of guitar, enriching the sound in the process. The songs also seem more considered and less rushed, another sure sign that Jagger and Richards have started working in harmony once more. Unbelievably, there’s life in these old dogs yet.
There’s plenty of catching up to do before I jet off to Canada at the weekend, so expect another post before the end of the week (I still haven’t reviewed Sufjan Stevens for heaven’s sake!). At the very least, I won’t be able to resist making some sort of irreverent comment on the Mercury Music Prize (the winner is announced tomorrow night). Now that the London bombings have made MIA’s ‘freedom-fighter-chic’ a little more unpalatable, I’m not sure who is going to win this one. I can’t see the Kaiser Chiefs following Franz Ferdinand for another spiky pop victory. It’s an outsider, but I’m going to plump for the wildly overrated Go Team album as a likely winner at this late stage. I still hope it will be Polar Bear though – one of those token entries is going to have to win it at some stage!