Implosion

R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now (Warner Bros)

The critical consensus surrounding latterday R.E.M. continues to mystify me. The general belief is that the group lost their way when Bill Berry left, recording a couple of albums that did not really 'represent' them (Up and Reveal) before making the first genuinely bad album of their career (Around The Sun) and finding their true voice as a 'rock' band again with Accelerate. My highly personal regard for Up aside, the generous reaction to Collapse Into Now is even more confounding. Around The Sun begins to look like a solid gold masterpiece when placed next to this. Reviews on both sides of the Atlantic have suggested this is R.E.M. sounding like themselves - and that it is the best album we can hope for them to make at this stage. This is hugely uncritical, and in some ways disrespectful to both the band and their longstanding fans.

Of course it's unreasonable to expect R.E.M. to make music that ranks with their greatest works (and I would include New Adventures In HiFi and Up in this list, along with everything from Murmur to Automatic For The People, perhaps even Monster as well - they have been a remarkably consistent band). It's not unreasonable, however, to expect something a little more than mere third rate facsimiles of their history. It's not unreasonable to expect a decent and sympathetic production. It's not unreasonable to expect some good songs, or some maturity and insight at this stage in a career.

The biggest problem here, it pains me to admit, is Michael Stipe. His voice and lyrics have often been one of the band's great assets, even when he preferred a subdued and sometimes incomprehensible voice. If anything, his lyrics have been on the decline since Up. That album was intensely personal, honest and powerful and it would appear to have exhausted him. Reveal's musings on man and nature were a little glib and Around The Sun was dogged by benign platitudes. Here, he reaches a new nadir of self parody, often resorting to the worst aspects of his nonsense doggerel or lazily assumed profundity. It Happened Today is the worst example of the latter, with Stipe allowing himself to rhyme 'this is not a parable/It is a terrible....a terrible thing') because he has earned his wings. When the grand chorus of Stipe, Eddie Vedder and, unexpectedly, Joel Gibb from the Hidden Cameras, takes over with a chorus of aaaahs which lasts for half the song, it's almost as if Stipe has recognised what a disaster it is and can't be bothered to finish it. This is a long way from Find The River.

Cliches abound elsewhere too. Uberlin finds him 'flying on a star', Blue's detour into spoken word represents a flagrant attempt to reprise E-Bow The Letter (it even features Patti Smith for heaven's sake). Disoverer is a little better, a reminder that Stipe once wrote songs where the meaning was opaques, but where it at least felt there was a meaning somewhere. A number of the lyrics on Collapse Into Now feel clipped and underwritten, as if he was lacking inspiration. His voice sounds tired and uninterested throughout.

As for the music, it's largely ruined by Jacknife Lee's production. This makes me desperate to hear the demos the band supposedly recorded with Tucker Martine, a producer far more likely to capture the band sensitively, instead of applying heavy compression and stadium bombast. Lee was kept at bay a little on Accelerate (although both he and the band did seem to confuse distortion with radicalism) - here he is allowed to run riot. The worst moment is the hilarious Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter, featuring uncomfortable guest vocals from Peaches. It's an attempt to recapture the strident glam rock of the Monster-era, but its ludicrous rhyme scheme ('alligator/escalator') is more reminiscent of U2's 'mole in a hole' fiasco on Elevation, for me one of the worst songs in recent memory and not a good role model. It all suggests that the band are, in spite of refusing to tour this album, looking for a way back into the stadium big league that feels unnatural and unforced.

Some have suggested that Collapse Into Now feels like a band comfortable with who they are, perhaps because it is balanced between upbeat rockers and acoustic numbers (with mandolins!). For me, it feels like a band trying to recapture what they were. Uberlin is a direct facsimile of Drive but it has no bite, instead just floating by aimlessly. Oh My Heart is shamelessly self-referential, alluding to a song as recent as Houston. It's at least a hearfelt piece about New Orleans and Katrina - and arguably the strongest thing here. Mine Smell Like Honey sounds like The Wake Up Bomb with less energy and some very silly lyrics. The portentously titled Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I is regrettably forgettable. There's a distinct lack of strong melodies here - far more so than on Up.

What a shame that every R.E.M. album since Up has been hampered by self consciousness, and an attempt to make the band what people seem to expect them to be. On Reveal, it sounded like they wanted to move through the doors they had boldly opened with Up, but they had to temper this movement with some breezy, summery pop with a heavy Beach Boys influence. The whole has its moments, but is a little wishy-washy overall. Around The Sun was purposefully ballad heavy, in an attempt to be another Automatic For The People (although they seemed to have forgotten that that album had Ignoreland and The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, and was never as relentlessly plodding). Accelerate was a blustery reaction to the criticism meted out to Around The Sun. Collapse Into Now is a desperate attempt to collect everything they have already achieved in one place - it just seems so half-hearted and browbeaten.

Perhaps there is pressure from Warners given the astronomical amount of money they invested in the band just as they were beginning a long commercial decline. But it says much about the status of R.E.M. in 2011 that there is a good deal more interest in the new Elbow record than in Collapse Into Now. I'm not for a minute suggesting they should stop making music - their artistry has sustained them well beyond the lifespan of most bands and has made them immeasurably important. Yet they should at least make the music they want to make - move to something more reflective and mature. It seems unlikely now that they will ever finish the job they started with Up.

Richard Thompson Interview

A few days ago, I was lucky to have a brief telephone conversation with the incredible Richard Thompson. The results of that chat can be found here.

Richard had plenty of informed and inspiring things to say about social commentary, the folk music tradition and the idea of music being a process of constant exploration. He is clearly deeply immersed in music and deeply committed to every aspect of his work. I respect him even more as an artist now.

Rock Heritage

John Cale and The Heritage Orchestra perform Paris 1919
Royal Festival Hall – 5th March 2010

Having never seen the great John Cale live before, and with the knowledge that he would be performing his superb ‘Paris 1919’ album in full, I’d been eagerly anticipating this concert for some time. I use the word ‘concert’ rather than gig because that is very much what it was – a stately, reverential and, for the most part, somewhat uninspired recreation of Cale’s 1973 hymn to cold war Europe, coupled with a rather short and ungenerous second half of more adventurous pieces for the band.

‘Paris 1919’ is rightly regarded as one of Cale’s more conventional albums. Whilst it has rich orchestral arrangements, it’s very much a set of melodic pop songs and there is very little hint of Cale’s interest in the avant garde, or of the poised confrontation of The Velvet Underground. The recording, however, is beautifully nuanced and with members of Little Feat in the original band, even the languid ballads threaten to tip into a lithe groove.

Yet when the band finally joins the orchestra onstage after a somewhat unprofessional and uncertain pause, the opening ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ simply lacks punch. Perhaps it’s something to do with drummer Michael Jerome playing an unconventional kit, largely sticking to brushes and providing the kick from a cajon. The problem isn’t confined just to this song, unfortunately, with the entire rendition of the album seeming slick, over-rehearsed and lacking any injection of immediacy or inspiration.

The arrangements seemed to suffer from overthinking how best to combine band and orchestra. Perhaps wary of cutting through the string section, guitarist Dustin Boyer repeatedly resorted to a clichéd and grating distorted rock ballad guitar sound that undermined the sensitivities of the songs. Rather than touching or affecting, the album’s ballads ended up overcooked and bordering on histrionic. The album’s livelier moments, such as ‘Macbeth’ (moved to the end of the set presumably to create a rousing finale), seemed to lack teeth. Only ‘Graham Greene’, one of my least favourite songs on the album, seemed to achieve a fresh impetus – less playful but more insistent than the studio version.

If the original recording has a significant fault, it’s that Cale’s consistently double tracked vocals are often uncomfortably flat. Tonight, his voice sounded stronger, more confident and more articulate. The intelligent, wry wordplay of much of the album’s lyrics at least came through with clarity and purpose. This made it all the more unfortunate that the sound of the musicians was so muddy and undefined. At one point, a near constant low level feedback from the horn section threatened to completely destroy the mood.

After a short break (the brevity of which certainly caught out those who insisted on another trip to the bar), the group returned to perform some choice selections from Cale’s career. These included a wiry, claustrophobic interpretation of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Femme Fatale’ (intercut with ‘Rosegarden Funeral of Sores’), a somewhat dreamy ‘Amsterdam’ and an outstanding, clamorous, deeply weird deconstruction of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. In this short section of the concert, the band played so much more intuitively and intelligently, crafting thrilling and futuristic music. I would have appreciated more of this. Both orchestra and bombast return for a rapturously applauded ‘Hedda Gabbler’.

The concert has been well received elsewhere in the press, and the audience afforded Cale a rather uncritical standing ovation. Yet, to me, it all seemed rather perfunctory and ungenerous – an example of getting a job done rather than anything more artistically adventurous. The performance of ‘Paris 1919’, curiously unsatisfying as it was, didn’t even provide the warm glow of nostalgia one might reasonably expect. Perhaps there is a broader problem with this recent trend of performing classic albums in full – but if classical audiences pay to see complete symphonies, I don’t really see the difference. For a large portion of popular music’s history now, the album has been the nearest equivalent to a full composed work, and reports of its death are no doubt greatly exaggerated. Still, any attempt to produce a tasteful facsimile of the original work, rather than something living, breathing and challenging, ought to be avoided at all costs.

In Praise of Progress

Sian Alice Group – Troubled, Shaken Etc (Social Registry, 2009)
HEALTH – Get Color (City Slang, 2009)
Tara Jane O’ Neil – A Ways Away (K, 2009)

Such is the heavy pressure to produce easily promoted, mind-blowing debuts these days, that it’s easy to let those acts that manage to develop slip under the radar. I admired ‘59’59”’, the debut album from Sian Alice Group, for its comfortable assimilation of various genres, for its attention to detail and for its hypnotic, repetitive moods. ‘Troubled, Shaken Etc’ really is a massive leap on from that record though. Here, the band return to some of the concerns they only fleetingly addressed on their debut, and explore them in greater depth, with far greater confidence.

It’s immediate from the opening ‘Love That Moves The Sun’ that Sian is allowing herself to stretch out a bit, her voice given a great deal more prominence. A lot of the lyrics remain indecipherable, but there’s a combination of assertion and melancholy that establishes her as a reedier, sleeker PJ Harvey. The song has some elements of a traditional song – arpeggiated guitar chords and a reverb-laden sound – but the unpredictable shape of the melody, playful textural variation and the informed looseness of the ensemble take it somewhere far less familiar. Something similar can be said for ‘Grow, Again, Repeat’, which starts out as a straightforwardly haunting ballad, before moving towards something more unsettling.

The album’s highlight is the shimmering, pulsating ‘Close To The Ground’, which unfolds lengthily over seven minutes, its motorik pulse underpinning a labyrinth of menace and sinister intent. The vibraphone introduction owes a considerable debt to Steve Reich, but the main body of the track has its own steely ebb and flow. It’s an enticing combination of grace and danger, austerity and charm.

Bizarrely, a review on Pitchfork accused Sian Alice Group of ‘avoiding rhythm’ on this album. Some of the tracks certainly have a gentle lilt, or a sense of freedom (the gorgeous closing ballad ‘Salt Water’ or some of the interludes), but then there’s the percussive drive of ‘Close To The Ground’ or the marvellous ‘Vanishing’, which is built on what is effectively a breakbeat. The all-too-brief ‘Longstrakt’ sound like the basis for a Kompakt-esque piece of minimal techno. Rhythm is certainly not absent from these tracks, and the result is that they provide a pleasing contrast with the group’s more aquatic moments. In fact, the use of sophisticated percussion arrangements strikes me as one of this album’s key characteristics.

‘Troubled, Shaken Etc’ is every bit as minimal, economical, cautious and restrained as its predecessor. Yet there’s a more concentrated focus on texture and effect here that adds a sense of tentative adventure. Skeletal templates are developed into haunting, elaborate mood pieces. The effect, particularly on the near-empty title track, is both disorientating and enchanting. This strikes me as a high achieving album, both challenging and enjoyable, and near-perfectly sequenced, which will no doubt go completely unnoticed by the increasingly conservative UK music press.

I can’t say the rather scattershot first album from HEALTH made much of an impression on me, but a firm recommendation of their second ‘Get Color’ (sic) from Three Trapped Tigers’ Tom Rogerson has to carry some weight. So, indeed, it transpires, on listening to this colossal combination of abrasive noise and soft, detached vocals. For all its sonic assaulting, this is also extremely artful music. Although it often explodes into brutality and savagery, it also seems carefully regimented and constructed. Rather than a series of random lurches, these tracks seem like plotted maps for difficult terrain. After a few listens, it becomes clear that we should expect the unexpected.

Importantly, on ‘Get Color’, the band has developed a distinctive and coherent sound, working independently without the use of a producer. Some of their wilful obscurities have been restrained and the template seems to work whether at its most furious and insistent (the double punch of ‘Severin’ and ‘Eat Flesh’) or on something approaching relative tenderness (‘In Violet’). Loud drums are a constant characteristic, and they serve both to anchor the music (with a regular quarter note kick drum pulse) and to stretch it (with elaborate rapid fills and phrasing).

Set against this are barrages of distorted synths and guitars, in carefully orchestrated bursts of noise, both visceral and energising. More important than all of this though are the weirdly androgynous vocals, heavily disguised and distant, but somehow still providing an element of warmth and feeling. It’s a strange, heady mix, but the results are subtly melodic on ‘Before Tigers’ or even arguably anthemic on the insistent, almost industrial clang of ‘Die Slow’. The album is just long enough to state its case and short enough to leave us wanting more.

Tara Jane O’Neil might best be categorised as a folk singer, but such commonplace terminology doesn’t really do justice to the strange and unnerving space her music occupies. This is actually her fifth album as a solo artist, but it’s the first time I’ve ventured into her weird and wonderful world, thanks largely to a positive and intriguing review over at Mapsadaisical.

The songs here are simple, often built on drones and unhurried chord changes, but the devil is most definitely in the details. O’Neil’s production is exquisite, from the layered harmonies on ‘In Tall Grass’ that add to the sense of awe and beauty, or the shaking bells on ‘Dig In’ providing an underlying sense of creepy unease (a consistent factor throughout the record). Perhaps most impressive of all is ‘Howl’, where a sense of personal vulnerability is allowed to seep in, its circular theme getting progressively more intense with each reiteration.

‘A Ways Away’ sounds like a coherent set of music rather than a gathering of isolated songs. It subverts our traditional expectations of singer-songwriters by capturing both a sense of worldly beauty and a sense of fear. This distinctive world is not something that could ever be described as twee. O’Neil realises it through her delicate balance between acoustic vulnerability and an odd kind of distance through fuzzy electric intervention.

By all accounts, this seems to be quite a development from earlier albums and it’s the sort of music that could easily reach a much wider audience in light of the success of Bon Iver. Sadly, the lack of mythical backstory probably means that few will pay attention. Also, there’s something significant in what O’Neil holds back. Whilst this is a frequently intimate and poignant album, it’s not a heart-on-sleeves backwoods confessional in the Bon Iver mould. It’s a good deal more mysterious and ghostly.

Eyes On The Prize

Look, Stranger! – EP (Self-released CDR, 2009) and live at 93 Feet East 22nd September 2009

Look, Stranger! are clearly a generous band. Having just recorded a meticulously arranged and pristine sounding EP with engineer Charles ‘Chicky’ Reeves, they’re now giving it away free at their first headline London show. This might well be something artists are compelled to do in the future, given the current devaluing of music as a product. Indeed, if Spotify ever does start to generate profit, the very concept of music ownership might be up for contention. For now though, it’s just a kind gesture to their burgeoning audience. I’m reminded of that great moment at Porchester Hall, when Arcade Fire’s Win Butler snuck two bemused ticketless fans in through the stage door. The bands that build through word of mouth share their experience with their audience.

Look, Stranger! radiate the same warm and ingratiating qualities onstage as well as off, inviting the audience further forward and engaging in jovial interaction. Whilst their songs are not without a small degree of youthful pretention, or at least a modest theatricality, there seems to be a determination not to incorporate this into their stage performance. They deliver their songs with commitment and charm, impressively faithful to their carefully plotted recorded counterparts.

There’s a sense that Look, Stranger! are venturing into what is now becoming a crowded marketplace. There is a substantial group of bands, from both sides of the Atlantic, including the likes of Battles, Dirty Projectors, Mew, and Three Trapped Tigers, who are reinjecting the virtues of arrangement and composition into rock music. Look, Stranger! seem to share these preoccupations, but with a greater deference to melody, harmony and the timeless impact of the human voice. There’s a palpable, widescreen ambition in songs like ‘She Will Not Rest’ and ‘Nova Zembla’ and the group are not averse to the occasional odd time signature.

If at times it threatens to get a little grandiose (Sheinman half-jokingly describes ‘Nova Zembla’ as the band’s response to the new Muse album), then there are moments of unashamed fun that dilute the danger. ‘She Will Not Rest’ unpredictably explodes into a careering, driving mix of heavy bass synths and stuttering drums. ‘Where Horses Roam’ could be the band’s finest moment, a three minute pop song with a nagging lyricless hook and an angular Grizzly Bear-go-to-studio-54 groove. It has the potential to really capture the imagination – surely it’s only a matter of time before large audiences are chanting ‘woah-hoah-hoah’ along with the band - and then quite possibly to become an albatross around the group’s collective neck.

Most impressive for me is ‘To The River’, where Sheinman’s voice is at its most personable and relaxed and the music is at its most evocative. The integration of electronic and acoustic drums in the rhythm track undoubtedly owes a debt to Radiohead, but the languorous melody also hints at the more emotional territory of Elbow or Sweet Billy Pilgrim. This lush, slow-building terrain, well crafted but also honest and direct is where the band are at their strongest.

This is the work of a sophisticated band. The most transparent evidence of this is in the well executed vocal arrangements and the group’s assured and sensitive handling of dynamics. The overall effect is also enhanced by an excellent rhythm section – bassist Ali Wedderburn and drummer Thom Hosken sit very tightly and play expressively but never contribute any more than is necessary for each particular song’s mood. Hosken is that rarest of things – a drummer with a very light touch who might just, at times, be too quiet! Crucially, Look, Stranger! sound like a real ensemble – there’s also much to enjoy in David Isaacs’ combination of Reichian minimalism and ornate flourish at the keys and in Tim Sheinman’s shimmering guitar lines.

At 93 Feet East the band bring out a more whimsical side to complement their ambition in songs like ‘Lady Godiva’ and also in the playful encore, which features a whistling solo from Wedderburn and sees band members depart from the stage one by one. That the band manage to marry their ambition with qualities of intimacy and immediacy is impressive. There are some minor kinks to be ironed out, some slightly tentative vocal pitching suggesting the group could yet grow in confidence – but this is clearly a band to watch.

The Flight From Convention

Flaming Lips – Embryonic (Warner Bros, 2009)
David Sylvian – Manafon (Samadhi Sound, 2009)

A new Flaming Lips album is always going to be a talking point. It’s unsurprising then that the nature and character of ‘Embryonic’ has already been well documented in publicity and interviews. It’s a massive double album, constructed largely from ‘jams’ in the studio, a move supposedly taken to liberate the group from the restrictions of the song form and to stop them from repeating themselves.

I certainly applaud the band’s willingness to adapt, although it is starting to look as if those brilliant companion albums ‘Zaireeka’ and ‘The Soft Bulletin’ might become twin albatrosses around the group’s collective neck. ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ has not, at least for me, endured all that well – relying too much on quirks and production tricks. ‘At War With The Mystics’ may well have been a better record, but it felt dense and impenetrable in places.

Perhaps ‘Embryonic’ might have come as more of a shock if Wayne Coyne hadn’t already explained and justified it so thoroughly. Now that he has, its sound is relatively unsurprising – full of fuzzy noise, propulsive drum grooves (still reliant on that colossal, distorted Dave Fridmann sound) and heavily inspired by the likes of Can and the electric period Miles Davis groups.

Melody is clearly not a priority for the group here, and one of the most interesting changes is the way Wayne Coyne’s voice has now been subsumed into the overall texture of the music. On ‘The Soft Bulletin’, they made a clear virtue of his shaky pitch, presenting him as the very vulnerable, human heart experiencing a sense of cosmic awe. Now he sounds like a background figure, somewhat overwhelmed by the unhinged chaos surrounding him.

As a result, it’s the moments where everything relaxes and the music sleepwalks into a laconic drift that are most surprising. ‘Evil’ is eerie and appropriately sinister, whilst ‘I Can Be A Frog’ is tender and barmy in equal measure, albeit slightly undermined by unsubtle interjecting sound effects. Even better is ‘If’, which sounds like a more aquatic version of Neil Young’s theme from ‘Philadelphia’.

Elsewhere, there is much to enjoy, if you have the patience to trudge through the whole thing. There’s something gleeful and delirious about the chanting on ‘Worm Mountain’ and the opening ‘Convinced By The Hex’ makes for a suitably warped and disconcerting introduction. The frantic, glorious rush of ‘Silver Trembling Hands’ and the way it melts beautifully into its frazzled half-time chorus, is a definite highlight.

Sometimes, though, it has to be conceded that ‘Embryonic’ exposes the limitations of this approach to music making. For improvisation to work, it has to be unselfconscious, with inspired music emerging as a result of a natural, unforced interplay between the members of the ensemble. Yet this is not really what the Flaming Lips do. Their reputation has been built on careful orchestration and meticulous studio processes. In concert, when they are not busy with gesticulation and gimmicky showmanship, their performances consist of near-perfect facsimiles of the studio recordings. It would perhaps be too much to expect them to abandon this aesthetic entirely.

As a result, much of the supposed ‘randomness’ of ‘Embryonic’ sounds meticulously plotted and pre-ordained. When at its least successful, it sounds like a number of, well, ‘embryonic’ ideas stitched together. Yet there are so many ideas here – some worthwhile, whilst others lead the group up cul-de-sacs. At the very least, it invites careful repeated listening. It’s the sort of album that will inspire and frustrate in equal measure.

Embryonic is currently streaming at http://www.colbertnation.com

By way of contrast, David Sylvian is an artist who has been on a path away from the conventional song form for quite some time now. His output has been sporadic, but has always seemed like the result of a clear and driven mission, if not of complete repudiation of his past, then at least in search of radical new directions. It worked brilliantly on ‘Blemish’, a genuinely caustic and provocative record, on which Sylvian sought some kind of catharsis following the collapse of his marriage. It featured contributions from the late, brilliant avant-garde guitarist Derek Bailey and from electronic artist Christian Fennesz.

One of the major characteristics of Sylvian’s recent work has been an attempt to escape from the restrictions of time and rhythm. Like ‘Blemish’, ‘Manafon’ has no drums or percussion, and has a floaty, dreamy atmosphere. Some might argue that Sylvian is more interested in ‘pure sound’ than music here and, as such, ‘Manafon’ does seem more like the product of an art installation than a studio collaboration between experienced musicians. All this reminds me of Ian Carr’s warnings about the limitations of a certain approach to free improvisation. Whilst he had great admiration for the likes of Evan Parker, he also claimed that attempting to avoid time was usually futile – ‘as soon as you play a group of notes, you’re playing in time’.

Whilst ‘Manafon’ adopts a similar approach to Blemish, with Fennesz returning to play a greater role on laptop and guitar, it’s a notably calmer work. Even amidst its references to tortured poets and ‘random acts of senseless violence’, it’s Sylvian’s voice, with its hint of vibrato, that’s placed firmly in the foreground, representing a peculiar sort of serenity. Here is someone who has, at least supposedly, abandoned false idols in search of something pure and crystalline.

This music is pregnant with silence, space and air. The musical contributions from Evan Parker amongst others are quiet and mysterious rather than furious or wild. It’s not fair to say that this music lacks melody – it’s more a case of the improvised backdrops inspiring Sylvian to improvise his own melodies. When these integrate well with the music, as on the opening ‘Small Metal Gods’ and ‘Emily Dickinson’, the results are hypnotic. On the longer pieces, though, any sense of shape or flow tends to dissipate, and the results are rather opaque mood pieces.

‘Manafon’ would have worked brilliantly as an EP or a mini-album. But with the entire full length album adopting this delicate, brush stroke approach consistently, it sounds much more like one continuous, overlong piece than a set of individual songs. I deeply admire the emphasis on space, but can’t help longing for some sort of contrast or surprise.

It could certainly be argued that ‘Manafon’ requires one hundred per cent total immersion and concentration to deliver its full rewards. But the individual statements of the musicians, however subtle and controlled, are fleeting and transient, over which Sylvian’s incantations are clearly intended to be transcendent. His intellectual and philosophical musings don’t always offer anything to connect with emotionally, a problem that did not afflict ‘Blemish’.

One has to admire Sylvian’s audacity. Like Scott Walker, he has distanced himself so thoroughly from his former life as a pop star that one now has to expect something challenging and deeply unconventional with every release. His last release with Nine Horses was a smoky treat – and his record label Samedhi Sound is beginning to establish itself as a source of stimulating, powerful music, not least the haunting, beautiful music of Mercury nominated Sweet Billy Pilgrim. Yet in his search for a transcendental, spiritual response to the dangers and chaos of the world, Sylvian may have produced a work which is ultimately rather difficult to enjoy and appreciate. It’s almost as if his music has been so purified that any sense of humanity – any rage, anger, love, passion has been excised in favour of a detached, impartial gaze. It’s arguable that he has done this very thoroughly and successfully but there will be divergent schools of thought as to whether this is a musical goal worth aspiring to or not.

Into The Woods

Mew – No More Stories Are Told Today I’m Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I’m Tired Let’s Wash Away (Columbia, 2009)

Well, that certainly wraps up the ludicrous title of the year award, with bonus points for lack of punctuation. What a shame that such linguistic pretention will most likely alienate this record’s potential audience, for Mew’s excellent, inventive music continues to develop apace. This may well be their warmest, most accessible album but the group’s imagination with rhythm and sound continues to set them apart from most of their peers, placing them firmly in that league of superior, composition-focused rock groups (see also Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, Apostle of Hustle, Three Trapped Tigers etc).

Those with an innate suspicion of ‘intellectual’ rock music might pounce on the angular subdivisions of ‘Introducing Palace Players’ (featuring a style of drumming that is somewhat alien to the rigorous restrictions of indie-rock). They might also be dissuaded by the rather self-conscious reversed weirdness of the opening ‘New Terrain’ and condemn Mew as ‘difficult’. For me, there’s something curiously uplifting in the disjunctive robotic movements of the former and something surreal and disorientating in the textures of the latter.

Whilst this music is certainly meticulously constructed, it’s not without more immediate charms. There’s the insistent pulse of ‘Repeaterbeater’ or the gorgeous summery shimmer of ‘Beach’. Even more off the beaten track is the bastardised samba of ‘Hawaii’, an irresistible confection which seems. Whilst Mew are renowned for their short attention spans, tending to flip between a wealth of ideas, these songs are more notable for their consistent, carefully detailed moods.

The mid-section of the album adopts a more stately pace. The saccharine ‘Silas The Magic Car’ is the one point where Jonas Bjerre’s cutesy, childlike vocals threaten to become an irritation. Much better is ‘Cartoons and Macrame Wounds’, an engrossing and mesmerising epic with a peculiar combination of gentle lilt and emphatic crescendos.

Rich Costey’s production is a significant factor throughout. Having also produced the group’s international debut ‘Frengers’, Costey has played a vital role in defining the distinctive Mew sound, which is sleek and precise. It strikes me that Mew are actually quite close in sonic terms to Muse, another band that Costey has produced, although they are nowhere near as grandiose and they lack Matt Bellamy’s nails-down-a-blackboard vocal histrionics. Perhaps this explains Mew’s modest but fiercely loyal audience – they’ll never break into stadiums in the way that Muse have, perhaps because of the sense of restraint that tempers their otherwise expansive music.

There’s something quietly subversive about Mew’s coupling of mainstream production values with the impulse for adventure. Whilst the album’s title exposes their affectations, there’s also something innocent and charming in their bizarre, almost nonsensical lyrics and delicate melodies. Listening to them is like walking into a fairytale forest – it looks beautiful and enticing but offers unexpected twists and turns in the dark.

Back To Life

Pearl Jam - London O2 Arena 18th August 2009

The feeling at the end of this epic performance was, for Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder ‘beyond words’. It has to be admitted that even for a relative unbeliever, this might have been enough to convert me back to the cause.

I use the qualifications ‘relative’ and ‘convert back’ because, some time in my early teens, I might well have counted Pearl Jam among my favourite bands. I remember waiting for ‘Vitalogy’ to come out with genuine excitement and, even when it turned out to be a rather hit and miss combination of great songwriting, untamed aggression and half-arsed experiments in banality, found that excitement rather uncritically satiated.

Some time after ‘No Code’ (an album that now seems like the key to their catalogue – the point of transition), I switched off. Vedder’s earnest, self-important side seemed to take over and, whilst the band could still knock out serviceable riffs with commanding energy, they seemed to have forgotten about writing memorable songs. In retrospect, perhaps every Pearl Jam album is a little troublesome to digest whole but, whilst ‘Binaural’ ‘Riot Act’ and ‘Pearl Jam’ all have their moments, they somehow seem to veer closer to monotony.

In August 2009, the group seem like a band revitalised. In the early nineties, the group often seemed like the unacceptable face of grunge – the ones who had the ambition to be more than moderately successful and who were also largely comfortable with the results. This year, the obligatory anniversary repackaging of their debut ‘Ten’ has helped remind people that there was always soul and subtlety beneath their mainstream rock sheen. In addition to this, the imminent ‘Backspacer’ seems exactly what is required – a mercilessly concise half hour of new wave influenced pop songs. The three that they tackle during this gig sound refreshingly lightweight and entertaining, free from the burden of clumsy lurches at profundity.

Pearl Jam have clearly been educated at the Bruce Springsteen school of live performance – they’re in absolutely no hurry to finish and know how to get an arena crowd involved. We clap on command and ‘doo-de-doo’ along to the refrain from ‘Black’, proving that nothing unites a huge crowd quite as easily as a break-up song. By the encore, the audience are so enthusiastic that Vedder can afford his own Robbie Williams moment, allowing the crowd to sing the entire opening verse of 'Betterman' for him. The set, at two and a half hours, delivers value for money but also a whole lot more besides. Very few bands could get away with playing for this long without including some of their best loved songs (‘Jeremy’ and ‘Daughter’ are conspicuous by their absence) but Pearl Jam pull off the neat trick of juxtaposing some unpredictable selections with more established gems.

The band play six songs from ‘Ten’ and, save for the half beard denoting some form of maturity, Eddie Vedder has hardly changed much since 1992, still sporting big shorts and trainers and veering between sombre invocations and savage growl (he sounds dignified on ‘Immortality’ but like he’s ripping his own vocal chords out on ‘Blood’). Similarly, Mike McCready, in spite of signs of middle-aged spread, still stalks the stage like a man possessed, unleashing fearsome guitar solos. Much of this music is made for arenas and must have sounded distinctly out of place at their debut London show at the Borderline back in ’92. However, by opening with the otherworldly drone of ‘Release’, the side of the group that veers well beyond stadium rock conventions is immediately emphasised. It’s an odd opening gambit, but it works superbly – the band are left largely unlit for the song’s duration, before the stage lights ignite as the group launch into ‘Animal’. Aside from this, there’s actually very little in the way of big show theatrics here – the visuals for the screens are restrained and sepia-tinged, there are no explosions, no props and no videos. The music is obviously intended to speak for itself.

The first six songs cover the period from ‘Ten’ to ‘Vitalogy’, including a furious ‘Corduroy’ and strident ‘Why Go?’. The group veer straight from this run through their golden period to brand new single ‘The Fixer’, which sits very comfortably alongside those powerful earlier songs. It’s an immediately likeable slice of heavy pop that already looks like a crowd favourite. Vedder precedes it with an endearing bit of amateur psychology, explaining that men always want to find quick fixes to relationship problems when listening and understanding might be the preferred response.

The set takes some bizarre twists and turns as it progresses. Either respectfully or satirically, Vedder introduces a thrilling version of ‘Rats’ with a few bars of Michael Jackson’s ‘Ben’ and dedicates it to ‘a man who was supposed to be on this very stage, doing what he did’. There are several tracks not associated with any album – in the main set there’s ‘I Got ID’ from the Merkinball single released around the same time as the group’s collaboration with Neil Young on ‘Mirrorball’. The lengthy encores feature covers of songs by The Who and Victoria Williams (‘Crazy Mary’), as well as the punk-meets-Motown stomp of B-side ‘Leavin’ Here’ and a rare example of a B-side that has developed a life all of its own, the closing ‘Yellow Ledbetter’. It’s a gorgeous song, strongly influenced by the more lilting and reflective side of Jimi Hendrix, but also dense and verbose, perhaps even a little obtuse. Surely even Vedder doesn’t know what all the words are!

By this time, it’s 11.15pm and Pearl Jam have clearly outstayed their welcome. The house lights have been turned on in an effort to encourage people to leave, but the group are still onstage, Vedder nonchalantly sharing a bottle of beer and a cigarette with the front row, breaking not only the curfew but the anti-smoking law as well. The show has been a celebration of this group’s considerable virtues and their dogged longevity. They are the true survivors of the grunge era, somehow managing to transcend the style at the same time as maintaining it.

The Hazards Of Prog

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love (Rough Trade, 2009)

I know I’m not exactly hot off the press on this one, but I’ve been pondering exactly what to say about this perhaps intentionally ridiculous record. I’ve been a longstanding evangelist for The Decemberists’ anglophile folk-rock and I enjoy Colin Meloy’s literate, narrative take on songwriting. Their last record, ‘The Crane Wife’ was majestic – an ambitious juxtaposition of interconnected song suite and more digestible pop nuggets. Perhaps inevitably, ‘The Hazards of Love’ takes the concept suite format and runs with it, producing something that we might fairly term a ‘rock opera’. One of my major reservations about this record is that the seamless longform folktale seems like too obvious a step for the group, a potential pitfall that they might have more fruitfully avoided. The other niggle, this one perhaps fairer and more significant, is that the group have already done this a good deal better on their excellent musical setting of ‘The Tain’.

Over a longer distance, ‘The Hazards of Love’ doesn’t just tiptoe into excess, it takes a running jump at it. There are thematic connections explored in both lyrics and music – so melodies and sequences already familiar reappear at later junctures. There are guest vocalists (from Lavender Diamond and My Brightest Diamond – does Meloy have a thing for diamonds?) to enable all the characters to be voiced. There are unexpected interjections of violent prog-metal. A small chunk of this record sounds suspiciously like Queen circa ‘A Night At The Opera’, not by any means the most fashionable of influences. Most worryingly of all, there’s a sodding childrens’ choir. Some of it actually works terrifically and many of the individual tracks are really rather good. The complete whole, without so much as a pause for breath, is difficult to digest though and some sections of it are deeply irritating.

In the first instance, it requires a generous spoonful of tolerance to enjoy this rather whimsical nightmare fairytale about Margaret, a woman impregnated by a shape-shifting fawn. Naturally, a rake and a Queen also get involved. Luckily, Meloy’s typically verbose and colourful lyrics help the whole project to be, on balance, more entertaining than alienating. Still, it takes a lot of work on behalf of the listener to digest the music at the same time as following the rather waifer-thin plot. The presence of the guest vocalists is actually a real blessing, as it helps to create contrast amidst the mounting tension and otherwise relentless extravagance.

In some ways, ‘The Hazards of Love’ seems to have something of a split personality. With the influence of Queen, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin never far away, much of it (‘Won’t Want For Love’, ‘Repaid’, the occasional interruptions in ‘The Abduction of Margaret’, ‘The Queen’s Rebuke’) is sludgy, old-fashioned hair rock. By way of contrast, some of the more immediate moments are very much of the moment and somewhat conventional. ‘The Wanting Comes In The Waves’ has a section that rather too closely resembles Arcade Fire. The punishing chug of ‘The Rake’s Song’ could come from any contemporary indie band, although it’s rendered interesting by the palpable savagery in Meloy’s snarly vocal, in character as ‘The Rake’. This is all before we even mention the occasionally tendency towards baroque chamber pop. The oom-pah waltz recasting of the title theme delivered by child’s choir is far too much for me and has so far made me lurch for the skip button every time.

Whilst there’s something rather refreshing in both the retro-rock and harpsichord excursions, they risk the trappings of irony and detachment and, as a result, don’t really move me. It’s very theatrical but not always all that dramatic. The group really prove their mettle on two outstanding songs here which also happen to be the most direct. ‘Annan Water’ alternates between a rolling and tumbling folk strum and a disarmingly beautiful chorus stripped back to just vocals and Hammond organ. The closing final piece in the ‘Hazards of Love’ jigsaw could almost be described as a soft rock ballad – but it’s performed tastefully and is sweetened by one of Colin Meloy’s most delicate and appealing melodies.

With all its transparent indulgences, ‘The Hazards of Love’ sometimes seems to be trying hard to induce a reaction in its listeners. The Decemberists are too good a band for that though and, try as I might, I can’t quite dislike this preposterous record. Meloy’s love for the English folk rock tradition is clear and not even the liberal peppering of harder edged heavy rock can disguise this. After all, it’s not as if we would ever come to a Decemberists album expecting something contemporary and fashionable.

Yin and Yang

Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Men (Samedhi Sound, 2009)
Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years (Rough Trade, 2009)


Here are two very different albums with which I’m completely besotted at the moment. Sweet Billy Pilgrim are a new name to me, the latest signings to David Sylvian’s Samedhi Sound label. Their second album ‘Twice Born Men’ is a rather sober and serious affair, albeit in the best possible way. By way of contrast, ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ is thoroughly bonkers – the most madcap album in Super Furry Animals’ quirky catalogue.

Getting straight to the point, the music on ‘Twice Born Men’ is disarmingly beautiful. It’s a beautifully crafted, effortlessly cohesive album that represents a shining example of genuinely artful pop music. There’s a strong melodic sensibility at work which is reminiscent of the intelligent anthems of Doves or Elbow, but there’s also a freer, more impressionistic side to this group, and an adventurous approach to instrumentation and arrangement. Many of the positive reviews this album has received have mentioned Talk Talk, although the music here is warmer and less stark than ‘Laughing Stock’. It’s a powerful, distinctive hybrid sound focused on texture and atmosphere. Whilst there are plenty of banjos and acoustic guitars, this could hardly be classified as folk music. Similarly, whilst there are plenty of gently swelling synth pads and found sounds, the group are not exactly electronic either.

The album is neatly bookended by the same musical theme, although it is stated in radically different ways. This gives it a rather old-fashioned sense of a long form journey and, indeed, chief songwriter Tim Elsenberg has admitted that he considers it a concept album about ‘the heart’s little journey’. Not perhaps the most novel of ideas, but the execution of the theme is near perfect. It opens with rustling cymbals, electronic haze and a finger picked electric guitar playing a delicate theme – pretty but melancholy. Over this, an American voice intones a story about a 13 month road trip – the important element being the free movement of driving rather than the places passed through. It sounds like a journey of forgetting and escaping but the story ends abruptly – ‘…but then I met you’. The end of the album returns to that electric guitar theme, but this time it is presented as a bawdy drunken chorus, which is in fact Tim Elsenberg’s voice overdubbed thirty times.

The first proper song ‘Truth Only Smiles’, is a neat encapsulation of this band’s magic. It’s an ambitious, rhythmically fascinating song with a strange, elusive verse giving way to a big, heartfelt chorus. Elsenberg’s voice has the full blooded force of Thom Yorke or Jeff Buckley but he also has an intuitive sense of how and when to use restraint. ‘Bloodless Coup’ and ‘Kalypso’ are similarly entrancing, the latter veering through a bewildering array of texture and tempo variations but exercising its own peculiar logic. The arrangements are completely beguiling. Unfortunately, I haven’t got credits to hand, but strings and what sounds like a clarinet add depth and resonance.

‘Longshore Drift’ sounds much like its title suggests, with a rubato delivery and a more abstract sensibility. This quality returns on the album’s penultimate track, although both are too restless and emotive to risk inducing sleep. The crackly electronics in the background serve to enhance the sense of eeriness. Although a number of the songs extend for over six minutes, the album as a whole is concise at only eight tracks. The abstract moments are always punctuated by more robust moments, like the asymmetrical, jazzy undertones of ‘Future Pefect Tense’. Whilst the album ends with its most dreamlike material, the group sustain a perplexing combination of melancholy and euphoria that makes for truly stirring music throughout.

‘Twice Born Men’ is lyrically evocative too, with a recurring maritime theme which is continued in the cover art – apparently there’s more information about the art than the music in the liner notes. There are also some inventive and imaginative lines (the ‘dreams all cracked and pistol-whipped’ of ‘Truth Only Smiles’ springs immediately to mind). At worst, it relies on platitudes about emotions and relationships, but these are far more insightful than those offered by lesser artists.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim make music that seems to float and drift, with numerous ideas feeding into an over-arching mood or atmosphere. When a strong melodic theme emerges, its impact is greater for being unexpected. The more I listen to it, the more its subtle detail creeps to the surface. Equal parts vulnerability and strength – this is cerebral music with a richly emotive core. Much has already been said about Grizzly Bear’s upcoming ‘Veckatimest’, but ‘Twice Born Men’ already sounds like a worthy UK counterpart.

Whereas ‘Twice Born Men’ is the work of a band with a clear, coherent vision and is carefully structured, Super Furry Animals seem to have, quite deliriously, lost all sense of direction on ‘Dark Days/Light Years’. It is gleefully all over the place and remarkably self-indulgent. Yet SFA are a rare band that actually benefit from freeing themselves from strictures. Although much of the music here is based on grooves (often seemingly krautrock-inspired), their infectious hooks often win through in the end. They have an effortless knack for making the very process of creating music sound like tremendous fun. This is, of course, exactly how it should be.

Their scattershot approach here makes for a much more engaging listen than the languid psychedelia of much of ‘Love Kraft’, or even the crisp pop of ‘Hey Venus!’. For those who prefer SFA at their weirdest, ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ will comfortably be their best album since ‘Guerilla’. This doesn’t necessarily mean the music is always wildly original. Much of the opening ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ (how could a song with a title like that be possible to resist?) is clearly derived from Hendrix or Led Zeppelin and the group’s fascination with The Beach Boys remains prevalent elsewhere. As ever, it’s the way SFA combine these yardsticks of classic pop and rock with their more experimental impulses. So, the aforementioned ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ begins with a bewildering raft of programmed beats, before exploding into a guitar-lead freak-out.

Satisfyingly, there are some remnants of the joyous reconstruction of 80s pop Gruff crafted with Boom Bip on the Neon Neon album. ‘Inaugural Trams’ and ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’ (more great titles!) both benefit from that pulsating, shimmering sheen. The German spoken word sectionin ‘Inaugural Trams’ is delivered by Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy – it’s probably not too harsh on Franz to suggest it’s more worthwhile than anything on their latest effort. Gruff’s vocals are often electronically treated to enhance the bizarre, hallucinogenic mood that prevails throughout the record. As has been the tendency on recent SFA albums, this sounds like the work of a democratic group – with lead vocal contributions from Bunf and Cian as well as Gruff and a wider emphasis on harmonies.

There is space for ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ to conclude with a lengthy motorik groove (the thoroughly daft ‘Pric’) and for it to contain an epic piece of hazy psychedelia (‘Cardiff In The Sun’). Even such extravagances don’t detract from the overall sense that this is, at heart, a pop album. Songs like ‘White Socks/Flip Flops’ and ‘Helium Hearts’ are shot through with the group’s oddball charm and natural way with a winning melody. The only limitations come with a slight feeling of repetition. ‘Inconvenience’, in spite of its griping lyrics, is actually self-mocking and full of life, but it’s basically a retread of the glam stomp of ‘Golden Retriever’. Similarly, ‘Helium Hearts’ seems based on the same brand of awkward funk that characterised ‘Smokin’ or ‘Juxtaposed With U’.

These are very minor quibbles though – to have SFA at their energetic, devil-may-care best is exhilarating and much of ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ sounds like a manic celebration of modern absurdity. As odd as this excitable album often is, it’s also playful, inventive and massively enjoyable.

How To Reappear Completely

The Invisible - The Invisible (Accidental, 2009)

It seems only appropriate to follow the tribute to Ian Carr with a review of something involving people who have passed through his workshops. As a project, The Invisible follows on from the excellent Jade Fox, who gained a strong following and credible reputation but never delivered an official full-length album. Originally intended as a side project to Jade Fox, the ideas grew substantially until it became a more viable proposition. The Invisible’s line-up includes the towering guitarist Dave Okumu, the versatile bassist Tom Herbert (formerly of Acoustic Ladyland and still a vital presence in Polar Bear) and superb drummer Leo Taylor. All are experienced jazz musicians and whilst they perhaps bring a more adventurous harmonic sensibility to this music as a result, few would venture to call this album jazz. It is, however, one of the most exciting and engaging British pop albums I’ve heard for some time.

That being said, it’s not exactly forward thinking. Listening to it makes me wonder why, when there’s been such a tremendous hullaballoo about synth pop acts like La Roux and Little Boots, excitement surrounding The Invisible’s equally 80s-informed brew has been slower to build. Okumu’s group plunder a much wider array of potentially more fashionable 80s sources. Indeed, pretty much everything that populated Simon Reynolds’ wonderful book ‘Rip It Up and Start Again’ can be heard in ghostly voices here, from Talking Heads to Orange Juice and Scritti Politti. Another major influence, on the introspective lyrics as much as the music, is Robert Smith and The Cure.

What is exciting about The Invisible, then, is not so much their depth or originality, but the effectiveness of their synthesis, the quality of their songs and the thoughtful studio treatment of the material. If there is a more contemporary element to their sound, it lies in the treatment of Okumu’s vocals, which occasionally calls to mind TV on the Radio or Bon Iver. Yet in spite of the transparent influences, there isn’t really another comparable band at work in the UK – there’s something fresh and appealing about The Invisible’s presentation and feeling for the music.

Sometimes the sheer proficient tightness of their groove is electrifying, as on the slinky ‘Jacob and the Angel’. Throughout, Tom Herbert’s basslines are thrillingly danceable, his phrases carefully placed and punctuated to give the music momentum. How many bassists are equally as vital on both upright and fretted electric instruments? Taylor uses the complete drum kit to provide texture and colour, as well as that supreme rhythmic security which elevates The Invisible over lesser rock groups. It all comes together in exciting fashion on ‘Monster’s Waltz’, with its delicious syncopated guitar chords which then unexpectedly give way to an explosive chorus.

Whilst there’s certainly a cerebral quality of the music, it’s the immediacy and drive of a number of the tracks that really makes it click. ‘London Girl’, with a bassline that comes across as a combination of ‘Good Times’ and ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, is completely irresistible. ‘OK’ is the most infectious thing here – with its sugary harmonies and driving pace. In an alternative dimension, these sound like top ten hits.

I’m not entirely convinced by the isolation-by-numbers of some of Okumu’s lyrics. He sounds less self-conscious and more dynamic when simply enthusing about a girl as he does on ‘London Girl’. It’s possible that he’s more interested in sound than he is a songwriter per se – he’s certainly paid considerable attention to the sound of his voice and how it fits within the intricate musical whole. As a result, the clunkier aspects of his lyrics don’t intrude too much on the overall effect (much the same as with The Cure and New Order if we’re honest).

There are few bands who give so much consideration to the execution and delivery of their songs. Every element of this music is precise and well crafted. The result is an album that sounds hypnotic and sensuous – music with real presence and vitality.

Refusing to Budge

Morrissey - Years Of Refusal (Polydor, 2009)

Describing a Morrissey album as a bit patchy is a bit like saying a packet of peanuts may contain nuts. With the exception of ‘Vauxhall and I’ and perhaps ‘Viva Hate’, all of his solo albums to date have featured the odd clunker or two. The least favourable reviews of ‘Years of Refusal’ have dubbed it his worst album since 1997’s ‘career nadir’ ‘Maladjusted’. Would it be too controversial to state that I don’t think ‘Maldajusted’ is all that bad? It contains two of his very best songs in ‘Trouble Loves Me’ and ‘Satan Rejected My Soul’ and one of his very worst in ‘Roy’s Keen’. I certainly prefer it to ‘Kill Uncle’ anyway. It’s also worth noting that I also prefer it to the much lauded ‘Ringleader of the Tormentors’. Yes, that album had three great tracks in ‘Dear God, Please Help Me’, ‘Life is a Pigsty’ and ‘At Last I Am Born’, but the rest of it was largely generic midtempo rock.

Most commentators are portraying ‘Years of Refusal’ as a regressive step after the candour and grandness of ‘Ringleader’. Production is from the late Jerry Finn, who also helmed the triumphant comeback ‘You are the Quarry’. Much of the musical backdrop is tough, unsentimental and unsubtle, dominated by the pounding, dirty rhythm section of Matt and Solomon Walker (how many drummers has Moz dispensed with now?). In a sense it’s appropriate given the defiance and ugly nature of many of the lyrics. We’ve been here before – but it’s rarely sounded this aggressive or clamorous.

In what is now typical of Morrissey’s attitude to contractual obligations (and, indirectly, toward his paying fans), two of the tracks have already been released as extra tracks on last year’s pointless ‘Greatest Hits’ set. Neither of them is altered in any way here, although their thunderous chugging perhaps makes more sense in context.

There’s nothing here that will cause controversy in the manner of ‘National Front Disco’ or ‘Bengali in Platforms’ but there are times amidst this dislikeable mix of self-aggrandisement, self-pity and self-parody that one yearns for something more outrageous. Yet again there’s a parade of uncharitable public figures (or at least, uncharitable towards Steven Patrick Morrissey) – the ‘uncivil servants’ and ‘a QC without humility’. Then there’s a lot of really rather churlish and tedious moaning. I still think there’s a good song to be written about the benefits of long term singledom but ‘I’m OK By Myself’ certainly isn’t it. Morrissey merely sounds like a moody teenager here. ‘That’s How People Grow Up’ seems to suggest that maturing means accepting that you are doomed to romantic failure. ‘I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris’ sounds nice enough, but it’s another of those songs presenting its anti-hero as essentially incapable of reciprocal love. Last night I dreamt that Morrissey rewrote the same song again. Oh look, it was a premonition!

Moz used to be able to do this sort of thing with knowing humour but for most of ‘Years of Refusal’ he just sounds morose and unpleasant. ‘All You Need Is Me’ audaciously accuses the world of preferring to carp on about him than address its more significant problems. So why does he spend even more time and energy admonishing everyone for criticising him if the criticism itself is so trivial? If Morrissey is simply looking for people to admire him again, he needs to provide us with some evidence that he’s more than just a rather nasty and petty individual.

That being said, some of the nastiness on ‘Years of Refusal’ is characteristically delicious. There’s a run of superb songs in the second half of the set incorporating ‘One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell’, ‘It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore’ and ‘You Were Good In Your Time’. The latter two stand out for veering away from the brash, angry style of the rest of the album, instead sounding lush and extravagant in the best possible way. If one thing has progressed and improved during Moz’s solo career it’s his voice. Once an idiosyncratic but wavering and unmusical device, it has in recent years become an instrument of real depth and character. These songs provide the most supportive musical context for that expression. There’s also the splendid ‘When Last I Spoke To Carol’, a song as curt and devastating as ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’, bolstered by a military rhythm and some Mariachi horns, not stylistic features that we’d usually associate with Moz.

Even when he’s stuck in the more generic rock mode, he can still sometimes throw out a gem. As he rattles off a gleeful list of anti-depressant medication, the excoriating opener ‘Something Is Squeezing My Skull’ at least demonstrates that Moz is still able to articulate the absurdity that accompanies the pain in modern living. This distinctive brand of black humour has always been a hallmark of his best work. We could probably have done with a bit more of it.

‘Years of Refusal’ is a crisp and brutally insistent record that finds Morrissey in particularly fine voice. The rare moments of adventure suggest that there are still possibilities for a late period masterpiece should he choose to focus more on the experiments and less on the reliable, overly familiar filler. Perhaps we wouldn’t have Morrissey be anything other than a stubborn, isolated icon now. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling that it’s a weakness that whilst this album has plenty of bite, it doesn’t have much in the way of humour or real feeling.

A New Hope

Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream (Columbia, 2009)

I’m increasingly wary of hyperbole at the moment (Gary Mulholland’s observation in this month’s Observer Music Monthly that Lily Allen is one of the ‘greatest lyricists and singers of her time’ struck me as particularly absurd), so let’s get a few things straight at the outset. Whilst I have no qualms about being a massive Springsteen fan, I’m not one of these strangely deluded people that think his ‘return to pop production’ on ‘Magic’ marked one of his greatest achievements. That being said, I’m certainly not averse to this late prolific period, and a companion piece to ‘Magic’ couldn’t really be a bad thing.

‘Working on a Dream’ continues Springsteen’s extraordinary talent for judging the American mood. ‘The Rising’ brought him out of a quasi-retirement and it seemed like a well-judged tonic of moderation in an otherwise stark post 9/11 landscape. Springsteen has recently derided the Bush administration for its lack of knowledge and understanding of the past, so perhaps the wonderful Seeger Sessions project was his personal response to that – an attempt to forge new links with the American folk tradition. Now ‘Working On A Dream’ arrives riding the crest of the wave of ‘Yes we can’ positivism that now characterises America. From ‘My Lucky Day’ to ‘What Love Can Do’ via the title track, ‘Working On A Dream’ presents an essentially positive view of what human relationships can achieve. This acts as a typically personal metaphor for the current American political climate. It seems appropriate writing about it on the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration.

The good news is that, on first few listens, it seems like a marginally better album than ‘Magic’. It plays to that album’s strengths – most specifically, its love for the lavish pop flourishes of Phil Spector and Roy Orbison. There are more songs in the sonic model of ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ here and, mercifully, less in the ponderous mould of ‘Devil’s Arcade’ or the plodding manner of ‘You’ll Be Comin’ Down’. In fact, ‘This Life’ perhaps resembles ‘Girls…’ a little too closely.

The sweeping narrative of the epic opener ‘Outlaw Pete’, an original Springsteen song that transplants the spirit of the Seeger Sessions onto the E Street Band, makes for one of the very best songs from these sessions. It’s an elaborate, lengthy story with a huge arrangement to match, once again giving Soozie Tyrell’s violin a pivotal role in the new E Street sound. It harks back to an exciting, wild and dangerous past (and to his more theatrical, dramatic side that he’s neglected on recent albums) but it’s a bit of a smokescreen for many of the lush, bittersweet songs that follow.

It’s possible that some may see these mostly straightforward pop songs as lightweight by Springsteen’s often weighty standards. Sometimes, though, simplicity is exactly what is required and there’s a sense that Springsteen is enjoying getting back to the basics of songwriting. Perhaps it’s particularly audacious of him to write a light country shuffle with lyrics collecting a series of borderline clichés and call it ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ – but this seems to be typical of the unburdened mood in which Springsteen currently finds himself. The jaunty, insistent ‘My Lucky Day’ and ‘Surprise Surprise’ wouldn’t have been out of place on the now unfairly maligned ‘Lucky Town’, but this is no bad thing. Both are rousing, irresistibly infectious pop songs. The general mood of the album is summed up brilliantly by ‘Kingdom of Days’. This work seems like an acceptance that what humans can achieve may be limited, but we must grasp for our full potential.

For the most part, Brendan O’Brien’s sound is a little less muddy here. There’s a little more room for individual parts and it’s particularly good that the supreme foundations provided by Garry Tallent’s basslines are now more audible. Unfortunately, O’Brien still can’t resist unnecessary flourishes and trickery. Springsteen’s voice, which has always alternated between impassioned howl and brow-beaten melancholy, has never been an instrument in need of reverb or double tracking. For this listener at least, these effects only serve to diminish his message.

The album ends with a sparse piece of great beauty – ‘The Last Carnival’, which is comfortably the most poetic and enthralling song here. It’s soft, blissful coda of gospel-infused vocals is an appropriate note on which to end – a sound that captures a strong sense of human creativity and invention. Perhaps it’s inappropriate that it is followed on limited edition versions by Springsteen’s title song from Darren Aronofsky’s film ‘The Wrestler’, however marvellous and insightful that song may be. Thinking again, though, perhaps even this character study shares the album’s abiding faith. Springsteen here seems to be adding his own weight to the great Studs Terkel’s observation that ‘a realist is someone who hopes’. Let’s hope that Obama too delivers on this essential promise and positive view of human nature. It has long been needed.

Same Tricks, Different Results

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion (Domino, 2009)
Bon Iver – Blood Bank (Jagjaguwar, 2009)

On the surface, you couldn’t find two acts more appreciably different than Animal Collective and Bon Iver. The former are synaesthetic, expansive, sometimes confrontational but more often these days full of unbridled joy. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has, so far, excelled at making music that is spare, hauting, melancholy and introspective, in the best possible way. Yet listening to the two new releases by these most inspired of artists, I’m struck by a common ground in their understanding of the power and emotional impact of the human voice. Much of the appeal of AC comes from the interaction of the voices of Avery Tare and Panda Bear, and in their deployment of various yelps and other vocal quirks. Justin Vernon uses his multitracked choir as a means both of self-expression and self-examination.

Animal Collective have always played a risky game in straddling that very fine boundary between infectious and infuriating. On ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’, they push that distinctive style to the very limit. The resulting music is delirious, intoxicating and completely irresistible. Resistance is clearly futile. Just listen to ‘Summertime Clothes’, a song about wandering aimlessly during nights when it’s too hot to sleep. There’s a vibrant explosion in the song’s chorus – ‘I want to walk around with you! Justyoujustyoujustyou!’ – it’s wonderful. Or then there’s the extended, radical closing track ‘Brothersport’, where the near ecstatic nature of the voices, combined with the sharp rhythmic interplay, sounds informed by African music.

The influence of electronic and dance music seems to have been pushed to the forefront on this record. ‘My Girls’ even seems to slyly reference the sound of something like The Source and Candi Staton’s ‘You Got The Love’. As such, it’s the logical conclusion of their experiments with insistence and unrelenting rhythm. For my ears, it’s a much more interesting area than their earlier experiments with pure noise, whimsical acid folk and feedback. Perhaps one of the reason why there is such a buzz around AC at the moment is that they are one of the few bands to have really progressed and developed. Where their earlier records had a loose, ramshackle charm and a childlike core, ‘Merriweather…’ feels multi-layered, rich, exotic and carefully composed. This isn’t to say that they’ve lost their drive for spontaneity or radicalism, just that the group’s internal systems are now operating on a more sophisticated level.

Listening to ‘Merriweather..’ on headphones is like diving into a swimming pool filled with honey. Sonically, at first it is hardly subtle, but beneath the pulsing heartbeats, electro glam stomps and background noise there is also plenty of nuance. If you embrace the group’s positivity and worlds of possibility wholeheartedly, there is much to discover. Some of the album’s most compelling moments occur when the insistence dissipates a little. There’s the way that ‘Daily Routine’ mysteriously and unexpectedly evaporates, or when the opener ‘In The Flowers’ performs the precise inverse function, exploding into a clattering barrage of percussion from a rather elusive, slippery introduction.

Those who felt (wrongly in my view) that ‘Strawberry Jam’ was too infectious, and therefore some form of artistic compromise, might be further challenged by the blissful, fulfilled nature of ‘Merriweather…’. The regressive sense of whimsy seems to have given way to a broader sense of awe and fascination, a feeling that often seems to be expressed as total euphoria. A large chunk of this album constitutes a celebration of immediacy and physicality, from ‘Guys Eyes’ expressing a desire ‘to do exactly what my body wants to’ to the experience of liberation through dancing on ‘In The Flowers’ or stepping outside in ‘Summertime Clothes’. So much of this comes through the dynamics and sonority of the voices of Avey Tare and Panda Bear.

Perhaps this is too reductive an analysis given the increasingly elaborate means AC deploy to achieve these goals (hello asymmetrical time signatures!), or when ‘My Girls’ expresses a more homely sentiment focusing on the joy of family life. Either way, it’s surprising and refreshing to hear an album, particularly in these difficult times, that is so devoid of melancholy or sadness. Listening to ‘Merriweather…’ for the fourth time now, I’m struck that it’s an album that works on multiple levels. It’s an immediately loveable statement, but full of unpredictable, highly creative avenues to explore on further listening. Time alone will tell if it’s a classic, but there’s definitely something exciting and fresh in its modern take on psychedelia. It’s a series of enriching auditory hallucinations.

The ‘Blood Bank’ EP is the first new material from Justin Vernon since his rapturously received debut album. Pleasingly, it shows few signs of performance anxiety, or uncertain direction. Instead, the title track represents a grander version of his core musical vision. It uses similar tricks to those deployed by AC – the multi layered vocals and harmonies, the insistent pulsating heartbeat. Yet the impact is not one of euphoria, but one of bittersweet reminiscence. It’s a strangely comforting sound at first, but the smouldering crescendos that are more familiar from Bon Iver live performances than from Vernon’s recordings imbue it with real intensity.

Typical of Vernon too are the disarmingly weird lyrics. ‘Well I met you at the blood bank/We were looking at the bags’ is a rather unconventional opening gambit for what might ostensibly be a love song. It’s also a song about how our secrets are sometimes our very life blood, a rather fascinating and intriguing sentiment that Vernon leaves teasingly under-developed.

Elsewhere, the EP provides further, equally fruitful paths through which Vernon might advance his interests in sounds and effects. The rather intimate feel of ‘For Emma..’ is welded into something more strident and confident with the minimal but austere piano of ‘Babys’. Most shocking of all is ‘The Woods’, in which a multi-tracked chorus of Vernons is fed, ‘808s and Heartbreaks’-style, through an auto-tuner. The effect, rather than being self-consciously cheesy, is actually uneasy and uncomfortable. It’s the sound of someone lost and trying to reconnect. It’s a particularly audacious move given how important the reverb-laden vocal sound was to ‘For Emma…’ Here, Vernon has abandoned it in favour of the least natural vocal sound conceivable, but one which in his control still sounds convincingly emotional.

In between all this is the relatively conventional ‘Beach Baby’, which serves as a neat bridge back to Vernon’s isolation on ‘For Emma..’. The addition of steel guitar adds a positive, playful touch. The four tracks together suggest that rather than a premature apotheosis, ‘For Emma…’ really was just the beginning.

Never Likely To Be Lost For Words

Okkervil River - Shepherd's Bush Empire 11/11/08

Will Sheff isn’t wasting any time tonight. He introduces the first song but then directs his band towards blasting through a number of songs in quick succession without so much as a pause. He’s every bit as intense and melodramatic in performance as even a casual listen to Okkervil River’s dense, verbose, highly dramatic songs might suggest. He loosens his tie, flirts with the microphone and bursts on to the drum riser to have a fiery stare off with the drummer. Every gesture is exaggerated and overstated, to the extent that his genuine debt of gratitude to the audience could be misinterpreted as mocking insincerity.

It’s not exactly clear how Okkervil River now manage to fill out venues of the size and grandeur of the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. They haven’t exactly received vast amounts of column inches in the UK, although Uncut’s editor Allan Jones and his wife are visibly enjoying the show from a prime vantage point on the first level balcony. Perhaps it’s the Pitchfork effect (the band’s breakthrough album ‘Black Sheep Boy’ received a justifiably rapturous review from the influential taste-making website) or perhaps it’s simply good old fashioned word of mouth. I’m certainly surprised by the relative youth of the audience – one might expect this rather unhip and literary brand of songwriting to have a slightly older demographic.

Tonight’s performance isn’t perfect – but then Okkervil River is a band that depends on a kind of ragged glory for its impact. The vocal harmonies could do with a bit of work and there are times when Sheff’s lack of patience threatens to undermine the performance – he seems to begin singing ‘The Latest Toughs’ in a completely different key from the rest of the band. The nuances of the songs are also occasionally threatened by one of those drummers who seem to view drumming as method acting. He rarely plays anything particularly adventurous but still seems to make the basic act of keeping time look as physically demanding as running a marathon. He also has a very limited dynamic range – hard and loud to extremely hard and loud. There are times when the group look in danger of becoming a rather conventional soft rock ensemble, anchored by an occasionally leaden pace. It’s inevitable that a smaller working band would miss some of the lavish flourishes of their more ornate studio arrangements – but sometimes this level of bludgeoning is too extravagant.

Nevertheless, when Sheff is in full flight, he brings these extraordinary songs to vivid and cinematic life. He luxuriates in the spellbinding power of language, using each song to tell a story, sometimes pausing simply to linger on the pattern and flow of his words. Even songs which are based largely on an intellectual conceit (the opening ‘Plus Ones’ is based on a string of references to songs with numbers in their titles, adding an extra number to the original – ’97 Tears’, ‘The 51st way to leave your lover’, ‘8 Chinese Brothers’ etc) become something insightful and devastating in his hands. Best of all is his rare willingness to write from a female perspective (the astonishingly beautiful ‘Starry Stairs’ and ‘On Tour with Zykos’). There are some examples of women writing from a male vantage point (the excellent Sylvie Lewis springs immediately to mind), but fewer from the other way around. Sadly not performed tonight, the early Okkervil song ‘Red’ related the story of a female dance yearning for her separated daughter.

The set list is judiciously selected, with most of the key tracks from ‘The Stage Names’ and its more recent sequel ‘The Stand-Ins’ getting welcome airings (although the stellar ‘Calling and Not Calling My Ex’ is a notable omission). For me, though, the performance provided a timely reminder of just how excellent ‘Black Sheep Boy’ was, by comparison barely registering in this country. Sheff’s stripped back performance of ‘A Stone’ (during which he sadly has to command the audience to stop yacking) is supremely moving. The more aggressive ‘Black’ and ‘For Real’ (the latter notable for its visceral stop-start stabs from the band) pack a more muscular punch. Dipping into the back catalogue, Sheff also delivers the morally complex and remarkable ‘The War Criminal Rises and Speaks’ (‘Does the heart want to atone? Oh, I believe that it’s so, because if I could climb back through time I’d restore their lives and give back my own…’).

Sheff’s best songs alternate between an affecting melancholy and a rousing spirit of adventure. The very best ones combine the two, as on the wonderful ‘Lost Coastlines’, which uses seafaring metaphors to detail the perilous experience of being in a touring band. It’s one of the few such self-referential songs to manage to be moving in a much wider sense. It gives a strong sense of human relationships – the way being in a band, where everyone’s greatest passions, not to mention their finances, are at stake, can be unpredictable and dangerous, yet also thrilling. It’s a situation where the bonds of friendship can be severely tested but are most often repaired. It becomes a big audience singalong tonight. During the closing ‘Unless It’s Kicks’, Sheff has no shame in commanding the audience to raise their hands and clap with vigour. In fact, the show’s closing 20 minute stretch is as invigorating and uplifting as I’ve experienced this year.

Even better still is the encore. There’s the haunting, mesmerising ‘Girl In Port’, followed by two much earlier songs featuring two of Sheff’s most compelling narratives. ‘Okkervil River Song’ is about as keening and convincing a description of young lovers as I can remember, whilst ‘Westfall’, inspired by the Austin, Texas Yogurt Shop murders, talks of motiveless killing with dispassionate frankness. It ends with some chilling words: ‘Now, with all these cameras focused on my face you’d have thought they could see it through my skin/They’re looking for evil, thinking they can trace it, but evil don’t look like anything…’ It’s a strange choice of fan favourite.

Lyrically, Sheff is without doubt in the highest league. In fact, this seems to be a particularly exciting time for American alternative rock groups with literary imaginations – Iron and Wine, The Decemberists, The Mountain Goats – all share an unconventional and wordy writing style with OR.

Nick Golding remarked to me on the way home that the sound balance was unusually clear and carefully mixed. Whilst I sometimes struggled to hear Scott Bracken’s trumpet, it’s certainly true that Sheff’s voice came through booming with disarming clarity. It’s far too frequent a problem at gigs that so much reverb is applied to a lead singer’s voice that any attempt at enunciation is obscured. Mercifully, this was not the case tonight. Perhaps this made Sheff’s occasional pitching issues more conspicuous – but this is a small price to pay for being able to hear and understand his lucid, brave and highly original words.

'We Are R.E.M. and This Is What We Do'

R.E.M., Twickenham Stadium, 30th August 2008


When REM announced that the UK leg of their tour to promote ‘Accelerate’ would feature stadiums, I felt the group’s management and promoters were being a touch ambitious. No number of silly ‘return to form’ reviews is going to turn around the band’s commercial decline overnight, particularly given that ‘Accelerate’ is hardly a return to the southern gothic folk sound that characterised the band’s years of multi-platinum sales. With the Cardiff show downgraded to an Arena and the entire top tier of Twickenham’s seating completely empty, this feeling proved to be correct.

Still, it’s hard to envisage how this superb show would have worked in a smaller venue. Having reinvented themselves some time ago as a touring act par excellence, the group have really pushed the boat out with this tour. I’ve seen REM some six times since 1995 and this really was by some distance the best performance I’ve seen them give – muscular, charismatic and, ingeniously, providing mass entertainment whilst being firmly uncompromising. Every aspect of the show’s design – including visuals and lighting – had been carefully prepared and orchestrated to enhance the atmosphere.

The sheer brilliance of their set merely heightened the torture of watching support act Editors. Dismissing them as a poor man’s Interpol really is too kind to this wretched band. Their four to the floor beat (constantly pushed ahead of the actual pulse by an aggressive and unsubtle drummer) is relentless rather than insistent (it pounds rather than grooves), the music is arranged with little or no imagination (simply adding some echo effects to the guitars does not make them innovative) and overall the group simply take themselves far too seriously. The earnestness is intolerable, and the whole experience is like being treated as a punch-bag. It left me with a severe headache. Their popularity really is hard to fathom.

This is the fiery, politicised REM that Michael Stipe promised during the pre-release campaign for ‘Around The Sun’. When that album proved to be subdued and mostly soporific, it unsurprisingly provoked a reaction that was somewhat nonplussed. Today, REM are dedicating a storming ‘Man Sized Wreath’ to the memory of Martin Luther King, calling for a sea-change to ‘get the Bush administration the fuck out of office and the Obama administration the fuck into office’, before launching into a visceral, vitriolic ‘Ignoreland’ and admitting ‘we’re kinda political’.

The verbal exhortations are more than matched by the righteous fury of the music, which has been amplified and toughened up. The tracks from ‘Accelerate’ work much better in a live context, sounding genuinely thrilling when stripped of Jacknife Lee’s irritating production techniques. The back-to-basics sound also leads them into unexpected and fruitful corners of their back catalogue, with thunderous versions of ‘Disturbance at the Heron House’ and ‘Exhuming McCarthy’ (the latter interspersed with soundclips from the McCarthy hearings) being particular highlights.

Luckily, there’s also a good deal of charm and humour to the show, with the comic book graphics emphasising the band’s occasional tendency towards goofiness (ending songs with words like ‘wow!’ and ‘yeah!’. Quite brilliantly, Stipe dedicates ‘Walk Unafraid’ to a particular group of people – “we call them redheads, I think you call them ‘ginge’ – but they’re the most beautiful people in the world”. He then asks the crowd to raise their hands if they have a special ginger in their lives and a surprisingly large number of hands go up. Finally, there’s a brilliant moment when someone puts MORE on the camera lens in Scrabble tiles before the encore.

The set-list is an extremely effective and careful selection that spans their entire career. It’s a shame that there’s nothing from ‘Reckoning’ or ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’ this time, but few people could really mourn the absence of any material from ‘Around the Sun’. Clearly the memory of that album has now been excised. Every other album is covered though – most unpredictably ‘Murmur’ is represented with a lovely rendition of the ballad ‘Perfect Circle’, with Mike Mills at the piano.

The opening triple salvo of ‘Living Well is the Best Revenge’, a slower but more mercurial ‘These Days’ and a strident version of ‘The Wake Up Bomb’ makes for a remarkably confident start. Sometimes bands take a while to hit their stride, but REM leap straight in on this occasion, and the intensity never really lets up. Ken Stringfellow is oddly absent from this tour (perhaps he’s busy with Big Star, but that can hardly be as much of a moneyspinner) and the band compensate for the occasional absence of keyboard shadings by beefing up the guitar assault. For ‘The One I Love’,

As usual, Michael Stipe commands the stage with his deranged dancing, limbs and hands flailing – but it’s also notable that his voice seems in considerably better shape on this tour, less gravely than in previous years. This is particularly welcome on the moments of levity – ‘I’ve Been High’ (a more straightforward, less mesmeric version than on ‘Reveal’ but delivered with real tenderness by Stipe) and ‘Let Me In’, performed in a group circle in a new acoustic arrangement. Stipe’s reading of it, enhancing the melody, is majestic.

The generous half-hour encore not only features the aforementioned ‘Perfect Circle’ but also a haunting, very powerful performance of ‘Country Feedback’, which remains a firm favourite both with fans and the group themselves. The regulars are also saved for the end – ‘Losing My Religion’, ‘It’s The End Of The World (As We Know It)’ and ‘Man On The Moon’ round off proceedings. It still seems staggeringly inappropriate that Stipe does a meet and greet with the crowd during a mass singalong of ‘Losing My Religion’, surely one of the most emotionally articulate and painful songs ever to have become an uplifting stadium anthem, but his generosity with the audience helps reduce the distance between band and audience that can sometimes be a major obstacle with huge shows like this.

So, scrub out what I said in my lukewarm review of ‘Accelerate’. These days, it hardly seems important what REM commit to disc in the studio. It’s extraordinary that 28 years into their existence, they continue to get better and better as a live proposition, still filled with vigour, enthusiasm, a desire to communicate and a sense of fun. That, frankly, is enough of a purpose, and their continued existence remains absolutely vital.

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.

All The Fun of the Fair

I’ve been trying to avoid these kind of hastily cobbled together summary posts, juxtaposing releases across a wide range of genres. However, as I’m going to be away with little blogging time from this Thursday, there seems little choice if I’m ever going to get through my mountainous backlog. So here are some musings on some randomly selected new releases…

Flying Lotus – Los Angeles (Warp, 2008)

Here’s one of the most interesting records I’ve heard so far this year and certainly the best album to emerge from the Warp staple in quite some time. It’s from an artist commonly referred to as a hip hop producer but who actually turns out to be something less tangible and more slippery than that (as befits someone who can count the late Alice Coltrane as his great-aunt).

‘Los Angeles’ is an unbroken suite of short, piecemeal ideas that converge into something rather magical and mesmerising. In this sense, it’s probably most closely reminiscent of Scott Herren’s work in his Prefuse 73 guise, although it’s a good deal less scattershot than his albums. The rhythms are simultaneously wonky and crisp, whilst the hazy ambience and overall emphasis on disorientation make the album sound drunk, albeit in an entirely satisfying way.

Fly Lo crafts a simmering, dense and absorbing conflagration of effects and the overall sound is both tempting and sinister. ‘Hot’ is particularly effective in channelling the inspiration of classic hip hop, but refracted through a heavily distorting prism. The mesh of competing rhythms is a mile away from the pounding formula of generic hip hop. FlyLo has produced a music that is more esoteric and prickly.

‘Los Angeles’ might be a soundtrack to the seedier, darker underbelly of life in that most infamous of cities. Much of it sounds ominous, perhaps even slightly bleak, although the album as a whole seems to journey towards something slinkier and lighter. Initially, though, the predominant sense seems to be of something surreal and cinematic – perhaps even Lynchian, were that weird and wonderful director ever to embrace Electronica. The interjecting sampled voices operate in similar terrain to the wonderful sound world created over here by the likes of Burial.

Perhaps this music’s strange terrain is most neatly encapsulated on the uncomfortable but irresistibly compelling ‘Testament’, where Gonjasufi’s pinched vocals deftly bolster the music’s sense of menace and dread. Digested as a whole, this is eerie music, haunted by vaguely recognisable spectres from the past, but pointing to an even stranger future.

Thank You – Terrible Two (Thrill Jockey, 2008)

Thanks must go to Alax of Tapedeck and Meal Deal fame for pointing me in the direction of this one. Thrill Jockey have marked themselves out as one of the most trustworthy of American labels, unafraid to dip more than a big toe into adventurous musical waters.

Unsurprisingly, then, this Baltimore trio ratchet up a pretty relentless and intense noise, at least in part reminiscent of the full-throttle unresolved tension mastered by This Heat in the late ‘70s. Their press release describes them as an ‘athletic rhythm/action unit’ which, for once, would appear to be a reasonably accurate and considered description.

Whilst much of ‘Terrible Two’ appears to be based on unrestrained jamming, the whole package coheres through returning to repeated and easily identifiable touchstones. All of these lengthy tracks are predicated on increasingly untamed combinations of frantic drumming, furious bursts of high pitched guitar strafing and, perhaps most imaginatively of all, interjections of organ dissonance, the combinations of selected notes totally disrespecting conventional harmony.

It’s difficult to know whether there is any kind of compositional logic behind this frazzled, seemingly unstoppable assault, or whether it is simply the result of spontaneous collective inspiration. Either way, this is a memorable experiment, both quirky and confrontational. The best and most ambitious tracks (‘Empty Legs’ and ‘Embryo Imbroglio’) come with real fire and aggression, whilst the closing title track provides a more enigmatic and brooding counterpoint.

James Blackshaw – Litany of Echoes (Tompkins Square, 2008)

The virtuosic, densely layered modern ragas that guitar prodigy James Blackshaw creates are powerfully mesmerising. Part-composed, part-improvised pieces (but by Blacshaw’s own admission with an emphasis on the former), they have a unique ability to reel the listener into a world that sounds unfamiliar and unconventional. Far more than just another guitarist in the Takoma tradition, Blackshaw has already, at the tender age of just 26, made great strides to expand and develop this music. There is little that is archival or retrogressive about his approach.

It’s even more refreshing then that the first sound we hear on his latest work is a different kind of instrument altogether. Blackshaw begins ‘Gate of Ivory’ with an ostinato motif on the piano, and the instrument reappears again elsewhere on ‘Litany of Echoes’, sometimes subtly enmeshed with his guitar work and again as the focal point on the concluding ‘Gate of Horn’.

The tracks in between are lengthy explorations that gradually reveal their depth and resonance. In some ways, the work of Fran Bury on violin and viola is almost as significant as Blackshaw’s by now familiar artistry here, and she makes a major contribution to the tone, mood and harmonic logic of these pieces. Blackshaw and Bury gradually and doggedly develop their themes to their logical conclusions and the results demonstrate a singular discipline and focus.

If this music only amounted to a combination of mental stamina and virtuosic technique, it wouldn’t necessarily be all that interesting or immersing. It’s the overall effect to which Blackshaw services his talents that makes this music so potent. The density of these ‘sheets of sound’ makes these pieces sound vibrant and full, even though there are only two musicians working on them, and Blackshaw only uses minimal overdubbing.

It’s also intriguing that there is no producer credit on this album’s inlay. If Blackshaw did all the recording and engineering work himself, then he has an intuitive ear for capturing sound as well as for composing and performing. There is little in the way of additional effects deployed here – just a reverberation that sounds natural and unforced, which matches the unhurried pacing of the material.

With the developments in arrangement and instrumentation matching the greater ambition of the composition and playing, this stands as an even stronger whole even than last year’s remarkable ‘Cloud of Unknowing’. With that record, he perfected the art of solitary creation – an entirely solipsistic, individualist method of working based on what attracted him to the work of John Fahey and away from predictable indie bands. With ‘Litany of Echoes’, however, he has brought interplay and chemistry back to his music, albeit in a very formal and appropriate way, bolstering rather than diluting the sheer mastery of his craft.

Alexander Tucker – Portal (ATP, 2008)

I was almost dissuaded from investigating this album after enduring part of Tucker’s moody collaboration with Stephen O’Malley at the Maximum Black gig at The Forum some months ago. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood, but it struck me as having all the hallmarks of the really bad category of freely improvised music – wholly based on repetition and droning and coming across as rather flat, uninvolving and lacking real feeling. Compared with the musicality of The Necks or the looser passages of Outhouse’s compositions (or indeed the relentless explorations of Thank You – see above), it seemed rather reductive and tedious.

Tucker’s solo work is rather different though, tied closely to a British folk tradition and occupying what is actually a more adventurous space. Tucker takes the basic template of folk music – lyrics which tell elaborate stories, delicately plucked acoustic guitars, and moulds them into something more liberating and free through the use of layered guitar effects.

Best of all on ‘Portal’ is Tucker’s experimentation with string arrangements and treatments. These work well, adding to a sense of mystery and making the overall flavour of the music seem more surreal and less earthy. Tucker’s drive not merely to modernise folk music, but to develop new processes and means of crafting it, is something that should be lauded. His construction of dense sound collages from loops, sampled performances and treated vocals makes this music sound otherworldly and unusual.

Tucker is always striving to avoid the over-familiar and the safe – on ‘Portal’ he has developed a music that is nuanced and calm, but also sometimes chilling and harrowing (particularly on the punishing ‘Omni-Baron’). Whilst individual tracks don’t stand out particularly, the overall sound of ‘Portal’ subtly embeds itself in the listener’s consciousness.


Neon – Here to There (Basho, 2008)

Two interesting things seem to be happening in the UK jazz music scene at the moment. One is for artists to make more of the intersections between their classical and jazz backgrounds, and to reject the false dichotomy that is too frequently imposed between the two traditions. The second is for established musicians to enter into fresh collaborative arrangements with much younger players. The classical percussionist-turned-jazz-master Paul Clarvis has done this very fruitfully with Blink and now one of British jazz’s most revered figures, saxophonist Stan Sulzmann, has had a rare meeting of minds with prodigious Pianist Gwilym Simcock and the excellent Percussionist Jim Hart, a player mature beyond his years.

Whilst bassless trios are becoming increasingly commonplace (Blink, Tim Garland’s Lighthouse Trio etc), Neon is an even more unconventional set-up, also lacking a drummer. As a drummer listening to this record, I’m struck by the percussive interplay between Simcock and Hart, which is both playful and precise. Simcock displays the remarkable lightness of touch and technical skill for which he is justly renowned whilst Hart’s accompaniments, which vary between the light and spacious and rapid flourishes, are suitably instinctive. Sulzmann remains a muscular and inspired soloist, with a more lyrical soprano sound, although his tenor tone sometimes seems slightly grating here – it’s unclear whether or not this is a quirk of the recording.

Sulzmann contributes most of the compositions here, and they are both nimble and lucid. The best of these might well be the languid, haunting title track which is sequenced perfectly at the heart of the album. Yet Simcock and Hart, as well as being supreme improvisers, are also excellent composers. Simcock’s delightful ‘Spring Step’, which he has also been performing with his own group, is one of the highlights here, whilst the unpredictable lurches of Hart’s ‘Deviation’ demonstrate his considerable imaginative flair. All the pieces demonstrate both the group’s meticulous orchestration and fluid interaction. ‘Here to There’ is a document of the considerable talents of the group’ individual members, but is also a collective enterprise of laudable generosity and mutual benefit.

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (Bella Union, 2008)

I’ve already written a fair amount about Fleet Foxes and their ‘baroque harmonic pop’ songs, having lauded their Sun Giant EP and written enthusiastically about their endearing performance at Meltdown a couple of weeks ago. It’s arguable, therefore, that not much needs to be added about this excellent album, which represents an extension of their My Morning Jacket-meets-CSNY formula. It is, after all, far too early in their burgeoning career for a radical change of direction.

I had initially felt that those hailing it as a modern classic might have been jumping the gun a bit, and I’m instinctively wary of that kind of grandstanding hyperbole. In this case, this is mainly because the quasi-spiritual, nature-obsessed lyrics rather strip it of any cultural relevance. Still, much like The Decemberists, if one yields oneself to Fleet Foxes’ peculiarly arcane world, they quickly repay the investment of effort.

Two characteristic elements of this set strike me that I perhaps didn’t emphasise enough in earlier commentaries on the band. Most of the songs carry the listener on a vivid journey, in strikingly linear progressions that mostly avoid verse-chorus-verse conventions. This is not to say that the songs are without hooks or melodies – far from it – it’s just that they are generally unhindered by structural conventions. Secondly, whilst it would be easy to pigeonhole the group as some sort of cosmic American folk band (particularly on the evidence of ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’), there’s a strong streak of soul that occasionally permeates the music here. Listen to the way ‘Ragged Wood’ suddenly and unexpectedly bursts into life in its final two minutes, or the mellotron shadings of the exquisite ‘Your Protector’, one of the most stirring tracks here.

Perhaps this is why Crosby, Stills and Nash still seem the obvious reference point for this music. There’s not much of Neil Young’s electric sturm-und-drang here – the music is mostly more intricate and meticulous and less furious. There is, however, plenty of the kind of harmonic texturing, hints of blues and soulful undertows that characterised the writing of David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Perhaps this is not the most adventurous of reference points – but then there aren’t many other bands drawing so positively on that late 60s folk rock spirit at this point.

No doubt much will continue to be made of the vocal resemblance between Foxes frontman Robin Peckold and Jim James of My Morning Jacket, but neither can really help the vocal resemblance. This excellent debut doesn’t follow quite as closely in MMJ’s footsteps as the first Band of Horses record did though, channelling the folk dimension a little bit more than the southern rock that informs James. If they develop their flair for arranging, they may yet carve out a distinctive niche of their own. This very promising album certainly shows they have the quality and the appeal to do so. There’s rich imagination in the group’s arrangements and their transcendent vocal harmonies.

Ry Cooder – I, Flathead: The Songs of Kash Buk and The Clowns (Nonesuch, 2008)

This is billed as the final part of what has now become Ry Cooder’s ‘California Trilogy’. The project seems to have reinvigorated him as an artist and, perhaps more significantly, as a songwriter. He had been in danger of becoming more renowned as a patron for the Buena Vista Social Club performers than as a master musician in his own right. Whilst his guitar playing is never likely to fall out of favour, his songwriting had perhaps been neglected until these unique and carefully constructed albums emerged.

The remarkable ‘Chavez Ravine’, as much an anthropological study and dissection of social and political history as a songbook, changed all that. The more whimsical ‘My Name Is Buddy’ narrowly missed out on my albums of the year list for last year due to being a little overlong and one-dimensional, although its social conscience was admirable. I’m just not sure that we needed the anthropomorphic animals-as-humans dimension.

The previous albums examined weighty themes from a now vanished California – some reprehensible local politics in ‘Chavez Ravine’, folk radicalisation on ‘…Buddy’. By way of contrast, ‘I, Flathead’ seems to be considerably more lightweight, focussing on a new character, a dragster racer and bar band musician named Kash Buk, who missed out on a chance at bigger things. The main focus of the set, by Cooder’s own admission, is on ‘honky tonks and dirty blondes’. Cooder himself embodies the character, singing in a peculiar growling drawl that imbues the words with personality and gravitas, and helps make Buk’s story convincing.

This might be the best sounding of the California trilogy, in that Cooder draws a great deal from what are ultimately very skeletal arrangements. Although there are hints of the Mexican flavours that characterised ‘Chavez Ravine’, the main emphasis is on the traditional guitar, bass and drums set-up, playing a heady and enjoyable mix of country and good old fashioned rock and roll. There’s a great classic vintage-valve sound here that helps Cooder seem even further removed from modernity. The playing is consistently excellent, with Cooder and his band attacking the material with as much bite and passion as scholarly vigour.

Even with all the focus on all the fun of the fair, Cooder still can’t resist some political sidesteps. The outstanding ‘Pink-O-Boogie’ not only grooves righteously but also ‘has the thing you Republicans just ain’t got’, whilst ‘Steel Guitar Heaven’ makes reference to union cards and the problems in getting paid.

Perhaps best of all though are the songs towards the end of the album where Kash reflects on his life, on missed opportunities and battles against the melancholy of ageing. The deeply intoned, Waitsian ‘Flathead One More Time’ muses on lost friends and the days of dragster racing and rages against the dying of the light (‘time is all you’ve got…’). ‘5,000 Country Music Songs’ focuses more on the music – and how the opportunity to play with Ray Price proved to be a missed one – ‘those shoes were just too big to fill that year’.

Whilst some might prefer the weightier, more politicised themes of the previous two albums, ‘I, Flathead’ not only concludes the trilogy, but provides it with some much needed balance and emotional clarity. Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon once famously dismissed Bruce Springsteen for writing songs about ‘cars and girls’, but those two subjects get plenty of mileage here, and they seem more than worthy of the exposition. Cooder has created a milieux rarely explored in modern music – as much archivist and academic as he is songwriter, he understands this world and he elucidates it brilliantly.