Better Late Than Never

Kate Bush - Aerial

Twelve years! When Kate Bush last released an album (the criminally underrated 'The Red Shoes' in 1993), we had a Conservative government and Oasis had yet to even release 'Definitely Maybe'. Whole genres have passed by in the interim - Britpop, New Wave of New Grave, the New Acoustic Movement, Drum and Bass, Garage - much to her credit, Bush has existed independently of all trends, be they manufactured or sincere. Her long silence has of itself reaped many benefits. Whilst Kate has focused on motherhood and the domestic life, the extraordinary mystique that surrounds her has grown, enabling her to do the bare minimum of promotion in support of 'Aerial' (one interview to Mojo magazine, two more for BBC Radio) whilst the media publicity machine does most of her work for her. It would have been very easy for many of the female artists who betray her influence (Bjork, Tori Amos) to steal her thunder, but Bush has managed to secure her legacy with consummate ease.

As might be expected, 'Aerial' is wildly ambitious and, in places, quite barmy. It is by no means a masterpiece, but then Bush is too idiosyncratic an artist to produce completely flawless works. It is split into two short discs (around 40 minutes each). The first, subtitled 'A Sea Of Honey' is a collection of seven self contained songs, which are fascinating, peculiar and frequently frustrating. The second disc, subtitled 'A Sky Of Honey' is a conceptual suite, dealing with the passage of the seasons through the course of a single day. Potentially, it's a project riven with pitfalls and could easily have descended into cliche, but Bush just about makes it work (although it perches precariously on the precipice whenever she bafflingly decides to imitate birdsong).

'A Sea Of Honey' is bookended by two remarkable songs. The single 'King Of The Mountain', in which Bush envisages Elvis hidden away in Citizen Kane-style isolation opens the album in a suitably dreamy manner. In a career characterised by the marriages of seemingly opposing musical styles, this is one of Bush's most effective hybrids to date. Its clattering, off-kilter drumming and bizarre reggae chug meld effortlessly with Bush's strangely restrained vocals. It's an entirely charming piece. At the end comes 'The Coral Room', a stripped back piano and vocal ballad that deals obliquely with the death of Bush's mother. A close relation of the heart wrenching 'This Woman's Work' (from 1989's 'The Sensual World'), it is dramatically conceived and exquisitely touching. It provides a powerful reminder of Bush's artistry.

The tracks in between are more problematic. I'm actually rather taken with 'Pi', which finds Kate singing the number to 109 decimal places and marveling over a man infatuated with numbers. It's entirely in keeping with the album's overall theme of awe at the wonder and order of the natural world, and the unique fretless bass sound of Eberhard Weber enhances the texture and sound. 'Mrs. Bartolozzi' appears to be a paen to laundry, with apparently ludicrous lines like 'Washing machine, washing machine/sloosy sloshy, slooshy sloshy/Get that dirty shirty clean'. This being Kate Bush, it's probably about a whole lot more than that, and the lyric about her blouse wrapping around the man's shirt reinvents her old talent for investing the mundane and everyday with erotic imagination. Musically, it is delicate and vulnerable, but suffers from a somewhat hesitant and meandering melody.

'Bertie' is a song for her 'lovely' son. Delivered in a mock-baroque style, it is immensely twee and for every person who is touched by it there will be someone who finds it insufferably nauseating (one wonders what Bertie himself will think about it in a few years' time). With lyrics like 'you bring me so much joy and then you bring me...more joy', it's disappointing that Bush has not found the means to express her obviously genuine emotions more eloquently. 'Joanni' (Joan of Arc) is tough and memorable, with one of the album's more immediate and engaging melodies, but its clunky beats and dated synth string pads do it more harm than good. Much better is 'How To Be Invisible', with its lithe, lightly driving rhythm section and peculiar lyrical incantations. It's the kind of magical realism that only Bush can really pull off. In essence, 'A Sea Of Honey' is never dull, but its experiments are not always successful.

Despite its pretentions, the suite largely fares better. Skip the insipid spoken word intro from Bertie and you arrive at the exquisite 'Prologue' which marks a welcome return for the big drums that worked so well on 'King Of The Mountain'. These produce the album's grandest musical statement when coupled with Michael Kamen's oustanding string arrangement. Kate is in her element here, celebrating the passing of Summer into Autumn with lines like 'it's gonna be so good, we're gonna be dancing'. No doubt someone will describe it as 'pagan', without having any idea what Paganism really is.

Rolf Harris, who first guested on 'The Dreaming' returns here as The Painter, and it's hard to imagine how he resisted the temptation to add the lines 'can you guess what it is yet?'. His jovial, Cartoon Club/Animal Hospital persona doesn't sit very comfortably with the idea of 'A Sky Of Honey' as a grand artistic statement though, and there's something slightly uncomfortable about his appearance, despite its brevity.

'The Architect's Dream' is again exquisitely arranged, although its percussion does sound as if it may have been programmed with the drum pads on a 1980s Yamaha keyboard, but we'll forgive this quirk. Best of all are the closing tracks, which are energised, and full of the highly inventive vocal dexterity for which Bush is rightly lauded. 'Nocturn' is passionate and haunting and with the titles of both discs included in the lyrics, it neatly ties the themes of both discs together, giving the whole bizarre enterprise an appropriately cyclical feel. 'Aerial' is the first piece here that suggests Kate may actually have listened to anything even vaguely contemporary. Its pounding four to the floor bass drum and shouted chorus ('I wanna be up on the roof!') hints intriguingly at club music, most specifically the relentless vocal and rhythmic dynamics of Underworld. Still, with its meticulously realised vocal arrangement, this is still singularly the work of La Bush.

As, if we're honest, is everything else here. It may not be perfect, or even always comfortable, but it's hard to imagine any other artist with this level of courage and conviction. Occasionally her ideas guide her exceptionally well, at others they seem stifling and misguided. It's hard to know what to conclude about such a baffling and confounding record other than at its best, it is the most serious-minded and ambitious pop music of the year and it's certainly good to have her back. It seems unlikely that Kate will perform live again, however, and one serious question remains - is this the start of a new phase of Kate Bush's career, or is it her farewell transmission?

Primitive Technology

The mixtape still has a proud home in my ageing car stereo - so glad to see that others support its dying cause!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A6643172

That's Entertainment!

Jamie Lidell – The Scala, London 3/11/05

Yet again, the Scala was packed out for another Eat Your Own Ears promoted extravaganza, this time celebrating the brightest lights of the current Warp roster. Whilst Richard D James continues to abrogate any responsibility to his audience (packaging his only new material in impossibly expensive collectors’ editions), the young pretenders may be about to steal his electro crown.

First up was French maverick Jackson, whose ‘Smash’ album is arguably the most thrilling electronica album of 2005. His set tonight is uncompromising, furious and pulverising, alternating between glitchy, arrhythmic stutterings and dramatically powerful bass hits. It’s all a little disorientating but undoubtedly effective when he develops an idea into something that reaches the feet as well as the guts.

Next up was a very peculiar Japanese duo. I’m still not sure exactly who they were. If anyone can enlighten me, please leave a comment or email me! They positioned themselves shamelessly on that fine line between experimental genius and complete piffle, although more often than not I fear they crossed over into the latter. The audience were clearly divided, some nodding appreciatively and attempting to dance, whilst others booed ferociously. They consisted of a sampling device deployed to create swathes of sound, a remarkably unconventional drummer and a singer who screeched what sounded mostly like nonsense over the top of it all. Sometimes they generated ideas that sounded promising (particularly in their complex polyrhythmic figures), but all the elements always competed for attention. Frequently, the drummer seemed to be playing against the samples rather than with them and all the yelping and screeching became irritating after a while, a million miles from the cleverly choreographed vocal interplay of Animal Collective.

Jamie Lidell was frankly a revelation. Beginning his set on stage alone, he used live sampling and mixing to manipulate his vocals into entire layered performances. It felt like watching someone remix their own work live on stage, and really has only one precedent in modern dance music – the equally adventurous live sampling of Matthew Herbert, with whom Lidell has already collaborated. ‘Music Will Not Last’ makes for an awesome opener, and Lidell shows himself to be in adventurous spirit right from the outset. After a crazy cut-and-paste refashioning of crowd-pleaser ‘A Little Bit More’, he introduces the very special guests who join him for tonight’s show, the first time he has played with a live band on British soil.

Most of the guest musicians are gathered from hip Berlin label Kitty Yo, with Gonzales providing some gospel-infused piano flourishes, Taylor Savvy some exhuberant if slightly untutored drumming, Mocky the rock solid basslines and Snax the essential funky Rhodes keyboards and synths. They replay ‘A Little Bit More’ in the more conventional funk style that Lidell has recently adopted, and Lidell involves the crowd in some shameless call-and-response audience participation, every bit as good an ‘entertainer’ as that tedious twit Robbie Williams.
The band play through most of the excellent ‘Multiply’ album, with Lidell successfully wearing the clothes of his major influences – Otis Redding on ‘What Is It This Time?’, Sly Stone for ‘You Got Me Up’ (for which Mocky cheekily nicks the bassline from ‘Thank You For Talking To Me Africa’). Lidell generates so much energy and enthusiasm that this performance genuinely has some of the spirit of the legendary Stax/Volt revue shows. It’s just a shame that, drawing exclusively on ‘Multiply’ and ignoring Lidell’s radically different glitchy techno debut ‘Muddlin’ Gear’, it’s such a brief thrill. Lidell has been dismissed in some quarters as a Joss Stone for the electro set, which is grossly unfair. He arguably has a more instinctive feel for the music than Stone, despite her established soul patrons, and he always filters the past through a decisively modernist prism. If anything, it’s just great pop music.

Pornography and Death - A Winning Combination!

I’ve been quite fortunate in 2005 to catch some significant bands in their debut appearance on these shores – not least the remarkable Arcade Fire gig at King’s College. Tonight was the turn of the marvellous supergroup The New Pornographers, their first time in London at the wonderful Borderline venue for what turned out to be a very sweaty gig. That both bands should be Canadian is a happy coincidence – but one that hints at the quality and invention of the current crop of independent bands from that particular country. Some of the Canadians in the crowd tonight were clearly proud to be flying the Maple Leaf flag, despite being berated as ‘nerdy’ by lead vocalist Carl Newman. Fortunately for them, he checked himself – ‘don’t worry, it’s the kind of nerdiness that will get you laid every single night!’

First, a few words about the opening act, Immaculate Machine, who featured the talents of erstwhile New Pornographer Katheryn Calder, along with guitarist/co-vocalist Brooke Gallupe and demented drummer Luke Kozlowski. They turned in a set so bristling with energy and enthusiasm that even the NP’s own supercharged blitz seemed sedate in comparison. Their taut yet exuberant sound shared elements with the NP’s infectious, yet meticulously arranged music, although if anything they amplified some of the quirkier dimensions to this pop confection. With intricate harmonies set against the thunderous and unrestrained clatter of the drumming and some Marc Ribot-esque excoriating guitar they provided both volume and intelligence. There are some remarkable songs here too that span from the immediate and infectious (‘Phone No.’) to the more wiry and angular (‘No Such Thing As The Future’) via the deliberately insistent (‘So Cynical’).

Sadly, they currently have no distribution in the UK, but their excellent ‘Ones and Zeroes’ album is well worth investigating should an import copy crop up anywhere. The recorded sound is a little less colossal, but the songs still stand up well. They are possibly the best support act I’ve seen this year.

It’s tremendous credit to the New Pornographers that they manage to perform such a ferocious and engaging set, despite the absence of two crucial members. Dan Bejar, whose songs contribute a more contrived (in the original, positive sense of the word) dimension to their work, does not tour with the band. The enticingly glamorous Neko Case was absent from these European dates, apparently due to scheduling conflicts. Perhaps she was busy putting the finishing touched to her forthcoming album, expected early in 2006. It’s therefore a bit less of a supergroup than on record, and one that perhaps loses some of its range, albeit none of its bite.

It’s a show that mostly focuses on the songwriting talents of AC Newman, and he delivers his increasingly unpredictable pop songs with considerable gusto. It’s always a bit of an obvious tactic to open a show with the first track on your new album, but ‘Twin Cinema’ sounds so commandingly jagged tonight that it’s difficult to see an alternative selection. It’s also difficult to imagine a more captivating opening three than the aforementioned opener, followed by ‘Use It’ and the brilliantly compelling ‘Mass Romantic’. These are fabulously constructed pop songs, which sound both crisply comforting and uniquely ambitious. Calder does a confident job handling Neko Case’s vocal parts on the latter.

There are some rough edges, including some botched harmonies and an apparent uncertainty over the set list, but these only serve to add charm to an already blistering performance. Intelligently, they draw from all three of their albums, but for me the newest material sounds the most refreshing. ‘Twin Cinema’ is an album with many listens in it – its unusual songs twist and turn in numerous unexpected directions. ‘Jackie Dressed In Cobras’ is particularly unconventional, whilst ‘Sing Me Spanish Techno’ has a gleeful melodic playfulness as its focus. Tonight’s performances enhances its more aggressive, attacking qualities and reminds me that it will be due a high place in my increasingly crowded albums of 2005 list.

This was a gritty, convincing show – just a shame that it all seemed to be over so quickly.

The same could not be said of the wonderful HBO TV series Six Feet Under, which after five seasons of overwhelming, convincingly portrayed trials and tribulations, has become a regular delight that I’ve almost taken for granted. Tonight on E4, we were treated to its concluding episode. There will now be no more – a wise decision, for many of these things are recommissioned to tedium, whereby they lose their original impact and descend into pseudo soap operas. By ending before the inevitable rot could set in – Six Feet Under may well secure its place as a classic of modern American television.

This is not to say that the show was without its flaws. It suffered from a tendency to stereotype minor characters, we well as occasionally drifting into overplayed histrionics. Yet it could survive its more hysterical, or even its more whimsical-surrealist moments, because its central characters, with their inherent contradictions and self-righteous traits, were so convincingly human.

In a TV world dominated by endless generic sitcoms and hospital and police dramas, Six Feet Under seemed bracingly original. It’s difficult to imagine any UK writers pitching a show about a family business, let alone a family of funeral directors. In skilfully interweaving each episode’s self-contained personal story surrounding a particular death with the continuing journeys of its central characters, the show sustained quality and interest remarkably well.

This final series has been particularly effective, drawing on some of the show’s familiar themes and concerns without seeming repetitive, as each of the characters has moved to some sort of resolution. The performances have remained superb, particularly from the complex female roles. Rachel Griffiths has managed to make the turbulent Brenda sympathetic and repulsive in equal measure, and this series has been brilliant in detailing her mixed emotions towards Nate. Frances Conroy treads the fine line between regal presence and innate vulnerability masterfully as the matriarch Ruth Fisher – it’s her performances that will be most missed. Her brief turn in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers suggest that film roles may still await her. Best of all in this series has been Lauren Ambrose as the extreme and passionately rebellious Claire Fisher. In finally confronting both her need for escape and her need for something more regular, she achieves perhaps the toughest transition of all. Her unlikely relationship with Republican lawyer Ted was played out with plausible tenderness and compassion.

The final episode was perhaps not the greatest – with its obligatory tying up of all the remaining loose ends. It did, however, realise a convincing unity within the Fisher family and their associates – perhaps the first time all dysfunction and frayed emotions had been cast aside to give ‘a toast to Nate’ (brilliantly, his death earlier in the series had been the terrible catalyst for change). This would have made for a resoundingly positive ending, which the writers resisted. The camera then cut to an hilarious dream sequence with Peter Krause’s Nate in a pop promo from the heavens that completely shattered the mood. The remaining few minutes dealt mostly with Claire’s departure for a new life in New York. Leaving by car, her journey down the open road was intercut with a montage sequence illustrating the future deaths of all the major characters. A neat idea in theory – but the terrible make-up designed to show the ageing process undercut the pathos with a perhaps unintentional comedy. Six Feet Under has certainly always had a black comic streak – particularly in its tendency to always make the unthinkable happen. Yet, this didn’t quite work somehow. It reminded me a little of the ending of Spike Lee’s disastrous 25th Hour. Perhaps a more ambiguous final scene might have been better. If not that, then the episode centred on Nate’s funeral was so brilliantly handled that it might have made for a superior parting shot. That being said, it’s typical of this wonderful show to leave its audience not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

So Far Behind They Think They're Ahead

Uncut have already published their albums of the year list - with, ahem, this blog's 2nd favourite album of 2004 (The Arcade Fire) at the top spot! I suspect this is not the only list this band will top this year - and the passage of 'Funeral' from impressive debut to genuine classic now looks certain. It's intriguing that the UK press only picked up on them after they became a word-of-mouth success.

As for the rest of the list, there must be a marketing logic to being the first publication to compile an end-of-year list, but it looks very silly indeed from a critical perspective. They may have just given Kate Bush's comeback a somewhat confused and lukewarm review - but it's not unreasonable to expect many of their journalists would have included it in their voting had they actually heard it at the time of voting.

In Uncut's favour, they've manged to include genuinely excellent albums from Animal Collective, Boards Of Canada, Ariel Pink, Elbow and Doves, most of which occupy relatively lofty positions. Yet, if we look at how well Animal Collective are currently performing in the Rate Your Music (http://www.rateyourmusic.com) 2005 list, and their sell-out show at the Scala last week, we can see that there is much more of an appetite for challenging independent music than much of the industry accepts.

It's otherwise a mostly predictable list, and skewed in favour of rock/Americana and the trad canon. I've already confessed my guilty enjoyment of 'A Bigger Bang' - but in no way would I suggest it's the sixth best album of the year. Bob Dylan's 'No Direction Home' is at 3 - it's a compilation mostly consisting of alternate versions from his classic 60s period with no new material whatsoever! For some reason they do not elect to extend this bizarre logic of what constitutes new in 2005 to the collection of previously unreleased material from Judee Sill, which is considered a reissue!

I'd concede that it's not been a great year for electronica or hip-hop - but the likes of Roots Manuva, Dangerdoom, Sage Francis, Four Tet, Jackson and His Computer Band, Jamie Lidell and The Books all deserved consideration.

Even if we accept Uncut's trad-rock focus uncritically - why have they criminally ignored the likes of John Prine, Erin McKeown, Teenage Fanclub, The Broken Family Band, Smog, South San Gabriel, M Ward, Okkervil River, Sleater Kinney ('The Woods' surely channels the spirit of the blues as well as anything Jack White has been involved in), New Pornographers, Magnolia Electric Co etc?? The Calexico and Iron and Wine collaboration is a stunning omission - easily the most accomplished Americana release of the year. These are all records that their core readership could be expected to enjoy.

Like the NME in the early 90s, who would regularly give excellent reviews to the likes of Animals That Swim, whilst never affording them any real promotion, Uncut is continually failing to invest in the bands it purports to support. Even after his death, there has still been no cover feature on the great Warren Zevon. Why not! If Richmond Fontaine really are as great as Allan Jones claims - why have they not been given any real column inches outside the reviews section. Even with all this fuss over Arcade Fire - the cover feature still goes to David Bowie for the umpteenth time (at least it's a piece on The Man Who Fell To Earth, which I shall read before I judge too harshly). To expect any real quality of research or appreciation of different genres is too much to hope for when they can't even manage this!

Those tedious Britpop revivalists Kaiser Chiefs and the wildly overrated MIA get token entries at the arse end of the top 50. Mercifully, Coldplay are excluded!!

Family Affairs

Mike Leigh’s Two Thousand Years is conventional and disappointing

Part of my high expectations for Mike Leigh’s return to the stage for the first time in 12 years undoubtedly sprung from his exemplary record as a film director, but I’d be deluding myself if I didn’t concede that I’d also fallen victim to the press hype and hyperbole surrounding this production. There has been much speculation and excitement about Leigh’s improvisatory working methods (which have been in place now for many years) and the fact that the work did not even have a title when commissioned by the National Theatre in London. In this case, I’m saddened to report that the weight of considerable expectation has proved to be an overwhelming burden.

‘Two Thousand Years’ delves once again into that familiar Leigh theme, dysfunctional family life, but with far less insight and impact than he managed with his award winning ‘Secrets and Lies’. Danny and Rachel are a middle class, liberal and avowedly secular Jewish family living in Cricklewood, North West London. Danny is a dentist and loves to tell appalling jokes; Rachel is supportive but independently minded. Despite (or perhaps because of) being born on a Kibbutz, Rachel and her family have consigned any religious dimension of their heritage to the scrapheap of irrational beliefs.

They are therefore shocked when their disconnected, vacant and moody son Josh turns to religion. His adoption of Jewish study and ritual is just the first in a series of events which bring simmering tensions in the family to boiling point, and one might expect it to usher in a typically incisive examination of unspoken feelings and passions.

Sadly it doesn’t. Leigh has deliberately elected to set the family’s story against the backdrop of the past year of political life, both globally (terrorism, Israel/Palestine and the war on Iraq are all discussed) and nationally (Rachel’s socialist father is horrified by the convergence of Labour and Tories). Perhaps it’s a product of the somewhat stereotyped nature of the characterisation (Danny and Rachel read The Guardian!), but much of the political discussion felt forced and unconvincing.

There are some very witty moments, such as when the idealistic daughter Tammy answers the question ‘why are we all here?’ with her desire to play her part for good in the world and Danny takes up this theme by stating ‘that’s why I still take NHS work – that’s my attempt to do good’. John Burgess does an excellent job in his role as Rachel’s disgruntled, sardonic and confrontational father. Mostly the humour is, however, very conventional (much of it feels less adventurous than an episode of ‘One Foot In The Grave’), and the descent into farce in the closing 30 minutes following the arrival of Samantha Spiro’s histrionic estranged family member is clumsy and predictable (her character achieves the extraordinary feat of appearing more shallow than Dorian from ‘Birds Of A Feather’). Her unannounced arrival after eleven years of silence would certainly be expected to cause shock and conflict, but the overacted comedy here fails to explain why Josh suddenly appears to resolve many of his personal issues in the final scenes. The implication is that he embraced religion as a means to escape the mundanity of domestic family life – and has now rejected it because he has now been shown the importance of maintaining close familial relationships.

Leigh is usually a master of integrating the personal and political – but the real theme at the heart of ‘Two Thousand Years’ is singularly personal – that of relationships between parents and their children. The political dimension is therefore somewhat fudged. I’m aware of Jewish families who see their religion in cultural rather than spiritual terms – but would any family really be so shocked that their son had taken an interest in his family history, whatever their opinions on faith? Religion seems so significant an element of world politics at the moment that Leigh could, and arguably should, have made more of these issues, rather than simply giving them cursory debate over endless cups of tea (the one residual element from Leigh’s last film project, the excellent ‘Vera Drake’). This is the sort of project described in less enlightened quarters as ‘very politcal’ – but in many ways, the politics of this production are mostly banal. This is a strength in as far as Leigh’s directorial presence is mostly detached and non-judgmental (more evidence against those who accuse Leigh of being ‘patronising’ towards his characters), but it also means that arguments remain fragmentary and undeveloped. At times Leigh just seems to be throwing too many ideas and subjects into what becomes a somewhat cloudy mix. In characterising Josh as withdrawn and uncommunicative, we don’t get a sense of where he draws his palpable anger from and his reasons for embracing religion remain frustratingly elusive. His rebellion and defiance includes a firm refusal to respond to interrogation or justify his actions.

If Leigh remains unconventional in his working methods, this time the result lacks originality. The confrontation at the end feels like a deliberate retread of 'Secrets and Lies' but there are no overwhelming revelations and it seems like a rather obvious device to bring about a somewhat straightforward and contrived resolution. Where there are signs of directorial influence from Leigh - they are not entirely encouraging either. The structure of the play is very bitty, with short, often perfunctory scenes split by snatches of music. Where on screen Leigh is a master of sustained and believable emotions (always heightened by his use of close-up shots), he seems here to be constrained by the limitations of the single location stage play. Whilst 'Two Thousand Years' is intermittently entertaining, it's hard to believe watching it, that Leigh once mastered this very form so thoroughly with 'Abigail's Party'.

The stage set is a pointed and accurate replica of a liberal North London family home, made all the more amusing when Tammy introduces her new Israeli boyfriend. She points at the small collection of books – ‘here is the library, where I received my education’. It’s therefore an even greater pity that the action that takes place within it seems so surprisingly stilted.

Wildlife Extravaganza

Animal Collective/Caribou/Aoki Takamasa and Tojiko Noriko/Kieren Hebden – The Scala, London 25/10/05

Bloody hell – I should really make it to Eat Your Own Ears gigs more often. What a superb line-up! Well, now I’ve got the free advertising for an excellent promotions company out of the way, we can get down to the nitty gritty of reviewing the evening’s music…

The Scala was packed out tonight, which I found pleasantly surprising after my last experience there (a half-empty but entertainingly shambolic Alfie gig). Given that these acts make challenging, sometimes confrontational music that is unlikely to get much in the way of radio or TV exposure, it’s refreshing to realise that such material can indeed attract a substantial audience. The Scala makes for the perfect evening for this sort of affair, and it was pleasing to see joyous dancers and chin-strokers in equal measure.

First up, Aoki Takamasa and Tojiko Noriko soothed us with their beguiling electronic reveries. It was certainly all very pretty, but really no more than exactly what you’d expect a Japanese male/female laptop electronica duo to sound like. Of all the acts on tonight’s bill, they were the least concerned with pushing boundaries, dealing as they did with the kind of delicately rustling sounds so familiar to anyone who has ever heard the likes of Susumu Yokota.

That could not be said for DJ Kieren Hebden (Four Tet) who managed to play intelligently selected and frequently inspiring records in between the live performances. I must confess that I have no idea what most of these records were, but Hebden’s avowedly anti-specialist sets veered between genres with effortless ease.

Dan Snaith’s Caribou may have had an enforced name change, but their sonic brand remains very much intact. Despite an obvious reliance on electronics and backing tracks, it’s often hard to believe that there are just three musicians on stage, especially when two of them are bashing seven shades of shit from two drum kits. This is highly kinetic, thrilling stuff. The Krautrock-inspired grooves are appropriately relentless, but it’s the unrestrained arrangements which add originality and invention to the mix, and the mid-song instrument swapping is a joy to watch. It all seems to have been mapped out with mathematical precision, although Snaith is wise enough to leave room for an old-fashioned, summery approach to a good melody which contrasts neatly with the frequently frenetic music.

If Animal Collective are sometimes baffling on record, as a live band they are totally bonkers. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to state that this really sounded (and arguably looked) like nothing else around. It was a complete performance, with Panda Bear standing, energised and focussed behind his skeletal drum kit, and Avey Tare and Geologist trading quirky physical movements. Animal Collective’s killer weapon lies in their brilliantly executed vocal choreography, not just in terms of conventional harmonies, but also in their intricately competing yelps and screams. This made for a percussive performance in the broadest possible sense of the word.

Tonight’s set was divided into four extended segments which combined pre-released material (mostly from the excellent new album ‘Feels’) with the band’s customary tendency to develop prototypes of new material on the road. The integration of drones and electronic sounds with post-rock infused guitars arguably sounded more comfortable than it does on record, and it’s pleasing that the band seem to be leaving the more provocative, high-treble feedback experiments of their earlier records behind. Where once they may have preferred to bury their peculiar lyrics and turbulent melodies beneath thick swathes of noise, they have now developed an effective means of combining the various elements of their sound.

Influences can be detected beneath the dense and quirky exterior – perhaps the clearest is Syd Barrett’s taste for nonsense poetry and confounding song structures. If Animal Collective refer to any formative template though, they have stretched and manipulated it into something modern and largely unrecognisable. They have crafted a weird and wonderful world that is entirely their own.

It Was The Colonel, In The Kitchen, With The Lead Piping

Colonel Bastard - Halcyon Days

At last - a proper album from these very fine quirky popsters from Cornwall via Cambridge. Wisely, it gathers together most of the band's live favourites into a brilliantly concise, immediately appealing collection. In Martin White and Ben Garnett, the band possess two gifted songwriters with neatly contrasting styles. White's songs brim with energy and exhuberance, whilst Garnett's, sometimes more refective and subdued, require a few listens before they work their magic. Both have a mastery of infectious melody and the combination results in an album that is much more than the sum of its parts.

Were anyone to offer Colonel Bastard a sizeable advance, it's conceivable that they could be lumped in with the current Britpop revival alongside the Kaiser Chiefs and their ilk. They certainly have an unmistakeably British sensibility informing their work (an American band would surely never rhyme 'lager' with 'aga'). They are better than our current chancers though, and the influences are more subtle. Whilst there are hints of Blur and Supergrass here, the band seem to possess something of the alchemical talents of the likes of The Boo Radleys and Teenage Fanclub (relatively underrated bands at the margins of the original Britpop explosion) for infusing 60s-tinged, summery pop with a quirkier, spikier edge.

It's clear that a number of these songs have been kicking around for a while, at least judging from the band's choice of cultural references. Internet porn no longer seems like a particularly cutting edge subject for a song, but somehow 'Surf The Sexx.Net' manages to sound like a fresh discovery. Peter Sissons is hardly the BBC Newsreader of choice these days, yet his name provides the title for Martin White's hilarious tale of crime and misfortune. Ben Garnett's 'The Day I Met The Bloke From Hollyoaks' might be a little behind the times too - isn't it all The OC and One Tree Hill these days? A US teen soap would seem inappropriate though - far too glamorous and glossy for this band's closer-to-home concerns. The songs are smart and engaging enough to transcend their references. 'Peter Sissons' benefits from a spiky, angular guitar riff that wouldn't sound out of place on a Franz Ferdinand single, whilst '...Hollyoaks' seduces with its truly irresistible chorus.

The lyrics are witty and incisive throughout. There's no Dylanesque verbosity here, but there are plenty of pithy, humorous couplets. My personal favourite is the fantastic opening line to 'Bubblegum Bears' - 'Well she's a honey and I'm Winnie The Pooh/I wanna get my paws on her 'fore the other bears do'.

They're not afraid of a good guitar solo either, but the musicianship is instinctive and thrilling rather than studied or virtuosic. The production is suitably under-polished, with well-arranged harmonies, but a gritty drum and guitar sound that captures the spirit of the band's live performances. Perhaps even last year, I might have described this as endearingly unfashionable, but with guitar pop rapidly squeezing out the pure pop market, I can't think of a better time for Colonel Bastard to make a bid for success.

See Colonel Bastard and Unit live tonight - LSE Student Union, Quad Bar, Houghton Street, London. Doors 7.30pm.

The Real Super Monday (Part One)

Back in June, the NME, with its finger firmly on a great cross-promotional marketing opportunity, eagerly declared June 6th to be 'Super Monday'. Released on that day were the latest efforts from the perenially worthy Coldplay, blues infused garage rock duo The White Stripes and jangle-indie revivalists The Tears. Whilst The White Stripes album certainly had its merits, it was difficult to get truly excited about another Coldplay album and The Tears, whilst pleasant enough, could hardly be deemed significant.

No doubt the modern NME, now almost entirely a narrow 'indie rock' genre publication (yet one that still has the temerity to use the image of champion of diversity John Peel for front cover crredibility), will ignore the diversity of releases on offer this coming Monday, October 17th. There is the eagerly anticipated new album from reclusive electronica duo Boards Of Canada, the first new album in 35 years from folk legend Vashti Bunyan, a dependably impressive new Depeche Mode album, an outstanding reinvention from southern rock behemoths My Morning Jacket, yet another album from the prolific New York electronica-meets-hippy-folk Animal Collective, the first new material in over ten years from Stevie Wonder, yet another new album from sadly defiant homophobe Sizzla (who I've rather lost touch with over the last couple of years) an essential collaboration between two of the brightest stars in modern hip hop (Dangermouse and MF Doom), a new record from Scottish melancholics Arab Strap and, for some at least, a long awaited full commercial release for The Crimea's 'Tragedy Rocks' album. Take a deep breath and dig deep into the wallet!

Reviews of some of these releases will follow shortly...

Formats and Concepts

Forgive me for sounding like one of Petridish's dreaded Guardian reviews for a moment, but there have been two notable trends in 2005 - the return of the formerly derided 'concept' album, and a new enthusiasm for the stop-gap mini album. In the former category, there have been some ambitious and remarkable achievements and adoption of a more 'thematic' approach to the long-player has been most welcome, with artists finding some imaginative context for their material.

Perhaps most impressive of all has been Matthew Herbert's radical 'Plat Du Jour' project, a largely wordless polemic against the manipulative and exploitative tendencies of the food industry. Herbert has long been a fervent musical adventurer, although he works within the confines of some stringent self-imposed regulations which see him find samples and sounds in the most extraordinary of places. Having sampled human digestion and his pet hamster exercising in its cage on his fantastic bodily functions album, Herbert has now made a righteous political statement constructed from the sound of food and its industrial production.

Whereas his recent production duties for Roisin Murphy's 'Ruby Blue' album traded in quasi-sophisticated and polite textures, 'Plat du Jour' is considerably more confrontational. The result is a sometimes severe but frequently dazzling new form of 'musique concrete' that makes for Herbert's most challenging listening experience to date. The fascination with jazz forms made explicit with his big band project is perhaps less overt here, but the contributions of jazz musicians Phil Parnell, Dave O' Higgins and arranger Pete Wraight are again fundamental to the overall sound of the album. All three improvise inventively with the sampled sounds, adapting confidently to what may have seemed initially an unfamiliar idiom. 'Plat du Jour' is as much a celebration of contemporary musical diversity as it is a political statement. The combination of modern composition, electronic production values and improvisatory spirit makes for an original and winning formula, with a consistent mood and tone pervading across the whole album.

In spite of this, 'Plat du Jour' cannot be appreciated fully without its lengthy and compelling set of inlay notes. Anyone who illegally downloads this material without the packaging will be missing out on reams of explanation and extrapolation. Herbert meticulously lists the sources for all his sounds, including live concert audiences eating apples on 'An Apple A Day', 30,000 broiler chickens in a barn on 'The Truncated Life Of A Modern Industrialised Chicken', and perhaps most ingeniously of all, the sound of a tank driving over a reconstruction of the meal prepared by Nigella Lawson for the 20th November 2003 meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair. The latter neatly combines the food theme with Herbert's passionate opposition to the war in Iraq.

Many of Herbert's political concerns are also expressed in his customarily didactic fashion. 'These Branded Waters' contrasts the recent obsession with corporate bottled water with the lack of access to sanitary services in parts of India and Bangladesh. The apocalyptic 'Empire Of Coffee' deals with the devastating trade problems in the coffee industry. 'Celebrity', the most accessible track on the album thanks largely to Dani Siciliano's sultry vocal and its unabashed sense of humour, is constructed entirely from the sounds of celebrity endorsed food products, most of which are, according to Herbert, of 'dubious nutritional value'. The track has a fantastic slightly delayed rhythm and its central ironic cheerleading chant of 'Go Gordon! Go Ramsey! Go Beyonce! Go Beyonce!' is brilliant.

Herbert's decision to make the majority of 'Plat du Jour' instrumental proves to be inspired. The message is invoked through the use of sounds rather than through forced or hackneyed 'political' lyrics. 'Plat du Jour' is suddenly remarkably topical in light of the recent Jamie Oliver school meals campaign and government policy on junk food (although my more liberal side feels New Labour's controlling element may have yet again too far in imposing a ban on all junk food sales). 'Plat du Jour' goes much further than this rather superficial debate, however - it does not merely consider the content and nutritional balance of modern diets, but also asks uncomfortable questions about the unsavoury role of corporate bodies, multinational organisations and aggressive marketing strategies in global health. It is as much about the destruction of independent businesses as a result of supermarket culture as it is about the fat content of McDonald's products. Following 'Super Size Me' and the Jamie Oliver series, there has been plenty of debate about the effects of poor diets, but few have been prepared to link the food industry with wider global trends quite as convincingly as Herbert does here.

Herbert is a passionate believer in the power of the individual to effect change through direct action. He at least largely puts his money where his mouth is (he now refuses to fly except to visit his family in America once a year). The central motto of the inlay to 'Plat du Jour' is 'avoid supermarkets'. If only this were so straightforward for people living in areas where a supermarket is the only food outlet available. Herbert's committed environmentalism and political awareness is commendable, and he remains one of the most vital musical artists at work in Britain today. 'Plat du Jour' makes for a thrilling education.

Sufjan Stevens has taken the concept album to new levels of excess with his surely unrealisable 50 states project. Nevermind that Stevens would have to produce an album a year until he was over the age of 75 to complete the Herculean task, he's continuing apace anyway. 'Greetings From Michigan' was an inspired collection that balanced sombre and incisive reflections on industrial decline with more rousing celebrations of his home state with remarkable aplomb. Its follow up, 'Illinois' (full title 'Sufjan Stevens invites you to: Come on feel the Illinoise') dismisses any concerns that Stevens would be unable to apply the same range of sympathy and compassion to the other US states. It is personal odyssey, historical document and geographical commentary rolled into a giant, monolithic statement.

On the surface, 'Illinois' is very impressive, displaying the same aptitude for exquisite arrangement that made 'Michigan' such a treat. It's this undeniable quality that most likely helps explain why 'Illinois' has been sitting pretty at the top of the rateyourmusic.com and metacritic albums of the year since Asthmatic Kitty issued the first pre-release mail order copies.

There are problems here though that make me slightly suspicious of the zealous critical praise 'Illinois' has enjoyed. Sadly the ludicrously verbose song titles, a refreshing conceit on 'Michigan', now appear slighly pretentious and do much to detract from the poignant and literate quality of many of the songs. At over 74 minutes, it's also massively overlong, and Stevens' richly detailed arrangements acquire an unwanted twee and sugary quality as a result of overexposure. Some more judicious editing might have transformed 'Illinois' from an exceptional record into a solid gold classic.

These are not severe or insurmountable setbacks though, and there is so much to admire on 'Illinois' that it will most likely retain a top 10 position in my albums of the year list. I'm beginning to prefer Stevens at his more delicate and restrained, and one of the clear highlights here is 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr.' a song ostensibly about a murderer, but really dealing with the wider issue of the secrets we keep concealed. It ends with a remarkable lyric - 'And in my best behaviour/I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid'. It is a controlled and moving testament. 'Decatur' is an equally assured banjo and vocal harmony dominated track, with a remarkably infectious central melody. Here, Stevens neatly captures an American historical spirit ('Sang-a-man river it overflowed/It caused a mudslide on the banks of the Operator?Civil war skeletons in their graves/They came up clapping in the spirit of the Aviator').

John Kell (http://www.kingofquiet.co.uk) has described Stevens in passing as being 'a bit plinky plonk'. Elsewhere on 'Illinois', these tendencies are further amplified so that he could be derided as 'a bit happy clappy'. The vocal choruses increasingly resemble child choirs, and parping crumhorns and chiming bells dominate the sound. At their best, these moments are uniquely uplifting, such as the title track's combination of a deconstruction of the American dream with a vivid description of a visitation of the ghost of Carl Sandburg to Stevens in a dream. Even better is the euphoric wall of sound Stevens constructs in the magnificent 'Chicago'. In reality, the quality control is remarkably consistent over the course of the album, it's just that some of these stylings become over-familiar towards the album's conclusion. Stevens' melodies can be a little formulaic, and so seem repetetive over too great a period of time. This is a bit frustrating as one of the album's real highlights, the soulful, slinky 'They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbours!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!' (you see what I mean about the titles) is buried three quarters of the way through the album.

Few artists have the talent, the passion or the necessary self-belief to invest so much energy and time to the development of a project from initial concept to finished product. Few also imbue that product with this level of human empathy and wisdom. Unusually for a concept album, 'Illinois' may be best listened to on shuffle or in small doses, but it's a richly rewarding encapsulation of the human spirit nonetheless.

Adopting a rather more unusual approach to concept and theme, 'Black Sheep Boy' by Okkervil River is a sublime manipulation of traditional Americana into a sort of crimson, cinematic melodrama. Songwriter Will Sheff has taken the Tim Hardin song that provides the album's title and expanded its central character across ten fresh songs of his own. Lyrically, the album is fascinating, imbuing familiar themes (jealousy, betrayal, rejection, frustration) with fresh appeal through the invigorating deconstruction of rhythm and meter. The structure of the album provides a distinctive narrative continuity, and Sheff's peculiar prose-poetry comes with violent dynamics and restless energies which are reflected in the frequently tempestuous music. Sheff's ragged voice has some of the angst and anger of Bright Eyes, but comes blessed with a much more instinctive feel for raging desire and the darker recesses of the human heart.

Opening with a faithfully minimal and subdued version of the Hardin song, the album bursts into life with the visceral, highly charged 'For Real'. This is where Sheff first demonstrates his vision of Okkervil River as a band, rather than merely a vehicle for his songs - the track boasts a confident mastery of unpredictable dynamic contrast. Never content to opt entirely for guitar strumming, 'For Real', like many of the other outstanding songs here, places the evocative sound of the Wurlitzer electric piano firmly in the foreground. The subsequent 'In A Radio Song' makes for an immediate and striking contrast, the musical accompinament skeletal and delicate, leaving plenty of room for the expansive, free-flowing lyrics to breathe. The opening lines clearly demonstrate Sheff's deftness of touch - 'Black sheep boy, blue-eyed charmer, head hanging with horns from your father - oh, in a cold little mirror you were grown, by a black little wind you were blown, blown, blown'.

The rest of the album is just as remarkable - from the pained but propulsive 'Black', with a chorus that threatens to veer into the poptastic side of indie to the thrilling stomp of 'The Latest Toughs', via the detailed slow build of 'A King And A Queen'. Perhaps most poignant is the controlled jealousy of 'A Stone' - 'Hot breath, rough skin, warm laughs and smiling, the loveliest words whispered and meant - you like all these things. But though you like all these things, you love a stone'. There is an extraordinary love of language at the heart of these songs.

It ends with the epic desperation and longing of 'So Come Back, I Am Waiting', Sheff showing considerable resolve in not providing a more comforting conclusion by ending the central torment. It ends with some chilling words - "I am waiting hoof and on hand. I am waiting all hated and damned. I am waiting - I snort and I stamp. I am waiting you know that I am, calmly waiting to make you my lamb". What a powerful conclusion to a magnificent, primal, deeply felt song cycle.

Of the mini albums, I have already waxed lyrical about the remarkable collaboration between Calexico and Iron and Wine, one of the albums of the year. There's a strange sense of urgency to the return of Grandaddy, which they have dismissed by releasing a low-key mini album in preparation for the next full-length which is due in early 2006. It would be unfair to suggest that Grandaddy lost form exactly, but 'Sumday' did suffer somewhat as a result of a monotony of pace and tone. The wonderfully titled 'Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla' has remedied this problem immediately. It doesn't perhaps rank with their very best work (it lacks the thematic coherence of 'The Sophtware Slump' or the wide-eyed fascination of 'Under The Western Freeway'), but it provides a welcome return to their trademark blend of bubblegum melody and analogue burblings.

There is more variation in tone and texture between the first two tracks than 'Sumday' managed across an entire album. Opener 'Pull The Curtains' is a delightful excursion into what seems almost like a Californian punk-pop sound. Of course, Grandaddy manage this genre exercise with real elan (they even opt to return to the sound later in the album with 'Florida', which adds entirely unexpected Pixies style screeching into the equation). Second track 'At My Post' veers between contrasting sections, one a melancholy, funereal reflection, the other a familiar Grandaddy trudge, with synths foregrounded above the guitars. It sounds like a sense of ambition and a desire to overcome their musical limitations have returned.

The subsequent three tracks, 'A Valley Son', 'Cinderland' and 'F*ck The Valley Fudge' are characerised by a mournful delicacy and a sense of loss, the latter very skeletal in its vocal and piano stylings. These are deceptively pretty, highly unusual songs and make for worthy additions to the Grandaddy canon.

'...Todd Zilla' could perhaps be criticised for gathering together a range of elements from Grandaddy's back catalogue rather than offering anything really original - but the the bleepy synthesisers remain more distinctive than the production sheen that stifled the last album, and the mini-album format offers little room for filler. It's a pleasing hint at what may come, but we'll have to wait until 2006 before we really know whether or not they have developed.

The progtastic Pure Reason Revolution have made their debut with mini-LP (or long EP) 'Cautionary Tales For The Brave'. Somewhat appropriately, a cautionary word is needed right from the outset as the 12 minute single 'Bright Ambassadors Of Morning' makes up the bulk of the material here. If you already have that, it may well not be worth £6.99 of your hard earned cash to buy this. If this represents first contact with the band, however, it makes for a useful introduction. PRR are defiantly unfashionable, combining the layered harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash with the lengthy explorations of Pink Floyd and the edgy riffing of Metallica. It's a distinctive combination, although the results sometimes sound slightly laboured. At their best, however, as on the uncharacteristically concise chug of opener 'In Aurelia' and on the aforementioned centrepiece, there is an admirable fearlessness and audacity at work. Is it really viable in the narrow mainstream marketplace though? Will they be able to sustain their potentially lucrative Sony contract?

From Jackson To Jacksonville

New albums from Jackson and His Computer Band, John Cale, Calexico/Iron and Wine, Bill Frisell, The Bad Plus and Ryan Adams hit the In League With Paton CD player.

There’s a whole plethora of material from across the sound spectrum to cover in this massive post, from the stuttering electronica of new Warp signing Jackson, to the second of three albums this year from the increasingly prolific troubadour Ryan Adams.

‘Smash’, the debut album from Jackson and His Computer Band is assertive, provocative music indeed, but it also comes with the kind of humorous party sensibility that the likes of Daft Punk now appear to have abandoned in favour of charmless repetition. Jackson is clearly someone with a short attention span – his tracks tend to flit rapidly between different sounds and ideas, but they work magic because they are usually anchored with one notable melodic line or texture.

The opening ‘Utopia’ is an excellent case in point. Jackson deploys a dazzling technique in cut-and-paste vocal sampling, but burbling beneath the surface is an insistent ostinato synth figure, veering between two notes in a fashion not entirely unlike the Jaws theme tune. Whilst that memorable piece of music created escalating tension and fear, Jackson’s motif affords the piece an oasis of calm.

The same cut-and-paste techniques recur on the disorientating ‘Rock On’, where we are very much in Daft Punk territory. Here, Jackson allows a possibly unironic love for seventies rock posturing to seep through. It’s a thrilling, highly entertaining track. By way of contrast, the child narrative on ‘Oh Boy’ is slightly sinister and reminiscent of the peculiarly malevolent atmosphere conjured by Boards of Canada on ‘Geogaddi’. This creepy atmosphere is heightened by the interjection of tantalisingly brief backing vocal samples (taken from Roy Orbison’s ‘Blue Bayou’ if my sample-detecting ears do not deceive me), the punctuations left lurking in the background of the mix.

The album sustains its defiantly scattershot approach surprisingly well, and benefits from a typically inspired guest appearance from Mike Ladd on the bemusing ‘TV Dogs (Cathodica’s Letter)’. The mysterious swells, pulses and ghostly choral samples of ‘Hard Tits’ provide further balance, the track sounding more contemplative in spite of its crude title.

Jackson has probably taken influence from the dancefloor disco of Daft Punk or Cassius, but has injected a new lease of life through his own maverick production techniques. He often opts for being deliberately melodramatic and, at its best, ‘Smash’ is a startling and unpredictable beast.

One could be forgiven for expecting ‘Black Acetate’, the new album from John Cale to share a maverick spirit with modern electronic pioneers, but some might be surprised by just how accessible, perhaps even conventional a record this is. Certainly, had the light pop-punk of first single ‘Perfect’ been recorded by McFly, every respectable critic in the land would not even consider devoting column inches to it. It’s rather zippy pacing sounds a little uncomfortable, not because Cale is too old for such amusements, but simply because it doesn’t sit entirely comfortably with the rest of the album.

If anything, ‘Black Acetate’ is further evidence that Cale is no longer pushing boundaries of his own, but rather following where his current influences lead him. His last album, the highly acclaimed ‘Hobosapiens’ saw him discovering Pro-Tools several years too late for it to really be ‘cutting edge’, whilst the foundations of ‘Black Acetate’ have been crafted with two major collaborators – funk producer Herb Graham Jr. and Eels sideman Mickey Petralia.

Luckily, the influences are many and varied. Reviewers have likened startling opener ‘Outta The Bag’ to the Neptunes, but that comparison fails to pin down its appealingly inelegant combination of falsetto vocals, sludgy rock and digitised Memphis style horns. Elsewhere, the playful squelch of ‘Brotherman’ suggests a combination of the classic funk of Curtis Mayfield and the mid-80s explorations of Prince. It depends more on intricate rhythm and atmosphere than melody for its impact. ‘Hush’ even closely resembles the bedroom electronica of Hot Chip – could Cale have been listening and taking note?

Melody plays a more significant role on the lush ‘Satisfied’, which benefits from a particularly strong vocal performance from Cale. The gravel-voiced murmurings and muted atmospherics of ‘In A Flood’ suggest the influence of Bob Dylan’s Daniel Lanois-produced albums. These songs are the album’s engaging and intriguing highlights. It is true that later in the album they do give way to rather more generic, lumbering creations (the aforementioned ‘Perfect’ ‘Wasteland’ and ‘Turn The Lights On’), but in concluding with the remarkable, funereal ‘Mailman (The Lying Song’, the overriding impression of ‘Black Acetate’ is positive.

‘Black Acetate’ may not rival ‘Music For A New Society’ for radical invention, nor ‘Paris 1919’ for songwriting ingenuity, but it nevertheless provides a fascinating document of an influential artist still totally engaged with current musical developments. There can be no obligation on an artist like Cale to revolutionise once more – a grand synthesis such as ‘Black Acetate’ is more than illuminating enough.

Cale’s work is certainly a collaborative effort, as is ‘In The Reins’, a near-faultless new mini album from the dream team of Calexico and Iron and Wine. This is one of those deceptively calm, unassuming accomplishments that will most likely slip through the critical net in the UK. Whilst Iron and Wine have already released one impressive mini album this year (‘Woman King’), there was a growing sense that Sam Beam’s well honed rustic Americana needed a new injection of life. He needed a musical backdrop that matched his richly poetic narratives. By joining forces with the dependably excellent Calexico, he has now achieved this.

It helps that the songs on ‘In The Reins’ are the best of Beam’s career to date – songs that inherit the classic American songwriting tradition of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash and Townes van Zandt. Beam has found his own narrative voice here, in much the same way that Springsteen claimed to have found his American storytelling voice with ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’. These songs, through their manipulation of language and their vivid construction of character and feeling, say far more about love, family and the underbelly of the American Dream than anything on Neil Young’s latest maudlin effort.

‘Prison On Route 41’ effortlessly captures a conflict between the protagonists’s jailed family, and the righteous path set out for him by his Virginia. It’s brilliantly realised (‘There’s a prison on route 41, a home to my mother, step brother and son/ And I’d tear down that jail by myself, if not for Virginia who made me someone else’), and delivered with Beam’s characteristic soft tones, which successfully underline its pathos. Elsewhere, ‘Sixteen, Maybe Less’ is a wonderfully subtle memory of love, tinged with a lingering sadness. The closing ‘Dead Man’s Will’ is deceptively simple, and unspeakably moving, a dedication of love from beyond the grave full of regret (‘give this bone to my father/He’ll remember hunting in the hills when I was ten years old’).

Although the songs are certainly marked with Beam’s distinctive stamp of authority, Calexico’s role here is pivotal. The mariachi horns that bolster the fantastic ‘History Of Lovers’ are a Calexico staple, and they elevate the song to thrillingly higher plane. On ‘Red Dust’, and ‘Burn That Broken Bed’, the band hit tremendous backbeat grooves, hinting at the close links between country music and soul. The strong influence of border music pervades throughout, from the strange but powerful interjection of Spanish operetta in the opening ‘He Lays In The Reins’ to the ragged percussion of ‘Burn That Broken Bed’.

This is a quietly remarkable record, rich in wisdom and experience heightened by a manifest love of language, both poetic and musical. It presents a prime example of how brilliant songs can be enhanced through the honing of instrumentation and arrangement. It would be wonderful if the two acts got together to perform this work live – it’s so good that I have to hope it’s not merely a one-off.

Whilst the Americana brigade at Uncut magazine might pick up on Calexico and Iron and Wine’s little gem, it’s unlikely they will make much noise about ‘East/West’, the latest double live album from guitarist Bill Frisell. This is a great pity that emphasises exactly how unhelpful the tendency in the UK media towards specialisation and compartmentalisation can be. Whilst he is known chiefly as a jazz musician, I wonder if there is anyone at work today who can rival Frisell’s instinctive understanding of the American folk tradition. On ‘East/West’, Frisell reinterprets some cornerstones of the American songbook in his own uniquely fluid style – ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, ‘Shenandoah’, ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ (from Porgy and Bess), Leadbelly’s blues standard ‘Goodnight Irene’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s-A-Gonna Fall’ are just a handful of the many highlights.

The concept is simple but effective – ‘East/West’ is a two-disc set containing selections from two concerts, one from the East Coast and one from the West Coast of America. The ‘West’ disc, a trio set recorded at Yoshi’s in Oakland, California with Viktor Krauss on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums is by far the more immediately appealing. Frisell’s playing is at its most lyrical on the sublimely atmospheric interpretation of ‘Shenandoah’ and Dylan’s ‘Hard Rain’, to which Frisell adds a sublime introduction of his own. These selections might well have seemed corny in the hands of a less adept communicator, but Frisell always brings his own touch of class to the material, deploying his trademark effects and guitar loops to craft a meticulously controlled atmosphere.

The group dynamic on this disc is terrific too. Krauss’ bass is relentlessly driving on Frisell’s own ‘Blues For Los Angeles’, combining in dual attack with some thunderous drumming from Wollesen. Another of Frisell’s compositions, ‘Boubacar’, a tasteful exploration into African modes in its original setting on ‘The Intercontinentals’ album, now becomes a much more aggressive creation and one that sits remarkably well with the American material.

The second disc, with Tony Scherr replacing Viktor Krauss on bass, is considerably more reflective and abstract. It requires some work, but is not without ample reward. The version of ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ demonstrates how crucial space and silence are to interpretations from the standard repertoire – what Frisell does not play here is every bit as important was what he does. Frisell’s own ‘Ron Carter’, presumably named in honour of the great bass player, is lengthy, and perhaps a little hesitant, but more concise readings of ‘Crazy’ and ‘Tennesee Flat Top Box’ round things off in style.

‘East/West’ provides an effective snapshot of Frisell’s live work over the past few years, but works best as a distilled summary of his major concerns thus far – a wonderful refashioning of the jazz tradition to incorporate soul, country, gospel and rock. Frisell will play live in the UK in November as part of the London Jazz Festival.

Another jazz act who have brought the music to a wider audience whilst making outrageous creative innovations of their own are The Bad Plus. The band are nominally a piano trio, but forget any preconceptions about what a piano trio should or should not sound like. They are almost entirely devoid of the warm resonances of EST or the polite lyricism of Tord Gustavsen’s trio. In fact, with their inspirations drawn from heavy rock and pop as well as the jazz tradition, they are perhaps even more aggressive in challenging purist ideas than Bill Frisell. Famed for their interpretations of successful pop hits, anyone who has yet to hear their versions of The Pixies’ ‘Velouria’ or Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ should investigate their earlier albums apace.

Their latest set, ‘Suspicious Activity?’, relies less on these bizarre reconstructions of rock hits, and instead emphasises the equally audacious nature of their own compositions. Amidst the familiar gleeful cacophony, there is also a rigorous attention to detail at work, and this may be their most intricate and impressive collection yet. ‘Prehensile Dream’ is angular and confounding, with some extraordinary polyrhythmic piano flourishes eventually giving way to an energised groove. It demonstrates the band’s uncanny ability to extrapolate a simple melodic idea into highly inventive improvisations. On ‘Anthem For The Earnest’, pianist Ethan Iverson demonstrates that he has one of the strongest and most rigorous left-hand accompaniment style in modern jazz, over which he is able to develop a series of conflicting polyrhythmic figures. ‘The Empire Strikes Backward’ (great title!) is supremely confident and radical. Anyone who has previously accused this band of being a goofy novelty act may well have to reconsider their position- Ethan Iverson’s piano playing is powerful throughout, and the trio are brilliant at manipulating the core material into something much more than the sum of its parts.

They still find room for one re-interpretation, this time the familiar theme tune from ‘Chariots Of Fire’, which retains much of the melody, but completely removes the mechanistic strictures of the Vangelis original. It’s an intriguing selection and one that, as usual, they make entirely their own. It complements the original material effectively and it is illuminating to hear the band apply a similar approach to deconstructing a famous piece of music as they do when working on their own music.

Like Bill Frisell, the band also appear at the upcoming London Jazz Festival. I’m actually quite pleased I picked this record up in Canada, as it doesn’t seem to be getting its UK release until November 7th.

Ryan Adams is probably an insufferable tosser, and certainly someone who can knock out serviceable songs in his sleep. ‘Jacksonville City Nights’ is the second of three proposed full length releases this year and, much like ‘Cold Roses’ before it, it’s pretty good, although it lacks that spark of inspiration that made ‘Heartbreaker’ such a striking solo debut. Adams is something of a musical chameleon, and not a true original. For the dire ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll’, he dressed himself up in a variety of horrific karaoke disguises, ranging from U2 to Aerosmith. On the opening track here, the honky tonk gem ‘A Kiss Before I Go’, he tries out his best Gram Parsons impression. It serves as a timely reminder of how well he mastered the country shuffle on ‘Heartbreaker’.

Adams sometimes has the ability to sink into a mire of cloyingly mannered vocals which undermines his considerable songwriting talents. The worst offender here is ‘Peaceful Valley’, where the vocal is almost unlistenable but the song is not without its qualities. ‘The End’ could have suffered the same fate, but Adams exerts just enough control to pull it back from the brink, and what could have been overblown becomes an affecting Nashville waltz. ‘Hard Way To Fall’ has a similar stripped back acoustic feel to ‘Peaceful Valley’, but is one of his most straightforwardly impressive songs for some time. The production remains faithful to the original country stylings Adams strives to imitate, and the unwelcome intrusions of ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll’ are mercifully absent.

He’s actually at his best here when veering away from his comfort zone. ‘September’ is a lush and wistful ballad brimming with emotion, whilst ‘Dear John’ features the vocals of Norah Jones of all people, but remains touching in spite of this. These songs are tinged with regret and longing, but without what some (arguably mistakenly) took to be the dour and miserable navel gazing of the ‘Love Is Hell’ material.

It’s all pleasant enough, and it’s particularly good to hear a gem plucked from the vaults (‘My Heart Is Broken’ was co-written with Caitlin Cary, presumably dating from the Whiskeytown era), but there’s nothing here as beautifully mournful as ‘I See Monsters’ or as cathartic as ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Sad’. Will Lost Highway release the remarkable ‘Destroyer’ album Adams recorded a few years ago with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings?

Well, that's it until the next post, but there's still plenty to catch up on, so expect more imminently.

Back From The Brink?

Neil Young's 'Prairie Wind'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tapping In From Toronto

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quirks, Geniuses and Frauds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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