Magic In The Night?

Bruce Springsteen - Magic

Getting straight down to business, I'd say it's pretty unlikely that this one will give Springsteen another In League With Paton album of the year gong, although I don't suppose the great man will care too much about that. Ultimately, I much prefer the outstanding Seeger Sessions band Live in Dublin set from earlier in the year. It's churlish to complain though when Springsteen is clearly a rejuvenated force. He'd virtually retired in 2001 when he felt compelled to respond to the tragic events of 9/11. Since then, he's barely paused for breath, touring 'The Rising' with the same hardworking spirit that informed the juggernaut 'Born In The USA' tour, completing the piecemeal 'Devils and Dust' solo set, forming The Seeger Sessions band for a foray into the American folk tradition and taking it to its logical conclusion on the ensuing tour, transforming his own back catalogue in the process. It's been the most productive phase of his career so far, with Springsteen crediting his audience with the intelligence to follow him on some of his less predictable journeys.

'Magic' is not one of those journeys though. It's a retreat to what is now the relative safety of the E Street Band, and a conscious effort to recapture the modernised rock sound of 'The Rising', whilst foresaking its weighty concerns in favour of a more concise, unburdened vision. At its best, this is no bad thing at all, and the album is blessed with a clutch of major songs. 'Girls In Their Summer Clothes' and 'I'll Work For Your Love' return to the Spector preoccupations that informed 'Born To Run' whilst 'Long Walk Home' and 'Gypsy Biker' are massive powerhouse anthems - the kind of song that would sound embarrassing in any other hands, but which Springsteen's grit and integrity manage to make genuine.

There's much less trickery and gimmickery here than on 'The Rising', in spite of Springsteen's decision to again employ Brendan O'Brien as producer. Whilst the sound is drier and more organic, there is still the sense that O'Brien is doing his level best to obscure the E Street Band as a unit, increasing the emphasis on thudding drums and rhythmically uninteresting strummed guitars at the expense of Roy Bittan's piano or Danny Federici's organ. 'Livin' In The Future' sounds entertaining and has a deliciously slinky chorus, but the production places it dangerously close to the MOR funk of Maroon 5. 'You'll Be Comin' Down' is somewhat underwhelming too, more than a little clunky and plodding. There's also not nearly enough of Nils Lofgren's expressive slide guitar, whilst Clarence Clemons is restricted to short but intense interjections on the saxophone. Strangely, 'Magic' actually sounds much closer to 'Lucky Town' (the more unfairly maligned of Springsteen's non-E Street albums of the early 90s) than any of the E Street albums. Some of these songs, particularly 'Long Walk Home', 'Gypsy Biker', 'Last To Die' and 'Radio Nowhere' are going to sound spectacular live, when the band is given more space to, ahem, work its magic.

The great variety and experimentation that characterised Springsteen's vocal performances on the Seeger Sessions album has also largely been abandoned in favour of a more stark contrast between belting with conviction and the more sombre tones of the title track or the uncredited 'Terry's Song' (a heartfelt tribute to his friend and colleague Terry McGovern who died recently). Springsteen sounds particularly stark and resigned on the title track, which is spare and beautiful.

It certainly isn't his greatest album lyrically either, occasionally sounding a little short on creative ideas. 'Radio Nowhere' is a great pop song, but it's hardly a new sentiment to lament modern American radio, and M Ward celebrated the golden era of radio with more insight on 'Transistor Radio'. It's brilliantly infectious though, and likely to provide Springsteen with his first real hit single in some time. Elsewhere, he occasionally seems stuck with benign platitudes or rather obvious statements, although I appreciate the melancholy sway of 'Girls In Their Summer Clothes' or the resigned longing of 'Long Walk Home'. Many criticised the apocalyptic and Biblical imagery of 'The Rising' as cliched and a means of avoiding challenging the more Patriotic element of his audience, but I'd take that dignified attempt at a poetic response over much of 'Magic'. 'Last To Die' may be the most adventurous moment lyrically here, but there's nothing close to his most recent masterpiece 'Long Time Comin' from 'Devils and Dust', with its rich, Cormac McCarthy-inspired manipulation of language.

The pre-release buzz for 'Magic' characterised it as a back-to-basics rock album and for once the press material is not entirely misleading. It's the most lightweight record Springsteen has made in some time, and far less concerned with contemporary context than his recent work. It doesn't quite have the playful zest of 'The River' though. For me, this album is at its best when it gets as soulful as it is hard-hitting. The slightly melancholy leanings of 'Girls In Their Summer Clothes' and 'Your Own Worst Enemy' invest them with greater emotional force.

The closing 'Devil's Arcade' is the only hint that Sprinsteen might ever return to the expansive, epic vision that informed 'Born To Run' and its flipside 'Darkness On The Edge of Town', but its a mesh of swirling atmospherics and meandering guitars rather than anything more focused or concerted. 'Magic' can be a little brutal and unsubtle at times, and there's certainly room for more light and shade. It is, however, easily digestible and occasionally fiery and thrilling.

Reports of the Death of Culture Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

NB: Personal View – not written in a work capacity.

Until next Monday morning, you can hear a rather excellent edition of the BBC World Service arts programme Culture Shock here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/culture_shock.shtml

I draw attention to this programme because of the presence of ‘Web guru’ Andrew Keen, who argues that various aspects of Web 2.0 (the Blogosphere, social networking websites, Wikipedia etc) are ‘killing our culture’ (whose culture specifically?). Obviously, as a keen blogger (no pun intended!), I have a clear interest to declare, but this doesn’t blind me to some of Keen’s more interesting statements.

He’s absolutely right to argue for personal responsibility online in the same way that we (should) expect it offline, and his argument that ‘we have to shape technology as much as it shapes us’ is powerful and important. Most of us are indeed aware that the internet is a very diverse space, awash with as much spin, opinion and disinformation as it is with useful resources. It’s also particularly vulnerable to extreme expressions, frequently without the backing of academic research. Wikipedia is an insightful example, as anyone who has seen some of the maliciously edited entries will no doubt testify.

He also had an interesting, if flawed, point to make about ‘anonymity’. His statement that ‘anonymity’ (neglecting the fact that complete anonymity on the web is next to impossible for anyone who isn’t a mastermind hi-tech criminal) ‘is a kind of theft’ is particularly audacious. By writing without declaring their true identities, bloggers and volunteer Wikipedia editors are taking without giving anything back, assuming kudos and expertise that they have not necessarily earned or proved. Well, perhaps, but an individual need not necessarily provide their name and address to demonstrate their credentials, even if only in the interests of personal security. Keen argues from this that ‘permissiveness about intellectual property is a vital social question.’ He doesn’t, however, discuss any practical questions about how we might restrict citizens’ contributions to the internet. He also doesn’t attempt to argue why the democratic ideal of freedom of speech should not also apply in the online realm.

It is also a massive logical leap between these positions and the alarmist notion that a ‘cult of the amateur’ is undermining expertise. I’m sorry to disappoint Keen, but I don’t believe that all professional journalists are corrupt rogues being bribed by PR companies or political interest groups. I do believe, however, that they have jobs to do, with specific audiences, business interests or shareholders in mind. This is not to say that any of this is inherently evil, just that it’s worth recognising the factors that may shape the work of professional journalists and experts. The word ‘amateur’ needn’t be negative. In my case, I hope it simply means that I’m not writing with a specific audience in mind; that I don’t have to write about a particular record simply because someone has been ‘kind’ enough to send me a free copy and that I’m relatively unconcerned about backing something that might turn out to flop. I can write about a wider range of music and film, focussing on aspects of art and culture for which I have genuine enthusiasm, thus aiming for a more positive approach.

Of course, I’m free to get things wrong without discipline or censure (and regular readers will hopefully recognise that I usually correct myself when I do) – but I’m also free to correct inaccuracies and errors in the professional media when I spot them. For a recent example, the NME (not a paper particularly respected for its journalists’ knowledge of jazz) reported the sad death of Joe Zawinul, but its news item was riddled with errors, not only claiming that Miroslav Vitous was a guitarist (in fact, he’s one of the greatest acoustic bassists in the world), but also claiming that he and Jaco Pastorius were members of Weather Report simultaneously – an interesting prospect that never actually happened (Vitous left in 1974, replaced by Alphonso Johnson, Pastorius didn’t join until 1976)! Why Keen thinks a professional news reporter for the NME is intrinsically more likely to have ‘expertise’ than me (an individual passionate about a massive range of music), I find a little baffling. Keen talks about individual amateur writers needing to be held to account, but one of our roles can be holding those professionals who fail to check their facts to an appropriate level of accountability themselves!

It’s also worth noting that the lines between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ may not be as clearly demarcated as Keen implies. A number of professional journalists also maintain blogs, where they have more space to exposit their thoughts (no word limits!) and more freedom to express individual views that veer away from a particular editorial line. For anyone interested in music, I would heartily recommend John Mulvey’s Wild Mercury Sound blog at the Uncut magazine website (which very successfully helps promote the magazine whilst challenging some of its limitations), Simon Reynolds’ blissblog or Marcello Carlin’s fascinating and inspired Church of Me as great examples of this.

Keen’s most contentious point is that blogs ‘collectively confuse popular opinion’. This is a wholly misguided statement in my view. Firstly, blogs are by their nature not a collective enterprise but rather the expression of individual views, some more carefully justified than others. In his response to Keen, trend tracker Tim Jackson argued that the phenomenon of blogging allowed individual voices to share some of the power traditionally held by employers, pressure groups, institutions and corporations. Can Keen really suggest that blogs are more influential in influencing public opinion than the tabloid press or broadcast media? This would assume that blogs are far more widely read than they actually are!

Rather flippantly, Keen states that ‘if culture is free then you get what you pay for and it’s usually crap.’ Keen has much of value to say, and his argument that the future of the web should depend more on expertise than hearsay is convincing. Yet his assumption that permissiveness always breeds decline and degradation is dangerous, and fails to credit individual internet users with enough intelligence to select which blogs to read and to corroborate whatever information they may find with other sources. It’s rather frustrating that, in the interview at least, Keen fails to differentiate between those bloggers with clear passion and enthusiasm for their subject, and those self-interested writers simply looking to promote themselves. I don’t feel that by writing and publishing this website, I’m somehow participating in a devaluation of culture, rigour and expertise. Instead I hope I’m helping to challenge commonly held assumptions about where expertise might lie, and perhaps even aid cultural discourse. It’s a fascinating debate, and it seems entirely appropriate that the BBC should give voice to someone emphasising rigour, fact-checking and expertise, important elements in the wider virtue of impartiality. However, the idea that ‘professional’ always equates with qualified and ‘amateur’ always means ignorant is itself misleading.

Tending To The Flock

Iron and Wine - The Shepherd's Dog

Perhaps I’ve waxed lyrical about Iron and Wine more than enough on these pages already but I can’t help feeling that ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’ deserves special attention as the first Iron and Wine album to explore the full possibilities of an ensemble sound. Most likely inspired by the outstanding collaboration with Calexico from a couple of years ago (indeed, Joey Burns and Paul Niehaus from that wonderful group both appear here), Sam Beam has now delivered rich and inventive arrangements to match his deeply compelling songs.

Lyrically, Beam continues to look like a true original and a master of language. His images are at once elusive and pure (‘love was a promise made of smoke in a frozen copse of trees’) and he has a peculiar knack for unusual juxtapositions (‘Cain got a milk eyed mule from the auction, Abel got a telephone’ or ‘springtime and the promise of an open fist’). Somehow, these words always seem to flow softly and elegantly (no doubt Beam’s beautifully understated delivery helps in this regard) and always evoke feelings rather than obscuring them.

Those who, like me, deeply admire Beam’s talent for composing ballads in the true sense of the term – long, storytelling songs with languid melodies – may be disappointed that his masterful song ‘The Trapeze Swinger’ is rarely used as a template here. There is the gorgeous ‘Resurrection Fern’, which closely resembles that song, albeit in far more concise form. Its chorus is almost unspeakably beautiful (‘we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire/both our tender bellies wrapped around in bailing wire/all the more an underwater pearl than the oak tree and its resurrection fern’), bolstered by Paul Niehaus’ subtle but stirring pedal steel. The closing ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ also has something of a soulful lilt to it, and is characteristically tender and affecting.

For most of ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’, though, Beam explores the more rhythmically driven, bluesy aspects of his work, to increasingly powerful effect. I think I credited Beam with pioneering something approaching an ‘American folk minimalism. This felt like a neat categorisation at the time but now seems hopelessly inadequate. ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’ is Beam’s most brazenly percussive work to date, both in terms of its deployment of a range of percussion instruments (but never a conventional drum kit) and in the style of guitar playing Beam deploys throughout. As a result, ‘The Shepherd’s Dog’ achieves much in retracing some of the lost connections between Appalachian blues and African desert music. ‘House By The Sea’ sounds closer to Ali Farka Toure than Bob Dylan (albeit with a hint of Roger McGuinn in the guitar solos), and there are echoes of the repetitive, hypnotic grooves of the Touareg masters Tinariwen, particularly on ‘Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog)’ or first single ‘Boy With A Coin’.

Somehow I hadn’t quite latched on to just how many of these songs Beam performed at his special show at the Spitz a couple of months ago. As a result many of the melodies and lyrical ideas already seem recognisable, but the overall sound of the record is somewhat unexpected and fascinating. This makes for an enchanting combination of distance and familiarity. There are all manner of sounds that seem alien to the trademark Iron and Wine sound – cello, soulful Wurlitzer, scratchy guitars, the delightful honky tonk piano on ‘The Devil Never Sleeps’, perhaps what might even be the odd intervention of electronics. The deep connection with the blues is still at the heart of this music, but the feel is now less rustic and more elastic.

Beam is an extraordinary songwriter capable of vivid, dreamlike songs that conjure their own weird combination of romanticism and danger. He would still be a significant artist even were he content to continue simply as an acoustic troubadour. That he has found new contexts for his elegiac words and melodies makes hiw work all the more expressive and powerful.

Ghosts in the Machine

PJ Harvey's 'White Chalk'

PJ Harvey clearly has little care for continuity. With each new album, she has reinvented herself. She indulged her fiery rage and righteous hatred on ‘Rid Of Me’, explored erotic mysteries on ‘To Bring You My Love’ and ‘Is This Desire?’, ventured into relatively conventional rock terrain for the Mercury winning ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’ and vented uncomplicated aggression on ‘Uh Huh Her’. Her latest venture, ‘White Chalk’, may well represent her most audacious transformation yet. It’s certainly the least commercial record she’s made in some time, in a career where commercial concerns rarely, if ever, seem to have been a significant factor.

At just 36 minutes long, one might be forgiven for inserting it into a CD player and expecting a set of snappy pop songs. Polly Harvey rarely takes such a comfortable route though of course. ‘White Chalk’ is in fact as confrontational and austere a record as I’ve heard this year. The majority of these songs were composed at the piano, and feature Polly pushing, occasionally straining, into the upper reaches of her vocal register. Formally trained pianists may wish to turn away now, for Polly is undoubtedly something of a novice at the old ivories, and much of the touch here is rather plinky-plonk.

There is, however, something eerily appropriate about this approach, particularly in the way it has directed Harvey towards a kind of chamber-noir sound. For much of ‘White Chalk’, Polly seems to be revelling in nostalgia for old lands, old times and a child’s loss of innocence. This being a PJ Harvey album though, it’s not the heart-warming, or even the melancholy form of nostalgic reverie. There’s a simmering malice and macabre chill throughout ‘White Chalk’ that creates unresolved tensions of the most cloying and uncomfortable kind. The skeletal piano and Yoko Ono-esque vocals serve to heighten and emphasise this discomfort.

The wonderful ‘Silence’, perhaps the album’s best track, begins ‘All those places where I recall/The memories that gripped me and pinned me down’. It sets the scene for the intense drama that plays out in the rest of the song, and also neatly summarises the album’s distinctive themes. Memory here has an inevitable, unavoidable force but is also stifling and disconcerting.

Both the title track and ‘Grow Grow Grow’ seem to revisit childhood. The latter is clearly an exploration of burgeoning child sexuality (‘Teach me Mummy how to grow, how to catch someone’s fancy beneath the twisted oak grove’), delivered almost as a fairytale. There are echoes of Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’ here, with its Freudian take on the Little Red Riding Hood story. ‘White Chalk’ itself is one of the more immediately appealing songs in this set, and one of the few to favour the rustle of an acoustic guitar over the more weighty backing of the piano. Harvey sings of ‘white chalk, sticking to my shoes, playing as a child with you’ and, rather more chillingly, claims that ‘these chalk hills will rot my bones’. There’s a majestic flow to the song that builds as it progresses.

Elsewhere, there’s an unrestrained longing that frequently boils over into desperation, from the malevolent cry at the heart of ‘The Devil’ (‘Come! Come! Come here at once!’) to the burning desire of ‘The Piano’. Much of this is reinforced by the stately yet quietly terrifying arrangements of these songs, from vivid vocal harmonies to soft, rustling percussion. Nick Cave’s ‘The Boatman’s Call’ has been cited as an obvious reference point, but where that album largely saw Cave abandon his trademark menace for more spiritual and romantic concerns, ‘White Chalk’ is as unsettling and troubling a record as Harvey has yet produced. Similarly, comparisons with Tori Amos and Kate Bush are largely unhelpful. There is mercifully nothing of Amos’ forced kookiness here, and if ‘White Chalk’ echoes some of Bush’s recent preoccupations with nature, that is only in the propensity of the natural world to evoke feeling and prompt memory. ‘White Chalk’ occupies its own peculiar space – a world that is creepy and bleak but thoroughly bewitching. On the surface, it’s completely uninviting, but ultimately it’s irresistibly tempting.

Spaced Oddity

Elmore Judd - Insect Funk

Elmore Judd are an unusual group comprising some of North London’s finest musicians, including the superb drummer Tom Skinner and keyboardist-songwriter Jesse Hackett, with whom I used to attend Ian Carr’s jazz workshops at the WAC Performing Arts and Media College. Hackett has been both shrewd and fortuitous in making useful friends through his participation in Damon Albarn’s Mali Music project. The result was a deal with the excellent Honest Jon’s label (so far mainly responsible for the rediscovering of soul legends such as Candi Staton, Bettye Swann and Willie Hightower), in which Albarn has a stake.

The group have already been acclaimed as ‘genuine innovators’ by Blues and Soul magazine, although they undoubtedly wear their influences rather proudly. What is most interesting about Hackett’s approach is the way that he has conducted something of a smash-and-grab raid on recent musical history. The opening ‘Pirate Song’ sounds like a Tom Waits song, and could have fitted comfortably on Hal Wilner and Gore Verbinski’s ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ pirate compilation from last year. ‘Dead Men Walk In A Straight 9’, with its rather bizarre oom-pah backing, mines similar ground. Skinner’s drums, emphasising beats against the main pulse, pull it in other directions, creating a perplexing, perhaps drunken sense of creeping unease.

Elsewhere, the sound is deliberately skeletal, somewhere close to Hot Chip (particularly on the synth-heavy erotic squelch of ‘Funky Nerd’) but with the dry, ironic humour extracted. ‘Disco in 4 Time’ and ‘We Float In Time’ have a similarly relentless four-to-the-floor backbeat to that deployed by LCD Soundsystem and many of the other DFA acts. By way of contrast, though, the title track is radical and off-kilter, with peculiar interlocking cartoonish vocals. ‘Ultra Busy’ has a disorientating, sub-aquatic feel that may well have been influenced by ‘Bitches Brew’ era Miles Davis. They are both perverse delights.

Although Hackett, his brother Louis and drummer Skinner are all virtuosic talents, there’s more creativity than showmanship on display on ‘Insect Funk’ and it’s all the more successful because of this commendable restraint. The group dynamic involves exploring the full possibility of sound and its manipulation and there is an extraordinary attention to detail on display here. Few bands vary their texture so greatly simply through the drum sound for example – there are lightly brushed drums, electronically manipulated, flat-sounding drums, and intricate, expressive percussion tracks. The guitar and keyboard lines are carefully mapped too, always simple and adding something to the atmosphere or the groove. Hackett is not so techinically gifted as a singer, but he achieves a mysterious quality through his breathy falsetto and enigmatic murmurings. ‘Insect Funk’ is slippery but insidious and undoubtedly impressive. It would be great to see this band break out of the restrictive London bubble.

Some Of The Dates Have Been Changed...

Nevermind US sub-prime mortgages - it was next Monday's album releases that were the most likely cause of financial disaster for me. Luckily, things are looking a little more staggered now. Here's an updated schedule for the next few weeks:

Sep 24th

Iron and Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Bettye Lavette - Scene Of The Crime
Manu Katche - Playground

Oct 1st

Bruce Springsteen - Magic
Steve Earle - Washington Square Serenade (moved from Sep 24th)
Scott Walker - And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball? (moved from Sep 24th)

Oct 8th

Supersilent - 8 (moved from Sep 24th)
Band Of Horses - Cease To Begin (moved from Oct 1st)
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera (already reviewed here!)

Languages of Love

Sylvie Lewis - Translations

Can I really be in love with a woman I’ve not even seen in person let alone met? Not really of course, but there’s certainly something rather enchanting about Sylvie Lewis. Born in Britain but now living in Rome, Lewis has led a remarkably itinerant lifestyle, including four years at the prestigious Berklee School of Music. This college is famous for having produced a number of quality jazz musicians, but its considerably rarer to find singer-songwriters among its alumni (and they tend towards the intellectual end of the spectrum – Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen for example).

Lewis’ lovely second album ‘Translations’ is loosely themed around complexities of language and communication and it has a delicate, old-time feel evidencing her formal training. Whilst there are elements of folk and classic pop, there are also strong hints of the jazz tradition, cabaret and show-tunes thrown into a thoroughly beguiling mix. In its deft handling of a variety of old-fashioned styles, it’s not a million miles from the recent explorations of Erin McKeown or Jolie Holland but there’s such a lightness of touch here that Lewis stands in a class of her own. Her consummate delivery is relaxed, effortless and commendably understated. There’s no attempt whatsoever to admonish the listener with crass dexterity or virtuosity, but rather a completely natural command of both phrasing and melody.

The delicate, playful quality of these songs will no doubt mean that appreciation depends on the individual listener’s tolerance for whimsy. Personally, I find these songs whimsical in the most delightful way – charming, graceful, insightful and spellbinding. It’s not just a collection of great songs, but also packed full of captivating moments too, such as the coda to ‘Cheap Ain’t Free’, where the music suddenly veers away from jaunty barroom jazz to pure Burt Bacharach-meets-Karen Carpenter schmaltz. Alternatively, there’s also ‘Starsong’, which begins with a lushly romantic voice and guitar introduction before moving into a light-hearted ragtime bounce. There are also lovely touches in the instrumentation too, with the focus shifting between softly strummed acoustic guitar to subtle piano. Richard Swift provides entrancing swathes of mellotron on a handful of tracks, and there are some very canny arrangements for strings, brass and woodwind.

‘Translations’ is an apt title for this record in so many ways, not only dealing as it does with communication and the language of love, but also capturing shared experience between a variety of different situations. This is an open-minded collection of songs where a variety of narratives intertwine, with a handful of the songs seemingly written in character from a male perspective. Lewis’ lyrics are mostly direct and unpretentious, sometimes exploring a casual manipulation of language. The opening lines to ‘Say in Touch’ are particularly charming: ‘He’s got a lover in New York/Likes to mention her in casual talk/Whenever they meet, they don’t speak much/When they meet they say in touch.’ Throughout, there’s a strong sense of wisdom gained through experience, although it’s consistently delivered in an entertaining, playful spirit.

These songs conjure a plausible world where conventional impressions of beauty can be both inspiring and oppressive, and Lewis subtly manages to challenge these conventions in the process on songs such as ‘Cheap Ain’t Free’ and ‘Death By Beauty’. On ‘Happy Like That’ she perceptively observes the flirtations of married men in late night bars (‘You want to be wanted, just a taste/But you push it to the edge because you know that you’re safe’) and, by way of contrast, there’s also the wonderfully breezy settle-for-singledom charm of ‘If It Don’t Come Easy’, with its insistent handclaps and chiming guitars. ‘Old Queens, Monet and Me’ doesn’t just dare to rhyme ‘Dubonnet’ with ‘Monet’ but also comes with a healthy dose of irony (‘as for music, all the good songs are covers anyway!’).

The album’s centrepiece is a splendid piano-laden love ballad in waltz time called ‘Of Course, Isobel’ which comes with just enough ambiguity to withstand a number of possible interpretations. It starts off sounding like a heartfelt plea from father to daughter (‘you don’t write you don’t call….Three women in my life I have loved well/My mother, my wife and, of course, Isobel’), but it could even be a love song to an estranged lover (‘when I tell my side, you made a plaything of my heart/You make love entertainment when for me love is art!’). Either way, it’s an exquisite and beautiful song, satisfying in its conventional resolutions.

Whilst this album has a very pure and comforting sound, the fact that it ends on its most elusive and mysterious song (‘Your Voice Carries’, more reliant on atmosphere than melody) suggests that there are other directions in which Lewis could travel, should she opt to follow these paths. For now, though, ‘Translations’ is an invigorating breath of fresh air.

Old Friends, Sat On A Park Bench Like Bookends

Kevin Ayers - The Unfairground
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera

It’s a special couple of months that sees these two pioneering collaborators (both Soft Machine alumni) both releasing new albums. Wyatt’s output has stayed restlessly creative over recent years, with a series of largely home-recorded albums demonstrating the continued flowering of his remarkable genius. As a composer, he is continually pushing himself in new directions, and he remains one of the most insightful and inventive of pop writers. ‘Cuckooland’ and now ‘Comicopera’ may show him becoming increasingly accessible but he is still completely fearless in his themes and juxtapositions, far from any comfortable or classifiable terrain. Yet, in some ways, it’s the Ayers album, whilst decidedly more conventional, that is the more unexpected. It’s this hermetic figure’s first recording for over fifteen years, and it is a remarkably dignified and unassuming disc. Wyatt himself is among the numerous guests on ‘The Unfairground’, billed amusingly as The Wyattron, although it’s not clear exactly what his contribution entails.

The play on words in Ayers’ chosen title is so obvious that it’s difficult to believe it hasn’t been used before. In fact, it neatly sums up the directness and clarity of this deceptively simple collection. Ayers’ vocal style is delicate, clear and almost conversational, and his melodies take a while to ingrain themselves in the mind. Repeated listens to ‘The Unfairground’ reveal numerous pleasures in its elaborate arrangements and old fashioned dusty shuffles. There’s also something hugely endearing about its ruminative and reflective mood.

Ayers may have been passing the time drinking wine in the South of France, but he clearly hasn’t closed his ears to contemporary talent. Among the guests on this beguiling record are indie-jazz pianist Bill Wells, various members of The Ladybug Transistor, former Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci singer Euros Childs and one of the greatest songwriters of the past 20 years in Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake. The songs all benefit from detail in the arrangements, including strings, brass and harmony vocals. These never feel tacked on after the event, but are rather innate contributing factors to the relaxed, lightly entertaining feel of the music.

The jauntiness of the opening ‘Only Heaven Knows’ or the delightfully infectious ‘Walk On Water’ border on twee, but never quite stray into that unpleasant pastiche territory coveted by Belle and Sebastian in their recent work with Trevor Horn. There’s also an important counterweight to be found elsewhere in the murky, dense trudge of ‘Brainstorm’ or the charming Cajun melancholy of ‘Baby Come Home’. The feel of much of this music is restrained and subtle, from the dusty shuffle of ‘Shine A Light’ to the multi-faceted rhythmic adventures of the title track, which bears a strong resemblance to Bob Dylan’s ‘Mozambique’.

Much of ‘The Unfairground’ deals with disappointment and uncertainty, and how age and experience do not by themselves bring greater insight. These are quite brave themes, although the reflective, whimsical humour with which Ayers confronts these subjects ensures that these songs are not overly weighty. Indeed, far from it, for there’s an admirable lightness of touch throughout the album. The resignation of ‘Cold Shoulder’ might be merely weary, or it might be wise (‘old shoulders become cold shoulders, nothing left to lean on’), whilst ‘Friends and Strangers’ neatly encapsulates the difficulties when the boundaries between friendship and love become blurred (‘funny how a situation changes, love can turn the best of friends into strangers’).

Those familiar with the oddball quirkiness Ayers displayed on albums like ‘Whatevershebringswesing’ might well find the relative straightforwardness and unashamed whimsy of ‘The Unfairground’ underwhelming. I have a clear sense that this is one of those delightfully modest albums that is all too easy to underestimate. It’s lovingly crafted, with an intriguing set of guests who have real empathy with Ayers’ unassuming approach.

Robert Wyatt claims that ‘Comicopera’ is about ‘the unpredictable mischief of real life’ and what greater, more sophisticated backdrop for an artistic statement could there be? He also claims that he doesn’t like to limit himself through prior planning or conceptual restrictions, although ‘Comicopera’ is an intelligently structured work neatly divided into three acts. Wyatt has a unique ability to make his work sound simultaneously both unfinished and utterly complete – there is as much space in this music as there is sound, and the low key production values allow for imperfections and real feeling.

So much has been made of Wyatt’s obfuscation or the challenge his music poses to ears more attuned to conventional pop music. His name has even become a verb – to ‘Wyatt’ now refers to the act of deliberately selecting the most outrageous or provocative track on a pub jukebox. Listening to ‘Comicopera’, though, I don’t feel that Wyatt’s music is without broader appeal. Whilst he’s undoubtedly preoccupied with sound in the broadest sense, and also with the traditions of improvisation and harmonic extension not usually explored in conventional pop writing, he has such a sensitive ear for melody and elegant chord progressions that much of the music here is both touching and approachable. Take the brief but charming ‘A Beautiful Peace’ for example, its delicate rustle and strum having an effortless charm. The music on ‘Comicopera’ is also subtle and considerably nuanced however, and therefore lacks the insistence or immediacy of much mainstream pop music. Like the best composition in any genre, it demands close attention, and rewards the effort handsomely.

Much of Wyatt’s last album (the outstanding ‘Cuckooland’) was fuelled by audacious examinations of the Middle East situation. ‘Comicopera’ advances this preoccupation by pivoting on the most original and intelligent expression of anger at the Iraq war any musician has yet mustered. Its second act sees Wyatt playing opposing roles, as a gung-ho bomber and an innocent victim of bombings. Then, in the album’s third (and most unconventional) act, Wyatt abandons the English language for Italian and Spanish, an expression of his perceived political and cultural alienation from the Anglo-American axis. This is a much more lucid, nuanced and powerful expression of dislocation than the uncontrolled anger Neil Young indulged on the massively overrated ‘Living With War’ album last year.

Ultimately, though, ‘Comicopera’ is as much personal as it is political, and even its most confrontational moments build broad pictures from individual perspectives. Wyatt and his wife and co-lyricist Alfreda Benge may be rivalled in 2007 only by Bjork and Feist for their insight into human behaviour. There are love songs here, but they are free from the burden of sentimentality and rarely predictable in their outlook. Sometimes, as much of the emotion and feeling is hidden as it is revealed (I particularly like ‘A.W.O.L’ with its lyrics about ‘thinking in riddles and waving to trains that no longer run’). Yet occasionally, Wyatt and Benge manage to be strikingly direct, as on ‘Just As You Are’ which manages to revisit that well-worn theme of constancy in love without sounding tired or jaded.

This album is so stylistically diverse and scattershot that it shouldn’t hang together nearly as coherently as it does. Its overarching themes and musical preoccupations provide a consistent thread, and there’s an engaging mystery neatly introduced by the eerie interpretation of Anja Garbarek’s ‘Stay Tuned’.

The three act scheme also helps to add shape and form, even if it was, as Wyatt suggests, an afterthought. The first act, subtitled ‘Lost In Noise’ is notable for its smoky, entrancing arrangements focussing on trumpet and saxophone. These performances are not just lovingly arranged (particularly the wonderful ‘Anachronist’ which is both hypnotic and discomforting) but also carefully recorded, capturing the natural live sound and tone of these instruments.

The first part of the middle act most explicitly conjures the comic mood the album’s title suggests. This being a Robert Wyatt album, however, the humour is particularly dry. On the quirky deconstructed blues ‘Be Serious’, he quips ‘how can I express myself when there’s no self to express?’, a peculiar inversion of existentialist philosophy. The act ends with the album’s most politically confrontational material, but is glued together by the endearingly ramshackle instrumental ‘On The Town Square’, essentially an extended improvisation for saxophone and steel pan over just one insistently repeated guitar chord. ‘A Beautiful War’ is devastating in its sardonic cynicism in the face of war, Wyatt playing the role of gleeful bomber privileged with a promise of freedom and security denied to his targets (‘I open the hatch, and I drop the first batch/It’s a shame, I’ll miss the place, but I’ll get to see the film within days…the replay of my beautiful day’). Immediately afterwards, on the brilliantly disorientating ‘Out Of The Blue’, Wyatt switches roles to play the part of the beleaguered victim of war (‘Beyond all understanding you’ve blown my house apart/You set me free…You’ve planted all your everlasting hatred in my heart’). It sounds appropriately confusing and terrifying, but also underlines a sense of anger and fearless righteousness.

The final act, subtitled ‘Away With The Fairies’ seems to enter another world completely, a land that is both romantic and disconcertingly dark, with Wyatt both forsaking the English language and veering into his most inventive musical terrain. ‘Cancion de Julieta’ might be the album’s most difficult moment but it’s also a clear highlight, setting a Lorca poem to appropriately dramatic and evocative music. It builds from just Wyatt’s uniquely conversational intoning set against a discreet double bass glide, into a swirling, malevolent concoction in asymmetrical time. The take on Orphy Robinson’s ‘Pastafari’ is equal parts Steve Reich and Lionel Hampton, far more engaging than a simple interlude. After ‘Fragment’ echoes some of the themes from the first act, the album ends with the Latin-tinged ‘Hasta Siemore Comandante’, which manages to be at once elusive and forthright, foreboding and celebratory.

It would be easy to take Wyatt for granted because he consistently produces music that is this weird and wonderful – it is exactly what his audience expects from him. But let’s be clear – there is no other male solo artist working on this level and nobody this unafraid to combine ideas and sounds that might otherwise be assumed to be in conflict with each other. ‘Comicopera’ is yet another vivid masterpiece in a career that has not yet produced anything less.

Reunion Madness

How unfortunate that the Led Zeppelin reunion has directly coincided with the release of Robert Plant's rather excellent new record with Alison Krauss. Given that Page and Plant performed Led Zep material together, somewhat indifferently, as recently as the late 90s (the only difference now being the participation of John Paul Jones), I'm actually surprised that demand for the reunion show has been quite this massive. People seem perfectly prepared to pay the outrageous asking price (£150 + for one concert is simply obscene), whilst also paying the additional costs involved in travelling substantial distances.

At least with Led Zep, there still seems to be some kind of bond of friendship and mutual empathy between the main parties. The Police reunion hardly seems to have quashed the antipathy between Stewart Copeland and Sting, who seem to have set aside their considerable differences purely for the purpose of making some cold, hard lucre.

Now comes the most ridiculous of them all - the Sex Pistols reuniting yet again! Can there be any spirit of rebellion left in these craggy old rockers? Another trudge through 'God Save The Queen' and 'Anarchy in the UK' at half the original tempos? No thanks. The most galling aspect of this particularly reunion for this writer is its timing - neatly coinciding with yet another anniversary reissue of 'Nevermind The Bollocks...' I still view this as one of the most overrated records of all time - profoundly uninteresting both musically and lyrically, and nowhere near as significant as John Lydon's later work with PiL, which was far more creative, challenging and unexpected. To my ears, the Pistols' music remains stodgy, soulless and ugly. It's no wonder it inspired Noel Gallagher. The assumption that 1976 was the year of punk, and that the Sex Pistols were at its vanguard is a massive assumption that still remains unchallenged. The protest spirit that catalysed punk surely began in the US with Iggy and The Stooges and arguably even The MC5. On this small island we seem obsessed with our capacity for musical and cultural innovation - yet it's so often based substantially on myth-making and distortion. I want to hear something original, fresh and exciting from these shores, not another trip down a memory lane almost entirely devoid of cultural value.

Community Spirit!

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Unexpected Pleasures

Robert Plant/Alison Krauss - Raising Sand

It’s difficult to admit it now, but one of my earliest infatuations as a teenager was with Led Zeppelin. Not so much the quasi-mystical nonsense of ‘Stairway To Heaven’, but rather the primal rush of ‘Communication Breakdown’ or the effortless and thoroughly peculiar melding of Eastern strings and pounding drums on ‘Kashmir’. Since those days, I’ve rather fallen out of love with their considerable legacy and can’t bring myself to care much about the imminent reunion gig, even if Dave Grohl does attempt to fill John Bonham’s enormous drum shoes. Foolishly, I opted to watch Page and Plant’s indulgent tedium over the Super Furry Animals at 1998’s Reading Festival, and much of Robert Plant’s solo work has left me rather cold. ‘Raising Sand’ therefore comes as a curious and entirely gratifying surprise.

It’s not a Plant solo album as such, but rather a collaboration with the extraordinarily popular bluegrass singer Alison Krauss, about whom I am usually very much agnostic. Her own music has tended to sound overly polite and sanitised, the songs often sounding forced rather than hard-lived. Yet her soft, somewhat vulnerable tones here provide a sterling foil for Plant, who is uncharacteristically restrained throughout. Indeed, it’s only on ‘Fortune Teller’ that he even comes close to resembling the sexualised urgency of his Zeppelin vocal performances. There’s only one Plant original here (‘Please Read The Letter’), and even that is cribbed from the Page/Plant album ‘Walking Into Clarksdale’. This is mainly a somewhat studied, but thoroughly easygoing foray into American roots music, neatly melding country, blues and soul into a delicately enchanting and hypnotic hybrid.

Sometimes the sound is comfortingly familiar, with swathes of pedal steel guitar and lightly brushed drums, but in places they veer into unusually eerie, gothic territory. ‘Polly Come Home’ doesn’t sound a million miles away from the harmony-directed minimalism of Low, although the slightly Irish lilt to the melody lends it an additional timeless quality. The superb opener ‘Rich Woman’ crackles and bristles with an oddly reserved energy, whilst Krauss handles the melodic line of ‘Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us’ with masterful subtlety.

The percussion throughout sounds particularly otherworldly and transcendent, perhaps slightly reminiscent of Malcolm Burn’s production work for Emmylou Harris on ‘Red Dirt Girl’ and ‘Stumble Into Grace’, particularly on the haunting take on Tom Waits’ ‘Trampled Rose’. The loose-limbed clatter that glues these songs together also prevents this from being too academic or reverential an exercise.

There’s a relaxed, consummate alchemy between Plant and Krauss that is thoroughly unexpected. Whilst it’s not quite as pure and original a partnership as that of Gram Parsons and Emmylou, it’s both respectful of that particular heritage and keen to develop it in unpredictable directions. The effortless grace of their harmony singing on ‘Stick With Me Baby’ is sublime.

What a shame therefore that Plant is undermining the promotion of this satisfying record by submitting to corporate pressures for a one-off Led Zeppelin reunion show. At least it looks unlikely to become a behemoth tour in the manner of this year’s other reunions (Genesis, The Police). I would rather focus on the quiet and intoxicating majesty of this beautiful record.

Belated Mercury Musings

I've been out of the loop a bit due to having spent the last few days on an intensive and highly fulfilling residential music course in an isolated property on the coast of Devon. So I missed yesterday's Mercury announcement completely.

I guess Klaxons are exactly the sort of over-hyped media fodder regular readers of this blog might expect me to rail against venomously, but I actually think they have some merit. Not, I must concede, because they are doing anything especially original (to me they sound more like early Super Furry Animals than a 'rave' band) but because some of the songs are clever, punchy and viscerally exciting.

Yet the nagging question remains - is this really the best record a British artist can come up with? Will it be remembered as a classic, pioneering achievement in even 10 years' time? Frankly, I doubt it. Like previous winners Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons seem designed far more for instant thrills than serious longevity. What has happened to the long term career trajectory in this country's fractured and damaged music industry? When exactly did it become a common assumption that artists make their most radical and innovative statement with their debut albums, leaving them nowhere left to go?

Surely the strident leap in delivery and sheer quality Amy Winehouse has made between her first and second albums deserved some recognition, in spite of her turbulent lifestyle? If her first album suffered a little from overbearing force of personality, this album amply demonstrated her sheer class as a performer and artist. Has there been a better collection of songs with such timeless quality released in the past twelve months? Plus it's now been five years since PJ Harvey was the last woman honoured with the award.

Alternatively, when will this prize actually justify its existence by selecting one of the 'token' nominations as a winner? The most subtle, inventive and engaging album in the shortlist by some distance was Basquiat Strings, misguidedly presented as a nomination for drummer Seb Rochford, rather than for the group's leader and composer, the highly talented cellist Ben Davis.

So it's been yet another missed opportunity for this beleagured cultural institution and with every year the judges strip away yet more value from what was initially a worthwhile and important concept.

Forthcoming Attractions

As if 2007 hadn’t yet proved wonderful enough, take a look at this rather tasty list of what the rest of the year has in store:

Aesop Rock – None Shall Pass (released in the UK today – one of modern hip hop’s great masters)
Dirty Projectors – Rise Above (11th Sep in the US – one of the most innovative and exciting bands I’ve heard in a long while)
Gravenhurst – The Western Lands (10th Sep – no doubt more electronica-tinged folksmithery)
Murcof – Cosmos (17th Sep - atmospheric electronica on the wonderful Leaf label)
Supersilent – 8 (17th Sep - I can’t express how much I’m looking forward to this – more unplanned free improv from Arve Henriksen, Helge Sten et al)
Kevin Drew – Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew’s Spirit If (Sep 17th – ‘solo’ project from Broken Social Scene mainman sounds excellent)
PJ Harvey – White Chalk (Sep 24th – reportedly sees Polly at the piano, sounds very promising)
Manu Katche – Playground (Sep 24th – outstanding percussionist/composer on ECM)
Scott Walker – And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball? (Sep 24th – the results of SW’s recent commission for a ballet project at the Royal Festival Hall)
Iron and Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog (Sep 24th – features more collaborations with Calexico and no doubt another fine album from one of America’s greatest contemporary songwriters, now on Transgressive in the UK).
Steve Earle – Washington Square Serenade (Sep 24th – The politically daring Earle returns with an album inspired by America’s capital)
Bettye Lavette – Scene Of The Crime (Sep 24th – The great overlooked soul singer continues her comeback, this time with an album of songs written by men).
Beirut – The Flying Cup Club (reportedly influenced by chanson music – out in October??)
Bruce Springsteen – Magic (Oct 1st – ‘Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night’ – Bruce returns with his most straight ahead rock record for some time).
Underworld – Oblivion With Bells (Oct 1st – dependable dance pioneers return)
Band Of Horses – Cease To Begin (Oct 1st – 2nd album from excellent My Morning Jacket soundalikes)
Robert Wyatt – Comicopera (Oct 8th – The return of a living genius)
Black Dice – Load Blown (Oct 8th – one of the better set of laptop experimentalists)
Prefuse 73 – Preparations (Oct 23rd – more stuttering, unpredictable hip hop)
Boxcutter – Glyphic (tbc – playful dubstep extraordinaire)
Shortwave Set – Replica Sun Machine (tbc – junkyard pop)
Also tbc – Spiritualized, REM, Portishead (but maybe now delayed until 2008?)

The One U Wanna C?

Prince at the 02 Arena

Reports on Prince’s 21 night stand in London have so far been mostly ecstatic. The few murmurings of dissent seem to have been judged as tantamount to some unforgivable act of treason. Those lucky enough to attend the opening night (and I suspect the same will be true of the closing night too) were treated to a lengthy set concluding with a generous three encores. Elsewhere in the run, he seems to have been onstage for barely 70 minutes. The ticket price, set at his magic number of £31.21 may be reasonable – but all are paying the same amount, even for the ghastly seats at the top level of the 02, set back at a severe distance from the stage, and where the sound quality was horrific.

My own experience of two of the shows suggests that the minority of dissenters have been right to express their reservations. Although the show on Friday 17th August was considerably better than the earlier show on the 7th, there was little in either performance to imply that Prince was doing anything other than hitting the button marked ‘cruise control’. The second show was never anything less than entertaining – but surely this is the very least we expect from someone with Prince’s star quality? He is not, after all, a Janet Jackson or a Madonna – being as much an immensely versatile musician and outrageously gifted songwriter as great performer.

Prince’s great contribution to popular music has been to break down stereotyped boundaries – there is no ‘white’ and ‘black’ in his music and he remains as likely to be as influenced by new wave and soft rock balladry as George Clinton’s P-Funk. Similarly, even when his albums have been completely lacklustre (sadly the new ‘Planet Earth’ album falls squarely into this category – giving it away free with the Mail generated hype the content alone could never have mustered), none has sounded remotely like its immediate predecessor.

The centrepiece of the set on the 7th was a lengthy and somewhat lumbering funk jam session giving legendary JBs saxophonist Maceo Parker a little too much space to blow. Parker has impressive power and muscularity, but little in the way of subtlety and this is hardly what most punters paid to see. ‘Musicology’ was supremely groovy, but segueing it into a covers of ‘Pass The Peas’ and ‘Play That Funky Music’ (complete with unwitting members of the audience dancing onstage – presumably only those with the VIP tickets near enough to get picked out) seemed pointless and indulgent. Similarly, the ghastly cabaret jazz take on ‘What A Wonderful World’ that enabled Prince to make the first of two costume changes (mercifully there were no ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ in this show) was a step too far into the realms of mouldy cheese.

Whilst the set list for the 7th available at fansite housequake.com lists 29 songs, I only counted 12 original songs played in full, which for an artist now on his 26th album is simply not enough. There was a strange and surreal aura to this show which mostly served to emphasise Prince’s diva tendencies rather than his manifest talents. Prince opened the show alone with his guitar, playing a rather tantalising medley of some of his greatest songs (‘Little Red Corvette’, ‘Alphabet Street’, ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’). This would have been a masterful way to open an intimate club show, but in the cavernous environment of the hellish former millennium dome, it hardly constituted playing to the gallery. Also, if anyone rashly assumed that this would presage a barrage of hits played in full with the band, they would have been left mightily disappointed. Prince somehow managed to make this worse by breaking up the set with a second medley performed alone at the piano. Both medleys demonstrated his technical ability, but left me with a curiously dissatisfied feeling – a little inappropriate given that much of Prince’s lyrical output focuses on his ability to satiate!

This show seemed to demonstrate Attention Defecit Disorder more than stamina. The closing run of ‘Kiss’ and ‘Purple Rain’ and the delightfully energetic encore of ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ provided crowd pleasing moments, particularly the mass singalong that ended ‘Purple Rain’, but it all seemed too little too late really. He obviously remains convinced of his own genius, breaking off from the lyric of Purple Rain to exclaim ‘I just love this song!’ Well, quite right, so do we – but we love plenty of other Prince songs too, and he could do so much more than treat his catalogue with brash and arrogant contempt.

The set on the 17th was structured much more sensibly for the nature of the venue, with the full band starting the show immediately with ‘1999’. How much better that the whole audience was brought to its feet from the very outset! Similarly, moving the segue of ‘I Feel For You’ into ‘Controversy’ to the end of the show gave it greater prominence, and emphasised the quality of Prince’s early material as much as his mid-period hits.

The funk jam was tauter and more spirited this time and we were ‘treated’ to an endearingly shambolic vocal and dance from Bourne Ultimatum actress Julia Stiles, who conveniently happened to have a front row seat. It was a shame she didn’t brush up on her lyrics! The inclusion of ‘7’ (one of his better New Power Generation-era moments) provided a welcome surprise in the main set and mercifully he restricted himself to just one medley this time, this one delivered with more humour and less bravado. Sadly, it contained mere snippets of some of his greatest songs – there’s simply no justification for only delivering ten seconds apiece of ‘Raspberry Beret’ and ‘When Doves Cry’ in order to favour much less interesting songs such as ‘Cream’, ‘Guitar’ and ‘Musicology’ in the main set!

The ‘in the round’ stage design was a clever gimmick but not, in the event, particularly well utilised. Prince spent most of his time facing one way, so a sizeable part of the audience paid to look directly at the back of his head. He proved better at engaging the side stands, moving to either side of the stage (predictably designed to replicate his androgynous symbol) and giving the lively crowd plenty of encouragement.

The quality of sound at both shows was hopeless – even close to the stage there was little definition. There seems little point in having two keyboardists in the band if there’s precious little possibility of distinguishing the individual parts above a nasty low-end rumble. Sometimes even Prince’s vocals became inaudible. This is clearly something this enormous venue needs to work on, although as arenas go, it’s clearly preferable to Wembley simply by virtue of serving good beer (Murphy’s ?!?!) and relatively adventurous fast food.

Prince is justified in bragging (‘too many hits – too little time!’), and maybe it would have been better had he graced London with his presence more than once in the last ten years. The tremendous weight of expectation has rendered it difficult to judge these concerts with any real degree of objectivity. As an entertainer, Prince may have lived up to those expectations but he has surely failed to seize a golden opportunity by not surpassing them.

Soy Super Bien!

Super Furry Animals - Hey Venus!

It’s perhaps understandable that Super Furry Animals have recently diminished in status from national treasure to a dependable band rather taken for granted. This has much to do with the rather assuming nature of their previous two albums, particularly 2005’s ‘Love Kraft’. A collaboration between SFA and Beastie Boys producer Mario Caldato Jr., ‘Love Kraft’ should have been inspired. Unfortunately, the result sounded like an album made under the influence of too many depressive substances – occasionally enlightened (‘Zoom’, ‘Laser Beam’ and ‘Cyclone’ are among their best songs) but mostly hazy, slothful and lacking in energy. All bands have to undergo an inevitable maturing process but in this case the gonzo spirit that informed the first three SFA albums seemed to have been surgically removed rather than merely tempered. It was the first SFA album that couldn’t even begin to match the exuberant qualities of Pete Fowler’s artwork.

‘Hey Venus!’ goes some distance in restoring that enthusiasm and restless creativity and it makes for a much more satisfying record as a result. The album’s concept about a runaway girl might well be a loose afterthought, but the sound (now controlled by Broken Social Scene’s remarkable engineer Dave Newfeld) is coherent and intelligent. ‘Hey Venus!’ at last sees SFA make inventive use of the studio again.

It also restores the maverick sense of humour that ‘Love Kraft’ transparently lacked. The opening ‘Gateway Song’ lasts a mere 45 seconds, neatly presaging the fun and games that follow, with Gruff Rhys boasting that ‘it brings us up nicely to the harder stuff and once you get hooked, you can’t get enough’. The Phil Spector-esque ‘Run-Away’ begins with a rather wonderful piece of spoken explanation – ‘this next song is based on a true story, which would be fine if it wasn’t autobiographical!’ He sounds rather like a Welsh Jarvis Cocker at this point and indeed ‘Run-Away’ would have fitted rather neatly on Jarvis’ recent solo album. ‘Hey Venus!’ also benefits from some spectacularly silly song titles – ‘Carbon Dating’, ‘Battersea Odyssey’, ‘Baby Ate My Eightball’ – the group clearly haven’t lost their delirious love of wordplay.

There’s still a lingering sense of disappointment in the fact that the band have settled for emphasising their more conservative 60s and 70s psychedelic influences over the rush of lo-fi magic that made ‘Mwng’ so captivating, or the experiments with techno and electronica that permeated ‘Rings Around The World’ and ‘Guerilla’. ‘Show Your Hand’, the album’s first single, whilst undeniably pretty, is really nothing more than you’d expect from a band with a barely restrained infatuation with ‘Surf’s Up’-era Beach Boys. There was a time when SFA seemed to have no care whatsoever for categorisation or the expectations of their audience, successfully challenging people to embrace whatever they had to offer. Nowadays, they seem to have settled into some kind of quirky pop-meets soft rock bracket.

The positive response to this is that the band has blessed ‘Hey Venus!’ with some genuinely memorable tunes (the delicate doo-wop of ‘Carbon Dating’, the brass laden stomp of ‘Battersea Odyssey’ or the ELO-esque harmonies of ‘The Gift That Keeps Giving’). There are some moments when the band’s masterful synthesis of old and new shines through with real clarity (the deliciously funky ‘Into The Night’ or the enjoyable ‘Neo Consumer’) Even the more lightweight moments come with a tremendous sense of fun (the fuzzy disco of ‘Baby Ate My Eightball’). It’s also worth recognising that ‘Hey Venus!’ is SFA’s eighth album proper, which is quite an achievement in itself. Kindred spirits The Boo Radleys sadly couldn’t manage that kind of longevity, unfairly maligned as they now are. ‘Hey Venus!’ doesn’t exactly break any new ground for SFA and, at just 36 minutes, many may feel a little short changed on duration. Let’s not take them for granted though, eh?

Oh Susanna!

What a shame that Susanna Wallumrod (this time billed without her Magical Orchestra) has given her first solo album such a laughably pretentious title, for ‘Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos’ is one of 2007’s genuine treasures. It doesn’t veer too far from the Nordic minimalism of her two albums with the Magical Orchestra, and many of the Rune Grammofon collective appear here to give her a helping hand. Helge Sten from Supersilent contributes some essential and subtle guitar parts, whilst the same remarkable improvising group’s Deathprod is responsible for the album’s warm and hypnotic sound. Susanna’s ECM jazz pianist brother Christian also appears on a handful of tracks, emphasising further continuity with the Magical Orchestra albums.

Just like those discs, Susanna’s solo cosmos is a largely percussionless, listless and free-floating musical landscape, but there are some very subtle variations in the approach to arrangements. Sten’s guitar adds warmth and texture, as does the greater range in instrumentation more generally. Equally welcome are the theremin on the opening ‘Intruder’ and the grand piano more frequently deployed throughout.

These twelve hauntingly beautiful songs cover matters of the heart with a disarming directness and insightful charm. Appropriately, Susanna’s voice remains a beacon of understatement and restraint and an instrument that deftly handles these consistently moving melodies. She delivers her words with a precision perfect and delicately unfolding grace that effortlessly matches the gentle undertones of her skeletal accompaniments.

It is precisely because these songs are so rich in nuance and feeling that this atmospheric music never becomes boring. Susanna’s musical backdrops are not merely hypnotic or wistful, but also deeply sensual and sublime. The opening trio of ‘Intruder’, ‘Born In The Desert’ and ‘Hangout’ are among the most strikingly beautiful songs released this year, whilst ‘Better Days’, with its swathes of guitar, points at how Susanna’s trademark sound might be further enhanced and developed.

It’s possible that Susanna’s quiet, pensive and melancholic exploration of emotional tensions might be lost amidst the far more blatant noise and confusion elsewhere. That would be a great shame – because she has much in common with other trailblazing female artists (Nico, Kate Bush, Bjork, Feist etc) in that she operates in her own unique space, completely removed from prevailing trends.

Tales of Minor Disappointment

King Creosote, New Pornographers, Liars

Along with Badly Drawn Boy, Kenny Anderson AKA King Creosote was just a few years ago one of the bright hopes among British solo artists. Sadly, both Damon Gough and now bard of Fife Anderson too seem to have disappeared into a pit of dispiriting ordinariness that doesn’t befit their distinctive characters, and from which it seems unlikely that either will emerge with dignity intact. Chief operator among the Fence Collective, Anderson was a fiercely independent, idiosyncratic and unusual writer, and a devotee of homespun, ramshackle folk arrangements often focussed on the harmonium. His last album, ‘KC Rules OK’ was his first for a big label (679 – also home to Mystery Jets and The Streets amongst others) and showed him aiming for a more conventional singer-songwriter market. It had its moments, but the arrangements seemed markedly less interesting and the soul was lost.

Unfortunately, ‘Bombshell’ continues this trend. Only the lovely opener ‘Leslie’ really retains the warmth and heart of Creosote’s home recordings. Elsewhere, the tender, affecting melody of ‘Home In A Sentence’ is smothered by glossy production, blandly strumming acoustic guitars and a rather hamfisted attempt at anthemics that make Anderson sound rather like an indie Deacon Blue. Some of the plodding tempos that anchored ‘KC Rules OK’ firmly to the ground return in the form of ‘There’s None Of That’ and ‘Nooks’. ‘You’ve No Clue Do You’ is at least catchy, but the attempt at a driving Franz Ferdinand-esque disco beat seems decidedly clumsy.

The yearning melancholy that characterised songs like ‘Friday Night in New York’ is given more room to breathe on ‘Church as Witness’, but even that is slightly undermined by its bed of directionless synth pads. The epic ‘At The W.A.L.’ demonstrates that Anderson still retains his story-spinning lyrical charm and it begins with considerable promise, emphasising mystery over clarity. Sadly, it develops only into another driving conventional rock arrangement. The haunting conclusion of ‘The Racket They Made’ gives a hint of what Anderson is capable of when left to his own devices – it’s a deeply powerful duet with fellow Fence Collective member HMS Ginafore, and along with ‘Leslie’, it bookends a highly disappointing album with real quality. ‘Common sense must prevail’ sings Anderson on ‘Home In A Sentence’, as if he’s resigned himself to a fate determined for him by some over-zealous record company man. I preferred him when he lacked a marketing strategy and distributed his tapes for free.

I’m equally unsure of ‘Challengers’, the fourth album from The New Pornographers, the Canadian band we must not call a supergroup. On their last album, the mighty ‘Twin Cinema’, the band concocted a slightly rough around the edges, highly spirited collection of rather ingenious guitar pop, where Kurt Dahle’s vigorous drumming was as central as Carl Newman’s spindly melodies. Although all the essential ingredients of the band’s signature style are present and correct on ‘Challengers’, they’ve performed something of a volte-face in terms of production values, very much cleaning up their act and swallowing the ‘bigger is better’ mantra a little too uncritically. Out go the big drums, in come the chugging guitars and grafted on string arrangements.

Some of the songs sound like pristine rewrites of songs from ‘Twin Cinema’. The opening ‘My Rights Versus Yours’ closely resembles the insistent, jaunty groove of ‘Use It’ but sounds a little more ornate and polite. Many of the other songs adopt the mid-tempo stomp of ‘The Bones of an Idol’ as their template, but the album occasionally drifts into plodding territory. There are pretty melodies in abundance, particularly on ‘Go Places’, where Neko Case handles the lead vocal with admirable restraint. The infectious ‘All The Old Showstoppers’ demonstrates Newman’s canny ability with vocal harmonies, and the lively, unpredictable ‘Mutiny, I Promise You’ shows more imagination with rhythm and metre than most indie rock bands can muster.

However, by the album’s conclusion there’s largely a sense of missed opportunity. It’s all very well adding instrumentation, but the horns and strings frequently just sound pretty rather than engaging or bold. Some tracks drift into blandness, and the album’s centrepiece, ‘Unguided’ chugs so unimaginatively that it could be Snow Patrol. And Christ, does it really have to be six and a half minutes long? It doesn’t go anywhere remotely interesting! Dan Bejar does his usual psychedelic weirdness schtik with ‘Myriad Harbour’ and the superior ‘Entering White Cecilia’, but the songs he penned for the last Destroyer album were more unhinged and bizarre. ‘Challengers’ is hardly a bad record but this band is clearly capable of more, and they sound much better when they come with energy and vigour rather than merely with calculated ambition.

I was expecting to be immediately smitten with the latest, eponymously titled album from Liars, which has been billed rather simplistically as the closest they will get to making a pop album. I find myself having reservations with it, though, perhaps because I admired the demented weirdness of ‘Drum’s Not Dead’ and the conceptual grand folly of ‘They Were Wrong So We Drowned’ a little too much. This band were never going to become technically gifted musicians overnight but I can’t help feeling much of ‘Liars’ reveals their limitations a little too obviously. They are better when they pay attention to the detail of the sound, rather than attempting to write anything approaching conventionally structured songs. I’m not particularly taken with the rudimentary drum machine that restricts a handful of these tracks, nor with the greater emphasis on Angus’ somewhat wayward falsetto vocal. The more brutal, attacking moments are much more successful, particularly the colossal single ‘Plastercasts of Everything’ and the insistent, explosive ‘Cycle Time’. Elsewhere, there’s a tendency for a rather tinny sound to prevail which is transparently reminiscent of The Jesus and Mary Chain. This was a very exciting sound in 1984, but I’m not sure it befits a band usually so fresh and difficult to categorise in 2007.

A Shaggy Dog Story

Iron and Wine/Jeremy Warmsley @ The Spitz

With some hasty last minute arranging, one of last week’s most fruitful evenings proved to be a trip to the imminently departing Spitz club for a masterclass in the art of songwriting. Before we get to that though, it’s worth having a mini-rant at The Spitz’s unfortunate fate. The venue already has its own (genuinely excellent) restaurant downstairs, but the upstairs space has now been sold to new owners, promising, with an extraordinary lack of logic, another restaurant. Does East London not have enough fashionable eateries? Why replace an outstanding restaurant and open-minded music venue with another restaurant? The Spitz’s promoters hope to find a new East London location for the venue. I sincerely hope they succeed – as it’s one of the few places in London to programme such a wide variety of quality music - jazz, rock, blues, and the more challenging and adventurous breed of singer-songwriter can all be found during the course of any one week there.

Iron and Wine and Jeremy Warmsley are now labelmates at the excellent Transgressive label (although, lovely as this music sounds, one has to wonder how ‘transgressive’ it really is). I’ve not seen Jeremy perform to such a sizeable audience before, and he immediately commands attention. Audiences are rarely this quiet and appreciative for support acts – it’s clear that Jeremy’s idiosyncratic style and genuine musicality are captivating qualities. There’s a little more melodrama in this short set than I can remember from the most recent performances I’ve seen, and as a solo artist Jeremy continues to refuse, admirably, to treat his songs as static objects. With an appealing lack of reverence, he precedes ‘Dirty Blue Jeans’ with an unfamiliar introduction, before delivering the song itself in a particularly savage and untamed version. ‘Five Verses’ continues to be the most endearing of the songs from ‘The Art of Fiction’, and he performs it playfully and affectionately. Things get more serious when he shifts to the piano, for an intense reading of ‘I Knew Her Face Was A Lie’, complete with ornate piano flourishes. Best of all tonight is a new-ish song, which might possibly be called ‘Dancing With The Enemy’. Jeremy won’t thank me for finding the chorus slightly reminiscent of Frankie Valli’s ‘Oh What A Night’, but the song pulled off a neat trick in combining its insistent hook with enigmatic and intriguing lyrics. The work-in-progress new album promises to push him to another level – hopefully commercial success will follow.

Sam Beam seems like an unassuming chap – arriving onstage sheepishly, stroking his lengthy mane of hair, and waiting for an AWOL Sound Engineer to return and fade out the background music. This is very much a low key show – just Beam with his acoustic guitar, and a set comprised of an intriguing balance of early songs and new material. He struggles with his complex tunings throughout, and is appealing in his sincere humility. Luckily, his songs speak for themselves – rich as they are in an extraordinarily intricate linguistic tapestry. Beam clearly loves language – and the minimal musical accompaniments he uses to embellish his otherworldly folk discourses make it necessary to completely drown in his unique world. His more rhythmic, blues-tinged material gets the edge, although the audience are most rapturous at his reworked, wonderfully laconic version of ‘A History of Lovers’ from the recent collaboration with Calexico. Of the new material, new single ‘Boy With A Coin’ sounds bright and insistent, whilst the beautiful ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ may be the most soulful and affecting song he has yet written. Beam’s soft, understated voice somehow speaks volumes – he has a natural, unforced delivery which conveys sensitivity and emotion without admonishing his audience in any way. He is becoming a significant treasure.

Feist/Noah and The Whale @ The Scala

From hardly visiting the UK at all, Leslie Feist seems to have become a regular fixture in light of the success of her wonderful album ‘The Reminder’. This gig at the Scala felt appropriately intimate, given the sophisticated chamber-pop sound she crafts so expertly.

Supporting her tonight (and also supporting Broken Social Scene when they premier Kevin Drew’s ‘Spirit If’ next month) are the quite wonderful Noah and the Whale. It’s really gratifying that this band are getting such a push – their folk narratives are wispy and difficult to pigeonhole, although singer Charlie Fink may well have taken some indirect lessons from Conor Oberst for his vocal stylings. Mercifully, he’s not as overbearing or self-important as Oberst, and whilst he spent too much time staring at the floor last time I saw Noah and the Whale perform, he seems more concerned with connecting with the audience on this occasion. Performing tonight without Charlie’s drumming brother Doug, the band undoubtedly miss their skeletal clatter, but the songs still have unusual and compelling charm, a strange combination of surrealist invention, endearing naivety and spellbinding wordplay. Tom Hobden’s confident violin playing demonstrates both conviction and a genuine enthusiasm for the American folk language. It’s difficult to predict whether this band’s distinctive appeal will find a wide audience, but they are one of the more intriguing and hopeful prospects British pop music has thrown up in recent years.

‘The Reminder’ is so emotionally alive - honest and personal yet universal in its shared wisdom and insight - that it’s almost surprising to find Feist so personable and humorous an onstage presence. Entertainment is clearly not beneath her, as she gets the crowd to join in their own messy but joyous harmony. The set doesn’t vary too much from her previous London show at Shepherd’s Bush, so there isn’t too much to add to my review of that performance. She opens with a lush version of ‘One Morning’, and adds a couple of unfamiliar covers of songs by Canadian songwriters she admires (the Sarah Harmer song is particularly touching), but the focus remains very much on the refined, compelling atmospherics of ‘The Reminder’. Feist is both elegant and commanding onstage, and her voice is rapturous, passionate and utterly compelling.

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Okkervil River - The Stage Names

With its majestic artwork and cleverly constructed, Tim Hardin-inspired song cycle, Okkervil River’s ‘Black Sheep Boy’ was one of the best rock albums of 2005. Much like Beirut’s ‘Gulag Orkestar’, it became something of a slow-burning cult success largely through word of mouth, something that should ensure this equally impressive album gets some deserved attention.

Musically, ‘The Stage Names’ partially takes flight from where some of the crisper, edgier tracks from ‘Black Sheep Boy’ left off, particularly with the pounding, insistent double opening punch of ‘Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe’ and ‘Unless It Kicks’, both tracks building to ferocious and unrepentant climaxes. ‘A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene’ and ‘You Can’t Take The Hand Of A Rock ‘N’ Roll Man’ add an insistent, Motown-flavoured backbeat to the proceedings that works surprisingly well. The overall sound is sparer and less ornate than ‘Black Sheep Boy’, although the central focus of the album is on a series of unashamedly melodramatic ballads.

As a lyricist, Sheff rejects conventional phrasing, structure and rhyme schemes, instead favouring verbose but intelligent prose-poetry rich in ideas and imagery. Many of the adjectives that immediately spring to mind whilst listening to ‘The Stage Names’ might more likely be applied to an American novelist as the cumulative impact of these songs is vivid, imaginative, compelling, lucid and captivating. His writing can be savage (‘I want a smile like a glistening shard, I want a kiss that’s as sharp as a knife’ or, even more forcefully, ‘Marie’s passed out in a chair with her once fussed-over hair all mussed into an I’ve just been f*cked shape’) or tender and compassionate (‘Let fall your soft and swaying skirt. Let fall your shoes. Let fall your shirt. I’m not the ladykilling sort enough to hurt a girl in port’). Along with Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam, Will Sheff is one of the most idiosyncratic and immersing writers currently at work in American music. It again begs the question of why there are no British songwriters with such original and unique voices.

Perhaps best of all are the album’s two most direct songs, ‘Savannah Smiles’ and ‘Plus Ones’. The former describes the distance between father and daughter with sincere regret and haunting power, the song’s protagonist regretting the glimpse into his daughter’s private world through an illicit perusal of her diary. He ends up wondering ‘is she someone I don’t know at all? Is she someone I betrayed?’, concluding the song with touching but unsentimental poignancy (‘all I’m seeing is her face aged eight’). ‘Plus Ones’ dissects a failing relationship with severe acuity, as well as a truckload of rather grim irony. It begins with an earnest confession – ‘I am all out of love to mouth into your ear, and not above letting a love song disappear before it’s written’. With a sly reference to Paul Simon, Sheff sings ‘The 51st way to leave your lover, admittedly, doesn’t seem to be as gentle or as clean as all the others, leaving its scars.’ Somehow, the song contains both bitter cynicism and real wisdom gained through experience. Both these songs capture Okkervil River at their most languid and melancholy.

Throughout, Sheff’s voice follows the intrepid contours of his words, veering from vulnerable, underplayed mumble to devastating howl. Nowhere is this more impressively delivered than on the marvellous ‘John Allyn Smith Sails’, essentially a poet’s extended suicide note, musing on failure and disappointment. It concludes with a brutal refashioning of ‘Sloop John B’, a move that in lesser hands would result in disaster, but here has a momentous and unstoppable force. It might be completely sincere or it might be the blackest comedy imaginable. Given the irony found elsewhere (the aforementioned ‘Plus Ones’, the fact that the title track is called, well, ‘Title Track’), it’s tempting to plump for the latter.

Whilst Sheff obviously has a love of writing in character, there’s also plenty of his own life on display here, from the references to backstage chatter and touring disillusion. In ‘Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe’, Sheff wryly observes how the conventional techniques of cinema are not reflected in our own lives – there are no fade ins, quick cuts or dissolves – but it’s still worth watching. ‘Unless It’s Kicks’ crisply describes human attempts to make sense of troublesome situations (‘what gives this mess some grace unless it’s kicks, man, unless it’s fictions, unless it’s sweat or it’s songs?’).

‘The Stage Names’ pulls off a neat trick in sounding both raw and carefully crafted, with Sheff a continuing master of rock dynamics. Sheff also proves himself adept at taking the conventional elements of rootsy American music (blues chord sequences, occasional slide guitar, rockabilly riffs) and translating them into a new and adventurous idiom. ‘The Stage Names’ is a gripping and gutsy treatise on love and life, with its own peculiar language and a relentlessly beating heart.

Cinematic Art Did Not Die With Bergman And Antonioni

Auteurist craftsmanship still vies with empty posturing in an exciting contemporary landscape

In the aftermath of the deaths of Antonioni and Bergman, much predictable guff has been written about the end of the golden age of cinema, and the loss of the last great auteurs in particular. Geoffrey Macnab wrote an interesting piece in The Independent last week that proved refreshingly positive, despite its headline proclaiming the death of cinema as we know it. He cited a number of modern directors who could qualify as contemporary heirs to the spirit of Antonioni and Bergman. I do wonder, however, if he selected the right people.

Somewhat inevitably, Lars Von Trier and Lukas Moodysson were both included in MacNab’s list. I’m reliably informed that I once referred to Von Trier as a ‘ludicrous charlatan’ somewhere on these pages, a position I continue to maintain after seeing the utterly ghastly ‘Dogville’. Von Trier’s critique on America lacks value because he is ill-informed and schematic, and the film’s forced theatrical setting removes any possibility of cinematic alchemy. Of his previous films, ‘Dancer in the Dark’ is interesting chiefly due to the extraordinary presence of Bjork, whilst ‘The Idiots’ is the work of a provocative chancer with little knowledge of his subject matter. ‘Breaking the Waves’ is unremitting in its gloomy absurdity, whilst ‘Europa’ offers clear signs of real talent squandered by grandiose pretentions and obfuscation. Moodysson shares a complete disregard for satisfying audience expectation with Bergman (who was an enthusiast for Moodysson’s films himself), but this has not led him in consistently fulfilling directions so far. ‘Show Me Love’ and ‘Together’ were touching, witty and affecting films, whilst the grandiose ‘Lilya 4 Ever’ had a bleak but compelling vision at its core. ‘Hole In My Heart’ however, took him into the weird world of gonzo pornography, with startlingly unpleasant results. It’s certainly possible to make films containing real sex that capture something tangible, wild and beautiful, as I think John Cameron Mitchell recently did with ‘Shortbus’. Moodysson did not succeed though, instead producing something nasty, excessive and unrestrained.

I am an admirer of Francois Ozon’s work, but he seems more of a jack-of-all-trades than a filmmaker with a distinctive creative vision, perhaps the nearest comparison being Britain’s versatile Michael Winterbottom (also included in MacNab’s list). Again, his work has been somewhat inconsistent and almost all his films stretch the boundaries of credulity at key points (if anything, it’s this that has become his trademark). His last film, ‘Time To Leave’, was given rather short shrift by some critics here, although I think it’s the closest he’s come to capturing something emotionally affecting. A better example of a French filmmaker with clear vision might well be Laurent Cantet, interested as he is in very human stories surrounding work and its relationship to personal identity.

It’s also surely too early to include the likes of Andrea Arnold and Jonathan Glazer in the list (with just one and two features to their names respectively). Arnold’s ‘Red Road’ could not fulfil any acceptable definition of an auteurist work anyway, as a chiefly collaborative project with characters and script ideas pre-determined by Lars Von Trier’s production company. I still wonder whether Arnold might actually have been somewhat stifled by this approach, with the film refusing to state explicitly its position on ‘benevolent surveillance’ and performing something of a volte-face on its expertly crafted tension by its conclusion.

It’s certainly positive to read this kind of encouraging reassessment of the contemporary scene, even if its specific conclusions are questionable. These days I find it difficult to enjoy the writing of, say, David Thomson, who claims that cinema is in irreversible decline whilst somehow managing to omit Abbas Kiarostami, Wong Kar-Wai and Tsai Ming-Liang from the last edition of his otherwise magesterial Biographical Dictionary of Film. It’s hard to believe that someone can be so passionate about an art form, yet so sterile and conservative in their approach that they see nothing of value in what is new. Perhaps Thomson just no longer knows where to look for cinematic talent, obsessed as he is with the machinations of Hollywood and the American movie industry. I just don't see that it's worth writing about the likes of Woody Harrelson or Edward Norton, when there are many more interesting screen presences elsewhere.

Although he’s notable by his absence from Macnab’s list, many would no doubt cite Mexican Carlos Reygadas as a prime contender to inherit the auteurs’ mantle. Despite Jonathan Romney’s glowing report on the premier of his new film ‘Silent Light’ at Cannes, I remain steadfastly unconvinced. The acclaimed ‘Japon’ remains one of the worst films I have ever seen, and a prime example of a picture reliant on all the worst aspects of ‘art’ cinema culture. Heavily influenced by Tarkovsky, yet without either the technical mastery or spiritual wisdom to pull it off, the film is dominated by long shots of nothing in particular, with numerous 360 degree pans around its rugged landscape. Even worse, its central premise is at best ludicrous and at worst offensive. A depressed middle aged man takes root in a small Mexican rural community with the intention of ending his days there, befriending an old woman in the process. After two and a half hours following the man walking, painting, walking and painting, we’re eventually treated to his graphically filmed and thoroughly unpleasant sex with the old woman, seemingly in order that she then sacrifice her life to rejuvenate his. What pretentious nonsense, offering us no insight whatsoever into the nature and meaning of depression, death or sex, its three most obvious themes.

So let’s not assume that the current breed of auteurs all need to be young, fresh and cool, or either European or Western. The austere, challenging style of Bergman and Antonioni’s cinema may be best reflected in filmmakers from areas as diverse as Turkey, Taiwan, China, Iran, Russia and, yes, I will concede, even dear old Blighty.

The clearest heir to Bergman is currently unable to produce a film, despite recent renewed interest in his work. I’ve written about Terence Davies’ films in depth elsewhere in this blog, but it’s worth noting that Davies admits in the interview with Geoff Andrew that accompanies the BFI’s wonderful DVD of ‘Distant Voices, Still Lives’ that he compares his own films with Bergman’s and finds them wanting. Yet there is such clarity, compassion, depth of emotion and warmth in his film’s that it is clear that cinema is a genuine vocation and passion for Davies. His mastery of the slow, steady tracking shot and visceral close up also clearly betray the influence of Bergman, albeit filtered through his individual, very British vision. It is criminal that he has not been able to make a film, purely through lack of funding, since ‘The House of Mirth’ (his third masterpiece in my view, and one of the best examples of screen adaptations of classic literature).

Elsewhere in Europe, there are filmmakers at work who are every bit as significant as their illustrious predecessors. Michael Haneke has long been pursuing an extreme and uncompromising ideal of cinema, but has recently translated this into significant popular appeal with the unsettling and profoundly thrilling ‘Hidden’. Its immediate predecessor, ‘Time of The Wolf’, whilst less well distributed, was also a startling and challenging work, similar in its simple, unpretentious vision of an apocalyptic world to Cormac McCarthy’s brilliant novel ‘The Road’. What a shame he now feels the need to capitalise by remaking his deliciously savage, confrontational and brutal ‘Funny Games’ in America. There’s also the Italian Paolo Sorrentino, maker of ‘The Consequences of Love’ and ‘The Family Friend’, although many express the underlying suspicion that he emphasises style over substance (I’ve not seen the latter, but ‘The Consequences of Love’ struck me as exquisitely poised).

Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan has only made four films so far, but he is working at an unusually prolific rate by modern standards. ‘Uzak’ is simply wonderful, and completely unlike anything else in modern cinema. ‘Climates’ fortunately proved a worthy successor, demonstrating Ceylan’s talent for portraying emotional extremes, along with real attention to detail in both image and sound design.

Think also of Thailand’s Achiatpong Weerasethakul, who already has a season in his honour at the BFI Southbank in September. ‘Blissfully Yours’, with next to no dialogue or music, is a beautiful dream of a film, capturing a simple moment of languid romance in something close to real time. ‘Tropical Malady’, with its sudden tangential leap in the middle, has no respect whatsoever for plot or structure.

From Russia, Alexander Sokurov continues to be a challenging and unpredictable filmmaker of sometimes insane ambition. For me, ‘Russian Ark’ was a rather drab and pointless exercise, impressive for its technical achievement alone, and certainly not inspiring or interesting (the film consists of just one tracking shot through the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg). ‘Father and Son’ and ‘Moloch’ are bizarre, unforgiving and surreal films, certainly unpalatable to some, but refreshing in their refusal to adhere to conventions. His one unqualified success is ‘The Sun’, a deeply peculiar look at the collapse of Hirohito that is somehow both elusive and insightful. It’s too early to say whether Alexander Zvyagintsev might join this cardre of directors. The genuine brilliance of ‘The Return’ was somewhat overshadowed by the tragic death of one of its young actors, and initial reports suggest that its follow-up, ‘The Banishment’, is somewhat less assured. He shows real promise and originality though. Similarly, I suspect Germany’s bold and visceral Fatih Akin is waiting in the wings and also a soon-to-be-contender.

Taiwan has now established a great tradition of intelligent, perceptive and idiosyncratic filmmaking. I would certainly have namechecked Edward Yang as an underrated successor to the auteurist spirit were it not for his own tragic and unexpected death last month (in many ways a bigger loss than Bergman’s because he clearly had so much more left to offer). Hou Hsiou-Hsien remains an unstoppable creative force though, and with ‘Three Times’ he appeared to have produced a work remarkable for its lyrical qualities, ingenious use of triptych structure and palpable technical control. Less well known here is the elliptical and confounding Tsai Ming-Liang, for whom an NFT (sorry, BFI Southbank) retrospective is surely long overdue. Many walked out of the screening of ‘I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone’ (Tsai’s contribution to the New Crowned Hope project) that I attended, but I felt it was a visionary, powerful and ultimately moving work.

It’s also worth remembering that the likes of Wong Kar Wai, Bela Tarr, Abbas Kiarostami, Pedro Almodovar, Theo Angolopolous, Terrence Mallick and Gus Van Sant remain active filmmakers, all still capable of work that exposes some of the younger pretenders as frauds. All have doggedly pursued and developed their own personal vision. Van Sant looked for a spare, non-judgmental style first with the wonderful ‘My Own Private Idaho’ (although I wonder whether that film would have been quite so beautiful without the overwhelming iconic presence of River Phoenix) and then through his most recent trilogy, beginning with ‘Gerry’ and continuing with ‘Elephant’ and ‘Last Days’. His latest picture ‘Paranoid Park’, deploying the outrageously gifted cinematographer Christopher Doyle (himself playing a large part in the luminous beauty of many of Wong Kar-Wai’s films), appears to have divided opinion but I look forward to its UK release with keen anticipation. Van Sant has cited Bela Tarr as the primary influence on his recent work, and it would be hard to find a filmmaker less interested in market concerns than Tarr. Yet ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’, ‘Damnation’ and the colossal ‘Satantango’ (7 hours long!) are all remarkable, compelling and unique works. ‘The Man From London’ looks very much like his most accessible film to date, at a manageable length and with something approaching conventional narrative. Angolopolous works at his own glacial pace (much like the pacing of his films), but is in the middle of a new trilogy exploring Greek political and social history. Wong, on the other hand, appears to have transplanted himself to Hollywood, bizarrely casting Norah Jones as his latest lead, and possibly shooting himself in the foot in the process. Almodovar went badly wayward with the excessive and confusing ‘Bad Education’, but ‘Volver’ put him back on the right track and ‘Talk To Her’ remains one of the most daring and successful films released during my lifetime. Should any of these iconic artists live to the ripe old age of 89, I have little doubt that they will be in receipt of similar kinds of plaudits to those applied to Bergman and Antonioni.

Writing this, I ultimately wonder whether there was ever any real meaning in Cahiers du Cinema’s concept of auteurist theory at all. Any successful piece of art should contain the vivid stamp of its creator’s personal vision, yet this shouldn’t (and usually doesn’t) preclude the possibility of collaboration. The great auteur directors certainly reduced the emphasis on screenwriting and conventional plotting (no bad thing). However, they also relied heavily on the genius of their cinematographers (note the role played by Sven Nykvist in many of Bergman’s finest films) or their charismatic performers (both Godard and Truffaut relied on iconic presences, and Antonioni’s most famous works lived and breathed by virtue of the elegance and physical beauty of Monica Vitti and Alain Delon). Similarly, the most independent, bold voices in contemporary music often depend heavily on the input of their creative partners (Bjork would be a prime example of this). Sometimes the dogged pursuit of an individual vision can result in a creative cul-de-sac, sometimes it results in a string of unparalleled masterworks. It’s certainly a tradition that’s still alive and well though, in cinema as much as anything else. The deaths of towering figures can be dispiriting but what is new can still challenge, provoke and inspire. The new methods of digital production and distribution also promise to change the way film is consumed, possibly in beneficial ways. Don’t let the killjoys put you off.