Genius.

Pivot/Three Trapped Tigers, The Luminaire 2/04/08

At the end of last year, I described Three Trapped Tigers as ‘the most ambitious new band in London’. I based this judgement on the four demo tracks that appeared on the group’s MySpace page, my previous work playing with chief tiger Tom Rogerson in a Jeremy Warmsley side project, and having seen a number of Tom’s free improvisation gigs that both confounded and inspired me in equal measure. However, when I wrote those words, I’d yet to see this particular configuration of Tom’s restless musical mind in live performance. When DJ Martian drew his readers’ attention to the group, quoting me in the process, I hoped they could live up to my hyperbole.

Happily, they can do a little more than that. It’s no exaggeration to describe Rogerson as a complete musician – he’s a brilliant technician, a prodigiously gifted composer and improviser, an intense and physical presence on stage, and also capable of channelling transparent passion and emotion into his music. This is based on unfathomably intricate composing – I found myself struggling to keep up with the group’s restless energy and time signature changes. Whilst it has the technical invention of contemporary composition and the mathematical precision of post-rock, there’s also a frenetic energy and collective spirit that makes it completely engaging and exciting.

All three musicians are utterly committed and immersed in this extraordinary sound. Rogerson hunches over his keyboards with total concentration (if he makes a career of this he’s going to end up with severe back trouble), but occasionally ends up treating his array of keys, synths and samplers with genuine violence. Adam Betts is an outrageous drummer – physical and powerful but also capable of great subtlety and focus. Matt Calvert provides solid foundations on bass synth, but also clear, ringing chords from his guitar – he also provides the occasional flashes of conflict or dissonance from which the group builds its tensions. There’s an obvious chemistry between the performers, even if they rarely make eye contact. Given the complexity of the arrangements – it’s remarkable how proficient and tight the playing is. There is no hint of hesitancy or uncertainity.

If Rogerson has had a limitation in the past, it’s perhaps been a tendency to be too passionate and too frenetic for too long. What struck me most about this performance is that the bursts of vigorous anger were punctuated by moments of genuine beauty and contemplation, with Rogerson leaving surprisingly pretty-sounding chords lingering for as long as necessary. Rogerson’s playing is all the more impressive with breathing space. Betts ably supports this more impressionistic tendency with the remarkable range of sounds he produces from his percussive apparatus – drum kit, thumb piano, samplers and electronic drums galore. He is his own orchestra.

It’s rare to hear music this intense, innovative and original that is also massively entertaining. For me, it provokes great physical and visceral reactions – a gut feeling when the group explodes into seismic noise, toe-tapping when they hit a sterling asymmetrical groove, or melancholy when they veer into romantic abstraction.

This impressive versatility simply made headliners and new Warp signings Pivot look like pretenders to the throne. They had very similar ingredients – odd, off-kilter rhythms, electronic background sound, wordless vocalising and sudden bursts of noise. Yet, by contrast, they seemed so mechanical and cold – and transparently lacking Rogerson’s musical empathy, superb ear and lightness of touch. Whereas Three Trapped Tigers captivated me completely, I found myself drifiting off into conversation and mundane thought during Pivot’s lengthier, meandering set. Surely it’s only a matter of time before people wake up to Three Trapped Tigers and their superlative synthesis?

Restlessness Vs. Constancy

Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple (Warner, 2008)

A couple of years ago, I had a chat with Joe Goddard from Hot Chip in which he expressed his fears that the then (and still) ubiquitous ‘Over and Over’ might prove to be an albatross around his group’s neck. Happily, he was proved completely wrong, but the stellar success of ‘Crazy’ could well be a poisoned chalice for Gnarls Barkley. Even though that claustrophobic, paranoid song was hardly positive, its bright sound no doubt aided its rise to the top of the charts, and many listeners struggled with the darker elements of the duo’s superb debut album.

Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo have ratcheted up the tension a few more notches on this hastily prepared successor. In doing so, they may well have bravely savaged their reputation as hitmakers extraordinaire. In the process though, they have made a provocative, challenging and adventurous album far removed from the world of contemporary R&B or hip hop. There are elements of psychedelia and garage rock as much as classic soul, all refracted through the distinctively modern prism of Danger Mouse’s inventive production. This is a record that requires a good deal of patience, but those who invest time in it may well find it to be a major statement.

In spite of its flippant title, ‘The Odd Couple’ is a concentrated examination of the darker recesses of human psychology. Cee-Lo’s lyrics are extraordinarily bleak, and the only respite seems to come with the jaunty pop of ‘Blind Mary’. Everywhere else, he’s adopting the persona of someone damaged, depressed, questioning or even psychotic. If the pressures of 21st Century Living are fuelling a stark rise in stress, anger and clinical depression, then Cee-Lo documents all these problems in blackly comic fashion here.

Thematically, ‘The Odd Couple’ represents a brilliant exploration of extreme feeling (regrets, secrets, bestial urges, self loathing), deploying the force of rhetorical exaggeration. On the opening ‘Charity Case’, Cee-Lo masterfully presents the confession of a character who helps others with their problems in order to avoid his own. ‘Oh can’t you see’, he implores ‘if I help somebody it’s mercy for me’. But the reality is not so simple – ‘even my shadow leaves me alone at night’, he confesses, ‘because I need to take my own advice’. He explores a similar theme on the palpably desperate ‘Who’s Gonna Save My Soul Now?’ (‘how could this be – all this time I’ve lived vicariously?’). On ‘Would Be Killer’, he goes much further, inhabiting the persona of a merciless man with a desire to hurt – a man who could (would?) murder. The superb ‘Neighbours’ is an audacious exploration of envy and greed.

Musically, this is disorientating, imaginative and fervent. The skittering, stuttering backing track Danger Mouse crafts for ‘Open Book’ creates high end drama and suggests confusion and frustration. More simply, the reconstructed psychedelic soul vibe of first single ‘Run’ imbues it with sinister urgency. ‘Surprise’, with its propulsive rhythm, is also highly theatrical. ‘Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?’ initially seems to resemble the trademark Portishead sound, but closer inspection reveals the main source of inspiration might be an earlier landmark of musical history, Syl Johnson’s sublime civil rights track ‘Is it Because I’m Black?’, the rolling rhythms and exposed vocal of which this track seems to echo.

The only moment that doesn’t quite ring true here is the self-mocking parody ‘Whatever’, for which Cee-Lo adopts a pinched nasal whine for comic effect. The lyrics rely too heavily on an obvious rhyme scheme, and the music is an uncharacteristic basic stomp. Pretty much everywhere else though, the combination of Cee-Lo’s increasingly forceful bellow and Danger Mouse’s elaborate arrangements make for a winning, if not necessarily immediate combination. The integration of the excesses of Cee-Lo’s lead vocals with layers of backing vocals is particularly successful, and much of ‘The Odd Couple’ sounds more confrontational than resigned as a result.

With each listen, ‘The Odd Couple’ sounds closer and closer to a masterpiece. Those yearning for the immediacy of ‘Crazy’ might be disappointed, but they will find bolder and more resilient material here – and a dark mood that is far more disturbing and troubling than that found on most mainstream pop records. The songs all bear testament to the value of brevity in pop music. In this concise form, they never outstay their welcome, yet their restless energy and imaginative verve reveal the group’s considerable ambition.

Sun Kil Moon – April (Calde Verde, 2008)

If Gnarls Barkley attempt to cram as many ideas as possible into one concise album on ‘The Odd Couple’, Mark Kozelek remains a rock of unchanging constancy. ‘April’ contains just 11 tracks, but is over 74 minutes long. It sustains a consistently languid and melancholy mood, perhaps even a dour one, and is dominated by a lingering sadness that is both haunting and beautiful. It would be easy to criticise Kozelek for his spare voice with its limited range, but within those understated limitations, there is a world of complex emotion and feeling.

‘April’ isn’t as ragged and untamed as the outstanding first Sun Kil Moon album ‘Ghosts of the Great Highway’. Instead, its focus on acoustic guitar pluckings and stubborn repetition echoes Kozelek’s earlier work with Red House Painters. If he’s made some esoteric career choices (albums consisting entirely of cover versions of AC/DC and Modest Mouse songs), it’s merely because his own artistic voice is now so fully developed as to be able to lay claim to any material. However, these projects often seem like distractions from his original writing, which is always excellent, and seems particularly strong here, rich in dense imagery and enthralling language.

It’s difficult to highlight individual tracks given the album’s overall mood, but I particularly admire the Neil Young slow growl of ‘Tonight The Sky’, which also serves up one of Kozelek’s most memorable choruses. The opening ‘Lost Verses’ unravels very slowly and mysteriously indeed, before ending with an unexpected and almost spirited rock coda. By way of contrast, ‘Heron Blue’ steadfastly refuses to add any layers to its extremely minimal arrangement. In doing so, it creates a powerful and alluring mystique.

If there’s a development here it’s in the greater and very effective use of backing vocals, many of which come from the ubiquitous Will Oldham. He adds colour and texture to the brooding ‘Like A River’, which rolls with characteristic effortlessness. Indeed, the whole album sounds superbly natural – as if it has simply flowed from Kozelek without any exertion of force.

Given Kozelek’s relentless slow pace and melancholy, it’s easy to let these songs simply drift by. Such an approach does the material scant justice – given due attention, these songs are absorbing and fascinating. Just listen to the way Kozelek’s voice melts into the delicate guitar arpeggios of ‘Tonight in Bilbao’ (which drifts on elegantly for over nine minutes), or the way he completely embraces the dust of ‘Moorestown’. He’s a kindred spirit with Jason Molina, particularly in his Songs:Ohia guise, or Will Johnson from South San Gabriel and Centr-O-Matic. He remains one of rock music’s most painterly writers and performers – impressionistic, but completely free from pretension or fanfare – it’s all there in the music and its mysteries.

Suffer Little Children

The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2008)

NB: This review contains significant plot spoilers.

I am at something of a loss as to why this film has been so extravagantly praised. Directed by debutant Juan Antonio Bayona but, somewhat conveniently, produced by Mexican horror maestro Guillermo Del Toro, it’s a watchable, occasionally chilling horror film. Like many films before it, it exploits its audience’s very human emotions towards children – both their fear and lack of comprehension of their private worlds, and their desire to protect them. Whilst it certainly induces the odd shiver or expression of surprise, it adds nothing particularly new to this genre, and in fact relies very heavily on a set of conventions and clichés.

I am entirely prepared to suspend my disbelief when it comes to the existence of ghosts and also to the possibility of communication between the living and the dead. What I found much more difficult to accept with this picture was that any woman that had grown up in care in a creaky old orphanage (with very institutional facilities) could possibly ever want to return to live in that building as an adult. But so it is – we must accept that Laura, her docile husband Carlos and their young adopted son Simon have bought this old orphanage with the intention of admitting a new group of children and reopening it.

Simon has congenital HIV but is blissfully unaware of both his illness and his adopted status – at least until he starts receiving messages from a series of imaginary friends. Initially dismissive, Laura becomes increasingly intrigued by this private world, but not concerned enough to act when Simon demands that she visit Tomas’ private house. Fairly predictably, tragedy strikes when Simon disappears during a welcoming party for the new orphans, and the stage is set for a psychological and emotional horror story that is prevented from reaching its potential by a series of over-familiar tropes.

Almost everything in this film is taken from the Hitchcock textbook – the old isolated gothic building by the sea, the disused lighthouse, the creaky or slamming doors, the chill gusts of wind, creaking staircases, the ominous footsteps – even the sinister elderly social worker who visits the house in the days before Simon’s disappearance could be Norman Bates in his mother’s garb in Psycho.

The film is rescued from clunky lameness by a convincing central performance, and because it does indeed have something to say about the nature of maternal grief, and the way that children can induce extreme emotions and alter relationships. That Simon was adopted would seem almost incidental were it not for the link it provides with the ghostly orphans who tempt him. Yet it is hardly the first film to investigate adults’ protective and sacrificial relationship with children, surely a well worn theme in both literature and the cinema.

Other plus points include a hammed up and hilarious cameo from Geraldine Chaplin as a medium who attempts to bridge the gap between Laura’s world and the world of the dead children. These supposedly ‘imaginary’ children are all linked by illness, something young Simon of course also shares, and also by one tragic and dramatic event that had been concealed from Laura during her own youth at the Orphanage. This is quite an effective idea, but it is never fully realised or explored.

Equally effective is the film’s focus on childhood games as a means of breaking the barriers between the world of the living and the world of ghosts. These treasure hunts and other games effectively become the language of belief, and the moment when Laura re-enacts a childhood game of knock has genuine tension.

Unfortunately though, the film prefers to concentrate on the conventional – a tedious dialectic between scepticism and belief (have Bayona and Del Toro not seen the X Files?) and a string of predictable events. When Laura bravely hacks her way through sandbags in some storage units in the garden shed, what else would she possibly find other than the remains of dead children? Are we supposed to be surprised or shocked by this?

Any chance of cinematic redemption is destroyed by the film’s string of saccharine false endings, which represent a concession too far in favour of Hollywood formulae. Why it all reduces to a very icky and unpleasant recasting of the Peter Pan story is somewhat mystifying. Both the scene where Laura submits to an eternity caring for these ill children (in a somewhat less enticing version of Neverland) and where Carlos returns to the Orphanage to feel his wife’s ghostly presence made me groan audibly in the cinema.

I found myself wondering whether I might not have been the only person amongst the audience to find certain elements of this film distasteful. To some extent, it seems to be about illness, but it succeeds only in either turning the idea of care into something rather patronising, or exploiting our fears surrounding the otherness of illness or deformity. I felt this all became a bit conflated and dangerous in the welcoming party scene, where Laura is frantically searching for Simon, de-masking various children, all of whom seem to be suffering from cerebral palsy, and who are made to appear threatening and sinister. Was I the only person to feel extremely uncomfortable with this idea? Also, whilst the film had plenty to say about grief and motherhood, I felt it had very little to say about the fear of death, which is essentially the driving force behind the entire story.

Very brief blink-and-you’ll-miss-them flashbacks towards the end of the film essentially imply that Laura may have inadvertently caused Simon’s death. Are we expected to see the ghost story as a figment of her imagination – a mechanism for dealing with guilt? Or do the ghosts simply direct her to this revelation? If so, what does the ending actually mean?

Do Pianists Dream of Ginger Sheep?

Neil Cowley Trio – Loud…Louder…Stop! (Cake Music, 2008)

Talented pianist Neil Cowley has had an unpredictable and versatile career trajectory, from performing Shostakovich’s 2nd Piano Concerto at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the age of 10, to session keyboardist for Brand New Heavies and Zero 7. Clearly, his own passions are free from the strictures of classical performance and sterile studio production though, as his debut trio album ‘Displaced’ demonstrated with impressive brio. If the European model of the contemporary piano trio veers towards the meditative and serene, Cowley has clearly learnt a good deal from the more irreverent approach adopted by US iconoclasts The Bad Plus. This is music with verve and panache, but also with the hard-hitting power and rigorous focus of rock music. In Cowley’s more than capable hands, it’s an appealing combination.

As with many contemporary jazz acts, the track titles alone are spectacular. What could possibly have inspired Cowley to compose a tune called ‘Ginger Sheep’ - a particularly surreal form of insomnia? Even better are ‘Clumsy Couple’ and ‘Streets Paved With Half Baguettes’. There are very few rock bands with this level of wit and creativity. Were it not for the relentless imagination and intensity of his music, it would make me yearn for Cowley to knuckle down and write some lyrics.

Some elements of Cowley’s approach will no doubt direct purists to question whether or not this is jazz. It’s a totally unimportant question when the synthesis is handled adroitly. The rhythmic simplicity and urgency of ‘Dinosaur Die’ echoes the conventions of indie-rock, yet the song’s insistence and gradual crescendo suggest it has more in common with the techniques of minimalism. It carries the listener on a journey from introverted reflection to outright anger – the kind of emotional transition rarely mustered by rock bands. By way of contrast, the track immediately following (‘Scaredy Cat’) incorporates elements of gospel and blues. Cowley is certainly aware of the mesmerising power of rhythm, but also of the emotional clarity that can be found in the elemental language of the blues.

Cowley is at his most irreverent and witty on ‘Ginger Sheep’, a track exploring offbeat emphasis, borrowing heavily from both Ska and European folk music. It’s fun, but ultimately lightweight and insubstantial. Much better is the more intricate ‘We Are Here To Make Plastic’, which confounds with its numerous time signature changes and off-kilter rhythms, also simmering with creeping unease, before collapsing into a playful section that exhibits Cowley’s breathtaking technique and manual dexterity. It then veers, again tangentially, into a more relaxed improvisation, with plenty of breathing space. All this happens within the space of a mere five minutes, pithy and concise by jazz standards.

The album’s home straight is a good deal more sensitive, and highlights Cowley’s more delicate and vulnerable side. It makes for essential respite from the heavy-handed hammering elsewhere, although careful listening reveals similar rhythmic and harmonic preoccupations simply being explored further through stylistic variation. Cowley also remains very heavy on the sustain pedal throughout even these more pensive moments.

There are some impressive and very immediate statements on this bold album, but sometimes the emphasis on driving rhythm or clear melody is a little limiting. I’d like to hear Cowley exercise his improvising chops a little more, or even take the music in a more abstract direction occasionally. It would also be good to hear more chemistry and interaction between the players in the group, an element of the music explored to greater impact on ‘Displaced’. Richard Sadler and Evan Jenkins seem reduced to much more of a controlled supporting role here and sometimes the compositions are so much in service of a rock music ethos that the long passages in slow four sound rather tepid and conventional. Also, so much is ‘Loud…Louder…Stop!’ about Cowley’s own exploration of single ideas that some of it does not reward closer scrutiny. Nevertheless, when these explorations are at their most intense, it’s an engaging and original listen.

Electric Dreams

Neon Neon - Stainless Style (Lex, 2008)

A concept album based on the rise and fall of playboy engineer John DeLorean relying heavily on recycled 80s production values doesn’t necessarily sound like one of 2008’s most appetising prospects. Yet any album combining the talents of Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys and Anticon production maestro Bryan ‘Boom Bip’ Hollon has to be worthy of some attention. The two first collaborated on the track ‘Dos and Don’ts’ from Boom Bip’s 2005 album ‘Blue Eyed in the Red Room’. So pleasing were the results that a long form project became a certainty. This makes Rhys one of the most prolific artists currently at work, having released this, his excellent solo album ‘Candylion’ and a Super Furry Animals album all in the space of the last twelve months.

Whilst the album sounds deliberately dated, it inadvertently captures much of the current zeitgeist. The opening instrumental theme and percussion heavy ‘Racquel’ (yes, it really is an ode to Racquel Welch) closely resemble Hot Chip, whilst there are also further hints of robotic funk and even tinges of the same soft rock influences that have informed the likes of Yeasayer. Yet Rhys and Hollon are careful enough to steer the project away from either vanity or mere parody. This collection works superbly because of its extended exploration of the contrast between mechanical coldness and human warmth. It transpires that there is something peculiarly affecting in the narrative arc from hedonistic celebration to unexpected defeat and alienation.

The theme is introduced right from the very outset. ‘Dream Cars’ is set to a devilishly dirty groove, but with its edges smoothed by Rhys’ saccharine vocal line. He sings of ‘dream girls in cold cars’ and ‘cold girls in dream cars’, neatly summarising the parallels between triumph of engineering and sexual adventure. The juxtaposition is established even more explicitly on the hilarious ‘Trick For Treat’, a deliriously entertaining mix of games console sounds, rapping from Spank Rock and falsetto vocals (‘she looks cold, but warm enough to dip my pinkie in!’). The brilliantly titled ‘Steel Your Girl’ develops the theme further, in more wistful and reflective style, all delicate backing vocals and pretty guitar arpeggios.

Beneath its reconstituted sheen, ‘Stainless Style’ is a perceptive reflection on the excesses of 1980s capitalism. Everything is subordinated to personal ambition, the slinky but ultimately mechanical ‘I Lust U’ claiming ‘I love you if the price is right’. The factory closure lament that is ‘Belfast’ (‘I took you for granted like so many in my day/I built my empire and threw it all away’) and the cautionary tale that is ‘Luxury Pool’ capture the damaged and isolated flipside of the album’s initial excesses. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of all this is the way different elements of the era’s pop music are deployed to craft particular moods. The OMD-esque pop of ‘Belfast’ is tinged with regret, whilst the outrageous funk of ‘Sweat Shop’ creates a steamy swamp for the track’s musings on sex. Elsewhere, there’s a reasonable helping of infectious processed pop, complete with intrusive drums and irresistible melodies that help to encapsulate the era’s temptations and vices.

‘Stainless Style’ is a brilliantly crafted record that ultimately transcends its core purpose. It could easily be reduced to the three words with which Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout famously dismissed Bruce Springsteen – ‘cars and girls’ – but, in the event, it’s amazing what can be made from these core ingredients.

Here Comes The Flood

Chris T-T – Capital (Xtra Mile, 2008)

I came to this new album from Chris T-T, his first with a full band since 2003’s ‘London is Sinking’, with real enthusiasm, and the conviction that it would be my favourite of Chris’ albums thus far. The reality of my reaction has proved a little more complicated. This is a fine album – but considerably more unremitting and volatile than its predecessors, and mostly without levity.

Billed as the concluding part of a trilogy about London (following predecessors ‘The 253’ and ‘London is Sinking’), ‘Capital’ is a big, blustery rock and roll record in a very British rock tradition. Compared with previous T-T records, it’s also somewhat dour and relatively humourless. Whilst Chris’ records have been heavily politicised for some time, fuelled by vitriol and rage, his records have also come with a healthy dose of self-deprecating fun (from ‘You Can Be Flirty’ to ‘Preaching to the Converted’, the latter comically undermining the whole purpose of his ‘9 Red Songs’ protest album). ‘Capital’ is sometimes compassionate and deeply moving (‘A Box to Hide In’, ‘Let’s Do Some Damage’), sometimes wry (‘Old Men’, ‘Black Music’), but rarely outwardly funny.

Whereas ‘9 Red Songs’ expressed some hope for the future, ‘Capital’ seems doused in pessimism. The opening ‘(We Are) The King of England’ slyly references his back catalogue by portentously proclaiming ‘if you thought London was sinking last year/Get ready for a whole lot worse’. The sludgy, tuneless and unpleasant ‘Where Were You?’ (comfortably my least favourite T-T track to date) ends with the words ‘everyone is dead/and everyone who’s not dead might as well be dead/they play dead…’ The closing ‘4AM’ claims that ‘the heart is gone, the soul is gone, the only thing left is the money’, a chorus seemingly applicable to both a failing relationship and the state of government in the UK and US in the aftermath of 9/11 (‘they’ve got any excuse now’). The urgency and sense of paralysing fear is spot on, but is more effective when tempered by Chris’ humane concerns and sympathies.

This is perhaps best achieved on ‘A Box To Hide In’, a song already familiar from live performances. With its flourishes of trumpet and harmonica, it reminds me more than a little of underrated indie heroes Animals That Swim, even if the acoustic live performances I’ve heard may actually have more unsparing power than this fuller arrangement. Either way, it’s a remarkably touching and unsentimental take on the July 7th bombings, and one that wisely warns against allowing such events to control us. In fact, Chris’ targets throughout ‘Capital’ seem to be the negative and damaging responses of those in power when faced with difficult situations. This is most neatly encapsulated in the scathing ‘None Of Them Give a Fuck About The Future’, one of the best and most ambitious tracks here, incorporating as it does threadbare funk, deceptively sweet-sounding female backing vocals and grizzly rock.

Some of the best moments on ‘Capital’ are where it ventures more into more personal territory. ‘Old Men’ is a wonderful denunciation of human beings settling into comfortable boredom, whilst accepting the grim inevitability that this is what happens to us all eventually. Even better is the extraordinary ‘Ankles’, a disturbing and powerfully articulate depiction of a dysfunctional relationship characterised by violence (‘I held her down to stop her leaving and coming back to you’).

‘Ankles’ also works well musically, refreshing Chris’ sound through foregrounding the piano. Indeed, keyboards are far more prevalent throughout ‘Capital’, from occasional sensitive piano chords to the pitch bending antics on ‘We Are The King of England’. The music is consistently crisp and vigorous. I’m not so keen on the ugly choppiness of ‘Where Were You?’ or the rather superfluous parody of ‘Black Music’, but ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ and ‘A To Z’ sound fearlessly angry, whilst ‘This Gun Is Not A Gun’ seems to sound more like 80s REM than anything on ‘Accelerate’ – no bad thing.

‘Capital’ presents a merciless deconstruction of commonly held assumptions, and a concentrated assault on limited altruism, insulting triumphalism and negative assertions of power for its own sake. As a result, it’s arguably the least comfortable of Chris’ albums to date. The greater attention to detail in production and arrangement could broaden his audience considerably, but few would dare accuse him of compromising. The most disconcerting thing about ‘Capital’ is that its apocalyptic tone and sense of fiery urgency is so absolutely necessary.

Things Wot I Must Write About...

This is really one of my public 'notes to self', as I have quite a lot of catching up to do here...The list includes:

Chris T-T - Capital
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
Destroyer - Trouble In Dreams
Diskjokke - Staying In
Marilyn Mazur and Jan Garbarek - Elixir
Nik Bartsch's Ronin - Holon
Marcin Wasilewski Trio - January
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP
Neil Cowley Trio - Loud...Louder...Stop!
Retribution Gospel Choir - Retribution Gospel Choir
Various Artists - Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour

Louder and Faster...In Reverse Gear

R.E.M. - Accelerate (Warner Bros, 2008)

Here we go, then, the argument goes something like this….

We’ve all lost faith in R.E.M. They lost their way when Bill Berry tendered his resignation, meandered in a tentative wilderness and lost all purpose and direction. ‘Accelerate’ is the long-awaited ‘return to form’, a PR line on which everyone is clearly in agreement. This even seems to include the band themselves, who now always seem to retreat and accept the party line once their albums are deemed disappointing.

Well, not quite everyone follows this line. Regular readers of this blog will already be aware of my enthusiasm for both ‘New Adventures in Hi Fi’ and ‘Up’ (both of which are more significant and better albums for me than ‘Out of Time’ or ‘Automatic for the People’). I even liked the bulk of ‘Reveal’, although I was troubled by its preference for bland atmospherics and synthetic sheen. I concede that the plodding lethargy of ‘Around The Sun’ dismayed me (although even that album had intriguing moments – ‘The Outsiders’ and ‘High Speed Train’ particularly). Yet this small concession to the critical consensus only helps reveal the limitations of a rather inaccurate line of argument.

As pre-release reports have suggested, ‘Accelerate’ returns rock dynamics (or lack thereof) and vigorous energy to the group. Yet it seems like such a contrived and reactionary record, from its functional, unimaginative title onwards – one made to suit the demands of record company executives, fickle critics and disappointed fans. It lacks the juxtaposition of spontaneity, insight and intelligence that characterised ‘New Adventures in Hi Fi’ or even the playful, self-mocking quirks of ‘Monster’. It is brash and pugnacious, but almost entirely without mystery or intrigue. With a distinct lack of light and shade on offer, the 35 minute run time seems like an essential requirement to avoid monotony, rather than a bold statement in its own right. It transpires that relentless thrashing and driving can sometimes be just as frustrating as interminable plodding. The record actually has its closest parallel in a much longer work – ‘Know Your Enemy’ by the Manic Street Preachers, a similarly uneven and unconvincing attempt to revive former glories, and I’m surprised that other critics have not ventured to make the comparison. Both records sound laboured and strangely self conscious, as if they have some kind of innate obligation to lay claim to the rock music terrain.

REM have never been a heavy rock band in quite this way before. ‘Horse To Water’ for example is so furious it sounds like Nirvana circa ‘In Utero’. It’s one of the most successful tracks on ‘Accelerate’ by virtue of abandoning subtlety altogether. Even the group’s loudest albums (‘Life’s Rich Pageant’, ‘Document’, ‘Monster’) have usually been tempered by quixotic angles, mischievous antics or gothic jangle (the latter of these characteristics admittedly breaks through on two tracks here), but much of ‘Accelerate’ simply sounds horrific. Producer Jacknife Lee, already responsible for two of my least favourite contemporary rock records in U2’s ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’ and Snow Patrol’s ‘Eyes Open’, compresses everything until there’s precious little definition or clarity remaining. It’s very loud, necessarily so given Bill Rieflin’s thunderous drumming, but pitch and tone are often completely unintelligible amidst the general wall of noise. Many have mentioned REM’s 1980s material as the template for this, but that music never sounded so harsh and unforgiving. It was big and cinematic, but never ugly. Here, distorted guitars clamour and squall, but only Mike Mills’ bass, confident and elegant as ever, really creates the intended tension.

The process for writing and recording did at least bode well, with the rehearsal shows in Dublin suggesting a similar outcome to the ‘on tour’ document that was ‘New Adventures…’. First single ‘Supernatural Superserious’, with its touching lyric about the overwhelming impact of humiliating teenage experiences and the first, nerve-wracking discoveries of intimacy, augured especially well. Crunchy and packing a commercial punch, it also came with an individuality and appeal worthy of the band’s great legacy. Even in context, it still sounds like a considered but effective repackaging of the REM trademark sound. Buck’s arpeggios, Mills’ counter melodies and Stipe’s charisma are all present, but in a way that seems fresh and engaging.

Much of the rest of the album seems more forced, perhaps even insincere. ‘I’m Gonna DJ’, already a staple of the band’s sets on the last world tour, although goofy and entertaining in a live context, seems like a slightly embarrassing attempt to be hip in its studio form (‘heaven does exist with a kickin’ playlist!’). The title track has a decent, memorable chorus, but Stipe is left floundering beneath a storm of unclear guitar noise. ‘Until The Day Is Done’ revisits the group’s familiar gothic balladry, with more direct political anger than Stipe mustered on ‘Around The Sun’ (‘forgive us our trespasses, father and son’ is transparently directed at George Bush Sr. and Jr.), but it adds little to a rich seam they’ve already mined dry. It feels like a song they’ve already written several times before. ‘Sing For The Submarine’, complete with cloying references to songs from the group’s back catalogue, simply has no melody to speak of at all, although it does sound effectively menacing and threatening. Far too many of the eleven tracks are predicated on Stipe’s more limited, monotonous brand of melody. Only the excellent ‘Hollow Man’, building from an oddly plaintive introduction into something more sprightly, offers any kind of breathing space.

The best material comes at the outset, with the barnstorming ‘Living Well’s The Best Revenge’ and caustic ‘Man Sized Wreath’. Neither song is particularly subtle, but then the group clearly aren’t aiming for that here. There is certainly a visceral thrill at hearing this group kicking back and rocking out once more. Both provide fertile ground for Mills’ nimble bass figures, and the contrast between Stipe’s impassioned ranting and Mills’ vocal counterpoint is exploited particularly well. I like the vocal harmonies on the political parable ‘Mr. Richards’, but whilst it has been described musically as ‘raga-rock’, I’m not sure it’s anywhere near that interesting. There’s a lot of overbearing strumming, and most of the intriguing sounds are buried in the murky mix.

Stipe has abandoned the more personal and intimate approach to lyric writing he adopted for ‘Up’, returning to the verbose, stream-of-consciousness style with which most listeners will be more familiar. Sometimes he is simply trying to squeeze too many words in and any sense of meaning, or even the intended thrill is obfuscated by the lack of real phrasing. It’s been a long time since his lyrics were rendered this unintelligible on record. His voice is hardly treated at all, and is hence closer to the more ragged growls of live performances than the clear, smooth sound of recent REM studio work. He remains a compelling performer throughout, but I frequently find myself frustrated at the relative lack of emotional directness on ‘Accelerate’. Again, only ‘Hollow Man’ seems daring enough to present a personal theme. Mind you, if Stipe’s own propaganda is to be believed, he’s never written about himself at all.

I tend to prefer REM at their most esoteric. Unfortunately, there’s nothing here to compare with the heady clamour of ‘Walk Unafraid’, the unrestrained desperation of ‘Country Feedback’, the warped sea shanty of ‘The Apologist’ or the murky undertow of ‘Let Me In’. There’s little of the enigma or peculiarity of their early IRS material either. Only ‘Houston’, with its ragged, nasty distorted organ really comes close to something fascinating and unexpected, but it ends abruptly without really having evolved or journeyed anywhere.

Whilst these songs are not actively bad, and the concise running time makes it all zip past swiftly, it feels somehow unsatisfactory and one-dimensional. It doesn’t help that it sounds like it was recorded in a nuclear bunker. REM are massively wealthy men now, with popularity surely no longer a major concern. They could follow the example of Bruce Springsteen in pursuing some less predictable artistic avenues. I’d even like to see them extricate themselves from their Warner Bros contract and pursue some of the more exciting strategic opportunities exploited by the likes of Radiohead (and, more recently, The Raconteurs and Gnarls Barkley). Most significantly, I’d like to see them stop reacting to the demands of others (‘Around the Sun’ was seemingly a response to demands for them to make a modernised ‘Automatic…’, whilst ‘Accelerate’ is the response to that creative and commercial failure) and make an album that accurately captures their current artistic place and mindset. I still suspect that ‘Up’ was that record – and that some of its explorations should have been further developed.

Ironically, whilst this album seems designed to help REM fill stadium sized venues again, I imagine most of these songs would work best live, at smaller venue shows taken at a frantic and breathtaking pace. But don’t believe the hype – I’m unlikely to listen to this one over most of its predecessors.

Rarely Heard Anthems

Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

I have a strange relationship with Elbow. Initially, I dismissed them far too rashly as a blandly anthemic band in the manner of Coldplay, a description that misses the structural ambition and intricate complexities of their best songs. As I’ve warmed to the group, I now realise that they are probably the type of band the likes of Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol so desperately want to be – a band with anthemic qualities, but also with genuine subtlety, musical intelligence and humane warmth. There is the nagging sense that they’ve essentially been remaking the same record since ‘Cast of Thousands’, but it is at least a consistently excellent record and one with sufficient depth to be worth revisiting.

This, their fourth full length, works best when it veers furthest from their established template. It opens with a startling track that somehow manages to combine a serene and mesmerising meditation with aggressive punctuations of violent brass. There’s a film-score quality to the most mysterious songs here, from the John Barry-esque ‘Audience with the Pope’ to the fairground carousel-meets-Ennio Morricone atmosphere of ‘The Fix’, which sees a characteristically wry Guy Garvey duet with guest vocalist Richard Hawley.

The focus of the album comes with two ballads – both of which are plaintive and melancholy rather than grandstanding or portentous. ‘Weather to Fly’ is a mix of quietly compelling sounds – from some manipulated high pitched backing vocals to the distant parping of a New Orleans-style brass band at the song’s conclusion. ‘The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver’ is more self-consciously widescreen in its crystalline sound, but as clear and gripping a depiction of isolation as Garvey has yet mustered.

Indeed, Garvey is on strong form throughout, his voice somehow retaining that personable, conversational quality whilst also sounding clear and bold in its delivery. Sometimes he sounds like he’s engaging us in late night pub chatter, just before closing, and having sank enough beers to reveal some personal secrets. His revelations are both intimate and amiable. The opening ‘Starlings’ seems to be a list of uncertain, philosophical responses to love (‘I’m asking you to back a horse that’s good for glue and nothing else…but find a man that needs you more than I…’). Continuing the theme, there’s a whole world of imaginative, dexterous wordplay in ‘The Fix’, a song at least partially inspired by corrupt gambling practises in the world of horseracing, by no means a common subject for a pop song.

‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ is their most restrained statement since ‘Asleep In The Back’. Even the ballads are mostly elusive (there’s nothing as immediately heartstring tugging as ‘Switching On’ or ‘Fugitive Motel’), and there’s no grandiose chugging in the style of ‘Fallen Angel’ or ‘Leaders of the Free World’. Some tracks (particularly the piano and vocal ‘Some Riot’) burrow into the mind gradually and insidiously, ignoring pop music’s predilection for the immediate and infectious. ‘Grounds for Divorce’ veers into that familiar ramshackle groove they have already furrowed on numerous occasions, although it does so with such élan that its inclusion is entirely forgivable. Given the group’s tendency to hold back, the bigger statements are all the more impressive and unexpected when they come – from the nefarious brass on ‘Starlings’, savagely punctuating an otherwise serene mood, to the thunderous drums on ‘The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver’. Where string arrangements are involved, they are carefully interwoven into already intricate textures.

Unfortunately, two moments do stick out as somewhat underwhelming. The terrace chanting of ‘One Day Like This’ risks lapsing into benign platitudes, and seems like a transparent attempt to rewrite the group’s Glastonbury singalong ‘Grace Under Pressure’. It’s far less interesting rhythmically and melodically than that excellent track though. Similarly, ‘The Bones of You’, whilst sounding undeniably lovely, seems like an amalgam of the chords, rhythm track and melody from a variety of other Elbow songs.

‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ is an album which requires a good deal of patience as it reveals its hidden depths. It comes with plenty of fascinating twists and turns that demonstrate precisely why Elbow have not captured the collective spirit in quite the same way as the aforementioned lesser bands. Like previous Elbow albums, the meticulous attention to detail and overall sonic architecture are breathtaking.

Ticketwatch Part 366

Clearly it takes the exploitation of the lucrative Tweenie market to mobilise people power in the US, but this report from New York makes for interesting reading:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/hannah-montana-vs-the-ticket-scalping-bots/index.html?hp

It's clear from this that the distinction there between official reselling agencies and touting organisations is even more blurred that it has been in the UK. It also doesn't seem like the legislation is promising anything that isn't already standard practice here - most major concerts already have a 4 per buyer ticket restriction, although that cannot stop touting groups buying out vast numbers with high speed dialler software. The intriguing difference here is the number of venues in NYC with public funding, and the new obligation on these venues to sell 40% of their tickets directly to individual consumers.

The Thin Line Between Life and Death

The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, 2007)
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007)

The Turkish German director Fatih Akin’s third feature, The Edge of Heaven has been given a badly mistranslated title for its UK release. The original German title ‘On The Other Side’ is more open to interpretation and therefore more effective. Yet the more emotive English title does emphasise the film’s interest in peril, danger and death. The film has a tripartite structure, reminiscent of the unjustly lauded Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (whose films have so far merely served to repeat themselves with diminishing returns). Also like Inarritu, Akin contrives to connect seemingly disparate lives, and in doing so portrays tensions, both political and personal, between Germany and Turkey. The film’s coincidences and contrivances might well seem implausible to less generous viewers, and appreciation of the film certainly requires a small suspension of disbelief.

This would be a significant problem if the film were only a meditation on the consequences of coincidences, but Akin has also crafted a picture which speaks volumes about human relationships, and the impact of globalisation and immigration on the lives of individuals. In spite of its rather forced plot strands, it is therefore a powerful and touching drama, and the required leap of faith is only a minor flaw in an otherwise successful work.

A major part of the film’s achievement is the naturalistic and convincing performances Akin draws from his excellent cast, many of whom are unknowns here in the UK. Only Hanna Schygulla is a recognisable veteran, and her presence here no doubt represents a homage to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, an acknowledged influence on Akin. Her performance here, which evolves as the film progresses, is one of quiet majesty and real humanity.

The palpable tragedies at the core of the film are foretold by some intertitles at the start of the film’s first two sections – the first of which is called Yeter’s Death, the second Lotte’s Death. The first section centres on the unconventional relationship between the elderly Ali and prostitute Yeter, who discover a kinship through their shared experience as Turkish immigrants. Ali pays Yeter to live and sleep exclusively with him, an offer Yeter accepts at least in part through fear of a pair of threatening Islamic stalkers. Yet, after suffering a major heart attack, Ali quickly becomes self-centred, dominating and controlling, a side hitherto hidden by his endearingly frisky exterior. Accidentally killing Yeter in a rash moment of violence, he finds himself incarcerated as Yeter’s body is flown back to Turkey.

Ali’s bemused son Nejat occupies a unique position among the characters in this film in that he is a Turkish immigrant in Germany who has achieved a laudable position – a professor of German literature. He might be expected therefore to have some sort of superiority over the oppressed characters of Yeter and Ayten, voluntarily embracing prostitution and activism respectively. Yet his stately compassion represents the picture’s moral yardstick, and he is to assume a more significant role in the film’s closing stages.

The second section of the film focuses on Yeter’s estranged daughter, Ayten (played with convincing audacity and gusto by the unfathomably beautiful Nurgel Yesilcay), a political activist in Turkey in danger of incarceration for terrorist activity. Fearing persecution, she enters Germany illegally, and quickly strikes a bond with disillusioned student Lotte, who clearly yearns for some form of escape from the mundanities of her comfortable life. Unthinkingly, she offers Ayten board and lodging in her mother’s house, and the two begin an intense love affair whilst searching in vain for Yeter, who mislead Ayten into believing she could be found working in a shoe shop. Lotte’s mother Susanne (played by the aforementioned Schygulla), initially dismayed and struggling to understand the subservience of all personal concerns to political protest, generously and compassionately funds Ayten’s legal defence.

Although the political argument between Ayten and Susanne seems somewhat staged, this section of the film has significant points to make about Turkey and its contradictory politics. Ayten’s application for asylum is refused not because of her commitment to political violence, but rather because as a country poised to join the European Union, Turkey could not possibly be guilty of persecuting or repressing political opposition. Similarly, Susanne tries reasoning with Ayten that membership of the EU will suddenly bring the universal human rights that Ayten hungers after. Akin highlights the fundamental naivety of these positions.

On deportation back to Turkey, Ayten is held in prison, and threatened with a lengthy jail term. Overwhelmed by her emotions and burgeoning beliefs, Lotte abandons her studies in Germany (and her suffering mother), and heads to Istanbul to find and rescue Ayten, finally believing she has meaning in her life. Ironically, she finds a room for rent with Nejat, who has purchased a German bookshop in Istanbul and hopes to find Ayten and fund her education as some form of recompense for the actions of his father, although Lotte remains unaware of this, with grim irony. Lotte proves surprisingly resourceful in spite of her naivety and inexperience and the result is a painful and inevitable tragedy that encapsulates the essential vulnerability of the lives depicted in this film.

The final section of the film might reasonably be expected to tie the remaining loose plot strands together in a neat conclusion, and initially this seems to be the objective, with Nejat now entrenched in his German bookshop in Turkey, perhaps resigned to never finding Ayten. Lotte’s mother heads to Turkey after hearing the news of her daughter’s death, and locates Nejat in order to stay in the room her daughter had rented. They form a touching bond of friendship, perhaps even Platonic love, and their conversation about sacrifice is particularly moving, prompting Nejat to seek out his father, now also deported back to Turkey having been released from prison. The film concludes on a satisfyingly ambiguous note, with Nejat waiting for Ali’s fishing boat to come back to shore as the tide gets choppier. We are left wondering whether he will in fact return. Rather than join up all the dots, Nejat has not, even by the film’s final image, discovered that Lotte’s mother is supporting Ayten.

The film reflects on the poignancy and irony of near misses and devastating tragedies, but also highlights the vulnerability and mixed feelings of displaced people with an insight, humanity and compassion that never veers into sentiment. These are big ideas for a director with still burgeoning talent, and ‘The Edge of Heaven’ is an assured film that lacks the relentless severity of ‘Head On’. For a film touched with tragedy and doom, it’s also surprisingly light and life affirming.

Julian Schnabel’s ‘The Diving Bell and The Butterfly’ also touches on the fragility and vulnerability of human life, albeit in a surprisingly tender and ultimately positive way. So far, Schnabel’s directorial career has been somewhat self-aggrandising, empathising with tortured artists (effective to a degree in his cinematic reworking of Reinaldo Arenas’ memoir ‘Before Night Falls’, but somewhat superficial in the tedious ‘Basquiat’ biopic). ‘The Diving Bell and The Butterfly’, however, is a different picture altogether, intelligently crafted and deeply affecting.

Jean-Dominique Bauby was at the tender age of 44 and at the height of success as editor of fashion magazine Elle, when cruelly struck down by a major stroke. On awakening from a coma, he found himself the victim of ‘locked-in syndrome’, fully conscious with little damage to his brain, yet unable to move or even communicate.

This remarkable film charts the gradual process of his self-discovery. Helped by a speech therapist who rearranges the alphabet in order of frequency of use, he learns to communicate only by blinking his left eye – once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’. In an almost unfathomable triumph of resilience, he manages to dictate an entire account of his experience in this way, to a publicist who becomes almost a lover, albeit with little physical contact.

The most impressive aspect of this film is the way it so effortlessly combines the fluency and insight of Bauby’s articulate and lucid prose with a cinematic language that is both original and effective. The audience frequently sees scenes from within Bauby’s ‘locked-in’ mind, behind the curtain of his one functioning eyelid. It’s a masterful device that allows us a vivid and sensory vicarious experience of Bauby’s frustration and an understanding of his journey from powerlessness to empowerment.

Whilst the film is occasionally distressing, it is tempered by a streak of black humour (one of Bauby’s most effective mechanisms for coping with his lack of mobility) and ultimately serves as a celebration of the ultimate triumph of human consciousness. Bauby finds more than solace in the wild flights of fancy of his imagination, and his dreams and fantasies are significant factors in the film’s emotional clarity. On his hospital balcony overlooking the coast and an imposing lighthouse, Bauby can indulge his imagination to its fullest potential.

As well as emphasising the brilliance of human consciousness and intellect, the film also seems to be a paen to the beauty and generosity of women. In spite of his apparent rejection of his family life, Bauby’s spirit is partially sustained by the continued support of his wife Celine, played with sympathy and compassion by Emmanuel Seigner. She even enables him to have a telephone ‘conversation’ with another lover, a painful and magnanimous gesture.

As a man worshipped for his handsomeness and success, Bauby was clearly something of a womaniser, and its striking that he had planned to write a book about female revenge. In a sense, this could have been the theme of ‘The Diving Bell…’, given that the beautiful women that surround him all have their mobility and speech, of which he has been cruelly deprived. Yet it is not so schematic, instead celebrating the kindness and companionship of these women (his physiotherapist, speech therapist and publicist are all female), all of whom help him to realise that he is still a strong and complete person. It achieves this in a way that is entirely positive and without misogyny, testament to the sensitivity and insight of both Bauby’s source material and Schnabel’s direction. Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood are particularly careful to capture Bauby’s regrets and moral failings as well as his positive memories.

Carefully paced and structured, the film ends before it begins, with the fateful accident itself. The relative banality of Bauby’s final memory before entering the coma is striking: ‘I had time for one final thought – we’ll have to cancel the theatre, although we’re probably too late already – and then I slipped into sleep.’ It’s just one of many painful ironies within the film – Bauby’s gifting of an aeroplane seat to someone who then ended up hijacked and taken hostage in Beirut and Bauby’s sudden realisation of common ground with his infirm father being two other obvious examples.

Watching this film immediately after ‘The Edge of Heaven’, I was struck by some intriguing parallels between the two pictures. There are two remarkable scenes in ‘The Diving Bell…’ involving Bauby and his 92 year old father. The first comes in a memory from immediately before the accident, in which a begrudging Papinou (played marvellously by the legendary Max Von Sydow) submits to being shaved by his son. The second comes with a conversation over the telephone, Papinou too infirm to visit Bauby in hospital, in which they attempt to communicate, Bauby’s blinking interpreted by a ‘translator’. Papinou’s transparent grief echoed the similar breakdown of Lotte’s mother in the Istanbul hotel in ‘The Edge of Heaven’, whilst the realisation that father and son are similarly encased also shared a powerful resonance with the acceptance of common ground between Lotte’s mother and Nejat. Both pictures are compassionate and humanist in tone and capture a combination of fragility and resilience that is somehow uplifting in the face of tragedy.

Winter Warmer

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjagwar/4AD, 2007/2008)

Reclusively isolated in a North Wisconsin hunting cabin, Justin Vernon has, with ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, crafted a genuinely beautiful, spare and simple work that is at once vulnerable, mythical and overwhelming. ‘For Emma…’ is an album that has been capturing the hearts and minds of bloggers for some time, having already been released twice in the United States. It’s not officially out in the UK until May, which is a shame given that it was recorded in the heart of winter, and seems far more appropriate for that season than for burgeoning sunshine. Luckily, it’s easily found on import CD, or streaming on various mp3 blogs, for which the Hype Machine website remains an invaluable resource. Vernon is also visiting the UK in the week of the album’s release to play some dates with Iron and Wine – a thoroughly mouth-watering prospect.

Vernon is a master of arrangement and textural variation. Whilst lesser artists would have settled for an elementary rhythmic template of strummed acoustic guitar, Vernon carefully adds layered vocals, murmuring electronics, both natural and processed reverb, and brilliantly orchestrated crescendos to create tension and drama. This helps him avoid many of the pitfalls associated with conventional singer-songwriters. ‘For Emma…’ is a collection of songs that not only restates the core values of song-writing as an art, but also expands them. So, whilst the natural acoustic of the hunting cabin room is frequently audible, imbuing this material with a hushed majesty, there’s also a profound grandeur too. The songs are both devastatingly intimate and appealingly outward-looking.

Accompanying himself with choral-style backing vocals, Vernon creates shifting textures of spectral voices and interjecting motifs. The use of electronic ambience is also remarkably subtle – Vernon somehow manages to integrate it completely with the natural timbre of the songs as they were recorded. Similarly, with the occasional use of percussion or even brass instruments, Vernon carefully constructs slow-burning crescendos that have a resounding impact, enhancing rather than undermining the languid elegance of his craft. The title track, for example, has elements of a marching band, but somehow seems far less earthy and predictable than such a description might suggest. Throughout, the instrumentation is always appreciably controlled – with the sparing rather than predominant involvement of distant drums or electric guitars which murmur rather than cackle.

Whilst there are transparent parallels between Bon Iver and Iron and Wine (the album’s title has notable kinship with Sam Beam’s strange manipulation of syntax), ‘For Emma…’ cannot so easily be connected with an American folk tradition. Sam Beam’s language captures much of the vastness of the American landscape and its literary tradition (indeed, Beam’s more epic moments are closer to Cormac McCarthy than any of his contemporaries). Although he often uses similar devices and vivid imagery, Vernon, frequently singing of love (whether it’s based on experience or not of course doesn’t really matter, but one gets the strong impression that there might well be a real Emma to whom these songs might be dedicated), seems more personal. There’s also a more kinship with drama than with traditional poetry or prose. He often delivers either in a fragile falsetto or an aggravated holler (reminiscent of TV On The Radio) that conjure a distinctly soulful quality. It makes the most straightforward song here, the concluding ‘Re: Stacks’ quietly heartbreaking. In fact, this song in particular reminds me of Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip’s solo material, sadly so far unheard by many.

From its opening line onwards, there’s a real mystery to ‘For Emma…’ that is completely captivating. ‘I am my mother’s only one’, sings Vernon, leaving a pregnant pause before claiming ‘but that’s enough’. It’s a striking way to begin a song, and the enigmatic poignancy is continued throughout, in a way that seems wistful and homespun on one hand, but also odd, otherworldly and spiritual on the other. ‘Re: Stacks’ again is particularly moving in this regard: ‘There’s a black crow sitting across from me, his wiry legs are crossed/He’s dangling my keys, he even fakes a toss/Whatever could it be that has brought me to this loss?’. Yet, somehow, it all ends on a sublime and positive note: ‘This is not the sound of a new man or a crispy realisation/It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away/Your love will be/Safe with me’. Either love has been lost, but the memory lingers securely, or love has been found anew – the precise meaning is unclear.

Vernon has shown deft skill and talent in creating a work that sounds so open and intense, but also leaves questions hanging with intriguing ambiguity. It’s a set of songs to live with and live inside, a record to experience as well as hear.

Pseudo-Intellectual Posturing?

Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash (Domino, 2008)

I’ve struggled a little with Stephen Malkmus’ solo material. This may say more about me than him, in that he has gradually abandoned many of the qualities I admired most about Pavement – their ramshackle, twitchy, scatty sound, the emphasis on verbose, quirky lyrics and their unusual but strangely infectious melodies. His first album had some delightful moments, but mostly sounded like a diluted version of an established formula, following which he took a couple of peculiar left-turns with classic rock on ‘Pig Lib’ and quirky folk on ‘Face The Truth’. With a new version of The Jicks in tow (featuring a dependably thunderous Janet Weiss on drums), Malkmus now returns to the characteristics that dominated ‘Pig Lib’. There are long meandering solos, syncopated rhythms, numerous time signature changes, and some squalling classic rock jamming.

Musical extrapolation is not something I generally have a problem with – indeed, as a jazz enthuasiast, I often find extemporising thrilling and inspiring. The problem here though, is that it often serves to obfuscate Malkmus’ talents as a writer. I come away from most of the tracks here unable to recall vocal lines or lyrics (many of which could be memorable in more concise contexts). More often than not, the long guitar solos seem to have very little to say – and offer little emotional expression. I feel much the same way about the improvising here as I do about Neil Young’s playing in live performance. Many love his technically limited attacks on two or three notes of his guitar, but I find they get tiresome and repetitive very quickly, and undermine the quality of his melodies. Unfortunately, in the case of ‘Real Emotional Trash’, I wonder whether the quality of the compositions can even withstand the kind of treatment metered out here.

The presence of Weiss is crucial – she turns this into Malkmus’ most aggressive and assertive solo album to date. The drumming is driving and exploratory, even on songs taken at relatively sedate tempos. It’s far more interesting than the guitar noodling that all too frequently threatens to smother it. She also provides striking dynamic contrasts, particularly on the bizarre ‘Hopscotch Willie’ and the lengthy title track, which most other rock drummers would not have the awareness or skill to execute. ‘Hopscotch Willie’ is typical of the ponderous demeanour of the album as a whole though – it veers between coruscating and tepid passages, without really ever fulfilling its undoubted potential.

‘Cold Son’ has one of Malkmus’ deceptively simple choruses that wouldn’t sound out of place on ‘Wowee Zowee’, but it’s in search of a decent melody for the rest of the song. Also, whilst ‘Wowee Zowee’-era Pavement always sounded perilously on the verge of internal combustion – the Jicks sound like a band merely content to flex their musical muscles in lieu of any real intensity. Pavement had a unique sound that made them brilliantly contemporary, but ‘Real Emotional Trash’ frequently sounds tied to rather tired 1970s influences (hear the plodding piano on the first section of the title track for example). Ultimately, this sounds like music that was really fun to make, but has resulted in something that’s rather frustrating for the listener. The title track has a really rather beautiful coda that follows several minutes of directionless posturing. So much more could have been made from it!

On the closing ‘Wicked Wanda’, Malmus advises of the need to ‘break out of your core category’, and this appears to be what he is attempting to achieve for himself. I admire Malkmus for veering away from his established template and experimenting with different ideas, but I just can’t see ‘Real Emotional Trash’ becoming an album to which I might ever have an ardent desire to return. I’d rather nostalgically delve back to ‘Stereo’, ‘Shady Lane’, ‘We Dance’, ‘Silent Kid’, ‘Here’ or even ‘Carrot Rope’, and that poses something of a problem.

The Mirrorball in My Mind

Hercules and Love Affair – Hercules and Love Affair (DFA, 2008)

This Hercules and Love Affair album seems to have divided opinion somewhat, but I have to confess at the outset that I’m all in favour. Plainly and simply, I’m too young to have experienced disco first hand. I’d like to think that in a previous life, I was in those NYC clubs brave enough to get Arthur Russell when he was actually alive and making music. Unfortunately, I’d no doubt have lacked the confidence to embrace the hedonistic, polysexual aesthetic recaptured by Andrew Butler and his clan here, but so brilliantly does this album encapsulate a particular time and place that I come away from it feeling that vicarious experience might actually be enough. ‘Hercules and Love Affair’ is a record to fuel imagination and fantasy as much as dancing feet.

This all begs the question of why I appreciate a meticulous reconstruction of disco more than, say, Stereophonics and their lumbering recreation of 1970s meat-and-two-veg rock? Perhaps it’s because 70s rock has been slavishly revived far too frequently, whilst very few have actually been brave enough to return to disco. It’s a form of music too often dismissed as novelty (and captured accordingly on various nostalgia compilations) rather than appreciated as a revolutionary, liberating force. There have been disco influences on modern pop tracks for sure – but these have often been inappropriately diluted or even anodyne. Similarly, the disco elements incorporated by the new wave of punk-funk acts are often merely traces, much of the original groove surgically removed and replaced with something more awkward and unconfident.

With ‘Hercules and Love Affair’, Andrew Butler successfully recaptures the spirit of disco but he is not striving to sound like Chic or Rose Royce, and certainly not like The Bee Gees circa Saturday Night Fever. The signposts here are early Grace Jones, Arthur Russell and Dinosaur L, Francois Kervorkian, and the Ze Records output. All the key elements are here – including the relentless and deceptively simple backbeats, the octave bass figures, punctuating horns and keyboard lines that serve more to add texture and atmosphere than to state harmony. The most irresistible track here is ‘Hercules Theme’, a heady mix of sensual horns, rhythmic clavinet playing and intriguing intertwined vocals.

There’s no point in denying that Butler’s construct is as much about image and aesthetics as it is about music. On paper, Hercules and Love Affair seem like a collective assembled by a liberal hipster committee – there’s a hip producer musically trained by associates of composer Philip Glass, and there’s also the vocal duo of Kim Ann and Nomi, lesbian and transsexual respectively. The very line-up of the group seems designed to sum up the inclusive and celebratory vision of disco, a movement that genuinely refused to recognise boundaries.

The main selling point for many, but no doubt also a big turn-off for numerous others, will be the presence here of the increasingly ubiquitous Antony Hegarty. Is his tremulous torch-song vibrato starting to wear thin? It’s certainly possible to make the case, but Hercules and Love Affair presents such a radically different context for his singing style that, to my ears at least, he begins to assume a new soulfulness. He proves surprisingly malleable as a backing vocalist, melding effortlessly into the mesmerising vocal textures on ‘Hercules Theme’ and supporting the other vocalists on ‘You Belong’. When he does take the lead, he does so spectacularly, his dynamic variety providing a fascinating counterpoint to the repetitive insistence of the music on ‘Raise Me Up’ and ‘Blind’.

The former seems to restate traditional themes of disco – empowerment, elevation and transcendence. The latter is something entirely different though, and is already looking like one of the finest singles of 2008. It’s that rarest of beasts – an introverted, almost solipsistic dance track. Musically, it has that inspired collective energy that fuels all four-to-the-floor club tracks, but lyrically and vocally, it seems to occupy a space entirely divorced from the dancefloor. Rather than exhibiting glamour or frivolous pleasure, ‘Blind’ seems to be a song about the loss of innocence that accompanies ageing, and the sense that experience can be limiting as well as liberating. Butler’s form of freedom clearly does not require an escape from internalisation and philosophising.

It’s also worth recognising that ‘Hercules and Love Affair’ isn’t all dancefloor pacing. The slinkier grooves of more mysterious opener ‘Time Will’ hint at some of the quirkier, less familiar-sounding electro to be found in the album’s more adventurous second half. Similarly, ‘You Belong’ seems closer to more reflective late 80s Chicago club music (particularly Inner City) than anything from the late 70s disco explosion. The consistent thread across the album is a keening, very human expression of emotion and sentiment sometimes absent from mechanistic dance music, even from funk, which tends to focus purely on sexual impulses. Butler claims to have been inspired more by ‘Miss Piggy, my friends, LSD, classic dance music and feminine power’. Authenticity, it appears, really is overrated.

Brooklyn Heights

Dirty Projectors @ The Forum 29/2/08
Yeasayer @ The ICA 6/3/08

I hate writing pretentiously about ‘scenes’ or ‘risings’ (and it is pretentious because it assumes a right on behalf of the writer to define what scenes are and where they come from), but there’s little point in denying that there is a particularly exciting pocket of musical activity in Brooklyn, New York right now. There’s Vampire Weekend’s brainy, zany and hugely enjoyable quirky pop, and even MGMT’s relatively straightforward woozy psychedelia has its merits, although I can’t help feeling they are by some distance the least interesting of these bands.

Dave Longstreth’s Dirty Projectors are a longstanding project with a constantly shifting line-up only just beginning to gain more widespread attention in the UK (and no doubt Longstreth would be delighted with his Album of the Year award from this very blog!). In the current set-up, Longstreth is flanked by two beautiful and talented young women and bolstered by a terrifyingly precise drummer making a vast range of noise from a skeletal kit. Longstreth himself strides around the stage like a lurching colossus, with his guitar maintained well above traditional height. It’s an ungainly but dominant demeanour that neatly encapsulates the simultaneously madcap but rigorously controlled nature of this music.

There are so many ideas crashing against each other – unconventional vocal harmonies (definitely not from the Brian Wilson or Crosby, Stills and Nash schools but from another place entirely), African guitar picking, dissonant noise grafted from hardcore punk and heavy metal somehow all find a home in the same song. Yet every idea is situated in a specific space, and after a while it becomes clear that every stab from the drums, every unexpected flight of fancy in Longsreth’s voice, every burst of savage chaos, has been meticulously organised. Not only does it sound riotous, dazzling and impressive, it also sounds like tremendous fun.

Performing as part of the Owen Pallett’s Maximum Black Festival – Longstreth’s sheer artistry simply makes a mockery of the other artists on the bill, who all disappoint in some way. Frog Eyes are pompous and tedious, self-importantly trying to make very basic and plodding rock music sound wildly ambitious, and failing transparently. I admire Ben Chasney’s Six Organs of Admittance on record, but there’s a massive problem with this meandering, noise-based music live. Chasney hardly engages with the audience at all, and his female guitarist is content simply to interrupt the otherwise rather pleasing minimal folk explorations with shards of eardrum-perforating noise.

This could potentially have been interesting – but it didn’t have to be this loud. I don’t think music has to sound pleasant or beautiful – indeed, all art should aim to capture some of the conflict and turbulence at the heart of life as well as the happiness – but the overall effect of this was extreme physical discomfort. In another time and place, I would have appreciated the collaboration between Alexander Tucker and Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))), but I just wasn’t in the mood for lengthy hypnotic drones by this point. Plus coming immediately after Dave Longstreth’s dense flurry of creativity, it just sounded rather empty and hollow. Unfortunately, this lead to a rather soporific mood and atmosphere, so I left without hearing Owen Pallett’s own headline set as Final Fantasy.

Last night at the ICA provided me with my first opportunity to see the excellent Yeasayer (another Brooklyn band) in a live setting. What an extraordinary spectacle it was too. John Kell came away feeling much of the band’s set had been ‘too hippy’, and to some degree I take his point (the lyrics certainly have a tendency towards spiritualist and communitarian sentiment). However, I felt strangely satisfied that such a fashionable buzz band could incorporate quite so many totally unfashionable elements, from the use of fretless bass (possibly the first time I’ve ever seen this instrument deployed by an American underground rock group) and synth drums to the ridiculous dress sense of their long-haired, moustached bassist.

It certainly wouldn’t be going too far to describe Yeasayer’s music as ‘progressive’. It is rhythmically imaginative, structurally unconventional and harmonically intricate, juxtaposing a wide variety of influences from across the globe. On the bright, muscular single ‘2080’ they come across as Tears for Fears crossed with Arcade Fire, and this turns out to be no bad thing. Elsewhere, they meld west coast honey-dripping vocal harmonies with unpredictable, thrilling musical left-turns.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the recreation of the album’s complex layers of sound requires frequent resort to samples and backing tapes, although the group gamely compensate for this with a very physical performance. Watching singer Chris Keating jerk and spasm uncontrollably around the stage (and, towards the end, within the audience) is an oddly compelling experience. A heavy rock element, rather constrained by the album’s sophisticated production, is brought to the fore here, and everything seems louder and more bombastic than on record. Some of the intricacies are arguably lost as a result, but there’s so much energy and tension in this performance that it doesn’t really matter. ‘No Need To Worry’ becomes more emphatic and trudgy, whilst the closing ‘Sunrise’ is a celebratory outpouring of chaotic joy, the band joined by their support act to hammer out rhythms on a variety of percussion instruments with appropriately wild abandon. The combination of bristling confidence and fearless invention suggests there may be longevity in this fascinating group.

It Gets Stranger Every Year...

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Dig! Lazarus! Dig! (Mute, 2008)

This latest instalment in the increasingly prolific saga of Nick Cave, so far every bit as well received as the triumphant ‘Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus’, is something of an intriguing oddity. Even for a man who so often takes the art of songwriting well beyond its logical conclusion, luxuriating in his own language, Cave is at his most unrestrained and verbose here. So much so in fact that the album requires a 50+ page booklet in order to exhibit all his lyrical flights of fancy. Cave is perilously perched on the edge of self parody throughout (only he could get away with a line like ‘Henry got lost down south in the weeping forests of le vulva’), but somehow mostly sustains the wild and untamed humour. This is therefore an album much less concerned with melody, and more with the sheer unbridled joy of trying to squeeze in as many words as possible.

There are some brilliantly inventive couplets which counter any possible accusations of self-indulgence (if anything, Cave’s most pretentious album was ‘No More Shall We Part’, which showed him taking himself far more seriously than he does here). The brilliant ‘We Call upon the Author’, perhaps a wiry, even quirkier restating of the ideas that informed ‘There She Goes My Beautiful World’, not only dismisses cult writer Charles Bukowski as a ‘jerk’, but also proudly boasts the refrain ‘PROLIX! PROLIX! Nothin’ a pair of scissors can’t fix!’. There’s also the compelling assault of ‘Albert Goes West’, in which Cave celebrates misdemeanours with malevolent glee (‘the world is full of endless abstractions/and I won’t be held responsible for my actions’). The closing ‘More News from Nowhere’ seems to be a litany of liaisons with various femme fatales, in which Cave even allows himself to get a little self-referential. The lines ‘I bumped bang crash into Deanna/hanging pretty in the door frame/all the horrors that befell me/well Deanna was to blame’ inevitably remind us of Cave’s earlier classic ‘Deanna’ (from the ‘Tender Prey’ album).

Musically, the residual influence of last year’s Grinderman side project undoubtedly permeates. There’s plenty of that album’s swampy groove, stark minimalism and insistent feedback. Correspondingly, there’s very little of the melancholy balladry that characterised ‘The Boatman’s Call’ (a masterpiece for many but now dismissed as a romantic indulgence by Cave) and that has remained a mainstay of Cave albums up to and including the patchy ‘Nocturama’. There’s a significant difference here though, which undoubtedly identifies this as a Bad Seeds album rather than merely an extension of the Grinderman ethos. In the absence of Blixa Bargeld, it’s fascinating to hear how the Bad Seeds have reconfigured themselves around new dominant instrumental characteristics – particularly agile, minimal bass figures and James Johnston’s pulsating organ. Whilst his parts are mostly rudimentary, Johnston’s presence has significantly transformed the Bad Seeds’ sound, something that might perhaps have otherwise been in danger of becoming stale and familiar.

There are times when The Bad Seeds sound positively alien here. The extraordinary ‘Night of the Lotus Eaters’ insistently repeats a three note motif, gradually adding and subtracting a variety of disorientating elements, including caustic guitar and undisciplined drums that pull against the driving rhythm. It’s a fascinatingly controlled and anchored form of chaos. There are also the strange high-pitched anti-sounds that linger suspiciously in the background of ‘Hold On To Yourself’ or the compelling and surprisingly soulful textures of ‘Midnight Man’. There are frequent savage guitar interjections that cut through the more conventional arrangements.

Whilst much of ‘Abattoir Blues’ was savage and furious, there’s something peculiarly light and airy about ‘Dig! Lazarus! Dig!’. The bountiful call-and-response chanting adds a sense of fun to the proceedings which lightens the atmosphere and directs the mood away from furious intensity towards something more playful.
This lighter approach works well on the tracks which are anchored by spidery bass lines, particularly the wiry funk of ‘Moonland’, or the satisfyingly relentless ‘We Call upon the Author’. When the songs are restricted by conventionally strummed acoustic guitar, the results are perhaps less successful. Whilst it often seems to be there only to hover in the background, the acoustic guitar strumming sometimes prevents the songs from taking full flight rather than adding creeping menace, which might possibly have been the intention. This is particularly true of the comparably uninteresting ‘Lie Down Here and Be My Girl’, and even ‘Albert Goes West’ suffers a little from this arrangement quirk. Similarly, the rather straightforward chug of ‘More News From Nowhere’ (which, to my ears, harks back at Tom Waits’ ‘Downtown Train’) arguably detracts a little from the unparalleled wit and invention of its lyric. Perhaps Cave intended it to be a subtler take on the fiery epic than ‘Babe I’m On Fire’, the blistering but overlong assault that terminated ‘Nocturama’.

Maybe it’s ironic that the most successful track here might best be described as a ballad, but ‘Jesus of the Moon’ is one of the very best songs of Cave’s career. The opening line (‘I Stepped Out of the St. James Hotel’) instantly reminds me of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blind Willie McTell’, and this song has a comparable grasp of legacy and cultural history (the opening verse proceeds to proclaim ‘a change is gonna come’). It also has one stark confessional moment with Cave, himself now something of a family man, boldly stating ‘people often talk about being scared of change/ but for me I’m more afraid of things staying the same/for the game is never won/by staying in the same place for too long’. These lines inevitably suggest a fear of commitment, but they also have a deeper resonance that present Cave as a restless, fearless artist, striving to capture an unstoppable torrent of ideas. I don’t accept the success of ‘Dig! Lazarus! Dig!’ quite as uncritically as some other writers have done, but I recognise that it’s emphatically not an immediate or straightforward record. These complex songs, with their fragmented imagery and floods of language, will repay close attention. Getting more acquainted with them will also no doubt be great fun, which is preferable to the self-important proselytising that undermines Cave’s least successful work.

A Solitary Splendour

Toumani Diabate – The Mande Variations (World Circuit, 2008)

A true master of his craft, Toumani Diabate is capable of adapting the Kora to a wide variety of contexts, sounding every bit as comfortable on this exquisite solo recording as with his thrilling Symmetric Orchestra. The uniquely challenging instrument (a 21 stringed harp with 11 strings for one hand and ten for the other) has been in Diabate’s family for generations – his father Sidiki was reputedly also a virtuoso. Toumani recorded ‘Kaira’, his first solo Kora album at the tender age of 21, now returning to the strictures of solo recording (mostly single takes with no overdubs) more than twenty years later. In many ways, it represents a withdrawal or introversion – a musical examination of personal experience and founding influences.

‘The Mande Variations’ contains some of the most beautiful music of this year or any other. A lot of this undoubtedly rests heavily on Toumani’s technical brilliance and personal approach to composition but a good deal of credit should also go to World Circuit’s Nick Gold for creating such an extraordinary sound. Whilst little or no treatment has been applied to Toumani’s playing here, the natural acoustic is so reverberant and spacious as to capture Toumani’s dazzling virtuosity without sounding cluttered or busy. There is a calm, meditative quality to much of this music.

Toumani appears particularly open-minded in his approach to music. Whilst there is, as might be expected, a close personal engagement with the griot folk tradition from which he comes, there are also references and even quotes that present ‘The Mande Variations’ as an attempt to juxtapose heritage with some wider, more immediate influences, drawn both from music and experience. The wistful, haunting ‘Elyne Road’ incorporates the melody from reggae classic ‘Kingston Town’, with Toumani affected by the ubiquity of UB40’s version during his first trip to England. The remarkable closing track ‘Cantelowes’ quotes directly from Morricone’s soundtrack to ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, as well as being dedicated to a friend who lived on Cantelowes Road in London, where Toumani apparently stayed for several months when first in the UK.

The near-perfect synchronicity between Diabate’s left and right hand figures is astonishing, particularly on the peculiarly relentless ‘Kaounding Cissoko’. ‘Ali Farka Toure’, of course dedicated to the recently departed desert blues sensation, demonstrates both Diabate’s manual dexterity and his musical intuition, with lengthy flurries of notes that defy the imagination. The latter was purely improvised in the studio, a further testament to Diabate’s open-mindedness towards a variety of compositional techniques.

Elsewhere, he draws directly on the folk tradition, always refashioning melodic ideas for his own purposes. For example, the opening ‘Si Naani’ features two themes taken from Griot folk songs, but which Diabate has made his very own through his considered and expressive extrapolations. The album’s title perhaps hints at his extraordinary talent for developing and expanding melodic ideas. There’s little of the twitching and flitting between numerous ideas that sometimes undermines improvisational playing – Diabate is more interested in establishing and sustaining particular emotions. Whilst there’s a sense of wistful nostalgia to much of this music, there’s also a sense of looking forward at the same time as retreating inward – a powerful combination that lends Diabate’s refashioning of his influences a genuinely timeless aura.

What is most powerfully striking about ‘The Mande Variations’ is that, in the midst of all this dazzling technique and exceptional skill, there is very little sense of ego or aggression. Somehow, Diabate manages to make all this sound peaceful and reflective, and he never resorts to vacuous showmanship. He may have the ability to dazzle, but he also has the judgement and instinct to know when to hold back. Technique is always firmly subordinated to the abiding mood or feeling, and the album is richly rewarding and emotional as a result of this.

Chicago Bound

Vandermark 5 - Beat Reader (Atavistic, 2008)

The Chicago jazz scene is frighteningly alive right now. From the inter-connected post-rock artists veering into more improvised territory on the Thrill Jockey roster (centred around trumpeter/composer Rob Mazurek and guitarist Jeff Parker) to the fiery explosion of expression at the heart of Ken Vandermark’s constantly evolving quintet, there’s a plethora of original and intelligent ideas on display.

For ‘Beat Reader’, Vandermark has assembled his strongest and least conventional line-up so far. With no piano or guitar, the harmonic accompaniment is provided solely by Fred Lonberg-Holm’s attacking ‘cello. With more electronic manipulation here than on his excellent trio recordings in his own name, Lonberg-Holm crafts fascinating textures and patterns, often sounding savage and unhinged. With Vandermark himself mostly favouring baritone saxophone or a range of clarinets, there’s an interesting tonal contrast between his playing and the alto or tenor of Dave Rempis.

Vandermark proves himself a master of constructing a careful balance between composed and improvised elements. Sometimes the music is as free and furious as an Ornette Coleman session, but it is definitely not free jazz in a technical sense. Much of it swings or grooves with the swagger and passion of a 1960s ensemble, and there’s as strong a connection with blues and roots as with European-influenced abstraction. For example, the slow walk that dominates the first half of ‘Further From The Truth’ is remarkably slinky, whilst the looser second half is eerie and contemplative.

All the pieces all seem to be dedicated to particular composers, and if there’s an abiding theme to this excellent record, it’s the way in which techniques of composition and arrangement can be used as effective springboards to free flights of fierce improvisation. Fascinatingly, the swirling, hypnotic ‘Friction’ is dedicated to Hungarian innovator Gyorgy Ligeti. Given Ligeti’s preference for sheets of sound, rhythmic complexity and dissonance over conventional melody and harmony, it’s surprising how accessible the central theme of ‘Friction’ is. Similarly, the slow tempo of ‘Any Given Number’ allows notes to linger in the mind, and also provides ample space and freedom.

The group’s arrangements, whether planned or spontaneous, are generally inspired. Lonberg-Holm is frequently left to his own devices, and the range of sound he can draw from his instrument immediately becomes violently clear, much of it perhaps drawn more from the techniques of contemporary classical music or folk music than the jazz tradition. Better still are the displaced stabs that accompany Vandermark’s wild and fast-flowing solo on the extraordinary ‘Signposts’. It’s a particularly harmonious juxtaposition of individual expression with collective alchemy. There’s also a tendency to veer unpredictably from passages of free experimentation, with a mischievous manipulation of time and space, to passages which swing simply but thrillingly. ‘Speedplay’, particularly, seems to cover all bases with surprising success, a powerful testament to the abilities of drummer Tim Daisy and bassist Kent Kessler.

After an unfathomably slow start to 2008, there suddenly seems to be so much to write about, particularly from artists really pushing at the boundaries of expression and classification. There’s Toumani Diabate’s Mande Variations, which effortlessly combines breathtaking instrumental virtuosity with an open, spacious beauty; some serene meditations from Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s Trio; the compelling integration of percussionist Marilyn Mazur and saxophonist Jan Garbarek; the melding of stark minimalism and righteous grooving from Nik Bartsch’s Ronin and a good deal more besides.

RIP Teo Macero and Joe Gibbs

All those with an interest in the creation and manipulation of sound may well feel saddened by the recent deaths of Teo Macero and Joe Gibbs, two of the most influential producers in popular music.

Macero’s work with Miles Davis was genuinely pioneering, introducing techniques of cut-and-paste editing to a form of music that had formerly assumed the primacy of the live recording. It would have been enough for Macero to have produced Kind of Blue or Sketches of Spain but his later work on the likes of In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Tribute To Jack Johnson and On The Corner helped revolutionise the music for a second time. For ‘In A Silent Way’, still my personal favourite Miles Davis album, Teo collaborated with Miles to edit together two meticulously crafted tracks from hours of recordings. The recent box sets with their various out-takes give a fascinating insight into this highly creative process. Macero also worked with a fascinating variety of other Columbia Recording artists, including Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, helping craft some of the most significant and influential albums in contemporary music history. Macero is generally believed to be one of the few figures prepared to stand up to Miles Davis over creative decisions, and a man capable of eliciting compromise and conciliation from a notoriously intense control-freak. Brian Eno claims that Macero did something that was ‘extremely modern’, a statement supported by the fact that those extraordinary, spatial, haunting records with Miles still sound remarkably fresh even now.

Joe Gibbs was one of the legends of rocksteady and reggae, but has generally garnered less attention than those wild pioneers of dub such as Lee Perry or Keith Hudson. Perhaps this is merely because their creative use of the studio was frequently more obvious and pivotal. Yet Gibbs was responsible for some of the very finest reggae albums – particularly Culture’s astounding ‘Two Sevens Clash’ and its righteous fury. He also worked his magic with The Heptones, The Mighty Diamonds, The Ethiopians, Johnny Clarke and many others, and scored a massive hit with Nicky Thomas’ ‘Love of the Common People’. I’ve always admired the great sound of the drums on his recordings.

Arbiter of Taste

Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool (1978, Reissued by Proper 2008)

I’ve felt for a while that Nick Lowe is one of the most underrated and unfairly marginalised of the great British songwriters. Even now, most people know him only through the Brinsley Schwartz hit ‘Cruel To Be Kind’ or through Elvis Costello’s version of ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding’. Recently, with a suave and sophisticated grey demeanour, he has reinvented himself superbly as a light country soul singer in the mould of Dan Penn. His early solo material was far from this though – and indeed, with his estuary vowels a little more pronounced – even his voice sounds somewhat unrecognisable from his recent works.

Now lavishly repackaged by Proper, ‘Jesus of Cool’ looks set to gain a thoroughly deserved reappraisal. The title now seems loaded with irony – in the intervening period since the album’s original release, Lowe has been many things, but never really hip or cool, and the cover images now look purely goofy. Yet the title came from a genuine piece of writing in Sounds from Tim Lott that described Lowe as ‘a bona fide Jesus of Cool!’ The US title, presumably aimed at avoiding offending sensitive Christians, was ‘Pure Pop For Now People’, a cloying piece of industry-speak which sounds exactly like the target of songs such as ‘Music for Money’ or ‘Shake and Pop’.

Indeed, the album’s presiding theme is the dispensability and disposability of pop music culture, a state of affairs that arguably hasn’t changed much since 1978. Lowe’s snide and cynical verbal assaults have probably diminished in impact a little over time, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had in the savage barroom boogie of ‘Shake and Pop’ or the deceptively smooth ‘Little Hitler’.

Wheareas Lowe’s recent excursions into country soul have explored a consistent and sedate sound model, much of ‘Jesus of Cool’ feels like irony-laden genre experimentation. It suggests that Lowe has as much in common with irreverent contemporary songwriters such as Stephin Merritt as with the classicists with whom he is more frequently compared. Where the enthralling ‘Tonight’ sounds like a youthful precursor to his brilliant ‘Let’s Stay In And Make Love’, a laid-back and beautifully private love song (‘tonight we’re just a boy and girl/the only ones in the world’), ‘So It Goes’ has jaunty phrasing that resembles Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys are Back in Town’. On the minor hit ‘I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass’, Lowe sounds like a quirky Bowie enthusiast, the jerky rhythm of the song bolstering its insistence. On ‘No Reason’, he even veers into Ska territory.

This gameful flitting about from style to style works chiefly because Lowe is a master of simple, infectious melody, and because he is a biting, intelligent lyricist. It also works because a handful of the songs (the wiry funk of ‘Nutted By Reality’, ‘…Breaking Glass’ and ’36 Inches High’ particularly) are genuine oddities, with unconventional arrangements and a producer’s attention to detail. The album seems to present Lowe as an avid collector and digester of a range of music, which he then re-assembles to suit his own purposes.

This handsome reissue comes in superbly designed packaging, with informative sleevenotes and a whole host of excellent bonus tracks (solo recordings from the ‘widerness’ period between the demise of Brinsley Schwartz and the arrival of this album). Most apposite is the wonderful ‘I Love My Label’, another compelling dissection of music industry culture. There’s also a highly enjoyable, high speed take on ‘Cruel To Be Kind’ and a furiously energetic ‘Heart of the City’. It’s all value for money, I’d say.