How Did We Get Here And Where Do We Go Now?

The Bug – London Zoo (Ninja Tunes, 2008)

It’s tempting to caricature Kevin Martin as something of a musical chancer, given the length of his career and his tendency to latch on to certain musical scenes. ‘London Zoo’ has been marketed, somewhat inaccurately, as another chapter in the story of dubstep. Actually, it seems like a natural progression from Martin’s first album as The Bug, which had more in common with the heavy and insistent rhythms of dancehall. Like its predecessor, ‘London Zoo’ makes fruitful use of an exciting cast of guest vocalists and toasters.

The vocal performances on this outstanding record have so much urgency and conviction that they simply compel the listener to pay attention. Longstanding Bug collaborator Warrior Queen returns to command attention through the sheer force of her vocal personality and Roots Manuva cohort Ricky Ranking provides the album’s concluding and most resonant imagery on the apocalyptic ‘Judgment’. It’s simply impossible to ignore the righteousness of Tippa Irie on the opening ‘Angry’, striking at everything from the American government response to Hurricane Katrina to suicide bombing at home.

Even more brutal and uncompromising is Spaceape on ‘F**kaz’ (hard to believe that this piercing directness comes from the same vocalist who made the more ambiguous ‘Memories of the Future’ with kode9). He finds faults on all sides of arguments, attacking both the selfish oppressors who would deny people opportunity for improvement and the head-in-the-clouds liberals who don’t understand the problems they are trying to solve. ‘Look at the state of your own home!’ he chides, with genuine bile and justified rancour. Eventually, he arrives at the crucial question that sums up this album’s sustained mindset: ‘How did we get here and where do we go now?’

Yet it’s Martin’s pitch-perfect production, bolstering the sense of anger, frustration and confusion in the vocal performances, that makes ‘London Zoo’ such a well-realised document. The music lacks melodic and harmonic sophistication – but the sheer relentless force of its rhythms make it compelling. The sounds that Martin conjures are appropriately doom-laden – with a plethora of clanks, gunshots, echo-laden percussive hits and colossal deep bass pulses.

‘London Zoo’ achieves what Bloc Party’s ‘A Weekend In The City’ only tentatively hinted at – a bleak, angry and downright terrifying vision of modern London in terminal decline (‘the people are turning so mad, the place is turning so bad…the streets are filled with blood red’). Is life in this bustling, diverse and brilliant city really this oppressive? Maybe it is for many people, in ways that I can only struggle to imagine.

Perhaps ‘London Zoo’ can be criticised in much the same way as I approached a stylistically different but thematically very similar album – Chris T[T’s ‘Capital’. It is perhaps guilty of being more than a little negative and charmless. Yet my concluding remarks about ‘Capital’ erred towards the generous, in that I accepted why the current climate makes it difficult to avoid an apocalyptic, downbeat tone and that maybe such fiery urgency is necessary in order to create something positive. Maybe it’s simply not the job of rappers, producers or songwriters to offer solutions – here Kevin Martin’s extraordinary cast seem to aim more at simply documenting their fears and experiences. By way of some levity, there’s a sense of personal angst as well as anger here – the performers occasionally questioning their own sanity as well as the world gone mad around them.

This is an outstanding record that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath not just as musically similar works such as Massive Attack’s ‘Blue Lines’ or Tricky’s ‘Maxinquaye’ but also with the classics of questing social consciousness – Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’, Stevie Wonder circa ‘Innervisions’ and, perhaps most potently, Sly Stone’s articulate paranoia on ‘There’s A Riot Going On’. Was this simply too confrontational and unsettling for the Mercury judges? Maybe it can be argued that Burial has already crafted a similarly uncomfortable portrait of urban claustrophobia without deploying the armoury of language and rhetoric. Nevertheless, ‘London Zoo’ is heavy, portentous and vehemently dystopian and it must not be ignored.

Only In Dreams

Leila – Blood, Looms and Blooms (Warp, 2008)

As well as being a sometime keyboard player for Bjork, Leila Arab has been responsible for one of my favourite albums of the 1990s, the skeletal, deceptively simple ‘Like Weather’*. That remarkable debut and, to a lesser extent, its follow-up ‘Courtesy of Choice’ married idiosyncratic, mostly untutored vocal contributions to esoteric and imaginative bedroom productions. Yet Leila never really became recognised as one of electronic music’s pioneers, and the gestation between ‘Courtesy of Choice’ and this third album has been a lengthy eight years.

The press spin on ‘Blood, Looms and Blooms’ has emphasised that Leila lost both her parents during that eight year gap and the critical focus on this album has emphasised its concurrent darkness and sadness. I’m not really sure that it’s all that preoccupied with death, but it’s certainly fair to argue that it’s a lot less warm and inviting a record than ‘Like Weather’. Indeed, the presence of Terry Hall and Martina Topley Bird as guest vocalists immediately invites comparisons with Tricky’s Nearly God project, with which this record shares a rather introspective and claustrophobic sound.

Leila’s solo set in support of Bjork at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire left me rather cold and baffled. Not only bereft of the contributions of her vocalists, it also seemed stripped of any of the melody or thematic development that characterises her recordings. Instead, she opted to bathe the audience in a rather oppressive sonic fuzz that occasionally teetered on the unmusical and was largely uninvolving.

Luckily, the approach is less confrontational on ‘Blood, Looms and Blooms’ and this album largely plays to her strengths, albeit sometimes with disorientating and unsettling effects. This is the most mysterious and elusive of Leila’s albums so far – basking in its rather creepy, fantastical atmosphere. The arrangements are both strange and seductive, particularly when Leila leaves enough space for her singers to weave their enchanting webs. It mostly sounds like a dreamworld – sometimes dizzying and intoxicating, frequently unnerving and peculiar.

Even the chiefly instrumental works are disarming in their impact. ‘Mettle’ begins playfully, but its underlying menace bubbles to the surface with alarming rapidity, the incorporation of heavily distorted guitars proving surprisingly effective. The brilliantly titled ‘The Exotics’, with its wordless, mock-operatic vocal interjections, using voice as instrument rather than linguistic vehicle, swells like the soundtrack to a malevolent fairground carousel.

Better still, Leila’s longstanding vocal collaborators have all developed and enhanced the qualities that made them such inspired discoveries in the first place. Roya Arab proves eerie and versatile on ‘Daisies Cats and Spacemen’ and Luca Santucci powerfully conveys the sense of disturbed sleep on ‘Teases Me’. So much so, in fact, that the appearance of Martina Topley Bird on ‘Deflect’ seems comparatively straightforward and lacking bite (emphasised by the uglier, more invasive presence of excoriating electric guitars).

The cover of ‘Norwegian Wood’ seems to have divided opinion somewhat, but I think it’s a major highlight of this set. First of all, it’s an appropriate choice of song, despite its potential over-familiarity. Leila’s clever layering of Luca Santucci’s vocals results in a novel and fascinating new interpretation of Lennon’s melody. Any cover version should aspire to re-imagining a song and investing it with new life and meaning, and that is precisely what Leila and Santucci have done here. This version is laced with fear and foreboding, entirely in keeping with the album’s overall mood and themes.

There are a small clutch of mis-steps here, not least ‘Little Acorns’, where the light-hearted playfulness feels a little forced and incongruous. The beats on this track also sound a little dated and could easily have been transplanted from a Bentley Rhythm Ace record. Mercifully, the rest of the album sounds as potentially timeless as music reliant on technology can feasibly sound. ‘Young Ones’, essentially a skeletal piano recital, might assist the album’s dreamy mood, but it feels a trifle superfluous. Perhaps ‘Blood, Looms and Glooms’ is just a fraction overlong – and some more rigorous editing might have marked it out as Leila’s most ambitious and successful record so far. It’s still a terrific record in spite of this though – very different in tone and shape from its predecessors, but sustaining their inventiveness and intrigue.

* Long gone are the days when the NME could still be an influential pointer in the direction of albums such as that!

The Problem of Evil

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)

One can usually rely on Anthony Quinn, The Independent’s regular film critic, to write a pithy sentence that sums up what so often goes wrong with movie criticism. ‘The Dark Knight’ (the second of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films) is, according to Quinn, a film with a ‘schizoid personality’ in which high-minded art and blockbusting entertainment are constantly fighting against each other. No, no, and thrice no! What Nolan has achieved here is to prove once and for all that intelligent cinema and populist moviemaking needn’t be two mutually exclusive extremes. That he does this so brilliantly and effortlessly with this film has made me rethink my fears that this once promising director might never make a film as original and effective as ‘Following’ or ‘Memento’ again. If he can work this much magic through merely reinventing a franchise, let him make an entire career from doing so.

Excellent though it was, ‘Batman Begins’ basically elaborated the origins of Bruce Wayne’s invention of Batman that were hinted at in Tim Burton’s film from 1989, albeit with added ninja training. When I first heard that this film would again feature The Joker as its central villain, I feared that it would end up being a straight remake of that more fantastical film. Burton gave the Joker a human identity in the character of Jack Napier, who in falling into a giant vat of acid in the Axis Chemical Factory, became hideously disfigured. This version of the Joker, performed with a combination of maniacal glee and hints of psychological vulnerability by the late Heath Ledger, is a much more complicated beast. Perhaps scarred and traumatised by his father, he has deep-rooted troubles, but his back-story undergoes subtle modifications every time he enthusiastically relates it. He terrorises simply for the fun of it and poses elaborate moral problems for the film’s central characters. With ‘The Dark Knight’, Nolan actually tears up every rule that has ever informed the superhero genre, crafting elaborate situations and personal stories that deeply involve us in the film’s action and themes. By the film’s devastating conclusion, the whole moral compass on which the Batman legend is founded has been audaciously distorted.

Another notable contrast with the Burton films is in appearance. Burton made his Gotham City look like a richly imagined gothic nightmare – Nolan’s Gotham looks more like a convincing modern urban landscape. Whilst the film mostly avoids recognisable landmarks (save for a breathtaking sequence filmed in Trump Tower), it was shot on location in Chicago, and its dizzying aerial panoramas, convoys and chase sequences demonstrate the visible influence of Michael Mann. In fact, in appearance, this film probably most closely resembles later Mann works such as ‘Collateral’ or ‘Miami Vice’. It’s therefore not just the banal day-glo comic book capers of the Joel Schumacher movies than Nolan has succeeded in banishing. He’s also managed to break free from the more credible Burton vision too and, in doing so, has crafted an intriguing and distinct style far removed from any of the previous instalments in the franchise, even his own. The audience for this film will find themselves immediately immersed in a completely fresh world, depicted in a surprisingly vivid and effective cinematic language.

As if to stake its claim to standard action movie terrain, ‘The Dark Knight’ begins with a dramatic and impressively novel bank heist, notable for its succession of domino killings that enable the Joker to be the only participant to leave alive with the money. But this showpiece introduction really only hints at the evil to come (at this stage the Joker is still a player in a Mob crime game) and the movie immediately veers on a tangent to address its first philosophical question. The Gotham City of this movie is one in a state of confusion leading to crisis. The very nature of vigilante justice is being questioned – why has ‘The Batman’ (initially that definite article is crucial) become the self-appointed guardian of the city? Can he in fact be blamed for the deaths of innocents and policemen? Why can other ordinary citizens not replicate his success? (The usually malevolent Cillian Murphy makes an amusing and understated cameo as one who tries and fails).

As the plot twists and turns through an epic 152 minute running time (which turns out to be not a minute too long – every unexpected development is justified), we’re introduced to myriad thorny psychological issues. There’s the love triangle between Bruce Wayne, District Attorney Harvey Dent (played with handsome righteousness by the perennially underrated Aaron Eckhart) and his assistant Rachel Dawes (the increasingly ubiquitous Maggie Gyllenhaal). Then there’s the cumulative self-doubt afflicting Bruce Wayne as Batman: Can he commit the necessary evil in order to achieve the common good? Is it even right that he should do so or does Gotham really need its ‘White Knight’ – protection with a human, democratic and accountable face in the form of D.A. Dent? In between these three is Gary Oldman’s Lieutenant Gordon, totally driven in his commitment to dealing with the criminals, but in denial about the corruption in his ranks.

Mapping out a plot summary is pointless, given that this film is not really about its narrative, relentlessly driving though it undoubtedly is. It is instead about the complex nature of moral questions and it paints a daringly intricate and nuanced picture where good and evil seduce each other rather than simply fight it out. The philosophical problem of evil is that we can’t understand what is good without first appreciating what is evil. In Gotham City, it’s clear that this also works in reverse. ‘Of course I don’t want to kill you’, says the Joker to Batman. ‘You complete me.’ The battle of good and evil here is not a simplistic conflict with an inevitable outcome – instead, as the Joker puts it so eloquently, it’s ‘what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object’. It’s never entirely clear which is which.

Thrown into this potent mix is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, the nature of which would be far too great a spoiler to reveal. It’s enough to say that it throws the movie on to a major new trajectory, with one of its characters corrupted on a path of targeted vengeance and its supposed hero questioning all his prejudices and preconceptions. What we’re left with is a superhero movie where the superhero is perched on the precipice of abrogating his responsibility – or at best keen to create the conditions where such a renunciation is the best outcome. Then there are the supporting characters – who all play quite significant roles. Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox designs innovative technology for Wayne Enterprises but eventually finds his personal principles deeply compromised. Alfred the Butler, played with insight and economy by Michael Caine, hides some crucial but inevitably dispiriting information from Bruce Wayne. Presiding over all this psychological and political mayhem is Ledger’s Joker – a man who consciously chooses chaos, has no rational plan and relishes his own insanity. In some senses, Christian Bale’s Batman is simply a cog in a much bigger machine.

The film’s conclusion is every bit as complicated as it appears – and both the forces of good and evil can lay claim to some kind of victory. But whilst the positive view of the human community holds sway, the individual bastions of moral virtue have all been called into question and been demonstrated to have significant flaws. Some of the lines from the surprisingly poetic script stick in the mind. Alfred claims that ‘some people just want to watch the world burn’ – although in the case of the Joker, he seems to want to ignite the flames too. The Joker himself claims that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stranger’ and, as part of the final confrontation, Harvey Dent pronounces that ‘you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain’. It’s a doom-laden proposition that neatly encapsulates the doubt, ambiguity and uncertainty at the core of this film’s unique vision. This film makes the pseudo-philosophy of The Matrix look like a pretentious sham. I need to watch it again – but I suspect it may turn out to be the closest the superhero genre has come to producing a masterpiece.

Even worse than Anthony Quinn’s simplistic assessment is an extraordinarily dim-witted and pretentious article published today on The Guardian website by David Cox, complaining that the film has nothing to say about terrorism and cannot be a fable for our times. On all the key questions, Cox moans, the film is ‘determinedly ambiguous’. Aside from the fact that even Cox himself concedes that this is entirely the point, is it really the job of thriller film-makers to determine what is right and wrong in the current global political climate? The film asks moral questions of its audience as well as its characters, and credits the viewer with enough intelligence to make their own judgments as to whether the use of blanket surveillance, physical abuse and a form of extraordinary rendition are justifiable methods to deal with an unreasonable evil that knows no bounds. After all, in the times we live in now, these are issues we need to consider, rather than merely sleepwalking into allowing our democratically elected leaders to make all the assessments themselves, without being held to account. Ludicrous though it may sound, perhaps this morally complex and inconclusive fantasy might be more provocative than all the sanctimonious preaching Michael Moore can muster.

Mercury Shortlist Announced

So here it is then:

Adele - '19'
British Sea Power - 'Do You Like Rock Music?'
Burial - 'Untrue'
Elbow - 'The Seldom Seen Kid'
Estelle - 'Shine'
The Last Shadow Puppets - 'The Age Of The Understatement'
Laura Marling - 'Alas I Cannot Swim'
Neon Neon - 'Stainless Style'
Portico Quartet - 'Knee-Deep In The North Sea'
Robert Plant And Alison Krauss – 'Raising Sand'
Radiohead - 'In Rainbows'
Rachel Unthank And The Winterset – 'The Bairns'

I proved right on Portico Quartet. Sorry to the good people at the Vortex, who I love dearly - but I simply do not think the hype around this band is credible. Their much vaunted minimalism is nothing new, and the quality of the musicianship and improvising is well beneath some of the other more exciting British Jazz acts. Very disappointing to see them nominated above Gwilym Simcock (the only young British jazz musician of truly international standing right now - is it not a travesty that he is not recognised by the industry here?),Outhouse, Finn Peters, Neil Cowley, Empirical, John Surman et al.

No Portishead?!?!?!?! No Robert Wyatt?!?! No Elvis Costello (another one I neglected to mention in the earlier post, silly me)?!?! Good for Robert Plant and Radiohead, but otherwise the list once again emphasises marketeable youth over established maturity and artistry. Have Laura Marling and Adele even come close to making the best British releases of the past twelve months? No, of course not.

Good to see Burial and Elbow on the list. I wonder whether Burial might actually win it - such a decision would go some way to restoring the award's credibility. Laura Marling as an outside bet, but I fear it would curse the young girl's career far too early!

This list does not even begin to reflect the diversity and quality of contemporary British music. However, I'm grateful for the small mercy that Adele is the only one of my major objections to make the list!

The Mercury Rises Yet Again

Oh dear, is it that time of year again already? Here are the NME’s possible shortlisted albums, many of them predictably ghastly:

Adele – '19'
Babyshambles – 'Shotter's Nation'
British Sea Power – 'Do You Like Rock Music?'
Burial – 'Untrue'
Coldplay – 'Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends'
Duffy – 'Rockferry'
Elbow – 'The Seldom Seen Kid'
The Enemy – 'We'll Live And Die In These Towns'
Estelle – 'Shine'
Foals – 'Antidotes'
Future Of The Left – 'Curses'
The Futureheads – 'This Is Not The World'
Hot Chip – 'Made In The Dark'
Jamie Lidell – 'Jim'
Johnny Flynn – 'A Larum'
Kate Nash – 'Made Of Bricks'
Kids In Glass Houses – 'Smart Casual'
The Kills – 'Midnight Boom'
The Last Shadow Puppets – 'The Age Of The Understatement'
Laura Marling – 'Alas I Cannot Swim'
Lightspeed Champion – 'Falling Off The Lavender Bridge'
Los Campesinos! – 'Hold On Now Youngster'
MIA – 'Kala'
Mystery Jets – '21'
Neon Neon – 'Stainless Style'
The Pigeon Detectives – 'Emergency'
Portishead – 'Third'
Radiohead – 'In Rainbows'
Spiritualized – 'Songs In A&E'
These New Puritans – 'Beat Pyramid'
The Ting Tings – 'We Started Nothing'
Tricky – 'Knowle West Boy'
Wiley – 'Grime Wave'
The Wombats – 'The Wombats Proudly Present... A Guide To Love, Loss And Desperation'

Some albums I wouldn’t object to seeing nominated:

Outhouse – Outhouse (have Loop paid the entry fee?)
Finn Peters – Butterflies
James Blackshaw – Litany of Echoes
Portishead – Third
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Neon Neon – Stainless Style
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (this and the above are one half British!)
Hot Chip – Made In The Dark
Burial – Untrue
Leila – Blood, Looms and Blooms
The Bug – London Zoo
Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
Polar Bear – Polar Bear (not released until 28th July so possibly ineligible)
Django Bates – Spring is Here, Shall We Dance (he’s based in Copenhagen, but still British!)
Wild Beasts – Limbo, Panto
Alexander Tucker – Portal
Gwilym Simcock – Perception
Chris T-T – Capital
Neil Cowley Trio – Loud…Louder…Stop!
Robert Wyatt – Comicopera (I think this was too late for last year….)
Sylvie Lewis – Translations
Boxcutter – Glyphic
Empirical – Empirical
Paris Motel – In The Salpetriere
Kevin Ayers – The Unfairground
PJ Harvey – White Chalk
Voice of the Seven Woods – Voice of the Seven Woods
Acoustic Triangle – 3 Dimensions

Updated: Some other albums I should have mentioned

Autechre - Quaristice
Benga - Diary of an Afro Warrior (the less predictable but equally worthy dubstep option)
Jonny Greenwood - There Will Be Blood (would be intriguing if this were nominated over Radiohead!)
Philip Jeck - Sand
The Long Blondes - Couples
Sian Alice Group - 59.59 (go on, nominate this over Spiritualized!)
Super Furry Animals - Hey Venus (bit underrated, this, I reckon)
John Surman/Howard Moody - Rain on the Window
School of Language - Sea From Shore (no-one has noticed this!)

Unfortunately, I’m predicting that the token jazz nod might go to the vastly overrated Portico Quartet.

Things I definitely do not wish to see nominated: Predictable bland indie tripe (hello Wombats, Pigeon Detectives, The Enemy, Babyshambles, even Foals), disappointing comebacks (Spiritualized), overrated singers (Adele, Kate Nash).

If the list is inevitably going to reflect the mainstream primarily, then I would happily back Portishead or Radiohead as worthy winners.

Here are the albums I think are most likely to be nominated: Laura Marling, Duffy,
Burial (if kode 9 entered it), Portishead, Radiohead, MIA, Ting Tings, Foals, Last Shadow Puppets, Adele, Portico Quartet or Empirical

'Just a man still workin' for your smile'

Leonard Cohen, London O2 Arena, 17/07/08

There has been much speculation about the motivations for Leonard Cohen’s World Tour being purely financial, with the great singer-songwriter having been duped out of a substantial sum by a duplicitous accountant. The extortionate ticket prices certainly bolstered such arguments, although one can hardly blame Cohen if his promoters exploit a market currently riding high on inflated prices. There’s no hint of money-grabbing in the performance itself though – which at two and a half hours of consistent quality is warm, spirited and generous.

Cohen may be 74 years old but he bounds on to the stage in the sprightly manner of a mere whippersnapper. ‘It’s been a long time since I was last on a stage in London’, he admits, before quipping ‘it was fourteen years ago, I was sixty years old, just a kid with a crazy dream…’ His wry and ironic sense of humour, so often missed by those who caricature him as dour and miserable, is in full bloom tonight. He apologises for ‘not dying’ and claims that, although he spent much time studying the major philosophies and religions, ‘cheerfulness kept breaking through’.

He is a consummate gentleman throughout, addressing the audience as ‘friends’, and frequently removing his splendid fedora in appreciation of his musicians’ individual contributions. If the vast and frankly unpleasant O2 Arena is hardly the most suitable of venues for this kind of subtle and nuanced performance, Cohen makes light of it. ‘It’s good to be gathered here’, he says, ‘on just the other side of intimacy’. Nevertheless, I still felt fortunate to have a seat in the second row of the stalls rather than being stuck in the top tier of the back corner, as I had been for Bruce Springsteen last December.

From the gentle, swaying opener ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love’ to the concluding ‘I Tried To Leave You’, it’s clear that Cohen still cares about all these remarkable songs. He doesn’t mess with the arrangements quite as much as Bob Dylan does these days, but he frequently alters phrasing and dynamics to suit his deepened voice. That being said, this is not the hushed whisper of the ‘Dear Heather’ album, which frequently allowed his chorus of ‘angels’ to do most of the work. Instead, it’s a committed and strong instrument that powerfully communicates the weightiness and insight of his words.

Cohen has never been the most energetic of performers, but tonight there’s a physical quality to his delivery that enhances the effect of these songs. Sometimes he’s down on one knee, serenading the seated Javier Mas, whose Spanish guitar and bandurria statements provide many of the highlights of these tasteful arrangements. Sometimes his eyes are tightly closed, as if searching for a new and deeper meaning in these well-worn songs – sometimes he is clenching his fist in pure determination.

The two sets mostly favour the period from his mid-80s reinvention onwards. The material from ‘I’m Your Man’, despite the album’s deliberately stilted production, still sounds remarkably fresh, sometimes even jovial (particularly in the case of the title track and ‘Tower of Song’). By way of contrast, the songs from ‘The Future’, many of which have a biting political edge, sound frighteningly prescient and immediate, even though that album first emerged way back in 1992. In fact, these songs are crucial to the ebb and flow of the set, as they provide a little energy and bombast to punctuate the otherwise languid and reflective mood. Critics of Cohen’s albums from ‘Various Positions’ onwards have tended to find the cheesy programmed arrangements with budget instrumentation too substantial an obstacle. How hilarious, then, that ‘Tower of Song’ genuinely seems to be built from a preset beat on a Technics organ! The line about being born with a golden voice gets a predictable cheer but even better is Cohen’s concluding joke about discovering the meaning of life in the song’s refrain (‘do-dum-dum-dum-de-do-dum-dum’).

There are selections from his classic, more folky years though, some very predictable and unavoidable (‘Suzanne’, ‘Bird on a Wire’, ‘So Long, Marianne’), others more surprising (a fervent version of ‘Who By Fire’ and a mesmerising ‘The Gypsy’s Wife’). These songs are served well by these delicate and refined full band arrangements, and Cohen’s delivery sometimes adopts a more soulful hue as a result, particularly on a slow and impassioned ‘Bird on a Wire’. The band’s contributions are elegant and complementary, from Bob Metzger’s lyrical guitar flourishes to Dino Soldo’s audacious blasts of high-end saxophone and harmonica.

Crucial to any Cohen performance will always be the interaction between his full-blooded recitations and the softer, enchanting tones of his female backing singers. His regular collaborator Sharon Robinson has a voice full of feeling and sensitivity, thoroughly deserving of its highlighting on ‘Boogie Street’ and ‘I Tried To Leave You’, whilst Britain’s Webb Sisters do an admirable job of providing the sweet, honey-drenched choruses.

The greatest appreciation is reserved for ‘Hallelujah’, a deeply moving song that has grown in stock through interpretations from artists such as Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, John Cale and kd Lang. Cohen is transparently touched by the belated recognition, as he is by the audience remaining on their feet throughout the three encores. He thoroughly deserves the appreciation though – this is a performance that exceeds all expectation and breathes yet more life into these outstanding songs. The audience clearly do not want it to end and neither, it appears, does Cohen himself. He makes old-age look like something to embrace rather than fear.

All The Fun of the Fair

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

Flying Lotus – Los Angeles (Warp, 2008)

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

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

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

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

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

Thank You – Terrible Two (Thrill Jockey, 2008)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alexander Tucker – Portal (ATP, 2008)

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

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

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

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


Neon – Here to There (Basho, 2008)

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

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

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

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (Bella Union, 2008)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drunk on Sunshine and Mirth

Django Bates and Stormchaser – Spring is Here (Shall We Dance?) (Lost Marble, 2008)

With a characteristic tinge of self-importance, Keith Jarrett once declared that his music was ‘the end result of a process that has nothing to do with music’. Whilst he hasn’t abandoned composition completely like Jarrett, one senses that Britain’s great Pianist and Composer Django Bates shares a similar outlook. Most of the pieces on this outstanding album are inspired by concepts and ideas – from the ‘pointlessness’ of borders and boundaries, to the ‘incendiary nature of love’.

From these springboards come arrangements of quite extraordinary dexterity and audacity, full of rhythmic complexity and imaginative harmony. Yet Bates’ great skill as a composer is to make the fiendishly intricate sound effortless, light and entertaining. There are few jazz musicians with such a dry and elaborate sense of humour and fewer still who dare to make that sense of comedy an intrinsic part of their creations.

Common critiques of jazz music from those who find it a closed world open only to scholars and academics suggest that it sometimes seems like a music with a limited emotional and textural range, and that it is often too serious to be considered approachable. Appreciators of the music would of course dismiss this as nonsense – but Bates of course responds with superior intelligence, actually taking the trouble to craft a music that is both intellectually demanding and physically exciting.

If there’s any kind of precedent for this thrilling music, it might be found in George Russell’s superb extended compositions for jazz orchestras or the grand majesty of Keith Tippett’s Centipede but Bates’ irreverence places him squarely in a category of his own. Particularly impressive is his innovative use of voices, which are carefully woven into the detailed tapestry of his music, and treated as instruments in their own right. On ‘The Right to Smile’ (brilliantly dedicated to the Russian man who won the legal right to smile in his passport photo), Bates declares his loathing of nationalism by gleefully deconstructing a string of recognisable national anthems, including our own. The short interlude ‘Early Bloomer’ is essentially a choral work, but with harmonic progressions that play havoc with the conventions of sacred music.

As ever Bates is manically hyperactive, packing as many ideas and layers as possible into dense sound collages. On ‘May Day’, he throws in some short hints at African music. Many find Bates’ constant joviality and mirth irritating, but he has the musicality to make it all compelling. It’s a bold assertion in itself that this form of intensely composed music is mutually exclusive from any sense of immediacy or fun. On ‘Something Less Soothing’, the speech is apparently delivered over something referred to as ‘Django’s Secret Pop Song’, which is in fact performed by some of Britain’s most accomplished jazz musicians (including Martin France and Michael Modesir). Bates even plays with the contested nature of what constitutes musical immediacy with the asymmetric contortions of ‘Subjective Hooks’.

It’s baffling then that British jazz critics, showing a misguided blanket distrust of all whimsy or humour, have reacted so negatively to Bates’ wisecracking. Perhaps this explains why he now bases himself in Copenhagen, at that city’s wonderfully named Conservatory of Rhythmic Music. It now seems customary in this country to attempt to undermine the national success of some of our greatest talents through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness of opinion. One star reviews in The Times and The Independent for this record seem churlish and childish in the extreme. Could these writers compose at this level? This is music that is rich in joy and euphoria – a critique of the ills of the world that also has the imagination and spirit to celebrate what is magical about humanity.

How to Reappear Uniquely

Radiohead, Victoria Park, London 24th June 2008

These shows in Victoria Park may have been Radiohead’s biggest UK concert performances outside the festival circuit, but that certainly didn’t direct the group to offer any concessions to mainstream popularity. From the choice of support act (the self-conscious and quirky Bat For Lashes had clearly read too much Angela Carter) to the unpredictable focus of their own setlist, the group continue to do everything on their own terms.

They are now a stadium rock group without ‘hits’. Whilst Thom Yorke’s alienation-by-numbers lyrics (he dismisses some of them as ‘nonsense’ himself during the show) frequently make the group an easy target for criticism, the harmonic and rhythmic innovation of their music more than compensates for this. Perhaps their universal acclaim merely shows the paucity of original rock music in this country, or hints at an overly-conservative music industry in decline, but I prefer to accentuate the positive.

The set helps cement my view that ‘In Rainbows’ is their most consistent album – all but one of its songs are included in the show. Some of them work superbly, whilst others sound a little too meticulous. The latter point seems particularly true of the show’s opening stint, which seems a little highly crafted and lacking in chemistry, Ed O’ Brien frequently relegated to shaking percussion and little communication with the audience. ’15 Step’ is an ingenious recording, but on stage it sounds like too close a replication – a more ragged and spirited reading might have been preferable. Similarly, ‘Bodysnatchers’, which sounds so gnarly and nasty on disc, seems to drag a bit in this highly disciplined performance.

It does get going eventually though, and turns into a pretty inspired and intense performance. Although there’s a suitably eerie ‘Pyramid Song’ before it, the turning point for me came with a determinedly linear and transcendent ‘Arpeggi/Weird Fishes’, the volume at last audible over the hoards of angry teenagers singing along. This track proves that the group work best when they exploit the chemistry between Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’ Brien. Too often, O’Brien is left doing very little.

From this point on, there’s very little messing about between sets, the various keyboards and synths being wheeled on and off-stage with ruthless efficiency and Thom Yorke rarely addressing the crowd other than with the occasional thank you. There’s a meaty, forceful version of ‘There There’ on which O’Brien and Greenwood join in with the drum-thumping, and Yorke’s voice rings out beautifully. It reminds me what a great song it is, and how I simply can’t understand those who found it underwhelming on release. ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ is presaged by Yorke leading a ‘Free Tibet’ chant, and it’s surprising how well this restrained mood piece works in live performance.

In fact, the selections from the ‘Kid A’ through to ‘Hail To The Thief’ period are particularly inspired. ‘The Gloaming’ was never my favourite track on record – a little too mechanistic and soulless, perhaps. In this performance though, it is both demented and terrifying, Thom Yorke dancing manically, arms flailing everywhere. It benefits from a more organic, percussive treatment. ‘Dollars and Cents’ is spindly, slow burning but also hypnotic. ‘The National Anthem’ actually sounds far more appealing without its tacked on bit of free-jazz skronking, a style of performance the band seem to have absorbed but not really digested.

The choices from further back are less predictable. ‘OK Computer’ is represented only by the dignified and elegant reading of ‘The Tourist’ and the claustrophobic ‘Climbing Up The Walls’, one of many tracks ushered in tonight by radio static and sampled voices. It bathes the park in an atmosphere of creeping menace. There’s no ‘Paranoid Android’, ‘Karma Police’, ‘Exit Music’ or ‘Let Down’. From ‘The Bends’, we get ‘Just’ and ‘Planet Telex’ alone (no ‘High and Dry’ or ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, but neither of these songs were great losses for me). The former sends the crowd totally wild, but it sounds limited and dated when placed next to there far more adventurous later material.

The superb encores feature some curveball selections. Yorke performs a solo version of ‘Cymbal Rush’ at the piano, there’s a deeply sinister ‘You and Whose Army’ and a furious, highly intense charge through ‘Bangers and Mash’ which features Yorke attacking a mini drum kit at the front of the stage, with admirable gusto. Closing the set with ‘Idioteque’ was a moment of total inspiration.

Wednesday’s set was apparently considerably more predictable, with the likes of ‘Karma Police’, ‘My Iron Lung’ and ‘Paranoid Android’ all included, at the expense of anything from ‘Amnesiac’. I think we got the better set, but I guess many would disagree. It certainly wasn’t the kind of set tailored for the vastness of the crowd, and there was a notable degree of restlessness in parts of the audience. The visuals were effective though, with some maverick camera work, day-glo tubular lights (apparently carbon saving?!?) and plenty of bold primary colour on screen. It was a pretty singular return to the big stage – they seem to respect their audience’s ability to progress with them.

Female Intuition

Lykke Li - Youth Novels (LL Recordings, 2008)
Joan as Police Woman - To Survive (Pias/Reveal, 2008)

Swedish pop singer Lykke Li’s debut album does not begin very auspiciously. ‘Melodies and Desires’ is a spoken word piece set to a predictably dreamy soundscape and dominated by clichés such as ‘you be the rhythm and I’ll be the beat’. Mercifully, things get considerably better once the rather earnest preliminaries are dispatched. Indeed, much of the rest of the album is charming and idiosyncratic. Li’s voice seems a little twinkly and cutesy on first listen but, given time, it reveals itself to be more versatile and malleable than on surface appearance.

Occasionally, her high pitched tones are capable of disarming tenderness, particularly on the more vulnerable tracks that define the album’s finishing straight (‘Everybody But Me’, ‘Time Flies’). More transparently, her voice communicates uncertainty, tension and hesitation, as well as those little moments of simple joy that pop music frequently captures so well.

On ‘Dance Dance Dance’, she establishes herself as the anti-Shakira, confessing ‘my hips they lie, ‘cos in reality I’m shy, shy, shy’. The song is also an effective curtain-raiser musically, introducing as it does Li’s peculiar phrasing and articulation, as well as her predilection for delicate percussion and ornate vocal arrangements. Stylistically, she veers in several directions on this album, with scant respect for genre, but these instrumental quirks remain a consistent thread.

‘Youth Novels’ is unusual among pop albums in that it is somehow both immediate and slow building, gradually revealing additional layers of complexity with each play. It’s appealingly familiar and infectious, yet quirky enough to sound quite unlike most other pop music of the moment.

Where Li is frequently playful and zesty, Joan Wasser’s second album is a satisfying serving of female sensuality. Given her connections with Antony Hegarty and Rufus Wainwright, I’d rather inaccurately had Joan as Policewoman pegged as a torch act. The bulk of ‘To Survive’, with her voice as elegant as it is dominant, reveals this impression to be false.

Apparently composed in the aftermath of her mother’s death, the album has a mournful tone and a languid, unhurried pace – but it also serves as a celebration and a statement of emotional ambition and hope. Her great skill as a singer is that, amidst the highly refined dinner club atmosphere (which reminds me of a more single-minded Feist), she manages to impose herself in a manner that is often arresting or enchanting.

Much of ‘To Survive’ is deceptive in its stark simplicity, from the skeletal chords and almost childlike left hand piano line that opens ‘Honor Wishes’, to the direct and unadorned nature of the lyrics. Within this alarmingly straightforward template, Wasser manages to tease out insightful statements of feeling, both through words and music.

David Sylvian’s ghostly backing vocals add a sense of mystery and introspection to ‘Honor Wishes’, on which Wasser perceptively asks this troubling question: ‘will you love me and not just my need to be loved?’ Even the relatively jaunty ‘Holiday’ is made more intriguing and questing by its arrangement, fluid guitar interjections and silky backing vocals adding to the luxurious texture. In its final third, it builds into something more dissonant and confusing, with an underlying unease that bursts the bubble of its dreams of escape.

Much of the rest of the album captures something modern pop music too often ignores – human intimacy. There’s a consistent sense of the unique sense of ownership that comes with private moments (‘this night’s fantastic and it’s ours my dear!’) and a wise acceptance that mistakes can lead to erotic and romantic fulfilment. In that sense, the controlled nature of the music, together with the subtle nature of the performances themselves, seems absolutely appropriate.

‘To Be Lonely’ neatly encapsulates the paradox at the heart of relationships – with Joan asserting that she has found the one ‘to be lonely with’. A relationship can be just as isolated as a solitary existence in its own way, and that isolation often requires some compromise or sacrifice (‘this is the one…I will try…’). It’s a disarming and lucid statement, on which Wasser sounds naked in her honesty.

‘To Survive’ doesn’t leave too lingering an impression on first listen. It seems too calm, too dignified and too controlled. Further listens reveal the triumph that comes through desperation, both in the purity and clarity of her singing and the meticulous execution of the arrangements. There’s the calling of the strings as they enter halfway through ‘To Be Lonely’ or the gradually emerging horns of ‘Magpies’, capturing the sense of rebirth Wasser hints at in the lyrics.

She escapes her intimate cocoon only on ‘Furious’ and the startling closing track ‘To America’ which features a surprisingly unobtrusive guest appearance from Rufus. On the former, she is astounded by her rage, and quizzical as to why there seem to be so few others who share it. The latter embarks on an unusual and unpredictable journey from minimal ballad to startling oom-pah assault.

‘To Survive’ is at once fragile and stalwart, a shimmering and beautiful beacon of a record. It also comes with a quite enchanting cover image, a nude Joan visible only from the shoulders, in profile and looking majestic and radiant in spite of the sepia palette. It’s a neat artistic summation of her achievement with this album – she stands bold and imperious against a deceptively smooth, muted background.

My Massive Attack Meltdown

'I wouldn't wish a Massive Attack Meltdown on anyone', quips the drummer from Fleet Foxes, a charming and endearing band with a tendency to hide behind their considerable volume of hair. 'It sounds like a terrible psychiatric disorder'. Judging by the evidence so far, I'd have a Massive Attack Meltdown every summer if I could. The group have picked such a fascinating and balanced selection of live acts for this year's festival that they've risked making themselves seem like the least audacious proposition in their own line-up, particularly given their paucity of output over the last ten years (er, just the one new record and still waiting for the much-delayed 'Weather Underground').

Fleet Foxes seem completely overwhelmed that they've been invited to play a venue of the size and significance of the Festival Hall and no doubt its rather staid and serious atmosphere baffles them too. There's a lot of joking around between songs, and a general bewilderment at just how quickly Britain has embraced them. It's easy to see why this has happened - Robin Peckold has a voice that is at once sharp and warm, closely resembling Jim James from My Morning Jacket, although they lack that band's classic rawk predilections, instead crafting something more rustic and traditional. Their harmonies are precisely and intricately arranged, but the resulting collective timbre is also deeply compelling. The songs, particularly 'Oliver James' and 'Your Protector' seem more like stories than poems. Sometimes the lyrics are frustratingly forced - like the group are trying to capture some kind of folk ideal, preoccupied by nature and ritual. But the music has a soulful edge too, and the playing is consistently inspired, primal and beautiful.

Elbow therefore have a task on their hands, but they step up to the plate with admirable wit and charm. The first part of their set is dominated by material from new album 'The Seldom Seen Kid' and its predecessor 'Leaders of the Free World' and the songs sound both more precise and more beefy in their live incarnations. The group display their musicality eagerly, but also unpretentiously and Garvey's voice, both towering and believable, continues to mature. Many of these songs have real emotional power, and the title track from 'Leaders of the Free World' is much more potent and righteous in concert than on record.

About an hour into the show, they surprise us all by bringing on a substantial male voice choir, who creep on to the stage singing the chorus from 'Any Day Now'. It's a wonderful touch that immediately imbues this show with a special, one-off significance, as well as a real sense of fun. Garvey apologises for not being able to introduce the choir members individually, instead promising to refer to them collectively as 'Jeff', a commitment he dutifully upholds throughout the show. The whole project coalesces brilliantly on a simmering version of 'Starlings', the opening track from the new album, with the alarming horn bursts played not just from the stage, but from a number of the audience boxes. It's followed by an outrageously stirring 'New Born', with a protracted coda where the group make a feature of the venue's giant pipe organ. It could comfortably have gone on even longer.

The home straight of the show favours the band's terrace anthem singalong moments a bit too much for my taste, although 'Grace Under Pressure' sustains my interest chiefly through its rhythmic intricacy. 'One Day Like This', however, which closes an otherwise excellent performance, crosses the line into inspid cliche for me ('it's gonna be a beautiful day' etc - we can leave that to U2, can't we?).

I went to Thursday night's performance from Grace Jones with very modest expectations. So volatile and prone to diva-ish behaviour is this statuesque superstar that I'd half expected something of a Sly Stone experience. Would she mime or sing only to backing tracks? Would she be characteristically late on stage, and deliver a performance of larcenous brevity? What she in fact treated us to couldn't have been further from my fears. Her performance was at times bizarre, wickedly funny, outrageous, kitschy and flamboyant - all to be expected. But it was also a brilliantly executed statement rejuvenating her, at the grand age of 60 (but looking barely half that age), as one of pop music's most iconic figures.

She is introduced by a promo clip for a new song 'Corporate Cannibal' that offers a timely reminder of her terrifying magnetism. 'I consume my consumers', she intones creepily, 'without any sense of humour...I'm a man-eating machine'. Underneath her, the music seems to have taken something of an industrial turn, but the song's churning monotony offers an apposite sense of dread. Then, finally, a screen rises, her precision perfect band launch into the menacing dub of 'Nightclubbing' and she is revealed holding on to the rails of a platform for dear life. At the song's conclusion, she slithers provocatively down the stairs, and it starts to become clear that Grace Jones means to reclaim her lost status tonight.

Always realising the significance of image for a pop singer, she makes an exit from the stage after each and every song to make some alteration to her costume. There's all manner of elaborate headgear, masks and a worryingly thin g-string. Jones' most shrewd and perceptive attribute was to make her striking and androgynous image part of a more complete package - where music, appearance and vocal character artistically intertwine. Each new costume seems to bring with it a slightly different personality (she threatens to 'come out naked' at one stage). Her performance is highly physical and confrontational but also strangely self-deprecating and genuinely appreciating of the audience (at the end, she screams 'F*ck You! I love you all!' repeatedly - her peculiar method of showing her affection).

She keeps her promise to perform new material tonight - from an upcoming album to be released in September on the Wall of Sound label. She forgets the words, and ends up improvising - but the material sounds aggressive and life-affirming in equal measure, and stands up remarkably well when pitted against a raft of classic material. In this two-hour plus show, she hardly misses anything out - we get an hilarious patois introduction to 'My Jamaican Guy', a sensual 'Private Life', a theatrical 'La Vie En Rose', a relentless 'Demolition Man' and a thrilling 'Love Is The Drug'.

During a near perfect recreation of the intoxicating funk of 'Pull Up To The Bumper', she invites a stage invation. Fifty in the audience are reckless enough to accept her request - one tries to touch her and is quickly put back in their place: 'Nobody touches me, but me!' she commands and, quite frankly, no-one would ever dare to argue. She returns to clash a set of giant cymbals through a potent, slithering 'Warm Leatherette' and concludes the show with perhaps her most well known song 'Slave To The Rhythm'.

Her band are simply fantastic - with total mastery of reggae and funk groove playing. What is perhaps even more impressive is the sheer force and imagination of her voice. Those who thought that she couldn't sing when recording in the disco years should now regret their assessment of her abilities. Her camp, unbridled belting of 'La Vie En Rose' was hugely effective.

With no shame whatsoever and with considerable style, Jones has brought her wilderness years to a defiant and spectacular close. The new material bodes well for the completion of a quite tremendous comeback.

On Friday, the double bill of Terry Callier and Aloe Blacc at the Queen Elizabeth Hall asserted the relaxed mastery of the headline act and exposed the limitations of his support. Aloe Blacc was ably supported by a dexterous and innovative drummer - but he appeared to be in the wrong band. Blacc's lyrics, whilst no doubt sincere, proved stiflingly earnest and reliant on cliche. It's all very well understanding the great history of black popular music but it's incumbent on a new artist to add their own contribution to it. Blacc's set seemed to me to be nothing more than a smash and grab raid on his noble influences.

Callier, meanwhile, was in another league. Callier is a singer of imperious and magesterial quality, but with a charming and friendly demeanour that made his entire performance seem effortless. Even now, his straddling of the intersections between folk, soul and jazz still sounds invigorating and original. There are a lot of passions in this music, both personal and political, and a refreshing openness characterises his writing. The timbre of his voice is naturally mellifluous, but he can sometimes cut through with real attack and vigour. His superb band are virtuoso musicians - legendary guitarist Jim Mullen, the expressive percussionist Bosco d'Oliviera and the quietly inventive drummer Nick France all among them. Callier wisely allows them plenty of space, but the group reward him by placing their expressive talents firmly in the service of his remarkable songs. His performance had far more force, power and authority than any of those mock-virtuosos from the Brit School or X-Factor crowds could muster.

The full line-up of this year's Meltdown Festival is an embarrassment of riches that shames most of the major summer festival line-ups for their lack of courage and conviction. Some wonderful acts I sadly have already missed or won't be able to catch - Flying Lotus, Dalek, Tom Tom Club, Leila and George Clinton.

Esbjorn Svensson Dead at 44

There have been a number of shocking deaths in the world of the arts over the last twelve months, but Swedish pianist and composer Esbjorn Svensson's death in a Scuba Diving Accident seems particularly tragic. His trio, est, divided opinion, with purists critical of Svensson's limited improvising chops and what they saw as their devaluation of jazz by combining it with performance techniques more familiar from stadium rock (light shows, smoke effects etc). Why such people seemed appalled that jazz could reach a seriously big audience has generally mystified me. What est were doing was massively positive - and Svensson was a sensitive musician and frequently inspired composer. EST could really groove, but they did this with a dignified restraint and remarkable calmness. Svensson contributed a great deal to the raised profile for European Jazz in the 1990s and beyond, and the group never recorded a bad album. I never got to see them live (and I now sincerely regret missing their concert with Polar Bear at the London Jazz Festival two years ago). I had been relishing the prospect of them touring again later in the year, as a new album had been scheduled for release. If that still emerges, it will very sadly be Svensson's last musical statement.

The Slender Threads of Critical Favour

Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (EMI, 2008)

I’ve been meaning to compose a calm, rational piece about Coldplay’s new album for the past few days but John Mulvey seems to have beaten me to it over at Wild Mercury Sound on the Uncut website. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I’m hardly a big fan of the group but my early animosity towards them has gradually tempered into something approaching indifference or even agnosticism. What completely baffles me about the response to ‘Viva La Vida’ is the sudden venomous assault on the group at a time when they have made what must be their most stimulating album.

This gives a false impression of the group as a critical punchbag – their previous three albums all received generous reviews which, in some cases (particularly with ‘Parachutes’ and ‘X and Y’) overstated both their quality and significance. So, ‘Viva La Vida’ appears to have become the ‘Be Here Now’ of the group’s catalogue – the record upon which the fickle opinion of critics suddenly turns (although even that record was rapturously received in the first instance). Incidentally, also like ‘Be Here Now’, ‘Viva La Vida’ is being released on a Thursday, but not this time coinciding with any public examination results. Those magazine critics at the plush music monthlies and even the broadsheet newspapers built them up, so - now that they’re a massively popular group with a singer married to a successful actress – they’ll have no qualms with knocking them down again. Or is it more that the fate of Guy Hands at least in part rests on the success of this album?

It clearly won’t work though, so ultimately there can be little point. ‘Viva La Vida’ has already racked up record iTunes pre-sales. So Andy Gill’s lengthy piece in the Independent, as much of a character assassination on Chris Martin as a fatuous dismissal of the band, seems like an indulgent waste of effort. His statement that he has never met anyone who liked Coldplay is just plain silly – many people I know like them, and not all of them are unadventurous automatons. Much of the ill feeling seems to be based on the fact that the group aren’t radical enough – even with that avant-garde master Brian Eno at the studio controls (although his own music recently has been far from innovative, and he hasn’t produced a truly original album in quite some time). Yet, by Chris Martin’s own admission, radicalism is hardly what the group is aiming at.

Instead, he has claimed the rather more modest goal of finding different and more interesting contexts for the group’s melodic sensibilities. Listening to Viva La Vida, which is, at least in part, a confident, atmospheric and stirring record, I think they may have come close to achieving this. In the past, Coldplay records tended to be focussed on either a set of plodding piano triads, or, much worse, multi-tracked guitars all chugging in exactly the same way, with unsubtle, strictly regimented drums joining in for the ride. It was a frequently tedious and resoundingly conventional formula. The recent single ‘Violet Hill’ backed up Martin’s statement. Whilst the insistent, pounding rhythm and appealing melody sounded familiar – the snarling, menacing guitar and bluesy inflections seemed imported from somewhere else - somewhere considerably more exciting.

On the rest of ‘Viva La Vida’, there are further notable changes. Keyboards are even more prominent than they were on ‘X and Y’, and the piano isn’t always merely laying down basic rhythm. The percussion tracks are more intricate and integral to the arrangements – and Jonny Buckland’s guitar often seeps in more for effect and texture than for foundation. The combination of bombastic organ and ritualistic percussion on ‘Lost’ is particularly striking, and a number of other tracks march along with military impetus. The album even begins with an instrumental that rather resembles The Cure at their most blissful and least dark. The epic medley of ‘Lovers in Japan’ and ‘Reign of Love’ is certainly bombastic – but it also has a rousing power absent from the group’s more turgid moments, borrowing liberally from the restless urgency of Arcade Fire. One of my favourite tracks here is ‘Strawberry Swing’, with its offbeat rhythms and circuitous looped guitars. It has an enticing mood, even if it is topped by some innocuous and banal lyrics.

It’s unclear whether or not it has been at the behest of Eno, but Martin has made some sort of conscious effort to restrain some of his vocal quirks here. His irritating tendency to flip suddenly into falsetto is mostly absent, and his voice is more understated and controlled throughout. On ‘Yes’ this leads to a rather nondescript and meandering song that makes the Eastern strings used in the arrangement sound rather like a desperate attempt to add interest. Similarly, its sudden lurch into a U2-apeing coda seems rather forced. On the excellent title track though, characterised by synth string chords, a pulsing heartbeat and mock-baroque flourishes, he sounds both purposeful and reflective and unusually unaffected. It’s rather unlike anything else the group has yet recorded and comfortably the highlight of their catalogue.

Of course, Martin won’t entirely abandon his preference for slothful balladry or suffocating blandness. ‘42’ will be more familiar to those fans who eagerly embraced ‘Trouble’ or ‘The Scientist’, although it admittedly has an interesting shape to its Beatles-esque melody. ‘Cemeteries of London’ merely adds a hint of folklore to an otherwise over-familiar form. They are not keen to challenge their audience too much.

Similarly, his lyrics remain a substantial handicap. The aforementioned ‘Strawberry Swing’ looks like poetry when compared with Martin’s series of monumental clangers as opening lines. ‘Just because I’m losing doesn’t mean I’m lost’ is merely characteristic of Martin’s frustrating emotional vagueness, but ‘All the people who are dead are not dead, they’re just living in my head’ is plain ugly. I can just about cope with the title track’s mock-historical reflections on fallen power though. That at least makes for a change.

Whilst ‘Viva La Vida’ is no gargantuan masterpiece, there is merit in its approach, and it means the band have at last made an artistic statement that goes some way towards justifying their personal fortunes. Coldplay are not radicals – indeed, they continue to operate in a safe zone where they can refine their formula without causing too much offence – but how much of the British music industry is radical? Are the Arctic Monkeys really revolutionaries? The likes of The Wombats, The Kooks, Pigeon Detectives and The Fratellis look like stone-age luddites by comparison with Coldplay circa 2008. I’d rather campaign against the British music industry’s current tendency to elevate lumpen, boorish rock music to high art than have a good old moan about Chris Martin’s meaninglessness. I’d be surprised if I grew to like ‘Viva la Vida’ enough to include it in my albums of the year list – but, staggered as I am to admit this, I find it more interesting than some of 2008’s bigger disappointments (Spiritualized and My Morning Jacket particularly).

A Mountain of Sound

Some records I'm digesting (some of which I've been mulling over for some time), but haven't got around to blogging about yet:

Outhouse - Outhouse
Ellen Allien - SOOL
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
Matana Roberts - The Chicago Project
Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
Benga - Diary of an Afro Warrior
Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part 1: 4th World War
Boris - Smile
Fieldwork - Door (Steve Lehman continues to astound)
Joan as Policewoman - To Survive
Lykke Li - Youth Novels
Matmos - Supreme Balloon
M83 - Saturdays=Youth
Marilyn Mazur and Jan Garbarek - Elixir (I really like this...)
Neon - From Here To There
No Age - Nouns
Steve Reich - Daniel Variations
Beatundercontrol - Cosmic Repackage
Misha Alperin - Her First Dance
Nik Bartsch's Ronin - Holon
Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra
Subtle - Exiting Arm

plus a handful of things I'm really looking forward to hearing...

Blink - Blink
Leila - Blood, Looms and Blooms (have been waiting for this one for a while)
James Blackshaw - Litany of Echoes
Finn Peters - Butterflies
Max Richter - 24 Postcards in Full Colour

The Complete Picture

Emmylou Harris - All I Intended To Be (Nonesuch, 2008)

When musicians reach a certain age it becomes tempting to speculate on what might be their creative last will and testament. Much speculation is made that the newest works by Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen might possibly be their last, in spite of the fact that such artists are still in relative youth when compared with the likes of BB King or Pops Staples, who continued to make music right up to their deaths. That this new album from Emmylou Harris seems to bring her remarkable artistry full circle might generate similar conjectures.

‘All I Intended To Be’ demonstrates that Harris has, in her maturity, finally achieved her goals. She is, in her own words ‘a singer of songs, a writer of songs, a strummer of a few chords, as Harlan Howard once said, in search of the truth’. Whereas Harris’ previous two albums masterfully refocused attention on her writing talents, this one presents her as something of an all-rounded. It’s a timely reminder of her abilities as an interpreter, but also restates her continually developing talents as a writer.

Howard’s memorable description of country music as ‘three chords and the truth’ seemed to apply perfectly to Harris’ previous two albums, despite many critics remarking that the sound crafted by engineer Malcolm Burn and her band Spyboy sounded a far cry from traditional conceptions of the country idiom. That enchanting, mysterious sound has been abandoned for this project, which reunites Harris with her former husband Brian Ahern, producer of her first eight solo albums. This news initially pleased me as I’d felt that another album in the same atmospheric style might seem like overkill, but there’s no doubt that the percussive, multi-faceted sound of her work between ‘Wrecking Ball’ and ‘Stumble Into Grace’ is missed here.

This certainly doesn’t mean that ‘All That I Intended To Be’ is a bad album – it’s just that it can occasionally sound conventional and straightforward when compared with its immediate predecessors. It even occasionally sounds clunky – that nasty thudding 80s drum sound and Knopfler-esque guitar frills on the opening ‘Shores of White Sound’ initially suggest the new arrangement might have been a mis-step, but luckily greater subtlety abounds elsewhere. Delicately picked acoustic guitar, slide guitar and brushed drums – those dusty old conventions of Nashville – are given greater prominence here.

This is also largely an understated and sombre collection. Indeed, the muted tone has directed some writers to criticise the album for its preoccupation with loss and mortality. This seems unreasonable to me – are these not suitable subjects for a female writer, in her 60s and burdened by the weight of experience, to address? Is it simply that they are subjects that most younger writers would prefer not to hear about? Given Harris’ insight, clarity and eloquence, she seems ideally placed to transform her own life experience into something universal.

Perhaps a more valid criticism is that her writing is starting to become a little repetitive. ‘How She Could Sing The Wildwood Flower’, a collaboration with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, is another song for June Carter Cash, although a little more traditional than the haunting ‘Strong Hand’ that appeared on ‘Stumble Into Grace’. It’s tempting to view the achingly sad ‘Not Enough’, which confronts lost unrequited love, as another song about her relationship with Gram Parsons, but it has broader appeal than this of course. She’s certainly inviting yet more intrusive interview questions on the subject though.

More adventurous writing comes with ‘Broken Man’s Lament’, in which Harris sings comfortably from a male perspective. This was of course once commonplace in the folk tradition but among contemporary writers, only the largely unheralded Sylvie Lewis is making it a major feature of her artistic character. ‘Sailing Around The Room’, a second collaboration with the McGarrigles, is elegant in the carefully delineated shape of its melody and ‘Take That Ride’ touching in its resignation to fate.

Most of the cover songs are shrewdly selected. The unique timbre of Harris’ voice makes it a perfect vehicle for Merle Haggard’s ‘Kern River’ and her rendition proves that she continues to improve as a singer, her voice acquiring fresh nuances with every release. ‘Moon Song’ is certainly one of Patty Griffin’s better efforts and gives weight to Harris’ persistent respect for her work. Harris brings quiet reflection and fresh poignancy to Tracy Chapman’s ‘All That You Have Is Your Soul’.

In her sleeve notes, Harris thanks Ahern for providing her with the ‘comfort zone’ in which to work. I wonder whether that comment might be unwittingly insightful. Most of the musicianship and production on ‘All I Intended to Be’ is more than competent, but it’s hardly imaginative or bold. The arrangements work best when additional instrumentation is introduced – the spectral accordion on ‘Moon Song’ for example, or the steel guitar on ‘Beyond The Great Divide’. Yet none of these contexts really push Harris into any new adventures, as the concoctions of Lanois, Burn and Spyboy certainly succeeded in doing. Some of the supporting players, Dolly Parton, The McGarrigles and Buddy Miller aside, are inadequate foils for Harris’ emotional clarity. John Starling’s duet vocal on ‘Old Five and Dimers Like Me’ is somewhat nondescript and unchallenging.

There’s a great deal to admire here – and Harris’ poignant reflection is once again enchanting - but it doesn’t quite feel like a towering highlight of her catalogue. As its title suggests, it’s a remarkably neat summation of all of her talents (and it’s also a very pleasant listen), but I suspect I’ll find myself returning to ‘Wrecking Ball’, ‘Red Dirt Girl’ and ‘Stumble Into Grace’ more frequently.

Split Personality

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges (Atco/Rough Trade, 2008)

The last we heard from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James came in the form of a cameo appearance in Todd Haynes’ idiosyncratic Bob Dylan biopic ‘I’m Not There’. His beautiful rendition of ‘Goin’ To Acapalco’, full of aching and longing, hardly prepares us for this, the next instalment in his band’s increasingly unpredictable journey.

‘Evil Urges’ has divided opinion on a band where a strong consensus used to prevail. It is a much cleaner sounding record – much of the dirtiness of their southern rock template has been abandoned in favour of something raunchier and, well, funkier. The main concern here seems to be the pleasures of the flesh (elucidated quite brilliantly by the title track), and the album reminds me of Beck’s Prince-inspired escapades on ‘Midnight Vultures’.

Whilst Beck’s album was irreverent and full of pastiche, there’s a much greater sense that James wants this My Morning Jacket album to be taken as a serious artistic statement (albeit one with a real sense of humour). Their last album ‘Z’ leaned heavier on keyboards and grooves, but a good portion of ‘Evil Urges’ sounds even further removed from their patented sound.

Whilst the band has never been without a sensitive side, there has usually been a dominant tendency to crank up the volume and exhibit an abiding faith in the power of rock. What is most striking about ‘Evil Urges’ is its relative calm, even in its lurches into funk. Perhaps the best example of this is ‘Thank You Too!’, a honey-drenched golden pop moment, but the change is also stark on ‘Sec Walkin’, a song which could easily have appeared on ‘At Dawn’ were it not for the radically altered production values. The synth pads, although kept in the background, completely change the texture of the group’s sound, and the muffled drum sound is some distance from the powerhouse performances to which we’ve become accustomed.

Fans hankering after that gloriously excessive reverb-drenched vocal will be particularly disappointed. James seems to have tried very self-consciously to disguise his voice throughout much of ‘Evil Urges’, frequently adopting a strained falsetto or deliberately controlling his more emotive tendencies. It’s easy to see why he has chosen this tactic given the success of his legion of imitators. With the likes of Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes muscling in on the My Morning Jacket sound, it was probably time to try something new, or at least to try and prove MMJ to be more versatile than their followers.

Sometimes it works brilliantly. The title track is slinky and seductive, whilst retaining some of the more muscular flourishes that characterised earlier albums. ‘Touch Me I’m Going To Scream Part 1’ is more slippery – almost whispery or tentative in its restraint. It’s resolutely not what people will expect from this band but it works in its own peculiar and surprising way.

Elsewhere, there are some embarrassing errors. The lumbering, harmonically limited funk of ‘Highly Suspicious’ is risible. Some pretty clumsy lyrics help make ‘I’m Amazed’ a somewhat average halfway house between the band as they sound now and as they sounded circa ‘It Still Moves’.

Sometimes James’ attempts to inject some soul or pop shimmer into these songs results in some spectacularly cheesy melodies. I can’t quite resist the hints at 60s pop that creep into ‘Two Halves’, but others will probably find it clichéd and insincere. A few more tracks with the subtlety and control of ‘Touch Me…’ would have been greatly appreciated.

I also have the sense that the lyrics often don’t help matters much here. On ‘Librarian’, James finds attraction in that most curiously sexless of stereotypes but even a cursory look at Cascada’s ghastly videos will suggest that the notion that libraries might be hotbeds of sexual adventure is hardly a new idea. His tentative steps into spiritual and political concerns on ‘Remnants’ also seem a little clumsy.

It’s strange that My Morning Jacket sound more like a band in transition here than they did on ‘Z’. That record was far more successful (and more concise) in integrating unexpected influences (soul, funk, ska) into their trademark sound. Here they sound halfway between a mainstream refinement of their template and a complete repudiation of it.

Here Come The Drums, Here Come The Drums!

Two exciting gigs this week have been very much focused on the musical possibilities of drums and percussion. First up, The Dodos had little trouble in charming the uber-trendy Hoxton Bar and Kitchen with their endearingly childlike rhythmic pop. It’s a shame that Sound Engineers these days only have the ability to turn things up – rectifying the constantly inaudible vocals would have been best achieved by turning everything else *down*. Turning the vocals up merely resulted in unpleasant feedback. It would be unfair to argue that this had too great an impact on the quality of the gig though – particularly given the group’s energised and intense performance.

Listening to their latest album ‘Visiter’ (sic) had already given me a good sense of the group’s melodic prowess and sense of fun, but I had not quite expected them to be quite this versatile and technically adept. The percussion is arranged superbly – with ramshackle rattles on the rims of the drums, unpredictable and syncopated rhythms, and a very noisy giant metal dustbin positioned at the back of the stage.

There’s also a surprising amount of guttural blues in this music. This plus the minimal set-up suggests what The White Stripes might achieve should they ever opt to employ a really good drummer. Occasionally it sounds like they are trying to bludgeon us with a relentless energy, but then they veer off into a piece of saccharine bubblegum pop that reminds us that they can also be straightforwardly enjoyable. The crowd seem to love every minute of it – and prove more than happy to indulge the group’s substantial encore. This group are one of the discoveries of the year.

Over at the Luminaire last night, Joe Gideon and The Shark and the outstanding Wildbirds and Peacedrums proved a delightfully complementary double act. Joe Gideon and The Shark are a brother/sister guitar/drums duo formed from the ashes of Bikini Atoll. They are playful and theatrical in their onstage demeanour but unrepentantly intense and blackly comic in their accompanying poetry. It’s an occasionally difficult listen – especially the opening and closing tracks which are grounded too firmly by repetitive basic keyboard loops. The rest of the set is engaging and enjoyable though, with a mordant lyrical bent that proves inventive and stimulating. There’s more than a hint of Nick Cave both in the aggressive, noisy nature of the music and in the humour that dominates the words.

If Joe Gideon and The Shark are primal and brash, Wildbirds and Peacedrums are something else entirely. This is seriously exciting and original music. Mariam Wallentin’s vocals are even more expressive and versatile in live performance than they are on their impressive debut album ‘Heartcore’. Both in style and execution, she very much reminds me of Leslie Feist, but without the one eye on commercial concerns. Wallentin is far less refined and restrained, instead extemporising freely and passionately throughout the set.

Perhaps even more impressive is drummer Andreas Werliin, who single-handedly proves that the drum kit can be an expressive and emotive instrument. The range of sounds he can draw from a small kit is frankly breathtaking. At the risk of sounding clichéd, something this band certainly are not, he is playing music and not just drums. The technique borders on virtuosic, and the duo slip between passages of abstraction and fearlessly driving rhythm with consummate ease. I begin to see far closer connections with improvisation and jazz in their live set than is recognisable from their album – their victory in a recent Swedish Jazz Prize now makes a lot more sense.

Most of the time there is nothing else going on save for the drums and the vocals. The intelligence of this unsparing economy lies in the fact that the songs require nothing else. Wallentin’s voice has so much dexterity and soul that there is scant need for conventional harmony – and the songs have are living and breathing artefacts, demonstrating the duo’s incredible intuition and musical sensitivity. When Wallentin does deploy some of her acoustic string instruments, they are always made to merge silkily with Werliin's percussive gestures.

I keep coming back to ‘Heartcore’ – it’s an outstanding and original record, but it’s clear that it can’t compensate for seeing the band live. It’s rare to hear such skeletal music being delivered so powerfully and fearlessly. Even within its obvious self-imposed limitations, it is audacious, unpredictable, fiery and frequently moving music. There is real freedom here.

Coming of Age

Mystery Jets - Twentyone (679, 2008)

I can’t exactly claim to be ahead of the game here and I’m not really sure why it’s taken me a full three months to notice that the Mystery Jets have a new album out. Of all the eagerly hyped British indie bands of recent years, Mystery Jets have struck me as one of the more credible and genuinely exciting. It was something of a shame that by the time their debut album ‘Making Dens’ finally emerged, most people seemed to have forgotten about them, and they ended up somewhat underrated. The riotous drum and chant riot of ‘Zoo Time’ seemed like a somewhat distant memory.

That album’s stylistic diversity, particularly its tendency towards meandering psychedelic folk has been shrewdly abandoned here in favour of a set of crisp, articulate pop songs set in the full flourish of youth. That title is no cheap joke – these are the songs of more successful youthful exploration and abandon – the kind that comes with the benefit of added experience and confidence. There’s even a hint of cynicism on the biting ‘Half in Love with Elisabeth’. It’s all a little bit whimsical, but also touching and endearing.

This album is helmed by hipster Trash DJ and remixer-du-jour Erol Elkan, but his presence is felt much more strongly here than on the new Long Blondes album. What sets the Mystery Jets apart from many of their less ambitious contemporaries is that their conventional instruments are always being used in engaging ways. The guitar lines are spiky and sprightly, the basslines provide counterpoint as well as foundation, the drums are taut and driving and the occasional interjection of synths adds both colour and warmth.

There’s a notable influence of 80s alternative pop here – felt much more keenly than on their debut. I actually attempt to use the word ‘alternative’ advisedly here, as other reviews have unfairly accused the band of declaring a love for Wet, Wet, Wet and Roxette. I don’t quite here that. It’s always a little bit reductive to search for reference points, but the way in which the vocals manage to both yelp and carry idiosyncratic melodies reminds me greatly of Andy Partridge’s songs for XTC. The rhythmic invention of the guitar lines reminds me of Orange Juice circa ‘Rip it Up’.The Police also seem to have been mentioned a lot in reviews of this record, and their influence is audible not just in Blaine’s vocals, but also in the frequent use of muted guitar strings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the contemporary group I’m most reminded of when listening to ‘Twentyone’ is the similarly underrated Hot Hot Heat. There’s a straightforward immediacy and exuberance in most of these songs.

Much of the appeal of ‘Twentyone’ lies in its ability to take individual experiences and render them universal and believable. There are songs about one night stands, secret girlfriends (the ambiguous ‘MJ’, with its plea to ‘don’t tell anyone what we’ve got going on’), relationships heading nowhere fast, emotional confusion, lust and love. There are lyrics that capture relationship experience with pithy wisdom (‘I don’t want to be a ball and chain, it’s just that I’m afraid of change’, ‘he’s half in love with Elisabeth and half in love with you’, ‘the penny dropped even before I clocked just where your hands had been/It’s like you’d done your hair for somebody else, scared that you might have been seen’). All are delivered in a matter-of-fact, pleasingly non-judgmental way. For those of us on the wrong side of 25, it’s a sweetly nostalgic experience – for the band’s peers, it will no doubt capture their lives as they are living them, with lucidity and compassion.

There’s no doubt that the album benefits from two absolutely knockout pop songs. First, there’s ‘Young Love’, detailing the desperate consequences of a one-night stand with insight, candour and affection. It’s every bit as infectious and irresistible as pop music should be. It also features a guest appearance from Laura Marling. As a singer-songwriter, I wonder whether Marling really has the longevity of the great writers with whom she is all too frequently compared, and I actually sympathise with her for the weight of all the pressure on her at such a young age. I fear she won’t be talked about so much five years from now – but it’s great to hear her in an entirely different context, her understated delivery sounding far more of a strength than a limitation here. Then there’s ‘Two Doors Down’, a love song that is admittedly somewhat twee, but also remarkably good natured and affectionate. It tells a story of falling in love with a neighbour – ‘I hear her playing the drums late at night/The neighbours complain but that’s the kinda girl I like’. Most of the band’s legion of enthuasists would probably relate to the attraction!

Luckily, they are not the only gems here and most of the record is anything but filler. There’s the rampant, searching opener ‘Hideaway’, where the role of Alkan is perhaps most clearly audible in its synth bass lines and manipulated drums. ‘MJ’ is terrific, although the repetition of the refrain ‘Don’t tell anyone’ can’t help but remind me of Queens of the Stone Age’s ‘Lost Art of Keeping a Secret’, even if the two songs are hardly that close musically. ‘Flakes’ is a swooning ballad touched with genuine drama. Only the grating carousel waltz of ‘Umbrellahand’ really jars – it’s an unsuccessful experiment and distraction from the main flavour of the album that would have been better left in the studio vaults.

‘Twentyone’ seems remarkably natural, assured, unpretentious and confident. It also has a real sense of fun and humour to match its smart, hipster production values. It should elevate them to a much bigger audience – much to its credit, it’s a Pop album with a Capital P.