Grace Jones - Hurricane (Wall of Sound/PIAS, 2008)
I can’t help feeling that the positive but reserved reviews meted out to this album have somewhat underrated the potency of Grace Jones’ comeback to proper star status (which is of course the only place a theatrical exhibitionist of her calibre would feel comfortable). Some have written it off as a throwback to the sleek reggae-infused sound of her glorious Compass Point period. To some extent it is, not least because it features the considerable rhythm section talents of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. But if this is a retrogressive step, it is more important for what it represents in practical terms. ‘Hurricane’ is very much a return to a confident and clear identity – Grace as the archetypal art-performer.
In light of having watched Terence Davies’ superb film ‘Of Time and The City’ at the weekend (more on that later), my girlfriend and I had an interesting discussion about dichotomies in popular music. Davies provocatively and spitefully dismisses The Beatles as having been ‘like a provincial firm of solicitors’. This got us considering whether The Beatles had really been untouchable innovators (the one pop band, it’s acceptable for the classical elite to appreciate, arguably now joined by Radiohead) or whether they had simply been among the first pure pop stars. I posited the claim that the divisions between ‘pop’ personalities and creative adventurers were perhaps non-existent then and certainly not as firmly entrenched as they are now. Artists like Grace Jones, although very much more performer than musician (indeed, producers of her early disco tracks bemoaned her inability to pitch a note), did much to challenge the assumed divides between entertainment and art that became starker in the 70s and 80s. She has always been able to combine musical excitement, particularly through intelligent interpretations (her versions of ‘Private Life’, ‘Warm Leatherette’ and ‘Love is the Drug’ are all very much her own) with as many costume changes as she has songs.
It’s great that the faith of the Wall of Sound label has enabled her to put this all together in front of substantial audiences again. With ‘Hurricane’, she has more than repaid their faith. The main reason I think this record is more than merely a regurgitation of ideas she already expressed concisely on classic albums such as ‘Nightclubbing’ is that her personal stamp is more clearly felt here than on any of her previous works. She had a hand in writing all the tracks (there are no cover versions this time) and some of them put her own life in the frame very much for the first time.
Sometimes, in doing this, she treads a fine line between the confessional and the sentimental. ‘I’m Crying (Mother’s Tears)’ manages to stay just on the right side, largely because of its hypnotic dubby accompaniment and because Jones’ vocal steers admirably clear of histrionics. Even better though is the strident ‘Williams’ Blood’, a gospel song written in collaboration with Wendy and Lisa that details Jones’ rejection of her father’s religious path (although the album is dedicated to him) and embracing of talents and traits inherited from her mother.
Those surprised and unnerved by this candid vulnerability might find more familiar solace in the likes of ‘Corporate Cannibal’ and the opening ‘This Is…’, where scary Grace is very much in full effect. The latter is little more than a list song, but the charismatic and icy delivery elevates it into something both teasing and threatening. ‘Corporate Cannibal’ is an assault on consumer and media capitalism delivered with raspy relish and perhaps appropriate in light of the current financial situation. It doesn’t exactly sound staggeringly new (indeed, its industrial clamour would have placed it quite comfortably on Massive Attack’s ‘Mezzanine’, an album released eleven years ago) but it does sound appropriately confrontational and imperious.
The epic title track, with Grace’s voice striking and laced with reverb, is mysterious and captivating, gradually encircling the listener in its peculiar minimalist embrace. There are more powerful melodies elsewhere on the album (the infectious ‘Well Well Well’ and ‘Love You To Life’ especially), but this is its magisterial centrepiece. Its processed bassline at least gives a playful nod to more recent musical developments – most specifically the ascendancy of grime and dubstep.
The debate will no doubt continue as to whether ‘Hurricane’ is a dated recapitulation or a bold new statement. What’s more significant is that the worlds of fashion, art, entertainment and music are once again intertwining meaningfully. As very few other performers are managing this now (Madonna has been coasting for some time, Janet Jackson no longer has the production and songwriting talent behind her that she desperately needs), Grace’s return is very much welcome.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Impressive Chops
Lambchop - Union Chapel, London 3/11/2008
I perhaps don’t need to write too extensively about Lambchop’s Union Chapel performance given my earlier comments about Kurt Wagner’s solo gig at Club Uncut last month. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed this concert, it has perhaps bolstered the opinions I expressed tentatively in that article. During Lambchop’s career post-‘Nixon’, Wagner’s vocal delivery and performing personality have become ever more compelling and idiosyncratic, whilst the sound of his group has drifted towards the polite and understated. Again, the songs from ‘OH(Ohio)’ (played in its entirety in sequence tonight, interrupted only by a lovely Bob Dylan cover, familiar to anyone who attended the Club Uncut gig) come to more vivid life in live performance, but there remains a sense that the band’s tasteful backing is diminishing rather than supporting their individuality.
Perhaps this is because Lambchop have settled into a more conventional group structure. Where once they benefited from contributions from Pauls Burch and Niehaus on Vibes and Pedal Steel respectively and also had the novelty of two bass players and a baritone saxophonist, they are now a comparatively streamlined seven-piece rock group. Admittedly, this is still a group with a lightness of touch and nuanced understanding of what makes music soulful and moving, but William Tyler’s pretty guitar figures often end up rendering the music less multi-faceted.
Their tranquillity remains deceptive though – and the moments when their coiled intensity unravels provide some of the thrilling highlights of this concert. There’s a sprawling ‘National Talk Like A Pirate Day’ and, perhaps most surprisingly, a barnstorming medley of Wagner’s X-Press 2 collaboration with Talking Heads’ ‘Once in A Lifetime’. Perhaps the latter serves as recognition that David Byrne also collaborated with X-Press 2 on a dance track, or maybe it repays the compliment for his stirring cover of ‘The Man Who Loved Beer’ (which, pleasingly, gets a rare airing towards the end of the set). There’s also a tetchy, irritable version of ‘Up With People’ that closes the main set. Initially, this sounds like Wagner just wants to get it over with – but the additional aggression with which he delivers the words serves as a powerful call to arms on the eve of the US Presidential election. Pianist Tony Crow’s bizarre moments of, erm, ‘sit-down’ comedy suggest that the band, like many other commentators, see this election as an epochal one.
The new songs represent a return to the sound of Lambchop’s earliest albums, so it's perhaps unsurprising to find the few older songs they play tonight revisiting that period. I particularly enjoyed the brisk, energetic take on ‘All Smiles and Mariachi’. The new material once again demonstrates Wagner’s originality and vitality as a lyricist, so it’s pleasing to again be able to discern the words (a real problem with the studio versions). ‘A Hold On You’ and ‘Please Stand’ emerge tonight as the set’s most moving selections.
Wagner ends the set with a gloved fist raised into the air triumphantly, before walking through the Union Chapel’s aisles towards the far exit. He expresses his gratefulness to the audience with transparent sincerity – and one of his many virtues is his ability to build bridges between his group and their listeners. I still wonder whether it might be time for a new phase in his career though.
I perhaps don’t need to write too extensively about Lambchop’s Union Chapel performance given my earlier comments about Kurt Wagner’s solo gig at Club Uncut last month. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed this concert, it has perhaps bolstered the opinions I expressed tentatively in that article. During Lambchop’s career post-‘Nixon’, Wagner’s vocal delivery and performing personality have become ever more compelling and idiosyncratic, whilst the sound of his group has drifted towards the polite and understated. Again, the songs from ‘OH(Ohio)’ (played in its entirety in sequence tonight, interrupted only by a lovely Bob Dylan cover, familiar to anyone who attended the Club Uncut gig) come to more vivid life in live performance, but there remains a sense that the band’s tasteful backing is diminishing rather than supporting their individuality.
Perhaps this is because Lambchop have settled into a more conventional group structure. Where once they benefited from contributions from Pauls Burch and Niehaus on Vibes and Pedal Steel respectively and also had the novelty of two bass players and a baritone saxophonist, they are now a comparatively streamlined seven-piece rock group. Admittedly, this is still a group with a lightness of touch and nuanced understanding of what makes music soulful and moving, but William Tyler’s pretty guitar figures often end up rendering the music less multi-faceted.
Their tranquillity remains deceptive though – and the moments when their coiled intensity unravels provide some of the thrilling highlights of this concert. There’s a sprawling ‘National Talk Like A Pirate Day’ and, perhaps most surprisingly, a barnstorming medley of Wagner’s X-Press 2 collaboration with Talking Heads’ ‘Once in A Lifetime’. Perhaps the latter serves as recognition that David Byrne also collaborated with X-Press 2 on a dance track, or maybe it repays the compliment for his stirring cover of ‘The Man Who Loved Beer’ (which, pleasingly, gets a rare airing towards the end of the set). There’s also a tetchy, irritable version of ‘Up With People’ that closes the main set. Initially, this sounds like Wagner just wants to get it over with – but the additional aggression with which he delivers the words serves as a powerful call to arms on the eve of the US Presidential election. Pianist Tony Crow’s bizarre moments of, erm, ‘sit-down’ comedy suggest that the band, like many other commentators, see this election as an epochal one.
The new songs represent a return to the sound of Lambchop’s earliest albums, so it's perhaps unsurprising to find the few older songs they play tonight revisiting that period. I particularly enjoyed the brisk, energetic take on ‘All Smiles and Mariachi’. The new material once again demonstrates Wagner’s originality and vitality as a lyricist, so it’s pleasing to again be able to discern the words (a real problem with the studio versions). ‘A Hold On You’ and ‘Please Stand’ emerge tonight as the set’s most moving selections.
Wagner ends the set with a gloved fist raised into the air triumphantly, before walking through the Union Chapel’s aisles towards the far exit. He expresses his gratefulness to the audience with transparent sincerity – and one of his many virtues is his ability to build bridges between his group and their listeners. I still wonder whether it might be time for a new phase in his career though.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
A Habit That's Hard To Give Up
Arthur Russell - Love Is Overtaking Me (Audika/Rough Trade, 2008)
It’s natural to feel a little suspicious of the burgeoning estates of dead musicians. There’s the endless ‘discovery’ of previously unheard raps from Tupac or Notorious BIG, the patching together of Miles Davis outtakes, or even worse, the grafting on to new music of poorly recorded vocal demos. All seem to suggest that a record label or family member is interested in making a quick and easy buck. Let’s not forget that the reissue industry is such huge business because it offers the largest possible profit margins. Reissuing old albums costs little and when they sell, reaps huge rewards for all involved.
The case of Charles Arthur Russell Jr. seems slightly different however. Matt Wolf’s excellent documentary ‘Wild Combination’ neatly encapsulated the wide-reaching extent of Russell’s creative imagination. It also left a lingering sadness that so little of Russell’s meticulously crafted music was appreciated during his own lifetime. The devotion of Russell’s partner Tom Lee seemed transparent and sincere, and one can hardly resent him now delving through Russell’s voluminous collection of recorded tapes to produce another compilation for the Audika label, a business currently existing, it would appear, solely to communicate Russell’s artistic legacy. The discovery of these tapes also seemed to be a voyage of discovery for Russell’s parents, who maintained a caring but somewhat distant relationship with their son.
We already know that Russell had little or no respect for boundaries. He composed minimalist music influenced by the avant-garde, endured a failed stage collaboration with Robert Wilson (both artists no doubt a bit too individualistic and stubborn to work well together), produced energising disco tracks and, most intriguingly of all, wrote peculiar, unpredictable songs in which he experimented with the soft sound of his voice and an electronically treated ‘Cello. What many people may not have realised until now is that Russell also invested a lot of time in writing relatively conventional pop songs, many of which are presented here for the first time.
Some of the songs are rooted in the American folk tradition and hint back at his rural upbringing. These songs help emphasise one of the surprising and insightful themes of Wolf’s documentary – the conflict between the pull of the reckless, liberated cities and the peace and space of rural America. Where once Russell had made a clear and deliberate rejection of the latter, his relationship with the world in which he grew up had clearly became more complex as he grew older.
There’s another dichotomy bared here too. Whilst Russell was an original, intelligent writer drawn to experimentation, he also loved straightforward populism too. Frequently, ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ emphasises Russell’s commitment to bubblegum over his commitment to art. The genuinely remarkable thing about this set is that this by no means diminishes the quality of the material – it seems that Russell could confidently inhabit any world to which he turned his mercurial gaze.
The greater emphasis on Russell’s voice, mostly untreated and undisguised here, acts as a timely reminder of one of my most deeply held convictions about the performance of songs. This is that no amount of false emoting or bellowing force can compensate for a real and natural vocal character. The X-Factor school of vocalising does nothing for me whatsoever. By most conventional musical criteria, Russell probably wasn’t a great singer. His voice is delicate and vulnerable, and frequently wavers away from the intended notes, but there’s something beautiful, intimate and human within it – something that manages to elevate his sometimes intentionally mundane lyrics towards the realms of profundity. Russell frequently wrote about everyday themes – the repetitive, less intense elements of love that he clearly found as significant as wild attraction, his dog, an unopened letter. The songs resonate with curiosity, honesty and feeling.
It’s difficult to pin down exactly what it is in this music that produces this overwhelming poignancy. ‘Don’t Forget About Me’, with its reverb-soaked backing and twangy guitar perhaps most resembles The Cure in their pure pop glory, but there’s something about the intertwining of Russell’s voice with that of backing vocalist Joyce Bowden that makes it induce tears in this listener. Similarly, the title track, not so distant in style from some of the material that appeared on ‘Calling Out Of Context’ is about as harmonically commonplace as music can be, but has an unabashed directness that amplifies its impact one hundredfold.
Even in full knowledge of Russell’s open-mindedness, it’s still oddly shocking to hear him sing an acoustic folk song in the manner of ‘Close My Eyes’ (recorded by John Hammond), playing it as straight as possible and sounding not unlike James Taylor. Elsewhere, there’s material that reveals the influence of his connection with Jonathan Richman – ‘Time Away’ is a reductive, snarly gem. ‘What It’s Like’, sadly the only song from Russell’s band The Flying Hearts included here, is somehow both conventional and bizarre, a gospel-tinged ballad featuring a funereal horn section and a Russell voiceover about a preacher forsaking his lover for God.
There’s something spidery in Russell’s melodies that makes them compelling even when they are undeniably basic. Some of the pop music here is simply sublime – the melancholy Byrdsian twang of ‘Oh Fernanda Why’, the infectious, bouncy ‘Hey! How Does Everybody Know?’ or the lush romanticism of ‘Habit Of You’ all linger satisfyingly in the mind. Some of the more quirky, idiosyncratic selections demand repeated listens, gradually drawing us into Russell’s unique world.
Whilst there’s no doubt that ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ offers myriad surprises, it also provides further evidence of the consistent threads running throughout Russell’s work. His devout perfectionism (perhaps he was as overtaken by music as by love), his commitment to popular appeal blighted by his inability to complete his work or ever be satisfied with his results, his boundary-crossing inventiveness. Perhaps the piece here that most accurately sums up his concerns is ‘Goodbye Old Paint’, a take on an old cowboy standard that begins like one of his instrumental sketches before expanding into a weird combination of Indian-influenced composition and American history. The joy here is that Russell’s versatility was so effortless and unselfconscious. His archive still seems to be a wealth of surprises and I very much doubt we have even yet come close to viewing the complete picture.
It’s natural to feel a little suspicious of the burgeoning estates of dead musicians. There’s the endless ‘discovery’ of previously unheard raps from Tupac or Notorious BIG, the patching together of Miles Davis outtakes, or even worse, the grafting on to new music of poorly recorded vocal demos. All seem to suggest that a record label or family member is interested in making a quick and easy buck. Let’s not forget that the reissue industry is such huge business because it offers the largest possible profit margins. Reissuing old albums costs little and when they sell, reaps huge rewards for all involved.
The case of Charles Arthur Russell Jr. seems slightly different however. Matt Wolf’s excellent documentary ‘Wild Combination’ neatly encapsulated the wide-reaching extent of Russell’s creative imagination. It also left a lingering sadness that so little of Russell’s meticulously crafted music was appreciated during his own lifetime. The devotion of Russell’s partner Tom Lee seemed transparent and sincere, and one can hardly resent him now delving through Russell’s voluminous collection of recorded tapes to produce another compilation for the Audika label, a business currently existing, it would appear, solely to communicate Russell’s artistic legacy. The discovery of these tapes also seemed to be a voyage of discovery for Russell’s parents, who maintained a caring but somewhat distant relationship with their son.
We already know that Russell had little or no respect for boundaries. He composed minimalist music influenced by the avant-garde, endured a failed stage collaboration with Robert Wilson (both artists no doubt a bit too individualistic and stubborn to work well together), produced energising disco tracks and, most intriguingly of all, wrote peculiar, unpredictable songs in which he experimented with the soft sound of his voice and an electronically treated ‘Cello. What many people may not have realised until now is that Russell also invested a lot of time in writing relatively conventional pop songs, many of which are presented here for the first time.
Some of the songs are rooted in the American folk tradition and hint back at his rural upbringing. These songs help emphasise one of the surprising and insightful themes of Wolf’s documentary – the conflict between the pull of the reckless, liberated cities and the peace and space of rural America. Where once Russell had made a clear and deliberate rejection of the latter, his relationship with the world in which he grew up had clearly became more complex as he grew older.
There’s another dichotomy bared here too. Whilst Russell was an original, intelligent writer drawn to experimentation, he also loved straightforward populism too. Frequently, ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ emphasises Russell’s commitment to bubblegum over his commitment to art. The genuinely remarkable thing about this set is that this by no means diminishes the quality of the material – it seems that Russell could confidently inhabit any world to which he turned his mercurial gaze.
The greater emphasis on Russell’s voice, mostly untreated and undisguised here, acts as a timely reminder of one of my most deeply held convictions about the performance of songs. This is that no amount of false emoting or bellowing force can compensate for a real and natural vocal character. The X-Factor school of vocalising does nothing for me whatsoever. By most conventional musical criteria, Russell probably wasn’t a great singer. His voice is delicate and vulnerable, and frequently wavers away from the intended notes, but there’s something beautiful, intimate and human within it – something that manages to elevate his sometimes intentionally mundane lyrics towards the realms of profundity. Russell frequently wrote about everyday themes – the repetitive, less intense elements of love that he clearly found as significant as wild attraction, his dog, an unopened letter. The songs resonate with curiosity, honesty and feeling.
It’s difficult to pin down exactly what it is in this music that produces this overwhelming poignancy. ‘Don’t Forget About Me’, with its reverb-soaked backing and twangy guitar perhaps most resembles The Cure in their pure pop glory, but there’s something about the intertwining of Russell’s voice with that of backing vocalist Joyce Bowden that makes it induce tears in this listener. Similarly, the title track, not so distant in style from some of the material that appeared on ‘Calling Out Of Context’ is about as harmonically commonplace as music can be, but has an unabashed directness that amplifies its impact one hundredfold.
Even in full knowledge of Russell’s open-mindedness, it’s still oddly shocking to hear him sing an acoustic folk song in the manner of ‘Close My Eyes’ (recorded by John Hammond), playing it as straight as possible and sounding not unlike James Taylor. Elsewhere, there’s material that reveals the influence of his connection with Jonathan Richman – ‘Time Away’ is a reductive, snarly gem. ‘What It’s Like’, sadly the only song from Russell’s band The Flying Hearts included here, is somehow both conventional and bizarre, a gospel-tinged ballad featuring a funereal horn section and a Russell voiceover about a preacher forsaking his lover for God.
There’s something spidery in Russell’s melodies that makes them compelling even when they are undeniably basic. Some of the pop music here is simply sublime – the melancholy Byrdsian twang of ‘Oh Fernanda Why’, the infectious, bouncy ‘Hey! How Does Everybody Know?’ or the lush romanticism of ‘Habit Of You’ all linger satisfyingly in the mind. Some of the more quirky, idiosyncratic selections demand repeated listens, gradually drawing us into Russell’s unique world.
Whilst there’s no doubt that ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ offers myriad surprises, it also provides further evidence of the consistent threads running throughout Russell’s work. His devout perfectionism (perhaps he was as overtaken by music as by love), his commitment to popular appeal blighted by his inability to complete his work or ever be satisfied with his results, his boundary-crossing inventiveness. Perhaps the piece here that most accurately sums up his concerns is ‘Goodbye Old Paint’, a take on an old cowboy standard that begins like one of his instrumental sketches before expanding into a weird combination of Indian-influenced composition and American history. The joy here is that Russell’s versatility was so effortless and unselfconscious. His archive still seems to be a wealth of surprises and I very much doubt we have even yet come close to viewing the complete picture.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
27 Recordings in Full Stereo
I’m struggling to keep up with commenting on my listening at the moment, so I thought I’d do a list of everything floating my boat at the moment, with some brief thoughts. I will hopefully get round to writing more considered thoughts about many of these records soon:
Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna (Warp)
Apparently their pop album, this is really just a more ambitious and accurate statement of their primal, ritualistic preoccupations. If they’ve assimilated elements drawn from grime or other forms of dance music, the most obvious reference point is still Can.
Max Richter – 24 Postcards In Full Colour (FatCat)
Some people may see an irony in this, but these bite-size sketches, designed to be downloaded as ringtones, may constitute Richter’s most evocative and affecting work to date. He has deliberately surrendered his control over the order in which the tracks play out – and it’s amusing just how much of a novelty it is to find a composer inviting the use of the CD player’s shuffle function. This is challenging music for the attention-deficit age.
AC/DC – Black Ice (Columbia)
This one does not require an essay. Maybe with the exception of ‘Rock N’ Roll Dream’ (which represents a tentative step into self-questioning balladry), this sounds exactly like everything else AC/DC have recorded. Ergo it is unquestionably awesome. For fans who recognise nuances – if ‘Stiff Upper Lip’ was a return to the blues and boogie of their earliest albums, producer Brendan O’Brien has brought to ‘Black Ice’ a similar muscle to that provided by Mutt Lange on ‘Back in Black’.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Is It The Sea? (Domino/BBC)
Put Will Oldham with a bunch of Scottish folksters in a band called Harem Scarem and you get another unpredictable live reworking of many of his greatest songs. The addition of harmonised female backing vocals continues to soften some of Oldham’s sharper edges. Perhaps this endless string of releases is a little unhelpful in any attempt to define Oldham – but definition is precisely what the great contrarian is trying to evade.
Dave Holland Sextet – Pass It On (Universal Classics)
A new group – featuring Alex Spiagin on Trumpet, Mulgrew Miller on Piano and the incomparable Eric Harland on drums, this is an intricate and engrossing set, refreshing some of the highlights of Holland’s career as a composer. Has Holland ever made a disappointing record?
Bobo Stenson Trio – Cantando (ECM)‘Cantando’, which translates as ‘singing’, is one of the most subtle, nuanced and beautiful recordings of the whole year. It’s a set of lyrical, melodic compositions performed with empathy and meticulous control. All three musicians explore the range of sounds from their instruments, combining to craft a meditative calm that transports us far away from this hurried, unbalanced daily existence.
Late Of The Pier – Fantasy Black Channel (Parlophone)
Whilst I appreciated the recent Guardian blog piece deriding their ludicrous moniker, Late of the Pier still seem like a breath of fresh air in the mostly redundant world of British indie rock. They are a band completely unafraid of both ambition and ridicule – as a result, their music is genuinely exciting. They sometimes betray their context by slipping into that oom-ska oom-ska groove that has plagued this music post-Franz Ferdinand, but they at least do it with a very real exuberance. Elsewhere, they are riotously unpredictable and maniacally subversive.
Benoit Pioulard – Temper (Kranky)
A step-up from ‘Precis’, itself one of my personal favourites of the past few years, this is an immersing and rewarding record – a strange combination of naivety and confidence that is supremely appealing. It sounds pleasurably disconnected from reality.
Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue (Rough Trade)
This has been getting short shrift in some sections of the music press, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Like ‘Under The Blacklight’, it seems to be to be another apposite context for Lewis’ silky, charming voice. She encounters problems when she strives too hard for authenticity – hence I wasn’t quite as enamoured with the detour into Appalachian folk on ‘Rabit Fur Coat’, nor Rilo Kiley’s more self-consciously shmindie moments pre-‘More Adventurous’. Whilst much of ‘Acid Tongue’ might seem like an indulgent studio love-in with famous friends, these moments sound spirited and full blooded, whilst the album’s moments of refined balladry are alluring.
Wild Beasts – Limbo, Panto (Domino)
It’s taken me a while to brave this one, in full knowledge that Hayden Thorpe’s extravagant, highly camp falsetto would be something of an acquired taste. I’m growing to appreciate it though – the songs are excellent, and the playing is far more adventurous than most of the mundane indie currently coming from British shores.
Beck – Modern Guilt (XL)
‘Modern Guilt’ is comfortably Beck’s best album since ‘Odelay’ and possibly the most impressive of the ubiquitous Dangermouse’s recent productions. Are we now taking Beck for granted? ‘Modern Guilt’ hasn’t received all that much in the way of column inches, but it’s a lot warmer and less arch than much of his back catalogue. It’s also musically challenging without lurching into self parody, as some of Beck’s material has in the past. It’s also mercilessly concise, which works in its favour.
Marnie Stern – This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It is It and That is That (Kill Rock Stars)
This is comfortably the most convoluted title of the year and one that potentially risks obfuscating the impact of this visceral, thrilling music. Contrary to many of her peers, Stern relishes in virtuosic displays of technique, as does her extraordinary drumming accompanist Zach Hill. The resulting music is so intense and fearless as to be utterly irresistible. It’s a wild combination of untamed aggression and elaborate intricacy.
TV On The Radio – Dear Science (4AD)
This one looks set for album of the year status from some quarters. It’s certainly the acclaimed group’s most consistent and accessible record to date – I’m just not so sure that its lunge for Prince-inspired minimalist pop represents anything staggeringly original. It is, however, involving and compelling. I also rather liked ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’, which now seems to have been casually re-assessed as the disappointment of their catalogue.
EST – Leucocyte (ACT)
I’ve been avoiding writing about this for fear of speaking ill of the dead. I must confess, however, that I’ve become unusually aggravated by the marketing campaign describing it as ‘Esbjorn Svensson - his legacy’. That, surely, is the entire EST back catalogue, which I suspect will come to be seen as one of the richest and most rewarding in contemporary jazz. ‘Leucocyte’, had Svensson lived, might have pointed in new directions for the group. It certainly represents a departure but I’m not yet convinced it’s a fruitful one. Much of it sounds loose and unstructured, with a greater emphasis on group improvisation that doesn’t play to Svensson’s strengths for simple, haunting themes. But I must give it more time!
Roots Manuva – Slime and Reason (Big Dada)
I haven’t investigated much hip hop this year, but Rodney Smith remains dependable. One of the few rappers to speak honestly about the reality of his life, rather than construct an elaborate macho fantasy around it, he’s also blessed with another rarity in this music – a sense of humour. ‘Slime and Reason’ is both insightful and fun and the productions remain uniquely inventive in British hip hop – the collaborations with Metronomy are surprisingly fruitful.
Finn Peters – Butterflies (Accidental)
Now signed to Matthew Herbert’s label, Finn Peters follows up the excellent ‘Su-Ling’ with a record of disarming calmness and simplicity, in which his flute playing is the central feature. The volume rarely rises above a careful whisper. It’s a good deal less immediate than ‘Su-Ling’, and requires a little patience, but its tranquil mood is surprising and refreshing amidst the furious blasting of most contemporary British jazz.
Jeremy Warmsley – How We Became (Transgressive)
I had been expecting the campaign for Jeremy to step up a notch with this second album, but it seems to have slipped out with only minimal fanfare. This is something of a shame given that it contains frequently impressive songwriting. At his best, there’s a disarming ambition in his writing and arranging. ‘Dancing with the Enemy’ and the title track are particular highlights. The greater emphasis on studio production occasionally threatens to swamp Jeremy’s more endearing idiosyncrasies (he is better served by the stranger arrangements than the four square indie rock template), but the balance is mostly just right.
Antony and the Johnsons – Another World EP (Rough Trade)
This one is a little taster to whet the appetite for the long awaited new album ‘The Crying Light’, which isn’t due until next year. The title track merely repeats the familiar Antony cabaret schtik and worryingly suggests that the new record might be a case of diminishing returns. Elsewhere across the EP though, there are new paths we can only hope are explored further on the new full length. ‘Hope Mountain’ introduces some affecting wind arrangements, whilst ‘Shake That Devil’ betrays the influence of both Nick Cave and John Coltrane. No bad thing in either case.
Blink – Blink (Loop)
Here is one of the finest British jazz albums of the year. Regular readers will already know of my enthusiasm for the Loop Collective, whose co-operative spirit and intelligent programming has been refreshing the London jazz scene for the past few years. This collaboration between two of its younger members (pianist Alcyona Mick and saxophonist Robin Fincker) and the established drummer Paul Clarvis (a regular percussionist for Harrison Birtwistle as well as an experienced jazz player) has made for its most empathetic and communicative release so far. Clarvis’ diverse playing experience proves liberating, and, somewhat appropriately, the group can veer between fiery and reflective in the blink of an eye.
Patricia Barber – The Cole Porter Mix (Blue Note)
If anyone could make me want to hear another collection of hoary Cole Porter standards, it’s Barber, who has some of the most relaxed and charming vocal phrasing in modern jazz. This is not quite as exotic and enchanting as her last collection of mythology inspired originals, but it’s a fine album nonetheless, and a good example of her quality as an interpreter.
Metronomy – Nights Out (Because)
This appears to be the hipster electro album of 2008 – something to rival LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Sound Of Silver’ or Hot Chip’s ‘The Warning’. For my money, it’s not quite on that level. It works well at its poppiest, as the rather marvellous ‘Heartbreaker’ single demonstrates, but sometimes it seems like the group are trying too hard to create strange, discomforting sounds. There’s also far too much reliance on disco-inflected octave parts on the guitar and bass.
Kasai All Stars – In The 7th Moon, the Chief Turned Into A Swimming Fish and Ate The Heads of His Enemy By Magic (Congotronics)
The Congotronics series continues to produce some of the most exciting music emerging from Africa – this Kasai All Stars record is no exception. The distorted thumb pianos remain a characteristic feature, but there’s a softer, more lilting groove and celebratory vocals that make this a more joyful than visceral experience.
Tom Richards Orchestra – Smoke and Mirrors (Proper)
Tom Richards has, until now, earned his living as a sideman for Jamie Cullum and, er, abysmal Staines indie-rockers Hard Fi. If this doesn’t seem to augur much for his own work, think again, as this is a very extravagant, well-arranged big band record. I’m not convinced that the vocal tracks work as well as the instrumentals, but it mostly avoids blandness. I’m a bit irritated that he’s stolen the intended title of my work-in-progress album, although in fairness I got it from a Magnetic Fields song anyway.
Plush – Fed (Broken Horse)
I’ve lived with the demos for Liam Hayes’ magnum opus for some time, but the fully fledged album itself, complete with its bankrupting arrangements, had assumed the status of a ‘Starsailor’ or a ‘Time Fades Away’ – an unattainable cult classic. Previously only available on a rare Japanese import, small label Broken Horse has at last made it available in Europe.
This might seem controversial given the album’s reputation, but I simply don’t agree that ‘Fed’ is some kind of visionary or maverick statement. Next to the spacious, mysterious and uncompromising arrangements of Mark Hollis it sounds positively conventional, however much its recording costs may have spiralled. What it is, however, is lavish pop music of the highest quality, made all the more appealing by the fact that it has been left a little ragged around the edges and because Hayes’ voice is itself honest and a little shaky.
Department of Eagles – In Ear Park (4AD)
This is the kind of rapturous, ravishing record with which I can all too easily become infatuated. Dept of Eagles are a spin-off from Grizzly Bear, but are more immediate and less abstract than their parent group. ‘In Ear Park’ is a collection of remarkably well constructed songs – a bit like Fleet Foxes meeting Stephen Sondheim in a dense forest somewhere. This and the Benoit Pioulard record seem to be in similar territory – both remind me most of Califone, an under-publicised band over here who must themselves have a new offering on the table soon.
Matthew Herbert Big Band – There’s Me And There’s You (Accidental)
There seems to be a chronic distribution problem afflicting Matthew Herbert’s new big band album – it should have been in shops two weeks ago but is still conspicuous by its absence from chain stores. Luckily, much of it is streaming from its dedicated website. Herbert remains one of the few artists committed to making ‘protest’ music and his found sounds continue to reflect his uncompromising political beliefs. As we attempt to revive a broken capitalism with taxpayer’s money, we probably need his principles more than ever. Herbert has also been working on forthcoming records from Micachu and The Shapes and The Invisible (a band featuring guitarist Dave Okumu and Tom Herbert, bass player for Polar Bear), both of which I am very excited about!
Fieldwork - Door (Pi Recordings)
Steve Lehman's album 'On Meaning' would comfortably have made my top 10 of 2007 had I heard it in time. I'm going to make no such omissions with this trio album featuring Lehman, his regular drummer Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Vijay Iyer - it's a magisterial example of unconventional and audacious group improvisation.
Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna (Warp)
Apparently their pop album, this is really just a more ambitious and accurate statement of their primal, ritualistic preoccupations. If they’ve assimilated elements drawn from grime or other forms of dance music, the most obvious reference point is still Can.
Max Richter – 24 Postcards In Full Colour (FatCat)
Some people may see an irony in this, but these bite-size sketches, designed to be downloaded as ringtones, may constitute Richter’s most evocative and affecting work to date. He has deliberately surrendered his control over the order in which the tracks play out – and it’s amusing just how much of a novelty it is to find a composer inviting the use of the CD player’s shuffle function. This is challenging music for the attention-deficit age.
AC/DC – Black Ice (Columbia)
This one does not require an essay. Maybe with the exception of ‘Rock N’ Roll Dream’ (which represents a tentative step into self-questioning balladry), this sounds exactly like everything else AC/DC have recorded. Ergo it is unquestionably awesome. For fans who recognise nuances – if ‘Stiff Upper Lip’ was a return to the blues and boogie of their earliest albums, producer Brendan O’Brien has brought to ‘Black Ice’ a similar muscle to that provided by Mutt Lange on ‘Back in Black’.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Is It The Sea? (Domino/BBC)
Put Will Oldham with a bunch of Scottish folksters in a band called Harem Scarem and you get another unpredictable live reworking of many of his greatest songs. The addition of harmonised female backing vocals continues to soften some of Oldham’s sharper edges. Perhaps this endless string of releases is a little unhelpful in any attempt to define Oldham – but definition is precisely what the great contrarian is trying to evade.
Dave Holland Sextet – Pass It On (Universal Classics)
A new group – featuring Alex Spiagin on Trumpet, Mulgrew Miller on Piano and the incomparable Eric Harland on drums, this is an intricate and engrossing set, refreshing some of the highlights of Holland’s career as a composer. Has Holland ever made a disappointing record?
Bobo Stenson Trio – Cantando (ECM)‘Cantando’, which translates as ‘singing’, is one of the most subtle, nuanced and beautiful recordings of the whole year. It’s a set of lyrical, melodic compositions performed with empathy and meticulous control. All three musicians explore the range of sounds from their instruments, combining to craft a meditative calm that transports us far away from this hurried, unbalanced daily existence.
Late Of The Pier – Fantasy Black Channel (Parlophone)
Whilst I appreciated the recent Guardian blog piece deriding their ludicrous moniker, Late of the Pier still seem like a breath of fresh air in the mostly redundant world of British indie rock. They are a band completely unafraid of both ambition and ridicule – as a result, their music is genuinely exciting. They sometimes betray their context by slipping into that oom-ska oom-ska groove that has plagued this music post-Franz Ferdinand, but they at least do it with a very real exuberance. Elsewhere, they are riotously unpredictable and maniacally subversive.
Benoit Pioulard – Temper (Kranky)
A step-up from ‘Precis’, itself one of my personal favourites of the past few years, this is an immersing and rewarding record – a strange combination of naivety and confidence that is supremely appealing. It sounds pleasurably disconnected from reality.
Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue (Rough Trade)
This has been getting short shrift in some sections of the music press, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Like ‘Under The Blacklight’, it seems to be to be another apposite context for Lewis’ silky, charming voice. She encounters problems when she strives too hard for authenticity – hence I wasn’t quite as enamoured with the detour into Appalachian folk on ‘Rabit Fur Coat’, nor Rilo Kiley’s more self-consciously shmindie moments pre-‘More Adventurous’. Whilst much of ‘Acid Tongue’ might seem like an indulgent studio love-in with famous friends, these moments sound spirited and full blooded, whilst the album’s moments of refined balladry are alluring.
Wild Beasts – Limbo, Panto (Domino)
It’s taken me a while to brave this one, in full knowledge that Hayden Thorpe’s extravagant, highly camp falsetto would be something of an acquired taste. I’m growing to appreciate it though – the songs are excellent, and the playing is far more adventurous than most of the mundane indie currently coming from British shores.
Beck – Modern Guilt (XL)
‘Modern Guilt’ is comfortably Beck’s best album since ‘Odelay’ and possibly the most impressive of the ubiquitous Dangermouse’s recent productions. Are we now taking Beck for granted? ‘Modern Guilt’ hasn’t received all that much in the way of column inches, but it’s a lot warmer and less arch than much of his back catalogue. It’s also musically challenging without lurching into self parody, as some of Beck’s material has in the past. It’s also mercilessly concise, which works in its favour.
Marnie Stern – This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It is It and That is That (Kill Rock Stars)
This is comfortably the most convoluted title of the year and one that potentially risks obfuscating the impact of this visceral, thrilling music. Contrary to many of her peers, Stern relishes in virtuosic displays of technique, as does her extraordinary drumming accompanist Zach Hill. The resulting music is so intense and fearless as to be utterly irresistible. It’s a wild combination of untamed aggression and elaborate intricacy.
TV On The Radio – Dear Science (4AD)
This one looks set for album of the year status from some quarters. It’s certainly the acclaimed group’s most consistent and accessible record to date – I’m just not so sure that its lunge for Prince-inspired minimalist pop represents anything staggeringly original. It is, however, involving and compelling. I also rather liked ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’, which now seems to have been casually re-assessed as the disappointment of their catalogue.
EST – Leucocyte (ACT)
I’ve been avoiding writing about this for fear of speaking ill of the dead. I must confess, however, that I’ve become unusually aggravated by the marketing campaign describing it as ‘Esbjorn Svensson - his legacy’. That, surely, is the entire EST back catalogue, which I suspect will come to be seen as one of the richest and most rewarding in contemporary jazz. ‘Leucocyte’, had Svensson lived, might have pointed in new directions for the group. It certainly represents a departure but I’m not yet convinced it’s a fruitful one. Much of it sounds loose and unstructured, with a greater emphasis on group improvisation that doesn’t play to Svensson’s strengths for simple, haunting themes. But I must give it more time!
Roots Manuva – Slime and Reason (Big Dada)
I haven’t investigated much hip hop this year, but Rodney Smith remains dependable. One of the few rappers to speak honestly about the reality of his life, rather than construct an elaborate macho fantasy around it, he’s also blessed with another rarity in this music – a sense of humour. ‘Slime and Reason’ is both insightful and fun and the productions remain uniquely inventive in British hip hop – the collaborations with Metronomy are surprisingly fruitful.
Finn Peters – Butterflies (Accidental)
Now signed to Matthew Herbert’s label, Finn Peters follows up the excellent ‘Su-Ling’ with a record of disarming calmness and simplicity, in which his flute playing is the central feature. The volume rarely rises above a careful whisper. It’s a good deal less immediate than ‘Su-Ling’, and requires a little patience, but its tranquil mood is surprising and refreshing amidst the furious blasting of most contemporary British jazz.
Jeremy Warmsley – How We Became (Transgressive)
I had been expecting the campaign for Jeremy to step up a notch with this second album, but it seems to have slipped out with only minimal fanfare. This is something of a shame given that it contains frequently impressive songwriting. At his best, there’s a disarming ambition in his writing and arranging. ‘Dancing with the Enemy’ and the title track are particular highlights. The greater emphasis on studio production occasionally threatens to swamp Jeremy’s more endearing idiosyncrasies (he is better served by the stranger arrangements than the four square indie rock template), but the balance is mostly just right.
Antony and the Johnsons – Another World EP (Rough Trade)
This one is a little taster to whet the appetite for the long awaited new album ‘The Crying Light’, which isn’t due until next year. The title track merely repeats the familiar Antony cabaret schtik and worryingly suggests that the new record might be a case of diminishing returns. Elsewhere across the EP though, there are new paths we can only hope are explored further on the new full length. ‘Hope Mountain’ introduces some affecting wind arrangements, whilst ‘Shake That Devil’ betrays the influence of both Nick Cave and John Coltrane. No bad thing in either case.
Blink – Blink (Loop)
Here is one of the finest British jazz albums of the year. Regular readers will already know of my enthusiasm for the Loop Collective, whose co-operative spirit and intelligent programming has been refreshing the London jazz scene for the past few years. This collaboration between two of its younger members (pianist Alcyona Mick and saxophonist Robin Fincker) and the established drummer Paul Clarvis (a regular percussionist for Harrison Birtwistle as well as an experienced jazz player) has made for its most empathetic and communicative release so far. Clarvis’ diverse playing experience proves liberating, and, somewhat appropriately, the group can veer between fiery and reflective in the blink of an eye.
Patricia Barber – The Cole Porter Mix (Blue Note)
If anyone could make me want to hear another collection of hoary Cole Porter standards, it’s Barber, who has some of the most relaxed and charming vocal phrasing in modern jazz. This is not quite as exotic and enchanting as her last collection of mythology inspired originals, but it’s a fine album nonetheless, and a good example of her quality as an interpreter.
Metronomy – Nights Out (Because)
This appears to be the hipster electro album of 2008 – something to rival LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Sound Of Silver’ or Hot Chip’s ‘The Warning’. For my money, it’s not quite on that level. It works well at its poppiest, as the rather marvellous ‘Heartbreaker’ single demonstrates, but sometimes it seems like the group are trying too hard to create strange, discomforting sounds. There’s also far too much reliance on disco-inflected octave parts on the guitar and bass.
Kasai All Stars – In The 7th Moon, the Chief Turned Into A Swimming Fish and Ate The Heads of His Enemy By Magic (Congotronics)
The Congotronics series continues to produce some of the most exciting music emerging from Africa – this Kasai All Stars record is no exception. The distorted thumb pianos remain a characteristic feature, but there’s a softer, more lilting groove and celebratory vocals that make this a more joyful than visceral experience.
Tom Richards Orchestra – Smoke and Mirrors (Proper)
Tom Richards has, until now, earned his living as a sideman for Jamie Cullum and, er, abysmal Staines indie-rockers Hard Fi. If this doesn’t seem to augur much for his own work, think again, as this is a very extravagant, well-arranged big band record. I’m not convinced that the vocal tracks work as well as the instrumentals, but it mostly avoids blandness. I’m a bit irritated that he’s stolen the intended title of my work-in-progress album, although in fairness I got it from a Magnetic Fields song anyway.
Plush – Fed (Broken Horse)
I’ve lived with the demos for Liam Hayes’ magnum opus for some time, but the fully fledged album itself, complete with its bankrupting arrangements, had assumed the status of a ‘Starsailor’ or a ‘Time Fades Away’ – an unattainable cult classic. Previously only available on a rare Japanese import, small label Broken Horse has at last made it available in Europe.
This might seem controversial given the album’s reputation, but I simply don’t agree that ‘Fed’ is some kind of visionary or maverick statement. Next to the spacious, mysterious and uncompromising arrangements of Mark Hollis it sounds positively conventional, however much its recording costs may have spiralled. What it is, however, is lavish pop music of the highest quality, made all the more appealing by the fact that it has been left a little ragged around the edges and because Hayes’ voice is itself honest and a little shaky.
Department of Eagles – In Ear Park (4AD)
This is the kind of rapturous, ravishing record with which I can all too easily become infatuated. Dept of Eagles are a spin-off from Grizzly Bear, but are more immediate and less abstract than their parent group. ‘In Ear Park’ is a collection of remarkably well constructed songs – a bit like Fleet Foxes meeting Stephen Sondheim in a dense forest somewhere. This and the Benoit Pioulard record seem to be in similar territory – both remind me most of Califone, an under-publicised band over here who must themselves have a new offering on the table soon.
Matthew Herbert Big Band – There’s Me And There’s You (Accidental)
There seems to be a chronic distribution problem afflicting Matthew Herbert’s new big band album – it should have been in shops two weeks ago but is still conspicuous by its absence from chain stores. Luckily, much of it is streaming from its dedicated website. Herbert remains one of the few artists committed to making ‘protest’ music and his found sounds continue to reflect his uncompromising political beliefs. As we attempt to revive a broken capitalism with taxpayer’s money, we probably need his principles more than ever. Herbert has also been working on forthcoming records from Micachu and The Shapes and The Invisible (a band featuring guitarist Dave Okumu and Tom Herbert, bass player for Polar Bear), both of which I am very excited about!
Fieldwork - Door (Pi Recordings)
Steve Lehman's album 'On Meaning' would comfortably have made my top 10 of 2007 had I heard it in time. I'm going to make no such omissions with this trio album featuring Lehman, his regular drummer Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Vijay Iyer - it's a magisterial example of unconventional and audacious group improvisation.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Macroreverie
Deerhunter - Microcastle (Kranky, 2008)
A good friend has been raving about Deerhunter at me for some time. Their 2007 album ‘Cryptograms’ struck me as interesting but a little cold and self-absorbed. With ‘Microcastle’, an album much-hyped following a pre-release internet leak and swift appearance on iTunes, I think I suddenly get it. Maybe it’s that I’ve been enchanted by Deerhunter mainman Bradford Cox’s romantic sheets-of-noise side project Atlas Sound and that the demarcation between the two projects seems increasingly permeable. Or perhaps it’s simply that there’s a greater spectrum of ideas and influences at work on ‘Microcastle’ – right down to the incorporation of a stronger sense of melody and harmony, much of it assimilated from 50s and 60s pop.
The impact of Deerhunter’s music has in the past been mainly visceral. On ‘Microcastle’, Cox has tempered that brutal force with something more emotional.
The mostly fuzzy guitars hint at The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and a wealth of British shoegazers, but it’s both more musical and more engaged than such comparisons suggest. There are moments of deceptive prettiness such as ‘Agoraphobia’ that mask the desperation or frustration that sometimes haunt Cox’s monosyllabic lyrics. Also, Cox frequently lends his melodies an unexpected twist of melancholy that transports his music far away from anything twee.
Similarly, there’s no sense of redundant or empty celebration here, and it’s clear that whilst music is a labour of love for Cox, it’s also a form of catharsis. The combination of healing and infectious enthusiasm is what imbues ‘Microcastle’ with a distinctive musical personality and a crossover appeal. The gradual swells of ‘Little Kids’ and ‘Neverstops’ transform songs of brief duration into expansive epics, whilst the sheer momentum and energy of ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ renders it irresistible. There’s every sense that this music could reach the Arcade Fire contingent – it’s the sort of combination of vulnerability, anger and impressionism that inspires devotion. Plus the gangly, ungainly Cox hardly looks any weirder than Win Butler and his not-so-merry band.
Sometimes the power of the music is based largely on pitting repeated phrases against increasing layers of sound. This technique works brilliantly on the near-euphoric coda to ‘Little Kids’, and the effect is made even more potent by its juxtaposition with the stark, almost naked sounding introduction to the title track. Cox manages to make a virtue of the inherent limitations of his voice – it’s weak, but he frequently makes it sound awestruck and overpowered by its environment rather than useless. The effect is then repeated in reverse when ‘Microcastle’ bursts into a joyous heat-haze. The sequencing may well be as significant as the production and writing on this album – it’s certainly difficult to hear it without the grandiose ‘Twilight at Carbon Lake’ rounding things off.
There’s a surreal, magical and romantic mood to the three brief pieces that make up the centre of the album. ‘Calvary Scars’ and ‘Green Jacket’ are melancholy and touching, whilst ‘Activa’ is deeply odd, the overall effect of the three combined being somewhat discomforting. With the latter, it’s a result of what is held back as much as what is stated – unusual sounds are left lingering and there’s a wealth of space in the music. Much of the success of ‘Microcastle’ stems from Cox’s admirable concision – no idea ever outstays its welcome here.
Sometimes there’s a sense that Cox might merely be luxuriating in his record collection – for example, the motorik ending of ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ that echoes Neu! or Joy Division or the Spector-ish pop influences with which he liberally peppers the rest of the album. Yet ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ is so much more satisfying a refashioning of Krautrock than anything Primal Scream have recently served up, and the influences always seem to be serviced towards a broader, overarching vision. Cox may describe ‘Twilight at Carbon Lake’ as ‘doo-wop’ – but it’s a particularly warped, outsider’s take on the form.
Live at The Dome in Tufnell Park a month or so ago, the group not only seemed on excellent form (they are one of those bands who seem to create a massive, unstoppable sound from a straightforward onstage set-up) but also appeared rather amiable. Cox, gangly and distressingly thin, is an unusual and dominant presence on stage, and whilst he is clearly very serious about his music, he also seems very serious about pleasing those who take the time and effort to hear him. It’s this kind of relationship between band and audience that makes some groups stand out from the crowd – it is, after all, what transported Arcade Fire into arenas.
A good friend has been raving about Deerhunter at me for some time. Their 2007 album ‘Cryptograms’ struck me as interesting but a little cold and self-absorbed. With ‘Microcastle’, an album much-hyped following a pre-release internet leak and swift appearance on iTunes, I think I suddenly get it. Maybe it’s that I’ve been enchanted by Deerhunter mainman Bradford Cox’s romantic sheets-of-noise side project Atlas Sound and that the demarcation between the two projects seems increasingly permeable. Or perhaps it’s simply that there’s a greater spectrum of ideas and influences at work on ‘Microcastle’ – right down to the incorporation of a stronger sense of melody and harmony, much of it assimilated from 50s and 60s pop.
The impact of Deerhunter’s music has in the past been mainly visceral. On ‘Microcastle’, Cox has tempered that brutal force with something more emotional.
The mostly fuzzy guitars hint at The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and a wealth of British shoegazers, but it’s both more musical and more engaged than such comparisons suggest. There are moments of deceptive prettiness such as ‘Agoraphobia’ that mask the desperation or frustration that sometimes haunt Cox’s monosyllabic lyrics. Also, Cox frequently lends his melodies an unexpected twist of melancholy that transports his music far away from anything twee.
Similarly, there’s no sense of redundant or empty celebration here, and it’s clear that whilst music is a labour of love for Cox, it’s also a form of catharsis. The combination of healing and infectious enthusiasm is what imbues ‘Microcastle’ with a distinctive musical personality and a crossover appeal. The gradual swells of ‘Little Kids’ and ‘Neverstops’ transform songs of brief duration into expansive epics, whilst the sheer momentum and energy of ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ renders it irresistible. There’s every sense that this music could reach the Arcade Fire contingent – it’s the sort of combination of vulnerability, anger and impressionism that inspires devotion. Plus the gangly, ungainly Cox hardly looks any weirder than Win Butler and his not-so-merry band.
Sometimes the power of the music is based largely on pitting repeated phrases against increasing layers of sound. This technique works brilliantly on the near-euphoric coda to ‘Little Kids’, and the effect is made even more potent by its juxtaposition with the stark, almost naked sounding introduction to the title track. Cox manages to make a virtue of the inherent limitations of his voice – it’s weak, but he frequently makes it sound awestruck and overpowered by its environment rather than useless. The effect is then repeated in reverse when ‘Microcastle’ bursts into a joyous heat-haze. The sequencing may well be as significant as the production and writing on this album – it’s certainly difficult to hear it without the grandiose ‘Twilight at Carbon Lake’ rounding things off.
There’s a surreal, magical and romantic mood to the three brief pieces that make up the centre of the album. ‘Calvary Scars’ and ‘Green Jacket’ are melancholy and touching, whilst ‘Activa’ is deeply odd, the overall effect of the three combined being somewhat discomforting. With the latter, it’s a result of what is held back as much as what is stated – unusual sounds are left lingering and there’s a wealth of space in the music. Much of the success of ‘Microcastle’ stems from Cox’s admirable concision – no idea ever outstays its welcome here.
Sometimes there’s a sense that Cox might merely be luxuriating in his record collection – for example, the motorik ending of ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ that echoes Neu! or Joy Division or the Spector-ish pop influences with which he liberally peppers the rest of the album. Yet ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ is so much more satisfying a refashioning of Krautrock than anything Primal Scream have recently served up, and the influences always seem to be serviced towards a broader, overarching vision. Cox may describe ‘Twilight at Carbon Lake’ as ‘doo-wop’ – but it’s a particularly warped, outsider’s take on the form.
Live at The Dome in Tufnell Park a month or so ago, the group not only seemed on excellent form (they are one of those bands who seem to create a massive, unstoppable sound from a straightforward onstage set-up) but also appeared rather amiable. Cox, gangly and distressingly thin, is an unusual and dominant presence on stage, and whilst he is clearly very serious about his music, he also seems very serious about pleasing those who take the time and effort to hear him. It’s this kind of relationship between band and audience that makes some groups stand out from the crowd – it is, after all, what transported Arcade Fire into arenas.
Friday, October 10, 2008
You Don't Miss Your Water Until Your Well Runs Dry
Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol 8: Tell Tale Signs (Columbia, 2008)
Various Artists – Take Me to the River: A Southern Soul Story (Kent, 2008)
For those of us who have been waiting patiently for The Bootleg Series to catch up with the contemporary Dylan, ‘Tell Tale Signs’ ought to be an essential purchase. Sadly, Columbia’s ludicrous multi-format strategy has perversely made it unaffordable – with an unnecessarily lavish 3CD set on sale for prices varying between £80 and £110. Not even the most obsessive of Dylan devotees would consider spending quite that much money on one product, especially when the box is so large that it won’t even fit on your average shelf. Thanks but no thanks Columbia.
The standard £15 2CD edition is, if we exercise critical acumen rather than slavish icon worship, a bit of a mixed bag. Its highlights are superb, and demonstrate that Dylan’s now ravaged voice has a caustic power all of its own, communicating wisdom and experience more than the defiant rage of the young Dylan. Perhaps the best example of this is the solo piano and vocal version of ‘Dignity’, one of those half-finished Dylan recordings that suggest he shouldn’t have bothered experimenting with more full blooded arrangements. His vocal is attacking and aggressive, but also full of compassion. The band version that eventually appeared on ‘Greatest Hits Vol. 3’ is nowhere near as assertive or compelling. The two additional versions of ‘Mississippi’ included here also give a clear impression of how Dylan never sees songs as malleable objects. The bare version which opens the first CD is remarkable – a lightly shuffled blues that seems more hopeful than resigned - much more striking than the slightly MOR plod of the ‘Love and Theft’ version.
There are, however, a number of superfluous alternate takes that were clearly consigned to the cutting room floor for good reason. There’s a radically different version of ‘Someday Baby’, a reverb-drenched U2-esque trudge that sounds like a totally different song from the slight but appealing barroom boogie of the ‘Modern Times’ version. Dylan sounds bored – and one can hardly blame him given the uninspired musical context. Only the delicate brush drums seem to complement the lyric. The punchier version of ‘Ain’t Talkin’ included here somehow sounds darker but less mysterious. The alternate versions of ‘Series of Dreams’ and ‘Everything is Broken’ are only superficially different from the previously released versions and don’t add quite so much to our understanding of Dylan’s songwriting process.
The collection continues to give credence to the argument that Dylan can frequently be a poor editor of his own work. There’s plenty of evidence here to suggest that both ‘Oh Mercy’ and ‘Time Out of Mind’ could have been even better albums. Not only this, but the versions of ‘God Knows’ and ‘Born In Time’ included here from the ‘Oh Mercy’ sessions are significantly superior to the less imaginative takes that eventually made it on to ‘Under The Red Sky’. Similarly, it’s hard to believe that the epic, rambling and haunting narrative of ‘Red River Shore’ was left off ‘Time Out of Mind’ in favour of some of the more lightweight blues numbers that peppered that album. Laced with accordion, the song is a meandering, languid delight.
There’s actually a relative paucity of completely unheard material here, although the small number of selections are certainly intriguing. ‘Can’t Escape From You’ seems inspired by vocal group music – perhaps The Platters or the early Drifters material. It sounds, pleasingly, like it could easily feature on one of Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour programmes. ‘Dreamin’ Of You’ is perhaps a little too characteristic of Daniel Lanois’ murky swamp and perhaps therefore suffers from over-familiarity. It’s an effective enough lyric, but not as melodic or as stirring as the best songs included on ‘Time Out of Mind’ and it covers similar thematic ground to some of the best tracks on that album. There’s a surprisingly mellifluous duet with Ralph Stanley on ‘The Lonesome River’, and Stanley deserves great credit for coping with the unenviable task of harmonising with Dylan.
There are a handful of soundtrack selections and live recordings padding out the set. Given the sheer volume of Dylan live recordings in recent years (what a shame the regular offerings streamed on the official website stopped with no warning), ‘Tell Tale Signs’ doesn’t seem to delve deep enough into this area. There’s a sterling, dramatic, tempestuous reading of ‘High Water’ but the version of ‘Lonesome Day Blues’ is a little perfunctory, Dylan hastily barking out the lyrics and obscuring his enunciation, as he does all too often in concert these days. Given the quality of his fresh readings of songs like ‘Hattie Carroll’, ‘John Brown’ and ‘Shelter From The Storm’ in recent London shows, I wonder whether some recent live performances of older songs might have been more valuable in this context, particularly in emphasising the changeable nature of Dylan’s songs, however sacred their original versions might seem.
For all the riches on ‘Tell Tale Signs’, I still suspect that a complete Dylan live album covering 2000 onwards would be a more rewarding addition to the catalogue, albeit with the reservation that the selections would need to be judicious. Some of ‘Tell Tale Signs’ feels a little too much like the scraping of a very deep barrel.
Putting the excessive asking price for the Dylan box set into very clear perspective is ‘Take Me to the River: A Southern Soul Story’, another new soul compilation from Kent Records. Frankly, the market is saturated with soul compilations, from the Motown Chartbusters series through to Dave Godin’s peerless Deep Soul collections. With this package though, Kent have taken the art of compiling to a whole new level. Lavishly packaged with a hard book filled with photographs and informative liner notes, the compilation is unique in spanning several labels and veering from predictable essentials to more obscure collectors’ gems. Priced at a very reasonable £28, it exposes Columbia’s greed and idiocy all too starkly.
If this is your first introduction to the heady, fervent world of southern soul music, it’s an ideal primer. It includes, amongst others, Al Green’s gospel-informed track that gives the set its title, two solid gold classics from William Bell (‘You Don’t Miss Your Water’ and ‘I Forgot To Be Your Lover’), Percy Sledge’s ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’, James Carr’s awesome ‘Dark End of the Street’ and Otis Redding’s staggering ‘Try A Little Tenderness’, possibly the best directive ever addressed to men in song form. These selections, familiar to anyone already immersed in this glorious music, are just the tip of the iceberg here though.
I can’t add much to David Hepworth’s perceptive and authoritative review in The Word magazine, other than to reiterate his point about the radicalism and sheer provocation of this music. Nothing that has come since – be it punk, acid house, hip hop or grime, has been quite as revolutionary as this remarkable combination of the sacred and profane. Clearly emerging from a gospel tradition, but shot through with desperation, lust and immoral urges, southern soul is as intense and passionate as popular music gets, dominated by compelling narratives and assertive personalities.
These statements of love, desire and heartbreak veer from the highly principled to the baldly insensitive. Arthur Alexander’s ‘Go Home Girl’ finds its protagonist weighing up the value of his love for a friend and his desire for said friend’s girlfriend and opting to sustain the friendship. By way of contrast, there’s Denise LaSalle’s promise to break up your home. Believe me, it’s no idle threat. In between, there’s plenty of good old fashioned adultery and musings on the bittersweet pain of unrequited love. All the emotions and longings fundamental to great pop music are here in droves.
It’s also great to hear some less predictable selections from great singers. We all know Eddie Floyd for ‘Knock on Wood’ but his ‘Got to Make a Comeback’ (actually the flipside to that stellar hit) is a languid hymn to steely determination that demonstrates his versatility and deserves a wider hearing. Similarly, Wilson Pickett is familiar for ‘Mustang Sally’ and ‘In the Midnight Hour’, but ‘Ninety Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)’ is an equally stirring piece of dirty blues still based on that unflappable backbeat.
I normally reject arguments that dismiss all modern R&B in relation to its earlier counterparts, not least because some of that contemporary music is so rhythmically exciting. Yet, listening to this wonderful compilation, one has to wonder if any of today’s divas or young males full of tedious bravado have had the kind of life experience that informs the great stories being told here. If there’s a comparable determination in the modern variations of soul music, it often seems to focus on money and material wealth. And whilst the music is still so often preoccupied with sex, very rarely does it now seem sensual or intimate. Many modern singers could do with listening to some of these confessions - be it Barbara and the Browns’ exquisite ‘If I Can’t Run To You I’ll Crawl’ or Doris Duke’s wonderfully uninhibited ‘To The Other Woman (I’m The Other Woman)’.
In fact, one of the strongest features of this collection is the volume of authoritative, artful performances from women. There’s the low down groove of Laura Lee’s ‘Dirty Man’, and gleefully accusatory performances from June Edwards (‘You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man’) and Candi Staton (‘Another Man’s Woman, Another Woman’s Man’). Add to this two of the essential masterpieces of the form with Aretha Franklin’s ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’ (one of Dan Penn’s best compositions) and Etta James’ ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’.
Perhaps what makes soul music one of the most accessible and enduring of all contemporary musical forms is its ability to absorb the best elements from a variety of traditions. Present within every song here is the sheer force and conviction of gospel music, the melancholy and pain of the blues and the unashamed vulnerability of country music. It is some of the greatest music ever recorded, plus the continual unearthing of more rare treasures suggests that soul music’s deep well may turn out to be bottomless.
Various Artists – Take Me to the River: A Southern Soul Story (Kent, 2008)
For those of us who have been waiting patiently for The Bootleg Series to catch up with the contemporary Dylan, ‘Tell Tale Signs’ ought to be an essential purchase. Sadly, Columbia’s ludicrous multi-format strategy has perversely made it unaffordable – with an unnecessarily lavish 3CD set on sale for prices varying between £80 and £110. Not even the most obsessive of Dylan devotees would consider spending quite that much money on one product, especially when the box is so large that it won’t even fit on your average shelf. Thanks but no thanks Columbia.
The standard £15 2CD edition is, if we exercise critical acumen rather than slavish icon worship, a bit of a mixed bag. Its highlights are superb, and demonstrate that Dylan’s now ravaged voice has a caustic power all of its own, communicating wisdom and experience more than the defiant rage of the young Dylan. Perhaps the best example of this is the solo piano and vocal version of ‘Dignity’, one of those half-finished Dylan recordings that suggest he shouldn’t have bothered experimenting with more full blooded arrangements. His vocal is attacking and aggressive, but also full of compassion. The band version that eventually appeared on ‘Greatest Hits Vol. 3’ is nowhere near as assertive or compelling. The two additional versions of ‘Mississippi’ included here also give a clear impression of how Dylan never sees songs as malleable objects. The bare version which opens the first CD is remarkable – a lightly shuffled blues that seems more hopeful than resigned - much more striking than the slightly MOR plod of the ‘Love and Theft’ version.
There are, however, a number of superfluous alternate takes that were clearly consigned to the cutting room floor for good reason. There’s a radically different version of ‘Someday Baby’, a reverb-drenched U2-esque trudge that sounds like a totally different song from the slight but appealing barroom boogie of the ‘Modern Times’ version. Dylan sounds bored – and one can hardly blame him given the uninspired musical context. Only the delicate brush drums seem to complement the lyric. The punchier version of ‘Ain’t Talkin’ included here somehow sounds darker but less mysterious. The alternate versions of ‘Series of Dreams’ and ‘Everything is Broken’ are only superficially different from the previously released versions and don’t add quite so much to our understanding of Dylan’s songwriting process.
The collection continues to give credence to the argument that Dylan can frequently be a poor editor of his own work. There’s plenty of evidence here to suggest that both ‘Oh Mercy’ and ‘Time Out of Mind’ could have been even better albums. Not only this, but the versions of ‘God Knows’ and ‘Born In Time’ included here from the ‘Oh Mercy’ sessions are significantly superior to the less imaginative takes that eventually made it on to ‘Under The Red Sky’. Similarly, it’s hard to believe that the epic, rambling and haunting narrative of ‘Red River Shore’ was left off ‘Time Out of Mind’ in favour of some of the more lightweight blues numbers that peppered that album. Laced with accordion, the song is a meandering, languid delight.
There’s actually a relative paucity of completely unheard material here, although the small number of selections are certainly intriguing. ‘Can’t Escape From You’ seems inspired by vocal group music – perhaps The Platters or the early Drifters material. It sounds, pleasingly, like it could easily feature on one of Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour programmes. ‘Dreamin’ Of You’ is perhaps a little too characteristic of Daniel Lanois’ murky swamp and perhaps therefore suffers from over-familiarity. It’s an effective enough lyric, but not as melodic or as stirring as the best songs included on ‘Time Out of Mind’ and it covers similar thematic ground to some of the best tracks on that album. There’s a surprisingly mellifluous duet with Ralph Stanley on ‘The Lonesome River’, and Stanley deserves great credit for coping with the unenviable task of harmonising with Dylan.
There are a handful of soundtrack selections and live recordings padding out the set. Given the sheer volume of Dylan live recordings in recent years (what a shame the regular offerings streamed on the official website stopped with no warning), ‘Tell Tale Signs’ doesn’t seem to delve deep enough into this area. There’s a sterling, dramatic, tempestuous reading of ‘High Water’ but the version of ‘Lonesome Day Blues’ is a little perfunctory, Dylan hastily barking out the lyrics and obscuring his enunciation, as he does all too often in concert these days. Given the quality of his fresh readings of songs like ‘Hattie Carroll’, ‘John Brown’ and ‘Shelter From The Storm’ in recent London shows, I wonder whether some recent live performances of older songs might have been more valuable in this context, particularly in emphasising the changeable nature of Dylan’s songs, however sacred their original versions might seem.
For all the riches on ‘Tell Tale Signs’, I still suspect that a complete Dylan live album covering 2000 onwards would be a more rewarding addition to the catalogue, albeit with the reservation that the selections would need to be judicious. Some of ‘Tell Tale Signs’ feels a little too much like the scraping of a very deep barrel.
Putting the excessive asking price for the Dylan box set into very clear perspective is ‘Take Me to the River: A Southern Soul Story’, another new soul compilation from Kent Records. Frankly, the market is saturated with soul compilations, from the Motown Chartbusters series through to Dave Godin’s peerless Deep Soul collections. With this package though, Kent have taken the art of compiling to a whole new level. Lavishly packaged with a hard book filled with photographs and informative liner notes, the compilation is unique in spanning several labels and veering from predictable essentials to more obscure collectors’ gems. Priced at a very reasonable £28, it exposes Columbia’s greed and idiocy all too starkly.
If this is your first introduction to the heady, fervent world of southern soul music, it’s an ideal primer. It includes, amongst others, Al Green’s gospel-informed track that gives the set its title, two solid gold classics from William Bell (‘You Don’t Miss Your Water’ and ‘I Forgot To Be Your Lover’), Percy Sledge’s ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’, James Carr’s awesome ‘Dark End of the Street’ and Otis Redding’s staggering ‘Try A Little Tenderness’, possibly the best directive ever addressed to men in song form. These selections, familiar to anyone already immersed in this glorious music, are just the tip of the iceberg here though.
I can’t add much to David Hepworth’s perceptive and authoritative review in The Word magazine, other than to reiterate his point about the radicalism and sheer provocation of this music. Nothing that has come since – be it punk, acid house, hip hop or grime, has been quite as revolutionary as this remarkable combination of the sacred and profane. Clearly emerging from a gospel tradition, but shot through with desperation, lust and immoral urges, southern soul is as intense and passionate as popular music gets, dominated by compelling narratives and assertive personalities.
These statements of love, desire and heartbreak veer from the highly principled to the baldly insensitive. Arthur Alexander’s ‘Go Home Girl’ finds its protagonist weighing up the value of his love for a friend and his desire for said friend’s girlfriend and opting to sustain the friendship. By way of contrast, there’s Denise LaSalle’s promise to break up your home. Believe me, it’s no idle threat. In between, there’s plenty of good old fashioned adultery and musings on the bittersweet pain of unrequited love. All the emotions and longings fundamental to great pop music are here in droves.
It’s also great to hear some less predictable selections from great singers. We all know Eddie Floyd for ‘Knock on Wood’ but his ‘Got to Make a Comeback’ (actually the flipside to that stellar hit) is a languid hymn to steely determination that demonstrates his versatility and deserves a wider hearing. Similarly, Wilson Pickett is familiar for ‘Mustang Sally’ and ‘In the Midnight Hour’, but ‘Ninety Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)’ is an equally stirring piece of dirty blues still based on that unflappable backbeat.
I normally reject arguments that dismiss all modern R&B in relation to its earlier counterparts, not least because some of that contemporary music is so rhythmically exciting. Yet, listening to this wonderful compilation, one has to wonder if any of today’s divas or young males full of tedious bravado have had the kind of life experience that informs the great stories being told here. If there’s a comparable determination in the modern variations of soul music, it often seems to focus on money and material wealth. And whilst the music is still so often preoccupied with sex, very rarely does it now seem sensual or intimate. Many modern singers could do with listening to some of these confessions - be it Barbara and the Browns’ exquisite ‘If I Can’t Run To You I’ll Crawl’ or Doris Duke’s wonderfully uninhibited ‘To The Other Woman (I’m The Other Woman)’.
In fact, one of the strongest features of this collection is the volume of authoritative, artful performances from women. There’s the low down groove of Laura Lee’s ‘Dirty Man’, and gleefully accusatory performances from June Edwards (‘You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man’) and Candi Staton (‘Another Man’s Woman, Another Woman’s Man’). Add to this two of the essential masterpieces of the form with Aretha Franklin’s ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’ (one of Dan Penn’s best compositions) and Etta James’ ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’.
Perhaps what makes soul music one of the most accessible and enduring of all contemporary musical forms is its ability to absorb the best elements from a variety of traditions. Present within every song here is the sheer force and conviction of gospel music, the melancholy and pain of the blues and the unashamed vulnerability of country music. It is some of the greatest music ever recorded, plus the continual unearthing of more rare treasures suggests that soul music’s deep well may turn out to be bottomless.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Tag Team
Fyfe Dangerfield/Tom Rogerson – The Vortex, London 7th October 2008
It’s quite rare to see a shared improvised piano gig, particularly one which ends with three pianists playing together, gleefully sending up the entire process. In that sense, this Vortex gig could be described as self-aware and unpretentious, even if some of the playing could easily have given the opposite impression.
Tom Rogerson is one of this country’s most complete musicians, and it’s criminal that his profile has not yet risen further. Until recently, he has divided his time working with songwriters Jeremy Warmsley and Emmy the Great, neither of whom have really provided an adequate space for his expressive, assured piano playing. I’ve already waxed lyrical here about his group Three Trapped Tigers, who marry the propulsive, angular groove of Battles with the intangible mystery of Supersilent or Food. They are a superb, viscerally exciting group – both technically assured and physically thrilling.
Rogerson’s improvised work occupies a different space entirely though. He rarely, if ever, repeats himself, tonight’s performances demonstrating his debt to classical training as much to a tradition of free improvisation. There’s nothing self-conscious or decidedly avant-garde about his two performances – instead, he aims simply and squarely for playing meaningful music with real feeling. His stance is doubled up and awkward, but the intensity is sincere and palpable. He frequently looks in danger of knocking himself out against the piano as he rocks back and forth, lost in his own substantive reverie.
This sort of insular, self-absorbed world is easily in danger of leaving audiences baffled or bored, but Rogerson finds his own way of communicating. Midway through his second improvisation, there’s a passage of such languid beauty and harmonic simplicity that it could have come from a pop ballad, although the delicacy and nuance with which it is performed elevates it to something haunting and profound. Similarly, when he loses himself in moments of Jarrett-esque minimalism, the violence with which he plays seems honest and convincing rather than a forced piece of showmanship.
It’s hard to feel so confident about Fyfe Dangerfield, more known for his leadership role in Guillemots than he is for solo piano work. His first set seems a little shallow – mostly consisting of long, murky and uninvolving passages holding down the sustain pedal with a dogged and unhelpful resolve. He’s constantly searching for interesting and unconventional sounds from the instrument, but his banging and punching of the keys feels like a gimmick used in place of identifiable musical phrasing. It’s definitely more artifice than art.
If Dangerfield’s first set is a little boring, the second is intolerable. It’s admittedly unclear whether or not it’s supposed to be taken seriously, but it comes across as a piss take of barrelhouse boogie. Clearly, there’s no obligation to perform this music anymore, but irreverence towards it needs to be based on very firm foundations. It also needs to have a clear purpose. Dangerfield’s rhythmic language is tentative and repetitive and his occasional barked interjections (a little like Tom Waits perhaps) seem ill-judged, even if they are intentionally comic. Physically, he seems tetchy, moving his seat snappily when playing at the far extremes of the keyboard. It seems as if he makes too many conscious decisions whilst improvising (demarcating the geography of the keyboard too starkly, moving too rapidly between aggression and reflection, using gimmicky sounds by muting the strings), and all these choices end up doing is restricting his expression.
This gig certainly suggests that Rogerson is a creative and articulate talent making music at the most challenging level that also speaks directly and clearly to its audience. Whilst his work is defiantly unpredictable, the consistent thread is a clear and mostly successful desire to capture feeling and mood through improvisation and composition. Three Trapped Tigers are operating in a musical landscape that can often seem clinical and cold – and they have injected that terrain with a refreshing burst of physicality and sensation. Rogerson’s solo work sounds not just liberated, but also emotionally engaging. So why are more people not yet writing about him?
It’s quite rare to see a shared improvised piano gig, particularly one which ends with three pianists playing together, gleefully sending up the entire process. In that sense, this Vortex gig could be described as self-aware and unpretentious, even if some of the playing could easily have given the opposite impression.
Tom Rogerson is one of this country’s most complete musicians, and it’s criminal that his profile has not yet risen further. Until recently, he has divided his time working with songwriters Jeremy Warmsley and Emmy the Great, neither of whom have really provided an adequate space for his expressive, assured piano playing. I’ve already waxed lyrical here about his group Three Trapped Tigers, who marry the propulsive, angular groove of Battles with the intangible mystery of Supersilent or Food. They are a superb, viscerally exciting group – both technically assured and physically thrilling.
Rogerson’s improvised work occupies a different space entirely though. He rarely, if ever, repeats himself, tonight’s performances demonstrating his debt to classical training as much to a tradition of free improvisation. There’s nothing self-conscious or decidedly avant-garde about his two performances – instead, he aims simply and squarely for playing meaningful music with real feeling. His stance is doubled up and awkward, but the intensity is sincere and palpable. He frequently looks in danger of knocking himself out against the piano as he rocks back and forth, lost in his own substantive reverie.
This sort of insular, self-absorbed world is easily in danger of leaving audiences baffled or bored, but Rogerson finds his own way of communicating. Midway through his second improvisation, there’s a passage of such languid beauty and harmonic simplicity that it could have come from a pop ballad, although the delicacy and nuance with which it is performed elevates it to something haunting and profound. Similarly, when he loses himself in moments of Jarrett-esque minimalism, the violence with which he plays seems honest and convincing rather than a forced piece of showmanship.
It’s hard to feel so confident about Fyfe Dangerfield, more known for his leadership role in Guillemots than he is for solo piano work. His first set seems a little shallow – mostly consisting of long, murky and uninvolving passages holding down the sustain pedal with a dogged and unhelpful resolve. He’s constantly searching for interesting and unconventional sounds from the instrument, but his banging and punching of the keys feels like a gimmick used in place of identifiable musical phrasing. It’s definitely more artifice than art.
If Dangerfield’s first set is a little boring, the second is intolerable. It’s admittedly unclear whether or not it’s supposed to be taken seriously, but it comes across as a piss take of barrelhouse boogie. Clearly, there’s no obligation to perform this music anymore, but irreverence towards it needs to be based on very firm foundations. It also needs to have a clear purpose. Dangerfield’s rhythmic language is tentative and repetitive and his occasional barked interjections (a little like Tom Waits perhaps) seem ill-judged, even if they are intentionally comic. Physically, he seems tetchy, moving his seat snappily when playing at the far extremes of the keyboard. It seems as if he makes too many conscious decisions whilst improvising (demarcating the geography of the keyboard too starkly, moving too rapidly between aggression and reflection, using gimmicky sounds by muting the strings), and all these choices end up doing is restricting his expression.
This gig certainly suggests that Rogerson is a creative and articulate talent making music at the most challenging level that also speaks directly and clearly to its audience. Whilst his work is defiantly unpredictable, the consistent thread is a clear and mostly successful desire to capture feeling and mood through improvisation and composition. Three Trapped Tigers are operating in a musical landscape that can often seem clinical and cold – and they have injected that terrain with a refreshing burst of physicality and sensation. Rogerson’s solo work sounds not just liberated, but also emotionally engaging. So why are more people not yet writing about him?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Portrait of An Artist
Wild Combination - A Portrait Of Arthur Russell (Matt Wolf, 2008)
Documentaries about musicians can be tedious affairs, sometimes neglecting to include any examples of the music itself. Often, they serve merely to deify rather than to critique their subject matter. Matt Wolf’s debut film, about the songwriter and composer Arthur Russell, nimbly avoids these pitfalls.
Pre-release speculation suggested that Wolf’s film might falter due to a paucity of footage of Russell performing. This obstacle has, in the event, proved to be exaggerated, as Wolf’s combination of home video footage and solo recordings adds a sense of mystery that might have been lacking from more direct concert material. It contributes to the overall sense of sadness – emphasising the idea that Russell’s contemporary audience was far smaller than it should have been. Here was a man mainly creating music mainly for himself, simply because it was his life’s work to do so.
It’s significant that Wolf came to Russell’s music in the same way as most people – through the recent reissues that have come courtesy of the Soul Jazz and Audika labels. He’s not a lifelong Russell anorak – he’s simply recognised Russell’s musical significance and worthiness as a documentary subject. He’s managed to secure contributions from most of the significant figures in Russell’s life – including moving testimonies from his parents and his long term partner Tom Lee, in addition to the bewildering array of musical collaborators, admirers and former band-mates.
The film conveys a strong sense of Russell as an ambitious and committed musician, but one whose combination of revisionism and perfectionism often made him into an awkward person. The song that gives the film its title eventually appeared on the posthumous ‘Calling Out Of Context’ album – Russell had apparently worked on it for over five years. The need to be in control of every aspect of his work made him impossible to work with – he could be unreliable and frequently refused to co-operate with others. In some senses, it’s a shame that his theatre collaboration with Robert Wilson proved such a disaster, but it’s clear that Russell was never best suited to joint ventures.
This is just one sense in which the film refuses to portray Russell as anything other than deeply flawed. There’s a moving moment in which Tom Lee recounts discovering that Russell tested positive for HIV, whilst he had tested negative. ‘Of course this upset me’, he admits, ‘because I thought that we were totally monogamous but he must have been fooling around a bit. Sadly, it only takes one time…’
Wolf’s film is successful in presenting Russell as a confused, reflective person, desperate to escape the confines of his rural American upbringing, whose restless mind took him in countless different directions. Perhaps this explains both his apparent unfaithfulness and his commitment to explore all aspects of music, uninhibited by the narrow restrictions of genre. To Philip Glass, he was an eccentric member of an avant-garde community, whilst to Lola Love (who provided the demented vocal to Dinosaur L’s ‘Go Bang!’), he was ‘the funkiest white boy I ever saw’. Ernie Brooks of the Flying Hearts saw him as a songwriter to rival John Lennon. To himself, Russell must have been all of these things at once.
The film is mostly excellent in demonstrating Russell’s open-mindedness towards all forms of music. It goes some way in explaining how his different explorations – acoustic folk songs, disco tracks under a variety of monikers, instrumental compositions and performances with his electronically treated Cello - all fell under his broad category of sophisticated bubblegum. In all his forms, his strong sense of melody and harmony always cut through. Perhaps the film skirts over his composed work a little too quickly – we only hear a small segment of ‘Instrumentals’, and the significance of ‘World of Echo’ is probably understated too.
Despite these minor issues, the film still gives a powerful sense of Russell as a man for whom making music is the only priority. Lee admits that he effectively became the breadwinner in their partnership, with Russell mostly avoiding work in order to write and record music all day, every day, regardless of whether he would ever complete it. Seeing Lee trawling through the countless hours of tapes Russell left behind is undoubtedly touching, and provides evidence that the rediscovery of Russell’s music is a journey that has only just begun.
Like all good documentaries, Wolf’s film recognises that all this music was, in Keith Jarrett’s words, the end result of ‘a process that has nothing to do with music’. The film is excellent in recognising Russell’s physical awkwardness and the restrictions of his isolated youth, recounted with warm and sincere regret by his parents. The pull of the city represented dreams of freedom and liberation, an uninhibited desire to experiment expressed in Russell’s body of work as a whole. There’s also a powerful irony in the testimony that as he descended into AIDS-related illness and dementia, Russell’s musical gift continued to grow stronger.
Brilliantly edited, and combined with some poetic camerawork of Wolf’s own imagining, ‘Wild Combination’ explores how we can be most free and creative. Russell seemed to work best when he was purely self-directing – with no deadlines or commercial expectations. Sometimes he clearly ached to be successful – but was ultimately more interested in pure artistic expression for its own sake, simply following his mind wherever it took him. Yet there’s also something powerful in the film’s conclusion, which hints at Tom Lee’s burgeoning relationship with Russell’s parents, and his comfort in regularly visiting the rural land where Arthur grew up. Amusingly, the ‘Master Mix’ cap Arthur sports on the cover for ‘Calling Out of Context’ has nothing to do with DJing, but is rather advertising a mix of animal feed! Lee, an entirely devoted and genuine man, clearly feels most free and at peace returning to his lost lover’s roots.
At once celebratory and poignant, but careful and compassionate in recognising human and artistic failings, ‘Wild Combination’ is exactly what it purports to be – a portrait of its subject. Going well beyond the music, the film demonstrates how difficult, awkward people can so often seem so compelling and attractive. Counterfactual speculation as to what Russell might have achieved had he not died at 40 seems to miss the point, as his father observes sweetly – ‘well, we’d at least have had another 800 reels of tape…’
Documentaries about musicians can be tedious affairs, sometimes neglecting to include any examples of the music itself. Often, they serve merely to deify rather than to critique their subject matter. Matt Wolf’s debut film, about the songwriter and composer Arthur Russell, nimbly avoids these pitfalls.
Pre-release speculation suggested that Wolf’s film might falter due to a paucity of footage of Russell performing. This obstacle has, in the event, proved to be exaggerated, as Wolf’s combination of home video footage and solo recordings adds a sense of mystery that might have been lacking from more direct concert material. It contributes to the overall sense of sadness – emphasising the idea that Russell’s contemporary audience was far smaller than it should have been. Here was a man mainly creating music mainly for himself, simply because it was his life’s work to do so.
It’s significant that Wolf came to Russell’s music in the same way as most people – through the recent reissues that have come courtesy of the Soul Jazz and Audika labels. He’s not a lifelong Russell anorak – he’s simply recognised Russell’s musical significance and worthiness as a documentary subject. He’s managed to secure contributions from most of the significant figures in Russell’s life – including moving testimonies from his parents and his long term partner Tom Lee, in addition to the bewildering array of musical collaborators, admirers and former band-mates.
The film conveys a strong sense of Russell as an ambitious and committed musician, but one whose combination of revisionism and perfectionism often made him into an awkward person. The song that gives the film its title eventually appeared on the posthumous ‘Calling Out Of Context’ album – Russell had apparently worked on it for over five years. The need to be in control of every aspect of his work made him impossible to work with – he could be unreliable and frequently refused to co-operate with others. In some senses, it’s a shame that his theatre collaboration with Robert Wilson proved such a disaster, but it’s clear that Russell was never best suited to joint ventures.
This is just one sense in which the film refuses to portray Russell as anything other than deeply flawed. There’s a moving moment in which Tom Lee recounts discovering that Russell tested positive for HIV, whilst he had tested negative. ‘Of course this upset me’, he admits, ‘because I thought that we were totally monogamous but he must have been fooling around a bit. Sadly, it only takes one time…’
Wolf’s film is successful in presenting Russell as a confused, reflective person, desperate to escape the confines of his rural American upbringing, whose restless mind took him in countless different directions. Perhaps this explains both his apparent unfaithfulness and his commitment to explore all aspects of music, uninhibited by the narrow restrictions of genre. To Philip Glass, he was an eccentric member of an avant-garde community, whilst to Lola Love (who provided the demented vocal to Dinosaur L’s ‘Go Bang!’), he was ‘the funkiest white boy I ever saw’. Ernie Brooks of the Flying Hearts saw him as a songwriter to rival John Lennon. To himself, Russell must have been all of these things at once.
The film is mostly excellent in demonstrating Russell’s open-mindedness towards all forms of music. It goes some way in explaining how his different explorations – acoustic folk songs, disco tracks under a variety of monikers, instrumental compositions and performances with his electronically treated Cello - all fell under his broad category of sophisticated bubblegum. In all his forms, his strong sense of melody and harmony always cut through. Perhaps the film skirts over his composed work a little too quickly – we only hear a small segment of ‘Instrumentals’, and the significance of ‘World of Echo’ is probably understated too.
Despite these minor issues, the film still gives a powerful sense of Russell as a man for whom making music is the only priority. Lee admits that he effectively became the breadwinner in their partnership, with Russell mostly avoiding work in order to write and record music all day, every day, regardless of whether he would ever complete it. Seeing Lee trawling through the countless hours of tapes Russell left behind is undoubtedly touching, and provides evidence that the rediscovery of Russell’s music is a journey that has only just begun.
Like all good documentaries, Wolf’s film recognises that all this music was, in Keith Jarrett’s words, the end result of ‘a process that has nothing to do with music’. The film is excellent in recognising Russell’s physical awkwardness and the restrictions of his isolated youth, recounted with warm and sincere regret by his parents. The pull of the city represented dreams of freedom and liberation, an uninhibited desire to experiment expressed in Russell’s body of work as a whole. There’s also a powerful irony in the testimony that as he descended into AIDS-related illness and dementia, Russell’s musical gift continued to grow stronger.
Brilliantly edited, and combined with some poetic camerawork of Wolf’s own imagining, ‘Wild Combination’ explores how we can be most free and creative. Russell seemed to work best when he was purely self-directing – with no deadlines or commercial expectations. Sometimes he clearly ached to be successful – but was ultimately more interested in pure artistic expression for its own sake, simply following his mind wherever it took him. Yet there’s also something powerful in the film’s conclusion, which hints at Tom Lee’s burgeoning relationship with Russell’s parents, and his comfort in regularly visiting the rural land where Arthur grew up. Amusingly, the ‘Master Mix’ cap Arthur sports on the cover for ‘Calling Out of Context’ has nothing to do with DJing, but is rather advertising a mix of animal feed! Lee, an entirely devoted and genuine man, clearly feels most free and at peace returning to his lost lover’s roots.
At once celebratory and poignant, but careful and compassionate in recognising human and artistic failings, ‘Wild Combination’ is exactly what it purports to be – a portrait of its subject. Going well beyond the music, the film demonstrates how difficult, awkward people can so often seem so compelling and attractive. Counterfactual speculation as to what Russell might have achieved had he not died at 40 seems to miss the point, as his father observes sweetly – ‘well, we’d at least have had another 800 reels of tape…’
Friday, September 26, 2008
A Private Broadcast
Curios - Closer (Impure, 2008)
It’s probably testament to Tom Cawley’s talent and open-mindedness that his original writing and playing for Curios is so wildly at variance with his unbridled assault on his Nord Electro for Acoustic Ladyland. With ‘Skinny Grin’, I felt that group might have taken their punk-jazz schtik a little too far, removing much of the musicality in favour of cross-genre thrashing. By way of contrast, across just two albums, Cawley’s own group have demonstrated the extraordinary versatility of the Piano trio. Curios is a prime example of how considerable empathy between three players can result in music that more than defies its limitations.
For the most part, ‘Closer’ emphasises the group’s more measured, reflective and melancholy side. There are moments of playfulness and exuberance but most traces of fiery aggression have been tempered. It’s definitely steeped far more in the evolving European school than the American bebop tradition. The result is a thoughtful, wistful set filled with great warmth. The intimacy implied by the album’s title seems entirely apt. Cawley’s touch is as light as a feather, and these recordings capture the subtlety and nuance of his playing with elegance and precision. There’s a palpable and compassionate sense of the group playing in isolation but for the benefit of many. ‘Closer’ is like a series of private conversations revealed to the wider world.
A couple of features in Cawley’s writing strike me as particularly impressive. First, there’s the way he can take a simple phrase and extrapolate it into something bold and unpredictable. He builds a whole feature from a short series of notes on ‘Curious’, with 22-year old drummer Josh Blackmore contributing his own responses and a wealth of rhythmic intricacy. It veers seamlessly from a cool, spacey feel to an unexpectedly driving swing. Secondly, there’s the comfort with which he has absorbed such a wide range of influences. If anything, there’s as much Debussy as Keith Jarrett in his writing, and ‘The Tiling Song’ even resembles an East European classical dance. Perhaps the real hint is in ‘Bradford’, a piece recognising the pivotal influence of American pianist Brad Mehldau.
Equally significant is how the entire band put their technical abilities in the service of feeling and atmosphere rather than virtuosic showmanship. Whilst the combination of classical and jazz traditions can often seem studied and academic, Curios manage to be consistently engaging and stimulating. It’s not simply that the music is complex or polyrhythmic – it’s the way the band makes transitions that are so confident as to barely register an impact. Suddenly, the listener’s ear might awaken and realise the music has travelled to a completely new place. For example, the opening ‘Little Sharks and Baby Dolphins’ shifts effortlessly between a deceptively simple waltz theme and a more propulsive, but no less delicate exposition. It’s all guided calmly by Josh Blackmore’s varying cymbal patterns.
This is not, on the surface, accessible or populist music, but it appears to have found a reasonable audience by virtue of its sheer finesse alone. There is, it seems, as much excitement in Cawley’s expressive, lyrical themes as there is in the outlandish, more muscular improvisation emerging from the Loop Collective. That London-based jazz seems to be pulling in so many different directions at the moment is hugely exciting. This radical open-mindedness has revitalised the scene, and hopefully pointed out to those programmers who undermined Jazz broadcasting in this country how wrong-headed they have been. There is both the space and the appreciation for a great wealth of ideas to flourish.
It’s probably testament to Tom Cawley’s talent and open-mindedness that his original writing and playing for Curios is so wildly at variance with his unbridled assault on his Nord Electro for Acoustic Ladyland. With ‘Skinny Grin’, I felt that group might have taken their punk-jazz schtik a little too far, removing much of the musicality in favour of cross-genre thrashing. By way of contrast, across just two albums, Cawley’s own group have demonstrated the extraordinary versatility of the Piano trio. Curios is a prime example of how considerable empathy between three players can result in music that more than defies its limitations.
For the most part, ‘Closer’ emphasises the group’s more measured, reflective and melancholy side. There are moments of playfulness and exuberance but most traces of fiery aggression have been tempered. It’s definitely steeped far more in the evolving European school than the American bebop tradition. The result is a thoughtful, wistful set filled with great warmth. The intimacy implied by the album’s title seems entirely apt. Cawley’s touch is as light as a feather, and these recordings capture the subtlety and nuance of his playing with elegance and precision. There’s a palpable and compassionate sense of the group playing in isolation but for the benefit of many. ‘Closer’ is like a series of private conversations revealed to the wider world.
A couple of features in Cawley’s writing strike me as particularly impressive. First, there’s the way he can take a simple phrase and extrapolate it into something bold and unpredictable. He builds a whole feature from a short series of notes on ‘Curious’, with 22-year old drummer Josh Blackmore contributing his own responses and a wealth of rhythmic intricacy. It veers seamlessly from a cool, spacey feel to an unexpectedly driving swing. Secondly, there’s the comfort with which he has absorbed such a wide range of influences. If anything, there’s as much Debussy as Keith Jarrett in his writing, and ‘The Tiling Song’ even resembles an East European classical dance. Perhaps the real hint is in ‘Bradford’, a piece recognising the pivotal influence of American pianist Brad Mehldau.
Equally significant is how the entire band put their technical abilities in the service of feeling and atmosphere rather than virtuosic showmanship. Whilst the combination of classical and jazz traditions can often seem studied and academic, Curios manage to be consistently engaging and stimulating. It’s not simply that the music is complex or polyrhythmic – it’s the way the band makes transitions that are so confident as to barely register an impact. Suddenly, the listener’s ear might awaken and realise the music has travelled to a completely new place. For example, the opening ‘Little Sharks and Baby Dolphins’ shifts effortlessly between a deceptively simple waltz theme and a more propulsive, but no less delicate exposition. It’s all guided calmly by Josh Blackmore’s varying cymbal patterns.
This is not, on the surface, accessible or populist music, but it appears to have found a reasonable audience by virtue of its sheer finesse alone. There is, it seems, as much excitement in Cawley’s expressive, lyrical themes as there is in the outlandish, more muscular improvisation emerging from the Loop Collective. That London-based jazz seems to be pulling in so many different directions at the moment is hugely exciting. This radical open-mindedness has revitalised the scene, and hopefully pointed out to those programmers who undermined Jazz broadcasting in this country how wrong-headed they have been. There is both the space and the appreciation for a great wealth of ideas to flourish.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Radiance
Emmylou Harris, London Hammersmith Apollo, 14th September 2008
It’s taken me a while to get round to writing up my thoughts on my first Emmylou Harris concert experience, so I hope my recollections are not too hazy and distant. With this and last month’s disappointing Stevie Wonder concert, I’m left with very few living legends to see in concert, which hopefully means I’ll be able to restrict myself to reasonably priced gigs from now on.
There has been a lot of debate among Emmylou obsessives about the merits of this latest touring ensemble, The Red Dirt Boys, and her superb previous band Spyboy. It’s certainly true that this band doesn’t attempt to mimic Spyboy’s mysterious swampy grooves, neither do they benefit from a singular talent quite as striking as Buddy Miller. My girlfriend commented perceptively on the limitations of the drum arrangements – the influence of rhythms from around the world, presumably imposed on Emmylou’s music by Daniel Lanois and Malcolm Burn, is now largely absent. It’s arguably appropriate though, given the more tasteful, rootsy nature of Emmylou’s latest album (‘All I Intended To Be’), that The Red Dirt Boys are a group well grounded in the American folk tradition. The strongest link in the band is Rickie Simpkins, who plays a bewildering variety of instruments including mandolin, fiddle and banjo. He’s also a more than competent vocalist, providing strongly supportive harmonies and a memorable duet on ‘Old Five and Dimers Like Me’. The whole group are tasteful, sensitive players who complement Emmylou’s haunting voice, an instrument not just undiminished in its powers, but still developing.
Perhaps most interestingly of all, they play subtly redefined versions of the songs post-‘Wrecking Ball’. These versions go some way toward emphasising the continuity throughout her career rather than presenting that album schematically as a radical seismic shift. Yes, the new emphasis on production values found a new context for her voice – but these songs, including her own, have strong ties with the country tradition. As a result, the show coheres superbly, with Appalachian balladry, bluegrass stomp and, as Emmylou herself admits, a healthy dose of the blues.
It is surely the latter ingredient that is the most significant in her potent mix. Whether she’s drawing something from her own experience or interpreting the work of her most admired writers, there is always an aching sadness and poignancy at the core of her delivery. She admits that she had to exaggerate for ‘Red Dirt Girl’ as her childhood was never quite so painful but claims that the selected Merle Haggard’s beautiful ‘Kern River’ because it’s ‘just so unbearably sad’. After performing a distinctive reading of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Pancho and Lefty’ (sharper and starker than the original), she quotes Townes’ view that ‘there are only two types of music – zip-a-dee-doo-da and the blues’. Unsurprisingly, she promises more of the latter.
It’s become a cliché to say this about the great interpreters – but Emmylou does indeed make every song her own. Even the Gram Parsons songs, which must come with weighty, personal memories for her, are imbued with fresh vigour. She does ‘Return of the Grievous Angel’ and ‘Wheels’ tonight, two of his most memorable songs, inverting them so that her harmony lines become the lead voice. This initially makes them sound unfamiliar and strange, but by the final verse of each, she has such total command that the original melody begins to sound weaker.
The most striking revelation of the night turns out to be Emmylou’s skill as a guitarist. Anyone expecting her to strum politely throughout would no doubt have left impressed by her graceful finger picking, particularly on a moving version of ‘Bang The Drum Slowly’. I found myself wondering whether this rendition of the song might have been even more effective had it been completely solo. The interjection of swirling synth pads during the choruses did seem a little obvious – a touch of emotional manipulation where evidently none was required.
Two further reservations – in not playing ‘Michelangelo’ or ‘Boulder to Birmingham’ she arguably omits her two finest self-penned songs. The show opening ‘Here I Am’ acts as the sole selection from ‘Stumble Into Grace’, which seems a shame given the rich seam of material that album might provide. This is of course a mere quibble given the show’s near two-hour running time. A more significant obstacle is the amount of reverb added to her voice – it’s a strong enough instrument not to need it, and the effect is to obscure her enunciation so some of the words become lost. With her great emphasis on story songs and personal narratives, the words are often as important as the melodies.
Still, for a woman who claims not to be religious, she sounds fervent and almost evangelical tonight. There’s a strong gospel power to the show’s final stretch, with a striking unaccompanied vocal harmony version of ‘Bright Morning Stars’ and a joyous and rousing ‘Get Up John!’. This starts to make the spiritual strain of her more recent material (especially ‘The Pearl’) begin to make more sense.
It’s also impossible to review an Emmylou performance without mentioning just how wonderful she looks, her angelic facial beauty well preserved and her stunning white hair seeming to flow seamlessly into a radiant white dress. It’s good to see she can still wear cowboy boots too.
It’s taken me a while to get round to writing up my thoughts on my first Emmylou Harris concert experience, so I hope my recollections are not too hazy and distant. With this and last month’s disappointing Stevie Wonder concert, I’m left with very few living legends to see in concert, which hopefully means I’ll be able to restrict myself to reasonably priced gigs from now on.
There has been a lot of debate among Emmylou obsessives about the merits of this latest touring ensemble, The Red Dirt Boys, and her superb previous band Spyboy. It’s certainly true that this band doesn’t attempt to mimic Spyboy’s mysterious swampy grooves, neither do they benefit from a singular talent quite as striking as Buddy Miller. My girlfriend commented perceptively on the limitations of the drum arrangements – the influence of rhythms from around the world, presumably imposed on Emmylou’s music by Daniel Lanois and Malcolm Burn, is now largely absent. It’s arguably appropriate though, given the more tasteful, rootsy nature of Emmylou’s latest album (‘All I Intended To Be’), that The Red Dirt Boys are a group well grounded in the American folk tradition. The strongest link in the band is Rickie Simpkins, who plays a bewildering variety of instruments including mandolin, fiddle and banjo. He’s also a more than competent vocalist, providing strongly supportive harmonies and a memorable duet on ‘Old Five and Dimers Like Me’. The whole group are tasteful, sensitive players who complement Emmylou’s haunting voice, an instrument not just undiminished in its powers, but still developing.
Perhaps most interestingly of all, they play subtly redefined versions of the songs post-‘Wrecking Ball’. These versions go some way toward emphasising the continuity throughout her career rather than presenting that album schematically as a radical seismic shift. Yes, the new emphasis on production values found a new context for her voice – but these songs, including her own, have strong ties with the country tradition. As a result, the show coheres superbly, with Appalachian balladry, bluegrass stomp and, as Emmylou herself admits, a healthy dose of the blues.
It is surely the latter ingredient that is the most significant in her potent mix. Whether she’s drawing something from her own experience or interpreting the work of her most admired writers, there is always an aching sadness and poignancy at the core of her delivery. She admits that she had to exaggerate for ‘Red Dirt Girl’ as her childhood was never quite so painful but claims that the selected Merle Haggard’s beautiful ‘Kern River’ because it’s ‘just so unbearably sad’. After performing a distinctive reading of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Pancho and Lefty’ (sharper and starker than the original), she quotes Townes’ view that ‘there are only two types of music – zip-a-dee-doo-da and the blues’. Unsurprisingly, she promises more of the latter.
It’s become a cliché to say this about the great interpreters – but Emmylou does indeed make every song her own. Even the Gram Parsons songs, which must come with weighty, personal memories for her, are imbued with fresh vigour. She does ‘Return of the Grievous Angel’ and ‘Wheels’ tonight, two of his most memorable songs, inverting them so that her harmony lines become the lead voice. This initially makes them sound unfamiliar and strange, but by the final verse of each, she has such total command that the original melody begins to sound weaker.
The most striking revelation of the night turns out to be Emmylou’s skill as a guitarist. Anyone expecting her to strum politely throughout would no doubt have left impressed by her graceful finger picking, particularly on a moving version of ‘Bang The Drum Slowly’. I found myself wondering whether this rendition of the song might have been even more effective had it been completely solo. The interjection of swirling synth pads during the choruses did seem a little obvious – a touch of emotional manipulation where evidently none was required.
Two further reservations – in not playing ‘Michelangelo’ or ‘Boulder to Birmingham’ she arguably omits her two finest self-penned songs. The show opening ‘Here I Am’ acts as the sole selection from ‘Stumble Into Grace’, which seems a shame given the rich seam of material that album might provide. This is of course a mere quibble given the show’s near two-hour running time. A more significant obstacle is the amount of reverb added to her voice – it’s a strong enough instrument not to need it, and the effect is to obscure her enunciation so some of the words become lost. With her great emphasis on story songs and personal narratives, the words are often as important as the melodies.
Still, for a woman who claims not to be religious, she sounds fervent and almost evangelical tonight. There’s a strong gospel power to the show’s final stretch, with a striking unaccompanied vocal harmony version of ‘Bright Morning Stars’ and a joyous and rousing ‘Get Up John!’. This starts to make the spiritual strain of her more recent material (especially ‘The Pearl’) begin to make more sense.
It’s also impossible to review an Emmylou performance without mentioning just how wonderful she looks, her angelic facial beauty well preserved and her stunning white hair seeming to flow seamlessly into a radiant white dress. It’s good to see she can still wear cowboy boots too.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Norman Whitfield RIP
Yet another legend has passed away this week - Motown producer and songwriter Norman Whitfield. Although Whitfield is less well known than Stax counterpart Isaac Hayes (he didn't enjoy such a fruitful solo career), his influence and style are pretty similar. His songwriting partnership with Barrett Strong mirrored the collaboration between Hayes and David Porter at Stax. His production style, creating what has since been dubbed 'psychedelic soul' must surely have informed Hayes' work on the Shaft soundtrack.
Whitfield was responsible for writing one of the most enduring songs of the Motown era - 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine'. The song was immortalised by Marvin Gaye's extraordinary delivery (and the exquisite orchestration on that version), but was also recorded by many other groups Whitfield was involved with, including The Temptations and The Undisputed Truth.
His production work for The Temptations still sounds imaginative today and has been hugely influential. Tracks like 'Psychedelic Shack', 'Ball of Confusion' and 'Papa Was A Rolling Stone' took them well beyond the conventional limitations of the soul vocal group.
The Undisputed Truth, very much a Whitfield project, have been less fondly remembered and remain criminally underrated. 'Smiling Faces (Sometimes)' and 'You Make Your Own Heaven and Hell (Right Here On Earth)' remain two of the most potent examples of Whitfield's skill with prodution and arranging - the mood of both is palpably threatening.
Whitfield was responsible for writing one of the most enduring songs of the Motown era - 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine'. The song was immortalised by Marvin Gaye's extraordinary delivery (and the exquisite orchestration on that version), but was also recorded by many other groups Whitfield was involved with, including The Temptations and The Undisputed Truth.
His production work for The Temptations still sounds imaginative today and has been hugely influential. Tracks like 'Psychedelic Shack', 'Ball of Confusion' and 'Papa Was A Rolling Stone' took them well beyond the conventional limitations of the soul vocal group.
The Undisputed Truth, very much a Whitfield project, have been less fondly remembered and remain criminally underrated. 'Smiling Faces (Sometimes)' and 'You Make Your Own Heaven and Hell (Right Here On Earth)' remain two of the most potent examples of Whitfield's skill with prodution and arranging - the mood of both is palpably threatening.
Daylight Robbery
There's always a lot of fuss about a 'new' Bob Dylan release, however much it scrapes the barrel for previously unreleased recordings. The latest volume in the Bootleg Series, 'Tell Tale Signs' is no different - but much of the fuss this time has been generated by those fans refusing to purchase the set. Sony's marketing strategy for this release is at best bizarre and at worst a total insult. They are releasing the collection in three versions - a single disc, a double disc and an inevitable limited edition 3CD set with deluxe booklet. The complete version costs....well, what would be reasonable? At the absolute top end, I'd say £39.99. This turns out to be very wide of Sony's valuation, which puts it at £101.49!!
Is the packaging made of the rarest diamonds?! This is three times the face value of a ticket to see the man himself in concert! There are many other Dylan 3CD compilations in circulation (the first Bootleg Series set vols 1-3, Biograph, various budget packages of the original albums) and none of them cost even close to this exorbitant asking price. It is no surprise that many fans are pledging to download the third disc illegally from torrent sites but this relies on someone being generous enough to shell out for the set and upload it, or for a very unscrupulous journalist to make a political stand.
What do Sony stand to gain from valuing the bonus disc at an additional £80? Is it the best material Dylan has recorded? This seems highly unlikely, however rejuvenated a force he has been since 'Time Out Of Mind'. One wonders what Dylan himself makes of all this, and whether or not he has any kind of control over it. This label is constantly milking the Dylan catalogue for a quick buck. Last year's 'Dylan' best of (also released in 2CD and 3CD versions) made little improvement on 'Biograph' save for some inclusion of later material, including some very peculiar selections. This has just taken the worship of Dylan into the realms of the ridiculous. I shall not be buying the set.
Is the packaging made of the rarest diamonds?! This is three times the face value of a ticket to see the man himself in concert! There are many other Dylan 3CD compilations in circulation (the first Bootleg Series set vols 1-3, Biograph, various budget packages of the original albums) and none of them cost even close to this exorbitant asking price. It is no surprise that many fans are pledging to download the third disc illegally from torrent sites but this relies on someone being generous enough to shell out for the set and upload it, or for a very unscrupulous journalist to make a political stand.
What do Sony stand to gain from valuing the bonus disc at an additional £80? Is it the best material Dylan has recorded? This seems highly unlikely, however rejuvenated a force he has been since 'Time Out Of Mind'. One wonders what Dylan himself makes of all this, and whether or not he has any kind of control over it. This label is constantly milking the Dylan catalogue for a quick buck. Last year's 'Dylan' best of (also released in 2CD and 3CD versions) made little improvement on 'Biograph' save for some inclusion of later material, including some very peculiar selections. This has just taken the worship of Dylan into the realms of the ridiculous. I shall not be buying the set.
Friday, September 12, 2008
It's Not Even Summer, Is It?
Stevie Wonder, London O2 Arena, 11th September 2008
On one level, it seems completely churlish to complain about Stevie Wonder’s performance at the O2 last night. Mercifully, we *are* treated to many of the highpoints of his back catalogue (‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’, ‘My Cherie Amour’, a huge chunk of the ‘Innervisions’ album, ‘Superstition’, ‘Sir Duke’, ‘Knocks Me Off My Feet’, ‘I Wish’ amongst others). He has a huge band supporting him onstage and from the back of the hellish O2 it’s frequently difficult to determine precisely who is doing what. Does he really need two other keyboardists in addition to himself? Two percussionists and a drummer?!
Unfortunately, though, I could only leave ‘A Wonder Summer’s Night’ (a bit of a crass and unimaginative name for a tour) with a heavy heart and a feeling that this once great artist no longer has any interest in being original or challenging. The show is so poorly sequenced as to be interminably disengaging for substantial chunks of its epic duration. His opening rendition of Miles Davis’ ‘All Blues’ is unexpected and pleasing – but a little odd for an audience who will not associate the piece with the performer on stage. In fact, Wonder’s still dazzling piano playing demonstrates a consistent jazz influence throughout the show, although it is often refracted through a prism that magnifies the schmaltz at the expense of the substance. The rest of the show suffers from disorientating lurches in pace and style – he’ll play an upbeat funk gem from his golden period and then immediately follow it with a sentimental ballad or an aimless jam.
Even at its best, the music is arranged and performed in a manner that is unsuitably slick. These hard-hitting, technically proficient gospel rhythm sections appear to be de rigeur these days – but as impressive as they are, they are musically one-dimensional (the whole show lacks dynamic or textural variety) and often boring as a result. The appeal of Wonder’s fantastic run of albums from Music of My Mind to Songs In The Key of Life during the 1970s was that there was a certain sloppiness to the sound as well as precision to the rhythm – it’s this tension that provided the invigorating groove and the palpable sense of soul. Both are sadly absent in this concert. There’s a fairly uninspired Latin groove over which Wonder introduces his entire band and lets every musician take a solo – but even this seems to have had any sense of spontaneity surgically removed.
Lamentable inconsistency has been Wonder’s Achilles Heel since 1975 (‘Songs in the Key of Life’ favoured his sentimental side, although he got away with it then through the sheer verve and spirit of that music). As he has become less prolific, his lapses of taste and decency have become all the more startling. Personally, I could have done without the excruciating extended version of ‘Ribbon In The Sky’ (one of many moments when he gets a bit ambitious with his demands in terms of audience participation) and the mid-section of the set that favours ballads with Wonder at the piano could have happily been curtailed. I suspect everyone could have done without the spiel about his mother dying and inspiring him to return to music too, but he has always been a painfully sincere and earnest artist. His request for a minute's silence on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was handled with more sensitivity and restraint, and I found myself rather angry with the morons who broke it with shouts of 'we love you Stevie!'
Whilst it’s great to see Wonder visibly enjoying his time on stage and treating fans to a generous set, the moments of audience participation and playfulness seem rambling and unfocused. There’s a moment when he sings ‘Hello London’ through a vocoder and you hope it’s going to meld into one of this 70s classics, but it never arrives anywhere at all. Sometimes he just stops completely and tries to engage the audience in call-and-response sessions but at the back of the venue, we’re just too detached from any kind of atmosphere to engage. There are so many moments when people drift to the bar and for once I find myself understanding the motivation to get a drink – I just wish he’d get on with it!
Vocally, Wonder is now a little vulnerable. The upper end of his register is still very strong, but at the lower end he seems to have lost power and volume. Sometimes his voice cracks or he doesn’t quite hit the right note, odd for a musician with such a capable ear. There are some songs (‘Knocks Me Off My Feet’ and ‘Visions’ particularly) where he seems to be struggling with the control of his voice and some of the lines are noticeably wayward as a result.
In spite of all this, the show certainly has its moments. ‘Higher Ground’ is as passionate and invigorating as ever, perhaps given fresh political resonance by Wonder’s passionate support for Barack Obama. Some lesser material from ‘Hotter Than July’ (including an enjoyable ‘Masterblaster’) stands up surprisingly well. ‘Don’t You Worry About A Thing’ and ‘Living For The City’ are also welcome treats, although, in his unwillingness to play the full seven minutes of the latter, the tempo is subjected to a bizarre and inappropriate acceleration. Similarly, whilst it’s good to hear the gorgeous ‘Visions’ amongst the ballads, its new soft rock coda is ill-judged, particularly when one of the guitarists begins shredding gratuitously to no discernible emotional impact.
Like Prince at his shows at the same venue last year, Wonder treats some of his greatest songs with far less respect than they deserve. An invigorating ‘Uptight’ is cut short and merged into a grotesque mass singalong of ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’. I have never met anyone who has admitted liking the latter song, yet it remains Wonder’s biggest UK hit and gets the biggest ovation of the night. Frankly, who can blame Wonder for all his cheesy indulgences tonight when his paying audience are so undiscerning? It’s great to hear ‘I Wish’ and ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’, but frustrating that they are edited and merged together in a hurried medley. We needed more of this material earlier in the show!
Even tonight, there’s still plenty of evidence that Wonder is a master musician – the better of his ballads are intricate and intelligent, with harmonic complexity rarely found in pop music. His groove based music remains peerless, and even the treatment handed out to it by this mercilessly rehearsed band of session musos can’t really diminish that power. So, the final half hour of the show is at the very least entertaining. Better still, that pure and clear sound he gets from the harmonica remains one of the most beautiful sounds on earth. I would have liked to hear more of it.
On one level, it seems completely churlish to complain about Stevie Wonder’s performance at the O2 last night. Mercifully, we *are* treated to many of the highpoints of his back catalogue (‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’, ‘My Cherie Amour’, a huge chunk of the ‘Innervisions’ album, ‘Superstition’, ‘Sir Duke’, ‘Knocks Me Off My Feet’, ‘I Wish’ amongst others). He has a huge band supporting him onstage and from the back of the hellish O2 it’s frequently difficult to determine precisely who is doing what. Does he really need two other keyboardists in addition to himself? Two percussionists and a drummer?!
Unfortunately, though, I could only leave ‘A Wonder Summer’s Night’ (a bit of a crass and unimaginative name for a tour) with a heavy heart and a feeling that this once great artist no longer has any interest in being original or challenging. The show is so poorly sequenced as to be interminably disengaging for substantial chunks of its epic duration. His opening rendition of Miles Davis’ ‘All Blues’ is unexpected and pleasing – but a little odd for an audience who will not associate the piece with the performer on stage. In fact, Wonder’s still dazzling piano playing demonstrates a consistent jazz influence throughout the show, although it is often refracted through a prism that magnifies the schmaltz at the expense of the substance. The rest of the show suffers from disorientating lurches in pace and style – he’ll play an upbeat funk gem from his golden period and then immediately follow it with a sentimental ballad or an aimless jam.
Even at its best, the music is arranged and performed in a manner that is unsuitably slick. These hard-hitting, technically proficient gospel rhythm sections appear to be de rigeur these days – but as impressive as they are, they are musically one-dimensional (the whole show lacks dynamic or textural variety) and often boring as a result. The appeal of Wonder’s fantastic run of albums from Music of My Mind to Songs In The Key of Life during the 1970s was that there was a certain sloppiness to the sound as well as precision to the rhythm – it’s this tension that provided the invigorating groove and the palpable sense of soul. Both are sadly absent in this concert. There’s a fairly uninspired Latin groove over which Wonder introduces his entire band and lets every musician take a solo – but even this seems to have had any sense of spontaneity surgically removed.
Lamentable inconsistency has been Wonder’s Achilles Heel since 1975 (‘Songs in the Key of Life’ favoured his sentimental side, although he got away with it then through the sheer verve and spirit of that music). As he has become less prolific, his lapses of taste and decency have become all the more startling. Personally, I could have done without the excruciating extended version of ‘Ribbon In The Sky’ (one of many moments when he gets a bit ambitious with his demands in terms of audience participation) and the mid-section of the set that favours ballads with Wonder at the piano could have happily been curtailed. I suspect everyone could have done without the spiel about his mother dying and inspiring him to return to music too, but he has always been a painfully sincere and earnest artist. His request for a minute's silence on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was handled with more sensitivity and restraint, and I found myself rather angry with the morons who broke it with shouts of 'we love you Stevie!'
Whilst it’s great to see Wonder visibly enjoying his time on stage and treating fans to a generous set, the moments of audience participation and playfulness seem rambling and unfocused. There’s a moment when he sings ‘Hello London’ through a vocoder and you hope it’s going to meld into one of this 70s classics, but it never arrives anywhere at all. Sometimes he just stops completely and tries to engage the audience in call-and-response sessions but at the back of the venue, we’re just too detached from any kind of atmosphere to engage. There are so many moments when people drift to the bar and for once I find myself understanding the motivation to get a drink – I just wish he’d get on with it!
Vocally, Wonder is now a little vulnerable. The upper end of his register is still very strong, but at the lower end he seems to have lost power and volume. Sometimes his voice cracks or he doesn’t quite hit the right note, odd for a musician with such a capable ear. There are some songs (‘Knocks Me Off My Feet’ and ‘Visions’ particularly) where he seems to be struggling with the control of his voice and some of the lines are noticeably wayward as a result.
In spite of all this, the show certainly has its moments. ‘Higher Ground’ is as passionate and invigorating as ever, perhaps given fresh political resonance by Wonder’s passionate support for Barack Obama. Some lesser material from ‘Hotter Than July’ (including an enjoyable ‘Masterblaster’) stands up surprisingly well. ‘Don’t You Worry About A Thing’ and ‘Living For The City’ are also welcome treats, although, in his unwillingness to play the full seven minutes of the latter, the tempo is subjected to a bizarre and inappropriate acceleration. Similarly, whilst it’s good to hear the gorgeous ‘Visions’ amongst the ballads, its new soft rock coda is ill-judged, particularly when one of the guitarists begins shredding gratuitously to no discernible emotional impact.
Like Prince at his shows at the same venue last year, Wonder treats some of his greatest songs with far less respect than they deserve. An invigorating ‘Uptight’ is cut short and merged into a grotesque mass singalong of ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’. I have never met anyone who has admitted liking the latter song, yet it remains Wonder’s biggest UK hit and gets the biggest ovation of the night. Frankly, who can blame Wonder for all his cheesy indulgences tonight when his paying audience are so undiscerning? It’s great to hear ‘I Wish’ and ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’, but frustrating that they are edited and merged together in a hurried medley. We needed more of this material earlier in the show!
Even tonight, there’s still plenty of evidence that Wonder is a master musician – the better of his ballads are intricate and intelligent, with harmonic complexity rarely found in pop music. His groove based music remains peerless, and even the treatment handed out to it by this mercilessly rehearsed band of session musos can’t really diminish that power. So, the final half hour of the show is at the very least entertaining. Better still, that pure and clear sound he gets from the harmonica remains one of the most beautiful sounds on earth. I would have liked to hear more of it.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Club Uncool
Kurt Wagner, Cate Le Bon, James Blackshaw - The Borderline, London 10th September 2008
Every so often London blesses us with a club night that has been intelligently programmed, with three interesting acts that make sense lined up next to each other. Last night’s Club Uncut was one of those rare and highly enjoyable evenings – and one which came with the added bonus of a very joyous and positive atmosphere.
Proceedings were opened by the prodigious guitarist James Blackshaw, a descendent of the Takoma school of playing strongly influenced by the likes of Robbie Basho and John Fahey. Blackshaw’s compositions are dense and long, drawing every ounce of potential from each and every theme or motif. His playing is technically accomplished and impressively dexterous, but his use of open tunings means his music is characterised most by warmth and intimacy. It’s hard to describe exactly what is so satisfying about his performance – he sits legs crossed and performs without much in the way of personality or charisma. The impact comes exclusively from the hypnotic power of his music. What a shame he couldn’t have been given a little more time.
I know very little about Cate Le Bon other that she is a Welsh associate of Gruff Rhys and is currently performing as part of the Neon Neon project. Her first song tonight seemed a little clunky to me – the chords strummed a fraction too heavily and her voice seeming somewhat mannered. She eased into her performance though, and within a couple of songs communicated a personality and musical vocabulary that seemed distinctive and refreshing. Many of the songs seemed to be about murdered animals, but the assured quality of her delivery transported her songs beyond the realms of whimsy.
Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner began his quite wonderful solo set by bellowing what he described as a ‘hogcall’ from within the audience, eventually completing the job from the stage. He then sat down with his guitar and performed a superb rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’. It’s rare to hear a Dylan song covered and forget there was ever a Bob Dylan version – but Wagner inhabited and controlled this song so completely that he made it his own.
The rest of his set consisted entirely of material from the new Lambchop album ‘OH(Ohio)’, the result being a revelatory glimpse at how brilliant that album could have been. With the focus now on his soulful, idiosyncratic guitar playing and unusual vocal phrasing, and with the words once again clearly audible, the songs revealed themselves as humane narratives, full of wit and insight. I found myself once again moved and stirred by the imaginative poetry of this compelling everyman.
Wagner himself was a genial figure on stage – revelling in the comic potential of the solo performance, and again demonstrating himself to be one of the most amiable, gentle and modest of songwriters. ‘I’m not here trying to be like Neil Young breaking away from Crosby, Stills and Nash’ he declared, ‘I’m just trying to become a better person – oh, and the rest of the group are busy with the Silver Jews thing too.’
He may however have been working to a strict contract, employing one bemused audience member to watch an egg timer throughout the whole set to ensure he didn’t extend his allotted time. As a result, the performance was frustratingly brief. Some parts of the audience may well have appreciated a smattering from the back catalogue, although that was clearly not the purpose of this show, and Wagner’s refusal to play ‘a song called Up With People’ was understandable.
He ends with a hoary old country standard ‘I Believe in You’ which may be now be responsible for one of the most straightforwardly romantic moments in my life so far. By his own admission, it’s ‘sappy’ and defiantly ‘uncool’, but it’s also sweet-natured and positive and it’s refreshing that Wagner is unafraid to express the value of good old fashioned human compassion.
My feeling now is that by drifting into ever more tasteful and restrained arrangements, Lambchop as a group has probably exhausted its potential. The band will probably not make a clearer, more articulate statement of dignified minimalism than ‘Is A Woman’ and will definitely not make a record as lush and invigorating as ‘Nixon’. On this evidence, the greater mystery and drama now resides in Wagner as a solo singer-songwriter, although he seems far too humble to pursue this path any time soon.
Every so often London blesses us with a club night that has been intelligently programmed, with three interesting acts that make sense lined up next to each other. Last night’s Club Uncut was one of those rare and highly enjoyable evenings – and one which came with the added bonus of a very joyous and positive atmosphere.
Proceedings were opened by the prodigious guitarist James Blackshaw, a descendent of the Takoma school of playing strongly influenced by the likes of Robbie Basho and John Fahey. Blackshaw’s compositions are dense and long, drawing every ounce of potential from each and every theme or motif. His playing is technically accomplished and impressively dexterous, but his use of open tunings means his music is characterised most by warmth and intimacy. It’s hard to describe exactly what is so satisfying about his performance – he sits legs crossed and performs without much in the way of personality or charisma. The impact comes exclusively from the hypnotic power of his music. What a shame he couldn’t have been given a little more time.
I know very little about Cate Le Bon other that she is a Welsh associate of Gruff Rhys and is currently performing as part of the Neon Neon project. Her first song tonight seemed a little clunky to me – the chords strummed a fraction too heavily and her voice seeming somewhat mannered. She eased into her performance though, and within a couple of songs communicated a personality and musical vocabulary that seemed distinctive and refreshing. Many of the songs seemed to be about murdered animals, but the assured quality of her delivery transported her songs beyond the realms of whimsy.
Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner began his quite wonderful solo set by bellowing what he described as a ‘hogcall’ from within the audience, eventually completing the job from the stage. He then sat down with his guitar and performed a superb rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’. It’s rare to hear a Dylan song covered and forget there was ever a Bob Dylan version – but Wagner inhabited and controlled this song so completely that he made it his own.
The rest of his set consisted entirely of material from the new Lambchop album ‘OH(Ohio)’, the result being a revelatory glimpse at how brilliant that album could have been. With the focus now on his soulful, idiosyncratic guitar playing and unusual vocal phrasing, and with the words once again clearly audible, the songs revealed themselves as humane narratives, full of wit and insight. I found myself once again moved and stirred by the imaginative poetry of this compelling everyman.
Wagner himself was a genial figure on stage – revelling in the comic potential of the solo performance, and again demonstrating himself to be one of the most amiable, gentle and modest of songwriters. ‘I’m not here trying to be like Neil Young breaking away from Crosby, Stills and Nash’ he declared, ‘I’m just trying to become a better person – oh, and the rest of the group are busy with the Silver Jews thing too.’
He may however have been working to a strict contract, employing one bemused audience member to watch an egg timer throughout the whole set to ensure he didn’t extend his allotted time. As a result, the performance was frustratingly brief. Some parts of the audience may well have appreciated a smattering from the back catalogue, although that was clearly not the purpose of this show, and Wagner’s refusal to play ‘a song called Up With People’ was understandable.
He ends with a hoary old country standard ‘I Believe in You’ which may be now be responsible for one of the most straightforwardly romantic moments in my life so far. By his own admission, it’s ‘sappy’ and defiantly ‘uncool’, but it’s also sweet-natured and positive and it’s refreshing that Wagner is unafraid to express the value of good old fashioned human compassion.
My feeling now is that by drifting into ever more tasteful and restrained arrangements, Lambchop as a group has probably exhausted its potential. The band will probably not make a clearer, more articulate statement of dignified minimalism than ‘Is A Woman’ and will definitely not make a record as lush and invigorating as ‘Nixon’. On this evidence, the greater mystery and drama now resides in Wagner as a solo singer-songwriter, although he seems far too humble to pursue this path any time soon.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
A Presidential Election
Calexico - Carried to Dust (City Slang, 2008)
Lambchop - OH(Ohio) (City Slang, 2008)
If I see the words ‘return to form’ used in reference to either of these two albums one more time I think I’m going to throw a hissyfit. John Mulvey at least admits the term is a ‘dread phrase’ in his blog about ‘OH(Ohio)’ on the Uncut website but it’s still a contestable claim that either band ever really lost form. Lambchop albums have perhaps become more slippery and elusive since ‘Is A Woman’, but ‘Damaged’ had a rather creeping, insidious effect on me that I came to admire. As for Calexico, their tentative venture into rockier territory on ‘Garden Ruin’, rightly acclaimed in reviews at the time, has now been condemned as a mis-step in retrospect. Regardless of what one thought of that attempt to diversify, the mini album with Iron and Wine ‘In The Reins’ remains to my mind one of the great unsung masterpieces of the decade so far. Critics are fickle beasts!
‘Carried to Dust’ certainly ought to please those Calexico admirers who would prefer them not to change too much. The mariachi horns return, there are plenty of lush strings and border-evoking brushed drums. Yet to suggest the group have completely abandoned the map they began charting with ‘Garden Ruin’ is a little misleading. There are some dramatic guitar atmospherics on the restless ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday’ particularly and a number of other tracks are not easy to pigeon-hole as border music. The slow building tension of ‘Man Made Lake’, for example, crafted with sustained piano chords and some unrestrained guitar howling, would not have been a feature of the Calexico sound before ‘Garden Ruin’. If Arcade Fire borrowed some of Calexico’s stylings for their majestic ‘Ocean of Noise’ (by some distance the best track on ‘Neon Bible’ for me), Calexico now return the compliment by using a distinctly Arcade Fire-esque backbeat and slow building tension on ‘Two Silver Trees’.
Elsewhere, the sound is more comforting and familiar, the Spanish language collaboration with Amparo Sanchez on ‘Inspiracion’ taking many of Calexico’s preoccupations to their logical conclusion. There’s that deliciously dusty quality to many of the songs, with the lightly rolling rhythms, evoking, it must be admitted, images of horses and wagons, they deploy so effortlessly. One can hardly blame the group for returning to these well worn tropes when they are so adept at executing them. Best of all is when they apply a new and unexpected nuance to these characteristic features. The superb ‘Fractured Air (Tornado Watch)’ benefits from some echo effects on the horns more common to dub reggae than American or Mexican folk music. Together with some syncopated rhythm guitar, it makes for something lithe and funky.
I’ve seen some reviews that suggest the songwriting on this album fails to match the impact of the group’s instrumentals. I have to disagree quite strongly with this, as ‘Carried to Dust’ is certainly Calexico’s most immediate collection so far (if not necessarily their best). Some of their songs are admittedly more about mood than melody (‘Bend to the Road’) but ‘Carried to Dust’ has more than its fair share of stirring creations. ‘Slowness’, featuring the delightful vocals of Canadian Pieta Brown, is particularly glorious, subtle and restrained but also with some kind of gently hymnal quality to the performance. ‘Victor Jara’s Hands’ and ‘News From William’ are the kind of compelling narratives we’ve come to expect from the group. Perhaps least predictable is the hazy, eerie, partially electronic ‘Contention City’, a journey into dreamlike fantasia the band handle remarkably well.
As is often the case with Calexico, there’s quite a lot to absorb within this album’s fifteen tracks (sixteen if you get the iTunes bonus track) but it’s too easy to take this group for granted. They remain musicians who luxuriate in every slight detail – the effect created by a single hit on a cymbal bell, or exploring the interplay between guitars and pianos, a frequent feature of this collection. I suspect this is something a little more than just another good Calexico album.
The extent to which ‘OH (Ohio)’ represents a diversion from Lambchop’s most recent work has arguably been overstated. It’s more skeletal, with the florid string flourishes of ‘Aw, C’Mon/No You C’Mon’ now firmly jettisoned, but 2006’s excellent ‘Damaged’ had already initiated that process. It shares with its predecessor a tendency to divest Kurt Wagner’s idiosyncratic voice of personality, his croaky mumble too often obscuring his strange and original lyrics. His words can as a result fall into the background, carefully enmeshed in what is undoubtedly a very lovely, mostly sedate sound.
For me, Lambchop tracks were always more powerful when they made a triumphant virtue of Wagner’s vocals and lyrics. ‘Nixon’ worked as much because of the extraordinary, piercing attack and surprise of that falsetto, as much as through its lavish arrangements. The best songs on ‘How I Quit Smoking’ (‘Theone’, ‘The Man Who Loved Beer’) saw Wagner embracing melody as well as acute-angled phrasing. Whilst some found the smoky ambience of ‘Is A Woman’ detached and unemotional, I found both lyrical and musical poetry within it, given investment of the necessary time and effort. Whilst there are plenty of moments on ‘OH(Ohio)’ that are tender and pleasant, there is nothing here that really moves me quite as palpably as those highlights from their back catalogue.
Where the band would previously delve into a nimble and funky soul groove, the emphasis on ‘Ohio’ is more on gently plucked guitars, Tony Crow’s piano now providing subtle shading rather than dominating proceedings as it did on ‘Is a Woman’. Typical are the title track, ‘Of Raymond’ and ‘Slipped, Dissolved and Loosed’. The latter is easily the most memorable thing here, its cooing backing vocals almost sounding comic but also providing a smooth counterpoint to Wagner’s staccato bursts. The opening title track is irresistibly cute (with its central refrain of ‘green doesn’t matter when you’re blue’) but, with its Jobim-tinged arrangement, it’s perilously perched on the precipice between tasteful delight and background or lounge music.
Perhaps there are two points of significant departure here – the use of two producers (regular contributor Mark Nevers and Roger Moutenot, who has worked wonders in the past for Yo La Tengo and Sleater Kinney amongst others) and the occasional deployment of uncharacteristically brisk, driving rock backbeats. These tracks, both superbly titled (‘National Talk Like A Pirate Day’ and ‘Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr.’), arguably sound incongruous in context, but they at least provide a very welcome distraction from the familiar dignified restraint on offer elsewhere. ‘National Talk Like A Pirate Day’ is superbly arranged, with Byrdsian jangly guitars and a potent counter melody from the bass.
A number of the tracks here seem to be more subtle and stately takes on familiar Lambchop modes. The lovely ‘A Hold Of You’ veers close to the country soul template they perfected on ‘Nixon’ but seems, perhaps rather self-consciously, to make sure the lid stays firmly on. Some of the songs seem to drift or meander rather lazily, sometimes outstaying their welcome a little. Perhaps the clearest example of this here is the lengthy ‘Popeye’, where Wagner’s words are at their most buried, the harmony seems to repeat a familiar Lambchop sequence, and everything just seems to run on without much purpose (at least until it suddenly veers into a loose-limbed funky coda). It all makes for a very appealing late night or early morning listen – mostly relaxed and elegant but never quite completely awake. Perhaps this is the same criticism that many used against ‘Is A Woman’, but I felt the consistent languid mood of that album serviced its unusual and idiosyncratic songs well. Also, Wagner’s vocals, although abandoning the falsetto, remained striking and incisive on that record.
As ever with Lambchop, the track titles are a veritable treasure trove of imagination in themselves and Wagner’s ruminations on the nature and limitations of masculinity remain transfixing and illuminating. Yet there’s an increasing sense that Lambchop albums now require a quite substantial investment of time and effort from their audience. I’m sure the dignified, tasteful songs on this album will continue to grow on me but I can’t quite escape the sense that this is basically just another good Lambchop album and nothing more, nothing less.
Lambchop - OH(Ohio) (City Slang, 2008)
If I see the words ‘return to form’ used in reference to either of these two albums one more time I think I’m going to throw a hissyfit. John Mulvey at least admits the term is a ‘dread phrase’ in his blog about ‘OH(Ohio)’ on the Uncut website but it’s still a contestable claim that either band ever really lost form. Lambchop albums have perhaps become more slippery and elusive since ‘Is A Woman’, but ‘Damaged’ had a rather creeping, insidious effect on me that I came to admire. As for Calexico, their tentative venture into rockier territory on ‘Garden Ruin’, rightly acclaimed in reviews at the time, has now been condemned as a mis-step in retrospect. Regardless of what one thought of that attempt to diversify, the mini album with Iron and Wine ‘In The Reins’ remains to my mind one of the great unsung masterpieces of the decade so far. Critics are fickle beasts!
‘Carried to Dust’ certainly ought to please those Calexico admirers who would prefer them not to change too much. The mariachi horns return, there are plenty of lush strings and border-evoking brushed drums. Yet to suggest the group have completely abandoned the map they began charting with ‘Garden Ruin’ is a little misleading. There are some dramatic guitar atmospherics on the restless ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday’ particularly and a number of other tracks are not easy to pigeon-hole as border music. The slow building tension of ‘Man Made Lake’, for example, crafted with sustained piano chords and some unrestrained guitar howling, would not have been a feature of the Calexico sound before ‘Garden Ruin’. If Arcade Fire borrowed some of Calexico’s stylings for their majestic ‘Ocean of Noise’ (by some distance the best track on ‘Neon Bible’ for me), Calexico now return the compliment by using a distinctly Arcade Fire-esque backbeat and slow building tension on ‘Two Silver Trees’.
Elsewhere, the sound is more comforting and familiar, the Spanish language collaboration with Amparo Sanchez on ‘Inspiracion’ taking many of Calexico’s preoccupations to their logical conclusion. There’s that deliciously dusty quality to many of the songs, with the lightly rolling rhythms, evoking, it must be admitted, images of horses and wagons, they deploy so effortlessly. One can hardly blame the group for returning to these well worn tropes when they are so adept at executing them. Best of all is when they apply a new and unexpected nuance to these characteristic features. The superb ‘Fractured Air (Tornado Watch)’ benefits from some echo effects on the horns more common to dub reggae than American or Mexican folk music. Together with some syncopated rhythm guitar, it makes for something lithe and funky.
I’ve seen some reviews that suggest the songwriting on this album fails to match the impact of the group’s instrumentals. I have to disagree quite strongly with this, as ‘Carried to Dust’ is certainly Calexico’s most immediate collection so far (if not necessarily their best). Some of their songs are admittedly more about mood than melody (‘Bend to the Road’) but ‘Carried to Dust’ has more than its fair share of stirring creations. ‘Slowness’, featuring the delightful vocals of Canadian Pieta Brown, is particularly glorious, subtle and restrained but also with some kind of gently hymnal quality to the performance. ‘Victor Jara’s Hands’ and ‘News From William’ are the kind of compelling narratives we’ve come to expect from the group. Perhaps least predictable is the hazy, eerie, partially electronic ‘Contention City’, a journey into dreamlike fantasia the band handle remarkably well.
As is often the case with Calexico, there’s quite a lot to absorb within this album’s fifteen tracks (sixteen if you get the iTunes bonus track) but it’s too easy to take this group for granted. They remain musicians who luxuriate in every slight detail – the effect created by a single hit on a cymbal bell, or exploring the interplay between guitars and pianos, a frequent feature of this collection. I suspect this is something a little more than just another good Calexico album.
The extent to which ‘OH (Ohio)’ represents a diversion from Lambchop’s most recent work has arguably been overstated. It’s more skeletal, with the florid string flourishes of ‘Aw, C’Mon/No You C’Mon’ now firmly jettisoned, but 2006’s excellent ‘Damaged’ had already initiated that process. It shares with its predecessor a tendency to divest Kurt Wagner’s idiosyncratic voice of personality, his croaky mumble too often obscuring his strange and original lyrics. His words can as a result fall into the background, carefully enmeshed in what is undoubtedly a very lovely, mostly sedate sound.
For me, Lambchop tracks were always more powerful when they made a triumphant virtue of Wagner’s vocals and lyrics. ‘Nixon’ worked as much because of the extraordinary, piercing attack and surprise of that falsetto, as much as through its lavish arrangements. The best songs on ‘How I Quit Smoking’ (‘Theone’, ‘The Man Who Loved Beer’) saw Wagner embracing melody as well as acute-angled phrasing. Whilst some found the smoky ambience of ‘Is A Woman’ detached and unemotional, I found both lyrical and musical poetry within it, given investment of the necessary time and effort. Whilst there are plenty of moments on ‘OH(Ohio)’ that are tender and pleasant, there is nothing here that really moves me quite as palpably as those highlights from their back catalogue.
Where the band would previously delve into a nimble and funky soul groove, the emphasis on ‘Ohio’ is more on gently plucked guitars, Tony Crow’s piano now providing subtle shading rather than dominating proceedings as it did on ‘Is a Woman’. Typical are the title track, ‘Of Raymond’ and ‘Slipped, Dissolved and Loosed’. The latter is easily the most memorable thing here, its cooing backing vocals almost sounding comic but also providing a smooth counterpoint to Wagner’s staccato bursts. The opening title track is irresistibly cute (with its central refrain of ‘green doesn’t matter when you’re blue’) but, with its Jobim-tinged arrangement, it’s perilously perched on the precipice between tasteful delight and background or lounge music.
Perhaps there are two points of significant departure here – the use of two producers (regular contributor Mark Nevers and Roger Moutenot, who has worked wonders in the past for Yo La Tengo and Sleater Kinney amongst others) and the occasional deployment of uncharacteristically brisk, driving rock backbeats. These tracks, both superbly titled (‘National Talk Like A Pirate Day’ and ‘Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr.’), arguably sound incongruous in context, but they at least provide a very welcome distraction from the familiar dignified restraint on offer elsewhere. ‘National Talk Like A Pirate Day’ is superbly arranged, with Byrdsian jangly guitars and a potent counter melody from the bass.
A number of the tracks here seem to be more subtle and stately takes on familiar Lambchop modes. The lovely ‘A Hold Of You’ veers close to the country soul template they perfected on ‘Nixon’ but seems, perhaps rather self-consciously, to make sure the lid stays firmly on. Some of the songs seem to drift or meander rather lazily, sometimes outstaying their welcome a little. Perhaps the clearest example of this here is the lengthy ‘Popeye’, where Wagner’s words are at their most buried, the harmony seems to repeat a familiar Lambchop sequence, and everything just seems to run on without much purpose (at least until it suddenly veers into a loose-limbed funky coda). It all makes for a very appealing late night or early morning listen – mostly relaxed and elegant but never quite completely awake. Perhaps this is the same criticism that many used against ‘Is A Woman’, but I felt the consistent languid mood of that album serviced its unusual and idiosyncratic songs well. Also, Wagner’s vocals, although abandoning the falsetto, remained striking and incisive on that record.
As ever with Lambchop, the track titles are a veritable treasure trove of imagination in themselves and Wagner’s ruminations on the nature and limitations of masculinity remain transfixing and illuminating. Yet there’s an increasing sense that Lambchop albums now require a quite substantial investment of time and effort from their audience. I’m sure the dignified, tasteful songs on this album will continue to grow on me but I can’t quite escape the sense that this is basically just another good Lambchop album and nothing more, nothing less.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
'We Are R.E.M. and This Is What We Do'
R.E.M., Twickenham Stadium, 30th August 2008
When REM announced that the UK leg of their tour to promote ‘Accelerate’ would feature stadiums, I felt the group’s management and promoters were being a touch ambitious. No number of silly ‘return to form’ reviews is going to turn around the band’s commercial decline overnight, particularly given that ‘Accelerate’ is hardly a return to the southern gothic folk sound that characterised the band’s years of multi-platinum sales. With the Cardiff show downgraded to an Arena and the entire top tier of Twickenham’s seating completely empty, this feeling proved to be correct.
Still, it’s hard to envisage how this superb show would have worked in a smaller venue. Having reinvented themselves some time ago as a touring act par excellence, the group have really pushed the boat out with this tour. I’ve seen REM some six times since 1995 and this really was by some distance the best performance I’ve seen them give – muscular, charismatic and, ingeniously, providing mass entertainment whilst being firmly uncompromising. Every aspect of the show’s design – including visuals and lighting – had been carefully prepared and orchestrated to enhance the atmosphere.
The sheer brilliance of their set merely heightened the torture of watching support act Editors. Dismissing them as a poor man’s Interpol really is too kind to this wretched band. Their four to the floor beat (constantly pushed ahead of the actual pulse by an aggressive and unsubtle drummer) is relentless rather than insistent (it pounds rather than grooves), the music is arranged with little or no imagination (simply adding some echo effects to the guitars does not make them innovative) and overall the group simply take themselves far too seriously. The earnestness is intolerable, and the whole experience is like being treated as a punch-bag. It left me with a severe headache. Their popularity really is hard to fathom.
This is the fiery, politicised REM that Michael Stipe promised during the pre-release campaign for ‘Around The Sun’. When that album proved to be subdued and mostly soporific, it unsurprisingly provoked a reaction that was somewhat nonplussed. Today, REM are dedicating a storming ‘Man Sized Wreath’ to the memory of Martin Luther King, calling for a sea-change to ‘get the Bush administration the fuck out of office and the Obama administration the fuck into office’, before launching into a visceral, vitriolic ‘Ignoreland’ and admitting ‘we’re kinda political’.
The verbal exhortations are more than matched by the righteous fury of the music, which has been amplified and toughened up. The tracks from ‘Accelerate’ work much better in a live context, sounding genuinely thrilling when stripped of Jacknife Lee’s irritating production techniques. The back-to-basics sound also leads them into unexpected and fruitful corners of their back catalogue, with thunderous versions of ‘Disturbance at the Heron House’ and ‘Exhuming McCarthy’ (the latter interspersed with soundclips from the McCarthy hearings) being particular highlights.
Luckily, there’s also a good deal of charm and humour to the show, with the comic book graphics emphasising the band’s occasional tendency towards goofiness (ending songs with words like ‘wow!’ and ‘yeah!’. Quite brilliantly, Stipe dedicates ‘Walk Unafraid’ to a particular group of people – “we call them redheads, I think you call them ‘ginge’ – but they’re the most beautiful people in the world”. He then asks the crowd to raise their hands if they have a special ginger in their lives and a surprisingly large number of hands go up. Finally, there’s a brilliant moment when someone puts MORE on the camera lens in Scrabble tiles before the encore.
The set-list is an extremely effective and careful selection that spans their entire career. It’s a shame that there’s nothing from ‘Reckoning’ or ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’ this time, but few people could really mourn the absence of any material from ‘Around the Sun’. Clearly the memory of that album has now been excised. Every other album is covered though – most unpredictably ‘Murmur’ is represented with a lovely rendition of the ballad ‘Perfect Circle’, with Mike Mills at the piano.
The opening triple salvo of ‘Living Well is the Best Revenge’, a slower but more mercurial ‘These Days’ and a strident version of ‘The Wake Up Bomb’ makes for a remarkably confident start. Sometimes bands take a while to hit their stride, but REM leap straight in on this occasion, and the intensity never really lets up. Ken Stringfellow is oddly absent from this tour (perhaps he’s busy with Big Star, but that can hardly be as much of a moneyspinner) and the band compensate for the occasional absence of keyboard shadings by beefing up the guitar assault. For ‘The One I Love’,
As usual, Michael Stipe commands the stage with his deranged dancing, limbs and hands flailing – but it’s also notable that his voice seems in considerably better shape on this tour, less gravely than in previous years. This is particularly welcome on the moments of levity – ‘I’ve Been High’ (a more straightforward, less mesmeric version than on ‘Reveal’ but delivered with real tenderness by Stipe) and ‘Let Me In’, performed in a group circle in a new acoustic arrangement. Stipe’s reading of it, enhancing the melody, is majestic.
The generous half-hour encore not only features the aforementioned ‘Perfect Circle’ but also a haunting, very powerful performance of ‘Country Feedback’, which remains a firm favourite both with fans and the group themselves. The regulars are also saved for the end – ‘Losing My Religion’, ‘It’s The End Of The World (As We Know It)’ and ‘Man On The Moon’ round off proceedings. It still seems staggeringly inappropriate that Stipe does a meet and greet with the crowd during a mass singalong of ‘Losing My Religion’, surely one of the most emotionally articulate and painful songs ever to have become an uplifting stadium anthem, but his generosity with the audience helps reduce the distance between band and audience that can sometimes be a major obstacle with huge shows like this.
So, scrub out what I said in my lukewarm review of ‘Accelerate’. These days, it hardly seems important what REM commit to disc in the studio. It’s extraordinary that 28 years into their existence, they continue to get better and better as a live proposition, still filled with vigour, enthusiasm, a desire to communicate and a sense of fun. That, frankly, is enough of a purpose, and their continued existence remains absolutely vital.
When REM announced that the UK leg of their tour to promote ‘Accelerate’ would feature stadiums, I felt the group’s management and promoters were being a touch ambitious. No number of silly ‘return to form’ reviews is going to turn around the band’s commercial decline overnight, particularly given that ‘Accelerate’ is hardly a return to the southern gothic folk sound that characterised the band’s years of multi-platinum sales. With the Cardiff show downgraded to an Arena and the entire top tier of Twickenham’s seating completely empty, this feeling proved to be correct.
Still, it’s hard to envisage how this superb show would have worked in a smaller venue. Having reinvented themselves some time ago as a touring act par excellence, the group have really pushed the boat out with this tour. I’ve seen REM some six times since 1995 and this really was by some distance the best performance I’ve seen them give – muscular, charismatic and, ingeniously, providing mass entertainment whilst being firmly uncompromising. Every aspect of the show’s design – including visuals and lighting – had been carefully prepared and orchestrated to enhance the atmosphere.
The sheer brilliance of their set merely heightened the torture of watching support act Editors. Dismissing them as a poor man’s Interpol really is too kind to this wretched band. Their four to the floor beat (constantly pushed ahead of the actual pulse by an aggressive and unsubtle drummer) is relentless rather than insistent (it pounds rather than grooves), the music is arranged with little or no imagination (simply adding some echo effects to the guitars does not make them innovative) and overall the group simply take themselves far too seriously. The earnestness is intolerable, and the whole experience is like being treated as a punch-bag. It left me with a severe headache. Their popularity really is hard to fathom.
This is the fiery, politicised REM that Michael Stipe promised during the pre-release campaign for ‘Around The Sun’. When that album proved to be subdued and mostly soporific, it unsurprisingly provoked a reaction that was somewhat nonplussed. Today, REM are dedicating a storming ‘Man Sized Wreath’ to the memory of Martin Luther King, calling for a sea-change to ‘get the Bush administration the fuck out of office and the Obama administration the fuck into office’, before launching into a visceral, vitriolic ‘Ignoreland’ and admitting ‘we’re kinda political’.
The verbal exhortations are more than matched by the righteous fury of the music, which has been amplified and toughened up. The tracks from ‘Accelerate’ work much better in a live context, sounding genuinely thrilling when stripped of Jacknife Lee’s irritating production techniques. The back-to-basics sound also leads them into unexpected and fruitful corners of their back catalogue, with thunderous versions of ‘Disturbance at the Heron House’ and ‘Exhuming McCarthy’ (the latter interspersed with soundclips from the McCarthy hearings) being particular highlights.
Luckily, there’s also a good deal of charm and humour to the show, with the comic book graphics emphasising the band’s occasional tendency towards goofiness (ending songs with words like ‘wow!’ and ‘yeah!’. Quite brilliantly, Stipe dedicates ‘Walk Unafraid’ to a particular group of people – “we call them redheads, I think you call them ‘ginge’ – but they’re the most beautiful people in the world”. He then asks the crowd to raise their hands if they have a special ginger in their lives and a surprisingly large number of hands go up. Finally, there’s a brilliant moment when someone puts MORE on the camera lens in Scrabble tiles before the encore.
The set-list is an extremely effective and careful selection that spans their entire career. It’s a shame that there’s nothing from ‘Reckoning’ or ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’ this time, but few people could really mourn the absence of any material from ‘Around the Sun’. Clearly the memory of that album has now been excised. Every other album is covered though – most unpredictably ‘Murmur’ is represented with a lovely rendition of the ballad ‘Perfect Circle’, with Mike Mills at the piano.
The opening triple salvo of ‘Living Well is the Best Revenge’, a slower but more mercurial ‘These Days’ and a strident version of ‘The Wake Up Bomb’ makes for a remarkably confident start. Sometimes bands take a while to hit their stride, but REM leap straight in on this occasion, and the intensity never really lets up. Ken Stringfellow is oddly absent from this tour (perhaps he’s busy with Big Star, but that can hardly be as much of a moneyspinner) and the band compensate for the occasional absence of keyboard shadings by beefing up the guitar assault. For ‘The One I Love’,
As usual, Michael Stipe commands the stage with his deranged dancing, limbs and hands flailing – but it’s also notable that his voice seems in considerably better shape on this tour, less gravely than in previous years. This is particularly welcome on the moments of levity – ‘I’ve Been High’ (a more straightforward, less mesmeric version than on ‘Reveal’ but delivered with real tenderness by Stipe) and ‘Let Me In’, performed in a group circle in a new acoustic arrangement. Stipe’s reading of it, enhancing the melody, is majestic.
The generous half-hour encore not only features the aforementioned ‘Perfect Circle’ but also a haunting, very powerful performance of ‘Country Feedback’, which remains a firm favourite both with fans and the group themselves. The regulars are also saved for the end – ‘Losing My Religion’, ‘It’s The End Of The World (As We Know It)’ and ‘Man On The Moon’ round off proceedings. It still seems staggeringly inappropriate that Stipe does a meet and greet with the crowd during a mass singalong of ‘Losing My Religion’, surely one of the most emotionally articulate and painful songs ever to have become an uplifting stadium anthem, but his generosity with the audience helps reduce the distance between band and audience that can sometimes be a major obstacle with huge shows like this.
So, scrub out what I said in my lukewarm review of ‘Accelerate’. These days, it hardly seems important what REM commit to disc in the studio. It’s extraordinary that 28 years into their existence, they continue to get better and better as a live proposition, still filled with vigour, enthusiasm, a desire to communicate and a sense of fun. That, frankly, is enough of a purpose, and their continued existence remains absolutely vital.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Too Much Information?
Bloc Party - Intimacy
In this weekend’s Observer, Kitty Empire suggested that ‘Intimacy’ might eventually be remembered as the classic Bloc Party album. For me, this is proof that Bloc Party are being too readily indulged. I do not share Kitty’s confidence that this album will stand up to much critical scrutiny even in five years’ time. I fear Bloc Party might actually be destined to be a prime example of the short shelf life of so many British bands once rashly trumpeted as original creative masters.
Production duties are split between Paul Epworth, who produced the group’s excellent debut ‘Silent Alarm’ and Jacknife Lee, producer of the flawed but interesting ‘A Weekend In The City’. What we essentially get here is a concise juxtaposition of the concerns of both previous Bloc Party albums. Lee here once again overcooks his tracks to within an inch of their lives, whilst Epworth aims at a more polished version of that potent punch the band packed at the earliest stage of their development. On the worst moments of ‘Intimacy’, the band is simply trying far too hard. Even at its best, this is often merely another covering of ground this band has already traversed.
For the most part, this is an atavistic and cold album that doesn’t match the thematic preoccupations implied by its title. The opening ‘Ares’ is clearly intended as a bold statement of intent – some kind of declaration of the group’s radical experimentalism. For all its transparent intentions though, ‘Ares’ is a very inauspicious start. Unfortunately, it sounds exactly like The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Setting Sun’, a record released more than ten years ago. The band throws every gimmicky noise and production trick at the wall here in the hope that something will stick. Okereke’s shouty vocals help render the track unbearable, and it’s hard to believe that he’s thrown the line ‘get fucked up!’ into the song, even if it is ironic rather than sincere. ‘Mercury’ tries similar tactics with more coherence – the brass sounds are menacing and confrontational and that repeated processed vocal successfully straddles that fine line between insistent and irritating. Some of the more conventional moments, with a taut and precise sound (‘One Month Off’ particularly) end up sounding worryingly close to Green Day.
Many critics have found Kele Okereke’s romanticism clunky and ham-fisted, but I initially welcomed the prospect of ‘Intimacy’ moving to the personal after the less than incisive socio-political analysis of its predecessor. The warmth and candour of tracks such as ‘I Still Remember’ and ‘Kreuzberg’ from that album made more impact on me than the ugly rantings of ‘Uniform’ or ‘Hunting for Witches’. Yet Okereke’s preoccupation with sex here comes across as rather dislikeable and self-pitying. ‘I’m sleeping with people I don’t even like!’ he bellows triumphantly on ‘Mercury’. Well, why are you doing that exactly? The psychological aspects of sex and sexuality can be fascinating and important subject matter (as the films ‘Shortbus’ and ‘Lust, Caution’ have recently proved) but statements without analysis lack depth or interest and ultimately come across as shallow.
There’s obviously genuine feeling here – some of the lyrics seem to be focussed on bringing a lost lover back from the dead - but all this soul-bearing often doesn’t seem to get beyond basic cliché (‘the world isn’t kind to little things’). Sometimes it’s just completely cringe-inducing. The lyrics that open ‘Trojan Horse’ - ‘you used to take your watch off, before we made love, you didn’t want to share our time with anyone’ - don’t even make much sense. You could reasonably remove a watch so as not to be aware of time during sex but how exactly does wearing one mean you’re sharing that time with someone else? It’s all rather perplexing and the image of a Jarvis Cocker-esque voyeur hiding in the cupboard monitoring the duration of Okereke’s erotic activities is not a particularly pleasant one.
For me, the album works best when the group grasps for a musical delicacy to correspond to these windows into Okereke’s private sphere. ‘Ion Square’ is a brooding, minimal, slow-building epic that at least has some sense of mood and atmosphere. ‘Signs’, with its pulsating heartbeat and lightly percussive backbone, represents a genuine and positive diversion from the band’s back catalogue but its determinedly linear and repetitive structure prevents it from ever really taking flight. I need to listen to the bizarre electro-choral beast that is ‘Zephryus’ a bit more – I can’t decide whether it’s the boldest track here or an example of insufferable pretension. The choir is certainly not as incorporated as effortlessly as Bjork managed with ‘Vespertine’ (incidentally, a record so often unfairly dismissed as cold and uninvolving – but so much more intimate and moving than this). One thing I certainly admire about this track is the restraint the group exercise. Whereas the dark, mysterious atmosphere of ‘Better Than Heaven’ is destroyed by an all-too-predictable explosion of drums and guitars, ‘Zephyrus’ maintains its dreamlike but detached poise. ‘Biko’, so incongruously titled as to be offensive and nothing to do with the Peter Gabriel song, is sweet-sounding and vulnerable, although the entry of programmed beats quickly and irrevocably punctures its serenity.
Whether they are attempting to craft something edgy or affecting, the Bloc Party sound could now benefit from a brighter, more naturalistic treatment. The drums are transformed into a dull thud with every trace of natural resonance removed – whilst the additional effects so often seem tacked on as an afterthought to give the impression that the group are either innovative or uniquely open-minded. The band and their producers are clearly thinking very hard about drama and atmosphere but when the tracks are so over-produced, it’s hard to find the original feeling or spark. Ultimately, there is nothing here that the band didn’t capture with greater power and clarity on ‘Silent Alarm’, mostly doing so without resorting to trickery.
Unfortunately, with his voice more exposed here than on previous Bloc Party albums, Okereke is revealed as a dull and imaginative vocalist, perhaps a bigger problem than the poor quality of his poetry. When he’s not plagiarising from The Cure, he’s repeating his own tricks. Many of the melodies here sound regurgitated from previous Bloc Party songs (sometimes the music follows his lead – ‘One Month Off’ repeats the dual guitar assault of ‘Helicopter’). His range is limited and his sense of timing and phrasing curiously lacking. Sometimes he stretches syllables to fit the melodies in a way that sounds unmusical and forced. Too often, his lyrics simply do not scan. Whilst no-one will approach a Bloc Party record in search of diva acrobatics, they might reasonably expect some form of expression to match the album’s clearly stated theme and certainly something more than the same notes endlessly reformulated.
Some reviews will no doubt herald the band’s toughening of their sound, and the addition of new elements from the worlds of electronica and even hip hop. Beneath the surface gimmicks though, ‘Intimacy’ really presents a band that has run out of ideas. Even the most energetic, aggressive moments here somehow sound sterile. ‘Halo’ should hit all the right buttons with its attacking barrage of guitars but it comes across as more calculated than spontaneous. Perhaps ‘Signs’ and ‘Zephyrus’ offer some positive signals for the group but they clearly ought to have taken more time to develop these new paths. Okereke often seems articulate and persuasive in interview but currently seems incapable of reproducing that intelligence on disc. This is also a remarkably one-dimensional view of human intimacy – one which emphasises intensity, trauma and dependency rather than fun and mutual fulfilment. Perhaps that's another reason why, for all its grand designs, 'Intimacy' is something of an anticlimactic letdown.
In this weekend’s Observer, Kitty Empire suggested that ‘Intimacy’ might eventually be remembered as the classic Bloc Party album. For me, this is proof that Bloc Party are being too readily indulged. I do not share Kitty’s confidence that this album will stand up to much critical scrutiny even in five years’ time. I fear Bloc Party might actually be destined to be a prime example of the short shelf life of so many British bands once rashly trumpeted as original creative masters.
Production duties are split between Paul Epworth, who produced the group’s excellent debut ‘Silent Alarm’ and Jacknife Lee, producer of the flawed but interesting ‘A Weekend In The City’. What we essentially get here is a concise juxtaposition of the concerns of both previous Bloc Party albums. Lee here once again overcooks his tracks to within an inch of their lives, whilst Epworth aims at a more polished version of that potent punch the band packed at the earliest stage of their development. On the worst moments of ‘Intimacy’, the band is simply trying far too hard. Even at its best, this is often merely another covering of ground this band has already traversed.
For the most part, this is an atavistic and cold album that doesn’t match the thematic preoccupations implied by its title. The opening ‘Ares’ is clearly intended as a bold statement of intent – some kind of declaration of the group’s radical experimentalism. For all its transparent intentions though, ‘Ares’ is a very inauspicious start. Unfortunately, it sounds exactly like The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Setting Sun’, a record released more than ten years ago. The band throws every gimmicky noise and production trick at the wall here in the hope that something will stick. Okereke’s shouty vocals help render the track unbearable, and it’s hard to believe that he’s thrown the line ‘get fucked up!’ into the song, even if it is ironic rather than sincere. ‘Mercury’ tries similar tactics with more coherence – the brass sounds are menacing and confrontational and that repeated processed vocal successfully straddles that fine line between insistent and irritating. Some of the more conventional moments, with a taut and precise sound (‘One Month Off’ particularly) end up sounding worryingly close to Green Day.
Many critics have found Kele Okereke’s romanticism clunky and ham-fisted, but I initially welcomed the prospect of ‘Intimacy’ moving to the personal after the less than incisive socio-political analysis of its predecessor. The warmth and candour of tracks such as ‘I Still Remember’ and ‘Kreuzberg’ from that album made more impact on me than the ugly rantings of ‘Uniform’ or ‘Hunting for Witches’. Yet Okereke’s preoccupation with sex here comes across as rather dislikeable and self-pitying. ‘I’m sleeping with people I don’t even like!’ he bellows triumphantly on ‘Mercury’. Well, why are you doing that exactly? The psychological aspects of sex and sexuality can be fascinating and important subject matter (as the films ‘Shortbus’ and ‘Lust, Caution’ have recently proved) but statements without analysis lack depth or interest and ultimately come across as shallow.
There’s obviously genuine feeling here – some of the lyrics seem to be focussed on bringing a lost lover back from the dead - but all this soul-bearing often doesn’t seem to get beyond basic cliché (‘the world isn’t kind to little things’). Sometimes it’s just completely cringe-inducing. The lyrics that open ‘Trojan Horse’ - ‘you used to take your watch off, before we made love, you didn’t want to share our time with anyone’ - don’t even make much sense. You could reasonably remove a watch so as not to be aware of time during sex but how exactly does wearing one mean you’re sharing that time with someone else? It’s all rather perplexing and the image of a Jarvis Cocker-esque voyeur hiding in the cupboard monitoring the duration of Okereke’s erotic activities is not a particularly pleasant one.
For me, the album works best when the group grasps for a musical delicacy to correspond to these windows into Okereke’s private sphere. ‘Ion Square’ is a brooding, minimal, slow-building epic that at least has some sense of mood and atmosphere. ‘Signs’, with its pulsating heartbeat and lightly percussive backbone, represents a genuine and positive diversion from the band’s back catalogue but its determinedly linear and repetitive structure prevents it from ever really taking flight. I need to listen to the bizarre electro-choral beast that is ‘Zephryus’ a bit more – I can’t decide whether it’s the boldest track here or an example of insufferable pretension. The choir is certainly not as incorporated as effortlessly as Bjork managed with ‘Vespertine’ (incidentally, a record so often unfairly dismissed as cold and uninvolving – but so much more intimate and moving than this). One thing I certainly admire about this track is the restraint the group exercise. Whereas the dark, mysterious atmosphere of ‘Better Than Heaven’ is destroyed by an all-too-predictable explosion of drums and guitars, ‘Zephyrus’ maintains its dreamlike but detached poise. ‘Biko’, so incongruously titled as to be offensive and nothing to do with the Peter Gabriel song, is sweet-sounding and vulnerable, although the entry of programmed beats quickly and irrevocably punctures its serenity.
Whether they are attempting to craft something edgy or affecting, the Bloc Party sound could now benefit from a brighter, more naturalistic treatment. The drums are transformed into a dull thud with every trace of natural resonance removed – whilst the additional effects so often seem tacked on as an afterthought to give the impression that the group are either innovative or uniquely open-minded. The band and their producers are clearly thinking very hard about drama and atmosphere but when the tracks are so over-produced, it’s hard to find the original feeling or spark. Ultimately, there is nothing here that the band didn’t capture with greater power and clarity on ‘Silent Alarm’, mostly doing so without resorting to trickery.
Unfortunately, with his voice more exposed here than on previous Bloc Party albums, Okereke is revealed as a dull and imaginative vocalist, perhaps a bigger problem than the poor quality of his poetry. When he’s not plagiarising from The Cure, he’s repeating his own tricks. Many of the melodies here sound regurgitated from previous Bloc Party songs (sometimes the music follows his lead – ‘One Month Off’ repeats the dual guitar assault of ‘Helicopter’). His range is limited and his sense of timing and phrasing curiously lacking. Sometimes he stretches syllables to fit the melodies in a way that sounds unmusical and forced. Too often, his lyrics simply do not scan. Whilst no-one will approach a Bloc Party record in search of diva acrobatics, they might reasonably expect some form of expression to match the album’s clearly stated theme and certainly something more than the same notes endlessly reformulated.
Some reviews will no doubt herald the band’s toughening of their sound, and the addition of new elements from the worlds of electronica and even hip hop. Beneath the surface gimmicks though, ‘Intimacy’ really presents a band that has run out of ideas. Even the most energetic, aggressive moments here somehow sound sterile. ‘Halo’ should hit all the right buttons with its attacking barrage of guitars but it comes across as more calculated than spontaneous. Perhaps ‘Signs’ and ‘Zephyrus’ offer some positive signals for the group but they clearly ought to have taken more time to develop these new paths. Okereke often seems articulate and persuasive in interview but currently seems incapable of reproducing that intelligence on disc. This is also a remarkably one-dimensional view of human intimacy – one which emphasises intensity, trauma and dependency rather than fun and mutual fulfilment. Perhaps that's another reason why, for all its grand designs, 'Intimacy' is something of an anticlimactic letdown.
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