Bird of Prey

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle (Drag City, 2009)

From Smog to his own name via a set of confounding parentheses, the moniker may have changed, but Bill Callahan’s musical and lyrical oeuvre has remained resolute. Perhaps ‘Woke On A Whaleheart’ presented Callahan at his least mordant and most breezy, but his light, conversational vocal style handles either mood with a similar dispassionate gaze. Even when he’s at his warmest, there’s a chilly hint of irony waiting to break through. He puts it rather starkly himself on ‘Jim Cain’, the opening song here when he sings ‘I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again’.

‘Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle’ makes listening (and by extension judging) a little easier by virtue of placing Callahan’s voice in some surprisingly novel contexts. The main reason for this lies in the orchestrations of Brian Beattie, which somehow manage to incorporate strings and horns without sounding at all extravagant or excessive. It makes for a lusher, more involving sound but one that somehow manages to retain the confrontational minimalism of Callahan’s boldest writing. Every instrument, even the drum kit, seems to be played with a refreshing lightness of touch. Callahan himself has mentioned Jimmy Webb, and a less schmaltzy Burt Bacharach might also be a valid reference point. There’s something in Callahan’s light, slippery vocal style that in this context reminds me most clearly of the wonderful first Bill Fay album.

Grammatical quandary of its title notwithstanding, this might be one of Callahan’s most direct and appealing records to date. Often caricatured as a miserabilist or a misanthrope, Callahan often seems to be a little more complex and enigmatic than such stereotyping implies. This new album is for the most part calm, peaceful and contemplative, sometimes disarmingly so. It presents an intriguing side-step after the occasional forthright joviality of ‘..Whaleheart’. If there’s a bridging song between the two album, it might be the lovely ‘Sycamore’, where Callahan’s deep vocal sounded ponderous and calm, floating above a serene musical backdrop.
Its closest relation here is ‘The Wind and The Dove’, a beautiful melody which Callahan characteristically leaves understated.

The album is full of subtleties that expand Callahan’s musical vocabulary quite considerably. One of the best songs is ‘Eid Ma Clackshaw’ (no doubt there’s an explanation for the title somewhere), which pits slightly swung vocal phrasing from Callahan against an insistent crotchet rhythm. It sounds peculiarly rigid, in an interesting way. ‘Too Many Birds’ is both simpler and prettier – one of the most beautiful moments on a lush, affecting album – but it also draws a lot of its impact from Callahan’s attempt to protract certain lines whilst squeezing in others. Those that admire the more austere Callahan should be satiated with the defiantly skeletal ‘Rococo Zephyr’ although even this seems less agitated and more assured than past efforts.

Callahan continues his bestial preoccupations here, with plenty of reference to both birds and beasts. On ‘Eid Ma Clackshaw’ love is the beast with a hunger that cannot be tamed. Even his song titles further this line of thought, with ‘All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beast’ teetering on the brink of self parody. Musically, it’s excellent, with its early eerie calm gradually giving way to intensifying menace. For all the lushness in the arrangements, there’s still a lingering nastiness throughout the album, with motorik rhythms contrasting with Callahan’s delivery.

This unusual hybrid of calm and storm, peace and violence is every bit as complicated and confusing as life experience can so often be. In its apparent paradoxes, it emerges as one of Callahan’s most confident and assured albums. Here, he’s both as graceful and as predatory as the eagle he desires to be.

A Mild Case of the Blues

Bob Dylan - Together Through Life (Columbia, 2009)

Unusually, I find myself almost agreeing with Petridish in The Guardian. His observation last week that the hype surrounding every new Bob Dylan release makes them impossible to judge seemed entirely reasonable. A handful of the reviews of ‘Together Through Life’ I’ve read so far have been quite measured, but many have been very generous. Allan Jones’ review in Uncut magazine, yet again proffering the five star treatment, seems absurdly uncritical. How do we judge an album arriving in the twilight years of a singular, remarkable career that has lasted over forty years?

If we’re unfair enough to insist that a new Dylan work is judged within the context of his complete output, then ‘Together Through Life’ can only be seen as his least ambitious and least interesting work since ‘Under The Red Sky’. The collections of acoustic reinterpretations ‘Good As I Been To You’ and ‘World Gone Wrong’ both had more to offer and can now be seen as transitional albums, directing Dylan back to his core concerns within the American folk tradition. These concerns reappeared on ‘Time Out of Mind’ and dominated ‘Love and Theft’ and ‘Modern Times’. There’s nothing on ‘Together Through Life’ as powerful as ‘Tryin’ To Get To Heaven’, ‘Not Dark Yet’, ‘Mississippi’ or ‘Workingman’s Blues #2’ and certainly nothing as sustained as ‘Highlands’ or as funny as many of the blues numbers on ‘Love and Theft’.

The PR story surrounding this album suggested that it took even Columbia records by surprise, with Dylan continuing to write and record after being commissioned to produce a song for Olivier Dahan’s new film. The reality seems a little less clear, with the late emergence of the news that all but one of the lyrics were co-written with former Grateful Dead poet Robert Hunter. This set alarm bells ringing in the minds of even the most slavish Dylan devotees. Dylan and Hunter collaborated once before, at the absolute nadir of Dylan’s career on ‘Down In The Groove’. The two songs that resulted were far from inspired. ‘Silvio’ might have been one of the best tracks on that album, but that simply wasn’t good enough from an artist of Dylan’s proven calibre. The less said about ‘Ugliest Girl in the World’ the better. Not even irony or childish humour could defend it.

There’s nothing here quite that bad mercifully, but the lyrics are notably simpler, sometimes more banal. I’m not one of those people that unreasonably expects Dylan to always write in florid surrealist allusions. Sometimes his best lyrics have been his most direct. However, even those direct, personal lyrics have been sustained and bold (I’m thinking particularly of ‘Up To Me’, a song rarely recognised as one of his very best). For all the literary criticism and analysis of his borrowings, Dylan’s ultimate achievement has been the complete integration of words and music within the form of longer, ambitious pop songs. He has also played the most significant role in the development of expressive vocal phrasing in the post-war era. But ‘Together Through Life’ seems like one of those occasional Dylan albums where he’s desperate to escape that burdensome legacy. These more straightforward words, whilst occasionally intriguing, offer too little for Dylan to sink his teeth into in terms of his delivery. Where he usually sounds ferocious or brutal, he frequently sounds lazy or non-committal here, on songs that at least pretend to be about love.

This works well on two songs. ‘Life is Hard’ is a delicate croon in the model of ‘Spirit on the Water’ or ‘Beyond The Horizon’, better than the latter but nowhere near as striking as the former. It is languid, laconic and hazy in a manner we’re still not entirely used to from Dylan. Where ‘Bye and Bye’ was light and breezy, this is exaggerated and mannered. It contrasts starkly with his tendency to rush and force his phrasing in live performance. On ‘This Dream Of You’ he sounds so hushed he’s almost in the background, and the song’s border feel lends it a hypnotic quality appropriate for its theme. This is territory that Dylan has visited before (‘Dreamin’ Of You’, an outtake from ‘Time Out Of Mind’ that surfaced last year on ‘Tell Tale Signs’) but this is a worthwhile addition to such world-weary concerns. Its melancholy tone and modified Latin rhythm remind me of Roy Orbison, although he would have course have delivered it with that incomparable combination of grandeur and quivering vulnerability.

The album is liberally peppered with the accordion of David Hidalgo, which seems to occupy the role Dylan’s unconventional keyboard playing assumes in concert – responding and serving as a counterpoint to his vocal delivery. It’s a neat idea, but I’m not quite convinced that the band have got enough mileage from it. As with most of Dylan’s output, there’s little to no dynamic or textural variation on these songs. This is unproblematic whenever Dylan’s delivery is urgent and when he has plenty to say but the generic blues tracks here are often uncharacteristically lacking in bite. For my money, Allan Jones’ comparison of this supposedly ‘rambunctious’ record with The Basement Tapes is massively wide of the mark. Even ‘My Wife’s Home Town’ and ‘Jolene’, on which Dylan’s growl is more savage and commanding, seem a little tame and polite musically. Drummer George Recile, one of the more exciting musicians in Dylan’s touring band, is kept on something of a tight leash here, where a greater contribution would have created more tension and drama. When the music here is at its most atmospheric, such as on ‘Forgetful Heart’, it’s inevitably accompanied by an inconsequential lyric.

There are songs here I really want to like more than I do. ‘Shake Shake Mama’ is a lightweight but endearing blues shuffle groove, but definitely the lesser cousin of something like ‘Summer Days’ or ‘Someday Baby’. It’s enjoyable chiefly for its sly humour. Many will latch on to the closer ‘It’s All Good’ with its litany of intensifying problems, all shrugged off with the title’s recurring platitude (‘buildings are crumbling in the neighbourhood but there’s nothing to worry about, ‘cos it’s all good!’). Dylan allows himself a little laugh mid-way through the song which encapsulates its mischievous spirit. I’m not sure it actually does all that much to expand his lexicon though, and there is an increasing problem with his reliance on non-sequiturs – ‘big politicians tellin’ lies/Restaurant kitchen all full of flies’ is, I’m afraid, not a good couplet at all. Like much of the music on this album, it makes me tap my foot reservedly, but doesn’t quite make me feel like dancing.

Dylan comes closest to capturing the border magic he’s clearly striving for on ‘If You Ever Go To Houston’, but it’s again slightly too measured and controlled. It has one of the album’s best lyrics, revitalising some of the caricatures and stereotypes of American narrative songwriting. Here, there are bar-rooms and gun-belts galore. It somehow feels both historic and ageless all at the same time. I suspect this and the entertaining ‘Jolene’ will be the growers of this set.

He almost escapes the shackles of the blues form on the portentously titled ‘I Feel A Change Comin’ On’, instead revisiting the dusty, soulful feel of ‘Tryin’ To Get To Heaven’ or ‘Workingman’s Blues’. I’m not too concerned abut some of the lyrics seem rather self-consciously imposing. It’s likely that this line: ‘I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver and reading James Joyce/Some people they tell me, I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice’ will be the most often quoted from this album. But do those influences lead directly to the gravitas of what follows? I’m actually more taken with the bizarre opening couplet (‘I’ve been walking the world over, looking far off to the east/Well I see my baby comin’, she’s-a-walking with the village Priest’). Dylan risks descending into cliché with such ‘rambling man’ language, but his lifestyle as a constantly touring performer imbues it with real world poignancy. His band’s playing is at its most relaxed and musical on this song, and it’s comfortably the most amiable song here, lingering favourably in the mind.

I have no real objection to Dylan, contrary to the film’s title, actually looking back and reviving older pre-rock n’roll musical styles. At the age of 68, it’s probably unreasonable to expect anything as revolutionary as ‘that wild mercury sound’ again. As I’ve remarked before, the blues context particularly suits his ravaged voice and therefore seems as much driven by practical as by artistic concerns. He genuinely sounds like a voice of experience now, which is why it seems slightly disappointing that much of ‘Together Through Life’ sees him lost in a romantic reverie rather than offering much in the way of real psychological insight. Conservative though they were in the main, ‘Love and Theft’ and ‘Modern Times’ both worked because of the sheer exuberance and zest of Dylan’s wordplay and wit. These are only fleetingly in evidence on ‘Together Through Life’.

As an enjoyable listen, ‘Together Through Life’ is by no means disastrous. But we are doing both Dylan and his devoted followers a disservice if we try and claim that it is ‘yet another masterpiece’. It’s one of his more feathery and vague records. It’s not without charm but there are certainly times when it feels like it should be a little more muscular. It’s also hard to approach it without remembering that Dylan said much more about relationships on ‘Blood on the Tracks’ and ‘Desire’. For those simply happy to hear more from a man who is clearly incapable of stopping, it will be good enough. For his harshest critics or some of his more demanding devotees, it will come as something of a letdown.

Another Playlist

I'll write something again soon, I promise, but in the absence of any new critical thinking, here's another one of those lists to remind me what's around:

Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Pet Shop Boys - Yes
The Decemberists - Hazards of Love (still trying to formulate an opinion on this!)
Hildur Gudnadottir - Without Sinking
Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle (one of his best as far as I'm concerned)
Doves - Kingdom of Rust
Branford Marsalis - Metamorphosen
Tom Cawley and Kit Downes - Homely
Flower-Corsano Duo - The Four Aims
Chris Batchelor, Steve Buckley, Myra Melford - Big Air
Staff Benda Bilili - Tres Tres Fort
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Broken Family Band - Please and Thank You
Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe
The Handsome Family - Honey Moon
Wildbirds and Peacedrums - The Snake (finally gets a UK release this week)

Some forthcoming albums I'm excited about:
Alasdair Roberts - Spoils
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care
Jarvis Cocker - Further Complications
Bob Dylan - Together Through Life
Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane and Sugarcane
The Field - Yesterday and Today
Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game

An Old Hand and A New Maverick

Marianne Faithful - Easy Come, Easy Go (Anti, 2009)
Micachu - Jewellery (Rough Trade, 2009)

Blimey. If it wasn’t shocking enough hearing Morrissey sing ‘there are explosive kegs between my legs’, it’s positively freakish hearing Marianne Faithfull utter the same words. This she does some way into ‘Easy Come Easy Go’, a dense and, I suppose, rather indulgent double album made in collaboration with Hal Willner. One has to have some degree of bravery simply to get this far.

I’ve never been too great an admirer of Faithfull’s work – it’s always struck me that she’s more famous for a certain incident with a Mars Bar for good reason. Perhaps this judgment has been prejudicial and unfair though – late into her career she has begun to prove herself an interpreter of sound judgment and considerable skill. I enjoyed her ‘Before the Poison’ album, and I was intrigued enough by the cast list and song selection here to at least dip more than a big toe in. Willner seems to provoke intense reactions – some people see him as a false pretender. I’ve admired his recent work, particularly the collection of pirate songs that, even if tied to the tiresome Pirates of the Caribbean movies, served as a fascinating curate’s egg.

At least in theory, Willner’s approach plays to Faithfull’s strengths. ‘Easy Come Easy Go’ is made up of a set of mostly strong songs (albeit drawn from very different parts of the musical map) and a group of musicians, Willner included, who favour an avant-garde reversion of cabaret song for which her husky voice is ideally suited. One of the arrangers is Steve Bernstein, whose Millennial Territory Orchestra I very much enjoyed at the Jazz on 3 gig at last year’s London Jazz Festival. His combination of knowledge of tradition and outlandish free spirit is perfect for this project too. Indeed, the arrangements, simultaneously smoky and extravagant, are sumptuous throughout.

One has to question the wisdom of making this a double set though. Recorded mostly live and, it seems, with some degree of haste, it could have benefited from some stricter editing, or at least some development of some of its simpler ideas. There are times when Willner is on cruise control, doing little more than regurgitating the original songs. Faithfull’s range remains limited, and sometimes it seems as if the songs have been selected more for their credibility than for her ability to claim them for herself. It’s great to see someone else spreading the word about the astonishing and tragic Judee Sill, but I’d sooner listen to her original of ‘The Phoenix’. As for the mauling of ‘Somewhere’ with Jarvis Cocker, all it achieves is to prove that most pop singers are simply not suited for musical theatre.

The first disc is considerably stronger. It’s not as if the grief of Dolly Parton’s ‘Down From Dover’ needs additional gravitas, but Faithfull’s performance certainly provides it. It sizzles and smoulders quite brilliantly. Neko Case’s ‘Hold On Hold On’ becomes rather demonic and sinister, and The Decemberists’ ‘The Crane Wife 3’ crackles with foreboding, with Faithfull accompanied by a relatively restrained Nick Cave. Also uncharacteristically held back is Rufus Wainwright on a version of Espers’ ‘Children of Stone’ that sounds mysterious and enchanting. Perhaps best of all is Smokey Robinson’s ‘Ooh Baby Baby’, on which the ubiquitous Antony Hegarty guests, overflowing with sexual urgency rather than mournful reflection.

The first disc makes a surprisingly strong case for linking fashionable contemporary selections with the Great American Songbook. Perhaps, along with the ‘Dark Was The Night’ compilation, it also inadvertently bolsters the argument that American music is currently in very good health indeed. It’s a neat, open-minded trick to pull off and with a more selective, less rushed execution, this could have been a real gem.

Back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Rough Trade, managed as something akin to a utopian collective, haemorrhaged its most successful artists to bigger, more powerful labels. Now reincarnated, they seem to be doing the cherry picking themselves. The much touted Micachu’s debut album was delayed for a month or so whilst she defected over from Matthew Herbert’s Accidental label.

In this case, the hype is worth believing. Whilst Mica has been compared (very unfairly) to Kate Nash for her estuary vowels, there is undoubtedly a singular and compelling talent at work here. Trained in composition at London’s Guildhall School of Music, Mica combines rawness and energy with imaginative writing and real rhythmic flair. At last we are reaching a stage where the musical interests of our performers matches the diversity of music on offer – a situation where marketing grime mix tapes and writing for major orchestras needn’t be mutually exclusive activities.

‘Jewellery’ is in many senses a bit of a ragbag collection, with some tracks recorded as a solo artist and others developed with her band The Shapes. All the songs are mercilessly concise, with only one track breaking the three minute mark. That track ends with a jubilant voice declaring ‘it’s a keeper!’ The music seems joyful as much for its rough edges as for its underlying sophistication. It’s gleefully fragmented, but individual tracks are curiously logical and carefully arranged. Perhaps this kind of non-conceptual sequencing makes for an album better equipped for the digital age.

In every song, Mica’s distinctive character, both musical and personal, cuts through clearly and with real intelligence. From the infectious ‘Golden Phone’ to the vengeful aggression of ‘Curly Teeth’, this is a set full of insight and humour. She may not be a gifted singer by conventional criteria, but her phrasing is crisp and imaginative and always adds a sense of forward motion to the songs. The contrast between the insistent strum of her unusual mini-guitar and the intricate syncopation of the drums and keyboard lines is particularly striking, and a consistent stylistic feature throughout.

Mica’s cerebral but personal songs, equal parts anxiety and confidence, are convincingly real and human. The music, skittering but somehow controlled and organised, seems to reflect this. This is not a record for people who see things in black and white, or want their music to be neatly compartmentalised. But it is a brilliantly idiosyncratic pop record for anyone looking for something audacious and fresh.

Yin and Yang

Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Men (Samedhi Sound, 2009)
Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years (Rough Trade, 2009)


Here are two very different albums with which I’m completely besotted at the moment. Sweet Billy Pilgrim are a new name to me, the latest signings to David Sylvian’s Samedhi Sound label. Their second album ‘Twice Born Men’ is a rather sober and serious affair, albeit in the best possible way. By way of contrast, ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ is thoroughly bonkers – the most madcap album in Super Furry Animals’ quirky catalogue.

Getting straight to the point, the music on ‘Twice Born Men’ is disarmingly beautiful. It’s a beautifully crafted, effortlessly cohesive album that represents a shining example of genuinely artful pop music. There’s a strong melodic sensibility at work which is reminiscent of the intelligent anthems of Doves or Elbow, but there’s also a freer, more impressionistic side to this group, and an adventurous approach to instrumentation and arrangement. Many of the positive reviews this album has received have mentioned Talk Talk, although the music here is warmer and less stark than ‘Laughing Stock’. It’s a powerful, distinctive hybrid sound focused on texture and atmosphere. Whilst there are plenty of banjos and acoustic guitars, this could hardly be classified as folk music. Similarly, whilst there are plenty of gently swelling synth pads and found sounds, the group are not exactly electronic either.

The album is neatly bookended by the same musical theme, although it is stated in radically different ways. This gives it a rather old-fashioned sense of a long form journey and, indeed, chief songwriter Tim Elsenberg has admitted that he considers it a concept album about ‘the heart’s little journey’. Not perhaps the most novel of ideas, but the execution of the theme is near perfect. It opens with rustling cymbals, electronic haze and a finger picked electric guitar playing a delicate theme – pretty but melancholy. Over this, an American voice intones a story about a 13 month road trip – the important element being the free movement of driving rather than the places passed through. It sounds like a journey of forgetting and escaping but the story ends abruptly – ‘…but then I met you’. The end of the album returns to that electric guitar theme, but this time it is presented as a bawdy drunken chorus, which is in fact Tim Elsenberg’s voice overdubbed thirty times.

The first proper song ‘Truth Only Smiles’, is a neat encapsulation of this band’s magic. It’s an ambitious, rhythmically fascinating song with a strange, elusive verse giving way to a big, heartfelt chorus. Elsenberg’s voice has the full blooded force of Thom Yorke or Jeff Buckley but he also has an intuitive sense of how and when to use restraint. ‘Bloodless Coup’ and ‘Kalypso’ are similarly entrancing, the latter veering through a bewildering array of texture and tempo variations but exercising its own peculiar logic. The arrangements are completely beguiling. Unfortunately, I haven’t got credits to hand, but strings and what sounds like a clarinet add depth and resonance.

‘Longshore Drift’ sounds much like its title suggests, with a rubato delivery and a more abstract sensibility. This quality returns on the album’s penultimate track, although both are too restless and emotive to risk inducing sleep. The crackly electronics in the background serve to enhance the sense of eeriness. Although a number of the songs extend for over six minutes, the album as a whole is concise at only eight tracks. The abstract moments are always punctuated by more robust moments, like the asymmetrical, jazzy undertones of ‘Future Pefect Tense’. Whilst the album ends with its most dreamlike material, the group sustain a perplexing combination of melancholy and euphoria that makes for truly stirring music throughout.

‘Twice Born Men’ is lyrically evocative too, with a recurring maritime theme which is continued in the cover art – apparently there’s more information about the art than the music in the liner notes. There are also some inventive and imaginative lines (the ‘dreams all cracked and pistol-whipped’ of ‘Truth Only Smiles’ springs immediately to mind). At worst, it relies on platitudes about emotions and relationships, but these are far more insightful than those offered by lesser artists.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim make music that seems to float and drift, with numerous ideas feeding into an over-arching mood or atmosphere. When a strong melodic theme emerges, its impact is greater for being unexpected. The more I listen to it, the more its subtle detail creeps to the surface. Equal parts vulnerability and strength – this is cerebral music with a richly emotive core. Much has already been said about Grizzly Bear’s upcoming ‘Veckatimest’, but ‘Twice Born Men’ already sounds like a worthy UK counterpart.

Whereas ‘Twice Born Men’ is the work of a band with a clear, coherent vision and is carefully structured, Super Furry Animals seem to have, quite deliriously, lost all sense of direction on ‘Dark Days/Light Years’. It is gleefully all over the place and remarkably self-indulgent. Yet SFA are a rare band that actually benefit from freeing themselves from strictures. Although much of the music here is based on grooves (often seemingly krautrock-inspired), their infectious hooks often win through in the end. They have an effortless knack for making the very process of creating music sound like tremendous fun. This is, of course, exactly how it should be.

Their scattershot approach here makes for a much more engaging listen than the languid psychedelia of much of ‘Love Kraft’, or even the crisp pop of ‘Hey Venus!’. For those who prefer SFA at their weirdest, ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ will comfortably be their best album since ‘Guerilla’. This doesn’t necessarily mean the music is always wildly original. Much of the opening ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ (how could a song with a title like that be possible to resist?) is clearly derived from Hendrix or Led Zeppelin and the group’s fascination with The Beach Boys remains prevalent elsewhere. As ever, it’s the way SFA combine these yardsticks of classic pop and rock with their more experimental impulses. So, the aforementioned ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ begins with a bewildering raft of programmed beats, before exploding into a guitar-lead freak-out.

Satisfyingly, there are some remnants of the joyous reconstruction of 80s pop Gruff crafted with Boom Bip on the Neon Neon album. ‘Inaugural Trams’ and ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’ (more great titles!) both benefit from that pulsating, shimmering sheen. The German spoken word sectionin ‘Inaugural Trams’ is delivered by Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy – it’s probably not too harsh on Franz to suggest it’s more worthwhile than anything on their latest effort. Gruff’s vocals are often electronically treated to enhance the bizarre, hallucinogenic mood that prevails throughout the record. As has been the tendency on recent SFA albums, this sounds like the work of a democratic group – with lead vocal contributions from Bunf and Cian as well as Gruff and a wider emphasis on harmonies.

There is space for ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ to conclude with a lengthy motorik groove (the thoroughly daft ‘Pric’) and for it to contain an epic piece of hazy psychedelia (‘Cardiff In The Sun’). Even such extravagances don’t detract from the overall sense that this is, at heart, a pop album. Songs like ‘White Socks/Flip Flops’ and ‘Helium Hearts’ are shot through with the group’s oddball charm and natural way with a winning melody. The only limitations come with a slight feeling of repetition. ‘Inconvenience’, in spite of its griping lyrics, is actually self-mocking and full of life, but it’s basically a retread of the glam stomp of ‘Golden Retriever’. Similarly, ‘Helium Hearts’ seems based on the same brand of awkward funk that characterised ‘Smokin’ or ‘Juxtaposed With U’.

These are very minor quibbles though – to have SFA at their energetic, devil-may-care best is exhilarating and much of ‘Dark Days/Light Years’ sounds like a manic celebration of modern absurdity. As odd as this excitable album often is, it’s also playful, inventive and massively enjoyable.

Soul Sides

Candi Staton - Who's Hurting Now? (Honest Jon's, 2009)
Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It (RCA, 2008/Sony UK, 2009)

Here are two albums both indebted to the vibrant soul tradition, but with a very different approach to production and execution. The return of Candi Staton to the secular mainstream has been one of the major soul revival stories and it’s slightly disappointing that a quick Google search reveals very little internet writing on this new album. Longstanding legacy artists like Staton of course don’t need the short term buzz and hype that the web provides (the likes of Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, however, positively thrive on it). Yet I often find it slightly irritating that bloggers so often opt to concentrate exclusively on the shock of the new. Unsurprisingly, then, Raphael Saadiq’s second solo album, also excellent, generates more results for its sleek modernisation of the classic Motown sound.

Staton, perhaps wisely, has opted to stay with the same team that helmed her outstanding ‘His Hands’ album from a couple of years ago. Former Lambchop member Mark Nevers stays in the producer’s chair and Will Oldham contributes another superb song (the title track from ‘His Hands’ is among the best things he’s written, but perhaps there’s too much love for Will here at the moment). The album has a relaxed feel, with plenty of reserved but gritty grooving. It sounds convincingly recorded live, with the sort of house band feel that characterised the best Memphis recordings from the Stax era. Whilst there are no explicitly religious songs here, there’s plenty of gospel fervour, and Staton’s gospel heritage adds real depth and conviction to her take on Mary Gauthier’s ‘Mercy Now’.

Although Staton apparently had her reservations with Will Oldham’s contribution here, the selection of this and the Mary Gauthier track neatly demonstrate the links between deep southern soul and country music. The album also opens superbly with a relatively recent Dan Penn composition, one of the slow-burning, gutsy tracks that best suit Staton’s wonderful voice. It’s about a slow seduction, with the woman initially reserved and resistant. Staton assumed it was a song about weakness, and initially didn’t want to sing it, but later re-interpreted it to be about overcoming doubt and fear in relationships.

As is so often the case, soul singers and their chosen songs offer huge insight into human emotions and relationships. Will Oldham’s ‘Get Your Hands Dirty’ continues his preoccupation with concepts of work that can also be heard on his own ‘Beware’ album. Again, Candi brings a rawness and emotional clarity to his work – Oldham would have rendered it more elusive and translucent. Just as I was bemoaning the lack of intelligent songs about remaining single, a flurry of them seem to be emerging. ‘Lonely Don’t’ is a song that imagines ‘Lonely’ as a partner that won’t mistreat and neglect you in the way that real life partners often do. It’s a powerful, thought-provoking sentiment. Even more daring is Staton’s sole original contribution to this set, ‘Dust On My Pillow’, another smouldering deep soul ballad, but a novel one which genuinely seems to be about Viagra. Staton is interested in its negative effects on long term marriages as newly restored men seek younger girls.

At its best, be it with dirty grooves like the title track or gritty ballads, ‘Who’s Hurting Now?’ plays to Staton’s considerable strengths as a communicator and vocalist. If there’s a limitation to this album, it’s in the occasional over-familiarity of the material, which occasionally risks veering into soul cliché. There’s a nagging sense that a couple of the tracks (‘The Light In Your Eyes’, ‘I Don’t Know’) are slightly icky. Still, it’s a small quibble with an otherwise appetising set that provides a powerful reminder of how timeless and durable deep soul music can be.

Raphael Saadiq is a high profile writer, singer and producer in the States but is only just receiving his dues here in the UK. He was a member of the underrated group Tony! Toni! Tone! (I willingly admit I’m relying on Wikipedia to get the various Tonies in what is hopefully the right sequence). He then went on to produce the femal R&B supergroup Lucy Pearl and work with D’Angelo and Joss Stone, who guests on a track here. His debut album ‘Instant Vintage’ earned five grammy nominations, but didn’t seem to kick up too much of a storm here. It’s taken a while for ‘The Way I See It’ to get a full UK release (it’s been available in the US since late last year) but it has now at last arrived.

Suddenly, everyone seems to have latched on to Saadiq’s almost slavishly faithful facsimile of Motown gold (particularly the Holland-Dozier-Holland sound) and I see no reason not to join the chorus of approval. Unlike the Candi Staton album though, this is definitely not a live-in-the-studio recording though. Saadiq is much more open to modern studio techniques. As such, ‘The Way I See It’ reproduces a classic template, but filters this through the influence of contemporary R&B and hip hop, mostly without diluting its effect. This is somewhere where guest artists Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone and Jay-Z can all feel at home (although Jay-Z admittedly murders the second version of ‘Oh Girl’ with his awful half-rapping, half-singing).

As a singer, Saadiq doesn’t quite have the force and range of the great Motown voices, although there is a real insistent quality to his delivery that is difficult to resist. His vocal phrasing is as crisp and driving as his precise rhythm tracks. As a producer, he understands the crucial role played by the bass and the rhythm guitar in the construction of those irresistible grooves. The playing on the opening double whammy of ‘Sure Hope You Mean It’ and ‘100 Yard Dash’ is impeccable.

Saadiq also has a knack for combining musical and sexual impulses. ‘Let’s Take A Walk’ is a good deal less innocent than its naïve title suggests. In fact, it’s about as unsubtle a seduction song as has ever been penned, set to a suitably filthy groove. In fact, many of these tracks seem to be primarily physical, with both ‘100 Yard Dash’ and ‘Keep Marchin’ emphasising movement. Perhaps the Motown track this most reminds me of is Edwin Starr’s imperious ’25 Miles’, one of my very favourites.

Then there’s the more complex trick of setting life’s more difficult lessons to remarkably breezy, upbeat accompaniment (‘Staying in Love’) – this was one of Motown’s greatest stylistic tricks and is a general hallmark of successful pop music. Saadiq also proves himself capable of a sensitive touch, with a handful of equally well crafted ballads. Mercifully, these aren’t the token slow warblers that so often hamper contemporary R&B albums, but essential constituents of a successful whole.

‘The Way I See It’ is a spirited and enjoyable album, steeped in history but with an effective contemporary sheen. Given the buzz surrounding it at the moment, it will surely raise Saadiq’s stature in the UK. Clearly this has been long overdue.

A Contrarian Unmasked

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Beware (Domino, 2009)

The cover is deep black, with a remarkably striking portrait of the artist in white silhouette. The typography hints at Neil Young’s iconic ‘Tonight’s The Night’ sleeve. Then there are the song titles – ‘Death Final’, ‘You Are Lost’, ‘I Am Goodbye’. At first glance, ‘Beware’ looks like a more natural successor to the classic ‘I See A Darkness’ than anything Will Oldham has recorded in the intervening years.

This being the work of a prolific man with many guises, who enjoys confusing and confounding his admirers as much as his detractors, it predictably isn’t quite that simple. ‘Beware’ is another step on Oldham’s strange, questioning journey, and another refusal simply to repeat former glories. What is for sure, at least to these ears, is that this is his best, most confident work since the aforementioned first outing under the BPB name.

On his most recent albums, Oldham has been experimenting with the effects of working with different vocalists. In fact, it’s been surprising how well his characteristically wayward voice has blended with his female collaborators. On ‘Beware’ he has assembled something approaching a mass choir. Sometimes they provide swelling background harmonies, whilst at others they work (very effectively) in response to his calls. The result is what might be Oldham’s most expansive and extravagant album to date – a form of imposing Nashville soul that is both commanding and compelling.

If anything, ‘Beware’ is closest in sound to ‘Greatest Palace Music’, the album on which Oldham controversially covered himself in Nashville syrup. I’m not sure that ‘Beware’ is destined to follow that album’s unfair dismissal though. The songs here are simply too good to be ignored. Also, the notion that this represents some new ‘positive’ or ‘happy’ Oldham is far too schematic an interpretation. Whilst ‘Beware’ is certainly full of physical humour and even occasionally some warmth, its overall emotional landscape is a good deal more slippery and complex.

So, whilst ‘I Don’t Belong To Anyone’ examines the joys of fun-loving bachelor status (a far more enjoyable song than Morrissey’s surly ‘I’m OK By Myself’) and ‘You Don’t Love Me’ explores the virtues of non-committal lovemaking, there’s also the devastatingly poignant ‘Heart’s Arms’ and the mysterious, troubling ‘You Are Lost’. The former is as expressive and eloquent a break-up song as I’ve heard (‘I open this awful machine to nothing, where once your intimacies came pounding’) and the latter seems to recognise the need for a free spirited partner to escape the restrictions imposed by its protagonist (‘if you listen to me you are lost’).

What emerges clearly from this selection of songs is the tremendous human insight of Oldham’s writing. One of Oldham’s older songs ‘One With The Birds’, introduced the tricky concept of being ‘inhuman’ and perhaps not being as distant from animals as we might wish. ‘Beware’ seems to incorporate some of our less altruistic desires into a more intricate and complete portrait of being human. Sometimes this lies in directly confronting the more unpalatable sides of human nature, from selfishness and greed to controlling impulses. Sometimes it’s a recognition of the warmth that can be found in tiny physical details (the ‘belly laughs’ or ‘the way my stomach jiggles’). At other times, it’s even rueful or self deprecating (‘you say my kisses don’t even raise a six on a scale of one to ten’). It’s a richly nuanced depiction of human life that refuses to conform to anything as simplistic as a positive or negative viewpoint.

Elsewhere, he mischievously undercuts the tropes of the American blues tradition (‘I know everyone knows the trouble I have seen/That’s the thing about trouble you can love’) and seems preoccupied with the concept of work, particularly in relationships. At the moment, ‘My Life’s Work’ is striking me as one of his most powerful and strident songs to date.

Musically, the album is as confident and audacious a work as any in Oldham’s illustrious canon. The first interjection of the choir on ‘Beware Your Only Friend’ immediately betrays the album’s wry humour (‘I want to be your only friend’, sings Oldham, ‘does that sound scary?’ responds the choir). Throughout the album, backing vocals conspire to add depth and power. The instrumentation is also correspondingly lavish, with plenty of fiddles, flutes, cornets and even the odd saxophone solo. On ‘Heart’s Arms’, Oldham explores the dramatic potential of sudden dynamic contrasts.

Yet ‘Beware’ is also an embrace of country music’s subtleties as well as its potential for luxury. There’s the gentle shuffle of ‘I Don’t Belong To Anyone’ or the more reflective, delicate lilt of ‘Death Final’, both excellent songs. Often the rhythmic foundation comes more from hand percussion than a full drum kit, a neat trick that lends space to the music where it might otherwise have been cluttered. This works particularly well on the extraordinary, dream-like closing track ‘Afraid Ain’t Me’.

There’s also a melodic familiarity to some of the tracks here that somehow manages to be more of a strength than a weakness. Oldham has certainly done this before – with ‘One With The Birds’ having borrowed heavily from Gram Parsons’ ‘Hickory Wind’. Here, ‘Beware Your Only Friend’ reminds me slightly of ‘Octopus’ Garden’, although it’s admittedly hard to imagine Ringo Starr singing these words. More notably perhaps, ‘Without Work, You Have Nothing’ strongly resembles the old Jerome Kern standard ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. These borrowings make the songs sound rooted in history, but Oldham takes these melodies to a wildly different place.

Oldham has never made a bad album as such, but sometimes they’ve seemed either overly conceptual (‘Sings Greatest Palace Music’) or have hidden some depths within considerable subtleties (‘The Letting Go’). ‘Beware’ is an immediate and authoritative statement, but one that seems likely to have a durable quality too. Straightforwardly, for such a contrarian, these are outstanding songs, delivered with a distinctive authorial voice.

Playlist

Various kinds of work have left me unable to blog for a while now, so I thought I'd post one of those occasional playlists, mainly to remind me of the mountain of music I need to write about. I had wanted to write something about Ari Hoenig's fearsome gig at Road Trip last week (a nice little venue if it continues to be used as a jazz club), but maybe the time has passed for that now.

Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It
Candi Staton - Who's Hurting Now?
Micachu - Jewellery
Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
Marianne Faithfull - Easy Come Easy Go
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Beware
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Men
Beirut - March of the Zapotec/Realpeople: Holland
Emmy The Great - First Love
Alela Diane - To Be Still
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
Oumou Sangare - Seya
DOOM - Born Like This (out on Monday)
Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle (out on Monday)
The Decemberists - The Hazards Of Love (on iTunes now, physical release on Monday)

Solo Pornography

AC Newman – Get Guilty (Matador, 2009)
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone (Anti, 2009)

This week two solo albums arrive from members of the infectious, zany power-pop supergroup New Pornographers. Whilst Neko Case has, over several albums now, established her own signature style, informed by backwoods country, Byrdsian twang and classic pop, AC Newman’s solo career has struggled to exist as a proposition distinct from his parent band. Newman writes the majority of the songs for New Pornographers, and their best albums arguably succeed because Dan Bejar’s excursions into weird, fantastical stream-of-consciousness provide some balance to Newman’s relentless pop sensibility. A whole album of Newman confections might well be difficult to digest.

‘Get Guilty’ is a big improvement on ‘The Slow Wonder’. That album had been frontloaded with excellent songs only to veer off into more obtuse, meandering territory. Whilst not quite as consistent as the best of the New Pornographers albums, ‘Get Guilty’ maintains a more engaging standard throughout. It succeeds partly through being more ramshackle and less overblown than the last New Pornographers outing, the disappointing ‘Challengers’. There’s a big emphasis on rhythmic clatter and percussive drive, most effectively on ‘Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer’. Whilst the arrangements are frequently lush, there’s a roughness around the edges that lends the music some endearing imperfections. In addition to this, there are unusual choices of instruments, including recorders and melodicas. It feels loose and fun, rather than over-composed.

The pomp-pop of ‘Challengers’ is refined into a more agreeable proposition on two tracks - the Spector-ish opener ‘There Are Maybe Ten Or Twelve’ and ‘The Changeling’, which seems to recast Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ as a drunken lurch. Both are bold, chiming, confident performances. On a second play, I wonder whether a better comparison might even be the lavish, irresistible early pop singles of the Bee Gees, minus the squeaky falsettos of course.

Elswhere, as might be expected, Newman’s predilection for relentlessly summery melodies presides. The first four tracks represent Newman at his strongest – combining this tendency with a slightly ragged musical delivery and an abundance of rhythmic quirks and tricks. ‘Too Many Prophets’ and ‘The Heartbreak Rides’ are among his most direct songs, where his tendency for lyrical verbosity and awkwardness doesn’t intrude too much on the overall performance. It would be easy to view Newman’s chirpy enthusiasm as irritating – but there’s also something undeniably delightful about their impact. Even the more translucent songs that constitute the final third of the record have a steely conviction and confidence.

Neko Case’s songs on ‘Middle Cyclone’ are less openly enthusiastic and insistent than Newman’s but, I suspect, ultimately more enduring. Here, she has refined and polished her sound without losing her idiosyncratic qualities as a songwriter. The BBC website describes ‘Middle Cyclone’ as a set of simple country songs but I can’t help feeling that underestes its achievement and misunderstands Case’s strategy. 2002’s ‘Blacklisted’ was something of a pivotal point in her career, the point at which she abandoned ‘Her Boyfriends’, took songwriting control and started to develop a stranger, reverb-laden sound evocative of fairytales and sinister menace. It was the perfect context for her unusual, sometimes creepy metaphors. Whilst ‘Middle Cyclone’ certainly presents a smoother, more approachable version of this sound, Case still inhabits her own unique space and in some ways it represents an expansion of her language.

‘People Got A Lotta Nerve’, the taster freely distributed around the internet, is in some ways quite misleading. Its twelve string guitar jangle and hummable chorus suggest an immediacy and directness not always in evidence elsewhere. Some of these songs are more complex creations. Indeed, sometimes when the surface appearance of a song is disarmingly simple, closer listening reveals that there’s much more than first meets the ear.

This is particularly true of the delightful title track. Its delicate strum and hushed, restrained vocal make it sound remarkably straightforward. The music box counter melody almost (but not quite) sends it into the realm of tweeness. Close listening, however, reveals an odd structure veering between bars of 5 and 6 in an unpredictable pattern. It’s a love song of sorts, or at least about the difficulty in accepting the need for love. The lyrics are both clever and achingly bittersweet. It’s a quiet gem and one of a handful of songs here to deal more directly with the feeling of falling in love.

There’s still a characteristic helping of magical realism though and Case’s preoccupation with the animal kingdom continues apace, now further enhanced by broader nature metaphors, as the title suggests. On the opening ‘This Tornado Loves You’, Case casts herself as a force of nature, wanting to ‘carve your name across three counties’. It’s one of many striking images liberally scattered throughout this album – another favourite is the key line from ‘Prison Girls’ – ‘I love your long shadows and your gunpowder eyes’.

For every crisp and immediate song here (the driving rock of ‘I’m an Animal’ is probably the closest thing here to something New Pornographers might produce), there is something distinctly odd. ‘Fever’ is full of weird and wonderful sounds, from the clicking sound of drum rims to discomforting guitar effects. Some of these tracks were recorded in Case’s rural barn, in which she utilised eight upright pianos.

‘Polar Nettles’ and ‘Vengeance is Sleeping’ both benefit from that underlying sense of barbarous threat that makes even her softest, most skeletal songs sound unusual. The longer ‘Prison Girls’ and ‘The Pharoahs’ essentially restate Case’s talent for narrative driven songs set to lilting shuffles. Neither perhaps breaks new ground for her (the former sounds like a slower version of ‘Deep Red Bells’) but both serve to emphasise her core talents with effortless ease.

The two judiciously selected cover versions also remind us how superb an interpreter Neko Case is. Her version of Sparks’ ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’, surgically removing any sense of playful irony or parody associated with the original band, is so good as to make me wonder whether all albums should be compelled to include a Sparks cover. Nilsson’s anguished, but also blackly humorous ‘Don’t Forget Me’ seems like a more obvious choice, but that shouldn’t take anything away from her thoughtful and composed delivery.

‘Middle Cyclone’ is a resplendent album that rewards more and more with every play. From the unashamed brutality of a line like ‘the next time you say forever, I will punch you in the face’ to the confessional tenderness of its title track, it contains a wealth of personal emotional directness not heard on its immediate predecessors. Yet it sacrifices little in its quest for broader appeal – this is still a strange, murky, half-fantastical world. My only reservation is the bonus track – a whopping 31 minutes of ambient sound from the pond at the aforementioned barn that is almost as long as the rest of the album. Sorry, but that’s just an unnecessarily large and wasteful file that almost undercuts the haunting beauty of everything that has gone before.

How To Reappear Completely

The Invisible - The Invisible (Accidental, 2009)

It seems only appropriate to follow the tribute to Ian Carr with a review of something involving people who have passed through his workshops. As a project, The Invisible follows on from the excellent Jade Fox, who gained a strong following and credible reputation but never delivered an official full-length album. Originally intended as a side project to Jade Fox, the ideas grew substantially until it became a more viable proposition. The Invisible’s line-up includes the towering guitarist Dave Okumu, the versatile bassist Tom Herbert (formerly of Acoustic Ladyland and still a vital presence in Polar Bear) and superb drummer Leo Taylor. All are experienced jazz musicians and whilst they perhaps bring a more adventurous harmonic sensibility to this music as a result, few would venture to call this album jazz. It is, however, one of the most exciting and engaging British pop albums I’ve heard for some time.

That being said, it’s not exactly forward thinking. Listening to it makes me wonder why, when there’s been such a tremendous hullaballoo about synth pop acts like La Roux and Little Boots, excitement surrounding The Invisible’s equally 80s-informed brew has been slower to build. Okumu’s group plunder a much wider array of potentially more fashionable 80s sources. Indeed, pretty much everything that populated Simon Reynolds’ wonderful book ‘Rip It Up and Start Again’ can be heard in ghostly voices here, from Talking Heads to Orange Juice and Scritti Politti. Another major influence, on the introspective lyrics as much as the music, is Robert Smith and The Cure.

What is exciting about The Invisible, then, is not so much their depth or originality, but the effectiveness of their synthesis, the quality of their songs and the thoughtful studio treatment of the material. If there is a more contemporary element to their sound, it lies in the treatment of Okumu’s vocals, which occasionally calls to mind TV on the Radio or Bon Iver. Yet in spite of the transparent influences, there isn’t really another comparable band at work in the UK – there’s something fresh and appealing about The Invisible’s presentation and feeling for the music.

Sometimes the sheer proficient tightness of their groove is electrifying, as on the slinky ‘Jacob and the Angel’. Throughout, Tom Herbert’s basslines are thrillingly danceable, his phrases carefully placed and punctuated to give the music momentum. How many bassists are equally as vital on both upright and fretted electric instruments? Taylor uses the complete drum kit to provide texture and colour, as well as that supreme rhythmic security which elevates The Invisible over lesser rock groups. It all comes together in exciting fashion on ‘Monster’s Waltz’, with its delicious syncopated guitar chords which then unexpectedly give way to an explosive chorus.

Whilst there’s certainly a cerebral quality of the music, it’s the immediacy and drive of a number of the tracks that really makes it click. ‘London Girl’, with a bassline that comes across as a combination of ‘Good Times’ and ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, is completely irresistible. ‘OK’ is the most infectious thing here – with its sugary harmonies and driving pace. In an alternative dimension, these sound like top ten hits.

I’m not entirely convinced by the isolation-by-numbers of some of Okumu’s lyrics. He sounds less self-conscious and more dynamic when simply enthusing about a girl as he does on ‘London Girl’. It’s possible that he’s more interested in sound than he is a songwriter per se – he’s certainly paid considerable attention to the sound of his voice and how it fits within the intricate musical whole. As a result, the clunkier aspects of his lyrics don’t intrude too much on the overall effect (much the same as with The Cure and New Order if we’re honest).

There are few bands who give so much consideration to the execution and delivery of their songs. Every element of this music is precise and well crafted. The result is an album that sounds hypnotic and sensuous – music with real presence and vitality.

Ian Carr 1933 - 2009: A Personal Tribute

It’s a sad and rare day when I get to write here about a significant figure in British music with a direct and personal influence on my life. For this reason, I’m not going to write too much about Ian Carr’s career and body of work. There are already some excellent obituaries online (to which I shall link at the end of the piece) that cover all this in much more detail than I can manage. It will suffice to say that those not familiar with Ian’s music and his considerable role in the jazz-rock movement should at least check out ‘Out of the Long Dark’ or the first two Nucleus albums (‘Elastic Rock’ and ‘We’ll Talk About It Later’). His playing is also well showcased on Neil Ardley’s adventurous ‘Greek Variations’ and ‘Kaleidoscope of Rainbows’ amongst many other notable sessions. His major contribution had finally been recognised in 2006 with the BBC Services to Jazz award, but by this time he was sadly already afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. In this piece, I want to write more about Ian as an educator, the domain in which I came into contact with him and where I benefited from his considerable musicianship, experience and wisdom.

I was fortunate to attend a prestigious fee paying school with impressive facilities – computers with sequencing software for every student, numerous instruments, concert halls and a recording studio- but there were many ways in which the school’s music department was sorely lacking. One of these was its attitude to jazz. Everyone involved in teaching and performing jazz in the school was well meaning and polite – but they were not specialists and viewed improvisation as a skill far from the reach of teenage minds. Solos for the school jazz band tended to be written out, and there was an unappetising focus on the hoariest of standards, always played exactly ‘as written’ in a staid and organised ‘music for schools’ fashion. Spontaneity and interaction were not exactly encouraged.

Thank goodness, then, for Ian’s workshops at Weekend Arts College, then located in a dilapidated but vibrant shack next to Kentish Town West train station (now located in the classier environment of Hampstead Town Hall). I first attended Ian Carr’s workshops in September 1995, when I was just 14 years old. I had already developed a taste for jazz at least in part from my Dad’s record collection but also from Gerry Hunt’s wonderful classes for younger children at the college on Saturdays. Here I earned myself a bit of a reputation for being prepared to try out almost any instrument, from steel pan to bass guitar, but more focus and higher standards were demanded from Ian's classes. I duly opted to concentrate on drums. At £1.50 for three hours, these classes cost a small fraction of my school music lessons but contributed so much more to my knowledge and experience. In Ian’s classes, improvisation was an essential ingredient of music, and a liberating force.

Crucially, making mistakes was an inherent part of the learning process. Ian was always full of pithy, wise phrases, but the one I remember most clearly is ‘jazz is the art of recovery’. It was in Ian’s classes where I learned the value of getting things wrong. The important mark of a good musician was in how they took risks and recovered when things didn’t quite work: ‘If you fail, fail again but fail more successfully’. Improvised music was a necessarily imperfect art form where learning never stops, no matter what standard you might attain.

Ian was therefore as passionate about the learning process as he was about teaching us – ‘I’m still learning every day - if you have stopped learning, you should stop altogether’, he often used to say. Although he could certainly be a tough taskmaster with some very strong, ingrained opinions, he also enjoyed working with his students as much as working for them. As a result, he was never patronising. When we eventually got to perform our repertoire for the term, he would often play with us, and would be tremendously guilty about taking a long solo for himself when his passion and enthusiasm simply wouldn’t allow him to sit out. He once told a guitarist in our group: ‘Tom, I’m so sorry, I think I took your solo – but it was so damn groovy I just had to play!’ In these situations, he couldn’t be stopped and, as a rhythm section, we got the undoubted benefit of supporting him.

Ian could be particularly tough on the rhythm section, and as a somewhat unconfident teenager, this could sometimes present a challenge. It would sometimes feel as if he might be singling out particular individuals for censure over apparently trivial issues. Only when our analysis of the structure and function of a piece of music progressed did it become clear how sensitive and attuned his attention to detail was. As a trumpeter and keyboardist, he didn’t teach me so much about playing the drums but he taught me a great deal about music and the wider role of the drums within it. He would often put drummers on the spot with questions about harmony or possible scales, making it clear that drummers could not get away with just hitting things and knowing next to nothing about the form or harmonic structure of the music. He was particularly intolerant of virtuosity for its own sake – bass players had to master a solid and dependable walking feel before they varied their placements and he would be far more enthusiastic about a drummer with comfortable time feel than one with dexterous chops and poor judgment over which ideas to play. I remember him castigating poor Alex Gould (a technically excellent drummer) for not placing the cross-rim on beat four of the bar during ‘Milestones’. ‘That rimshot on beat four is the absolute crux of the piece!’ he would enthuse – ‘it cannot be put just where you want it!’ I learnt quickly to focus on my ride cymbal feel and get to grips with the structure of the piece, before attempting to impose my individual contribution.

It was really through Ian’s classes that I learned how to listen. It’s this quality he recognised in my playing at the time – an ability to listen to the contributions of other members of an ensemble and to play supportively. He also directed my listening in the broader sense, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz history and artists’ discographies. He would be offer very specific recommendations – Oliver Nelson’s ‘Blues and the Abstract Truth’ was one of ‘the key albums of the 1960s’, whilst ‘Tales of Another’ by Gary Peacock, Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette was another of his all time favourites. I doubt I would have even heard of George Russell, a major but underestimated presence in jazz history, were it not for Ian’s praise of him and subsequent radio broadcast.

It was often hard to elicit praise from Ian but when it came, he would deliver it in spectacular fashion. We worked on an aggressive, driving rendition of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Elegant People’ (still among my favourites of his compositions) to which Ian remarked: ‘Daniel that was so deep down in the swamp I thought you’d changed colour!’ Lack of political correctness aside, I could only take that as a very sincere compliment.

Then there were his wonderful, lengthy stories – of encounters with Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett, of his experiences performing (those infamous ‘double diminisheds!’) and, latterly, writing. He had certainly experienced a lot in his lengthy and illustrious career, not all of it positive, but all of it somehow valuable and informative.

Perhaps Ian’s most transparent flaw was his innate suspicion of free improvisation. More recently, having enjoyed the music of Evan Parker, Tim Berne, David Torne and many others, I’m not sure that I share Ian’s views here. He certainly saw few limits to improvising within a compositional structure – indeed, his teaching often emphasised just how wide the choice of scales and ideas could be. Yet whenever we requested to improvise completely freely, he was well out of his teaching comfort zone. Fairly understandably, our attempts at free improvisation were often tentative, sometimes even plain embarrassing. Perhaps Ian merely felt we needed to get to grips with a tradition and a language first. I remain unsure as to what his true opinions were here but I think it stemmed from his emphasis on the importance of time to all music. He felt that ‘time’ could never be entirely abandoned (‘play two notes, or even the same note twice, and you are playing time’) and maybe therefore that the free improvisers’ quest to escape these strictures was rather futile. Indeed, the possibilities of playing time were so vast that it needn’t be seen as a stricture at all.

It could sometimes feel as if Ian was condemning you with faint praise. His final report on me said something like ‘Daniel is starting to become a very good drummer’. It was perhaps the phrase that followed that that was more significant though, and I’m only now starting to understand what he meant. ‘Where he goes now is up to him’. This seemed quite an ambiguous and mysterious statement to my 18 year old self but it now seems very simple. A clear conception of your direction and what you want to achieve is vital to your progress as a musician. I certainly don’t regret studying history instead of music. At the time, I was quite hot-headed and fervently believed that studying music or literature might risk destroying my personal passions for the art I loved. I now believe this opinion to be ignorant and naive and am finally, ten years on, taking the steps I think Ian was encouraging me to take then. I’m doing it later than most, but there is still time and I will long be grateful to Ian for setting me off on a very long road.

I was lucky to catch Ian at the end of his teaching career. His playing had started to deteriorate and he would often be visibly frustrated by this in classes, although he had lost none of his enthusiasm for the music or for communicating. He retired from WAC a year after I left to study history at University. Subsequently, Tim Whitehead, Jonny Phillips and Ricky Mian have all ably stepped into his shoes, inheriting and developing a great tradition of jazz education at the college.

It’s deeply sad that Ian’s career was cruelly cut short by health problems at precisely the time he was gaining both a new audience and the wider recognition he’d long deserved. He’d often been unfairly portrayed as being in the shadow of his hero, Miles Davis, when his contribution to jazz-rock was actually contemporaneous with that of Miles. Some extraordinary musicians passed through Ian’s workshops at WAC - Julian Joseph, Courtney Pine, Jason Rebello, Mark and Michael Mondesir and many of the pack of musicians now revitalising British music – Zoe Rahman, Naadia Sheriff, Tom Herbert, Tom Skinner, Dave Okumu, Jesse Hackett of Elmore Judd and many others. This is testament to his manifest qualities as a teacher and his legacy will live on through these musicians for many years to come. Personally, I respect him for managing to combine pretty much all of my personal interests in one career. He composed music that crossed the often unnecessary boundaries between classical, jazz and rock (accompanied by an open-minded appreciation for a variety of musical forms), he wrote passionately and authoritatively about jazz, and even became an excellent broadcaster too.

Some links to more informative and objective obituaries covering Ian’s life and music:

http://www.iancarrsnucleus.net/IanCarrobituary.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/ian-carr-trumpeter-and-composer-whose-band-nucleus-was-at-the-forefront-of-the-jazzrock-movement-1633339.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5810825.ece

Wordless Thoughts

Mountains - Choral (Thrill Jockey, 2009)
Lars Horntveth - Kaleidoscopic (Smalltown Supersound, 2009)
Joshua Redman - Compass (Nonesuch, 2009)
Enrico Rava - New York Days (ECM, 2009)

Maybe it's a result of being slightly frustrated by some of the song-based music released so far this year but I find myself absorbed by a fine selection of instrumental music at the moment. With new albums from Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Alasdair Roberts and Bill Callahan imminent, this may not however last very long, so I'll revel in it while I can.

If you should never judge a book by its cover, then you certainly shouldn’t judge the contents of an album from its title. ‘Choral’ is the third album from electronic duo Mountains but, aside from the odd buried whisper or moan, it contains no human voices whatsoever. Instead, it’s one of those deceptively minimal, thoroughly engrossing tapestries of sound akin to those constructed by Christian Fennesz.

For the most part, it’s a good deal less abrasive and disturbing than much of this music can be. Its embracing, hazy fuzz distances Mountains from the more terrifying work of artists such as Xela or Elegi. Instead, it comes with a warmth and open-heartedness that might broaden its appeal, without compromising the ethos or power of the music. By mostly rejecting confrontation and noise for its own sake, Mountains nimbly escape cliché, and make their comparably rare burst of more aggressive sound at the album’s conclusion more brutally effective.

‘Choral’ is more in keeping with other contemporary electronic music by rejecting demands for conventional harmonic movement, rhythmic impetus or melodic hooks. Two tracks stretch over the twelve minute mark mostly built on layering drones upon each other. The emphasis is therefore more on sound, timbre, mood and atmosphere. The frequent interjection of acoustic guitars or modest percussion instruments imbues the somnambulant textures with benevolent, human presence. The gently rolling ‘Map Table’ is particularly impressive in this regard.

‘Choral’ is a haunting and distinctive individual contribution to a still-burgeoning genre. Its music slowly and gently unravels in a beatific and engaging way. There is a strong sense that, with ‘Choral’, Mountains have crafted a form of avant-garde folk music where tradition allies comfortably with innovation.

Jaga Jazzist multi-instrumentalist Lars Horntveth describes ‘Kaleidoscopic’, a single 37-minute composition, as an attempt to reflect what he enjoys listening to, without consciously striving to copy anything specific. Eleni Karandiru, Gil Evans, Bernard Hermann, Jean-Claude Vannier, Robert Wyatt, Jim O'Rourke, John Fahey, Astor Piazzolla, Colin Blunstone, Dr. John, Steve Reich, Van Dyke Parks, David Lynch and Yma Zumac all appear on his list of admired artists. Even limited to just these artists, Horntveth has clearly absorbed an inspired cross section of contemporary music. Unsurprisingly as a result of all this digestion, ‘Kaleidoscopic’ is an absorbing listen.

It’s arguable that perhaps it dives too swiftly across the musical map. Textures and sounds are rarely given enough time to settle, and fairly conventional melodic themes disappear as quickly as they’ve emerged. The music is most effective when Horntveth focuses on simple ideas – an insistent ostinato, for example – and threads other motifs around it. It’s this combination of minimalism and adventure that would appear to provide the most fertile ground for his musical imagination.

Horntveth’s writing is also confident and assured in its catering for quirky ensembles of instruments within the wider orchestra. ‘Kaleidoscopic’ effortlessly merges electronic and acoustic textures, incorporating harp, guitar, vibraphone and saxophone. None of this sounds in any way awkward or self-conscious, although the overall mood of the piece is peaceful and serene, rather than dissonant or aggressive.

I have no qualms whatsoever, even at this very early stage, in hailing ‘Compass’, the latest album from saxophone virtuoso Joshua Redman, as one of the albums of the year. Redman has openly acknowledged the influence of Sonny Rollins’ classic trio date ‘Way Out West’ (going as far as to call his previous album ‘Back East’ in tribute) but his use, on five tracks here, of a quintet with two bassists (Larry Grenadier and Reuben Rogers) and two drummers (Brian Blade and Gregory Hutchinson) also perhaps owes a debt to Ornette Coleman. Whilst Redman has always had the chops and language to stand beside such lofty influences, his music has at times perhaps been too taut and controlled. ‘Compass’ sounds loose and liberated, in the best possible way.

Redman had deployed this unconventional quintet in a musically satisfying way, avoiding the temptation simply to gain more momentum and power from the extra rhythmic impetus. Instead, the musicians engage in intelligent conversation with each other, and the ideas germinate as much from leaving space as from making statements. Helpfully, when two drummers are used, considered stereo panning helps us distinguish the individual contributions. As a result, ‘Compass’ is particularly well suited to listening on headphones.

When the full quintet is not being used, Redman assembles a variety of trio configurations, all exploring that fascinating world where harmony is implied rather than stated. What is perhaps most impressive about the music on ‘Compass’ is its strong sense of harmonic progression, in spite of the absence of a chordal instrument. This is immediately apparent on the beautiful opening ballad ‘Uncharted’, brief at just two minutes, but speaking volumes in that time.

Redman’s themes on ‘Compass’ are mostly conventional and striking in their simplicity. It may well be precisely this that has created the sense of freedom and space in the rest of the music and which has resulted in such thrilling interaction within the various ensembles. Often, as on ‘Insomnomaniac’ and ‘Un Peu Feu’, the themes are driven by rhythmic syncopation, but Redman also proves himself capable of real emotion too, as on ‘Moonlight’, which places Beethoven in an entirely different context, where the feeling seems to come from a restraint rather than from an outward expression. It’s remarkable in its austere sadness.

Redman’s playing is consistently superb – with its clear, crisp tone and confident extemporising. Nevertheless, ‘Compass’ could hardly work as well as it does without the sheer artistry of the ensemble players. Blade and Hutchinson particularly are magical, coming as close as possible to making the drums sing. ‘Compass’ is a rare gem – a cerebral jazz album with spontaneous chemistry that also has an immediate emotional impact.

Larry Grenadier, as in demand as ever, makes another appearance on ‘New York Days’, the latest set from Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, a record very different in tone and spirit from Redman’s. In keeping with the grand tradition of the ECM label, this is a record more preoccupied with lyricism and atmosphere. Having said that, the kind of sublime subtle musical conversations evident on albums such as Bobo Stenson’s outstanding ‘Cantando’ is also evident here, particularly on the two meditative free improvisations.

These largely gentle, contemplative performances do not necessarily leap from the page and are slow to unravel. Instead, they require (and reward) close attention. The most transparent quality here lies in Rava’s trumpet melding effortlessly with the contributions of saxophonist Mark Turner – they seem to both contemplate and embolden each other’s playing. Much of the supporting playing is characteristic of the individual preoccupations of the musicians involved. Stefano Bollani remains an impressionistic and ruminative pianist, sometimes even opaque, although the peculiar intricacies of his accompaniments are often highly original. Paul Motian’s superlative drumming remains unique in its deployment of texture and colour. It is never purely about rhythm, but as much about phrasing, both directing the other musicians and responding to them.

If this music might on the surface seem bereft of the creation and release of tension that characterises the most exciting jazz, closer listening reveals hidden fruits. The two improvisations work as the group gradually convenes, bringing order from an initial wash of calm thoughts. Even with curiously introspective titles such as ‘Outside’ or ‘Interiors’, much of the music still has a warm and romantic quality which rescues it from seeming aloof and detached, a pitfall that ECM’s less successful releases sometimes fall into. As ever, Manfred Eicher’s production has an audiophile’s sensitivity, and every sound and stroke is precisely rendered.

For those that recognise some kind of dichotomy between European and American schools of jazz, Rava might just be the connecting point between the two, having spent much of his career playing and studying in the US. Miles Davis is an obvious influence on his playing, and he also cites Duke Ellington as a major influence here. Yet the music does not swing in the exaggerated, American style – it has the fluidity and languid grace of European music.

Hold Your Horses...

M Ward - Hold Time (4AD, 2009)

Reviewing records is a difficult business sometimes, and as this blog is very much a labour of love, I don’t even get the satisfaction of financial remuneration. Partially for that reason I prefer my writing here not to focus too much on carping and negativity. But I also want to write about this new M Ward album and all the reservations I have with it, in much the same way as I wanted to write about My Morning Jacket’s ‘Evil Urges’ or Spiritualized’s ‘Songs in A & E’.

I’ve so far liked pretty much everything Matt Ward has produced, from his John Fahey-inspired works for guitars to his brilliant conceptual pop albums ‘Transfiguration of Vincent’ and ‘Transistor Radio’, the latter a particular favourite. His more recent albums have seen him move arguably in a more conventional direction. This has been unproblematic though given his complete mastery of the pop song form. Last year’s collaboration with actress and singer Zooey Deschanel was as straightforward and reverential a record as he has yet produced, but the songs were suitably infectious and charming. So why am I struggling so much with ‘Hold Time’, a record that in many ways feels like a natural progression from ‘Post War’ and the She & Him album and which some writers are proclaiming as his best work to date?

Everything about ‘Hold Time’, from its syrupy sound to its handsome packaging, seems like an attempt by Ward to broaden his audience. In principle, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this of course. Who could resent a musician of such quality filling larger concert halls or actually selling some records? Nevertheless, it ought to be possible for this to happen without Ward sacrificing too many of his idiosyncratic qualities. Almost every track on ‘Hold Time’ seems to present a reduced, watered-down version of Ward’s characteristic timeless songcraft. Where once his writing sounded effortless, it now begins to sound more like pastiche. Sometimes these weaker facsimiles of his signature style are bolstered with saccharine strings, as it to hide the rather transparent weaknesses in the songs. The bizarre addition of echo-laden glam rock drums on a handful of tracks also feels like a conspicuous error of judgement.

Some of these songs are undeniably pretty (‘One Hundred Million Years’, the nimble shuffle of ‘Fisher of Men’, the jaunty single ‘Never Had Nobody Like You’) but none appear to be all that memorable or affecting. Somewhat unexpectedly, if there’s a connecting theme to this record it appears to be one of born again Christianity. Again, I don’t have a particular problem with this – but it would be good if the delivery of the songs could match the gospel fervour of some of the song’s themes. Instead, Ward mostly sounds comfortable, laconic, sometimes even detached. This is particularly noticeable on the light, bland strum of the opener ‘For Beginners’.

I’ve not taken issue with his voice before, even though he’s never been a technically gifted singer. Yet the use of the same old-timey microphone effect on every song here has possibly now become a repetitive and lazy trope. So much of ‘Hold Time’ sounds insincere or ironic but Ward’s obvious love of classic pop suggests this isn’t intentional at all.

Even in areas where he was once supremely assured, Ward can now be found floundering. His interpretations of the songs of others often imbued them with mystery or strangeness, particularly that fine version of David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’. The ghastly, protracted and painful-for-all-the-wrong-reasons duet with Lucinda Williams on Don Gibson’s ‘Oh Lonesome Me’ may be the worst thing he’s recorded. Lucinda’s usually convincing grittiness somehow sounds forced and affected in this context, and the string arrangement is horrendous. He makes a more conscious attempt to reinvent his source material with the take on Buddy Holly’s ‘Rave On’ but it’s something of a failure nonetheless. By lobotomising the song’s energy and impetus, it ends up occupying a fairly meaningless limbo. It’s too lightly swinging to be melancholy, but not vibrant enough to be celebratory. It’s the sort of thing which would work marvellously in Susanna Wallumrod’s hands – she would have transformed it into something unbearably sad. Ward just renders it emotionless.

The point of comparison that keeps creeping into my mind is Lambchop’s ‘Aw C’Mon/No, You Come On’ double set, where some decent songs were smothered in arrangements that too frequently had more schmaltz than soul. In Ward’s case, things pick up considerably towards the end of the album when he abandons the lavishness and opts for something more fundamental – ‘Epistemology’ has a driving rhythm, whilst ‘Shangri-La’ is appealing in its dustiness. It’s arguably too little too late though.

For the all the effort to spruce up the sound, ‘Hold Time’ ends up sounding like a musical shrug. There’s a dispassionate distance and aloofness to many of these songs. Where critical reservations have been expressed about this album, they have focussed on the transparent lack of Ward’s dexterous, quirky guitar playing. I don’t think this is the main problem, as that had already started to be pushed into the background on ‘Post War’. There’s something else missing – something less tangible but much more significant - an allure, a sense of mystery or palpable emotion. It’s somehow very dry and unmoving.

Are there any other M Ward admirers feeling the same way about ‘Hold Time’? I’d like to hear your thoughts in the Comments field below!

Joining The Dots

Various Artists - Dark Was The Night (Red Hot Organisation/4AD, 2009)

As the very endearing character JJ from Skins might put it – ‘oh my giddy, giddy aunt!’ ‘Dark Was The Night’ is a charity compilation curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner from The National for the Red Hot AIDS awareness organisation. As someone who has contributed music to a charity album myself, I strongly support Red Hot’s contention that music can be a positive force for social change. Quite how much awareness a group of North American artists can raise in the areas where it’s most needed is probably a moot point but the project is undoubtedly a worthy one. It’s a rare charity undertaking where quality is in the ascendancy rather than vanity. Having quite this much excellent music spread across two discs is in itself really rather wonderful.

It features a whole host of inspired artists demonstrating that North American music is currently in remarkably vibrant health. The Dessners are clearly very well connected – but attempts to assert this as some kind of scene seem a little far-fetched. You could make the case for the thriving Brooklyn groups and there’s the predictable host of Canadian artists too. Inevitably, composer and string arranger du jour Nico Muhly also makes a contribution. Quite where Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, Buck 65 and the Kronos Quartet fit into this spectrum is anyone’s guess but the set coheres surprisingly well.

The compilation has no concept as such, beyond showcasing independent artists refashioning traditional themes in a contemporary way. Mercifully, this rubric doesn’t preclude original compositions, although almost everything here borrows something from the great American folk tradition. The first disc is presented as the darker of the two discs, inspired by Blind Willie Johnson’s piece that gives the project its title and which the Kronos Quartet present in a decidedly avuncular manner. Some of the contributions to this disc are indeed quite theatrical and morose. The second disc is supposedly lighter and brighter, although it certainly has its fair share of quietly affecting moments.

The set opens with some dream collaborations. First of all, David Byrne teams up with the marvellous Dirty Projectors. ‘Knotty Pine’ actually turns out to be a good deal more conventional than might be expected, but its syncopated rhythms are in keeping with Dave Longstreth’s lurching, confusing style of composition. Its chorus could almost be described as infectious – one wonders if this is the influence of Byrne’s melodic maturity, or whether it hints at a poppier direction for Longstreth’s forthcoming albums. The Books work with Jose Gonzalez on an electronic version of Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’ that sounds exactly as you’d hear it in your dreams. Perhaps the best of these meeting of minds is Feist duetting with Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard on a lovely version of Vashti Bunyan’s ‘Train Song’, which is thoroughly Americanised with a surprising infusion of the blues.

Other specially commissioned collaborations later in the disc include Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) which somehow manages to combine the bourbon-soaked wistfulness of The National with Vernon’s appetising introspection. Those clamouring for Antony Hegarty to find a new context for his over-exposed voice need look no further than his beguiling version of Dylan’s ‘I Was Young When I Left Home’, accompanied by the feathery pluckings of Bryce Dessner. Perhaps its overkill to have Feist crop up again, but the exquisite and mysterious backdrop provided for her by Grizzly Bear (whose new album I am eagerly anticipating) on ‘Service Bell’ works perfectly.

There are original compositions from Bon Iver (‘Brackett, WI’ is a dirtier, more rhythmically driven take on his majestic choral wonders) and Yeasayer. The latter are on solid form, with ‘Tightrope’ as percussive, intricate and fascinating as anything on ‘All Hour Cymbals’. It is, however, perhaps the hardest track to reconcile with the folk tradition that informs the collection as a whole. As with most of the group’s music, it draws on a diverse and unpredictable array of unfashionable influences.

Perhaps the most striking contrast on the album is established by the juxtaposition of The Decemberists’ ‘Sleepless’, one of their more extravagant ballads, with ‘Die’, a contribution from Iron and Wine so brief it would be easy to skip past it altogether. Sam Beam’s voice sounds bolder and more forthright than usual here and the song is so stark and simple as to lack his usual lyrical flights of fancy. It’s an interesting diversion for a talented writer.

My Brightest Diamond’s interpretation of ‘Feeling Good’ (originally from ‘Roar of the Greasepaint’ but arguably most closely associated with Nina Simone) is mercifully a good deal more subtle than Muse’s ghastly demolition of it. In fact, it’s a rather haunting and memorable deconstruction of a song usually delivered much more emphatically.

The track most likely to catch people’s attention (and divide opinion) is Sufjan Stevens’ uncharacteristically overcooked ten minute rendering of The Castanets’ ‘You Are The Blood’. It’s particularly interesting for reintroducing Stevens’ electronic preoccupations, something not heard since his bizarre ‘Enjoy Your Rabbit’ album. This acts as the album’s grand centrepiece, reappearing as it does in radically reimagined form in the second disc by hip hop artist Buck 65. Stevens has clearly gone to more effort than most here – there’s seemingly nothing he hasn’t thrown into this precocious melting pot. It has an elaborate brass section, immediately followed by a classical piano cadenza (is this played by Stevens himself?). You can’t fault him for ambition but, to my mind, it’s a strangely self-conscious addition to his impressive output.

The second disc is never quite as wilfully unpredictable, but it has many pleasures. Arcade Fire contribute ‘Lenin’, a reduced budget version of their orchestrated chugging which has the benefit of sounding as if it would be more at home on ‘Funeral’ than on ‘Neon Bible’. Similarly, Zach Condon delivers an accordion and brass band offcut that could have sat quite comfortably on ‘The Flying Club Cup’. There’s nothing in any way revelatory about either, and they feel more at home as part of their artists’ already established catalogues than on this compilation, but both are dependably enjoyable.

The second disc contains two solid gold gems. My Morning Jacket’s ‘El Caporal’, recorded back in 2007 before the unfortunate ‘Evil Urges’, proves where their more fertile and comfortable ground lies. This is a swaying country-tinged saloon-bar ballad, with some strange lyrics (‘I just hope, love, that my kisses will linger/On your sweet, confused captain’s face’) and a swooning, lovely vocal from Jim James. It teeters on the brink of schmaltz but stays the right side throughout. It’s perhaps most closely related to James’ sterling version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Goin’ To Acapulco’ from the ‘I’m Not There’ soundtrack.

The second gem sees violinist and troubadour Andrew Bird taking on one of my favourite songs of all time, The Handsome Family’s ‘The Giant of Illinois’. It can’t be coincidence that my favourite Bird tracks are both Handsome Family covers, and this is every bit as flavoursome as his magisterial version of ‘Don’t Be Scared’. His skill is to reshape the melody completely, without losing the power and melancholy of the original. It remains a sweet fable in his capable hands and his music is much more palatable when divorced from his self-conscious, ultimately rather meaningless lyrics. Rennie Sparks is mercifully a much more direct, generous and insightful storyteller, and her words fit perfectly on this project.

Of the rest, New Pornographers offer up ‘Hey, Snow White’, a Dan Bejar song that is oddly more in keeping with Carl Newman’s ornate pop songcraft than with his usual verbose streams of consciousness. Stuart Murdoch reworks ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ into a contemporary folk song of his own, whilst Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’ faithful but groovy rendering of Shuggie Otis’ superb ‘Inspiration Information’ sticks out here like a sore thumb, albeit in a good way. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings team up with Coner Oberst for a version of the latter’s ‘Lua’. Oddly, I find myself preferring the original in spite of all my reservations about Oberst and his histrionics. It seemed more brutally honest and intimate than this more straightforward and restrained version, although if this is a sign that Welch and Rawlings are finally springing back into action that would be most welcome indeed. Is it inappropriate or all-too-appropriate that an AIDS awareness project should end with Kevin Drew’s surprisingly wistful ‘Love vs. Porn’?

‘Dark Was The Night’ is an intelligently compiled selection of riches, from a wide variety of excellent artists. Bryce and Aaron Dessner’s sterling work here may well direct me to see The National in a different light, as they clearly have a thorough understanding of American musical tradition as well as being well connected with its contemporary flourishing. Comparisons will inevitably be made with ‘No Alternative’ that other great Red Hot compilation that featured the likes of Nirvana and Sonic Youth. Many of those bands had already become iconic. With the exception of Arcade Fire, there’s nobody here with that kind of devoted following and subsequent influence. Yet what ‘Dark Was The Night’ amply demonstrates is that the various pockets of brilliance in modern American music can combine to create something noble and meaningful. Could Britain have produced something this impressive? Who might have organised it?

Refusing to Budge

Morrissey - Years Of Refusal (Polydor, 2009)

Describing a Morrissey album as a bit patchy is a bit like saying a packet of peanuts may contain nuts. With the exception of ‘Vauxhall and I’ and perhaps ‘Viva Hate’, all of his solo albums to date have featured the odd clunker or two. The least favourable reviews of ‘Years of Refusal’ have dubbed it his worst album since 1997’s ‘career nadir’ ‘Maladjusted’. Would it be too controversial to state that I don’t think ‘Maldajusted’ is all that bad? It contains two of his very best songs in ‘Trouble Loves Me’ and ‘Satan Rejected My Soul’ and one of his very worst in ‘Roy’s Keen’. I certainly prefer it to ‘Kill Uncle’ anyway. It’s also worth noting that I also prefer it to the much lauded ‘Ringleader of the Tormentors’. Yes, that album had three great tracks in ‘Dear God, Please Help Me’, ‘Life is a Pigsty’ and ‘At Last I Am Born’, but the rest of it was largely generic midtempo rock.

Most commentators are portraying ‘Years of Refusal’ as a regressive step after the candour and grandness of ‘Ringleader’. Production is from the late Jerry Finn, who also helmed the triumphant comeback ‘You are the Quarry’. Much of the musical backdrop is tough, unsentimental and unsubtle, dominated by the pounding, dirty rhythm section of Matt and Solomon Walker (how many drummers has Moz dispensed with now?). In a sense it’s appropriate given the defiance and ugly nature of many of the lyrics. We’ve been here before – but it’s rarely sounded this aggressive or clamorous.

In what is now typical of Morrissey’s attitude to contractual obligations (and, indirectly, toward his paying fans), two of the tracks have already been released as extra tracks on last year’s pointless ‘Greatest Hits’ set. Neither of them is altered in any way here, although their thunderous chugging perhaps makes more sense in context.

There’s nothing here that will cause controversy in the manner of ‘National Front Disco’ or ‘Bengali in Platforms’ but there are times amidst this dislikeable mix of self-aggrandisement, self-pity and self-parody that one yearns for something more outrageous. Yet again there’s a parade of uncharitable public figures (or at least, uncharitable towards Steven Patrick Morrissey) – the ‘uncivil servants’ and ‘a QC without humility’. Then there’s a lot of really rather churlish and tedious moaning. I still think there’s a good song to be written about the benefits of long term singledom but ‘I’m OK By Myself’ certainly isn’t it. Morrissey merely sounds like a moody teenager here. ‘That’s How People Grow Up’ seems to suggest that maturing means accepting that you are doomed to romantic failure. ‘I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris’ sounds nice enough, but it’s another of those songs presenting its anti-hero as essentially incapable of reciprocal love. Last night I dreamt that Morrissey rewrote the same song again. Oh look, it was a premonition!

Moz used to be able to do this sort of thing with knowing humour but for most of ‘Years of Refusal’ he just sounds morose and unpleasant. ‘All You Need Is Me’ audaciously accuses the world of preferring to carp on about him than address its more significant problems. So why does he spend even more time and energy admonishing everyone for criticising him if the criticism itself is so trivial? If Morrissey is simply looking for people to admire him again, he needs to provide us with some evidence that he’s more than just a rather nasty and petty individual.

That being said, some of the nastiness on ‘Years of Refusal’ is characteristically delicious. There’s a run of superb songs in the second half of the set incorporating ‘One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell’, ‘It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore’ and ‘You Were Good In Your Time’. The latter two stand out for veering away from the brash, angry style of the rest of the album, instead sounding lush and extravagant in the best possible way. If one thing has progressed and improved during Moz’s solo career it’s his voice. Once an idiosyncratic but wavering and unmusical device, it has in recent years become an instrument of real depth and character. These songs provide the most supportive musical context for that expression. There’s also the splendid ‘When Last I Spoke To Carol’, a song as curt and devastating as ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’, bolstered by a military rhythm and some Mariachi horns, not stylistic features that we’d usually associate with Moz.

Even when he’s stuck in the more generic rock mode, he can still sometimes throw out a gem. As he rattles off a gleeful list of anti-depressant medication, the excoriating opener ‘Something Is Squeezing My Skull’ at least demonstrates that Moz is still able to articulate the absurdity that accompanies the pain in modern living. This distinctive brand of black humour has always been a hallmark of his best work. We could probably have done with a bit more of it.

‘Years of Refusal’ is a crisp and brutally insistent record that finds Morrissey in particularly fine voice. The rare moments of adventure suggest that there are still possibilities for a late period masterpiece should he choose to focus more on the experiments and less on the reliable, overly familiar filler. Perhaps we wouldn’t have Morrissey be anything other than a stubborn, isolated icon now. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling that it’s a weakness that whilst this album has plenty of bite, it doesn’t have much in the way of humour or real feeling.

Going Down In Musical History

Richard Thompson's 1,000 Years Of Popular Music, The Barbican, 3rd February 2009

I must admit to being something of a latecomer to the work of Richard Thompson. Whilst I’ve long been an admirer of that superb trilogy of Fairport Convention albums on which he played a major part (What We Did On Our Holidays, Unhalfbricking, Liege and Lief), their appeal was always mainly for the contributions of Sandy Denny and the vigorous reworkings of folk material. His own catalogue, along with the excellent albums made with his former wife Linda, has always seemed dauntingly vast. Where exactly does one start? I’ve started to delve in quite recently, and now have most of his recent recordings (Sweet Warrior, Mock Tudor, Front Parlour Ballads, The Old Kit Bag) as well as the classic albums with Linda (I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, Shoot Out The Lights), but there’s still so much to devour.

Luckily, this concert didn’t require too much prior knowledge of Thompson’s own writing. The project began as a witty but meaningful repost to the storm of list-making that accompanied the turn of the millennium. Pundits asked to compile their favourite music of the millennium inevitably tended to concentrate solely on the twentieth century. Thompson opted to examine the whole 1,000 years. In doing so, he drew ties between various strands of folk music, and successfully outlined the powerful connections between seemingly disparate musical forms.

Performing with the excellent singer Judith Owen, as well as vocalist and percussionist Debra Dobkin, the first half of the performance consistently fascinated, introducing me to a whole world of music about which I am relatively ignorant. We were treated to pastoral songs, ballads, sea shanties, mining songs and madrigals, all performed as much with fun as with reverence.

Thompson’s engaging warmth and humour was evident from the outset. Beginning on the Hurdy Gurdy, he refused to use it as a tokenistic gesture for just one song. ‘When I get something big strapped on, I like to keep it there for quite a while’ he jested, with surprising frankness. This style of banter continued throughout the show.

His introductions to the material, even the better known songs, proved as engaging and entertaining as the music itself. Before performing a beautiful reading of ‘Shenandoah’ he explained: ‘It’s kind of a call and response thing. I’ll call….and I’ll respond…just to avoid any confusion’. Performing songs in medieval Italian, French and Latin, he often gamely translated, at least giving a strong sense of the music’s themes and preoccupations.

One early highlight was an appropriately eerie version of ‘The False Knight on the Road’. The song is well known in the folk canon, having been performed in a much faster version by Steeleye Span amongst others. Thompson’s slower version has more mystery and power. This song, and many others, benefited from Thompson’s dexterous but always musical guitar playing.

There was plenty of wry and amusing flirtation between Thompson and his co-performers, particularly the entrancing Judith Owen, and he allowed both plenty of space for their own contributions. Owen’s delivery of ‘Down By The Sally Gardens’, an elegant and spare misremembering of what had already been a folk song anyway by the poet WB Yeats. Owen’s performance is achingly haunting, delivered in a pure, controlled voice that sadly gave way to irritating mannerisms in her contributions to the second half of the concert. In writing about Feist’s song ‘Intuition’, I remember observing that whilst there are plenty of songs about break-ups or unrequited love, there are relatively few about the regret that sometimes follows rejected love. Here was a prime example of such a song, a testament to the power of the theme in its endurance. I was struck by its elegant simplicity, both lyrically and musically. Sometimes what is most simple really is most profound.

As an enthusiast for contemporary music of all stripes, I never thought I’d argue this, but with all these riches in the first half of the performance, the second half’s focus on the twentieth century gave it undue prominence. Perhaps it’s just that the journey from the music halls to contemporary R&B traverses more familiar terrain, but I felt this section of the concert also suffered from some errors of judgement.

First and foremost, the movement from Cole Porter standards to Rock n’ Roll and Country seemed to ignore the most important contribution to contemporary popular music, that of the blues. Surely, at the very least, a song from one of the Delta Blues performers would have been essential? Whether intentional or not, what we were left with was a history of popular music that largely sidelined the contribution of black music. But the blues was and still is surely one of the purest forms of folk music.

Also, the restraint and clarity of the performances of the early music, so powerful and meaningful, was inexplicably abandoned in favour of some clattering deliveries lacking in nuance. Maybe this was purely to communicate the new music’s emphasis on relentless rhythm and energy, but Debra Dobkin’s trap set drumming, effective on a handful of songs, quickly became an intrusive nuisance, especially when the tempos drifted. Similarly, Judith Owen’s voice, characterised by real feeling and honesty in the first set, became more affected and abstruse, particularly on the jazzier material (which apparently is where her own interests lie). The beauty of the standard repertoire is that it can be taken on two levels – Owen emphasised the banality more than the insight. Neither Dobkin nor Thompson seemed entirely comfortable with swing.

Nevertheless, the second half of the show was hardly a complete failure. Thompson made some judicious and surprising selections. He acknowledged the influence of the Kinks (originally The Ravens) on his North London childhood by performing ‘See My Friends’, one of Ray Davies’ greatest achievements, also hinting at the contribution of Indian folk traditions to western pop in the 1960s. The closing clatter of Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’, interspersed with a medieval section in Latin, was spirited and fun.

Whilst Thompson has suggested that his purpose in undertaking this project was to uncover some of the ideas and forms buried in ‘the dustbin of history’, I rather suspect its effect has been to do the complete opposite. Tonight’s concert suggested, to me at least, that there has been plenty of consistency in what has made music ‘popular’. Directness and simplicity, in the right hands, can indeed be artful, and often succeed in bringing people together with a sense of common purpose and spirit. There is a rich tradition in musical communication that survives today, in spite of music’s often more nakedly commercial impulse.