Summer Meltdown

Acoustic Ladyland - Clore Ballroom Sunday 14th June
Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra/The Bad Plus - Saturday 20th June
Ornette Coleman with Baaba Maal, Flea, Charlie Haden and The Master Musicians of Jajouka - Sunday 21st June

The Meltdown festival has become something of a regular fixture in my musical calendar and the presence of the legendary Ornette Coleman as curator for 2009 made it completely unmissable. Sadly, I wasn’t able to catch as much of it as I would have liked but what follows is a brief dispatch from the shows I did attend.

Whilst their musical tropes are by now familiar, Acoustic Ladyland’s new line-up still comes as something of a shock. Tom Herbert departed to focus on Polar Bear and The Invisible some time ago and now superb pianist Tom Cawley has left to concentrate on his own more meditative music. Ruth Goller has picked up the mantle of aggressive, driving bass playing with consummate ease, but Cawley’s shoes must surely be particularly difficult to fill. Sensibly, Pete Wareham hasn’t tried to do that, instead opting for the terrifying presence of rock guitarist Chris Sharkey.

The new music isn’t much of a departure from their now established thrash jazz template, although whilst the group seemed to be treading water a bit on ‘Skinny Grin’, they now sound positively rejuvenated. The title of their new album (‘Living With A Tiger’) seems apt – this is a tougher, louder beast of a band. Seb Rochford continues to demonstrate his versatility by playing at about seven hundred times the volume he would deploy with Oriole or even Polar Bear, with heavy snare drum accents and swashbuckling cymbals in abundance.

The best of the new tracks slow it down a little, but keep it swampy – with what sounds like a pretty heavy Led Zeppelin influence. Space for improvisation continues to be minimal – but Sharkey’s dynamic bursts of noise have given this engaging, attacking sound fresh impetus. The group’s name continues to seem completely incongruous – and the one significant limitation is that it’s all a little one-dimensional. Hopefully one day Pete Wareham will surprise everyone by writing some ballads that are every bit as exciting.

I would have liked to have been able to stay through for the concert that featured Marc Ribot, Evan Parker and Han Benninck and also a surprise support slot from About, the new improvising group featuring John Coxon, Charles Hayward and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. From the other reviews of this show that I’ve read, and from what Alexis has told me about the About project, the upcoming album that the group have produced should be one of the year’s essential releases. It’s encouraging to think that Taylor’s presence might bring freely improvised music to a new, broader audience here in the UK.

The final weekend saw Ornette Coleman himself perform twice, and a mouth-watering collaboration between Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Carla Bley and Robert Wyatt. I missed the first Ornette Coleman show, although a compelling account of it can be found here: http://mapsadaisical.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/ornette-coleman-and-the-master-musicians-of-jajouka-royal-festival-hall-190609/

Support for Charlie Haden’s project came from New York trio The Bad Plus. My opinion on this group has fluctuated widely from passionate enthusiasm through to complete frustration. Where once they concentrated on creating a modern standard repertoire from pop, rock and dance music (Nirvana, Blondie, Aphex Twin etc), they now seem to have shifted to reinterpreting twentieth century classical music (they performed pieces by Stravinsky and Ligeti). I have no objections to this per se, but there’s increasingly something irritating about their studied quirkiness and intellectual playing. There’s no doubting their brilliant musicianship and supreme technical ability, but I can’t help feeling (as I think I’ve said in more than one previous review), that all this talent is now better served by their own compositions. There was plenty of support for this argument when the group unleashed the beautiful ‘Giant’, composed by bassist Reid Anderson and from their best album (‘Prog’), where some restraint and directness enabled the group to come alive.

Joining Charlie Haden, Carla Bley were a group of London musicians, including Shabaka Hutchings and Jason Yarde, demonstrating just how vibrant the Jazz scene in the capital is right now. Haden began the show by emphasising the political context of his recordings – with albums having been recorded under Nixon, Reagan, Bush Snr and Bush Jnr. ‘Don’t make another one!’ shouted a member of the audience, perhaps missing the point that the albums had been written and recorded as responses to the political climate. I don’t get the impression Haden had ever intended to instigate years of reactionary conservatism in the United States!

Reaction after the show from friends seemed mixed, largely due to some rather shambolic organisational difficulties. Apparently the concert had been timed rather carefully to arrange for an appearance from curator Ornette Coleman, which never actually happened (although he did appear at the end to embrace Haden). Perhaps the rustling to locate sheet music not yet on stage, the spaces that Haden needed to fill with some admittedly hilarious jokes and his struggling to announce the names of the musicians correctly may have turned collective ears against what was actually a rather powerful performance. Reviews in the mainstream press so far seem to have been overwhelmingly positive.

The concert featured music from throughout Haden’s career, but focused on most recent album ‘Not In Our Name’. This material could seem redundant in the brave new world of the Obama era, but a reiteration of the value of music as a means of protest and celebration can hardly be a bad thing. Indeed, whilst a lot of ‘political’ music can seem negative or aggressive, Carla Bley’s arrangements of tunes from the classic American songbook (particularly ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’) had a joyous potency.

The sound of a group this size is often a source of great joy, but the playing was often full-blooded and rich. There were some wonderful individual contributions too, from Shabaka Hutchings’ fiery and vibrant bursts of ideas contrasting with mellifluous trumpet solos. The dignity and humanity of the music came through in the group’s playing throughout.

As promised, Robert Wyatt joined mid-set for two numbers sung in Spanish, Silvio Rodriguez’s ‘Tale of the Tornado’ and Haden’s own ‘Song For Che’ (which Wyatt himself recorded on ‘Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard’ and curator Ornette Coleman also performed on ‘Crisis’, if memory serves me correctly). If Wyatt seemed slightly nervous and hesitant on the former, the latter demonstrated his familiar and distinctive conversational style in more confident flow. His voice seemed natural and unforced on this beautiful and haunting piece of music. It was a joy to catch a rare onstage performance from him.

The set ended in truly compelling fashion, first with a majestic drum solo – one of those supremely controlled displays that began with a simple piece of phrasing, before developing it around the kit and embellishing it with flourishes both technically accomplished and musically intuitive. Haden of course made his individual statement too, although it was hard to tell whether his persistent requests to ‘turn the bass down’ were part of the by now jokey atmosphere or a serious irritation hampering him. If the latter, it wasn’t evident as the solo developed, characterised by singing lines and some knowing quoting of Coleman’s modified blues ‘Turnaround’.

It was a shame that the intended appearance from Coleman for ‘Skies of America’ didn’t happen, but perhaps an even bigger shame that the distracting hustle and bustle made everything seem a little on-the-fly and disjointed. The first part of the set seemed a little stylistically boxed too – with a Cuban piece followed by an arrangement with a reggae feel. On balance though, this was a powerful, musically thoughtful performance.

On paper, Ornette Coleman’s closing night performance looked potentially dangerous. With guest appearances from artists in residence Master Musicians of Jajouka, Baaba Maal and that well known free improvising jazzer Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers – this had the makings of a rather confused and confounding event. Thankfully, it proved to be nothing of the sort – and was rather a consistently engaging, wonderfully enervating concert experience.

The Master Musicians’ support set must have required some adjustments for most Western ears. I’ve not got a good enough musical ear to identify what precisely is so harsh about their sound – the pipes seem tuned against each other in very narrow intervals and it takes a while to locate the true pulse amidst their complex polyrhythms. Still, though, their visible sense of enjoyment and showmanship was enough to persuade me to immerse myself in their mesmerising and ultimately uplifting sound.

Ornette Coleman took to the stage immensely slowly, with a sense of fragility that made me a little nervous, especially as he struggled to connect his strap to his saxophone. As soon as the first notes emanated from his alto though, it became clear that the concern was entirely unwarranted. What a marvel that this pioneering figure can produce such eloquent phrasing and vigorous sound at the age of 79 (or 82 as someone else quoted, I’m not sure which is correct).

Titled ‘Reflections of This Is Our Music’, this concert might better have been dubbed ‘reflections of an illustrious and radical career’. Continuing to reject conventional harmonic accompaniment in favour of a two bassists line-up (Tony Falanga and Al McDowell), Coleman’s approach somehow still sounds as furious and otherworldly today as it did in the late fifties. Yet deconstructed airings of ‘Turnaround’ and ‘Blues Connotation’ suggest that those who view Coleman’s music as impenetrable or intractable are missing the point – here is a man who remains as in touch with the blues as he is with his own attempts to move away from form. Veering between violin, saxophone and even a brief spell on trumpet, he seemed gleeful, impish and full of ideas from both within and outside the jazz idiom.

Listening to ‘Blues Connotation’ particularly, I wondered whether the term ‘punk jazz’, which provided the title for a Jaco Pastorius composition and has since been lazily dished out to all manner of groups attempting some kind of jazz-rock fusion, might genuinely be apt for this group. They played throughout with a devil-may-care and visceral abandon that left my heart racing and my thoughts buzzing off in several directions simultaneously. Denardo is an unashamedly unconventional drummer, with a relentless but muffled sound that goes against the brightness and verve of most jazz drumming. He seems to have devised his own range of stick grips and frequently veers out of time, forcing Tony Falanga to work his way back into the fold and his conception of swing exists somewhere out on its own astral plain. Yet there’s something lucid and compelling about his peculiar stomp, and it imbues this already captivating music with an undeniable originality, even when the material being performed is the best part of 50 years old.

The choice of music is both richly satisfying (‘Lonely Woman’) and somewhat bizarre (a perhaps slightly hesitant recontextualisation of Bach’s Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1). The collaborations mid-set seemed like the perfect encapsulation of Coleman’s questing spirit and open-mindedness. I had admittedly been prejudiced against the appearance of Flea, but his intuitive playing somehow managed to make the three-pronged bass attack completely invigorating, and extraordinarily physical. His contributions often featured the language of disco and funk, which might be expected. What was less predictable was just how much of a positive impact his propulsive playing had on the overall sound of the ensemble. When joined onstage by the Master Musicians, it seemed as if Coleman and his group were initially grasping at something and not quite finding it but, slowly, a more singing tone emerged from the saxophone responding to the persistent dynamic of the Master Musicians. It was a tremendous, intoxicating cacophony.

After a trio performance with Charlie Haden for the encore, on which Haden’s bass sounded opulent and resonant, Coleman seemed reluctant to leave the stage, thanking the sound crew before embarking on a personal odyssey to shake as many audience members’ hands as he felt possible. Even when his security intervened he didn’t seem particularly inclined to be rescued. Whether this was an act of gentlemanly kindness towards his audience or an egotistical acknowledgement of his iconic status didn’t really matter – this man has earned the right to a long goodbye. Whoever they get to curate Meltdown next year has some big shoes to fill.

Hitting The Spot Like Gatorade

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca (Domino, 2009)

‘Bitte Orca’ would appear to be Dirty Projectors’ breakthrough album – the one that somehow makes sense to critics alienated by the conceptual quirks of ‘Rise Above’ or ‘The Getty Address’. Those who, like me, fell in love with ‘Rise Above’ and its audacious reimagining of hardcore punk as meticulous and virtuosic composition might initially find it hard to locate precisely what is so singular about ‘Bitte Orca’. On first listen, it seems like a beefier, heavier take on the group’s bizarre mix of math-rock and African soukous and hi-life rhythms. It’s every bit as planned and cerebral as ‘Rise Above’, but with some concessions to commercial production techniques that threaten to make it less visceral and exciting.

Thankfully, repeated listens reveal ‘Bitte Orca’ to be yet another example of David Longstreth’s peculiar genius. It seems like more of a collective enterprise this time – with Longstreth’s female collaborators Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian allowed a more individual and imposing presence. This time, Longstreth has added a sincere affection for poptastic R&B and chamber folk music into his already overflowing melting pot. How it all coheres is a total mystery. Somehow, ‘Bitte Orca’ doesn’t simply sound like a grab-bag of musical influences but rather a carefully arranged and highly original synthesis. References to Talking Heads are understandable (especially given Longstreth’s tendency for vocal yelps and acrobatics), but that band rarely sounded as aggressive as Dirty Projectors do on ‘Cannibal Resource’ or as tender as ‘Two Doves’. Essentially, there is no other rock band at work now covering this range or making music as simultaneously adventurous and entertaining.

Longstreth’s cerebral approach (it’s no surprise to discover he studied composition at Yale) can be off-putting for those who prefer rock music to be more instinctive and less studied. My response to this has been to emphasise the sheer thrill of this group’s sound – the unexpected jerks and rhythmic shifts, the sudden explosions amidst otherwise pretty surroundings, the unpredictable ebb and flow of Longstreth’s daredevil melodies. It also strikes me that the idea that collective improvisation or the basic energy of four square rock have somehow superseded the art of composing is a rather offensive and pretentious notion. Any understanding of music’s value and impact has to recognise that are a wealth of different means to achieving an emotional reaction. Many of this album’s most exciting moments occur as a result of Longstreth’s ambitious arrangements. The vocal breakdown on ‘Remade Horizon’, which the group do indeed replicate in concert, is particularly staggering.

Sometimes it appears as if the African influence on Longstreth’s writing and guitar playing has diminished here. Arguably, it’s more plausible that it has been better subsumed within the group’s overall sound. For example, ‘Remade Horizon’ veers joyously between a lush folk strum and a 12/8 afro groove. The guitar lines throughout the album proudly display these influences, even when the rhythms suggest more common western idioms.

Beneath the hard-hitting punctuation of Brian McComber’s precise drumming ( which at times hints a little too much at the famous Dave Fridmann thunderous drum sound), there is a nuance, subtlety and care to much of this music. Sometimes this is deceptive – amidst its sweet string arrangement and tender vocal, ‘Two Doves’ contains some crushing lyrics. After listing some inspiring images, Angel Deradoorian confesses ‘our bed is like a failure’. ‘The Bride’ is at least partially melancholic and reflective, whilst the closing ‘Flourescent Half Dome’ could almost be described as a ballad. ‘Temecula Sunrise’ is a peculiar mix of delicate, intricate plucking and noisy outbursts of joy.

‘Stillness Is The Move’ has been the main talking point here, for obvious reasons, as it seems like a move into soulful slow jam territory. Amber Coffman’s vocal might be flighty at times, but it also makes for the most accessible piece of music Longstreth has yet produced, albeit one which is impressively artful in its construction. Much of its success comes from the juxtaposition of the vocal melody with Longstreth’s looped, confounding guitar figure. Even better though is the extraordinary ‘Useful Chamber’, which begins in a delicately vocodered electronic haze before travelling off in several different directions, its most aggressive section giving the album its title.

There can be little doubt now that Longstreth is a massive talent. Whilst he’s kept the same formation that toured Rise Above, he’s cleverly avoided simply remaking that record with original lyrics. Whilst he is undoubtedly both playful and confounding, it’s also clear from ‘Bitte Orca’ that his passion for a broad range of music is entirely sincere. The interplay between the various voices is a delight, whilst the rigorous control of the entire ensemble is unmatched elsewhere in alternative rock. This is as complete a record as we could have wished for, this time without any endearingly conceptual peg. The astounding music speaks entirely for itself.

Comforting Sounds

James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (Young God, 2009)

In spite of (or perhaps because of?) once naming a song ‘The Sound and The Fury’, I’m rather suspicious of musical works named after great literature. It always seems rather lazy to state your broader inspirations in such a transparent and unadventurous way. This, however, is a James Blackshaw record, and this exceptionally gifted young guitarist and composer has yet to disappoint. True to form, ‘The Glass Bead Game’ marks a further development of his ambition and may well be his most fully realised work to date (although at least one reviewer at The Wire magazine is obstinately dissenting from the critical consensus for Blackshaw). Now signed to Michael Gira’s Young God label, Blackshaw looks sure to secure yet more devotion from the faithful for this extraordinary record.

Even given his unexpected piano playing on ‘Litany of Echoes’, it might still have been tempting to dismiss Blackshaw as a derivative exponent of the Takoma school of folk music. ‘The Glass Bead Game’ answers this charge with a richer, more arranged tapestry of sound. The opening ‘Cross’ is simply beautiful. Whilst Blackshaw’s basic guitar foundation sustains his core preoccupations and could have appeared on any of his albums thus far, the addition of strings (contributed by members of Current 93) and wordless vocals takes it to entirely new territory. The vocals hint at predictable Reichian influences but actually remind me more of Meredith Monk’s ‘Mercy’. There’s already something mysteriously powerful about Blackshaw’s hypnotic playing – whilst it remains harmonically anchored, it’s still emotionally resonant and deeply satisfying.

The epic, 18-minute ‘Arc’ (with Blackshaw on piano again) is the yang to the yin of ‘Cross’ and it therefore makes perfect logical sense that it should close the album. Whilst it adheres to a minimalist framework, there’s something powerful, maybe even devotional about it, achieved largely through the deliberate over-use of the sustain pedal, allowing its clusters to blur, overlap and blissfully merge. The heavy sustain comes perilously close to burying the contributions from strings and wind instruments, but in effect allows notes to rise and fall from a resplendent overall sheet of sound. The effect is deeply moving.

In between, there’s the sublime ‘Bled’ which seems to begin with broad brush strokes before expanding into a more detailed and colourful response to the initial theme. There might even be a rare nod to the blues in its closing minutes. ‘Key’ is more in keeping with what we’ve come to expect from Blackshaw, but no less impressive for its notional familiarity. Melodically, it is strikingly pretty.

More controversial for me is the other piano piece ‘Fix’. I have been pondering whether this might be the first time Blackshaw has resorted to more calculated emotional manipulation. Whilst it sounds haunting and sad, the plodding, insistent crotchet rhythm invokes the overrated Sigur Ros, or could even be something Chris Martin from Coldplay might come up with. Whilst the presence of the violin certainly enhances the track’s warmth, I can’t help feeling that this is a bit too straightforward and transparent for Blackshaw, although some see it as the album’s standout track.

Still, this is only a minor quibble with an otherwise outstanding album that sees Blackshaw continue to expand his reach. The ideas are well executed, and developed with care and grace by Blackshaw and his accompanying musicians. These tracks hint that a more ensemble-based approach could be just as fruitful as Blackshaw’s virtuosic solo performances, perhaps even more so.

The Blinding Light

Antony and the Johnsons - London Hammersmith Apollo, 27th May 2009

This was my first full live encounter with Antony and the Johnsons. I’m prepared to admit that, for many, the novelty will by now have worn off, as indeed it has for me a little on record. Yet there can be little doubt that Antony Hegarty is a distinctive and important voice – unpredictable in personality, but clear and deeply touching in voice. It is a voice that has the power to move in complicated ways. As my girlfriend perceptively pointed out, his songs are essentially uplifting. Whilst they are often tinged with melancholy or deep sadness, the overriding characteristic is hope.

The show began with fifteen minutes of contemporary dance that I have to confess was a bit lost on me. Having said that, it fitted with Antony’s New York art aesthetic and made more sense as an opening than having a conventional support act would have done. When the band took to the stage, most of the musicians appeared as mere silhouettes, so dim was the lighting. I was a little concerned that this would remain the atmosphere for the whole show but the subtle changes in lighting enhanced the impact of the performance, with Antony only gradually illuminated. A glaring lantern near-blinded the audience during ‘The Crying Light’ and again at the end of the show, during the encore of ‘Hope There’s Someone’.

Even the songs I like least from ‘The Crying Light’ seem to come alive in these performances, with nuanced arrangements that are at once both intimate and overpowering. It was an unconventional band set-up – with Antony on piano, accompanied by a musical and dynamically restrained drummer, a bassist who frequently played melodic lines and a string group where one of the violinists doubled on guitar. Perhaps most interesting of all though were the contributions on saxophone and clarinet. This arrangement stripped some of the bombast from the more self-consciously dramatic material but also provided a compelling counterpoint to Antony’s still staggering voice.

These were performances where detail and texture really mattered. In this environment, the fearsome, nasty and explosive guitar solo that threatened to overpower ‘Fistful of Love’ became even more menacing for its contrast with all that surrounded it. I had wondered whether Antony’s vibrato might become tiresome over the course of a two hour set, but placed in contexts that varied from the soulful to the more theatrical, it continued to draw an emotional response right up to the show’s conclusion.

I would have to concede that the songs that mine the subjects of gender, sexuality and androgyny remain the most powerful of his songs. It’s fair enough that he shouldn’t want to mine these subjects forever, but the touching vulnerability that accompanies ‘I Fell In Love With a Dead Boy’, ‘Hope There’s Someone’ and ‘You Are My Sister’ is not a major feature of ‘The Crying Light’. The gently lilting ‘Aeon’ certainly strives for it, but it feels a little more transparent and contrived. Hopefully, ‘The Crying Light’ is a transitional statement on the path to finding new subjects and contexts for that remarkable voice.

Nature and the various man-made threats to it are clearly preoccupying Antony’s mind nowadays, so much so that he makes a quite lengthy speech about ‘Hope Mountain’ being his response to climate change, imagining Jesus returning in feminine form in the hills of Afghanistan. The song itself is far from the most memorable in the set though. Luckily, his talk proved weirdly entertaining, aware of much of life’s absurdity and charmingly self-mocking. On this basis, most people seemed happy to indulge him this protracted digression from the music.

Musically, some of the less predictable moments in the set pointed towards potential new avenues. It was good to hear ‘Shake The Devil’, a more percussive moment from the ‘Another World’ EP that highlighted the saxophone and, in its slightly darker sound, vaguely resembled something The Bad Seeds might concoct. The aforementioned ‘Fistful of Love’ guitar solo was even more unexpected. Perhaps these only worked because of the striking contrast with the gentleness and tenderness elsewhere, but they did serve to highlight the fact that Antony’s voice might be more versatile than many have assumed.

This was altogether a superb concert though – delicately arranged and delivered. Although it was almost entirely devoid of physicality, there was a sense in which it felt more choreographed than the peculiar dance that preceded it. Not only covering all bases in Antony’s career so far, it also produced some compelling variations on his languidly paced, powerful torch songs.

Baroque N' Roll

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest (Warp, 2009)

Having studiously ignored the leak of Grizzly Bear’s latest magnum opus that set the internet alight some months ago, I may now look like the slowest writer in the blogosphere. But, as the tortoise said to the hare, sometimes slow and steady wins the race. I would always prefer to voice a considered opinion over one influenced by hyperbole and feverish excitement. Rest assured that ‘Veckatimest’ is a major statement, although there are transparent reasons why it hasn’t generated quite the same critical elation here in the UK as, say, Animal Collective’s ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’.

‘Two Weeks’ and ‘Cheerleader’, the two tracks offered as official tasters, prove in some ways to be red herrings. The former is an immediate and appealing slice of ornate chamber pop, with a lush, blissful vocal arrangement. The latter is a lithe, almost funky light rock groove in which everything (even the choir) is delivered with delicacy and restraint. They both benefit from some imaginative musicianship. ‘Two Weeks’ pits some carefully voiced drumming against an insistent keyboard stomp. Whilst these pieces are both intricately arranged, they give little hint of the hyper-composed, rigorously organised nature of the rest of ‘Veckatimest’. It’s a consistently absorbing listen, but absorbing mainly in the sense that it demands complete and uncompromised attention.

Clearly, in these times of attention deficiency and choice saturation, this is no bad thing. One major criterion for a work that might stand the test of time is that it should provide more than just an instant thrill. Grizzly Bear are not looking for the rapidly fading pleasures of a casual fling – they’re after the long term relationship. The band’s preoccupations on ‘Veckatimest’ seem to be focused as much on sound and timbre as they are on pop’s traditional domains of melody and harmony.

Another reason that this album hasn’t quite met with the universal acclaim bloggers predicted is that its sound is not altogether that fashionable or modish. Whilst it is ornate, it is never grandiose or anthemic. The employment of arranger du jour Nico Muhly hasn’t resulted in the band pressing any of the obvious buttons to lift the hairs on the back of the neck. Both Muhly and the band themselves are more sophisticated musicians. A lot of ‘Veckatimest’ is more cerebral and whilst Grizzly Bear have sounded mysterious and meandering in the past, parts of ‘Veckatimest’ seem surprisingly dark and foreboding. I’m reminded particularly of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales when listening to this.

The musical comparisons that most strike me are ones that would not so long ago have ensured a band was in for a critical mauling. I can’t help thinking of the surreal and highly composed worlds of 1970s music – King Crimson and Van De Graf Generator particularly spring to mind. This sophisticated approach to writing for a rock ensemble seems to be increasingly prominent once again. Grizzly Bear’s closest contemporary relations might well be Dirty Projectors, but there’s an immediate visceral impact to Dave Longstreth’s meticulously planned constructions that is mostly absent here. This music is more nebulous – its emotional core often concealed behind a studied veneer and customarily oblique lyrics.

Put in the effort though, and ‘Veckatimest’ is a coherent work of hazy, melancholy beauty. Its mostly gentle, bucolic arrangements recall the jazz-folk crossovers of John Martyn or Terry Callier, but its occasional explosions of aggression are unexpected, puncturing the calm atmosphere without remorse. The consistent use of close harmony singing explains the public approval from Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, even if in this context they seem closer to doo wop groups than to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Grizzly Bear also seem less interested in arcane magic realist concerns. For all these reference points, they still seem like a fearlessly contemporary band.

These are not verse-chorus-verse pop songs (and how refreshing that they are not), but they are still informed by a powerful melodic sensibility. It’s perhaps for this reason that I find myself recalling some of the striking sub-sections of songs, rather than the complete songs themselves. There are repeated vocal chants at the end of ‘All We Ask’ and at the centre of ‘Cheerleader’ that substitute for recognisable choruses and are notable for their warmth and inclusiveness. After several listens, some of the album’s more wistful moments become less abstruse. The delightful jazzy flutter of the opening ‘Southern Point’ is particularly charming.

Another important element of this music is the contrast between its peculiar, mysterious gentleness and its moments of abrasive attack. Sometimes the two come together. ‘Hold Still’ is brief but beautiful, all dreamy strummed guitars, but pierced by some Marc Ribot-esque guitar lines that render it disarmingly sinister. The various impulses directing this music coalesce majestically towards the album’s conclusion, with the astonishing ‘I Live With You’, which manages to combine bombast with tenderness and empathy with anger.

‘Veckatimest’ sounds like a labour of love and care, preoccupied as it is with musical colour, texture and mood. There are few modern rock bands who could craft something this precise whilst also imbuing it with feeling. ‘Veckatimest’ is made all the more complex by its alternating senses of joy and sadness. It requires some work, but it is not impermeable – it gradually reveals its discreet strengths and considerable charms. There will not be many better records released this year.

Ice and Fire

The Field - Yesterday and Today (Kompakt/Anti, 2009)
Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care (Domino, 2009)
Fever Ray - Fever Ray (Rabid/V2, 2009)

Every so often an album comes along that so perfectly captures a particular sound that it makes it harder to see where the act can develop. I wondered if two of last year’s most acclaimed releases, the Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver albums, might fall into that category. In another musical space entirely, Axel Wilner’s first album as The Field (2007’s ‘From Here We Go Sublime’) so clearly established his brand of hazy, somnambulant techno that any further output would surely just end up repeating the same trick.

Given that techno is founded upon minimalism and repetition anyway, with ‘Yesterday and Today’, Wilner has served up a splendid lesson in how to expand and improve a patented sound. If ‘From Here..’ sounded like seeing the northern lights in the Arctic, a peculiar mix of ice and beauty, ‘Yesterday and Today’ is undoubtedly a warmer, more accessible work. The dreamy ambience is enhanced by the interjection of staccato vocal samples, nimble basslines and, on the excellent title track, by the fearsome, metronomic drumming of John Stanier from Battles. By the end, all of Wilner’s familiar atmospherics have dissipated, leaving just Stanier’s drumming and a vibrant, nimble bassline. It becomes a compelling piece of minimalist disco. It helps that it’s followed by ‘The More That I Do’, another harder, more organic track with vocal and electric guitar samples carefully integrated into Wilner’s sound.

Sometimes the drive for blessed-out euphoria is taken a little too far. I’m a little agnostic about the cover of The Korgis’ ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometimes’ but that might be more because I’m not all that keen on the song itself. Wilner’s interpretation at least transports it to somewhere more mysterious and seductive. It also serves a crucial purpose in at last deviating from the four square house beat that usually defines Wilner’s sound. The stuttering, unpredictable rhythm is an important variation. Less positively, I’m just not sure there’s enough interest in the original source material to justify Wilner’s lengthy exposition.

In fact, duration seems to be a greater preoccupation for Wilner this time around. Whilst he’s made his sound warmer and more ingratiating, some of the track lengths are rather terrifying. This is definitely club music in that respect, although it also works remarkably well on headphones. Close listening reveals subtle details and gradually shifting textures. One of the album’s real highlights is ‘Leave It’, which maintains a consistent mood and dynamic for eleven and a half minutes. Wilner expertly creates tension through the use of a delicate chime sound, which is only just allowed to cut above the basic rhythm track in the mix.

Only the opening ‘I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet’ (a strong contender for worst title of the year) directly reiterates the formula Wilner patented on ‘From Here…’. The basic track for the closing ‘Sequenced’ sounds like a delicious slice of 80s synth-pop but the bizarre sounds Wilner weaves in and out of the mix come from somewhere else entirely. Overall, Wilner has succeeded in crafting something that develops and sleekly modifies his sound, making it more inviting without completely abandoning the rigorous structures that made it so identifiable in the first place.

Including the word ‘dull’ in your album title is probably inviting some carping nastiness from music critics, but Junior Boys have laid down the gauntlet with ‘Begone Dull Care’. It’s especially audacious given the often sleepy nature of their particular brand of downtempo electronica. Some of the reaction I’ve seen to this third album has been a little muted but I’m struggling to understand why. Maybe it’s because it’s their most straightforwardly melodic album to date – closer in spirit to Pet Shop Boys than to any hipster electronic act you could name. This strikes me as no bad thing and it’s made for their most consistent record to date.

The more melodic heart takes a while to push through though. Opening tracks ‘Parallel Lines’ and ‘Work’ are recognisably mechanistic and rather slippery, although the falsetto on the former gives hints of what is to come. With track three, though, the album takes its unexpected turn. ‘Bits and Pieces’ might well be the most exuberant and infectious track Jeremy Greenspan has produced so far. It’s quite some distance from their usual languid, melancholy take on electronic pop. There are some significant changes at play here. Where in the past, the group’s vocals have been characteristically unimposing and usually subsumed within their smooth, languorous sound, they now push out further into the foreground. Not only this, but there’s plenty of Prince-esque light funk flourishes too. These are later revived again on the utterly irresistible ‘Hazel’. It all sounds like a thinking man’s Calvin Harris or, perhaps more accurately, a lot like Hot Chip.

‘Dull To Pause’ may be the group’s ballad – a slower, translucent dream of a track. Similarly pretty is ‘Sneak A Picture’ which has the unfortunate effect of reminding me of Jan Hammer’s ‘Crockett’s Theme’ from Miami Vice. It even has a saxophone part, for heaven’s sake! Don’t let that put you off though, this sleek, insidious pop song is an absolute delight.

There are sounds and approaches here very much borrowed from soul, but they are harking back more to the 80s than to materialistic contemporary R&B. Think about some of the great singles from that era – Shannon’s ‘Let The Music Play’, D Train’s ‘You’re The One For Me’, Loose Ends’ ‘Hangin’ On A String’, The Pointer Sisters’ ‘Automatic’...I could go on for a long time as an unashamed enthusiast for this era of pop music. It’s unfashionable now, but well worth reviving. Junior Boys seem to be putting their own languid spin on it here. The tracks are meandering and protracted, but ultimately also absorbing.

There’s been a lot of love for Fever Ray, the solo project from Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife, not without justification. I’ve been living with this record for a while now and its eerie, unsettling precision coupled with some striking vulnerability has made it one of my favourite albums of the year so far.

Numerous comparions have been made with Kate Bush circa The Dreaming and it’s certainly possible to hear all those glacial references to 70s and 80s synthpop, from Kraftwerk through to The Cure. ‘When I Grow Up’ resembles Bjork’s domestic reveries on ‘Homogenic’. Yet there’s something about Andersson that is far less theatrical than Kate Bush or Bjork. Perhaps it lies in her apparent desire to disguise herself. Her voice is peculiarly treated on many of these tracks, sometimes with the effect of making her sound masculine (particularly on ‘If I Had A Heart’ and ‘Dry and Dusty’. When left alone, her voice is something of an imposing monotone bellow and it’s odd to hear it used to voice words about tending to plants. The treatment sometimes allows her voice to become another part of her foreboding atmosphere and when the effects are reduced, she suddenly rises above it and imposes a dominating personality. The contrasts are striking, all the better for being achieved with economy rather than excess.

The music is close to the output of Andersson’s parent group in its sleek minimalism and unsettling impact. There’s much less relentlessness though – house and techno beats are abandoned in favour of a statelier pace. The result is austere but also intimate and involving. It’s like being seduced by someone gently only to then discover that they are a dominatrix. I suspect my personal favourite moments are when Andersson’s true voice cuts through – the melancholy ‘Keep The Streets Empty For Me’ and the strident ‘When I Grow Up’.

The music is often deceptively simple – close listening reveals that the rhythms are interesting without resorting to the conventions of stutters and skips that have now become rather tired. Chords linger for as long as they need to, whilst melodies are kept within a tightly limited range. Within these strictures, though, the music is powerful and imaginative. For all its obvious artifice, ‘Fever Ray’ is a notably nuanced, uncluttered triumph.

An Alternative History

Iron and Wine - Around The Well (Sub Pop Compilation, 2009)

I've been quite vocal in my admiration for the songwriting of Sam Beam many times on this blog. It's testament to his talent and to my argument for him to be seen as a major artist, that this rarities collection makes for such absorbing listening. Whilst it's easy to accept 'Around The Well' as it has been presented - an 'odds and sods' compilation of B-sides, EP tracks, soundtrack contributions and covers - it actually offers a good deal more when digested as a whole. Running to two discs in length and sequenced chronologically, it provides us with an alternative history of Iron and Wine, from Beam's earliest scratchy home recordings to his creative apogee thus far in 'The Trapeze Swinger'.

The first CD is soft and delicate. Beam is the most unshowy of performers - his guitar playing light and airy, offering only the barest of accompaniment, his voice at its most whispered and understated. Listening to these songs in one sitting is a little more challenging than digesting his later, more realised material. Many of these songs feel like sketches for more ambitious writing to come. Yet the seeds of Beam's gentle command are already apparent. His melodies are often simple and repetitive (in that lingering, quietly reflective way), whilst his music is a Southern Gothic refashioning of the blues. His great success is creating a music that is steeped in the American folk tradition, whilst also developing his own unique voice.

Much of that individuality comes from his language. Whilst songwriters are frequently labeled as poets, few are compared with the great American novelists. Sam Beam has a good deal more in common with William Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy than he does with Bob Dylan. There's a combination of the sacred and the earthy that characterises the best writers ('I'll put my trust in the saviour/The fuming forces of nature') and a deep understanding that emotion can often be best expressed not through melodrama, but through direct storytelling.

His descriptions are vivid and allusive ('The money came and she died in her rocking chair/A letter locked in the pattern of her knuckles/Like a hymn to the house she was making'). As a result, his songs are imbued with a deep melancholy, sometimes even a resonant sadness, that is profoundly moving. His songs are also rich in mystery, filled with uncertain characters and insecure voices. Interpreting them is rarely a straightforward task and sometimes just basking in the flow of the words is enough ('how the rain sounds as loud as a lover's words'). On the plaintive 'Call Your Boys', which hints most clearly at the treasures to come, he seems to be dealing with the deeply personal subjects of family, ancestry and legacy, topics rarely addressed in modern songs.

His choice of covers is also assured. Even when delivering songs that do not rely on his flighty vocabulary, his style is consistent and engaging. Stereolab's 'Peng! 33' is rendered reflective rather than playful. His take on The Flaming Lips' 'Waitin' For A Superman' is so calm and unexpressive as to initially seem as if he has stripped the song of Wayne Coyne's sincerity. In fact, he has transformed it into a quiet, mournful hymn. Best of all though is his majestic version of 'Such Great Heights'. In the hands of the Postal Service, this was a chirpy, infectious piece of electronica. Beam has made it a touching folk ballad. Simply by slowing it down slightly and swinging the vocal phrasing, he radically alters the mood of the song.

The second CD begins with cleaner production values on the lovely 'Communion Cups and Someone's Coat'. By this stage, Beam's ambition to expand his reach is already apace. The dusty, charming 'Belated Promise Ring' introduces brushed drums, honky tonk piano and upright bass but this is Beam at his most traditional. 'God Made The Automobile' is deceptively lightweight (a nod to Springsteen perhaps in its cars and girls subject matter) but it's looped backing vocals seem like some sort of precursor to 'The Trapeze Swinger'. It also has one of Beam's most touching melodies.

The songs get progressively stranger and more intriguing from this point onwards. The catalyst for Beam's later hybrid sound appears to have been his massively fruitful collaboration with Calexico. It's a shame that there don't seem to have been any outtakes from 'In The Reins' held back for this set. By the time we reach 'Carried Home', his dark gothic blues is fully realised. 'Kingdom of the Animals' is more peculiar still, with the hints of dub and Afro-Caribbean rhythms that made 'The Shepherd's Dog' his most idiosyncratic and exciting album. There are some fantastic lines in this one two - its two lovers 'sweating wild and weird in our sunday clothes' - in their eyes 'an angel clear and coronal/Clothed in all that's prodigal and strange'.

He saves the very best for last here though. I've written a great deal about 'The Trapeze Swinger' in an earlier post, but it remains a song that demands close attention with every listen. The structure is simple - four chords and a very simple melody repeated over and over again for nine and a half minutes. Yet the song has a remarkable emotional force - its words so strange and involving, its sense of memory and loss so clear and compelling. The musical key to its success is the subtle variations in texture that go on beneath the vocals - how one instrument will become prominent and then settle into the background again. Yet when Beam performs it live entirely alone, it seems to work just as well. It's far too good a song to be left buried on the soundtrack of an inferior American movie - a masterpiece in fact - and it's great that it has a new and wonderful home here.

Beam's songs often need time to cast their spell. They are not easily digestible and there is a clear need to pay close attention to his words and the subtle shifts in his music. He hasn't quite made a classic album yet, but there is plenty of evidence here to suggest it is not too far away. For the time being, this collection provides plenty of insight, wisdom and imagination.

Rewarding Loyalty

The Broken Family Band - Please and Thank You (Cooking Vinyl, 2009)

Whilst I derived great enjoyment from the softening of Steven Adams’ lacerating heart on ‘Hello Love’, I suspect a large part of the Broken Family Band’s loyal following will be delighted to hear him return to caustic nastiness on ‘Please and Thank You’, their first release for Cooking Vinyl. Adams claims the record is ostensibly about ‘being nice to people’. In fact, it’s rather more about his difficulty and reluctance in doing so. What a delicious platter of unforgiving misanthropy this is, balanced only by a generous side dish of loveless lust. This torrid stuff is a far cry from the joyous celebration of intercourse on ‘Leaps’.

Perhaps appropriately, it’s all accompanied by the band’s most aggressive and least subtle music to date, with proceedings dominated by beefy drums and chugging guitars. It’s a far cry from the country twang of their earliest recordings but it will be more familiar to listeners who first tuned in with the punky blast of ‘Balls’. The group are clearly more confident as musicians now, with Mickey Roman’s drumming becoming ever more prominent (he seems to have thrown away the brushes in the same way that R.E.M.’s Peter Buck once chucked his mandolin), allowing the band to develop a tautness and precision that has sometimes been absent in their more endearingly wayward moments.

Whether the actual musical ideas to which this musicianship is applied are expanding at the same rate is more debatable. Chords are often milked for all they are worth here, and some of the melodies and guitar lines seem over-familiar now. ‘Borrowed Time’ seems like a slightly sped-up rehash of ‘Don’t Change Your Mind’, whilst ‘The Girls In This Town’ is basically a heavier rewrite of ‘Michelle’. Elsewhere, they are beginning to betray the influence of some of their contemporaries. ‘Mimi’ (the only point at which the drums are brushed) reminds me a little of the harmonic and melodic insistence of AC Newman.

I’m not sure any of this diminishes the quality of the album that much though, given how much there is to enjoy here. In some ways the group’s determination and consistency is admirable – they’ve developed a prolific work rate that puts some of the more high profile ‘indie’ acts to shame. Also, my reviews of some Broken Family Band albums, particularly ‘Welcome Home, Loser’ have focused on their marginal failure to capture the vigour and energy of their live shows on disc. No such problem here – the production succeeds in being crisp and pristine without muting the band’s punchy dynamic.

As a result, there’s a real urgency and immediacy to this set. ‘Don’t Bury Us’ and ‘Stay Friendly’ provide a particularly hard-hitting double whammy in the middle of the album. The opening ‘Please Yourself’ might be the most furious and unrelenting punch they’ve yet delivered. There are some moments which hint that the group have always harboured a classic rock fetish (‘Son of the Man’, that pesky cowbell on ‘The Girls In This Town’), but even this can’t undermine the sense of a band becoming more muscular whilst also enjoying themselves tremendously.

Adams really is vicious for most of this album. His cruelty reaches a savage apogee on ‘St. Albans’, which manages to deride the Hertfordshire town and its central character with merciless bile (‘no-one wants to f*ck you in this town’). Sometimes it’s all rather well directed, such as on the opening ‘Please Yourself’, which rightfully attacks self-obsessed bores (‘You walk over here in a straight line/With cocaine in your moo-starsh and waste my time!’). ‘Borrowed Time’ crudely defies the ageing process (‘in the old people’s home, I will have you on the stairlift’), whilst the brilliant ‘Cinema Vs. House’ turns the decision over where to go on a date into an agonising deal-breaker (‘we could go to the cinema, but that’s two hours without speaking!’).

Adams and his bandmates continue to build their following through consistency, quality and good old fashioned word of mouth. Ten years ago, few could have predicted that Cambridge indie heroes Hoffman would morph into a band that would make five full albums and two mini-albums. It’s a longer career than many better supported and more hyped bands have managed. Thank you indeed.

Jesus of Uncool

Nick Lowe and Ron Sexsmith - London Royal Albert Hall, 18th May 2009

Can there be a less fashionable musician currently at work than Nick Lowe? Clad in well pressed black trousers and a shirt white enough to match his hair, he hardly looks like he could be the same man who was once signed to Stiff records and who produced ‘New Rose’ for The Damned. In calling his most recent album ‘At My Age’, it’s clear that Lowe himself relishes the irony. Fashionable or not, this show offered an illuminating education in how to mature as a singer-songwriter.

Ron Sexsmith, who provided a brief but straightforwardly enjoyable opening set, might be younger, but his songs share a directness and clarity with those of Nick Lowe. The two performers complemented each other neatly and it was a shame that Sexsmith wasn’t allowed a little longer than his cursory 20 minutes. He managed to squeeze in a handful of songs from across his career, including two songs perhaps better associated with Leslie Feist (‘Brandy Alexander’ and ‘Secret Heart’). Sexsmith is not the most elaborate or diverse of writers, favouring conventional chord sequences, lyrical platitudes and hummable melodies. His songs have a calm, reflective charm though and his soft, understated voice is appealing.

It’s easy to see why Lowe’s current career retrospective is called ‘Quiet Please’. I had forgotten to bring my earplugs to the concert but I was hardly troubled by the band’s delicate dynamic. If anything, they soothed rather than exacerbated my persistent tinnitus. Such restraint enabled the band to master the Royal Albert Hall’s infamously difficult acoustic – all the parts were clearly audible, with Lowe’s voice achieving clarity in spite of his unfussy, near-spoken delivery, with its emphasis more on phrasing than power.

The set traverses Lowe’s changeable career, but favours his most recent albums, on which he has re-established himself as a wistful, occasionally whimsical writer of new country-soul standards – a hybrid of George Jones, Tony Joe White and Dan Penn. There’s not much trace of his earlier incarnations as a writer of pub-rock or affectionate parodies (the Bowie-inspired angular funk of ‘I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass’ would have sounded very odd in the middle of this set). Lowe has never been a true original or a radical, but he seems to have reached his full potential late into his career, discovering a mould into which he fits with remarkable ease.

He simply writes great songs and whether delivering them solo or accompanied by the stately and unfussy playing of his band, everything sounds effortless and unhurried. Lowe imbues his songs with subtlety and dignity. Even the casual misogyny in ‘I Trained Her To Love Me’ sounds deceptively soft (he promises that the show will be ‘entertainment for all the family’ from that point on). His songs show a rare insight and awareness into everyday home life so often absent in contemporary pop. ‘Lately I’ve Let Things Slide’ will be, for many, an all-too recognisable account of how depression sets in almost unnoticed. ‘Let’s Stay In and Make Love’ is a rather delightful tribute to the virtues of isolated intimacy over the social whirl.

The audience evidently appreciates the airing of ‘Cruel To Be Kind’, although even this is played with a lightness of touch rather than a vigorous stomp. ‘What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding’ closes the main set as a soulful ballad – a far cry from Costello’s more urgent version. Yet even with their delicacy and taste, the group can still invite toe-tapping, particularly in their rockabilly shuffles, or in the insistent backbeat of ‘When I Write the Book’.

I could have done with a bit less of special guest saxophonist Curtis Stigers, whose smooth interjections almost took some of the material into soft porn soundtrack territory. Perhaps keyboardist Geraint Watkins could have been allowed a little more space too – his occasional solos were expressive, confident flourishes. The encore begins with Lowe singing a solo take on ‘The Beast In Me’ but develops into a showpiece for the talents of his ensemble. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Watkins sound like Van Morrison when Lowe allowed him to sing one of his own songs and Ron Sexsmith joined in for a rambling take on an old Louvin Brothers song.

Lowe is an amiable on-stage presence, a storyteller and wry humourist as much as a singer. His explanation for the length of time between full UK tours (about 20 years apparently) raised a few smiles – he had been forbidden from playing in the provinces ‘due to lack of interest’. It’s a shame too that the promoters seemed to have over-stretched themselves a bit by going for the Albert Hall as London venue – the entire top circle was empty and there were many spare seats in the stalls too. Given how charming and engaging a performer Lowe clearly is, let’s hope his upcoming return to the London stage with Ry Cooder (a mouth-watering collaborative prospect) is better attended.

The Virtue of Persistence

Branford Marsalis Quartet - Metamorphosen (Marsalis Music, 2009)

Perhaps the title is laced with irony. Whilst it implies radical change, ‘Metamorphosen’ actually captures Branford Marsalis’ quartet at a time of impressive persistence and resilience. The group has maintained its current line-up for a decade – a long time for a single group in the constantly shifting jazz world. With Marsalis himself contributing just one composition (the outstanding ‘Jabberwocky’), it’s clear that this is very much an ensemble effort. It emphases that great dictum, always most truthful in the best jazz, that the individual and the collective need not (and should not) be mutually exclusive.

Those familiar with the group’s albums will rightly view ‘Metamorphosen’ as a logical progression rather than a bold new dawn. It presents us with a further exposition of the group’s core values, which are open-minded enough to incorporate playfulness, rhythmic vitality and deep longing, the latter particularly evident in pianist Joey Calderazzo’s emotional writing. ‘The Blossom of Parting’ pulls off the rare trick of being at once both free and refined. Similarly, when the group really swing, they do so both righteously and with taste on ‘Jabberwocky’.

The group’s reworking of Monk’s ‘Rhythm-A-Ning’, whilst predictably respectful of the jazz tradition, also comes with an audacity that one can’t help feeling its composer would have appreciated. It’s here that drummer Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts is at his most ferocious and monstrous, with hard-hitting backbeats to offset his more fluid statements elsewhere in the set.

The presence of Tain always reminds me of Julian Joseph’s mobile ringtone, although that’s probably a story for another occasion. There’s plenty of support here for Julian’s Tain evangelism of course. The masterful handling of switches between half time and double time feels, and the consummate understanding of subdivision makes for a swing feel that is accurate but also enervating and driving. The album is sequenced so that his two compositions act as bookends. This works well, with the opening ‘Return of the Jitney Man’ showcasing the group’s quirky, inventive side whilst ‘Samo’ offers a more dogged and concentrated exposition, beginning with intimate and reflective playing, eventually building to something uniquely intense.

So, whilst the various individual composers and their solo contributions offer a dazzling variety of styles and perspectives, the most engaging aspect of ‘Metamorphosen’ is how they fuse into a coherent and effortless whole. Often, the Marsalis’ attack is balanced by the lyricism of Joey Caldarazzo, with Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts providing conversational responses rather than interventions on the drums. Whether at its simplest or most technically audacious and exhausting, the playing always sounds meaningful and honest. With Joshua Redman’s ‘Compass’ also one of my personal highlights of the year so far, the American saxophonists seem to be in a league of their own in 2009.

Free Folk

Alasdair Roberts - Spoils (Drag City, 2009)

Whilst I’ve liked everything Alasdair Roberts has recorded, both as a solo artist and as Appendix Out, I had a nagging sense that his last album (‘The Amber Gatherers’) was pleasant enough, but added little to his lexicon. Pleasingly, ‘Spoils’ is a rather different beast, filled with tumultuous and inventive language, compelling narratives and free spirited musicianship. It is at once his most intricately arranged and most liberated recording and it’s more than enough to remind me that he is one of the true originals of UK folk music, twisting and turning his traditional inspirations into something radical and involving. His songs demand time and complete attention from the listener – but they certainly repay the effort invested.

With Roberts, we have a troubadour in the original sense – a singer travelling and delivering stories. Roberts avoids all the trappings of the contemporary songwriter. There are no in-depth confessionals or anthems of narcissism. Instead, he inhabits his own world of ‘simulacra’, ‘downtrodden spirits’ and much more besides. On ‘So Bored Was I (Dark Triad)’ he describes himself as ‘bilious and saturnine’. How often are those words used in modern pop? Keeping track of his vocabulary is a challenging task in itself.

It would be easy to criticise Roberts on the basis that little of this can have any real bearing on his contemporary real-life experience. Yet this would miss the point. By delving deep into the Scottish folk tradition and re-imagining it, he has brought his own heritage to dazzling, dizzying life. ‘Spoils’ may well be his best integration of tradition and composition to date and as such it feels like a living, breathing creation rather than a folkloric artefact.

It’s a record that states its intent boldly from the outset. ‘The Flyting of Grief and Joy (Eternal Return)’ is lengthy at over seven minutes but it barely feels long enough to contain all of Roberts’ ideas. Its delicate introduction puts Roberts’ faltering, vulnerable vocal firmly in the foreground, and it remains a beguiling instrument. Any sense of familiarity here is probably a result of the continued presence of Roberts’ Appendix Out colleagues Tom Crossley and Gareth Eggie. Yet the song gradually sprawls into something more unusual, with guitar lines providing counter-melodies and gently rattling percussion from the ingenious Alex Nielsen, before eventually coming full circle with a reiteration of the opening theme.

There’s more of an emphasis on rhythm here than on previous Roberts albums, perhaps as a direct result of Nielsen’s presence. The loose rattle and roll of ‘You Muses Assist’ feels particularly invigorating. The languid opening to ‘Ned Ludd’s Rant’ proves deceptive, the mournful feel giving way to a gentle gallop. Even when the pace is slower and controlled, Nielsen gets a fascinating range of sound from his instruments, contributing as much to the timbre and texture of the songs as to the rhythm.
The result is a sound with recognisable echoes – the guitar language of Richard Thompson particularly – but which also sounds refreshingly peculiar and hypnotic. ‘Hazel Forks’ might be the most conventional thing here, but even this song hardly confines to the structural restrictions of modern pop songcraft. It has the misfortune to share a key lyric with Billy Joel’s ‘Goodnight Saigon’ (we’ll all go down together’) but it’s far from overblown. Its unexpected sidesteps and detours make it more intriguing than confounding.

The album concludes with ‘Under No Enchantment (But My Own)’, one of the prettiest songs Roberts has written, its many melodies combining to produce something thoroughly delightful. It’s a charming end to a restlessly strange, brilliantly performed set of songs. Whilst Roberts has clearly immersed himself in the history of the folk ballad to a degree that the youthful West London folk scene could hardly imagine, he’s also blessed with a unique and enchanting voice and sound that is entirely his own.

Sweet Duality

Bat For Lashes - Two Suns (Echo, 2009)

At what point did Natasha Khan become a proper pop singer? Was it when ‘Fur and Gold’ received its deserved Mercury nomination? It certainly wasn’t her unfortunate support slot for Radiohead at Victoria Park, where she bravely (perhaps foolishly) debuted a wealth of new material and had to forfeit any audience support following a power failure. Perhaps unfairly, most people around me that day left with an impression of her as something of a third rate Bjork copyist. Yet now everyone seems rather infatuated with ‘Daniel’, this album’s sensual and evocative lead single.

Inevitably, I’m rather taken with it too. Its dreamy combination of atmospheric pads, pizzicato strings and infectious melody works well enough for me. Moreover, how could I resist a song which starts with the words ‘Daniel, when I first saw you, I knew you had a flame in your heart’. Why, thank you, Natasha! Oh, it’s about Daniel from Karate Kid? I see….Well, they say songs are what you make of them and it’s certainly a better song to take my name than Elton John’s insipid ballad.

This is not to give the impression that Khan’s lyrics are unproblematic though. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome with ‘Two Suns’, as with ‘Fur and Gold’ is that these mystical, fairytale narratives are mostly bobbins. Khan has taken a not-very-original dualities theme and reiterated it. Rather a lot. There are ‘two suns shining’, the dream of love ‘is a two hearted dream’, there’s ‘moon and moon’, later there are ‘two planets’. Well, you get the idea by now.

Those who can tolerate this along with all the magic realism will find much to enjoy here. Khan cleverly maintains a balance between warm synth pads that recall Hounds of Love-era Kate Bush with torch piano ballads that recall, well, early Kate Bush. This is probably already enough information to suggest that Khan has yet to establish herself as a true original (although the Bush comparison makes more sense now than the Bjork one here – she’s got little of Bjork’s interest in asymmetrical time or contemporary composition). Within her limitations, though, she manages to produce refreshingly exotic, involving music. The opening ‘Glass’ is particularly exciting, ushered in with bold drumming and a powerful vocal mixed well into the foreground.

Some tracks are a little too close to facsimiles of tracks from ‘Fur and Gold’. ‘Sleep Alone’ is more than a little like ‘Trophy’ with added electronica. Khan is definitely best here when she’s at her least predictable and when making the most of vocal arrangements. The combination of gospel chorus and folk strum on ‘Peace of Mind’ is enchanting, whilst the percussive, impressively textured ‘Pearl’s Dream’ is an undoubted highlight, a kind of yang to the yin to ‘Daniel’ (I can do the whole dualities thing too!). ‘Good Love’ benefits from an unexpected soulful streak, with its spoken section hinting back perhaps even to doo-wop.

There’s a warmth throughout ‘Two Suns’ that suggests Khan has been planning a bid for greater accessibility. It’s a conspicuous studio construction, with a pristine, crystalline sound. Scott Walker appears at the end to duet on 'The Big Sleep' and it's hard to see Khan producing anything as confrontational or demanding as 'Tilt' or 'The Drift', although she may yet make her 'Scott 4'. This is still artful pop music. At times it reminds me of those great early Eurythmics records (‘Sweet Dreams’ and ‘Touch’), before their production became too bland. The intoxicating sound is enough to make me forgive Khan her lyrical indulgences.

Big Noise

Big Air – Big Air (Babel, 2009)

I’m baffled and intrigued by this album but, ultimately, I’m also mesmerised by it. The ensemble itself is unconventional enough, with Oren Marshall’s tuba parping substituting for bass and Myra Melford’s mischievous piano hardly keeping to regular harmonic strictures. Then there’s the audacious music, with its generous helping of electronics and effects, and some sly juxtaposing of some traditional influences with highly contemporary approaches to arrangement.

The result risks being cringe-inducing and pretentious and at times there is a nagging sense that this might just be a set of musicians’ jokes. For the most part, though, the playing is playful rather than silly, and the themes are satisfyingly memorable. This kind of adroit and humorous handling of ambitious and difficult music could perhaps be expected from a transatlantic collaboration between London-based trumpeter and saxophonist Chris Batchelor and Steve Buckley with New York’s devilishly confounding Melford. Batchelor and Buckley played as part of memorable Django Bates line-ups, and his influence is never far away in their cheeky compositions.

Drummer Jim Black pins down a righteous groove that roots this music securely but also gives it a driving edge. His playing is relentlessly creative, but he never imposes too greatly. There’s always a sense of space, even when the music is at its most apparently disordered. Buckley’s opener ‘The Wizard’ writhes with a slinky, seductive feel. ‘Airlock’ benefits from a similarly coiled rhythmic impetus.

Melford will always be more Cecil Taylor than Herbie Hancock and her playing may be too interventionist and distracting for some tastes. I’m a fan of her own work, and her delightful harmonium playing on Batchelor’s ‘The Road, The Sky, The Moon’ demonstrates that she is more than capable of playing with sensitivity and delicacy where necessary.

The band make thoughtful use of electronics too. Perhaps the best piece here is ‘Song For The Garlic Seller’ which gradually emerges from some manipulations of tuba and trumpet. The result is a fiery outburst building from a deceptively mysterious introduction. This deployment of tricks and masks is a big component of this group’s innate sense of fun.

The great joy of this fine album is hearing the spirit of spontaneous abstraction merge with a love of the blues and the New Orleans tradition. It’s a provocative mix that will infuriate some as much as it will inspire others. I’m all in favour.

The Hazards Of Prog

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love (Rough Trade, 2009)

I know I’m not exactly hot off the press on this one, but I’ve been pondering exactly what to say about this perhaps intentionally ridiculous record. I’ve been a longstanding evangelist for The Decemberists’ anglophile folk-rock and I enjoy Colin Meloy’s literate, narrative take on songwriting. Their last record, ‘The Crane Wife’ was majestic – an ambitious juxtaposition of interconnected song suite and more digestible pop nuggets. Perhaps inevitably, ‘The Hazards of Love’ takes the concept suite format and runs with it, producing something that we might fairly term a ‘rock opera’. One of my major reservations about this record is that the seamless longform folktale seems like too obvious a step for the group, a potential pitfall that they might have more fruitfully avoided. The other niggle, this one perhaps fairer and more significant, is that the group have already done this a good deal better on their excellent musical setting of ‘The Tain’.

Over a longer distance, ‘The Hazards of Love’ doesn’t just tiptoe into excess, it takes a running jump at it. There are thematic connections explored in both lyrics and music – so melodies and sequences already familiar reappear at later junctures. There are guest vocalists (from Lavender Diamond and My Brightest Diamond – does Meloy have a thing for diamonds?) to enable all the characters to be voiced. There are unexpected interjections of violent prog-metal. A small chunk of this record sounds suspiciously like Queen circa ‘A Night At The Opera’, not by any means the most fashionable of influences. Most worryingly of all, there’s a sodding childrens’ choir. Some of it actually works terrifically and many of the individual tracks are really rather good. The complete whole, without so much as a pause for breath, is difficult to digest though and some sections of it are deeply irritating.

In the first instance, it requires a generous spoonful of tolerance to enjoy this rather whimsical nightmare fairytale about Margaret, a woman impregnated by a shape-shifting fawn. Naturally, a rake and a Queen also get involved. Luckily, Meloy’s typically verbose and colourful lyrics help the whole project to be, on balance, more entertaining than alienating. Still, it takes a lot of work on behalf of the listener to digest the music at the same time as following the rather waifer-thin plot. The presence of the guest vocalists is actually a real blessing, as it helps to create contrast amidst the mounting tension and otherwise relentless extravagance.

In some ways, ‘The Hazards of Love’ seems to have something of a split personality. With the influence of Queen, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin never far away, much of it (‘Won’t Want For Love’, ‘Repaid’, the occasional interruptions in ‘The Abduction of Margaret’, ‘The Queen’s Rebuke’) is sludgy, old-fashioned hair rock. By way of contrast, some of the more immediate moments are very much of the moment and somewhat conventional. ‘The Wanting Comes In The Waves’ has a section that rather too closely resembles Arcade Fire. The punishing chug of ‘The Rake’s Song’ could come from any contemporary indie band, although it’s rendered interesting by the palpable savagery in Meloy’s snarly vocal, in character as ‘The Rake’. This is all before we even mention the occasionally tendency towards baroque chamber pop. The oom-pah waltz recasting of the title theme delivered by child’s choir is far too much for me and has so far made me lurch for the skip button every time.

Whilst there’s something rather refreshing in both the retro-rock and harpsichord excursions, they risk the trappings of irony and detachment and, as a result, don’t really move me. It’s very theatrical but not always all that dramatic. The group really prove their mettle on two outstanding songs here which also happen to be the most direct. ‘Annan Water’ alternates between a rolling and tumbling folk strum and a disarmingly beautiful chorus stripped back to just vocals and Hammond organ. The closing final piece in the ‘Hazards of Love’ jigsaw could almost be described as a soft rock ballad – but it’s performed tastefully and is sweetened by one of Colin Meloy’s most delicate and appealing melodies.

With all its transparent indulgences, ‘The Hazards of Love’ sometimes seems to be trying hard to induce a reaction in its listeners. The Decemberists are too good a band for that though and, try as I might, I can’t quite dislike this preposterous record. Meloy’s love for the English folk rock tradition is clear and not even the liberal peppering of harder edged heavy rock can disguise this. After all, it’s not as if we would ever come to a Decemberists album expecting something contemporary and fashionable.

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.