The Young and The Old: Dizzee Rascal, Bishi, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Lowe

One of the most irritating elements of pop music culture is the tendency to throw up sub-genres which all-too-briefly blaze incandescent before very quickly dying out. Two new albums arrive this week amid talk of ‘the death of grime’, particularly troubling given this genre has only recently been subsumed into the mainstream. I’ve not heard the Wiley album yet, but ‘Maths and English’, Dizzee Rascal’s third album has emerged to a curiously mixed reception. The Observer Music Monthly, increasingly the national mouthpiece of ludicrous hyperbole (the Arcade Fire are the best band in the world etc) hailed it as the best British hip hop album ever, but more critical reviews have expressed serious reservations.

It’s certainly fair to say that this is Dizzee’s attempt to distance himself from the limitations of the grime sound. The compelling and intriguing opener ‘World Outside’ sees him proclaim that he’s found a new world outside the ghetto. Along with a handful of other tracks here, it deftly incorporates some of the familiar sonic tricks from grime’s instrumental offshoot dubstep, with recent albums from Burial and Skream! perhaps being influences.

Given that Dizzee is British hip hop’s most distinctive and articulate voice, it’s difficult to resent him for seeking new contexts for his lyrics. When these contexts genuinely sound fresh, they are startling. ‘Temptation’, with its Arctic Monkeys sample, is surprisingly effective, and hints at how interesting the Monkeys could be if they placed Alex Turner’s wry musings in a setting less slavish to angular indie rock conventions. The insistent, repetitive phrasing of ‘Where’s Da G’s?’ (a merciless attack on the faux-posturing of drugs-rap) and the appropriately unsettling ‘Paranoid’ work particularly well. Both tracks are less dependent on the familiar bowel-crushing synth bass figures that predominated on ‘Boy in Da Corner’ and ‘Showtime’, and look more to high end sounds for their sinister impact. ‘Hardback’ is interesting as Dizzee adopts the wise voice of experience, advising those who might follow in his footsteps. ‘Another thing, make sure you buy a house before a car’ he sagely suggests ‘everyone thinks that Porsche looks great/but do you really want it sitting outside your council estate?’ It’s good to see his humour has not deserted him.

Elsewhere, there’s an old-skool preoccupation that works only intermittently. ‘Bubbles’ is preoccupied with fashion, most specifically Nike Air trainers. Looking fresh? These were the must-have item when I was nine! What goes around comes around, I suppose. It is also evidence to suggest that Dizzee can make almost any topic sound significant simply with the precision of his vocals. ‘Da Feelin’ goes for a summery vibe with a frantic drum ‘n’ bass beat but ends up sounding a little cheesy, DJ Jazzy Jeff’s ‘Summertime’ meets Goldie’s ‘Inner City Life’. ‘Sirens’ is simply awesome though – a hard-hitting tale of adolescent criminality with heavy, noisy music to match. It recalls Public Enemy’s collaboration with Anthrax on ‘Bring the Noise’. ‘Pussyole’ is just lame by comparison, yet another track content on merely recyling the tired old James Brown ‘Think’ break (perhaps second only to Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ in overused hip hop samples). It’s also by no means the only example of a puerile undercurrent running through this album – it’s difficult to tell whether ‘Suk My Dick’ is deliberate parody of hip hop braggadocio (in which case it’s quite clever), or simply juvenile rubbish.

Some tracks are simply substandard unfortunately. On ‘Excuse Me Please’, he lists some rather obvious contemporary problems in a rather uninspired and schematic way, whilst sounding thoroughly disinterested. The collaboration with Lily Allen on ‘Wanna Be’ is predictably irritating. For the privately educated Allen to mouth the witty ‘your mum buys your bling’ accusations seems a little ridiculous.

‘Boy In Da Corner’ had something of the shock of the new, whilst ‘Showtime’ cannily refined the formula. ‘Maths and English’ is the sound of an artist struggling to retain his core identity and seek new directions. It’s occasionally over-confident, and whilst it spends plenty of time lambasting posturing, it doesn’t always succeed in finding true substance underneath. ‘You Can’t Tell Me Nuffin’, coming right at the end of the album, reminds us how musically inventive he can be, all dissonant synth string lines pulling against each other in grimly compelling mismatches. We needed more of it here.

It’s great to hear a full length album from Bishi, KashPoint and Siren Suite DJ, Patrick Wolf collaborator and one of London’s most idiosyncratic young talents. I had expected ‘Nights at the Circus’ to be an album of traditional Indian and Eastern European folk music, particularly given the excellent acoustic folk set she performed in support of the Unit single launch at the Spitz last year. The finished product actually merges Bishi’s folk music discoveries with her own incisive and intelligent writing to quite glorious effect. ‘Night…’ is an album with a clear and coherent vision, where traditional instruments (sitar, tabla, accordion) meet electronics in a natural, homogenising fusion that uncovers connections between musical forms often wrongly deemed mutually exclusive. Drawing links between Indian melodies, Bulgarian folk harmonies, contemporary composition (the string arrangement on ‘Broken Creatures’ is particularly ef

It helps that Bishi’s voice is so unfashionable in its studied confidence and accurate enunciation. There’s no slurring of words here, just crystal clear phrasing coupled with enticing melodies and harmonies that genuinely enrich and enhance the music. Bishi is a talented and effective communicator, with the title track conjuring a mysterious and hedonistic alternative world, and the delightful ‘Nightbus’ proving that observational lyrics are not the sole preserve of Alex Turner.

It’s also clear from this collection that Bishi has managed to sustain this vision for some time – the gorgeous, moving finale ‘Namaste’ is the result of a collaboration with Patrick Wolf from some years ago. It sits comfortably alongside the more recent work because it shares a warmth and generosity of spirit with tracks like ‘Grandmother’s Floor’ and ‘Broken Creatures’. The relentless rhythmic drive of ‘On My Own Again’ and ‘Never Seen Your Face’ prove that she is as comfortable with contemporary club culture as she is with the traditional idioms she has learnt. The press release presents this album as a product of the ‘quiet revolution’ but I would take this wonderful cross-cultural bounty over the forced, pretentious faux-folk of Devendra Banhart or Joanna Newsom any day of the week. ‘Nights at the Circus’ is a work of genuine artistry and invention, completely out of step with any current trends.

By complete contrast, I’ve also been enjoying two releases from older statesmen of the rock world. Bruce Springsteen and The Session Band’s ‘Live in Dublin’ (not sure why the Seeger prefix has now been dropped from the group’s name) brilliantly captures the sheer passion and euphoria of last year’s live shows across two audio CDs and a DVD. Although taken from three separate performances, the sequencing faithfully reproduces the careful balance of a typical show, featuring many of the traditional folk songs from the Seeger Sessions album alongside radical reworkings of Springsteen originals and previously unreleased interpretations.

With effortless spirit and a pretty much unprecedented trust in audiences, these shows pretty much covered the entire history of rock ‘n’ roll. There’s gospel fervour aplenty (‘This Little Light of Mine’, ‘O Mary Don’t You Weep’), New Orleans Dixie and rhythm and blues, Irish folk melodies (‘Mrs. McGrath’ and the original immigrant song ‘American Land’), even dalliances with ska and reggae (an almost unrecognisable ‘Blinded By The Light’ and unexpected ‘Love of the Common People’ respectively). The performances are consistently both inspiring and inspired, with Springsteen frequently spitting out the words with the grit and guts of a preacher. The sheer exhuberance of this remarkable band remains a revelation – and there are great moments when the brass section all solo together, vocalists trade lines and fiddles spar with banjos and accordions. The energy never lets up. Indeed, this seems as much a travelling community as a band, with Springsteen generously ceding lead vocal duties to Mark Anthony Thompson and Patti Scialfa.

There are some curious omissions (no ‘John Henry’) and some of the original selections are idiosyncratic. I would have liked to have the beautiful 6/8 take on ‘The River’ here (and I sincerely hope I can find a recording from another source), and it’s interesting that he goes for the country shuffle version of the verbose ‘Growin’ Up’ over the more accessible ‘Bobby Jean’, which he had performed in a remarkably similar style (although perhaps it simply wasn’t played at the Dublin shows). Instead, though, we get some more rarely performed riches. The reimagining of ‘If I Should Fall Behind’ in the style of the Tennessee Waltz is particularly heartwarming and ‘Highway Patrolman’, one of his very best narratives, sounds particularly moving in this new context. I’m particularly grateful for the inclusion of ‘Long Time Comin’, in its full brass-bolstered glory, and clearly one of the very best songs of Springsteen’s career.

Some songs are so thoroughly reworked that they completely change mood. ‘Further On Up The Road’ sounded doom-laden and apocalyptic on ‘The Rising’, but here it sounds mordant, reflective and melancholy – both dance and lament. ‘Open All Night’, a stark acoustic blues on ‘Nebraska’ is presented here as barroom boogie party anthem, complete with backing vocal workouts and obligatory audience participation.

The centrepiece of the show is Springsteen’s brilliant reworking of Blind Alfred Reed’s ‘How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?’, an impassioned howl of protest against the incompetence of the Bush administration in the face of Hurricane Katrina. It helps make the show far more than just a musical history revue – it’s brought crashingly, devastatingly into the present day, and crystallises the notion that the blues can never lose its relevance.

Springsteen is both committed bandleader and inspired storyteller throughout, laying his own claim to the public domain material and boldly refashioning his own to suggest a long dormant connection to the roots of American popular music. The E Street Band are now rumoured to be reconvening for a new studio album (again with Brendan O’Brien producing) and world tour, but there have to be serious doubts now as to whether this is the right move. Completely free from production trickery, this extraordinary record may be the very pinnacle of Springsteen’s career.

With its dry, self-mocking title and concise running time (just 33 minutes), ‘At My Age’ from Nick Lowe is a considerably more unassuming proposition. Lowe must be one of the most underrated songwriters in Britain. Best known for penning ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding’ for Elvis Costello, his own work has been consistently neglected, and few have noticed the quite marvellous late-blossoming of his songwriting with his work since ‘The Impossible Bird’. This might be a result of his work-rate slowing considerably – ‘At My Age’ is the first we’ve heard of him since 2001’s outstanding ‘The Convincer’.

‘At My Age’ doesn’t offer any real surprises, mining the same rich seam of Southern country-soul as ‘The Convincer’, very much in the world of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. Those familiar with the recent work of Solomon Burke will already be familiar with ‘The Other Side of the Coin’, and the feel of that track is a pretty fair indication of the overall sound of the album. There are three covers, including an excellent version of Charlie Feathers’ ‘The Man in Love’, alongside nine Lowe originals.

The originals all have a relaxed, easy-going charm and direct lyrical simplicity. The opening ‘A Better Man’ is a slow dusty shuffle with a slight resemblance to Johnny Cash’s ‘I Still Miss Someone’, whilst ‘Long Limbed Girl’ has a slightly awkward half-groove that suits its title. ‘The Club’ combines a lazy brand or rockabilly with a lonely hearts lyric (Lowe claims he writes about what he knows, and he knows what it means to be blue). Most shocking is ‘I Trained Her To Love Me’, an exquisitely nasty piece of misogyny, with Lowe breaking a girl’s heart to take his vengeance on the whole of womankind.

It’s not a revelatory record by any means, and coming after ‘The Convincer’ it feels like more of the same, although if anything even more understated and controlled. Still, it’s a mostly warm and genial listen, and Lowe’s half-spoken, half-sung vocal delivery remains uniquely ingratiating.

Every week i spend too much on music and make a CD tower

I am in two minds about The National. Their last album ‘Alligator’ was something of a slow-burner, with some mysterious and powerful highlights, but somehow it didn’t quite coalesce into a striking whole. ‘Boxer’ has a more uniform sound and is more subtle, perhaps even more obtuse, than its predecessor. There is something oddly compelling about their atmospheric sound, but it takes some effort to appreciate their wilfully detached and skeletal melodies with minimal range.

On ‘Boxer’, they again make great use of the chamber arrangements of Padma Newsome that also worked so well on last year’s brilliant Clogs album (one of the many great records last year completely missed by UK critics). This is particularly notable on some of the album’s standout tracks – particularly the delightful coda of ‘Fake Empire’. This contrasts neatly with some muscular, driving songs in the form of ‘Mistaken for Strangers’ and ‘Apartment Story’, although these mostly take a backseat in favour of more restrained, laconic laments.

The overall tone is somewhat morose, a sensation emphasised by Matt Berenger’s tendency to sing in the club style, mumbling his way through most of the tracks. The most striking moments are when he enunciates clearly, making the uniquely poetic charm of his lyrics discernible. I particularly like it the disarming confession of ‘Slow Show’ (‘I dreamed about you for 29 years before I found you’).

Whilst the arrangements help characterise the songs as kitchen sink melodramas, there’s also a nagging suspicion that they also help mask the deficiencies of a rather pedestrian rhythm section. The piano on ‘Fake Empire’ is rather plinky-plonk, and the drumming throughout lacks finesse and, somewhat critically, is completely without dynamic variety. I rather prefer the band when the rhythm section blends into the background, as on the rather touching ‘Start a War’ and the Leonard Cohen-esque ‘Racing Like A Pro’.

I don’t therefore share the view that ‘Boxer’ is a future classic, but it has a rather individual charm – music for empty late night bars on rainy nights.

It might win most pretentious and verbose title of the year award, but ‘Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square’, the comeback album from Wheat (eagerly anticipated by, well, just about nobody except this blog and the wonderful Really Rather – http://www.reallyrather.blogspot.com/), has many virtues. It’s particularly strange that Wheat are so ignored given the excellence of both ‘Medeiros’ and ‘Hope and Adams’, records that could stand happily in the company of Grandaddy’s ‘The Software Slump’ and Mercury Rev’s ‘Deserters Songs’. This one does not feature the production hand of Dave Fridmann. It retains some of his widescreen finish, but mercifully doesn’t smother its excellent songs with his obtrusive electronic tinkering, instead absorbing and incorporating its more electronic preoccupations.

This is both a lush-sounding and inventive record, full of sustained, dramatic synthesiser chords, off-kilter, inventive drumming and slightly out of tune vocals. It frequently sounds like a piece of warped vinyl, albeit in a very good way. The band can veer between the conventional tropes of indie-rock and far more ambitious territory without ever losing their control. Odd song titles abound (‘To, as in addressing the grave’, ‘Courting Ed Templeton’, ‘Move=Move’), but the band mercifully have the quality of material to support their indulgences. ‘To, as in addressing the grave’ and ‘Saint in Law’ have a shimmering, beatific quality, whilst ‘Closeness’ , ‘Round in the Corners’ and ‘Little White Dove’ are crunchier, albeit with several unexpected twists and turns. This really is one of the best rock albums of the year, although it seems unlikely many will notice.

Another album I feel might have been slightly mis-represented is ‘Blue Alert’, the third album from Anjani. This intoxicating, melancholy and haunting record has been written and produced entirely in collaboration with her illustrious partner Leonard Cohen, although many reviewers have preferred to opt for Norah Jones as a convenient reference point. The similarities are obvious, but entirely superficial – ‘Blue Alert’ mostly features Anjani’s breathy vocals coupled with her cabaret jazz piano playing. Anjani’s voice is considerably more versatile than Jones’ though, and she interprets Cohen’s lyrics with deft understatement. It’s hard to conceive of Jones concocting anything this vivid and emotional though. The opening ‘Blue Alert’, with its cautious and understated delivery is about as close to Jones as it gets – elsewhere, the material is considerably more challenging. These songs go right to the heart of the human experience. ‘Never Got to Love You’ is as direct and heartbreaking a song as Cohen has penned, but those who dismiss him as a miserabilist should turn to the quite exquisite ‘Half a Perfect World’. Seemingly relating the unexpected blossoming of a relationship between two women, it’s a strange but beautifully incisive song.

The songs are also tinged with the same laconic minor chord sequences that characterised Cohen’s ‘Dear Heather’ album (indeed, the two albums even share a song, the lovely ‘Nightingale’). Anjani’s arrangements are deceptively simple, and the whole album is characterised by a dignified emotional restraint. The resulting performances are both powerful and sublime.

Anjani is performing on tonight’s edition of Later…With Jools Holland, but you’ll have to endure the tedious new incarnation of The Who and the ghastly Kaiser Chiefs as well unfortunately. Still, there’s always The White Stripes to keep things engaging…

I’ve always been a little fearful of Richard Thompson, not because, as Rufus Wainwright claims, he’s so ‘fiercely heterosexual’, but because he’s one of those artists who seems unnervingly prolific. Where should one start? Actually, new album ‘Sweet Warrior’ is only his 16th solo album in a 40 year career, although that doesn’t include his collaborations with Linda or his legendary work with Fairport Convention. I suspect it’s as good a place to begin as any, given that it confidently reiterates his core talent – the deft merger of straight ahead rock with the inflections of traditional English folk music. Thompson remains in strident voice – there’s very little evidence of any vocal deterioration from the Fairport days. He’s also a guitarist of piercing clarity and expressive detail. As a result of this, he can build exciting songs from even the most conventional of foundations.

The songwriting is consistently excellent, so it doesn’t seem particularly fruitful to pick highlights. The main talking point will certainly be ‘Dad’s Gonna Kill Me’, where the ‘Dad’ in question is actually an abbreviation of Baghdad (‘Dad’s in a bad mood, Dad’s got the blues/It’s someone else’s mess that I didn’t choose’). It shares some of the spirit of Steve Earle’s fearlessly political writing on ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘The Revolution Starts Now’. Elsewhere, Thompson’s lyrics are frequently very witty, particularly on ‘Mr. Stupid’ and the ferociously energetic ‘I’ll Never Give It Up’. ‘Bad Monkey’ pits Thompson’s committed vocal against an uplifting horn section.

‘Sweet Warrior’ also benefits from its fair share of tender songs. ‘She Sang Angels To Rest’, ‘Take Care The Road You Choose’and ‘Too Late to Come Fishing’ are particularly touching, although the latter two suffer a little from production and execution that may be slightly over-crisp. There are occasions on ‘Sweet Warrior’ when I’d like it all to sound it a little rougher or dirtier. With 14 tracks, it’s also arguable that it’s a little too long, but these are minor flaws to an otherwise engaging and enjoyable collection.

Controlled Explosions: Wilco, Band of Horses and The Besnard Lakes live

Jeff Tweedy claims not to have a very good track record with London audiences, but for Wilco's triumphant London return on May 20th he needn't have worried. What a superb performance this really was, coming complete with all the components you could wish for in a rock band. The current Wilco line-up has terrific chops, immediately marking them out from their less inspired Americana contemporaries. Glenn Kotche's drumming, at turns vigorous and sensitive, both supports and propels the group, whilst Nels Cline is a guitar player of effortless fluidity, also capable of creating real drama from the fretboard. Pat Sansone now seems to play as much guitar as he does organ, and the result is a triple guitar assault arranged and controlled with real dynamic precision. The real revelation though is Tweedy's voice. Once a rather muffled, diminutive instrument content to settle in the hazy distance, he now dominates proceedings with clarity and commanding vision.

As I predicted, the songs from 'Sky Blue Sky' really blossom in live performance, especially the show opener 'Side With The Seeds' and 'Impossible Germany', both of which sound decidedly more adventurous than the more reductive of critics have decreed. They expand on the blueprint of songs from 'A Ghost is Born' and 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot', expanding 'Handshake Drugs' into something majestic and coruscating, whilst rendering 'Poor Places' mysterious and cinematic. The encore of 'Spiders' is explosive.

As Tweedy himself claims, though, they save the best for last. At the end of a generous two hour show, a dishevelled looking figure with long grey hair and bushy beard takes to the stage. It turns out to be legendary singer songwriter Bill Fay (about whom I wrote in an edition of John Kell's Unpredictable Same fanzine about three years ago), on a stage for the first time in over thirty years. He seems understandably reticent, and, duetting with Tweedy on a version of his great song 'Be Not So Fearful' he's unfortunately a little overwhelmed. Still, it's a great pleasure to see this most elusive and withdrawn of musicians back in a small amount of limelight - and if this goes any distance in making the rumoured collaboration with Wilco on new Fay material happen, it would be a gratifying result indeed.

At the Scala, Band of Horses don't quite manage the two hour marathon, if only because they're still a little shy of material. Still, in their not-quite-one-hour set they still manage to pack in the best moments from debut album 'Everything All The Time', along with three new songs and a rather brilliant David Allan Coe cover to round things off. Much has already been made (not least in this blog) of the band's uncanny resemblance to My Morning Jacket circa 'At Dawn', and whilst the band do little to dispel such comparisons in their musical execution, their genial good nature and ebullience throughout comes as something of a surprise. They are constantly thanking us all, and seem to be having a rather jolly time of it. This is great to see, and as a result they can get away with playing a previously unheard song and a cover in the encore, as well as opening with a particularly impressive new song.

The Besnard Lakes also have some superficial similarities with My Morning Jacket, although their sound is so diverse it's next to impossible to pin them down to simple comparisons. There are elements of the drone rock beloved of Spacemen 3 and the shoegazers, as well as some seriously unfashionable, slightly proggy 70s influences that come out much more clearly in live performance than they do on record, particularly in the form of some very long twin guitar solos which turn out to be surprisingly engaging. The Water Rats is a small and unassuming London pub venue, but The Besnard Lakes rock so unbelievably hard and loud that they make it seem like Earl's Court. Frankly, it's impressive that the foundations withstand the assault. The songs are mostly long, unpredictable and unashamedly adventurous. There's a great interplay within the band, particularly between the vocalists, and the careful orchestrations are pulled off with an almost casual confidence. They might be a bit earnest, were it not for the breadth of ambition and the quality of the playing, as well as the lyrical preoccupation with spies, which adds mystery and intrigue. It's a special gig, topped off with an hilariously ragged version of Fleetwood Mac's 'You Make Loving Fun' - so uncool it's brilliant. John Kell has it right though when he says that their lead singer looks like Mark Gatiss' tragic Creme Brulee character from the League of Gentlemen.

Haunting Voices: Elliott Smith's New Moon

Posthumous albums are almost always difficult to approach. There’s no way of knowing whether they reflect the artist’s intentions accurately – presumably there were always good reasons why tracks remained unreleased (unless the artist in question was as poor a judge of their own output as Bob Dylan was throughout the ‘80s). There’s also the thornier problem of ‘cashing-in’ – just who stands to gain from the endless Jeff Buckley live albums or ghastly 2Pac cast-offs?

When an artist dies in as dramatic and frankly macabre a way as Elliott Smith (Smith committed suicicide by stabbing himself in the heart), there’s the additional temptation to search for some bleak, comfortless worldview that might help explain the artist’s state of mind. Many people will approach Elliott Smith’s ‘New Moon’ from a strictly psychological viewpoint, but this will achieve little, and also misses the warmth and romantic vulnerability that lay alongside Smith’s angst and depression.

There’s already been one posthumous Elliott Smith release – ‘From A Basement on A Hill’ – due to have been a planned double album but never quite completed. Some find this album challenging and uncomfortable – but I rather admire its uneasy combination of sludgy rock and melancholy melodies. It combines the brutal with the unfathomably pretty in a way not many musicians could pull off.

‘New Moon’ is less confrontational, and takes a while to reveal its qualities. Its compilers are keen to emphasise that it is not an odds-and-sods collection, but rather represents a possible alternative canon to Smith’s back catalogue, drawn as it is exclusively from the sessions that produced Smith’s spare acoustic masterpieces ‘Elliott Smith’ and ‘Either/Or’.

Concerns over the value of ‘New Moon’ are mercifully alleviated pretty quickly, and there’s plenty of evidence of Smith’s subtle talents here, especially on the first disc. The trademark Smith sound helps this collection cohere – most tracks deploy the double tracking of vocals that Smith preferred, although this sometimes serves to emphasise his tremulous vulnerability rather than disguise it. There are some masterful moments, including the languid, melancholy ‘Go By’ which develops effectively through the layered multi-tracking of Smith’s vocal lines. ‘Angel in the Snow’ demonstrates Smith’s inventive harmonic sensibility, as well as his nimble guitar playing, rarely remarked upon in reviews.

Best of all is the infectious, touching ‘All Cleaned Out’. Where some of the songs in this set risk highlighting the more world-weary, profane dimensions of Smith’s lyric writing, ‘All Cleaned Out’ risks a more poetic approach, and suggests that Smith was at his best when combining barbed and cynical observations with a more playful quality. It has a great opening line (‘Here comes your pride and joy – the comic little drunk you call your boy’) and continues to exhibit Smith’s canny turn of phrase (‘Wearing clothes that clash/Wondering whether this is treasure or it’s trash…’).

The second disc is a little less immediate, and requires a little work. The most obvious delight is the charming ‘Whatever (Folk Song in C)’, with Smith at his most lush, with a McCartney-esque melodic flourish. The rest are more elusive, although I like the dusty, mysterious ‘New Disaster’ and the outstanding ‘Either/Or’, oddly missed off the album of the same name.

There are a handful of tracks which feature more of a ‘band’ sound, and they feel a little out of place on this otherwise spare collection. ‘New Monkey’ and ‘Fear City’ are both uncharacteristically evasive on melody and sound a little aggressive. Both seem to be in search of clear direction.

Some of the tracks might feel superfluous to all but the most ardent of collectors – there are alternate versions of ‘Pretty Mary K’ and ‘Miss Misery’ (the song from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack that brought Smith to wider recognition, included here with radically different lyrics). There’s also a cover of Alex Chilton’s ‘Thirteen’ which initially seems slavishly faithful. Listen closely, though, and the very essence of Smith’s come through. Where the Big Star original was innocent and nostalgic, Smith’s delivery quivers, and implies sadness, melancholy and regret, as if nothing in life can ever compete with the residual warmth of first love. It’s a beautifully intimate moment – and a reminder that Smith had an extraordinary ability for individual communication. At his best here, the unadorned arrangements genuinely capture not just the sound, but the feeling of a man alone in a room – singing directly to a single listener.

Adventurers United

I’ve been attempting to catch up on some records this week, so here are some of the results…

I have to confess to an element of ‘genre tokenism’ when it comes to specialist dance music. I don’t pick up that many dance records in the course of a year, and I’m certainly no expert in the field. I’m certainly appreciating the new album from The Field though (oh dear, do you see what I did there?). I’m not sure that Axel Willner’s breed of minimalist techno is bracingly original, but it’s certainly mesmerising and effective, as this music should be. All the individual elements of this music are steadfastly basic, from the skeletal drum programming (which initially seems unadventurous) to the repetition ad nauseum of various vocal samples and ambient effects. Yet this is anything but background music. The effect is such that very subtle shifts in texture become unexpectedly dramatic. With the four to the floor beat pushed into the background, the emphasis is more on sound and atmosphere than rhythm. The rippling synth figures of ‘The Little Heart Beats So Fast’ hark back to the acid house movement, whilst the more prominent ideas in tracks like ‘Over the Ice’ and ‘Everyday’ create an eerie calm unusual for dance music. This is music that sounds simultaneously detached and immediate – elusive, mysterious but captivating. The title seems eerily appropriate – this seems to capture what the process of sublimation might sound like.

‘Mirrored’ is the first album proper from avant-rock Warp signings Battles, and it seems to be dividing opinion somewhat. There are some that find it overly cerebral and irritating, whilst others seem to admire its rhythmic drive and foot-tapping qualities. The band certainly have technical pedigree, featuring former members of Don Caballero and Helmet, as well as Tyondai Braxton, son of free jazz legend Anthony Braxton. They are completely unafraid to show their chops – the opening ‘Race: In’ is about as dexterous and technically impressive as rock music gets. Luckily, it’s as exhilarating as it is confounding. Elsewhere, they prefer things quirky and goofy, as on lead single ‘Atlas’ with its peculiar vocals that completely eschew language. The best of the album provokes physical or visceral reactions, and the group interplay (particularly in the deft juxtaposition of electronic and conventional rock elements) is frequently compelling. The group become less engaging when they veer into abstraction though, and there’s a short section of the album (the close of ‘Rainbow’ leading into ‘Bad Trails’) that seems forced and out of place. Still, by the exhuberant, playful ‘Tij’ they’re more than back on track, and ‘Mirrored’ proves that rock music can still be bold and adventurous.

‘Noise Won’t Stop’ is the UK debut from Shy Child, a drums and synth duo that has inevitably been tagged with the rather ludicrous nu-rave label. The album shares some tracks with another album, ‘One With The Sun’, released elsewhere in the world last year, but unfortunately ignores the group’s two best moments (the outrageous ode to auto-fellatio ‘Down on Yourself’ and the insistent, clattering single ‘Technicrats’). There are plenty of treasures here in spite of this though, and what is likely to elevate this group above their similarly nostalgic contemporaries is the real sense of fun here. This is a tremendously entertaining record, all single finger synth lines, jittery drum beats, silly lyrics and bleepy noises. The collaboration with quirky rap outfit Spank Rock fits in perfectly. ‘Drop The Phone’, ‘Pressure to Come’ and ‘Kick Drum’, all three jerky and off kilter (essentially this seems to be club music for people who can’t dance), make for a killer opening trio. The group’s minimalism is perhaps a little limiting, and when they try for a smoother, more melodic sound on ‘Summer’ and ‘What’s It Feel Like?’ they come unstuck. ‘Cause and Effect’ is memorably delirious though – a fitting conclusion to a hugely enjoyable record.

For those that like their indie rock to come with a hefty dose of melodrama, ‘Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters’, the debut album from Scotland’s The Twilight Sad may just be the perfect tonic. One need only look at the titles to discern the group’s shameless lunges for grandeur (‘that summer, at home I had become the invisible boy’, ‘mapped by what surrounded them’, ‘and she would darken the memory’ – all set in consistently lower case letters). Yet, amidst the loftiness and grandiose theatrics there’s also plenty to like. The alternately shimmering and thunderous epic rock dynamics distance this music from the tepid template of most contemporary British guitar music. There’s also something inherently endearing in singer James Alexander Graham’s refusal to disguise his thick Scottish vowels and exaggerated consonants. For all the obvious swelling guitar crescendos, it’s the foregrounding of melody and emotive vocal lines that make this music effective. Similarly, the frequent use of accordion prevents the arrangements from becoming too swamped by the walls of abstract guitar noise. It’s interesting that all this has earned the band some serious plaudits – it sounds quite unfashionable in the current musical climate and if I can think of a clear reference point for this, it’s underrated Irish epic rockers Whipping Boy who spring most immediately to mind. A good friend of mine abandoned his early taste for indie rock by dismissing it as all about ‘trying to regress to the womb’. It’s an interesting notion, and one that this album does little to disprove, such is its focus on the torment of adolescence. Yet there’s an admirable empathy and perceptiveness at this album’s core that prevents it lapsing into caricature or mere bombast. It feels like a series of emotional highs and lows, which is exactly as it should feel.

It’s been a while since I’ve latched on to anything from the Kill Rock Stars label, but ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’ by Marnie Stern is one of the albums of the year so far. It’s furious, high velocity rock and roll combining the visceral blues of Sleater Kinney with an unhinged and demented intricacy. It’s essentially a totally frenetic mess, but Stern is somehow gifted with the ability to shape these uncompromising elements into spirited, joyful and exhilarating music. It helps that she has the outrageously gifted drummer Zach Hill to work with. For Hill, a simple backbeat is never appropriate, and whilst he veers off in several unexpected tangents simultaneously, he always anchors the music to a clear pulse too, albeit usually a completely beserk one. Stern’s guitar playing rejects conventional riffing or soloing in favour of a constantly energetic high-end noodle, as if she’s been mainlining caffeine. With titles like ‘Plato’s Fucked Up Cave’ and (my personal favourite) ‘Put All Your Eggs in One Basket and Then Watch That Basket!!’, there’s also plenty of humour here too. She’s supporting the outstanding Animal Collective at the Coronet in London in July – definitely a show not to miss.

More to come later this week – including albums from The National, Fennesz/Sakomoto and Elliott Smith as well as my thoughts on the superb Wilco gig last weekend. There’s also a whole set of inspirational releases from the ECM label that I need to get round to writing about!

Dahling, You Were Fabulous: Rufus Wainwright's Camp Cabaret

Opulent, camp, grandiose, extravagant, excessive, theatrical, operatic, romantic – these are all words that spring immediately to mind when listening to Rufus Wainwright’s latest magnum opus. Even the CD itself is bright pink, for heaven’s sake. Never one to under-egg the pudding, he has continued the orchestral preoccupations of the Want double set on ‘Release The Stars’, albeit with a generous helping of sensitivity and restraint for the sake of balance. It may be his most considered and effective work to date. Those who feared that Neil Tennant’s appearance as Executive Producer might have made for an album of throwback synth-pop need not have been concerned.

Rufus’ most overblown creations continue to work because they come with a deliciously self-mocking sense of their own absurdity. His own arrangement for ‘Do I Disappoint You?’ is hysterical, and even the introduction of a child’s choir fails to destroy its music hall cabaret spirit. It’s hard not to raise a smile as Rufus bellows ‘why does it always have to be….CHAOS?!!’. Similarly, the portentous ‘Slideshow’ works because it is also hilarious, its chorus featuring a decidedly smug Rufus demanding ‘and I’d better play a prominent part in your next SLIDESHOW!’. Most ridiculous of all, from its title to its ludicrous outro complete with Sian Phillips voiceover, is ‘Between My Legs’, a sharper, more infectious take on the punchier rock sound of ‘Movies of Myself’. Even when the arrangements are less embellished, Waiwright still can’t resist excess. ‘Tulsa’ is apparently an ode to Killers frontman Brandon Flowers, and comes with a quite extraordinary opening gambit (‘You taste like potato chips in the morning/You face has the Marlon Brando club calling’).

Wainwright is a true romantic of course, and elsewhere this album contains some moments of real beauty. The lush ‘Tiergarten’ is entrancing, and yet again demonstrates Wainwright’s mastery of vocal harmony arrangements, through which he continues to extend his musical language. ‘Not Ready to Love’ sounds painfully candid, and is as a result heartbreaking. It’s easily the most subtle and controlled song Wainwright has yet delivered. Similarly, ‘Leaving for Paris No. 2’ is tinged with genuine sadness. These songs hark back to the finest moments on ‘Poses’.

His romanticism is more playful on the excellent ‘Rules and Regulations’ and the exotic ‘Sanssouci’, on which he delivers two quite masterful vocal performances. In fact, his voice is much improved throughout the record – there’s much less slurring of words and he’s relying more now on his ability to vary dynamics to give the songs shape and direction.

Wainwright’s greatest gift may be his ability to make the trivial sound vital, and to make the superficial sound beautiful. It’s quite a trick, but whilst ‘Release the Stars’ continues to make beauty a paragon of virtue, it also captures a more tender side as well. Some will see these as conflicting extremes, pulling Wainwright in two directions. I find it easier to view them as two sides of the same coin – and this album makes Wainwright sound more multi-faceted and intriguing than ever. He’s a star himself.

Impossible Synthesis?: Wilco's 'Sky Blue Sky'

Whilst it would be a Herculean task to argue that ‘Sky Blue Sky’ is in the same league as Wilco’s best work, the critical reaction to it has still left me somewhat perplexed. Its harshest critics seem to be not only labouring under the misapprehension that Wilco are at the vanguard of experimentalism, but also assuming that music can be compartmentalised into neat, mutually exclusive categories. For these writers, an album is either experimental or retrogressive, forward thinking or backward looking.

The argument in pretty much every review has been that ‘Sky Blue Sky’ represents a major volte-face and a retrenchment from the adventurous wilds of ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ and ‘A Ghost is Born’. The Observer this weekend called it a futile exercise in ‘rock archaeology’. I rather like the idea of ‘rock archaeology’ actually – it suggests an uncovering of something hitherto undiscovered from music’s illustrious past, rather than a simple homage or borrowing. Even more lazily, Rob Mitchum on Pitchfork suggests it reveals the ‘dadrock’ side the band has ‘always tried to hide’.

This is palpable nonsense – Wilco have always worn their influences rather proudly. Even the more outré moments on ‘A Ghost is Born’ (the krautrock ‘Spiders’ for example) have harked back mainly to the 1970s for inspiration. Even on ‘Yankee…’ and ‘…Ghost…’, Wilco’s raison d’etre was never to experiment, but rather to synthesise (extremely successfully) a range of musical approaches. They have never simply been a ‘dadrock’ band in the manner of Ocean Colour Scene or Kula Shaker (bands that even resorted to dressing as if from an earlier decade), but they’ve hardly been determined modernists either.

I can find plenty of evidence to suggest that the band’s striving for synthesis continues on ‘Sky Blue Sky’. With its current line-up including the intuitive, nimble guitarist Nels Cline and brilliant drummer Glenn Kotche, Wilco has more of a group dynamic than on previous studio albums, and I don’t agree that the band are ‘passive’ or ‘sidelined’ on this album as some have suggested. Comparisons with Fleetwood Mac or Supertramp are pretty lazy – much more accurate reference points would be early Steely Dan (when they combined a love of country and soul with their jazz chops) or Little Feat. ‘A Ghost is Born’ actually set a number of precedents for the mix of lush impressionism and guitar interplay that lies at the heart of ‘Sky Blue Sky’ – think of ‘At Least That’s What You Said’, ‘Hell is Chrome’, ‘Muzzle Of Bees’ and ‘The Late Greats’ and you’re not actually that far away from the sound the band conjure here. There are no tracks ending in fifteen minutes of feedback, but the majority of Wilco fans may well be relieved at this.

The fist half of ‘Sky Blue Sky’ is dynamic, expressive and enticing. To simply dismiss it as a retro-rock album misses the intricate detail and intriguing mystery of ‘Impossible Germany’, or the dramatic, restless soulfulness at the heart of ‘Side With The Seeds’. There’s also the unpredictable, stop-start jerkiness of ‘Shake it Off’ and the light, dusty country shuffles of the title track and ‘Either Way’. Jeff Tweedy appears to be singing with much greater confidence, and there’s a fresh emphasis on melody and mood. The guitar playing is fluid and inventive, particularly when Tweedy and Cline extemporise simultaneously. Whilst ‘Sky Blue Sky’ isn’t Wilco at their most innovative – it may be Wilco at their most musical, something most critics appear to have missed completely.

The real problem is an uncharacteristic lack of consistency. Where Tweedy once made an entire double album engaging (‘Being There’), he now seems to be struggling to fill a 50 minute single disc. It's made more noticeable by the fact that the album's weaker moments congregate in its second half. ‘Hate it Here’ attempts to repeat the soulful trick of the superior ‘Side with the Seeds’, whilst ‘Leave Me (Where You Found Me)’ is so delicate that it risks becoming bland. 'Walken' is probably the album's most derivative moment.

Similarly, the lyrics veer from the surreal imagery and inventive manipulation of language that characterised the previous albums to rather more banal platitudes that seem limpid and uninspired. Tweedy displays his gifts on ‘Side with the Seeds’ (‘Tires type black/Where the blacktop cracks/Weeds spark through/Dark green enough to be blue/When the mysteries we believe in/Aren’t dreamed enough to be true/Some side with the leaves/Some side with the seeds…’) but he’s really struggling for anything meaningful on ‘Walken’ (I’m walking all by myself/I was talking to myself about you/What am I going to do?’) or the rather benign-sounding ‘On and On and On’ (‘Don’t deny what’s inside’). It’s troubling to say it, but contentment doesn’t seem to come naturally to Tweedy – the songs characterised more by ambiguity and confusion are considerably more successful.

For the most part though, ‘Sky Blue Sky’ is a controlled but nuanced display of group dynamics, interplay and musicality. I also suspect the thrilling essence of many of these songs will come across more clearly in live performance, but we’ll have to wait until next week’s London shows for evidence of this. By synthesising the conventional ingredients of the songwriting art with intuitive and dexterous musicianship, Tweedy has at least avoided repeating himself, again demonstrating that Wilco are a constantly shifting, satisfyingly questing group.

Uneasy Listening: Cat Power at the Forum

I’ve been wondering what to write about this show, given that my entire experience of the night was soured by a particularly thoughtless couple. Having reserved our tickets somewhat late in the day, John Kell (http://www.kingofquiet.co.uk/) and I settled for unreserved seating upstairs. Neither of us had quite accounted for the number of early arrivals (in fact, I expected most of the seated crowd to spend the support slots in the bar), so getting a seat proved more of a mission than expected. Having secured a severely uncomfortable pew (not kind on the lower spine), I felt unduly sympathetic to a couple audacious enough to ask us to save seats for them. Having done this, I did not expect in a million years that they would proceed to talk and giggle (not even quietly, but quite obtrusively) CONSTANTLY THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PERFORMANCE. They barely even stopped to breathe. Now I can accept that there are different schools of thought on talking at gigs, but my own position on this is clear: no reasonable person would contemplate talking like that through a classical concert, an intimate jazz gig, a movie or a play. What exactly is the difference about a rock concert? Why pay £20 plus to hold a conversation when you could just as easily hold it for the price of a couple of drinks in a bar, café or pub? Having paid from my own hard earned cash, I was not best pleased about their conduct. In the unlikely event that you’re reading this – next time pay more courtesy to people kind enough to secure you a seat (it was so busy they would have been standing at the very top of the balcony otherwise).

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the rockabilly duo support act, who were highly entertaining – basically Revered Horton Heat meeting the White Stripes in a dark alley. No bad thing.

Cat Power has something of a reputation as a difficult performer, an image intimately connected with her battles with alcoholism and depression. Her solo shows have seen her so crippled with fear that she’s been unable to perform, or has simply forgotten her own songs. She’s now performing with a stable band (still in support of her outstanding album ‘The Greatest’, released early last year), Dirty Delta Blues, and has seemingly defeated most of her demons. So why then was this show still so difficult?

She may no longer be such a loose canon, but Chan Marshall still seems a profoundly uncomfortable performer, relentlessly pacing up and down the stage and preferring not to face the audience directly. Her voice, a vulnerable and sensitive instrument on record, is rather more uncompromising live, and she frequently renders her own material incomprehensible tonight, intentionally slurring the words. Whilst she projects confidently, she ignores most of the nuances in the recorded versions. It’s frequently fascinating, but rarely pretty. On record, she sounds positively seductive – live, she appears awkward and unpredictable.

The band, although much acclaimed, are not equals to the legendary Hi label session band that played on ‘The Greatest’. They all seem impressive musicians, but in a relatively straightforward and unadventurous way. They don’t give the songs enough room to breathe, and are frequently just too loud for the rapturous textures Marshall originally concocted.

True to her reputation, Marshall handles a number of covers, most of them major works in the soul and pop canon – James Brown’s ‘Lost Someone’, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, Smokey Robinson’s ‘The Tracks of My Tears’, Willie Nelson’s ‘Crazy’ and Dan Penn’s ‘Dark End Of The Street’ among them. Identifying the material proves a challenge, given Marshall’s reluctance to enunciate and the unnecessary reverb added to her voice. She veers so far from the established melodies, not in itself a crime, but she seems somehow uncertain in her extemporising, and her interpretations have little shape or direction. ‘The Tracks of My Tears’ arguably works best, simply because she transforms it radically from elaborately arranged ballad into full-force Northern Soul stomp.

The show gets more comfortable and meaningful as it progresses (if anything it seems to be about pushing the songs to their utmost extremes), but there’s a lingering sense of missed opportunity at the end in spite of this. I think Marshall has plenty of talent and originality – but, in spite of the successful 'Dusty in Memphis' vibe of ‘The Greatest’, she may not entirely be at home with ‘the greatest soul singer in the world’ tag that her band bestows on her.

I'm Behind Schedule...

So here's a list of things I need to blog about, lest I should forget myself:

Cat Power live at the Forum last week
Dava (about whom only a select few know)
Bishi (should get the album later this week)
David Torn - Prezens
John Surman - The Spaces in Between
Elliott Smith - New Moon
Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur
Laura Veirs - Saltbreakers
Soulsavers - It's Not How You Fall, It's The Way You Land
Medeski, Scofield, Martin and Wood - Out Louder
John Abercrombie - The Third Quartet
Led Bib - Sizewell Tea
Eberhard Weber - Stages of a Long Journey
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Rufus Wainwright - Release The Stars
Tord Gustavsen Trio - Being There
Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions
Sebadoh - The Freed Man (Domino reissue)
The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
Abram Wilson - Ride! The Ferris Wheel To The Modern Day Delta
Curios (Tom Cawley Trio) - Hidden
Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford - s/t
Robyn - s/t
The Bird and the Bee - s/t
Tinariwen - Aman Iman: Water is Life
Paul Motian w/ Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell - Time and Time Again
Marnie Stern - In Advance of the Broken Arm
Maximo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures
Sarah Nixey - Sing, Memory
Field Music - Tones of Town

The Earth From The Air: Bjork's Volta

I’m aware that this is going to sound incredibly snobbish, but there’s this lingering sense that the rock and pop press consistently underestimate Bjork. Predictably, Volta has received universal plaudits so far, but very much of the four-out-of-five-stars, take-her-for-granted kind. ‘Volta’ is a sixth remarkable album in a sequence that has seen Bjork expand her reach fearlessly with every new recording. It is therefore manifestly absurd that a dependably brilliant new Bjork album should be accorded the same ratings as, say, the latest dull offering from Kasabian. Let’s be absolutely clear about this – Bjork is quite peerless in contemporary pop music. There is no other artist prepared to push themselves quite as far, to manipulate their voice to such intense effect, to be as upfront about their influences whilst striving to expand the language of modern music. Her passionate combination of the mechanical innovations of electronic music with an emotional honesty and warmth often lacking in the work of other comparably experimental performers marks her out as a unique and massively significant artist.

She has rarely ever followed trends or expectations, and it’s therefore no surprise that the pre-release talk of ‘Volta’ representing a return to ‘commerciality’ after the ‘introspective’ approach of ‘Vespertine’ and ‘Medulla’ has turned out to be complete piffle. If anything, ‘Volta’ draws as much from her recent soundtrack for husband Matthew Barney’s ‘Drawing Restraint 9’ as any of her previous albums proper. There’s perhaps more of an abandonment of conventional song structure and melody here than on any of her previous works, and the unconventional instrumentation imbues the accompaniment with unusual and compelling textures.

Perhaps it’s precisely this individualism and isolation that has led most commentators, with justifiable surprise, to focus on the presence of R’n’B mastermind Timbaland here. This comes in spite of the fact that his contributions are arguably more gimmicky and less significant than those of the many other collaborators here (including Bjork regular Mark Bell, Congolese mavericks Konono No.1, avant drummers Chris Corsano and Brian Chippendale and the master Kora player Toumani Diabate).

If ‘Medulla’ focussed on the sound of the human voice, then ‘Volta’ focuses on the combination of primal rhythms and exquisite, cinematic horn arrangements that sound both vivid and alien. It opens with the delightfully groovy ‘Earth Intruders’, something of a close relation to ‘Human Behaviour’ with its rolling tom drums from Corsano. The lyrics are characteristically bonkers, with Bjork ranting about ‘necessary voodoo’ and ‘metallic carnage’ (although the Dr. Who fan in me genuinely mistook the latter for ‘The Dalek College’). The vocal phrasing is in itself intensely percussive, and it’s fascinating to hear how voice and drums intertwine effortlessly. The distorted thumb pianos of Konono No. 1 emphasise the juxtaposition between the traditional and the shock of the new.

The horns make their first entrance on the quite astounding ‘Wanderlust’, in which Bjork falls into some kind of existential rapture (‘I have lost my origin and I don’t want to find it again’). There’s a genuine sense of awe and mystery here that justifies her use of this suddenly in vogue song title (the REM song of the same name sadly had nothing of the sort). Her voice is also at its most forceful and intimidating, and for all those complaining of a lack of melody, there’s definitely a tune here, unconventional as it may be. The prominence of the polyphonic horn arrangements continues with ‘Dull Flame of Desire’, a lengthy duet with Antony Hegarty that slowly unravels into something weirdly compelling. It seems very much a love song, and as such probably the least oblique song in the set. ‘Vertebrae by Vertebrae’ somehow makes the horns bigger, bolstering them with military percussion. The song is full of curious imagery and Bjork’s vocal twists and turns in entirely unexpected directions. Later, on ‘Pneumonia’, we get Bjork’s voice set along against the horns, which creates a particularly eerie and discomforting effect.

‘Innocence’ stands out as the moment where Timbaland is given some kind of freedom, the beat being particularly syncopated and off-kilter. It also features some odd samples that could easily have come from an old Sega beat-em-up console game. Luckily, the song itself is exquisite, with Bjork singing candidly about self discovery and the onset of sexual awareness (‘to my surprise, I grew to like boys!’) whilst maintaining that the original innocence is still there, simply ‘in different places’. I’m not sure that anybody writes about sex and sexuality quite as convincingly and honestly as Bjork (return to the quite wonderful ‘Cocoon’ from ‘Vespertine’, a song characterised by real musical and lyrical intimacy to match its subject matter). As a result, it was precisely the ‘introspection’ of ‘Vespertine’ and ‘Medulla’ that made them so masterful. I’m therefore grateful that she allows some of that approach to remain on Volta, most notably on the gorgeous ‘I See Who You Are’, in which she sings boldly ‘let’s celebrate now, this flesh on our bones!’. Toumani Diabate’s kora adds exotic flavour.

Bjork has declared that she aimed to return to some kind of rhythmically charged, toe-tapping dance music with ‘Volta’, and this is most clear with the relentlessly punishing ‘Declare Independence’, which sounds remarkably close to something you might hear on a compilation from outrageous London nightclub KashPoint. It has a thumping four-to-the-floor kick drum relentlessly propelling it, and is as confrontational a statement of individuality and liberation as Bjork has yet penned.

The two trickiest songs here are ‘Hope’ and the closing ‘My Juvenile’, for which Antony returns as Bjork’s ‘conscience’. On the former, she sings ‘what’s the lesser of two evils, if a suicide bomber made to look pregnant manages to kill her target or not’. She’s mangling the English language here, but I suppose her real question is whether the success of failure of an act of terrorism makes any difference to how we should judge it. Musically, it is a sublime combination of subtle electronic glitches with Diabate’s lush, delicate kora. ‘My Juvenile’ is bizarrely ambiguous – it could be about falling in love with someone too young, it could be about protecting her child – who knows? Bjork sings ‘My juvenile, I truly say you are my biggest love…one last embrace to tie a sacred ribbon’. Antony justifies it all with ‘the intentions were pure’. It’s a very strange, intensely personal song that concludes the album on an intimate and mysterious note.

Of all Bjork’s albums, ‘Volta’ may be the most stylistically diverse and uncompromising. It doesn’t have the consistent intimate warmth of ‘Vespertine’ for example. Yet there’s a sense of Bjork achieving some kind of transcendence here, observing life on earth from somewhere higher, and translating her observations into a mysterious and ambiguous language. There’s also a dynamic and strident theatricality to Bjork’s vocal performances. Given a few listens, I suspect it will reveal itself as another masterpiece.

No Progression: The Return of Dinosaur Jr.

There are some bands, perhaps those that display their creative ambitions most explicitly, that we want to push themselves further and further, and we get disappointed when they fail. However, there are some bands that have so spectacularly nailed what it is that they do that any form of change might well spell disaster. Three of my favourite bands fall firmly into this category – Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads and Dinosaur Jr. All three bands make guitar based rock music that makes no attempt whatsoever to hide its simplicity, and with which it is remarkably easy to connect. Dinosaur Jr. perhaps had the most brutally effective formula – a unique brand of scuzzy slacker rock that somehow managed to sound lazy and invigorating at the same time. That their template greatly informed the grunge phenomena of the early 90s is now undisputed.

How appropriate it is, then, that ‘Beyond’, the first album from the band’s original line-up since 1988’s ‘Bug’ should open with a characteristically coruscating distorted guitar solo from J Mascis. It’s clear from the opening ten seconds that not a lot has changed in the intervening 19 years. Well, good. J Mascis has not lost his ability to pen addictive and infectious rock songs, and ‘Almost Ready’, ‘This Is All I Came To Do’ and the jangly ‘Crumble’ are more than worthy additions to the Dinosaur Jr. canon. The Mascis songs on this album don’t do much to develop or progress this band one bit – but they certainly sound like they are enjoying rediscovering their original strengths. Mascis’ double-tracked guitar solos are consistently thrilling, Barlow is rock solid throughout, and Murph’s drumming is simply awesome, always crisp and propulsive, particularly on the relentless ‘Been There All The Time’. Perhaps the one exception to this is the restrained ‘I Got Lost’, which dares to deploy (shock! horror!) acoustic guitars and a cello. As a consequence, however, it’s probably the least immediate track of the set.

The main obstacle to Dinosaur Jr. breaking out of cult appeal probably continues to be Mascis’ voice – a deliberately muffled, throaty, cigarette-stained whine of contempt for obligation and responsibility. Even the song titles carry that weary sense of resignation and negativity (‘I Got Lost’, ‘What If I Knew’, ‘Pick Me Up’ etc). More casual listener might well therefore embrace the two Lou Barlow compositions featured here. It’s a delight to hear Barlow’s tender melancholy bolstered by this band’s furious riffing and inspired exposition, and ‘Back To Your Heart’ and ‘Lightning Bulb’ easily stand up to any of Mascis’ contributions.

Excellent though this album is, and wonderful that it is to see Mascis and Barlow onstage together again, I have to confess to some reservations about this whole project. There’s of course the lingering sense that most reformations have a financial impetus, and given that this one started with some no doubt lucrative festival appearances, there can be little doubt that lucre came into this one too. Nevertheless, one certainly can’t begrudge them earning a little cash, particularly Barlow, who seems to have been largely subsisting throughout his career, a fate that should never befall a songwriter of his quality. I’ve also observed that this reunion seems to have given birth to a rather questionable form of critical revisionism that suggests that the second line-up of Dinosaur Jr. was purely a matter of diminishing returns. Mike Johnson may well have cause to feel a little upset about this, as the later line-up of the band produced three of the greatest singles of the nineties with ‘The Wagon’, ‘Start Choppin’ and ‘Feel The Pain’. ‘Beyond’ is a very satisfying record, but I’m not sure it contains any surefire classics on that level. Still, the fact that there’s still a kinetic and fiery connection between these three is surely enough.

'In those days, they had time for everything...'

…Or so says a line from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons used by Terence Davies in his masterful film ‘The Long Day Closes’ from 1992. The line strikes me as hugely significant given that the film’s young protagonist Bud values the escapism of the cinema. Today, it’s again become difficult to see the kind of classic films referenced here in repertory (unless you happen to live in London or Paris), and we are constantly being told that we don’t have time for great works of art. Just last week, the Newsnight Review panel, were justly lambasting a new series of 'edited' versions of classic works of literature, with the business mogul responsible for this heinous project stating ‘most people don’t have time to read long novels these days’. Speak for yourself, you overpaid berk! I still read a book every couple of weeks on average. I get so infuriated by marketing types telling me what I can and can’t do, and how much spare time I should have. ‘Time management’ must be one of the most odious phrases in the modern English language.

Davies’ films may be concise by comparison with the great novels of Melville and Tolstoy (both ‘Distant Voices…’ and ‘The Long Day Closes’ clock in at around 85 minutes), but they are challenging for audiences who usually respond only to comfortable cinematic conventions. It is perhaps for this reason that Davies, surely Britain’s greatest living film-maker, cannot now get funding to make another film. This is nothing short of outrageous, especially when big production companies like Working Title can effectively saturate the market with a plethora of banal romcoms.

Like Davies’ earlier masterpiece ‘Distance Voices, Still Lives’, the film is an autobiographical work (this time focussing on the life of a twelve year old boy in 1950s Liverpool), composed of a series of vignettes without straightforward plot or narrative that somehow manage to combine a lingering melancholy with the warm glow of nostalgia. It’s this peculiarly unsentimental juxtaposition of sensations that captures the very essence of human experience – life can be hard, but the simple fact of being alive is, in itself, a cause for awe and inspiration. It is all the more remarkable that Davies achieves this through a uniquely cinematic language, marrying meticulously composed images to a soundtrack of period songs (including Nat King Cole, Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds), radio programmes and movies.

There is little in the way of narrative or dialogue but to argue that the film offers no character development or that we cannot sympathise with the family environment at its core is palpable nonsense (interestingly, it would appear to be mostly American writers who have argued this in what little available writing there is about the film online). The songs the characters sing frequently reveal much about their joys and regrets, albeit in much more subtle and controlled ways than conventional dialogue. Where speech plays a greater role, it frequently provides light relief, and there is great warmth to the characters of Edna and Curly.

It’s easily possible to identify with Bud’s love of cinematic escapism, his mother’s understated, yet unconditional love, his confused religiosity born from a Catholic upbringing, and his wide-eyed observation of the world around him. Very much a companion piece to ‘Distant Voices…’, the film is essentially about memory, and Davies is surely right to assert that memories rarely come with a recognisable chronological framework. Whilst the film covers a clear period of a few months between 1955 and 1956, the timeframe is decidedly non-linear.

Through creating a sustained and coherent mood, Davies creates a portrait of that unique time on the cusp of adolescence that is naturalistic and wholly convincing. Bud’s childhood might be free from the violence and rage of Davies’ earlier film (‘The Long Day Closes’ is set a few years after the death of Davies’ father) but it is far from trouble free. There is the disciplinarian rule of the cane at Bud’s new school, as well as the rigorous mundanity of the teaching (a scene detailing a dictation about erosion is hilarious) and the social Darwinism of the playground. There’s also the fact that Bud’s life away from school is mostly lonely and solipsistic, and the film brings to life his self reliance with real panache and elegance.

Davies has claimed that he aimed to capture ‘the poetry of the ordinary’ with these films, and his greatest achievement in ‘The Long Day Closes’ may be the capturing of a childhood sense of wonder and obsession with detail. There’s a wonderful shot capturing the light changing on a carpet, and as a result the audience sees the regular, ordered aspects of the world through Bud’s inspired, imaginative vision. Another wonderful moment shows Bud and his family in the cinema, with a long tracking shot gradually showing the cinema transforming into a Church, thus neatly highlighting the parallels between the ritualistic aspects of moviegoing and worship. The combination of images as extraordinary as this has a cumulative impact, and the final shot of Bud and his friend gazing out at a darkening sky therefore assumes a genuine grandeur.

Whilst it’s tempting to emphasise the comparative lack of hardship or fear in ‘The Long Day Closes’, the film certainly offers hints of troubles to come. There’s a latent homoeroticism to some of Bud’s observations, and his vivid nightmare indicates a sense of underlying unease. David Thomson has emphasised that the film stops short of the time period that may be the most challenging (although Davies did address the difficulties of his young adulthood in his earlier trilogy of short films), but this is surely exactly what Davies intended. ‘The Long Day Closes’ offers a sense of innocence being eroded that is implied rather than stated, and is all the more effective for this.

The Terence Davies retrospective continues next week at the BFI Southbank.

Female Artistry vs. The Marketing Buzz: A bit more on Feist, Mavis Staples and a crass aside on The Arctic Monkeys

It’s immensely pleasing to report that Feist’s ‘The Reminder’ is every bit as wonderful as the sampler I received two weeks ago suggested. Although it is stylistically scattershot, veering from luxurious pop to a languid jazzy folk not a million miles from Jolie Holland or Erin McKeown, it achieves coherence through the carefully crafted nuances of the arrangements and the compassionate emotional insight of its lyrics. Feist’s vocals are exquisite throughout – technically impressive but beautifully controlled, distinctive but naturalistic and unmannered, frequently as interesting for what they reserve as for what they express. The nearest comparison that springs to my mind is the late great Dusty Springfield, a singer consistently underrated in her lifetime, capable of handling a great variety of material, genuinely soulful and emotionally convincing. Gonzales’ piano is also a crucial ingredient, proving that he is as capable of sophisticated musicality as the outstanding novelty rap pop he produced under his own name.

It’s possible that the sequencing may be an obstacle for some listeners, with the album concluding with its most stately and atmospheric tracks. It’s precisely because of this that the album has a satisfying emotional arc though, and repeated listens draw out its subtleties and textures. If there’s an over-arching theme, it’s love and the machinations of the female heart – well-worn subjects perhaps, but Feist effortlessly invests them with new depth and feeling. In addition to the tracks I’ve already discussed, highlights include the gloriously soulful ballad ‘The Limit To Your Love’, and the vulnerable ‘Intuition’, which ponders the difficulty of knowing which relationships might be the ones that last (‘did I, did I miss out on you?’ she asks at the end, with a hint of genuine sadness and regret). ‘The Water’ and ‘Honey Honey’ are both mysterious and minimal, with Feist’s voice given plenty of space to cast its spell. These songs carry the memories of former love affairs, both unrequited and realised, and the album frequently contrasts the heady rush of young love with the changing feelings that come with age and experience. It’s a beautiful album – at once touching and mesmerising.

Showcasing these songs at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire last week, Leslie Feist also proved herself a compelling stage presence, challenging and entertaining the audience in equal measure. Gigs that consist almost entirely of unreleased material can be problematic (the Kings of Leon performance at Glastonbury 2004 seems a case in point), but this worked brilliantly, due at least in part to the quality of the material, but also ably assisted by the subtle and unusual qualities of her malleable musical ensemble.

Equally brilliant, albeit for very different reasons, is Mavis Staples’ collection of ‘freedom’ songs ‘We’ll Never Turn Back’. This is yet another career resurrection from the outstanding Anti label (also responsible for Solomon Burke’s ‘Don’t Give Up On Me’ and Bettye Lavette’s ‘I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise’). Where the Feist album is reflective, melancholy and restrained, ‘We’ll Never Turn Back’ is fierce, steadfast, gutsy and committed in restating the relevance of these songs beyond the original civil rights movement (in which The Staple Singers of course played a crucial role).

Not content with having produced his own passionate but whimsical vision of a vanished America on ‘My Name is Buddy’, Ry Cooder also lends his considerable talents to this project both as a musician and producer. This record simply sounds wonderful – keeping the gospel spirit of these songs by sticking to traditional instrumentation, but with inventive playing and dynamics that give this powerful material a fresh questing imperative. Cooder’s own contributions on guitar and mandolin are dependably crisp and powerful, but Jim Keltner’s drumming is equally significant. Nobody plays a backbeat with the degree of accuracy that Keltner commands, and he invests each of these songs with a relentless force that, as one of the songs suggests, they will not be moved. ‘Ninety Nine and a Half’ even sounds like it could be a dance track – fusing the spirit of folk, gospel and disco. Cooder’s musical backdrops are a consistent reminder of the close links between the American folk tradition, gospel, blues and soul.

Mavis’ sleevenotes show that she is keenly aware of the social injustices and divisions that still characterise modern America, and there are thinly veiled attacks on the Bush administration throughout this record. Cooder and Staples add lyrics to the traditional songs (‘This Little Light of Mine’ now states ‘ain’t gonna fight in no rich man’s war’) and Staples frequently veers out into long half-spoken, half-sung extemporised sermons. The more sceptical among us might prefer to question Staples’ reliance on the Church in this context (particularly given the evangelical commitment to Bush’s administration), but Staples states her form of Christianity boldly and explicitly (‘My God is a loving God…a merciful God’), and this music has the uplifiting and inspirational qualities of the best gospel music. There’s also real insistence to both form and rhythm here, with repetition playing a strong part in ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ and ‘Turn Me Around’.

Staples has lost some of her power and range in recent years, but in this context, her gritty, emphatic voice, with clear phrasing, sounds just right. The deeper end of her range still has a unique character too, as demonstrated clearly on the title track. This is clearly not just material with which she is familiar, but a collection of songs which can best channel her determination and spiritual commitment. Anyone with even the remotest interest in American cultural and social history should snap this up straight away, but that it also serves as a living, breathing document of America’s current predicament makes it all the more remarkable.

Of course, everyone else is rushing out for the second Arctic Monkeys album. Whilst I have no particular axe to grind against this band, the shape the reviews for this album are taking fascinates me as an example of the more cynical machinations of the music industry. The consensus seems to be that it represents a musical development from the much-lauded debut (not having heard it yet, I can't really judge this), yet it seems to have received a more measured four-star treatment than the hyperbolic five star, best British debut album nonsense heaped upon its predecessor. Paul Morley stated on Newsnight Review that 'Favourite Worst Nightmare' was 'the perfect soundtrack to the self-consciousness of the moment'. What the hell does that mean, Paul? And, yes, of course they were aware that it was their second album when they were making it. If Alex Turner is such a poetic genius, one would also expect him to be able to count. To my ears, 'Brianstorm' is a neat fusion of the limber white-boy funk of Franz Ferdinand with the taut guitar pop of The Libertines. Lyrically, it's characterised by joky rhymes and bad puns. In its observational style, it's hardly all that far removed from something like Blur's 'Charmless Man'. Nothing particularly wrong with any of that, but it's hardly an original vision.

A Song and Dance Man: Dylan Triumphs at Wembley

I’ve been going to Bob Dylan London shows since 2002, and watching with grim fascination as he’s struggled to reinterpret his back catalogue for what has become an undeniably mangled voice. Some of his more ardent followers mourn the loss of the Appalachian subtleties brought to his touring band by guitarists Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton, but thinking back to those shows, they seem more memorable for utterly garbled renditions of ‘Blowing In The Wind’ (with Sexton and Campbell struggling to harmonise with a wayward Dylan) or ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, most of the lyrics rendered incomprehensible with an ambivalent mumble or growl. The softer, delicate arrangements of those days also did little to mask Dylan’s obvious deficiencies.

Not so the Bob Dylan and Band of 2007. Something has undoubtedly been revived in Dylan’s performance since the recording of ‘Modern Times’. Whilst the voice is hardly likely to make a magical recovery, the significant qualities of Dylan’s artistry were always crisp, playful phrasing and a skill for manipulating language and rhythm, rather than the conventions of pitch or timbre. For the first time in what must be many years, these qualities were evident consistently in his shows at Wembley this week. Sunday’s performance came as such a surprise to me that I picked up a ticket for Monday’s show at the last minute from the Wembley box office – an excellent move as it turned out, for Monday’s show was even better. Dylan has, at least temporarily, rediscovered the ability to communicate, and with it, the capacity to move an audience, as was obvious from the rapturous reception from Monday’s crowd particularly.

Although some commentators seem perplexed by it, part of the reason for the increased consistency surely lies in the emphasis on uptempo traditional rhythm and blues over melodic acoustic songs. The hillbilly meets swing and R&B stylings of ‘Modern Times’ provide a much more suitable context for Dylan’s singing (almost like preaching during many of the songs), and also gives his remarkable touring band a chance to spar ferociously, with enviable spontaneity and vigour. Dylan has surely been wise to play six songs from ‘Modern Times’ at each of these shows – he’s clearly committed delivering the material clearly and with feeling, and it allows him to make more judicious forays into his back catalogue.

From the opening lines of ‘Cat’s In The Well’ on Sunday (a slightly perverse opener, but one that actually works well as a curtain-raiser for these shows given its 12 bar form), there’s power and control in Dylan’s delivery. It’s not one of his best songs, but many might opt to read new prescience in its apocalyptic howl (‘Cat’s in the well, and grief is showing its face/The world’s been slaughtered and it’s such a bloody disgrace….Cat’s in the well and the leaves are starting to fall/Goodnight my love and may the lord have mercy on us all’). It sounded propulsive and furious.

What’s proved interesting for many is that Dylan is back on guitar again, for the first time since 2002. He plays four songs on electric Stratocaster, following ‘Cat’s In The Well’ with a chugging, desperate version of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. It’s a song to which he might well have been indifferent on previous tours, now spat out with a newfound confidence and sense of purpose. It’s clear that this is going to be a great show when ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ proves recognisable from its opening lines – there’s no game of ‘guess which song he’s actually singing’ this time round. He ends his four songs on guitar with a blisteringly relentless take on ‘It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, singing the melody entirely on one note, almost rapping, but brilliantly intense. Last time I saw this song performed, the only comprehensible line was ‘even the president of the United States sometimes has to stand naked’, which got a giant cheer, perhaps because the audience had had to wait a good three minutes to work out which song it was. There’s no need for that tonight. Nobody knows exactly why Dylan stopped playing guitar (although the onset of arthritis would seem as likely an explanation as any), but regardless of the superfluity of adding a fourth guitar to the group, returning to the instrument has clearly revitalised him.

He’s then on to keyboards for a snarly, prophetic delivery of ‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’ and a tender and compassionate reading of ‘Spirit on the Water’ (one of the best of his recent batch of songs). Oddly, it has even more space than the album version, and Denny Freeman (unfairly maligned on Dylan web forums as a poor guitarist for his preference for languid, melodic lines) plays two inspired solos as a result. It swings with a delicate lilt. Dylan’s keyboard playing remains caustic, unorthodox and defiantly off-kilter, and whilst this often works well, I wasn’t quite convinced by the preference for a cheesy Bontempi organ sound over the electric piano used on previous keyboard tours. It did rather make ‘When The Deal Goes Down’ sound like the soundtrack to a fairground carousel ride, perhaps undermining the convincing and affecting vocal performance.

This might just be a retrospective view following Monday’s more intense performance, but there was some degree of deterioration following a crackling ‘Rolling and Tumbling’. A groovy version of ‘Blind Willie McTell’, still relatively rarely performed, and bolstered by multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron’s banjo, enlivened proceedings but, whilst it was a pleasure to hear ‘Chimes of Freedom’ (one of Dylan’s greatest and most complex ‘protest’ songs), he occasionally resorted to the cursed upsinging device at this point. Luckily, an astounding, brilliantly controlled ‘Nettie Moore’, with Herron’s violin adding to the mournful mood, rescued proceedings but things slipped again with a perfunctory ‘Summer Days’ (perhaps surprisingly the only ‘Love and Theft’ song in the set), Dylan forgetting the opening lines to two of the verses (and, if anything, his greater clarity elsewhere made this all the more obvious). ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ provided the standard conclusion, with a rollicking ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ and ‘All Along The Watchtower’ as encores.

At Dylan’s 2005 Brixton show, I was astounded by versions of ‘Shelter From The Storm’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s-A-Gonna Fall’ where all the lines were crisp and clear. The entirety of Monday’s show was performed at this level. It also had the edge of the two shows for the considered judgement of the set list, with a little more variety in pace and dynamic. Whilst there was nothing out of the ordinary for this tour, it was great to get ‘Watching The River Flow’ and a superb ‘John Brown’ (a war song slightly reminiscent of the Irish ballad ‘Mrs. McGrath’, which Springsteen recorded for his Seeger Sessions project last year). I also enjoyed a fiery and almost funky rendition of ‘Ain’t Talkin’ (which replaced ‘Nettie Moore’), with the band sounding particularly tight and inspired.

There was also real interplay and chemistry on display – with Dylan visibly directing the band, seemingly calling on Herron and rhythm guitarist Stu Kimball to play more. This reached its apotheosis with a magnificent, moving version of ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’. Dylan delivered much of the last verse in drawn-out triplets, and the band followed suit in a moment of wonderfully spontaneous group improvisation.

Perhaps it’s because the more animated crowd contributed to the show, inevitably responding ‘Nooooooo!’ when Dylan crooned ‘you think I’m over the hiiiiiillll?’ on ‘Spirit on the Water’, but both singer and band seemed more alive to creative possibilities in this show. Also, Dylan’s posture was less static, and at the keyboards he appeared far less rigid, instead moving in time with the music.

The only real flaw in an otherwise outstanding show was his confusing the lyrics to ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ (‘you used to be…so amused….by the mystery tramp...’ oops!), but again, this simply served to highlight his increased commitment and clarity elsewhere. These were two great shows, delivered with apocalyptic fervour, and constituting a major creative reawakening in the live arena at last. He sang, he even had a little dance.

The Inner Child: Panda Bear's 'Person Pitch'

I can remember having quite an in-depth conversation with Emmy the Great about Animal Collective during a car journey from the Brixton Windmill to Camden Town.
I think this must have been around the time the group released ‘Sung Tongs’, something of a leap towards accessibility, but Emmy had their debut album ‘Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished’ on the car stereo. I had ambivalent feelings about this record – whilst it contained flashes of the inspiration the group have since distilled far more successfully, it was also fiercely combative, characterised by noise so high-pitched it induced headaches. I’m all for experimentation, but I wondered whether their electronic interventions need be quite so forced and malevolent. Emmy clearly loved the album, but I feel that the group’s more recent excursions, which have assimilated electronic trickery and improvisation far more comfortably, have proved me right. I haven’t really felt the need to return to that frustrating debut.

Noah Lennox, AKA Panda Bear, is the group’s drummer and singer, and whilst ‘Person Pitch’ is his second solo recording, it’s his first to gather a feverish level of excitement from the cognoscenti. Many are suggesting it is the best record yet from the entire Animal Collective staple. They may well be right. Panda’s debut ‘Young Prayer’ has, with hindsight, been judged as a little confounding and obscure, although I loved its powerful mix of percussive clamour and mantric chanting. ‘Person Pitch’ arguably adopts a much more coherent vision though, weaving infectious melody and even some comprehensible, affecting lyrics into its intoxicating sound collage.

‘Intoxicating’ is a tricky adjective inevitably implying 60s cliché, but despite Lennox’s rejection of mind-altering substances on ‘Take Pills’, this music comes very close to a genuine recreation of the lysergic sounds of the psychedelic era. It’s not just mere homage, as Lennox’s cut and paste use of samples adds a fresh and exciting impetus to the music. If Lennox doesn’t require drugs to achieve this, surely the more interesting it all becomes. The most obvious influence is certainly Brian Wilson, particularly apparent in Lennox’s meticulously crafted harmonies, but there are also hints of The Byrds’ explorations on ‘3D’, The Monkees circa ‘Head’, and in the imaginative collage approach, David Axelrod’s productions for The Electric Prunes.

Many critics described the early Animal Collective material as ‘childlike’, and there’s a sense of awe and discovery here that lends that description weight in an entirely positive sense. The music, constructed almost entirely from samples, is dense and compelling. It has the minimalist ethos of contemporary composition, layering a variety of sounds over what can frequently be reduced to just one chord – it’s far more about texture, mood and atmosphere. This effect is rendered brilliantly on ‘I’m Not’, the album’s summery, swirling centrepiece.

Lyrically, Lennox makes little attempt to avoid straying into whimsy, but this is an intrinsic part of this album’s quirky and endearing charm. On the opening ‘Comfy in Nautica’, he proclaims, with little sense of irony, ‘coolness is having courage’. Well, there’s probably some truth in that sentiment, even if most lyricists would stop short of taking it further than a private notepad. It’s almost as if Lennox is trying to recapture some of the perceptive observations that children can make, many of which get lost in the more mundane routine of adult life.

Lennox creates great impact from altering the mood of his constructions mid-way through. Whilst the 12 minute epic ‘Bros’, daringly released as a single, is hypnotically relentless, it’s the added layers of processed guitars towards the conclusion that elevate the music to a new level. ‘Take Pills’ shifts between a woozy, abstract introduction into something chiming, infectious and almost jaunty. It’s a shift both surprising and satisfying. For all the obvious reference points, ‘Good Girls/Carrots’, another 12 minute epic, is both primitive and disturbingly modern, with its pulsating rhythms borrowed from house music. The tablas that open the track provide this album’s clearest link back to ‘Young Prayer’.

There’s a playful contrast at work between driving rhythms, and the hazy somnambulance of the punctuating mood pieces (particularly ‘I’m Not’ and ‘Search For Delicious’). Lennox arguably saves the simplest, and perhaps the best, for last with ‘Ponytail’. At just two minutes, its brevity comes as welcome relief after the intensity of the album’s main expositions. The lyrics are simple and charming (‘when my soul starts growing, I get so hungry, and I wish it never would stop growing’) It also sounds wonderfully warm, a contented conclusion to a quite remarkable album.

Kurt Vonnegut: 1922 - 2007

It's worth taking some time to mourn the passing, and celebrate the life of one of my American heroes, the great writer Kurt Vonnegut, who has died at the age of 84. Vonnegut had a genius for reducing complex issues and concepts to their starkest, simplest terms and was a master of dry, biting satire. It's perhaps for this reason that he always rejected the 'science fiction' box, although as a scientist-turned-writer, he was in a unique position among the great American writers, and able to highlight the pitfalls of a form of 'progress' that continually threatens to destroy civilisation. As a self-proclaimed progressive socialist and committed member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Vonnegut realised that left wing politics and personal freedom needn't be mutually exclusive, and his experiences as a PoW and of the Dresden bombings also left him a firm pacifist.

Vonnegut was perhaps unique among the great male American writers for his mercilessly concise prose style. The likes of Roth, Updike, Bellow and Ford opted for intentional verbosity, elaborate rants and lengthy sentences. Vonnegut summed up his sentiments in crisp, dry phrases ('So it goes...' etc) and his writing never contained anything extraneous.

Whilst many will remember the superb anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, or perhaps Cat's Cradle or Breakfast of Champions as his best works, it's also worth noting his mastery of the essay and short story forms, as well as his emergence from retirement last year with his extraordinary 'memoir' 'A Man Without A Country' (not so much a memoir as a remarkably cogent and wise summary of where America has gone wrong, and, more impressively, even offering some solutions to put it right). Despite his initial hope for the world turning into pessimism, and his personal battles with depression (he once attempted suicide), Vonnegut still managed to make his allegories and satires blisteringly funny.

It is an extraordinary injustice (and one which we should not begrudge Vonnegut identifying himself in 'A Man Without a Country') that he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. If any writer has better captured the ideals highlighted by the Nobel committee, I've yet to find them.

Many full obituaries will appear in the press over the next few days, but it's surely best to let the man speak for himself. Here are just a few of his edifying statements:

"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon."

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before."

"We are put on earth to fart around, don't let anyone tell you any different."

"I said that only one person on the entire planet benefited from the raid, which must have cost tens of millions of dollars. The raid didn't shorten the war by half a second ... only one person benefited - not two or five or ten. Just one. ... Me. I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that." (1977 Paris interview on the Dresden firebombings)

"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere."

"My last words? 'Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.'"

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. "

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. "

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. "

"Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."

Identity Parade: Bill Callahan

All this playing with identity is really rather tedious, isn’t it? Following in the pretentious footsteps of Prince and, a more obvious connection, Will Oldham, Bill Callahan has adopted a variety of guises. He started out recording as Smog before rather stubbornly adding parentheses and making the s lower case to become (smog). He has now strangely opted to start using his real name some distance into his career. Aside from the fact that this makes record store managers’ jobs unnecessarily difficult when filing music, what exactly is the change of name meant to signify? Has there been some great change in his songwriting formula? Are there great revelations here that lead to some kind of unmasking or a more intimate, less cynical style? Perhaps (unfairly) he’s become better known as Mr. Joanna Newsom now anyway.

Branding aside, ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’ is his umpteenth album and I have to confess I wasn’t sure I really needed yet another Callahan album in my life. He’s been remarkably consistent, misjudging only with the oblique droning of ‘Rain On Lens’, but his three greatest albums (‘Wild Love’, ‘Knock Knock’ and ‘Supper’) best summarise his main concerns, with everything else simply a bonus. His last album (‘A River Ain’t Too Much To Love’) was dependably good, but didn’t really offer anything fresh or surprising.

After just three listens, I’m already convinced that ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’ is one of those albums reviewers have taken for granted, simply because there’s already a wealth of notable Callahan material out there, and there’ll likely be another one within a couple of years anyway. I suspect the talk of a blunting of his lyrical barbs has been overstated (there might be a line like ‘You bring out the softness in everyone’, but he juxtaposes it with ‘we gather like ravens on a rusty scythe’), but the music has certainly acquired real warmth and attention to detail.

It’s uncharacteristic, given the raw and untamed energy of much of his own music, but perhaps part of the credit for this should go to former Royal Trux guitarist Neil Michael Hagerty, who has been drafted in as producer. It’s also fair to say that this is the most intriguing and expressive group of musicians that Callahan has assembled. The most obvious surprises are provided by Howard Draper’s mournful piano, the unusual backing vocals of Deani Pugh-Flemmings and the neat combination of bass and percussion that underpins the album’s more rhythmic moments.

A handful of the songs stand out among Callahan’s best. ‘Diamond Dancer’ (‘she danced so hard she turned herself into a diamond’) is a sweet and generous song, encapsulated in pithy and concise language, and set to a relentless beat that almost grooves. ‘Night’ begins with Callahan’s hushed vocal set against a lone piano playing a deceptively simple figure slightly reminiscent of REM’s ‘Nightswimming’ – the effect is haunting. There’s also the pleasingly autumnal ‘Sycamore’, with its intertwining guitars, which, to my ears at least, seem slightly out of tune with each other, perhaps intentionally. The all-inclusive closer ‘A Man Needs A Woman or a Man To Be A Man’ emulates the scratchy shuffle of Carl Perkins or Scotty Moore, and features some quite wonderful lyrics. Callahan describes a feminine room, with its ‘legacy of good’ before proceeding to confess that ‘I’m not sure I can uphold it on my own’. The song is brimming with startling firework imagery (‘fireworks are wasted during the day/but I set them off anyway’, ‘and when it’s good and dark/The sky a wet black, like the earth has turned’) and the arrangement swells brilliantly.

Callahan has never been the most melodic of writers, and it’s possible that his half-spoken baritone will remain too much of an acquired taste for the unconverted. Nevertheless, ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’, whilst perhaps more conventional than anything else he’s recorded, is surely in the upper tier of his catalogue – both warm and cerebral, as romantic as it is mordant.

Jogging The Memory: Feist's 'The Reminder'

This isn't a full review, as I've not heard the whole album yet, but I've spent part of this evening listening to a sampler of what looks to be an outstanding second album from Feist. The slow burning popularity of debut 'Let It Die', at least in part due to the appearance of 'Mushaboom' in an ubiquitous advert (but can I remember what the hell it was advertising? No!), might have paved the way for Feist to drift comfortably into the middle of the road.

The opening track on the sampler, and the album's first single ('My Moon My Man'), suggests otherwise. It's pure pop - with its stomping pianos and sultry, expressive vocals. Simultaneously groovy, sexy and seductive, it's one of the the finest singles of the year so far. It also has an absolutely irresistible twangy guitar break. Collaborating with Gonzales, Jamie Lidell and Mocky on this album has predictably directed Feist towards more sophisticated textures and arrangements - much as I like Broken Social Scene, this is about as far away from their sound as it's possible to get.

The five tracks on this disc neatly encapsulate the diversity at the heart of 'The Reminder' - each track takes a radically different approach, but coherence is achieved through the distinctive tones of Feist's vocals and the emphasis on melody. '1234' is also brilliant - another pure pop song for sure, but one that dares to feature banjo and brass without drifting into folk pastiche. It sounds fresh and exciting, and also features some splendid honky tonk piano (presumably from the talented Gonzales).

'Sealion' built on a sample of a Nina Simone chant, has relentless rhythmic drive and an infectious energy that is sure to be a highlight of this month's live shows. It's propelled by layered handclaps, vocals and, again, some superb twangy guitar playing. 'I Feel It All' is similarly joyous, but perhaps a little more conventional in its arrangement, characterised more by strumming guitars this time. It's the layering of the vocals that works superbly here, and when they are set against the delicate chime of a glockenspiel, the effect is particularly charming. The dreamy romanticism of 'The Park', apparently inspired by London's open spaces, is enchanting and its acoustic rustles and plucks work a subtle, spacey magic. I'm not entirely convinced by the birdsong backdrop though - that seems like a rather obvious and unnecessary flourish.

Feist has juxtaposed a vast array of influences with real panache here, creating an amalgam that sounds exciting and intriguing, all dominated by her vocals, which are stronger and more creative here than on 'Let It Die'. Sadly, this sampler does not reveal whether there are any inspired interpretations to rival her take on The Bee Gees 'Inside and Out' or Ron Sexsmith's 'Secret Heart'. It's clear, however, that she has more than enough inspiration of her own this time around. Slowly but surely, Leslie Feist seems to be drifting into serious artistic and creative territory - there's plenty of evidence here to suggest that she could become as singular and unusual a female talent as Bjork. Can't wait for the Shepherd's Bush Empire show now!

Against The Grain: Subtle Shifts from Kings of Leon and Low

When I interviewed Kings of Leon at Glastonbury 2003, they proved themselves tedious and frustrating interviewees. Barely able to get more than cursory one word answers out of them, I concluded that they probably had little of interest to say anyway. Admittedly, this probably was not helped by the fact that I was directed to limit my questioning to the festival (by my people not theirs!), but I couldn’t escape the view that they set out deliberately to obfuscate their unwitting and inexperienced interrogator. Their set, extraordinarily second only to the headliners (I think it was Oasis that night), did little more to convince me of their value. Debuting new material, but with little passion or conviction, they sounded tired, and already bored with that terribly unpleasant business of playing music to over 100,000 people.

Much has happened in the intervening years to force me into changing my mind. The album that followed that perfunctory Glastonbury set (‘Aha Shake Heartbreak’) turned out to be a vast improvement on their debut, channelling the spirit of Southern country rock with an electric charge drawn straight from the blues. The focus became less on the media spin (their supposed family status, their preacher father, the mysterious Angelo, who may or may not be the creative force behind the band) and more on the kinetic music they were creating, at last justifying the blitz of hype.

Again produced by Ethan Johns (also responsible for Ryan Adams’ ‘Heartbreaker’ among other substantial works) and the aforementioned Angelo, ‘Because of the Times’, poor grammar of the title notwithstanding, is another big step forward. The group have succeeded here in creating a big rock album, inspired as much by The Pixies as Led Zeppelin or Lynyrd Skynyrd, that sounds organic and fresh whilst remaining steeped in the rich history of rock and roll.

Real attention has been paid to the sound of this record. Although it’s still based firmly on a raw, ‘live band’ template, there’s plenty of attention to detail in the arrangements. Guitar lines are carefully interwoven, and the bulk of the songs are built on the sturdy foundations of Jared and Nathan Followill’s crisp basslines and strangely funky drumming. Also used to its full capacity as an instrument is the gritty voice of Caleb Followill which, increasingly versatile in its impact, ranges from the sincerely affecting to the caustic and visceral. Even though his lyrics sometimes seem like a string of bizarre non-sequiturs, he manages to twist the words into powerful and compelling vignettes.

There’s also a surprising level of diversity in the music, and a handful of the songs require a few listens before they really take root. There’s the slow-burning epic opener ‘Knocked Up’, which along with the crunching single ‘On Call’ and ‘Trunk’ deploys atmospherics effectively. ‘Knocked Up’ also veers quite brilliantly between it’s minimal, brooding verses and its powerful, extrovert choruses. Perhaps most unexpected of all is the deliciously groovy ‘My Party’, which quite comfortably beats the likes of Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys at their own wiry, angular game. The explosive ‘Charmer’ is a direct hotline to The Pixies’ ‘Debaser’, although it comes across as homage rather than copycat plagiarism. The superbly titled ‘McFearless’ is both relentless and compelling.

Lyrically, Caleb still devises some peculiar and occasionally uncomfortable metaphors (I particularly like ‘Girl, you’re wanted like a wanted man’ and ‘she shakes like the morning railway’) – perhaps he’s still trying to be a little too clever. When he’s direct, the results are much better. ‘True Love Way’ is a blistering account of frustrated lust (‘She’s a cold one and it hurts me so/ It’s a dark path and a heavy toll’), and, by way of contrast, the protagonist of ‘Black Thumbnail’, whilst deeply affected by beauty, seems afraid of love (‘my cold cold sailor heart says get on your way/I ain’t too proud to say but that’s how I’m made/I’ll be that person til my dying day/I try so awful hard but I can’t change’). Best of all is ‘Knocked Up’ which, as many other commentators have observed, seems like the masculine counterpart to Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, with its young lovers determined to keep their child.

There certainly seems to be much more depth here than on the previous albums, both lyrically and musically. KoL seem to be that rare breed of band – in an era where the earth shattering debut album seems to be all or nothing, and where time is most definitely not on a band’s side, they are slowly maturing and coming good.

Perhaps only the most ardent of Low fans will jump for joy at the prospect of yet another album from this most regular and dependable of bands. Like its predecessor (‘The Great Destroyer’), ‘Drums and Guns’ comes with plenty of talk of a change in direction. The last album actually heralded nothing of the sort, it was simply a heavier, louder take on the same furrow Low have been ploughing for years. ‘Drums and Guns’ arguably offers much more in the way of surprises. Whilst it retains the key elements of Low’s trademark sound – the stark minimalism, the stately tempos and the mellifluous harmonies from Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker (it’s hard to think of two other voices in the contemporary pop landscape that connect so beautifully with each other)- it also adds striking new elements . There are delicate electronic percussion interventions, ambient sound, and a variety of keyboards that shift the emphasis away from rudimentary beaten toms and strumming guitars.

‘Drums and Guns’ is certainly a grower, which coming from a group that is slow burning at the best of times may not exactly be a selling point. The majority of Low albums do have some moments of real immediacy though – a ‘Just Like Christmas’, ‘Dinosaur Act’ or ‘That’s How You Sing Amazing Grace’, for instance. There’s nothing remotely comparable here. It’s not helped by the fact that it starts terribly, with ‘Pretty People’ pitting Sparhawk and Parker against a rather uninteresting backdrop of mundane droning feedback. ‘All the soldiers are gonna die/All the little babes, they’re all gonna die’ they sing, rather portentously, suggesting that ‘Drums and Guns’ will wear its theme of a violent and corrupt world rather obviously on its sleeve (the inlay even features arty photographs of, well, drums…and guns).

Mercifully, things get a lot better very quickly. ‘Belarus’ and ‘Breaker’ are two of Low’s quirkiest tracks to date, and given that the entire album is helmed by Dave Fridmann (who has certainly been guilty of superficiality in some of his previous productions), it’s remarkable how subtle and effective the electronics are here. They add an additional layer of mystery and intrigue to this sombre and reflective music. ‘Dragonfly’ is elegant and haunting, as the group so often are. The work that these tracks most remind me of is REM’s criminally underrated ‘Up’, where the band found a new texture and context for their melodic and harmonic sensibilities. The arrival of new bassist Matt Livingston also seems to have heralded a greater reliance on lower tones and pulsating bass lines.

The two most striking tracks are ‘Always Fade’ and ‘Hatchet’, not least because they represent the closest this defiantly slow group has ever come to producing something uptempo. The latter, with its punctuating guitar figures, brazenly melodic vocals and stuttering beat even reminds me a little of Hot Chip circa ‘Coming on Strong’.

Although there is a somewhat murky period after the shock of ‘Hatchet’ (where individual songs do seem to blur into one a little) the album does coalesce both thematically and musically as it progresses. What emerges by the superb conclusion (‘Murderer’ and ‘Violent Past’ are both album highlights) is a sinister, downbeat and very pessimistic world view, both personal and political. ‘Murderer’ is a particularly striking song in the current climate, with its protagonist offering one last service to God ‘before I go’, suggesting ‘you may need a murderer to do your dirty work’. It’s powerful and edgy.

This album seems to have divided opinion as to whether it’s one of the group’s more challenging or accessible ventures, which is odd, given that it clearly can’t be both. I feel it’s comfortably the most difficult of their recent albums, and probably closer in spirit to ‘Trust’ than ‘Secret Name’ or ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’. It is frequently audacious though, where Low albums tend to stick to their very particular comfort zone. They are now finding new ways to sustain a long-term musical career, and ‘Drums and Guns’ is characterised by a new boldness and confrontational vision.