Journey To The Margins Part 1

This is going to become a big multiple post catching up on some of the more unusual and esoteric sounds I’ve been immersing myself in this year. My musical tastes are continually expanding, particularly as I get further alienated by the focus of the mainstream music press and radio on generic guitar music that I’ve heard several hundred times before. I still value great songwriters as artists, as my previous few posts have explicitly stated, but I grew up with traditions of instrumental music, particularly jazz, and I’ve been building on these foundations with more ambitious and abstract listening habits of late.

I’ve particularly been meaning to write about David Torn’s remarkable ‘Prezens’ album for some time but have struggled to find words or even concepts that adequately capture its artistry. This is Torn’s first album as bandleader for the ECM label in twenty years, and what a remarkable group he has assembled for these sessions. With New York free improvising legend Tim Berne on saxophone, the in-demand Craig Taborn on keys and world class drummer Tom Rainey, this is a prime example of fascinating music drawn from collective improvisation. The pieces are all comprised from recordings of group sessions, to which Torn has added electronics and manipulated the structures. The resulting sound is nearly impossible to classify, although there are identifiable elements drawn from the free jazz tradition, fusion, heavy metal and electronica.

There is a striking attention to detail, and Torn’s emphasis is as much on mood, texture and sound as it is on technical virtuosity. Many guitarists these days use effects, processing and live sampling to manipulate their sound, but few have done this with as much success and originality as Torn achieves here. His own playing is frequently subsumed not just by the overall atmosphere but also by the group’s rampant and celebratory hard grooving. When he eventually comes to the foreground, it’s with a searing, excoriating force. More generally, there are times (particularly on the lengthy ‘Structural Functions Of Prezens’ and ‘Bulbs’) when the listener is hypnotically lulled into a false sense of security before the music explodes with dizzying, calamitous abandon. At its most extreme, the music is quite extraordinary in its lack of respect for classification. ‘Sink’ begins with a dirty groove that could almost be described as funky, before becoming increasingly abstract, with Berne exploiting the highest registers of his instrument. Rainey is simply superb throughout, delivering rhythms that are frequently breathtaking in their intricacy and invention.

It would be easy to overstate this record’s strangeness or ‘otherness’ but also essential to its impact is a very deep and ingrained understanding of the blues. This can be heard even in the album’s most deconstructionist moments. The opening ‘AK’ for example, is closely in touch with American blues traditions. Amidst all the clatter and clamour there is actually a very recognisable beating heart. In a year when the ECM is truly excelling itself, this may be their most significant release.

Bassist and composer Scott Colley has established himself as a major played in the New York jazz scene (he also features prominently on Kenny Werner’s rather strange ‘Lawn Chair Society’ album), but has been somewhat overlooked so far here in the UK. There’s a very peculiar review of the ‘Architect of the Silent Moment’ album over on allaboutjazz.com that I find rather baffling. It argues that this music emphasises individual virtuosity over melodic accessibility. I have to confess that I was initially most struck by this album’s accessibility – the rhythm section is subtle but compelling, and the harmonised melodies seem to me to be attractive and mostly immediate in their impact. There’s an impressive reworking of Andrew Hill’s ‘Smoke Stack’, but everything else is a Colley original, and he already seems to have established some kind of signature sound. There’s no denying the improvisational chops of the individual group members (including Craig Taborn again, outstanding trumpeter Ralph Alessi and the exquisite Jason Moran guesting on piano), but there’s also a thematic quality to all of these pieces. It might be fair to argue that the rhythm section are sometimes too content to provide backing and don’t always converse as equals with the soloists, but this isn’t a consistent problem throughout. The record is best when making full use of the talents of Moran, especially as the contrast in styles between his piano and Taborn’s unpredictable, angular keyboard interruptions is powerful and arresting. There’s more to come from Colley for sure, but this is a pretty impressive calling card.

My Mercury musings of the past few days have already indicated that I’m genuinely impressed by the much hyped self titled debut from Fraud. This is frequently odd, discomforting and original music, dominated not just by joyous and disrespectful improvising, but also by outrageously crisp rhythm playing.

The band have a particularly novel line-up, deploying two drummers. This would seem like enough for most bands, but when one of those drummers is the immensely creative, chattery and fidgety Tim Giles (one of the best drummers on the London jazz circuit at present), it’s clear that this was always going to be a highly percussive record. Luckily, Fraud achieve this in a refreshingly unconventional way – there’s little sign of tedious drum battling or aggression – the group instead prefer to seek out the full range of sounds both from drum kits and from electronic percussion. They also use a baritone guitarist, but no bassist, which imbues the music with extra space and freedom.

The compositions frequently turn the conventions of group playing upside down, frequently beginning with abstract exposition before coalescing into more conventional rhythm-directed hard riffing. Saxophonist James Allsopp plays with a tone that is defiantly gritty and harsh, sometimes even intentionally nasty. The group also make considered use of keyboard and electronic textures.

It’s a peculiar clattering noise, but it’s not all fast and furious, and frequently there’s an obvious group dynamic at work. The closing ‘Mystery Box’ is as close as the group get to a conventional ballad, resembling as it does Charles Mingus’ ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, but it feels otherworldly and disorientating rather than melancholy, haunting or beautiful.

This inventive, fearless but ultimately enjoyable album gives further evidence of the brilliant health of British jazz right now.

My Mercury musings also directed me towards two albums on the wonderful Type label from 2006 that had sadly passed me by at the time. ‘The Dead Sea’ by Xela is simply superb, a compelling blend of drones, abstractions, guitar pluckings and strange percussive sounds that is both mysterious and riveting. Its central image of being lost at sea is powerful and terrifying, and the closing ‘Never Going Home’ concludes the set on a palpably bleak and resigned note. The use of seamless segues between the compositions makes the work feel like a complete and carefully structured whole, with subtle variations in texture providing shape and transition. It’s strongly influenced by the techniques of sound collage, and the shifting layers of noise are both cerebrally and emotionally affecting.

‘Coins and Crosses’ by Ryan Teague is an impressive offering in an increasingly fashionable sub-genre that sees contemporary composition merge with electronic experimentation. I’m not sure there’s anything particularly audacious in the compositional techiniques that Teague deploys, and the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra is mostly used to rather conventional effect. Teague has supposedly been strongly influenced by early sacred music, and as a result there are times when this album sounds very close to the much more successful spiritual works of Arvo Part. Still, the electronic sounds are successfully subsumed within the greater whole rather than overpowering the traditional textures, and there are some achingly beautiful melodies that flow effortlessly at the core of this music. This is more likely to offer inspiration to other electro-acoustic musicians than to establish Teague as a major composer in his own right, but it’s undoubtedly a pleasure to hear.

An Alternative Mercury Shortlist

OK, I've made some predictions and selections, now I've thought of my ideal alternative shortlist. Please note that I'm actually pleased at the nominations for Amy Winehouse and Basquiat Strings, but I didn't want this list to overlap in any way with the official one, so neither are included here. Also, I don't go for tokenism, so I haven't restricted myself to one jazz entry.

1.Broken Family Band - Hello Love (superior guitar based indie-pop - only those completely ignorant of musical history would take The View over this gem).
2.Fraud - Fraud (very impressive debut, some gritty improv and hard riffing)
3.Finn Peters - Su-Ling (deliciously swinging)
4.Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur (atmospheric, subtle, evocative)
5. Dani Siciliano - Slappers (inventive production, clever songs)
6. Alasdair Roberts - The Amber Gatherers (warm and affecting Scottish folk)
7. Xela - The Dead Sea (innovative use of sound and texture, very striking, disturbing in places)
8. Jeremy Warmsley - The Art Of Fiction (independent, bedroom-produced pop)
9. Curios - Hidden (The Art of the Trio)
10.Ryan Teague - Coins and Crosses (intriguing mix of very early and very contemporary influences, passed me by last September unfortunately)
11.The Long Blondes - Someone To Drive You Home (more superior indie-pop)
12. Kode 9 and Spaceape - Memories of the Future (intoxicating, strange, disorientating, dubby)

Two Extremes: Steely Dan and Daniel Johnston In Concert

It would be difficult to watch two more different gigs consecutively than Steely Dan at the Hammersmith Apollo and Daniel Johnston at The Union Chapel. The former came with predictable musical virtuosity, as well as tremendous clarity of sound and execution astounding in its precision and accuracy. The latter was raw and untutored, unashamedly vulnerable and brilliantly moving.

Steely Dan haven’t visited the UK in a while, and this time they brought an ensemble that Walter Becker has repeatedly described as the best group they’ve yet assembled. This is without doubt a bold claim, but with the dexterous, driving drumming of the tremendous Keith Carlock and a particularly intricate horn section, there’s plenty of evidence to support this.

Certainly this was a much better show than the Wembley Arena performance I caught a few years ago. The advance publicity had lead me to expect plenty of recent material, including Donald Fagen solo tracks and some premieres of new work from Becker’s forthcoming second solo album. In fact, there was none of this, the band instead offering a shrewdly selected set of material ‘delving back into the deep 70s’.

The presentation was tremendous, with the band arriving onstage to open with a deeply swinging jazz groove to usher Becker and Fagen to the stage. Fagen played melodica for the first few tracks, which was a nice touch, and a refreshing change from his usual key-tar. ‘Time Out Of Mind’ made for a neat opener, metronomically groovy but with one of their most infectious melodies.

They only play two tracks from the past decade – an engaging, clattering ‘Two Against Nature’ and a tightly controlled rendition of ‘Godwhacker’. Much of the rest of the set focused on their golden period of transition (from 1974’s Katy Lied through to 1977’s Aja) – when they began to move from the fixed line-up and freewheeling multi-genre spirit of the early albums towards a more perfectionist adherence to strict time and jazz charts. In recent years, this perfectionism has proved stifling – with both studio and live bands forced to play rigidly composed lines with little free reign. Mercifully, this ethos has been at least partially abandoned for this tour. Becker and Fagen employed Musical Director and the horn charts particularly were meticulously arranged but they also left plenty of space for dynamic soloing and the horn players trade lines as if their lives depended on it (in fact, they probably did – Becker and Fagen are notoriously tricky taskmasters).

The show was testament to the duo’s longstanding writing talents, both as musical arrangers and as storytellers, with their surreal, hyper-literate tales of geeks, hipsters, drug dealers and outsiders. They also delivered plenty of laconic, dry humour too. Becker brings the volume right down during ‘Hey Nineteen’ to address the audience (‘it’s a lovely midsummer evening, and the last place you really want to be is at a Steely Dan show – you’d rather be on the banks of the river, with a beautiful lady…’). When Becker introduces the band towards the show’s conclusion, he introduces his partner in crime as ‘composer, pianist, songwriter, visionary and raconteur’. He may well be all these things but he still has the worst posture at an electric piano that I’ve ever seen.

Highlights included a stunning recreation of ‘Aja’, complete with Keith Carlock’s thrilling and visceral take on the infamous Steve Gadd drum solo. It’s also hard to overstate the audience’s delight when the band encored with ‘FM’, a genuinely surprising populist gesture. It sounded superbly slinky. ‘Chain Lightning’ is rendered as a particularly dirty blues, whilst ‘Bad Sneakers’ and ‘Kid Charlemagne’ made for pleasing curveball selections. The show also benefited greatly from variety, with Becker taking the lead vocal on ‘Haitian Divorce’ (with ample irony) and one of the backing vocalists taking lead vocal duties on a richly soulful, gospel-tinged version of ‘Dirty Work’ (one of the few forays into the earlier catalogue, there was no ‘Do It Again’, ‘Bodhisattva’ or ‘Reelin’ In The Years’ this time round). The closing ‘My Old School’ was particularly satisfying. The man sitting next to me simply could not resist the temptation to play air drums.

Daniel Johnston, by complete contrast, is not a musician’s musician. His vocal pitching is wavering and uncertain, his guitar and piano playing both lack any recognisable sign of technique or training, and his sense of time is so wayward as to be non-existent. His songs deploy only very limited harmony, often written in the same key and using the same three or four chords.

It’s not difficult to explain his extraordinary appeal though. His songs are among the most simple, direct and breathtakingly honest testaments in the modern pop landscape. They are frequently heartbreaking, and clearly a form of solace for the extreme emotional and mental anguish he has suffered throughout his life. He is endearingly childlike, but this also imbues him with a pithy wisdom completely absent from more self-conscious and verbose singer-songwriters. Sometimes watching him feels intensely voyeuristic – is it right to enjoy these manifestations of one man’s personal torment?

On the evidence of this outstanding show, the answer to that question is definitely a firm yes. What really shines through at the Union Chapel is Johnston’s underlying sense of hope and positivity. His songs address difficult issues, from unrequited love to his artistic and personal battles against depression (the quite brilliant ‘Story of An Artist’). Yet there is also real warmth at the heart of his work, particularly evident in the tender piano ballad ‘Love Enchanted’ and the unashamedly sentimental ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’.

There is real musicality to this performance too though, mostly due to the carefully structured nature of the show. Johnston arrives onstage to mass applause, beginning with a handful of solo performances, before inviting special guests James Yorkston and Adem to accompany him on a fascinating range of instruments (Adem plays mandolin and harmonium, whilst Yorkston gets an extraordinarily rich sound from his acoustic guitar). Johnston does his best to throw his accompanists off track, but they do an admirable job in keeping him true. They deliver spirited versions of ‘Casper The Friendly Ghost’ and ‘Walking The Cow’, amongst other songs from throughout the Johnston catalogue.

There’s then a short break before Johnston returns with another guitarist, introduced as a friend from the ‘songs of pain’ era. There’s then another short set where Johnston is backed by a full band, a surprisingly successful venture into conventional musicality.

Johnston is characteristically nervous and self effacing throughout, but there’s also a real sense of conviction underneath it all. He shakes consistently and violently, so much so that John Kell and I wondered whether he now had a physically degenerative disease to add to his other problems, but apparently the shakes are side effects from taking lithium. He sustains his extraordinary gift for communication throughout the show and he remains a prime example of how untrained musicians can break free from academic, formal preconceptions of what constitutes great art. Music shouldn’t exist purely for musicians – it should speak to everyone. Johnston achieves this with quiet dignity and integrity. In baring his soul so unreservedly, he challenges us to look more closely at ourselves.

Mercury Shortlist Announced

So here it is....

Young Knives
Bat For Lashes
Jamie T
Klaxons
The View
Amy Winehouse
Basquiat Strings feat. Seb Rochford
Dizzee Rascal
New Young Pony Club
Maps
Fionn Regan
Arctic Monkeys

First of all, I'm genuinely delighted for Ben, Emma, Seb and the rest of Basquiat Strings - the album is excellent and deserves to win, but it almost certainly won't. I'm surprised there's no space here for Cinematic Orchestra, The Long Blondes or Bloc Party (and the observational lyrics on The Long Blondes album are surely at least the equal of Alex Turner). Much as I like Dizzee Rascal, that album is not the best example of British grime/hip-hop/dubstep etc - Wiley, kode 9 and spaceape and Skream! albums all superior.

It's actually a rather strange list, inevitably skewed in favour of acts with the full benefit of the corporate and PR machines (so no Jeremy Warmsley, Twilight Sad, Fridge, Broken Family Band, Flipron, Fraud or Curios), yet with some curious choices - the likes of Maps and Fionn Regan etc have hardly made much impact on the record buying public, have they?

There used to be a handful of selections of real insight on the Mercury shortlists (even last year with Polar Bear, Hot Chip and Scritti Politti on the list) - this may be the worst shortlist to date for recognising artistic invention and innovation.

I would say it's probably between Amy Winehouse and Klaxons, with Bat For Lashes as a good outsider's bet.

More Mercury....

Thanks to DJ Martian for, as usual, being the most comprehensive person on the web and constructing this list of albums eligible for the prize (if their respective record labels have put up the cash to enter them of course).

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/djmartian/mercury_music_prize_2007_eligibility

I missed the outstanding Finn Peters and Tom Arthurs albums out of my list of jazz contenders and it also strikes me that Julie Fowlis must be an almost dead cert if there's a token folk nomination. I hadn't realised that the outstanding guitarist and composer James Blackshaw was British - that would be a wonderful selection, as would Ryan Teague's excellent Coins and Crosses which sadly passed me by last September. I'd completely forgotten Acoustic Ladyland's Skinny Grin, a real possibility given that the judges ignored the far superior Last Chance Disco last year in favour of Polar Bear's excellent but, at the time, less well known Held On The Tips Of Fingers album. If they look to recognise the achievement of Seb Rochford again - there's also Fulborn Teversham as well. They're also bound to nominate the ludicrously overrated New Young Pony Club and Simian Mobile Disco too I suspect, particularly as those albums are still so fresh in the mind.

DJ Martian also includes The Tuss, the mysterious act which may or may not actually be the Aphex Twin. Is this a full length album or an EP? I've not picked it up yet - note to self that I must do so ASAP. I also had no idea that Xela were a British act - The Dead Sea is outstanding! Looking at this list DJ Martian has so carefully compiled, it's clear that British music really is incredibly healthy at the moment - it's just that our beloved music critics, who are paid to sort the wheat from the chaff, simply have no idea where to look right now!

Anyway, within about half an hour, we'll know the shortlist.

I'm One Step Ahead Of The Game...

Oh dear, the NME has come up with a truly ghastly list of possible Mercury nominations:

Candie Payne - 'I Wish I Could Have Loved You More'
Jarvis Cocker - 'Jarvis'
Jamie T - 'Panic Prevention'
Arctic Monkeys - 'Favourite Worst Nightmare'
Amy Winehouse - 'Back To Black'
Klaxons - 'Myths Of The Near Future'
Gruff Rhys - 'Candylion'
Razorlight - 'Razorlight'
Dizzee Rascal - 'Maths & English'
Editors - 'An End Has A Start'
The Cribs - 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever'
Maps - 'We Can Create'
The Enemy - 'We'll Live And Die in These Towns'
The View - 'Hats Off To The Buskers'
The Twang - 'Love It When I Feel Like This'
Bat For Lashes - 'Fur And Gold'
Cherry Ghost - 'Thirst For Romance'
Kasabian - 'Empire'
Mika - 'Life In Cartoon Motion'
Patrick Wolf - 'The Magic Position'
The Chemical Brothers - 'We Are The Night'
Joss Stone - 'Introducing Joss Stone'
1990s - 'Cookies'
Kaiser Chiefs - 'Yours Truly Angry Mob'
Calvin Harris - 'I Created Disco'
Just Jack - 'Overtones'

Well, credit to them for remembering Patrick Wolf and Bat For Lashes, both of which had slipped my mind - but the rest of it? The Enemy, The View, The Twang, The Cribs - not only is there a common theme in the lack of imagination in their monikers, there's also a common thread in their complete lack of musical inspiration. British guitar music is currently in the worst state it's ever been in during my lifetime if this is the best we have to offer the world. I couldn't really resent a nomination for Jarvis, even if that album was nowhere near as good as I'd hoped. Pitiful copyists Editors can go home, as can the ludicrously overrated Joss Stone. Calvin Harris' embarrassing appropriation of electro-pop merely has novelty value - it can't possibly win a major prize, can it? I'm also wondering if the surprisingly well received Happy Mondays comeback album might sneak a nomination, even if the public don't seem to care for it.

The Usual Pointless Predicting...

According to the Mercury Music Prize website, the nominations for the 2007 award are being announced tomorrow morning. Does anyone actually care this year? The publicity campaign seems to have been almost non-existent.

I'm going to stick my neck out and predict a nomination, and probable victory for Amy Winehouse and 'Back to Black'. I just can't see the award going to yet another tedious and derivative indie record this year, but I usually get these things hopelessly wrong - and Klaxons would also be a highly predictable winner.

It's highly unlikely that Arctic Monkeys will win two years in a row, but I can't see 'Favourite Worst Nightmare' not at least scoring a nomination. I'd also suggest that Dizzee Rascal is likely to get another nomination for the patchy, but occasionally brilliant 'Maths and English'. I'd be surprised if The Long Blondes and Cinematic Orchestra's slow burning triumph 'Ma Fleur' weren't nominated too, the latter being a strong outsider's bet to win.

The real competition this year is for the token jazz nomination, British jazz being in particularly good health at the moment. John Surman, Abram Wilson, Soweto Kinch, Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Cawley's Curios must all be possible contenders. Even more plausible, however, are the superficially skronky Led Bib and the genuinely superb Fraud. I'd like to see the latter win the prize.

Other artists I'd like to see nominated - The Twilight Sad, Jeremy Warmsley, Kode 9 and Spaceape, Skream!, Wiley, Flipron, Broken Family Band (did Track and Field put up the cash for 'Hello Love' to make the longlist?), Basquiat Strings, Fridge, Dani Siciliano, Alasdair Roberts.

Bloc Party's 'A Weekend In The City' took a pretty harsh critical lambasting - will the Mercury Judges see any merit in it?

It's all pointless anyway, how often does the best British album of the year actually win this award?

High As Any Saviour: Iron and Wine's Trapeze Swinger

Back in late 2006, when I went to see Iron and Wine play with Calexico at London’s Forum, Sam Beam played a song that immediately struck me as a masterwork. It sounded unfamiliar to me then, so I assumed it was a forthcoming track, and since then I’d been unable to track it down (all I remembered was a haunting melody and a lyric about the ‘pearly gates’). Thanks largely to The Hype Machine, surely one of the web’s very best music resources, I’ve managed to identify it as ‘The Trapeze Swinger’. It’s an epic, sprawling, highly evocative song dense with surreal allusion that appeared on Iron and Wine’s ‘Such Great Heights’ EP from 2004, a release that completely passed me by at the time. The title track from the EP is a melancholic acoustic reversion of The Postal Service song, but it’s really Beam’s own song that best encapsulates his considerable talents.

‘The Trapeze Swinger’ provides further evidence that Beam may be the best lyricist currently at work in American music. His style is distinctive and he is a superb manipulator of language, mostly abandoning conventions in favour of unusual imagery and uncomfortable juxtapositions of ideas. It’s somehow fitting that Beam originally intended to pursue a career as a cinematographer. The song’s lyric is tightly structured, with each verse beginning with the line ‘Please, remember me…’, but the large number of verses and peculiar flow leave plenty of space for free-flowing expression perhaps influenced by stream of consciousness writers.

As a result, there’s also plenty of room for interpretation as to the song’s meaning, although it would appear to ostensibly be about an ageing man reflecting on a more youthful relationship that turned sour, and regretting its failure. The song’s central metaphor is that the fleeting, precarious, and razor sharp danger of a trapeze act seems to reflect the fragile nature of relationships. The trapeze swinger also perhaps symbolises the unique power a song can have – it may be over in minutes, but it can linger in the mind with clarity and conviction. It’s such a simple notion that it’s a wonder nobody seems to have really explored it before – certainly not in such a haunting and moving fashion anyway.

The words effortlessly meld descriptions of vivid dreams and ‘real’ memories, rich in particular detail (Halloween face painting, counting passing cars etc), perhaps verifying Australian writer Patrick White’s contention that ‘there can be little to chose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality’ (there can be little doubt that Beam is strongly influenced by great novelists, perhaps more so than by other lyricists – William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy would also seem obvious reference points). The strange line ‘please remember me, as in the dream we had as rug-burned babies’ seems particularly extraordinary, as if this was a relationship destined to happen from birth, but also somehow doomed to fail. There’s a peculiar, powerful fatalism at the heart of Beam’s work. There’s also intelligent wordplay (the subtle reminiscing of an intimate encounter in ‘the car behind the carnival’) and striking imagery (the line that stuck in my mind about the pearly gates having ‘such eloquent graffiti’)

Beam’s protagonist in ‘The Trapeze Swinger’ seems almost crippled by regret, but the song concludes on an ambiguous ray of light. If he ever does reach the pearly gates, the protagonist will redeem himself (‘I’ll do my best to make a drawing/of God and Lucifer, a boy and girl/An angel kissin’ on a sinner….all around the frightened Trapeze Swinger’). This final line is central to the song’s impact – even the daring Trapeze Swinger is as vulnerable as any other individual human, fundamentally uncertain of how to judge difficult situations.

There’s an obvious musical criticism that can be levelled against ‘The Trapeze Swinger’. It is based on one very brief, perhaps even insubstantial, melodic theme repeated over and over again for the song’s (reasonably lengthy) duration. There is no dynamic variation whatsoever and no distinction between verse and chorus. The song simply journeys on until it has reached its final meditation. The sweet, delicate harmonised backing vocals that open the track underpin Beam’s beautifully understated performance throughout. Yet this approach is precisely how the song achieves its remarkable power – it feels like a compelling, unstoppable story, twisting and turning but never quite veering from its consistent path.

The music also rewards close attention considerably – this is a defiantly subtle and brilliantly executed arrangement, whereby different instruments and figures slip in and out in an intelligent and unobtrusive manner. Sometimes it’s slide guitar punctuations that occupy the foreground, at others it’s upright walking bass. Towards the end, the bass drops out, its role assumed by the left hand of the piano. Beam also adds some subtle electronics that fill out the texture a little. All this helps to give Beam’s musings additional power, highlighting key lines and ideas whilst sustaining a particular mood. With ‘The Trapeze Swinger’, Beam appears to have achieved something akin to an American Folk Minimalism – and in its own way, this is a strikingly original record whilst simultaneously rustic and traditional.

This is a great song about the overwhelming burden of memory that also hints at how retrospect can often stifle us. It shouldn’t be left to languish in obscurity as an additional track on a very under-promoted EP.

Winning and Losing in Love: The Broken Family Band

This year I have been very absorbed in a range of instrumental music (especially the likes of Battles, Supersilent, David Torn, John Surman, Fraud and Tord Gustavsen – much of which I still need to write about here). Some events in my life recently have given me something of an awakening, and jolted me right back to the art of songwriting, particularly the revelatory recent albums from Feist and Bjork, to which I may add some further thoughts soon. Although it’s very different musically from those two scattershot albums, The Broken Family Band’s latest seems to have come along at precisely the right time – and it’s brilliant. It’s a great big slap in the face to anyone who thinks that songwriting is somehow an inferior art form to more studied composition (actually, the two are very much complementary – I can’t listen exclusively to either). It’s harder for me to gather together thoughts and feelings about instrumental music for some reason, which might give evidence for the greater accessibility, perhaps even the greater relevance, of the song for most modern ears. Or maybe it just says that I prefer to marry my love of sound to my love of language. Who knows?

The Broken Family Band’s singer and chief songwriter Steven Adams has written a brave and interesting piece in The Guardian today, explaining his band’s modus operandi. BFB insist on maintaining their regular day jobs in addition to performing in a semi-professional touring group, turning down more opportunities than they accept as a result, and ensuring that their musical endeavours are strictly ‘for fun’. As a jobbing musician with more than one other regular job, I find this really quite inspiring and endearing. It also explains how easy it’s been to take this band for granted when they are actually something genuinely special. They just always seem to be there, quietly working really hard, but mostly somewhere in the background in terms of the more trivial preoccupations of the British music media.

Let’s look at the bare facts, though – ‘Hello Love’ is their fourth full length album, along with two mini albums, in a period of just over five years. This is a remarkably prolific flexing of songwriting muscle by today’s market determined standards – and Adams’ Guardian article is illuminating in capturing how the band’s working methods actually make this easier to achieve. They have managed to create a working environment for themselves in which there is much creative freedom and little burden of pressure. They’ve therefore been able to establish a signature sound without the interference of label budgets or A&R executives, and have carefully refined that sound at a pace that they have dictated entirely by themselves. They are surely the best possible role models for other aspiring young bands with independent spirit, with a body of work that is looking increasingly fit for some sort of longevity.

I’ve been guilty of taking them for granted myself – leaving their recent albums languishing in the lower half of my albums of the year lists because they have usually been flawed in some way. There have been problems with the sequencing, as on ‘Cold Water Songs’, or problems with the finish as with ‘Welcome Home, Loser’. The latter may still be their best collection of songs, but it was slightly spoiled by an Abbey Road gloss which sounded suitably clean but also slightly anaemic. ‘Balls’ returned them very successfully to the rawer, more untamed aspects of their established formula, whilst ‘Hello Love’ positions them somewhere in the middle ground, albeit in a wholly satisfying way.

The sound is much smoother and more polished than on ‘Balls’, but by getting down to business quickly, recording the entire album in just 12 days, the band have managed to capture an energy and enthusiasm to match the uncharacteristic attention to detail in the production. The whole group sounds fantastic, from Mickey Roman’s exuberant drumming to the textural embellishments of Jay Williams and regular guest Timothy Victor. The icing on the cake comes with the deceptively sweet layered backing vocals of Jen Macro, with which the band have liberally seasoned this very fine record.

The most infectious songs here (‘Leaps’, ‘So Many Lovers’, ‘Julian’ ‘Love Your Man, Love Your Woman’) are crisp and clear, with Adams’ voice at last assuming a little more versatility and communicative power. Elsewhere, they expand their musical remit considerably. The closing ‘Seven Sisters’ is a first for the band in that it ambles on for nearly eight minutes, neatly combining reflective country balladry with an aggressive comic punk-thrash coda. ‘Hey Captain!’ sounds slightly less surreal on record than it did live earlier in the year, but I’m still pleasantly baffled by its sudden transition from reflective folk pickings to Mogwai-esque post rock sludge. Somehow, it really works, and it’s great to see the band move beyond the constraints of verse-chorus-verse song structure. Meanwhile, ‘You Get Me’ and ‘Don’t Change Your Mind’ are far less immediate, but have a gradual, almost insidious charm. The latter also has some brilliant lyrics about not being able to sleep naked in case you need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, not a problem normally addressed in the contemporary pop landscape.

In fact, there is an honesty and clarity throughout that may previously have been lost for some listeners amidst the group’s ersatz Americana schtik and shrouds of irony. ‘Leaps’ addresses the subject of sex with admirable candour and positivity, whilst the drumless ‘Give and Take’ (sounding more like something from Adams’ solo outing ‘Problems’) is an exquisitely nasty break-up-and-move-on-song (‘hey, enjoy her body, enjoy her mind/she will take them away from you in her own time’). Best of all is ‘So Many Lovers’, a song that dares to deal with the paradoxes at the heart of relationships (‘lady, I know you think the world of me/but I’m not sure the world agrees, that I can be with you’ – one of Adams’ cleverest lines to date) and comes with a jaunty singalong chorus to which pretty much everyone must be able to relate (‘you should be happy to be among the infinite number of people who have loved and lost/and we’ll all know better next time…’). The relentless chug of ‘Love Your Man, Love Your Woman’ sounds like a rallying cry to forget about all concerns and get on with the simple business of good hard lovin’ (‘so you need peace, security…BUT THAT STUFF’S JUST TEMPORARY!’). Slightly more oblique is ‘Little Justice’, which veers between the tender and the ferocious. Does the central demand for ‘a little justice…bring our lovers home?’ hint at current government foreign policy perhaps? It might be arguable that Adams leaves himself vulnerable to accusations of being earnest here – but his barbed wit and satirical bite are very much still lurking. They prevent lapses into sentimentality, and are more effective now for being the bedrock of his musings rather than the veneer.

It’s great to see a band I used to enjoy in local Cambridge boozers now getting plenty of national press attention and packing out venues the size of Koko, even if the reviews have inevitably been of the ‘quite good’ three-stars-out-of-five-variety. Actually, the more I listen to this record the more I feel that, on this band’s modest terms, it is some kind of masterpiece. BFB don’t aspire to breathtaking originality or breaking musical boundaries – that is simply not their purpose – but here they have produced a set of songs that is ceaselessly thought-provoking, touching and, in the end, uplifting too. Like the band say, it’s just for fun, but that’s the highest possible praise.

This Is Not A Show

If the YouTube material posted here is anything to go by, REM appear to have rediscovered their Mojo:

http://remdublin.com/blog/ethank/2007/07/01/some-videos-were-posted-murmurs

Not that they ever diminished in force as a live band - we have to hope that producer Jacknife Lee doesn't tinker with these songs too much (after all, the man has produced Snow Patrol and the rather tricksy new Bloc Party album). 'Around The Sun' had some fine songs, but had been somewhat studio-neutered.

Still - what with the harder, more attacking sound of the rock tracks here, the lilting shuffle of the ballads, and the 'road-testing' of the material - the template for this new REM album-in-progress would appear to be the quite wonderful 'New Adventures In Hi Fi'. The signs are good. I wish I could have been in Dublin!

Home Cinema!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve finally found some time to rent some DVDs and catch up with some films I had intended to see in the cinema over the last six months or so.

Notes On A Scandal is a frosty, intelligent film elevated by superb central performances from Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett and, especially, Bill Nighy, who makes far more of an underwritten role than might reasonably be expected. Dench revels in her creepy obsessions, both in dramatic, tense on-screen moments and in her manipulative and sinister overdubbed narration. The film (and presumably also its source material, Zoe Heller’s novel) has a sophisticated grasp of its central issues, and remains morally complex throughout. We are not invited to condemn naïve schoolteacher Sheba for her futile affair with an underage schoolboy (although I wonder whether the film would have been this brave had the genders been reversed), neither do we really know whether to detest or pity Judi Dench’s unloved, scheming and controlling obsessive. For me, there were two problems undermining the film though – there are a couple of plot elements that really strain credibility, and whilst certainly dramatic, the film has little in the way of visual invention – ultimately it feels better suited to TV than cinema.

Admirers of the revenge thriller may feel the genre has at last been given a new lease of life by Denis Dercourt’s superbly subtle film The Page Turner. The film is icy and brilliantly restrained. It has only one shocking moment of grizzly violence, but comes with a world of resentment, rage and frustration seething underneath. Deborah Francois, who already proved her acting mettle in the Dardennes brothers’ Palme D’Or winning ‘L’Enfant’, gives an even more sophisticated and meticulously controlled performance here, and with her steely beauty is absolutely sublime casting.

At just 80 minutes in length, here is a rare film with absolutely no excess whatsoever, and where meaning and intent are frequently communicated through glances and unuttered thoughts. I am not sure how intimate the relationship between concert pianists and their page turners generally is, but there’s something utterly convincing about the need for trust and dependence on which this film’s devastating plan hinges. There’s also something plausible in the intense emotions that accompany serious artistry, and in the bitterness that comes with Francois’ character adopting a role she perceives as beneath what was once rightfully hers. Apparently, Dercourt is himself also a musician as well as film-maker, and found how ‘similar the mechanisms of suspense’ were to those of music. He’s extrapolated these similar tensions brilliantly with this film.

Francois’ performance is matched by that of Catherine Frot, vulnerable (and therefore sympathetic in spite of her original injustice) as Ariane Fouchecourt, a renowned concert pianist struggling with confidence and anxiety following an accident. Francois’ Melanie, taking a role as live-in childminder in their stately family home, shocks her out of her hermetic shell, encouraging her to find aspects of herself perhaps previously concealed, whilst all the time scheming and engineering her downfall. Everything hinges on a tragic disappointment in Melanie’s childhood, captured during the film’s prologue, for which Ariane was ultimately responsible. The film deals with many issues surrounding prodigious musical talent – the difficulty in gaining access to formal musical training in a world which is still somewhat elitist, the casual arrogance and insouciance that serious performers sometimes carry with them and the difficulty in sustaining musical brilliance through advanced years and personal trauma. The film’s conclusion is unremittingly nasty, and brilliantly executed, the look of callous and malevolent satisfaction on Melanie’s face providing the icing on the cake.

Gabrielle, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella The Return by that wayward and unpredictable director Patrice Chereau, is another fine and well executed piece of French cinema, although there are moments when it feels self-consciously stagy. The intervention of inter-titles and loud, clamorous classical music under the dialogue are techniques borrowed from silent cinema. I’m not sure they add as much to the picture as Chereau clearly intended, but the two central performances (for the film is essentially a two-person chamber piece) are so superb as to turn these reservations into minor quibbles. Isabelle Huppert is characteristically wonderful as Gabrielle, a sophisticated woman part of a cultured bourgeois set but locked in an entirely loveless marriage with Pascal Greggory’s complacent Jean.

One evening Jean arrives home to find a letter from Gabrielle informing him she has left for another man, but she returns a mere four hours later, confused by conflicting emotions and guilt. The ensuing series of confrontations between the two reveal complex power dynamics within the marriage, suppressed frustration and resentment, considerable self-deception and loathing. Greggory is superb as Jean, who seems to regard emotion as a demeaning excess to be constrained at all costs, almost matching Huppert’s compelling iciness (she is perhaps the only woman alive who could deliver a line like ‘the thought of your sperm inside me repulses me’ and still retain her composure). The period locations are superb, and this modest but successful film appears to have been somewhat overlooked.

Guillermo Del Toro’s acclaimed and popular film Pan’s Labyrinth no doubt works much more effectively on a bigger screen, but it’s easy to see why this has been a rare foreign language film with broad appeal. The attention to detail and spectacular audacity with which Del Toro and his effects team have conjured young Ofelia’s private fantasy world is a marvel to behold. Some have questioned the film’s success in placing a fantasy landscape on an equal footing with an historical one (the film is set during the Spanish Civil War), but it’s worth noting that that the historical element of the film is very much in microcosm, focussing on one Franco-ite compound surrounded by groups of Republican Guerillas. Del Toro doesn’t really attempt to explain the wider context of the Spanish Civil War. In some ways, the private and brutal world of Sergi Lopez’s villainous Vidal is very much a parallel to Ofelia’s escape into the extraordinary underworld. I found Vidal a little caricatured as a tyrant – an evil stepfather capable of barbarous cruelty and unfailingly self-righteous. The fantasy element of the film, which is very much presented as ‘real’ rather than a dream or an illusion, can essentially be reduced to a series of episodic confrontations with bizarre and frequently threatening creatures, and these scenes resonate gloriously in the mind long after the end credits have rolled. There are problems with execution – and the film’s interweaving of alternate worlds is not always entirely successful. Still, I found the film’s conclusion surprisingly moving, and the whole film is dominated by an outstanding performance Ivana Baquero as the intrepid, imaginative Ofelia.

John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus has been somewhat patronisingly dismissed in some quarters as a ‘sex comedy’, with many feeling that it is not as profound as it thinks it is. All I can say is that these critics must be very self-satisfied and smug in their own insights into the mysteries of life (as well as being sexually satiated) as I felt this film had daring, provocative and incisive things to say about private lives. Real sex has now become quite commonplace in movies (although not, it must be conceded, in American cinema), so there’s little offensive or shocking about Shortbus’ inclusion of fellatio (some of it, staggeringly, self-administered), penetration, erections and ejaculation. The scenes could certainly be viewed as pornographic if viewed entirely out of context, but Shortbus is by no means a porn film, as it very carefully plots the tensions and interconnections between its characters’ sexual journeys and their emotional lives. It asks questions about the role of its audience. In much the same way as Michael Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’ satirised movie violence, the film suggests that ‘voyeurism is participation’. As one of the characters films an amateur film intended as a suicide note, we wonder whether this is material we should be watching. In the end, the voyeurism at the heart of the film is proved to be essential, as it is a voyeur character who jolts the movie back to celebrating life.

Whilst move movie sex exists in a world of idealised eroticism and is frequently wholly unconvincing, the sex in Shortbus (both straight and gay) is adventurous, quirky, sometimes absurd, entirely genuine but not necessarily arousing. This not only serves to distance the film from that most obnoxious of genres, the erotic thriller, but also from the pompous, indulgent sexual commentaries of Catherine Breillat. The sub-plot of a frustrated woman (herself ironically a sex therapist) in search of an orgasm may well be a direct reference to Breillat’s infinitely more pretentious ‘Romance’, but mercifully the film has none of the outrageous superiority of ‘Sex is Comedy’ or ‘Anatomy of Hell’, films with which it will inevitably be compared. The latter was particularly offensive in its casual homophobia, arguing not only that all men hate women, but that gay men inevitably hate women more, because of their innate inability to understand the mysteries of female genitalia (personally, I can’t understand anyone, gay or straight, who hates women). Mercifully, Shortbus is less preening and self-conscious in its unpicking of the psychology of sex and sexuality.

The film is certainly very funny, as any film containing such a painfully hilarious demolition of the Jackson Pollock school of painting inevitably must be. It’s the sort of film that can get away with a line like ‘I’m sorry, but I have a vibrating egg between my legs!’. What’s most impressive about the film, aside from the real demands it places on its excellent cast, is the exquisitely moving material it draws from it. Yes, the movie is full of sex, but it is characterised as much by snappy and intelligent dialogue and ingenious editing. Those who dismiss the film suggest that its chief insight is that its characters sex lives and emotional lives are not one and the same thing – but I think it actually achieves far more than this. It is a film that dares to suggest that we often struggle to find what we’re looking for in love and lust, and that when we do find it, it might actually be too heavy a burden for us to bear. The characters are all in some way unfulfilled, whether in relationships or not. The candid ‘dare’ meeting between dominatrix Severin (who hides the fact that she is actually called Jennifer Aniston!) and depressed James in a small cupboard may be the boldest and most moving scene in American cinema since River Phoenix confessed his love for Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho. I’m baffled by those who have argued that the film offers no insight into its characters’ emotions or psychology and in its emphasis on honesty above deception, the film may have a moral centre that even those most offended by its explicitness could perhaps accept.

The film centres around Shortbus parties, polysexual orgiastic dens of hedonism and free love in an underground New York club. The parties revolve around the outrageously camp Master of Ceremonies Justin Bond, who brilliantly undercuts the hedonistic ideal by saying ‘just look at it – it’s like the 60s, but without the hope’. This quite brilliantly sums up the underlying sadness at the heart of the movie, although Cameron Mitchell bravely concludes everything with a ray of light (‘we all get it in the end’).

The film benefits considerably from a superb soundtrack, with incidental music from Yo La Tengo, as well as songs from Animal Collective and The Hidden Cameras (whose Lex Vaughn has a brief acting role). It has a real independent spirit, which has misled the likes of Philip French into dismissing it as ‘amateurish’. It’s actually very carefully put together, with a narrative arc that moves from humorous satire to emotional trauma, before a visually stunning cabaret finale. John Cameron Mitchell has reinvented the ensemble piece with this enjoyable and very clever film.

Would Al Green Please Explain It All?

Oh dear. Some concerts exist largely so that the word ‘disappointing’ can be deployed by anoraks like me. Al Green’s ‘performance’ at the Royal Albert Hall last night was sadly one of them. He certainly set out to entertain – distributing roses to the ladies, embracing the ladies, sinking to his knees in front of the ladies, imploring us to believe in the power of the lawwwd, namechecking great black artists from John Coltrane to Sam Cooke – in fact doing just about anything to avoid getting down to the business of singing his songs.

Opening with a finessed version of ‘I Can’t Stop’ (the title track from his comeback Willie Mitchell-helmed album of a few years ago), it initially looked like all would be well, in spite of his voice seemingly needing a good warm-up. Unfortunately, the title of that song proved thoroughly misleading, as stopping seemed to be Green’s main concern. He was off to Manchester, Birmingham, Paris and Madrid, he kindly informed us, and we were all welcome to follow him. The ladies, of course, deserved to fly. Those in the audience who had paid around £40 for a ticket might well have been more concerned with the performance he should have been delivering in London. For that kind of money, a 60 minute set, with five minutes of build-up from the band at the outset, a further ten minutes of aimless jamming at the end and no encore, is simply expecting too much grace from your audience. Tonight, Al Green took our money and ran.

He performed just one new song from his forthcoming album (featuring collaborations with ?uestlove from The Roots, Alicia Keys and Anthony Hamilton amongst others), seeming to only sing half of it before giving up. He sounded enthused but tetchy during a medley of frustratingly brief snippets of soul classics. He introduced ‘Let’s Stay Together’ as a miracle from God, but then brought out some unforgiveably lame dancers while the band blitzed through the song at twice the appropriate speed. Green’s jacket came off, went back on, came off again and went back on again – and he implored us all to sing with him, the audience and backing singers doing much of the work for the majority of the show. When he actually set his mind to singing, as on a superb ‘Here I Am (Come and Take Me)’, there was still evidence of his sublime genius in phrasing and control. Yet whilst he managed the great leaps into falsetto, he really struggled with the rest of the top end of his range, sometimes failing to complete lines altogether.

All this was made much worse by a band of tediously proficient session players with little sensitivity or spirit. The brilliance of the Hi Records band from Memphis that originally played on these songs (and indeed toured again with Green in the last few years) was that they could sit just behind the beat, and never played anything extraneous or unsubtle. This band featured solos from an unfathomably bland keyboardist, a wild guitarist who decided 80s hair metal noodling was somehow appropriate, and some remarkably unadventurous horn players. Everything was performed at upbeat disco tempos, replacing the original slinky grooves with perfunctory attempts to get people dancing. We were introduced to the Musical Director at the end of the show – a man I would sack as a matter of priority. The Hi band wouldn’t have needed one – they would just have got on with the business of making soulful, emotive sound.

Luckily, the concert was improved immeasurably by the presence of special guest Candi Staton, who in her short set managed to achieve both entertainment value and quality vocal delivery. She still sounded remarkably powerful, pleasing the crowd with extended renditions of ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ and ‘You Got The Love’. There was an uncomfortable juxtaposition between the themes of her soulful, lightly groovy version of ‘Stand By Your Man’ and ‘His Hands’, an exquisite song about her journey from abuse to the Church written for her by Will Oldham. She demonstrated herself in command of a wide range of material in what was really only a very brief slot. I regret not catching her at the Jazz Café earlier this year.

Unfortunately, the quality of her performance only threw the ultimate failure of Green’s into sharper relief. Onstage for a mere 50 minutes, tonight it was less of the Reverend and more of the Redundant Al Green.

Where Bawdy Meets Melancholy

Last night’s Beirut gig at Koko must surely rank as one of the best gigs of 2007 so far. Koko now seems to be the London venue of choice for promoters keen to gamble on aspiring independent artists, and the substantial audience for this show has surely vindicated that calculated risk. This is great to see – it’s just a shame that Koko is such an unwieldy, claustrophobic place. Like the Hotel California, you’re very welcome, but it’s damn near impossible to get out!

I hadn’t heard anything about support act Dirty Projectors before last night. Jeremy Warmsley informed us that mainman Dave Longstreth had some kind of obsession with the first Black Flag album, for which he had retained the inlay, but not the cassette, and for the first DPs album had endeavoured to recreate the sound of that seminal record as he remembered it in his head. Although I know many people for whom the whole US hardcore scene represents something close to an obsession, I’ve never really found the time for it. I therefore can’t comment on how closely Longstreth came to realising that rather bizarre ambition, but I can say that Dirty Projectors sounded like the most radical and original rock act I’ve seen in some time. The intricate and joyful interlocking guitars sounded like they were transported from Mali, and the rhythm section veered gamely between disco-inflected grooves and adroitly handled stabs and punctuations. Added to the mix were some delightful vocal harmonies, and controlled explosions of improvised noise. This should have been too many ideas for one band – but somehow it coalesced superbly. I shall be seeking out some of their recordings as a priority.

Beirut’s almost entirely acoustic live set-up was a joy to behold, with ukuleles, mandolins, various horns, baritone saxophone and accordion amongst sundry other instruments battling to be heard. Mercifully, this was a rare occasion for which Koko seem to have managed a decent sound balance, helped by the band performing with real zest and enthusiasm. The Eastern European folk music upon which Zach Condon has drawn heavily has a very bawdy heart indeed, and the band made the most of this in live performance, although the song’s melodies frequently seem more melancholy or mournful. It’s an intriguing juxtaposition, and the band capture a peculiar conflict between exuberant joy and reserved hesitancy. Zach Condon’s slurred vocals, somewhat similar to those of Rufus Wainwright, are still a slight obstacle, as its frequently difficult to grasp his lyrics and themes. Still, there’s clearly something innate and clear in this music with which audiences connect, as this is the most enthusiastic and excitable London crowd I’ve seen in a while. The new material didn’t sound quite as distinct as Condon had suggested in interviews that it would, although it offered a clear refinement of an already very successful formula. In a sense, more of the same would be more than enough.

Dispensing With Subtlety

Magnolia Electric Co. and Guests, The Scala, 25th June 2007

Having praised Immaculate Machine’s embrace of detail and intricacy yesterday, it’s amusing that my next live music outing was to a gig with little command of subtlety whatsoever. I first raised this point in a rather negative review of the ‘Trials and Errors’ live album a couple of years ago, but there really is a massive gulf between the music Jason Molina and his group commit to record and the sound of the band when performing live. Admittedly, the group has been moving gradually away from the elegiac and mysterious moods of Songs:Ohia in favour of a more conventional rock direction, but even the most recent MEC studio material benefits greatly from light textures full of space and sensitive dynamic contrasts. When on tour, they obviously just like to rock out, and Molina lets his Neil Young fetish get out of control, bursting into exuberant guitar solos far more often than is strictly necessary (can the band’s keyboard player really not improvise?).

Although there were moments when last night’s show at the Scala was hugely enjoyable, I still maintain that this difference in approach to live performance is largely to the band’s detriment. On disc, much of Molina’s best material is difficult to classify, in that it moves well beyond the confines of conventional rock or country music, despite being well versed in the language of Americana (ghosts, moons and highways all feature prominently). Seeing them live, I now find it much less surprising that the group are frequently stereotyped as ‘working class work’. The songs are all played at a similar mid-tempo trudge, everything is loud and clamorous throughout and there are guitar solos disrupting the flow of the lyrics.

For a while, this is really quite thrilling. The opening ‘I’ve Been Riding With The Ghost’ gets a thunderous and compelling treatment, and when the two guitarists duel with each other it even begins to feel like fun. ‘The Dark Don’t Hide It’ sounds more confrontational and less reflective here and even the calmer, slower songs are given pretty remorseless treatments. The quality of the playing is mostly tremendous, and it’s rare to see rock guitar solos with this much shape and spirit, although they don’t ever stray much from pentatonic conventions. The bigger problem is perhaps with the rhythm section, specifically the drums, which thud along monotonously without any variation or control. I kept finding myself thinking that the performance would be so much more effective if some of the soloists were sometimes given more space, or if the drums could follow the changes in mood implied through Molina’s inventive vocal phrasing. I’m pretty sure the same drummer features on recent studio work though, where there is

Luckily, Molina has been an amazingly consistent songwriter, and these songs are of such quality that they could withstand even the most mundane arrangements. Vocally, Molina sounds confident and assured – so much so that he is able to breathe new life into the songs without wandering too far from the original melodies. It’s rather bizarre to think that Molina was once dismissed as Will Oldham’s poorer imitator – their voices are actually rather different, Molina’s lacking the shaky pitching and vulnerability that is rather unique to Oldham.

The music finally matches the quality of the writing at the show’s breathtaking conclusion. ‘Oh, Grace’ at last instigates some rhythmic invention and is powerfully moving as a result, whilst ‘Hold On Magnolia’ is notably softer and more restrained. We could have done with more of this in the main body of the set.

It’s worth taking the time to mention the supporting line up as this was an extremely well organised and thoughtful line-up (put together by the wonderful people who organise The Local Night For Local People at the King’s Head in Crouch End). Poor David Vandervelde was made to look rather conventional in the end, but he did an admirable job of playing his pleasant, amiable songs to a mostly empty venue, and looked like he was enjoying every minute of it.

David Thomas Broughton was, by dramatic contrast, completely bonkers. Seemingly afflicted with a severe case of Attention Defecit Disorder, he simply couldn’t stay still, and certainly couldn’t focus on one idea for any length of time. With a mannered vibrato voice slightly reminiscent of Anthony Hegarty, and a clear desire to smash all singer-songwriter conventions into the ground, he delivered a madcap performance that was both bizarre and fascinating. Lots of singer-songwriters are now using multi-effects units to turn themselves into one man bands and watching people prostate on the ground fiddling with machines can be incredibly boring. Broughton, whilst edgy and aloof onstage, was clearly aware of the audience, playing his unusual ukulele unamplified from within the crowd. Delivering mostly incomprehensible lyrics, layering inappropriate parts over each other with scant regard for conventional musicality and even smashing his own head against his guitar, Broughton’s unusual schtik may have been intensely serious or intentionally hilarious – it was hard to tell. I’m not sure it mattered either way.

Adjagas were an international group unafraid to combine disparate ideas into what turned out to be a compelling and satisfying melting pot. Sometimes they appeared to be singing in another language, at others with no language at all, combining elements of avant rock with country tinged riffing and what sounded like Middle Eastern scales. It all went rather odd at the end, with some histrionic shouting, but the rest of their set was both finely judged and brilliantly executed. It also seemed genuinely original.

I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rain

Peter Gabriel at Hyde Park, Immaculate Machine at The Windmill, Brixton

Well, Crowded House certainly brought one kind of weather with them for Hyde Park Calling, but the Biblical downpour that accompanied their set was hardly what any of us were hoping for. After an outrageously busy day (and a supporting line up so awful I couldn’t bring myself to arrive any earlier), I had hoped to make it to Hyde Park in time to catch the complete Crowded House set (as I still view them as something of a guilty pleasure). Unfortunately, an utterly abysmal Piccadilly Line service prevented that but allowed me to catch not only their last two songs but also the aforementioned freak storm. Frankly, I might as well have gone to Glastonbury after all.

Luckily the weather just about held out for the duration of Peter Gabriel’s rather marvellous set. Less stage managed than his recent tours, there were few gimmicks to this show, and a greater focus on playing a range of material covering his entire career. As the last two tours had focussed on material from ‘Up’, Gabriel and his band ignored that album entirely for this show, instead compiling a set from fan votes on the website for songs rarely performed these days. Admittedly, this made me even more gutted for missing out on the Growing Up tour, as the two performances would have complemented each other neatly.

The irritating thing about festivals is that they rarely ever run to schedule and the headline act is always restricted to a 90 minute set at max. As a result, we lost ‘Digging In The Dirt’, ‘Big Time’ and the extraordinary ‘Moribund The Burgermeister’ from the set list Gabriel had performed at the other European shows so far. This was somewhat annoying, but hardly disastrous given the supreme quality of the show.

The band were on top form. Tony Levin epitomised virtuosity (playing a variety of adapted bass guitars, sometimes with his trademark ‘funk fingers’, essentially a pair of broken drumsticks). David Rhodes played some coruscating flashes of inspired guitar and Ged Lynch was solid and extremely loud at the kit. Gabriel himself was in fine voice (although why he needed to sing into two microphones, one headset and one on a stand, is somewhat beyond me). He was clearly relishing the opportunity to update his back catalogue, much of which still sounds remarkably fresh.

The set list had a thoughtful arc to it, beginning with the exotic ‘Rhythm of the Heat’, reaching an intense peak in the middle with a powerful rendition of ‘Family Snapshot’ and ending with the more familiar (‘Solsbury Hill’, ‘Sledgehammer’ and ‘In Your Eyes’). Highlights included a mesmerising and hypnotic ‘No Self Control’, a faithful take on ‘Intruder’ which emphasised the song’s claustrophobic weirdness and some unexpected songs from the unfairly maligned second album – the band coped ably with the time singnature switches of ‘DIY’ and the peculiarly stuttering ‘On The Air’.

Gabriel, Levin and Rhodes entertained the crowd with some shamelessly hilarious formation dancing during Solsbury Hill and Sledgehammer, marching out on the ramp into the crowd during both. From the emotional vulnerability of ‘Mother of Violence’ (delivered by Gabriel’s daughter Melanie) to the poptastic exuberance of ‘Steam’, this was a shrewdly balanced and highly enjoyable show.

On Sunday, Immaculate Machine more than compensated for yet more dreary weather by putting in a fiery and slightly inebriated performance for the Brixton Windmill’s summer Sunday BBQ. After competent and engaging sets from Stagecoach and The Outside Royalty, IM proved they have that little something extra in the form of peerless energy, and some immediate and infectious melodies. It is somewhat criminal that this outstanding band has been almost entirely neglected in the British music press’ rather late-flowering obsession with the Canadian music scene. In London for five days, including some dates with The New Pornographers (for whom singer and keyboardist Kathryn Calder also plays), it’s rather depressing that they still seem to be playing to half-empty venues. At least the cognoscenti at the Windmill gave them a well-deserved ovation, forcing an encore. It was an impressive, punchy set, with a clutch of excellent new songs from new album ‘Immaculate Machine’s Fables’, due out in the UK in July, as well as judicious selections from their back catalogue (including ‘Broken Ship’ and ‘Phone No.’, two of their finest songs). Luke Kozlowski’s drummed with vigour and audacity and Brooke Gallupe and Kathryn Calder hamonised beautifully. The performance had something of a ramshackle spirit, which only served to make the band more endearing.

‘Immaculate Machine’s Fables’ may well be their most accomplished album to date. At ten tracks and only 36 minutes, it’s a mercilessly concise collection, but it’s also more ambitious than their previous work. Two tracks feature string parts from former Hidden Cameras arrangers Owen Pallett and Mike Olsen and this time round there’s as much lush balladry as punchy power pop. Calder’s voice is particularly spellbinding on ‘Roman Statues’ and ‘C’Mon Sealegs’ has some of the melodic charm of The Shins. Even the presence of Alex Kapranos and the utterly ghastly Cribs can’t ruin the energetic, brilliantly catchy ‘Jarhand’, an opener which, along with ‘Nothing Ever Happens’, refers back to their earlier work. Overall, it feels more arranged and orchestrated than either of the previous albums, with some fascinating attention to detail and more intricate guitar playing from Brooke Gallupe. Splendid.

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVOTees

Devo Live at Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown, June 19th 2007

The newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall doesn’t exactly look transformed, although it has to be noted that the seats are now considerably more comfortable. It’s a great venue for classical music, folk and jazz, but a rather staid atmosphere for many of the acts Jarvis Cocker has selected for Meltdown. It’s interesting to note just how many of these artists are recently reformed or coaxed out of semi-retirement. There’s Iggy and the Stooges, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Melanie, Roky Erikson and, of course, Akron, Ohio’s greatest cultural export, art-rockers Devo, performing in the UK for the first time in seventeen years.

Devo are one of a small selection of bands that have influenced my life from the very formative years. I remember a tape put together for me by a rebellious childminder, which included a couple of David Bowie’s 80s moments, plus the first half of Devo’s Brian Eno-produced debut LP ‘Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo’. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t the first idea about the band’s concept of De-Evolution then, but I found the chanting choruses, angular rhythms and infectious hooks highly exciting. So, seeing the band live for the first time ought to have been a revelatory experience – uniting that rush of childhood enthusiasm with my later admiration for their conceptual wackiness.

In many ways, the show doesn’t disappoint. The band put on an absolutely fantastic show, beginning with an absolutely hilarious intro film which begins ‘So, you’ve decided to see a Devo performance…a wise decision…’ The band then leap to the stage in their customary yellow jumpsuits and ‘energy domes’ (staggering that so many purchased them for £18 from the merchandise stall when they are essentially just adapted plastic plantpots). They may look a great deal older (and considerably fatter in the case of Mark Mothersbaugh), but they still have plenty of energy, as the thunderous opening rendition of ‘That’s Good’ amply demonstrates. There’s plenty of instrument swapping throughout, with Mark Mothersbaugh frequently running across the stage to play out one of their trademark synth riffs before running back to centre stage again. The lighting is intelligently synchronised and the crowd are rapturous throughout, gamely trying to dance to their many songs with unexpected switches of time signature.

I make the last point not to sound like a muso, but rather to highlight that Devo had a rare rhythmic invention mostly lacking in their post-punk peers. As I recall, even on their more overtly produced 80s albums, the drums sounded motorik, but dry. It may have been that the Festival Hall has acoustics unfavourable to a big rock band, but they sounded imposing and boomy here, with far too much stadium reverb applied. As a result, the drums (played ambidexterously but unsubtly), all too frequently predominated in the mix, a problem not helped by the lack of definition in the mostly overdriven guitars. It sounded a little odd to hear Devo’s jerky, mostly weird songs refashioned, whether intentionally or not, as power rock assaults. Still, the vocals sound great, and the unusually responsive London crowd more than compensate for these niggles.

It would also be churlish to complain about the setlist, which is unashamedly nostalgic (there’s no new material yet) and strikes a shrewd balance between obvious favourites like ‘Girl U Want’, ‘Whip It’ and ‘Joko Homo’ and slightly less predictable selections like ‘Secret Agent Man’, ‘Mr. DNA’ and ‘Wiggly World’. The crowd participation reached its peak with the call and response coda to ‘Jocko Homo’, by which point the band had disrobed from their jumpsuits to reveal spectacularly tasteless black hockey outfits, complete with bizarre kneepads.

It’s all tremendous fun, with Mothersbaugh particularly in great voice. The encore is brilliant, with the band not only replicating the segue between ‘Gut Feeling’ and the outrageous ‘Slap Your Mammy Down’ but Mothersbaugh also rejuvenating his Booji Boy alter ego, complete with costume, for ‘Beautiful World’. Is it any wonder that this is the same man who composed the Rugrats theme tune?

An additional pleasure involved catching the post-concert foyer performance from Bishi, who has now assembled an excellent band featuring Zongamin, Matthew Glamorre, Fidel Villeneuve from the Applicants, an excellent tabla player and my musical co-conspirator Brendan Pickett. It was a sadly brief set, but Bishi’s voice, and gold lame costume, were sublime.

Don't Forget It's Dumb Luck That Got You Here

Reviews of ‘Icky Thump’, the new album from The White Stripes, have been predictably gushing, but also intriguing. First of all, there’s been a peculiar discomfort over Jack White’s appropriation of a Northern phrase for the album’s title. I rather like it actually, as it provides a suitably onomatopoeic description of Meg White’s untutored drum sound, which inevitably underpins everything here. Secondly, many have come close to using that ghastly critics’ cliché the ‘return to form’ after the ‘murky’ or ‘confusing’ ‘Get Behind Me Satan’. I don’t feel that album did anywhere near as much to obfuscate or confound as some suggest, containing as it did some of the group’s most infectious material (‘My Doorbell’ and ‘The Denial Twist’ in particular). It also did much more to expand their rather limited palette than ‘Icky Thump’ manages, in spite of good intentions and the appearance of the much maligned bagpipes.

‘Icky Thump’ starts impressively with the colossal title track, built on skewed stop-start rhythms, heavily distorted guitars, and unsubtle synthesiser blurts. For a songwriter rarely explicitly political, the track also sees Jack White make some telling but ambiguous points about the Bush administration’s stance on immigration (‘White Americans, what? Nothing better to do?/Why don’t you kick yourself out, you’re an immigrant too/Who’s using who? What should we do?/Well you can’t be a pimp and a prostitute too’). ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As Your Told)’ is the most memorable song here, with some neat guitar work and an infectious tune. Towards the end of the album, they also capture something powerful on the brilliant ‘A Martyr For My Love For You’.

Some have hinted that the overall sound is bigger and more robust. This might be true, but it’s also cleaner and less brutal. There are even a handful of songs that could almost be described as subtle. Advance word left me expecting a heavy beast of a record – but even after three or four listens, I can’t help feeling there’s something missing here. Yes, there’s a greater range of instruments (heavy 70s organ, synthesisers, the aforementioned pipes), but this mostly seems to make the music sound more dated and less timeless. By contrast, the use of groovy piano and marimba on ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ gave the music a different texture, and took the group into new spaces. The increased reliance on irritating squealing guitar effects and elaborate solos doesn’t much help here either.

A prime example of the problem here is ‘300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues’, which veers between delicate rustic sections and curtailed explosions of noise. Unfortunately, it also has a completely forgettable melody. I always feel Jack White sounds better when vocally untamed (as he is here on the excellent title track and the bizarre Corky Robbins cover ‘Conquest’, a kind of heavy metal mariachi song), or trying to force too many words into too small a space. Here, he simply sounds vague and nonchalant. It doesn’t help that ‘300 MPH…’ drags on, in cumbersome fashion, for over five minutes. As a clipped three minute blast, it might have been more effective. There are a clutch of tracks which hit all the hardest buttons but really fail to linger in the mind (‘Bone Broke’, ‘Little Cream Soda’, the rambling ‘Catch Hell Blues’).

These are small problems though when compared with two tracks that are completely unbearable. ‘Prickly Thorn But Sweetly Worn’ is a woefully unconvincing folk pastiche which is swiftly followed by Meg White’s mercifully brief spoken word piece ‘St Andrew’. This seems intentionally incomprehensible, her obscure vocals set to a concoction of bagpipes and percussion, with no discernible purpose or direction. Sequenced together they sound perverse, two lightweight throwaway jokes bizarrely placed at the very heart of the album. If they are attempts to inject some humour into proceedings, they look rather silly when placed next to the deliriously entertaining ‘Rag and Bone’, with its comic exchanges between Jack and Meg.

By far the best thing about ‘Icky Thump’ is its song titles, many of which demonstrate that Jack White has a confident mastery of the language of the blues (‘I’m Slowly Turning Into You’, ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do What You’re Told)’, ‘I’m A Martyr For My Love For You’ etc). Musically, it largely fails to live up to these ambitions. At its best (‘Icky Thump’, ‘I’m Slowly Turning Into You’, ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is…’) it sounds like business as usual, which whilst not necessarily a bad thing, risks becoming tiresome away from the alchemical thrill of their incendiary live shows. At its worst, it’s actually rather embarrassing. Luckily, it ends with redemption of sorts, as the countrified ‘Cause and Effect’ is sweet and clever. Yet, for me, the overall impression for me is that Jack White is running out of ways of assimilating old ideas, all too frequently resorting to gimmicks and pastiche. In the wake of the Stripes’ success, numerous ramshackle rock n’ roll duos have been springing up all over the place. It would be particularly galling if Jack White was to become his own worst imitator. ‘Icky Thump’ might be the first warning sign that this is a realistic possibility.

There’s plenty more imitation on offer this week, chiefly in the form of a handful of French electro releases owing a substantial debt to Daft Punk. Justice are already infamous for their scene-shaking ‘We Are Your Friends’ (a deft remix of Simian’s ‘Never Be Alone’) from last year, although I much prefer the insistent, uncompromising ‘Waters of Nazareth’ single, which is probably the most successful track on their intermittently wonderful debut album. The collection veers from generic house music to overtly cheesy disco (the ghastly ‘D.A.N.C.E.’, lyrics delivered by a group of helium-voiced kids and seemingly aimed at an aerobics market) via a good share of inventive moments too.

The segues between tracks attempt to make it cohere, but it veers haphazardly between the highly portentous and the ultimately silly. The best tracks are a lot of fun, and benefit greatly from some ingenious squelchy synth and unfashionable slap bass sounds. Sometimes, as on ‘New Jack’ they become excessive, and there’s so much cutting up and playing with the central themes that it just becomes grating.

I remain unconvinced by the vocal tracks, which sound self-consciously trendy. ‘DVNO’ seems to be striving for Jamie Lidell disco-funk territory but it sounds forced and contrived. ‘Thhee Ppaarty’ starts promisingly enough, with a skeletal theme in half time over which the spoken vocal is delivered, but it eventually morphs into another four to the floor diso track. The opening suckerpunch of ‘Genesis’ and ‘Let There Be Light’ is brilliant though – at once playful and unreservedly excessive. Similarly, the cinematic and dissonant string lines of ‘Stress’ sound genuinely terrifying. Ultimately, though, the jury’s still out.

Perhaps it’s easy to be too cynical about this sort of music but even listening to the much acclaimed new album from Digitalism, I’m still not quite convinced. The influence of Daft Punk is still fairly transparent, but there’s less of the cheesy 80s synth emulations and a more maverick, devil-may-care spirit on display here. They shamelessly pilfer The Cure for ‘Digitalism in Cairo’, and develop some infectious riffs on the likes of ‘Zdarlight’ and ‘Jupiter Room’. ‘Pogo’ is appropriately manic, and the title track is insistent and joyful, in part reminding me of Josh Wink’s classic ‘Higher State of Consciousness’. There’s still the nagging feeling that this is playing it pretty safe for dance music in 2007 – never really breaking any particularly interesting new ground. ‘I Want I Want’ is a particularly unfortunate electro-rock crossover which could just as easily have been made by Republica. There’s also far too heavy a reliance on distorted vocals, which sound neither fresh nor particularly interesting at this time. When it comes to the crunch, I’d rather listen to more substantial recent electronic works from The Field or Isolee. The best European dance music would appear now to be coming from Germany, not France.

It’s a little wispy and elusive, but after a few plays I’m really starting to like ‘Dumb Luck’, the new album from Dntel. Jimmy Tamborello is best known to me as one half of The Postal Service collaboration with Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie, and his own work follows a similarly collaborative impulse. Unlike Stephin Merrit’s work in the guise of The 6ths, where he essentially employed other singers to assume his voice, Tamborello has sought creative and compositional input from his co-conspirators. The results are never any less than interesting, and Tamborello’s overall guiding hand lends the album a mysterious and impressionistic mood, not too far from an electronic Yo La Tengo. Even the usually histrionic Conor Oberst sounds dignified and restrained on ‘Breakfast in Bed’, and there’s an eerie calm permeating the whole record. ‘The Distance’, featuring Arthur and Yu is gorgeous in its premeditated simplicity, and ‘Roll On’ provides a fresh, arguably more appealing context for the musings of Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis. The album as a whole hangs together surprisingly well.

It’s been six years since the last Fridge album (2001’s ‘Happiness’) but the individual members of the group have packed rather a lot into that space. Kieren Hebden has released one excellent album and one adequate one as Four Tet, Adem Ilhan has recorded two lovely solo albums and drummer Sam Jeffers has made headway with his design company. Hebden has also found time to produce James Yorkston and record three albums of collaborations with legendary free improv drummer Steve Reid. The last thing anyone was really expecting was another Fridge record but here it is, released surreptitiously, despite the group’s increased profile as a result of their extra-curricular achievements. Some have chosen to criticise this rather curious album on the basis that it too obviously displays the individual preoccupations of the group’s members. This is true enough – the opening title track is percussive and emphasises sound rather than melody, much in the same way as the recent Hebden/Reid collaborations, and elsewhere there are hints of the acoustic meets electronic rustic atmospheres of Adem’s solo work. The combination of ideas is sympathetic and effective though, and the group sound expressive and relaxed on hazy experiments such as the lovely ‘Oram’ and ‘Insects’. There’s a benign warmth to much of the material here that distances it from much improvised machine music. ‘The Sun’ is a delightful and understated work that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

10 Years On And I'm Feeling Old

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/06/ten_years_of_ok_computer_and_w.html

On Monday 16th June 1997, not just one, but two albums were released which even at the time looked set to become established classics in the rock canon: Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’, Spiritualized’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’. The Spiritualized album undoubtedly had the bigger impact on my life, influencing the music I was writing at the time rather too obviously and introducing me to a whole new range of sound (Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane etc). I still think the album sounds wonderful – and its mix of visceral intensity and naked emotion still chimes with me. Jason Pierce is hardly the best lyricist in the world, but here he found a way to capture aching sadness in simple sentiments, from the clever rhyme scheme of ‘I Think I’m In Love’ to the simple directness of ‘Broken Heart’ and ‘Cool Waves’. It’s a shame that Pierce has spent much of the subsequent decade trying to escape from it – either by building a bigger, more manipulative sound on ‘Let It Come Down’ (the first time his ambition outstripped his ideas) or by stripping it all back for the raw and mostly derivative ‘Amazing Grace’.

Whilst ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’ sometimes appears in more outré greatest albums lists, it’s ‘OK Computer’ that has undoubtedly had the biggest cultural impact, for better or for worse. Many writers still highlight its focus on technology and urban alienation, but it seems bizarre that this still strikes people as groundbreaking. The writer of The Guardian piece I linked to above obviously hadn’t heard Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer World’ or Devo’s ‘Freedom Of Choice’.

A bigger problem is that Thom Yorke’s lyrics are mostly weak. His political attacks are vague and inarticulate, and I don’t think ‘OK Computer’ says anything particularly profound or clear about man’s relationship with technology. It offers no argument and certainly no solutions for its predominating feelings of alienation. Yorke actually fares much better as a lyricist when less detached and more vulnerable (the key tracks for me remain ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ and ‘Let Down’). Overall, The Flaming Lips’ ‘The Soft Bulletin’ (1999) managed to address similar themes with more humanity, compassion and optimism.

Where OK Computer is interesting thematically is that, when placed in context, it is pretty much uniquely negative, and somewhat prescient. NuLabour had just won a landslide victory, and there was much vacuous and ill-judged celebrating, and plenty of odious schmoozing at number 10. Yorke’s frustration and rancour now looks rather shrewd, if only he could have expressed it more potently.

Musically, it still sounds expansive and impressive, but mostly in a rather formal and self-conscious way. The Pink Floyd comparisons are justified, as it’s stylistically very close to ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ and sometimes similarly turgid. When they allowed themselves to experiment with rhythm (as on ‘Airbag’ and ‘Paranoid Android’) the results were compelling, but the plodding tempos of ‘Karma Police’ and ‘No Surprises’ offered little that was truly new, although the former’s coda prickles the nerves somewhat. I’m not sure it’s fair to say they paved the way for Muse, Keane and Coldplay as that kind of blandly anthemic stadium rock can probably be more fairly traced back to the more bombastic excesses of the eighties. Still, I’m rarely inclined to listen to ‘OK Computer’ these days. Much like ‘Sgt Pepper’s…’ (about which Marcello Carlin has written incisively at Church of Me http://www.cookham.blogspot.com/, so I won’t bother) and ‘Nevermind’, it seems one of those albums that will simply be accepted as a classic, without much sensible criticism ever being applied to it. There’s so much weight of high praise surrounding it that simply hearing it feels stifling and oppressive.

Since its release, Radiohead have proved themselves to be an intriguing and adventurous band, although often poor editors of their own work and unable to make decent decisions. Had they combined the best parts of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ into one short album, they would have produced a clear masterpiece. This goes against the prevailing critical consensus, but ‘Hail To The Thief’ still strikes me as their most successful album to date, combining all their musical concerns into one consistently engaging whole, but people with opinions I respect disagree with me on this. It’s for the best of these works that I still feel the band are an easy target for those who dislike the idea of ambition and complexity in popular music, but ten years on, ‘OK Computer’ strikes me as having a reputation built on rather uncertain foundations.

As an afterthought, both Radiohead and Spiritualized have new albums scheduled for the Autumn and it will be interesting to see where they are at in 2007!

Wireless Festival Report

London's 02 Wireless Festival (God forbid that we should forget the '02' prefix) strikes me as a fine example of the corporate explosion in music festivals over the last ten years. In an 'I can remember when it all were fields round here' way, I can remember when we only had Glastonbury, Reading and the lamented Phoenix festivals. Then came T in the Park, V and now we have Connect, Latitude, End of The Road, All Tomorrow's Parties and sundry other events. Some come with more independent spirit than others - All Tomorrow's Parties has succeeded by virtue of its esoteric artist-curated line-ups and holiday centre accommodation, whereas Wireless works as a series of one-day events rather than a festival as such. Corporate sponsorship is everywhere, restricting the beer and food on offer and naming every single stage. It won't be long before every band on the bill is brought to the event by a separate multinational.

It's not only down to this that the event is so lacking in atmosphere though. The programming this year has been bizarre. Sometimes this is a good thing - Daft Punk are no longer at their commercial peak, and LCD Soundsystem and CSS are brave choices of Main Stage acts. It's gratifying that this bill does indeed pack out Hyde Park on a partially rain drenched day. Beyond this, though, the programmers are trying too hard. Every act on the main stage today, with the notable exception of dire folk rapper Plan B, deploys four-to-the-floor rhythms and the conventions of house and electro music. Today's line-up seems like a rather joyless exercise in nostalgia. Metronomy are bafflingly poor - a synthesiser and guitar group clearly modelled on Hot Chip, but without Alexis and Joe's warmth, melodic invention and broad understanding of musical history. New Young Pony Club might be hip to the groove, but their songs are charmless and shouty. There's not even a hint of a tune, or even a memorable riff. What's more baffling is that these acts would have worked so much better in one of the smaller tents - second stage headliners Klaxons are timed neatly to clash with LCD Soundsystem, which is infuriating.

Over on the XFM stage, Shy Child are essentially the synth-revival version of The White Stripes - a vigorous and accomplished drummer bashing the hell out of a skeletal kit and electronic percussion, combined with surprisingly intricate riffing on that most uncool of instruments - the keytar. They have energy and spirit, and they are remarkably tight - but the yelping vocals become monotonous and tiresome by the end. They'll need to develop their schtik (as indeed The White Stripes have done surprisingly well) if they are to have any kind of longevity.

On the Tuborg-sponsored stage, Husky Rescue (all the way from Helsinkini!) provide some much needed variety, with their strange and occasionally compelling blend of shoegazing indie-pop, country, folk and electronica. It's very self-consciously atmospheric, and they are very much the sort of band that might come with a press release describing them as 'cinematic'. Dressed sharply, they are also rather boring to look at, although their singer eventually sheds the nonchalant look to reveal how much she is clearly enjoying herself. At their best, they are infectious and enchanting, although they really need to do more with their somewhat lumbering rhythm section.

I found myself quite enjoying CSS back on the main stage, rather limited and one dimensional as they undoubtedly are. They are an indie disco band, but they do indeed get people dancing (particularly girls it would appear), and their music has a roughshod, insouciant appeal. There's no denying that they have a certain coolness about them, and energetic frontwoman Lovefoxx is, well, foxxy. Any more than an hour of this relentless backbeat stuff though and I would start to go insane.

LCD Soundsystem put in the finest of the non-headline performances, although their set is plagued by horrendous sound problems. With the amount of money pouring into this event, the kind of balance and sound cut-out issues that occurred here just shouldn't happen. James Murphy is clearly agitated by it all, and compensates for the problems by constantly giving signals and directions, to band and soundmen alike, which is quite fascinating to watch. Murphy has a very peculiar gait, mostly looking as if he's at risk of falling over, and his half-spoken vocals are invigorated in live performance. LCD are the only band on this supporting bill who achieve something concrete through the minmalist aesthetic, at least in part because Murphy knows that music has the power to engage the brain and heart as well as the feet. Recent single 'All My Friends' with its pounding one-chord riff bears the clear influence of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, whilst 'Time To Get Away' and 'Us V Them' are brilliantly groovy. Best of all are rapid and demented versions of 'Daft Punk Is Playing At My House' and 'North American Scum', the latter of which really seems to energise the audience. Genuine enthusiasm infuses this music with party spirit, and the willingness of all to just clatter some percussion for the sake of it is thrilling. 'Sound of Silver' is one of the albums from earlier this year that I keep returning to - this set brings into relief exactly why that is.

Daft Punk were simply mind blowing. Whilst bits of the 'Human After All' album showed a band at risk of repeating themselves (both ad infinitum within individual tracks and through recycling older ideas), this performance was ceaselessly inventive and fantastically entertaining. Clad in robot helmets for the duration of the set, and concealed within a pyramid-shaped space-craft, the band maintained their enigmatic stance whilst playing a simultaneously creative and crowd pleasing set. There were only three short pauses in an otherwise continuous set that achieved, everything good dance music should - it was relentless, sensorily confounding, playful, energetic and defiantly basic. They never simply replayed the tracks as they were originally recorded - instead cutting up elements from different tracks and layering them over each other. The clever splicing of the vocal from 'One More Time' with the head-spinning 80s metal riff from 'Aerodynamic' was a particular highlight. They orchestrated the whole performance with admirable precision, both thematically (opening with 'Robot Rock' and closing with 'Human After All') and theatrically. They gradually added new elements to the simple but highly effective light show, and the performance created a cumulative impact through a series of brilliantly engineered synaesthetic crescendos. With some justification, the crowd go completely mental, and it's been a while since I've been pushed and shoved with such vigour. They encore with a brilliant medley of their side-projects, with little snippets of 'Together' and 'Music Sounds Better With You'. I had little notion of what to expect from a Daft Punk live show, but this show has elevated them in my estimations.

Video Killed The Radio Star....

…Well it didn’t exactly come to pass as Trevor Horn predicted, but now I wonder whether it might be happening more insidiously and indirectly. This week, XFM launched Xu, supposedly an innovative concept handing total control over its daytime programming to its listeners, from 10am through to 4pm. In the first instance, this is total bunkum. Listeners will only be able to select tracks from the very restrictive XFM music library used to create the original playlists, plus, depending on the policy’s success rate, a lot of the music will probably be pre-programmed by music editors anyway. It’s also hardly a novel concept, having been used by various music TV channels for a number of years. By subsuming this concept into their radio networks, are GCap finally fulfilling the Buggles prophecy?

Call me old fashioned – but I think there’s a critical difference between music TV and radio. Music TV, at its most successful, is as much based on visuals as audio – featuring largely expensive promos made by big teams and competent directors. This is partially where the energy and vitality comes from. Radio, lacking this visual identity, requires some form of personality and comment to provide it with identity.

One suggestion has been that XFM owners GCap are simply trying to save money on DJs salaries, which is of course plausible given the company’s commercial imperative. In light of the success of Radio 2 in particular (which has invested heavily in unpredictable choices of on-air talent in recent years), this does seem like a baffling way to cut costs though. Others have suggested that, fearful of technological development and the massive success of online video and social networking, XFM are attempting to create a ‘multimedia experience’ (which sounds horrible) by tying the daytime schedule directly to online content.

I’m all for exciting cross-platform developments. I love on demand functionality and I’m a great admirer of any broadcaster with a strong web presence. Yet there’s a massive problem when corporate bigwigs see ‘interactivity’ as purely synonymous with ‘User Generated Content’. The technologies involved develop so rapidly that a new fad will very quickly emerge and render all this obsolete. Not only this, but those simply looking for a music shuffle feature would surely prefer the more personal iPod, or will turn to more genuinely interactive online services such as last.fm (just last week the subject of a $142million takeover by CBS). Interaction between a radio station and its audience works chiefly through its presenters – it’s a tried and tested formula, and it works! As a result, the big innovations in Radio recently seem to have been through the choice of estoteric presenters – Russell Howard on 6Music, Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, amongst other examples.

On a personal level, I’ve found XFM completely disastrous since the Capital takeover. Only John Kennedy’s XPosure show has been consistently worth a listen, but the station’s policy of forcing complete album playbacks into this slot has destroyed the format of the show too frequently. Elsewhere, the station provides no alternative at all, with wall-to-wall Keaneplay Razor Patrol of the likes you can hear on virtually any other station. Radio 2 is genuinely less conventional in its selection of music. It feels like an uncertain time for cutting edge radio at the moment, with Radio 3 cutting back its contemporary output with less jazz and the loss of the excellent Mixing It and now this, a gamble that I sincerely hope fails to pay dividends. The real problem that technology poses to the broadcasting industry is that anyone can now do it themselves (albeit by entering a legal minefield) – those of us who value diversity, and listening that challenges as well as entertains, may well desert traditional broadcasters altogether and find our musical tips elsewhere.

NB: Personal Opinion, not written in a work capacity.