Giving You The Inger

The editor asked me to review this one, I'd never heard of the act.  Glad I did, though, it's a really strong album.

Inger Nordvik – Hibernation (self release) 

Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell. Two artists for whom the greatness of their recordings is indirectly proportionate to the awfulness of most musicians they’ve influenced. The former has inspired a phalanx of open-mic wraiths mumbling about how lonely they are, and the latter unintentionally gave the green light to enough tastefully pretty tunes about self care and nature rambles to sap the life from any coffee shop employee. It seems almost wilfully wrong-headed to think that these elements were what made Drake and Mitchell great – it’s like a Numanoid proselytizing recreational aviation and 80s Tory policy.

On Inger Nordvik’s second album of folk-flecked piano songs a very clear line can be traced back to Joni Mitchell, but she and her band is unusual in picking just the right elements to bounce off. Sure, the songs are succinctly jazzy and the vocals sweetly breathy, but like Joni’s best work there’s a knottiness to the playing and a sophisticated complexity to the arrangements: take the clockwork construction under 'Go Back'’s exquisite vocal line, or the arco bass acting as a sinister undertow to the calm limpid surface of Waiting. The entire band is outstanding, but special praise must go to drummer and percussionist Ola Øverby. In contrast to the bounce he supplies to the cocktail-umbrella urban pop of Fieh, he brings a twitchy precision to Hibernation, from the delicate ride taps on Secret that make it sound as though the kit has been caught in a warm spring rain to the uptight buttoned-down fills of album opener 'Denial' - which sounds like Fleetwood Mac’s 'The Chain' migrating from a blustery tundra to a humid afternoon on the Ganges plain in three minutes.

Listening to Hibernation is like leaping between icy coolness and inviting warmth, possibly reflecting the songs’ genesis in a small cabin on the snowy northern coast of Norway. The title track opens with a glacial post-rock billow before being thawed by toasty bass, ending up like a strange optimistic cousin of Radiohead’s 'Pyramid Song' that could give you a cosier glow than radioactive Ready Brek. Nordvik’s voice is similarly quite lovely, and full of different characters, sweetening the gruff sincerity of Mark Eitzel, tempering the kooky artistry of Stina Nordenstam, freshening the cool detachment of Sheila Chandra, and recalling Jeff Buckley without his pervasive miasma of smugness.

Amongst these riches, the album does occasionally tip over into a cute refinement, such as on closing track 'Ask You' which the ears enjoy but which dances away from memory, and 'It Follows' slightly mars its wholesome earthy groove - imagine someone had crocheted a Portishead song - with a somewhat precious lushness. But, overall Hibernation is the sort of delightful flora where the delicate leaves and complex tendrils turn out to be as gorgeous as the flowers.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cale, Cale, Rock 'n' Roll

This is one of those albums where, if I think of the songs, they sound great, but if I actually play the songs, they sound....decent.  Worth hearing, but not Cale's best.

JOHN CALE – MERCY (Double Six)

 The story of 21^st-century hip-hop is the story of collaboration. Contemporary fans exploring Paid In Full, the classic 1987 album by Eric B & Rakim might be surprised to find that the full list of artists involved is a) Eric B; b) Rakim. Today the equivalent would feature beats from a pool of producers and guest vocals from a coachload of rappers and singers, regardless of the names on the front cover. On the plus side, this reduces the chances of stagnation and keeps artists creative, but it does make for albums without much of a tonal centre. Whilst the glossiest of pop productions might involve a vast phalanx of producers each ensuring that a specific snare sound is maximised for airplay impact on the preferred aural demographic - or something - the serial-collaborator model is less common in other music genres (although jazz and improv are, and always will be, one giant pulsating swingers’ party of temporary hook-ups).

 In his first album of new compositions for a decade, John Cale has released his inner Cardi B and invited an eclectic mix of collaborators to join him on 7 of the 12 tracks. However, even though this roster stretches from eloquent electronica to sleazy indie to dilated-pupil neopsychedelia, Mercy is surprisingly cohesive as an album. Partly this is because it is victim of particularly grim modern mixing and mastering where every musical element seems to be in the foreground at once, and where reverb coats everything but without creating any sense of space (if you do hear anything behind the charmless sonic wall, it’s probably the ghost of King Tubby quietly weeping). More pleasingly, Cale’s vocals create a rich thread through the record, dragging their wry weltschmerz through each track at a similar stately pace, regardless of changes in musical style or tempo; apart from a slightly more sprightly tune in Night Crawling, which might have come from a 90s Bowie track, Cale is the melodic equivalent of a noh performer, his subtly expressive mahogany tones addressing ecology, theology, or Marilyn Monroe’s legs with the same monastic delivery – it’s no surprise that he was attracted to Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering because of her “puritanical” voice. The lyrics throughout are suitably sparse with an impressive imagistic allusiveness (though starting a song about Nico by crooning “you’re a moonstruck junky lady” is a huge misstep, coming on like some alternate-world Chris de Burgh wandering round the New York demimonde looking for stoned damsels to woo).

 The collaborative pieces are generally Mercy’s most enjoyable. Fat White Family help to give The Legal Status Of Ice a woozy, punchdrunk griminess, whereas Actress brings gorgeous burbling, chattering bleeps to an improvised vocal, sounding like The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide switching itself on and off in dense undergrowth. There’s a fractured R&B feeling to Noise Of You, like it’s a sexy slow jam created by a confused old wizard, and this vibe is amplified on Story of Blood featuring Weyes Blood, where breathy but sombre vocals pull against a sensuously slinky drum pattern, like a twisted urban impersonation of something on Prefab Sprout’s From Langley park To Memphis. This is immediately followed by Time Sands Still, with Sylvan Esso, which adds a warm dubby 90s element to a similar beat (scholars of forgotten chillout pop might be reminded of Smoke City’s Underwater Love).

 The album ends with Out Your Window, a somewhat plodding ballad with a piano motif that strongly resembles the refrain to Nobody Lives Without Love, Eddi Reader’s contribution to the Batman Forever soundtrack, of all things. The relentlessly hammered keys are wearing, and a nasal guitar is tasteless, but even here, at the album’s weakest point, we’re still surprised with the falsetto plea, “don’t you be jumping out your window”. Mercy may have a few forgettable tracks, but an artist with John Cale’s long and varied history will always find a way to intrigue the listener. But next time, John, why stop at 7 guest collaborators? Break out the Rolodex and let’s really go to town. 

Some Day My Principality Will Come

A very brief EP review this time.  I don't often do record reviews for Nutshaft, but this time there weren't any gigs to speak of worth reviwing.  I'm doing a single track review this month, for similar reasons, so expect a micro-post.

GIVE ME MONACO – LUMINANCE EP (Emseatee Records)

 The artist states that this is the second of a pair of EPs “centred around destructive and regenerative elements within nature”, but like all good house and associated genres, it sounds like shiny unnatural machines being corralled by a sensitive human mind – lucky, really, because the water cycle is doubtless very cool, but you can’t really dance to it. You’ll have no trouble flexing a boogie muscle to ‘Basalt’, which pits a classic constantly tweaked acid-trance riff against some bright melodic figures that might have leapfrogged straight from an old Yellow Magic Orchestra album, whilst a breathy vocal fragment threatens to morph into A Guy Called Gerald’s ‘Voodoo Ray’.  On the other hand, ‘Caldera’ – yes, all the tracks are connected with volcanic geology – has a sleeker rhythm with a likembe loop and disconnected vocal phonemes that might remind Thames Valley ravers of the much mourned Coloureds. If ‘Lahar’ and ‘Magma’ are possibly a little less memorable, the four-tracker as a whole is packed with warm bounce. As ingenious as it is igneous.