Memoir! Heat

I just came across this. I used to hold over my last review for MusicOMH until the next one was published, so their site always had the latest, but I dropped out of the habit of writing for them a little over a year ago. Nothing against them, I hasten to add, I just found that it wasn't exciting me too much to write these reviews, so I sort of sidled away. Might go back to it one day.

MY LIFE STORY – LOVING YOU IS KILLING ME (Exilophone/ Republic of Music) 

The Smiths and Oasis are often celebrated as bands whose B-sides were as strong as their A-sides, but My Life Story deserve to be added to that list. Megaphone Theology, their compilation of flip-sides – or, more accurately, CD single bonus tracks - in some ways showcases a more relaxed and exploratory band than the singles or albums. Nowhere else in the catalogue can you find anything resembling the strangely moving stream of consciousness of 'I Love You Like Gala', the restless inventiveness of the string of 'Emerald Green' songs, which set the same words in myriad styles, nor the torch song glory of 'Silently Screaming', which is roughly “What if R.E.M.’s 'Nightswimming' were written by Disney theme era Elton John?”. Even their wonderful Edwardian drawing room take on Wire’s 'Outdoor Miner' is squirreled away on an obscure EP, whilst their somewhat corpulent cover of The Stranglers’ 'Duchess' got wheeled out as a single. 

So it’s fitting that 'B-Side Girl', a lightly ironic love song to both partner and pop music, is one of the best tracks on My Life Story’s fifth album. It’s a shimmering swoon, a languorous heat-haze of a song with a subtly muscular bassline that has flavours of vintage Ride, whilst also resembling a hungover Wannadies with a touch of the literary psych-pop of cult Californian songwriter and Stewart Lee favourite, Anton Barbeau. Roughly half of Loving You Is Killing Me fits this classic indie songsmith mould, with the upliftingly melodic 'Numb Numb Numb' recalling Duffy, the Britpop-era mononymic guise of under-rated pop penman Stephen Duffy, of Tin Tin and Lilac Time “fame”. It boasts a gorgeously misty outro, with a refined melancholy which is echoed by the closing track, 'Wasted', a sort of bare bones Erasure tune which leaps from emotional intimacy to West End melodrama in three and a half minutes. This is proceeded by 'The Urban Mountaineer', a slightly Beatlesy take on that small slice of British indie history that came between C86 and baggy, which gave us swagger without belligerence. 

For some, the idea of My Life Story without the fanfares and fringe flicks of their first two albums will seem wrong, like spotting James Bond eating Greggs in a tracksuit. For those diehards, there are plenty of brash and brassy tunes on offer, even if they don’t quite embody the Camden cabaret style of the 90s. 'Running Out Of Heartbeats' is a bedroom glam stomp, a trashy collision between early They Might Be Giants and late Bis with some wailing guitar which is just about ridiculous enough to be allowed, and 'I’m A God' is a synthpop bluster which betrays the influence Marc Almond has always held over Jake Shillingford. These more vibrant tracks aren’t always quite convincing though: 'Identity Crisis' is an acknowledged riff on Marc Bolan’s hip-swivelling doggerel and is perky but forgettable, whereas 'Naked', a song about nudists being, err, nude sounds like The Longpigs having a crack at The Banana Splits theme - intriguing, perhaps, but not something to which you might wish to return very often. 

Tracks like this make the album feel a little slight.  Whilst the Scott Walker cosplay baritone of 'Tits And Attitude' is memorable, and the sinister undertow of 'Bubblewrap', where romance meets stalkerism in a Depeche Mode style, is delightfully eerie, with just ten tracks over 36 minutes the record seems to be lacking one or two more corkers to flesh it out...maybe Jake’s saving those in case CD singles make a comeback. 

 

The Final Chow Down

This is an unusual review for two reasons.  Firstly, I've reviewed something incredibly buzzy which is getting yards of column inches, and secondly I think it's pretty damned great. So, here you go, yet another review telling you that this album is ace and the band are awesome...I bet it's the only one to refer to Pauline epistles, mind.

THE LAST DINNER PARTY – PRELUDE TO ECSTASY (Island) 

The Last Dinner Party have not been known, over the past year or so, for reticence. And now, to join their well-stocked wardrobe, bulging book of press cuttings and fast-filling trophy cabinet, they’ve made an album which sounds huge, with an ornate flamboyance decorating pop hooks from the top drawer (of the dressing up box). How many other debut albums open with a full-on overture? This one starts with a lavish orchestral confection, equal parts Gershwin and Shostakovich, with a little hint of golden-age Hollywood glamour. The album’s title is probably not a reference to Steely Dan’s 1973 classic Countdown To Ecstasy, but in some ways The Last Dinner Party resemble Becker and Fagen’s sophistirock outfit, adding curlicues and complexities to popular song forms – although on evidence to date it's clear the former would be more fun to hang out with in the studio. 

Sonically, this album is varied but invariably bold, gesturing camply towards a raft of classic pop styles. 'Burn Alive' is blousy panto goth, 'The Feminine Urge' is pitched on the sturdiest of Spector drum patterns, and 'Caesar On The TV Screen' is blasted epic glam a la Marc Almond and its late 60s soul-pop shuffle could have served Amy Winehouse well (not to mention some gratuitous but delicious timpani rolls). 'Sinner' starts with an insistent piano which Aurora Nishevsky should really perform with a stick-on Ron Mael ‘tache, so readily does it evoke vintage Sparks, but blossoms into a controlled fruitiness with the flavour of Roxy Music’s late – and under-rated – albums. There’s a light Cardigans slinkiness to 'My Lady of Mercy', which suddenly bursts into a Broadway stoner metal chorus – quite fittingly, as the Cardigans were always unabashed Sabbath heads.  

In a blizzard of reference points, the band always sound cohesive, not just a list of educated nods, the music impeccably arranged and with true depth to the writing. Take 'On Our Side', with a tinkling piano, slow stately chords, and a high, yearning vocal line that isn’t far from the Coldplay of 'Fix You', but there are definite differences. Firstly, Coldplay don’t tend to end an epic ballad with an 80-second ambient hug sounding like a windchime being sucked down a cloud tunnel, but also, whereas Chris Martin’s lyrics are almost pathologically generic, where every stone is accompanied by a bone, and anything cold is simultaneously old, this album is incredibly well read, and wears its learning as lightly as the lace frill around a flouncy cuff. Literary and classical allusions are tossed in without smug fanfare. When a song claims of the titular 'Beautiful Boy' that “he launches ships”, we think of Marlowe’s Helen of Troy; when 'The Feminine Urge' proclaims “I am dark red liver stretched out on a rock” the image of Prometheus is raised; and 'Caesar On A TV Screen'’s “When I was a child, I never felt like a child, I felt like an emperor” must have been copped from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthian Girl Bosses.  

The lyrics are consistently port-rich in allusion and emotional drama. Grab words from across the album and you’ll find lust, envy, pray, sin, altar, lust (again) - it’s basically The Best Catholic Guilt Album In The World...Ever! But there is great humour in the writing too, the offhand wit of the playfully bookish. When 'Burn Alive' assures us “there is candlewax melting in my veins” it’s a bohemian thirst trap for sixth-formers existing on a diet of snakebite and Brontë, whereas the wryly bleak yet urbane statement “I'm falling like the leaves in Leningrad” is part Kate Bush, part Mark Corrigan. 

Admittedly, 'Portrait Of A Dead Girl' might have been better served by a rawer recording more in line with the band’s celebrated live shows than the frilly pomp of this version, and one too many slightly blustery guitar solos might have been shoehorned in, but widescreen ambitions should never be criticised, and as Prelude To Ecstasy ends with 'Mirror', a Cheryl Cole torch song with Nick Cave intensity and Bond-theme bombast, you have to conclude that this album is big, and it is clever. 

 

Play This Tape 'Ere

Two reviews in a week at MusicOMH, because of a mix-up with dates.  Even we critical bellwethers have to abide by the calendar, like the drones do.

TAPIR! - THE PILGRIM, THEIR GOD AND THE KING OF MY DECREPIT MOUNTAIN (Heavenly) 

Billy Connolly once observed, “My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell` Overture without thinking of The Lone Ranger”. Listening to 'On A Grassy Knoll (We’ll Bow Together)', the second track on London sextet Tapir!’s debut album, they may be so fey and otherworldly that they are the first people in fifty years to use the phrase “grassy knoll” without thinking of JFK. The album is a collection of three EPs of bucolic, understated indie folk which tell a somewhat inscrutable epic story, and the first of these, 'Act 1 (The Pilgrim)', sets the tone, but lowers the expectations. It opens with some slightly cheesy Americana picking and whistling, before said non-assassination tune adds a hissing drum machine to some wistful folky arrangements to come off part charming, part infuriating – imagine a Canterbury scene band formed by Four Tet, Arab Strap, and Rod, Jane & Freddy. There’s an early Genesis mingling of whimsy and preciousness which doesn’t convince, and the third track, 'Swallow', is what The Simpsons’ Martin Prince and his “Shall I serenade you with my lute?” schtick might become if he spent twenty years hanging out in hipster record shops. Doggerel like “On my way home I caught a swallow/ With broken wings and a face that’s narrow” is half Bright Eyes, half Tom Bombadil, and all pretty naff. 

But thankfully, after these disappointing opening tracks the album improves immensely. Following 'The Nether (Face To Face)', a sweet little lullaby with a strange un-rap chant of “It’s cold, it’s dark/ Throw your bones in the ancient water” as if we’ve stepped into the cosiest little Dagon-worshipping cult in existence, Act 2 begins, delivering some delightful tunes. 'Broken Ark' has a tinny “pok pok” drum machine rhythm as heard on Damon Albarn’s more recent work, nice fuzzy guitar and simple keys. The vocal is quite lovely, more natural and less self-conscious than the cracking high register  of Act 1. A swooning cello gives a delicious Nick Drake flavour. No surprises that a motif is nicked from Erik Satie on 'Gymnopédie', but it’s appended to a sweet, elegant vocal melody, and sounds like a cousin of Mercury Rev’s 'Holes' held together by lolly sticks and Blu Tack. “Jesus had headlice” is an unusual line, though probably historically accurate, and heralds a move away from the fifth-form Arthuriana of the earlier lyrics, until we have the strange collage of slogans on 'My God' (all to a vocal line which is basically 'Young Hearts Run Free', inexplicably). 

'Untitled' is a country-flecked lope, a shy retiring version of The Band, bringing in female vocals to excellent effect, and nodding towards Radiohead with “For a second there I lost my head”. 'Mountain Song' ends the album, claiming “I built myself a mountain made of things I wished I own” like the exact opposite of Björk’s 'Hyperballad', before an extended outro which builds up a single phrase Morricone-style, with trumpet and massed voices. It’s a pleasing end to a rather uneven collection. People often say that the first episode of a sit-com is disappointing, and you should skip to the second, which is exactly the approach we propose for this album. 

 

 

 

 

 

Waterwings' Greatest Hits

In case anyone was waiting for the next update, the Fall Cup has moved to the knockout stage, and now uses 100% of our comments, so I won't post any more stuff here.  Seek it out at https://thefallcup.blogspot.com/

BARRY CAN’T SWIM – WHEN WILL WE LAND? (Ninja Tune) 

On the evidence of this debut album, Scottish producer Barry Can’t Swim inhabits a land where it’s always summer (in the “long blissful evenings soundtracked by chilled anthems” sense, rather than the "hideous climate change wasteland” sense). The unhurried grooves on When Will We Land? exude warmth, and whilst they’re not designed to incite dancefloor euphoria, there is certainly a good clutch of serotonin triggers sprinkled across the tracks. The title track typifies the album’s strengths, coming in with forceful cheeriness as chintzy piano weaves round breathy pads like a Philip Glass reimagining of the Windows 95 start-up, whilst the voice asking “What is the mind of God?” carries shades of Orbital’s 'Are We Here?' The whole experience is cardigan-cosy, with some reverby “diva stuck in a culvert” vocals hiding behind unfussily funky drums. 

'Always Get Through To You' has a rough-hewn gospel-soul vibe, tracing a direct line back to earthy, ochre deep house classics like Joe Smooth’s 'Promised Land', and 'I Won’t Let You Down' proffers strings that teeter on the edge of cheesiness, but which are nailed down by some steady, chunky drums, until it begins to sound like a Bizarro World version of Springsteen’s 'Streets Of Philadelphia', where the melancholy has been replaced by fuzzy optimism. The naively bouncy 'Sonder' might have been constructed using Fisher Price’s My First Garage Rhythm – a good thing, in case that’s not obvious – and makes use of some non-Anglophone samples which may remind aging ravers of chill-outs and come-downs in the company of Enigma, and similarly a slightly wobbly vocal stumbles above a smiley skipping noughties beat, coming off like a genial, avuncular version of Burial: less 'Night Bus', more 'Chatting To Old Ladies In The Number 47 Queue'. Speaking of public transport, 'Deadbeat Gospel' is the album’s most intriguingly leftfield track, with what sounds like a field recording of a chirpy half-cut chap dropping a boho spiritual rap to his peers in the late-night taxi rank queue, whilst some strafed vocals are reminiscent of Age Of Love’s eponymous trance monster. 

All of this is pretty joyous, and the only real criticism of When Will We Land? is that certain sounds and techniques pop up repeatedly. It’s often useful for artists to limit their palette, but one might begin to feel déjà vu from the descending piano lines, fragmented aahs and oohs, and artfully placed world music samples. Barry Can’t Swim, but just occasionally, he's been known to coast. 

German Bite, Perhaps?

Really nice record, this.  I only reviewed it because one of the band is part of the team behind Supernormal, which regular readers will know is my favourite festival.

TEETH OF THE SEA – HIVE (Rocket Recordings) 

This is Teeth Of The Sea’s sixth album, and fittingly it sounds like six albums at once. Locked within these 41 minutes you’ll find alt-rock, techno, fluffy pop, EBM, a whiff of teenage metalhead guitar, and even a soupcon of easy listening. Hive mostly consists of melodic instrumental oddities, but a pair of pulsating pop monsters show themselves early on. 'Get With The Programme' pushes low-key vocals against an aggressive square wave arpeggio, Depeche Mode’s doomy tunefulness doing battle with Front 242’s shiny leather shimmy, and is followed by 'Butterfly House', a hothouse-ripe synthpop track with the slightly wry vocals of Kath Gifford (previously of such great acts as Snowpony and Moonshake). Occasional slashes of guitar could have come from INXS’s Kick, and if that’s a surprise then God help you when the sugar-coated shredding arrives half-way through, direct from a Van Halen tribute. 

'Powerhorse' couples its rough sandy textures with a sinuous synth bass, sounding a lot like a macabre reptilian version of Boards Of Canada’s 'Roygbiv', but the album’s centrepiece is 'Megafragma'. Fortunately – or tragically? - this is not a 9-minute avant-garde cover of 'Toca’s Miracle', but a hypnotic, endlessly cantering piece of Terminator dub, with gaseous billows of guitar and keys erupting and receding above a relentless train-track ostinato. It’s somehow spacious and claustrophobic at the same time, and feels longer than ice ages whilst also being far too short. 

Hive's real wild card though, the hoverfly in the bee swarm, is the trumpet. The opener 'Artemis' uses chintzy synth notes that sound as though they’re being picked up on long wave, but it’s the descending horn line that is stands out, sounding like something from James Last (imagine the joys of the albums Post-Rock-A-Go-Go, or Non-Stop Techno Kraut Party). On 'Æther' the mournful trumpet is lost in a synth miasma, and it’s a close cousin of Jean-Michel Jarre’s funereal space-sax workout, 'Last Rendezvous'. Whilst Jarre was memorialising those lost in the Challenger disaster, Teeth Of The Sea celebrate the Apollo moon landings, commissioned by The Science Museum. The track 'Apollo' closes the album, and this time dusty, fuzzy guitar is a springboard for a defiantly melancholy trumpet line, letting you know how Morricone’s 'Ecstasy Of Gold' might have sounded had The Good, The Bad And The Ugly been set in a VHS warehouse. Hive could have been a messily ornery experimental effort, but all of these very different elements tessellate like honeycomb.  

 

 

o, screw capitals, i say

This is a lovely album.  You cold argue it's just more stuff that sounds like Slowdive, but I'd argue that there's no harm in that.

SLOWDIVE – everything is alive (Dead Oceans) 

Around the turn of the millennium, a lot of musicians became obsessed with the movies. Every trip-hopper turned in a “soundtrack to an imaginary film”, and every post post-rocker pledged that their latest release was “cinematic” (it was just accepted that cinematic meant breath-taking and adventurous, whereas strictly speaking 2001: A Space Odyssey is exactly as cinematic as Carry On Emmanuel).  The new Slowdive album – only their fifth, and a full six years since their self-titled return to the studio – doesn't sound like either of the above, but does bring to mind a few film soundtrack styles in its opening three tracks.  

There’s a stately sequencer at the beginning of shanty - capitals are verboten on all track titles here – it’s time to get all nostalgic for early ‘90s electronica credits and Designers Republic chic - which very much resembles something from one of Tangerine Dream’s mid-80s soundtracks. This is overlaid by a blanket of guitars, some reverby vocals curling like mist on a moor, and a rhythm that edges towards being groovy but which is played with such funkless froideur it could have been what High Llamas had in mind when they named their 1998 album Cold And Bouncy. The track is light and airy, but somehow still quietly epic, like a Bond theme made from candy floss. 

There’s a cosy yet sombre atmosphere to prayer remembered, an instrumental which is all glistening guitar and breathy pads across a rock solid but a wholly unaggressive rhythm, and it’s like a reticently gothic cousin of a big celluloid heartstring-puller from 30-odd years ago, such as Eddi Reader’s Nobody Lives Without Love from Batman Forever (and no, we didn’t expect that this would be a connection we’d be making either). alife, however, is an echoey emotional dream-pop beauty, and sounds like a song from the closing credits of a John Hughes knock-off teen comedy playing in an air hangar – it even has a sudden unceremonious fade, as if there are no more stylists and legal advisors left to name onscreen. If a lot of shoegaze is a rich luxurious chocolate truffle, then this delightfully fluffy tune is a pocketful of Fun-Size Milky Ways, and none the worse for that. 

Not every track comes with the air of OSTs past, however. Lead single kisses is a cheery mid-paced pop breeze which has a little New Order in its understated vocals and nearly jangly guitar, whereas skin in the game is only a few dozen effects pedals away from late-80s literate pop (imagine Black if they swapped their espressos for milky tea with three sugars and some MDMA). The album’s high points are very different. andalucia plays is a hushed countryish paean of the sort which a lovelorn Midwesterner might strum to himself in the dusty back room of a Texaco, which is smothered with blissful 4AD guitars and lucent first-rays-of-the-dawn synth notes. Even better is chained to a cloud which is built on a bright pointillist synth arpeggios that could have been nicked from old Frankie Knuckles classics like Baby Wants To Ride or Your Love (as nicked by The Source & Candi Staton for You’ve Got The Love) and which blossoms into a ball of noise with a lovely contrast between the clinical precision of the drums and the  warm blurriness of the rest of the song. 

Slowdive’s discography stretches back 33 years, and there’s not much on this album which will raise the eyebrows of anyone familiar with their previous work, as it falls somewhere between the fuzzy glow of 1993’s Souvlaki and the dispassionate chill of its follow-up Pygmalion. But everything is alive is joyful listen regardless, taking the cloud tunnel bliss of the best shoegaze and adding some pure pop pleasure. Cinema for the ears?  More like dream visions for the soul. 

 

 

Armageddon Bored Of John Lydon

I thought that this was a very disappointing record.  I suppose the best way to spin it is to say that it wasn't made for you or for me, but for someone who is now dead.  I respect that...but I still think this is pretty crap.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. - END OF WORLD (PiL Official) 

If clairvoyants and oracles were real, there’d be proper proof. Instead of telling us that Brazil would win another World Cup, or that there’d be further conflict in the Middle East, if just one seer in 1977 had said “You know that Johnny Rotten? One day he’ll ask to do Eurovision with a soft croon about love and loss” the Society for Psychical Research would have a billion members today. Of course, PiL were not successful in their bid to present Ireland in Liverpool this year with Hawaii, and it’s not the sort of thing liable to win the contest in the twenty-first century (although it can’t have fared worse than the tedious bluster of the Kelly-green Keane they did send), but the song remains a tiny gem, and closes End Of World, their eleventh studio album. For those of us used to Lydon the trickster imp, it’s a surprisingly sincere song, with glistening guitar and an undulating bass softly ebbing and flowing like waves lapping a calm shore, the line “remember me, I’ll remember you” landing especially poignantly once you know the song is about Lydon’s wife Nora who lived with Alzheimer’s. Nora died in April, and the album is dedicated to her memory. 

The intimacy of Lydon’s vocal on Hawaii isn’t repeated on the album, which is full of his familiar trademarked style where stentorian pronouncements teeter at the edge of becoming a yelp, like an ironic carnival barker, or a muppet doing high priest cosplay. Lydon sounds cracking for the most part, but the music is rather less consistent. The album starts with the pirate-rock romp of Penge, and if the relevance of that part of south London to a lyric about harbours and longships is a mystery, the song rollocks along in fine fettle, as does Car Chase, a glam disco stomp – “a smash and grab of a song” as Lydon puts it – about a mental institution resident escaping and going on minor nocturnal sprees. But there’s rather too much uninspired vamping on the album, and tracks that sound half-finished: the title track has a doughty Thin Lizzy guitar line, but it's tethered to an unedifying and dumpy rock rhythm, and Down On The Clown (nothing to do with circus fellatio, incidentally) is similarly lead-footed. There’s nothing hugely wrong with this, but it’s a long way from the paranoid, febrile dub skirmishes of the majestic Metal Box, or even the stadium fist-pump of mid-eighties hit Rise.  

Being Stupid Again has a strong groove, with a phased guitar sliding io and out of focus, as if a wasp circling your picnic were playing How Soon Is Now, but is let down by the lyrics, all about students espousing left-wing causes. People, especially iconoclastic antistars like Lydon, should be able to ridicule whatever part of the society they want, but it has to be interesting. Only the pronouncement “All maths is racist!” has any satiric bite here, unlike repeating “Ban the bomb” in a silly voice. The real message comes out near the track’s end, the Daily Express mantra of “I’m not paying for that” - if anger is an energy, snide moans about public expenditure would barely power a glimpse of your commemorative God Save The Queen NFT*. On an album where ex-Pistols are labelled “liars, fakes, cheats and frauds” Lydon is beginning to resemble Morrissey, harping on old grievances and a nebulous social malaise - it’s hilarious how much Lydon sounds like one of Mark Heap’s self-important windbag characters when he announces “Your ignorance shall be your fall from grace” at the start of Walls. There’s material on this album that’s fun, from the bouncy Blondie backing vocals on Pretty Awful, to the yob jazz of Dirty Mucky Delight, but it’s hard to make a case for most of it being essential listening. Apparently, Nora loved the album. Actually, that’s probably justification enough. 

*Yes, this exists: ‘GOD SAVE THE QUEEN’ COMMEMORATIVE COIN + BONUS NFT! - Sex Pistols | The Official Website (sexpistolsofficial.com) 

 

Bear Bum?

And today, on Albums By Bands I'd Never Heard of That I Reviewed Because Of The Name...

MOON PANDA – SING SPACESHIP, SING (Fierce Panda) 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy addresses the question of what’s unpleasant about being drunk: “Ask a glass of water”. Similarly, listen to the second album by Danish/Californian dream pop duo Moon Panda and you might get a taste of sultry summery parties from the perspective of a melting ice lolly. Every one of these twelve tracks is sweet, sticky, and liable to evaporate before your ears. A track like 'Machina Sky' lets a breathy pop vocal lounge across a shuffling beat, whilst synth and bass sink slowly into a treacle well of reverb – there are even languorous choppy guitar chords that have wandered in from Spandau Ballet’s 'True', but stopped for a few sangrias on the way and are now a bit sleepy. Elsewhere, 'Mixed Up' is the sort of sophisticated groove-pop which lies equidistant between Sade and Brand New Heavies, but instead of swaggering through the urban night it seems content to sag contentedly in the afternoon sun – is this the start of a new flaccid jazz movement?  

Maddy Myers’s vocals are charming throughout, warm, soft and intimately aspirated as if Wendy Smith from Prefab Sprout had swapped the literate angst in chilly County Durham for lunchtime cocktails by an LA pool. The music is lush and lazy and every track, from opener 'Come Outside'’s shimmering mix of glossy keys and smiling staccato vocals – think Space meets early Moloko – is a sunshiny delight, but isn’t all wilting synths and heat-haze guitars. There are some snaky basslines scattered throughout that might have come from one of Thundercat’s slinkier outings, whilst 'CURRENT'is one of a few tracks with a hiccoughing rhythm that is clearly influenced by the intricately controlled stumbling of a J Dilla beat (or perhaps by DOMi & JD BECK’s adaptations of the style). But perhaps Sing Spaceship, Sing’s pleasures can cloy over a dozen tracks, and by penultimate number, 'Rain Mouth', you might long for something other than a woozy lope. Closing track, 'Dance', really breaks the spell, an agonisingly sluggish weeping guitar part sounding like a half-arsed take on the knowing airhead schlock of Willie J Healey, or George Harrison: The Benylin Years. This is a collection of beautifully produced songs, ripe for sampling on playlists and dipping into for loving compiled mixtapes, but maybe doesn’t have the variety to truly satisfy as an entire album. After all, man cannot live by Calippos alone. 

A Spanner & Their Works

You're not really supposed to read these bits, this isn't actually a blog, by any meaningful definition.  Good, that's that sorted, then.

ANOHNI & THE JOHNSONS – MY BACK WAS A BRIDGE FOR YOU TO CROSS (Rough Trade)  

The highlight of Julian Schnabel’s film of Lou Reed performing the entirety of his classic album Berlin is the luminous vocal on 'Candy Says' by Antony (as ANOHNI was known at the time). At the end of a light and quavering but surprisingly sinewy reading, Reed holds ANOHNI with a long appreciative gaze, allowing a fraction of a smile to brush his lips - which for that uneffusive old boulder was the equivalent of a 21-gun salute. The respect between the two musicians is highlighted by 'Sliver Of Ice', which is based on one of the last conversation Reed had with ANOHNI, in which he told her of the beautiful intensity of elementary experiences at life’s end. As ANOHNI puts it, “the simplest sensations had begun to feel almost rapturous; a carer had placed a shard of ice on his tongue one day and it was such a sweet and unbelievable feeling that it caused him to weep with gratitude”.  Over the sort of warm jazzy haze, you might find in the Elysian Fields Holiday Inn, ANOHNI’s delicate croon captures the experience with Hemingway bluntness: “A taste of water on my tongue, it was cool, it was good”. 'Go Ahead', the track immediately preceding this, makes a sonic nod to Lou Reed, visceral squeals of guitar noise threatening to engulf a sparse stately clutch of chords. The vocals, a parody of rock which would feel far more at home over a NWOBHM canter than this NYC noise edifice, scamper with deliberate awkwardness across the top. No wonder the track lasts only 90 seconds, any longer and the tensions in the song might yank it apart.  

Despite this pairing, Lou Reed is far from this album’s primary reference point. Instead, ANOHNI’s strong but spindly voice, and many of the lush arrangements, will recall that breed of vintage soul vocalists who balance suave sophistication with gut-wrenching emotion: think Smokey Robinson, Al Gren and, especially Marvin Gaye. 'Why Am I Alive Now' captures the essence of Gaye’s classic, What’s Going On, the gorgeous syrupy vocals, the shimmering strings and the hazy vibraphone managing to communicate cosy safety and self-critical uncertainty at once. 

ANOHNI’s voice has always been a glorious thing, with the lopsided, stumbling beauty of an hours-old foal or a butterfly slowly unfurling from the cocoon, but My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross is filled with lovely complementary arrangements, like the tiny flute phrases in 'Can’t' that melt away like ice on the tongue. The track has flavours of the well-bred soul of the 90s, urbane if not quite urban, and one might draw a line to Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, and even McAlmont & Butler...if you really get creative, 'Can’t' sounds like a slowed down and hollowed out version of Hue & Cry’s burnished yuppie pop. And just to prove that her voice is not just very pretty but also malleable, on 'Scapegoat' ANOHNI’s lines fracture as they drift into the distance like Horace Andy’s, and two registers appear to be in conversation on 'It’s My Fault', as on Cat Stevens’s 'Father & Son' (and the opening line “I didn’t do it, but I know that I did something wrong” seems to paint ANOHNI as the direct inverse of Shaggy). 

Divas and talent show judges spend whole careers selling the concept of “good” singing, a dead-eyed and lead-footed virtuosity which flattens all compositions and makes a mockery of interpreting a lyric. Although there are a couple of songs on this album which don’t set up camp in your memory, the vocals always astonish, from the sound of Jeff Buckley floating on a soul bisque on 'It Must Change' to the greasy gospel crescendo of 'Rest'. There’s one moment in this track where ANOHNI phrases the word “stone” in the zen-like line “Rest like a stone waits for the sun” with a micro-melisma, slingshotting swiftly across three notes: the phrasing is gorgeous, but it’s neither self-conscious nor showy, just a tiny perfect moment.  Lou Reed would doubtless give it a barely perceptible but heartfelt nod. 

 

 

 

 

The Pen Is Mightier

And here's your second review of the day, this time of a very famous international act  also worth listening to, but I suspect you know this already.

SWANS – THE BEGGAR (Mute) 

People used to say “Swans can break a man’s ear with just one beat of a drum”. At their inception, Michael Gira’s band of less-than-merry men were known for their sonic brutality, especially live, where many an exciting new career as a tinnitus-sufferer began. The addition of singer/keyboardist Jarboe heralded a new melodic sensibility, but the underlying aggression remained, a misanthropic sonic gall hidden below the sweetly tuneful surface. When the band reformed in 2010, after 13 years of silence, their sound was a little different, more spacious and subtle. A Swans album was still intense, but it was more often the intensity of a cold unwavering stare than of a spittle-flecked harangue. The Beggar, their sixteenth studio album, makes good use of the quietly ardent tone, and whilst listening is intentionally oppressive, it’s like the insidious continual whisper of conscience rather than the brimstone sermon, and even when songs reach a clangourous attack they tend to build frog-boilingly slowly from hushed beginnings. 

This is the case form the very outset, 'The Parasite' opening with 6 chilly, spare guitar notes which sound like the start of Ennio Morricone’s theme to a new Dollars film set in purgatory, before building to a stentorian drone to leave us eight and a half minutes later trapped in a church organ with some wasps - and if you think eight and a half minutes is exhaustingly long for a track, then strap in! 'Michael Is Done' begins with barely voiced moth-wing string flutters and an oddly sprightly nursery rhyme melody before swelling slowly towards the sudden eruption of a Spector wall of sound, complete with rattled tambourine and girl-band backing vocals (incidentally, the Michael in question might be the apocalyptically battling archangel, rather than the lyricist, but regardless, “He’s the hate in the love […] his words are burnt meat” seems to sum up the Gira aesthetic). Even when tracks start off imposing, they tend to get even bigger and darker. Take the title track, which grows from a sinister bass groove to relentless slave-galley drums, but 'Ebbing' takes the bombastic biscuit and, despite its name, swells and waxes a folky little vocal melody to a crushing crescendo: this is the soundtrack to a short alternative version of The Wicker Man where the locals just decide to sacrifice themselves and the entire island ends up in flames.  

Essentially, The Beggar has two flavours, gliding between sweet and sour, heavenly and harrowing, or – to borrow from first two tracks’ titles – paradise and parasite. Variations of these  are mixed and swirled on the confusingly named 'The Beggar Lover (Three)' for a shade under 44 minutes. Such is the density of this fascinating collage that it would take an entire review of its own to cover, but in lieu of a map, here is a list of notable landmarks: a paranoid miasma of strings, like a particularly fretful Ligeti; sinisterly sepulchral tubular bells; a smooth voice-over actor intoning lines like “Its appetite is endless and will never be filled”, as if on a 1990s guide to setting up your expensive stereo in hell; a percussive flurry, like summer rain heard from inside a cello; a lead-footed industrial rhythm paired with luxuriant siren vocals; disconnected robot phonemes strangely reminiscent of Jean-Michael Jarre’s Zoolook; sub-aquatic trip-hop; a timpani duel; a kid singing playground classic 'This Old Man' and totally fucking it up.  

For all their power, sometimes Swans’ portentous bleakness can become a bit, you know, silly. It’s hard not to giggle when a zombie-Cohen croak repeats “come to me, feed on me” for 45 seconds straight. There are also times, such as the 60s garage chug of 'Los Angeles: City Of Death', or the stately chord progression and gospeloid choir of 'No More Of This', that edge towards a safe rock stodge, like Spiritualized’s blackened goth cousins. Some might wish for more of the pounding drums and hellish vocals of old, others might hope for more of the experimental blasted patchwork of 'The Beggar Lover (Three)', but the album succeeds best through its unwieldy, unmanageable length. They say Swans can break a man’s spirit with just two hours of unstinting grimness. 

Percolator, With Jools Holland

 I love Sparks...but not so much that I can't sneak a Fall reference into the first line of a review!

SPARKS – THE GIRL IS CRYING IN HER LATTE (Island) 

Rather like Mark E Smith stating that he kept The Fall “at arm’s length”, Sparks have never fully revealed themselves. They are arch and artificial, but rarely resort to wielding the smug and clumsy tool of pure irony. Partly this is because of the music, an improbable triangulation between art rock, bubblegum, and Broadway, which is playground simple and post-doc complex by turns, but it’s also down to the performative vocal delivery: if Bowie is grandly theatrical, Russell Mael is more like the kid in the school production of King Lear who grins and waves at his mum. Tonal ambiguity is evident from the get-go on this album, it being impossible to decode whether the title track is a snide swipe at the urbane sad-gurl consumerist with Phoebe Bridgers on her AirPods, or a sympathetic lament that life is hard. 

A queue of identical weeping women stretching across Caffè Nero would make a good René Magritte painting, emotional and cold simultaneously, and this lightly unnerving atmosphere is reinforced by the surprisingly abrasive glitchtronica loop underpinning the bouncy melody, which could have been lifted from Fennesz, whilst 'Veronica Lake' boasts an undulating digidub pop rhythm which is pitched somewhere between Pole and Yello. Clearly, even after 50 years, Sparks are still expanding their palette, and though this is their first album on Island since the rollicking unglamorous glam of their mid-70s work, only 'Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is' even slightly resembles that era, although it sounds more like They might Be Giants, with an ascending vocal line that recalls The Divine Comedy’s 'Everybody Knows (Except You)'. Incidentally, the song is about a 22-hour-old baby wanting to return to the womb because the world is rubbish – clearly you can become a sad boi/gurl before leaving the maternity unit.  

A strange subject for a pop tune this might be, but other tracks make this micro-vignette feel like a three-volume Wilkie Collins novel. 'Escalator' is tinny suburban Krautpop, and is written of the point of view of a commuter who sees a woman on an escalator then...doesn’t talk to her. It’s hardly 'Teenage Kicks'. 'A Love Story' has someone repeatedly ask someone politely to hold his place in a queue whilst he goes to score some dope for his girlfriend. It’s an unusual clash between middle-aged respectability and youthful hedonism, and a yobbish one-note keyboard part keeps barging into the bubbling synth backing, intimating that that the relationship is not healthy. There are plenty more pop concepts to be slyly detourned before the album is out: 'When You Leave' is about how much fun it will be when the boring guest goes, an inversion of the “get the party started” trope, making it the opposite of P!nk - presumably L!me Green - and 'Take Me For A Ride' twists the classic rock topics of fast drivin’ and law-breakin’ into harmless middle-class cosplay, expertly illustrated by a disconnected metal guitar smashing into skittish woodwinds direct from an MGM musical. 

'We Go Dancing' is the most gloriously unexpected musical gambit, a chunk of martial minimalism recalling Steve Martland or John Adams in his very fastest machine, which claims Kim Jong Un gets massed ranks to “dance” in formation at will because he’s the world’s best DJ (Run DMZ, if you will). Kim may be an easy, though valid, target for ridicule, but does the track draw comparisons between club music’s exhortations to dance and totalitarian commands? And, if it comes to that, does 'Gee, That Was Swell' intentionally nod toward the valedictory heroics of 'My Way' even as it becomes the first break-up song in history to conclude “Sorry, that didn’t work, but lovely knowing you, bye”? This album asks far more questions than it answers. 

Although The Girls Is Crying In Her Latte might not be quite the joyous nugget of recent peak, Lil’ Beethoven, it’s impressive that, on their 26th album, Sparks are incorporating new sounds and concepts, whilst till sounding exactly like themselves. They’re a band we should all embrace – at arm’s length, mind. 

 

 

Cooler Shakey

I'm sort of amazed that this record isn't terrible.  Like everyone sane of my age, Shakey was my first musical love, so I was glad to give him some props.

SHAKIN’ STEVENS – RE-SET (BMG)

It would be hard to explain to a Gen-Z pop fan just how big Shakin’ Stevens was for the first half of the ‘80s, winning the hearts of the nation with his twin weapons of smooth rock ‘n’ roll vocalising and signature dance moves, which looked like someone had just cut half the strings on an Elvis marionette. But best not to waste too much time trying to get our putative zoomer up to speed, though, as Re-Set, Shaky’s third album this millennium, is as different from most of his career as the name suggests (and the fact that the cover shows him standing, windswept and scarf-wrapped in a disused slate quarry like he’s a lost post-McGann Dr Who regeneration does nothing to dispel this new-beginning notion).

Firstly, the lyrical concerns are rather more weighty than the classic Stevens songbook themes of boy meets girl/ boy tries to gatecrash next door’s party/ boy conducts disappointing structural survey. There’s a clear ecological message running through the album, and 'Greed Is All You Need' is an unequivocal swipe at any dastard who puts profit above people or planet. Sometimes the message doesn’t get much beyond “like, the government, man”, and we probably didn’t need both references to 1984 within the first verse of 'Hard Learned Lesson' to make the point, but throughout the sentiments are clearly heartfelt and sincere. The best of the political songs is 'Beyond The Illusion', a paean to the men like Shaky’s ancestors who worked the Cornish copper mines, which sounds like something Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger would have included in a Radio Ballad, delivered with the brawny warmth of Show Of Hands. 

Re-Set is also far more musically mature than the pop rocking that constituted most of Shaky’s career. Not only is his voice beautifully raw and burnished, but the songs, whilst not structurally complex, are elegantly persuasive, from the self-assured Tom Petty chug of 'Not In Real Life' to the Dylanesque shimmy of 'Hard Learned Lesson'. 'Dirty Water' even cuts a ZZ Top strut across dusty hardtop towards a roadhouse boogie session, where some atmospheric backing singers can be heard through the window. Only 'It All Comes Round' feels featherlight, a timid Levellers song that needs another few pints of scrumpy to build its courage. The last Shaky album to crack the UK Top 40 was the slightly anaemic Lipstick, Powder & Paint in 1985; Re-Set is more Politics, Gunpowder & Pain, and if it doesn’t score him his best sales for many a long year, then the world is an even worse than we thought.

A Lass & A Lack

Well, here I go again trying to see if I can review a bad record.  I've always found EBTG very boring indeed, at best forgettable, at worst egregiously anonymous, but...this album is really strong.  Whatever they've been doing for the last 24 years was obviously the right thing.

EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL – FUSE (Buzzin’ Fly)

 Back in the 90s, a review proposed that what made Pulp Fiction great was, not the playfully intertwined plots, the grittily witty dialogue, or Samuel L Jackson’s righteous sideburns, but the fact that it made a 50s-themed diner look cool, when everyone knows they’re rubbish. Perhaps that was not such a cute trick as inspiring schoolkids to quote Ezekiel, but it’s a good point. You get a similar feeling with 'Karaoke', the elegant closer of this neat ten-track comeback album, which paints a karaoke bar as a glorious hub of emotionally healing communion and creativity, an artistic hothouse, the Bauhaus with backing tracks. Our actual experience might tell us that these places are either drably depressing or boozily brash, but it crumbles in the face of Tracey Thorn’s cool certainty. Elsewhere on the album there are apotheoses of musical micro-events, from an after-hours lock-in session in a tiny venue on 'Run A Red Light' to a euphoric get-together on 'No One Knows We’re Dancing'. This latter track beautifully paints characters from a dancefloor demimonde with a few spare biographical strokes, and it’s easy to visualise the arrival of Fabio, “parking tickets litter his Fiat Cinquecento” (perhaps EBTG were reminded of urbane soul boy “Guy from Camden Town” sketched in 'Five Get Over Excited' by fellow Hullensians The Housemartins).

This celebration of minuscule moments might not convince if it weren’t done with such elegant sang froid. Thorn’s vocals on this album are possibly her best ever, a detached jazz-smoke contralto that sounds like a wryly introspective Sade, or Swing Out Sister with a doctorate. Her soft whispers are like someone rustling a manila envelope, and she makes dignified hushed pronouncements like Lana Del Rey as suburban Brit – she also enunciates immaculately thoughout, so play this album to your crotchety great-uncle who says that you can’t understand a word that pop singers are saying nowadays. But despite the attention given to the vocal delivery and the knottily poetic lyrics – “It’s the bar-take, not the door-split” is like something from early Simon Armitage - the album isn’t precious, adding some deliberately jarring Burial-style effects, coating Thorn in digital tape wobbles and pitch shifts. This is EBTG’s first album for 24 years, and it sounds as though the fuzzy vocal line to 'Interior Space' has been stored under the bed the whole time, gathering dust, pet hair and the odd spider corpse. There’s a chilly delicacy to much of this album, with 'Lost'’s slow layers of pseudo-gamelan synth lines coming off like Japan if they’d never unlocked the dressing-up box, and 'Interior Space' hiding an icy starkness in the centre of almost cheesily emotional piano, just as Angelo Badalamenti did on the Twin Peaks soundtrack.

Of course, this is an EBTG album, not a experimental electro-chanson song cycle, and there are radio-friendly tracks too. Anyone who has ever sat string at their overpriced bottle of beer in a shiny bar whilst 'Missing' wafted politely across the room will find tracks like 'Time And Time Again' and 'Forever' rather too nice. The first three track titles – 'Nothing Left To Lose', 'Run A Red light', 'Caution To The Wind' – seem to promise the kind of Dionysian rock abandon that would have Lemmy edging surreptitiously towards the exit, but Fuse could comfortably be played in any high street coffee shop without causing anyone to splutter into their cappuccino foam. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the more prominent the beats, the less exciting the song. Bu this is Fuse’s secret victory: if you don’t pay attention, it’s harmless background fluff, but if you concentrate there are mysteries and subtleties to discover that will demand repeated listens...and also, tuneful though they may be, these spare and spacious laments would be bloody hard to pull off at karaoke.

 

 

 

 

 

Hydrophobia HiFi

I've been writing for MusicOMH for about 2 years no, and I've not yet given a bad review, mostly because I choose acts I expect to be good, or who at least have enough of a recognised style that I thought I'd essentially enjoy what they did.  I'm trying, essentially, to engineer a situation wherein I write a bad review, I tried picking some random techno, which turned out to be rather good, so then I picked this album, just because the band had a name that made me laugh.  I expected ugly brash punk.  That is not what I got...

LANA DEL RABIES – STEAGA BEATA (Gilongo Records)

Over the past decade or so, there’s been a trend for act names to be cheeky puns on existing musicians. Joanna Gruesome, Chet Faker, Bob Vylan, Ceilidh Minogue, Alice Blooper...there are so many out there that it’s hard to know which one of those we just made up. Phoenix-based vocalist, producer, and multimedia artist Sam An, AKA Lana Del Rabies, must have one of the funniest monikers on offer, but their searing third album is certainly not a joke. Steaga Beata translates as “blessed witch”, and whilst there’s definitely magic in the music, you won’t leave this hour-long assault feeling consecrated or holy.

'Prayer Of Consequence' opens with an ominous swelling wave of eerily breathy tones and funereal synthesised cellos – it’s like The Shining’s slo-mo tsunami of blood rolling down the corridors of 4AD’s offices rather than The Overlook – before a chugging locomotive of the damned drum pattern takes over (the devil may be evil, but at least his trains run on time). This Hades Express beat comes back with redoubled energy on 'A Plague', a gristly slab of industrial menace which holds hints of Scott Walker’s late meat-punching vintage. There are times when the claustrophobic intensity and indecipherable wails of tracks like 'Master' or 'Mother' come off like an anti-matter Cocteau Twins, but the real touchstone for this album is Lingua Ignota’s howled catharsis. Steaga Beata may not quite scale the heights of Lingua Ignota’s Caligula, but its anguished ugly beauty is a very worthy companion piece. 'Grace The Teacher' offers a comparatively lighter touch, however, balanced between sweetness and despair as Leyland Kirby-style piano and strings get lost in a misty vortex of pining ghosts.  

There are occasions when the album’s dedication to bleakness can become predictable, when another track of droning churns, chilling screams and insidious whispers can leave you with 'Apocalypse Fatigue', as one of the track names puts it. 'Hallowed Is The Earth' provides a welcome change of pace and a deep trip-hop vibe, with a seasick sonic lurch in place of a bassline, recalling some of Tricky’s most esoteric productions, but loses its way halfway through, settling on the crackles and murmurs we’ve already heard. But even if the album doesn’t stray far from its discomfort zone, the sound is rarely less than powerful. 'Forgive' closes the album with an unusually clear and simple vocal melody – it almost sounds like a doubly dolorous Dolores O’Riordan – and beneath the scuzzy synthesised burr there’s a solemn celebration in the repeated refrain. If the album is a horrific film of conflict and destruction, this is the hopeful tone of the end credits.  Let’s hope for a sequel soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grotesque (After The Grim)

I sometimes wonder whether I subconsciously give a slightly lower rating to records where I don't even get a download for my troubles.  Was this album a zip file of MP3s away from 4 stars?

SLEAFORD MODS – UK GRIM (Rough Trade)

Ten years ago, when Sleaford Mods first came to the public eye with Austerity Dogs, few people would have banked on them still delivering the goods six albums later – partly because maintaining that bile-spitting intensity seemed unrealistic, and partly because those pallid early press shots made it look as though at least one of them would have succumbed to scurvy before now. But those who knew that there had already been five albums under the Mods’ name before 2013 will have been less pessimistic. Impressively, this latest album channels as much dyspeptic rage as any previous release, and showcases some interesting developments.

UK Grim harbours some fantastic writing. There’s the unvarnished poetry of lines like “When your heart hangs like a loose stool that won’t drop”, but there are also surreal and mystifying barked pronouncements, as if righteous ire and deep sadness are bursting from Jason Williamson in every possible direction: is 'I Claudius' about dysfunctional families, half-remembered 70s telly, nationalism, and off-duty Santas scoffing chips? Or all, or none, of the above? The outstanding 'Force 10 From Navarone', featuring the current titan of sardonically allusive pop, Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw, captures all that’s best about Williamson’s current writing, laying down a carpet of potty-mouthed non-sequiturs which are almost hilarious but ultimately hauntingly melancholy, including the syntactically fractured dream-state cracker joke refrain, “Jason, why does the darkness elope? Cross-sectioned; it’s not a drink, and I don’t fucking smoke”. 

Despite this, some of the lyrical targets feel obvious. The last few governments might be the worst in the post-war period, but simply saying so doesn’t make for interesting art. Lines like “In England nobody can hear you scream, you’re just fucked, lads” aren’t hugely satisfying, and Williamson’s often preaching to the choir (or at least screaming back towards the rabble). It’s fitting that satirical collagist Cold War Steve created a video for the title track, when 'Tory Kong' stretches the conceit of a tired broadsheet political cartoon over three minutes. Moments like this proves that barn-door targets are disappointingly easy to hit, even when you’re pissing at them. 

Whilst the linguistic half of Sleaford Mods is developing in two very different directions, Andrew Fearn has turned in his most musically satisfying set of tracks to date. The Fallesque watchwords are still simplicity and repetition, but there is an attention to detail that gives many of these tracks real quality, from the distorted Blade Runner ostinasty of the title track, to the chunky muscular beat of 'D.I.Why' which could almost have been lifted from a vintage Run DMC track (the song’s observation that hipster musicians dress like avuncular TV steeplejack Fred Dibnah provides the album’s first laugh-out-loud moment). 'Tilldipper' is a roiling rant with a bassline like rubble doing the conga, but this is balanced by the crepuscular wistfulness of 'Force 10 From Navarone', complete with a cheap Casio Spanish guitar line that could bring tears to your eyes, or the organic squelch of 'So Trendy' which resembles the Teutonic coolness of To Rococo Rot more than it does the punk and hip hop to which Fearn’s productions are usually likened. Incidentally, 'So Trendy' features the album’s other excellent guest vocal, with Jane’s Addiction/Porno For Pyros’ perv-in-chief Perry Farrell intomning like a googly-eyed modern prophet (“Check out all my squiggly veins. I got 57 screenshots in one hour just in case”). 

It’s unclear whether future Mods releases will lean more towards literary invention or blunt tirades, but by this point, nobody should be surprised if they’re still spitting and firing in another ten years. Perhaps they’re already beaming back messages from the future: in the 'Force 10 From Navarone' video, where the performers appear as glitchy holograms of the sort R2-D2 might project – “Fuck me, Obi Wank Kinobe, there is no hope”.

 

Sleep-Porker

 I love this record.  Sometimes, music doesn't need to be complex, just good.

PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS – LAND OF SLEEPER (Rocket Recordings)

Back in the early 1990s, Therapy? were the metal band it was OK for Select readers to enjoy. They turned out a petty strong bunch of grinding industrial rock tunes, but they snuck them under the indie radar by having sensible haircuts, making jokes about James Joyce instead of Jeffrey Dahmer, and eschewing the umlaut for the question mark. Tiny changes, on the face of it, but enough for Therapy? to find themselves on CD shelves next to Curve and Echobelly. Thankfully, metal and general sonic heaviness are far more acceptable to your average consumer nowadays, but anybody who’s seen a show over the past decade by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – and we hereby give notice we’re not typing that lot out again – will notice that they still look different from their psych-doom-stoner peers: baseball caps and Bermuda shorts in place of leathers and cowls, barefoot cavorting in place of hair-swaying and messianic shape-throwing. If there were still such a thing as the alternative mainstream, Pigs would be the heavy band most likely to be accepted by it.

Which is all very well, but all on the surface. A joky name and the odd spangly shirt might make Pigs atypical, but when it comes to making intense weighty noise, there’s nothing wry or ironic about them, and Land Of Sleeper, their fourth album, might be their chunkiest offering yet. The gloriously named Ultimate Hammer sets the scene, a filthy ultra-chug which is Blue Cheer without a hint of the blues, which suddenly slows to a crawl like a snail whose Benylin martinis have just kicked in. The switch to this Sabbather-than thou trudge turns a heavy rock bast into an entity with its own gravitational pull, and when the tempo picks up again, a buzzing whining lead line smacks you across the face like you’ve just got into a bar brawl with a mechamosquito.

A similar method is used on Big Rig, which opens with the bellowed lines “There is a sphere or burning tar, it’s all around/ Everyone in this god-forsaken English town/ Are washed away it’s filthy residue each day/ But like a mould it grows ensuring our decay”, like a syntax-shrugging cross between HP Lovecraft and John Betjeman, before dropping down into The Valley of the Sluggish Riff. This time, there’s more of a tension between the immovable object of half-tempo grooves, and the irresistible force of a headlong amphetamine rush. It’s like listening to a band that can’t decide whether it’s Eyehategod or Motörhead. But  more psychedelic.

Not every track plays the same trick (though it’s a bloody good one, and you’ll be glad to be the patsy every time the ruse is pulled): The Weatherman is a mystical, ritualistic chant, which just gets more solemnly sacramental the more ideas get thrown at it over nearly 7 minutes, and Terror’s Pillow builds the onslaught on a dinky nursery rhyme figure played on a pair of egregiously distorted strings. But, no matter how often the music pulls back to something more spacious, like the telegraph-wire bass rumble half-way through Atlas Stone, it’s only a matter of time before the vast guitars come lumbering back, their rough scuzzy contours having roughly the same excoriating effect as a quick jog in a pair of pumice-stone jodhpurs. Abrasive yet euphoric, Pigs continue to supply the world with wired and vivid music - “What a time to be alive”, as Ultimate Hammer would put it.

 

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. 

Is Slang?

I've just submitted my latest MusicOMH review, which starts off talking about hip-hop before reviewing John Cale. This one spends more time talking about hard bop than one might expect for a techno review. I can't really defend these choices.

TERENCE FIXMER – SHIFTING SIGNALS (Mute)

Most vintage jazz albums had liner notes, and most of these liner notes consisted of streams of dated slang terms. Pick up your favourite Blue Note or Prestige classic, and although the music might now be celebrated as some of the best of the mid-twentieth century, the sleeve is liable to sound like an awkward aging uncle, exclaiming, “Hey, even on a relaxed blowing session, this cat is cookin’. They don’t just have chops, they have soul. Check out the spicy licks as the trumpet and drums trade four-bar passages”. The music has aged far better than its context, the one still feeling fresh and relevant, the other quaint and archaic. We’re witnessing a similar change in attitudes regarding techno. If Terence Fixmer’s seventh album had been released as little as twenty years ago, you could expect press releases banging on about a dispassionately anonymous producer wielding unfeeling technology. This earlier era of electronica may not have seen the full Nat Hentoff approach - “Hey, even on a white label remix, this faceless producer is facelessly producin’. They don’t just have all the manuals for their devices, they have an utterly robotic absence of humanity. Check out the ineluctable, emotionless high-pass filter as the synthesiser and drum machines repeat the same four bars for twelve minutes.” – but it was certainly bigger on cyborgs and fractals.

It’s great that we’ve reached a point where we can listen to a strong album like Shifting Signals for its musical qualities, rather than as a sci-fi signifier. This is doubtless partly because computers are now something we carry in our pockets, rather than the domain of tech-wizards , and the idea of a dance producer connecting and sequencing actual hardware seems as charmingly whimsical as a skiffle band with a tea-chest bass, but also because a near forty-year-old genre which has so clearly influenced the mainstream no longer sends shocks (regardless of how much the guitarist at your local pub’s Sunday jam session witters on about proper musicians being threatened by this new-fangled stuff). Shifting Signals makes clear nods towards specific moments in techno’s history, such as the mournful Aphex horns hovering behind a rubbery loop on Reset, the almost funky bounce and muffled vocals of The Way I See You which recall Baby Ford’s terribly under-rated BFORD9 album, and the minimal Jeff Mills march of Automaton (OK, there are still the odd nods to robo-chic in techno’s DNA, that could have been a Model 500 title from 1985). 

Although there are moments of sonic sleekness on display, such as the shiny burnished hum of The Passage, the album is at its best with grimy textures and Fixmer proves himself to be a master at marshalling dirty industrial sounds. Corne De Brume – or Foghorn, in English – opens with a wavering static buzz resembling a detuned telly being spun on a rotary washing line, and is topped by some rusty distorted notes. They could cleaned up and airlifted into a different track as euphoric ravey airhorn blasts, but here they sound as if there was a loose connection in the studio, adding a rough glitchy texture. Roar Machines is built on a similarly scuzzy baritone synth line, which is tweaked and twisted throughout. It almost sounds as though it was based on speech patterns...though if you hear actual words, maybe it’s time to remove the headphones and go and get some fresh air. 

A couple of tracks are less memorable, but the only real mis-step is lead single Synthetic Mind, a plodding track whose simple piano part was influenced by John Carpenter, but which recalls the ponderous coffee-table techno and dolphin holograms of Cosmic Baby; but even this is enlivened by long descending synth tones, which could have soundtracked Hans Gruber falling from the Nakatomi building had Die Hard been set in the Jet Set Willy universe. To return to the glory days of jazz, this meticulously constructed record might not be the work of a trailblazer like Miles or Coltrane, but it sits alongside the thoughtful craftsmanship of Horace Silver and the gutsy kick of Cannonball Adderley: a pleasure for cool hepcats and cold androids alike.

Piece of Bis

OK, I've decided that what I'll do is post my MusicOMH reviews one in arrears.  This means there will be an average of 4 weeks between posting on their site and here - but go and sign up for the site if you want them more quickly.  Here's a fun little album from some pop kids who probably now have their own kids.

BIS – SYSTEMS MUSIC FOR HOME DEFENCE (Last Night From Glasgow)

Pop music is synonymous with youth, of course, but nobody can stop time. The public is generally happy to see their favourite artists slip into middle age so long as they can still turn out a tune, happy to forego low hairlines and narrow waists, and everyone just pretends that jumping over the drum riser or busting out a slutdrop was never a big deal in the first place. But when an act celebrates their juvenility from the outset, aging becomes a harsher curse. Musical Youth might turn in a decent festival set, but there’ll still be a little cognitive dissonance you won’t get with UB40 and anyone who’s encountered The Nashville Teens on the nostalgia trail can only find their senescence risible. Sonic Youth were perhaps ironic enough to carry it off, but seeing their craggy, lined faces in their final years as a band still. And Neil Young is just taking the piss.

Bis have managed to walk that tightrope rather nicely. Yes, they may not all have been old enough to buy a pint when they first appeared on Top Of The Pops – the first unsigned act ever to do so, an achievement which puts them into both the record books and  the roster of classic pub quiz questions – but, despite the odd lyric about sweetshops or Teen-C power, their feeling of youthful effusiveness came from their fierce independence and love of euphoric pop music rather than any post-adolescent energy. And this has not changed on their sixth studio album, the same infectious bounce and sly wit is in evidence as it was back in 1996; they just go easier on the hairclips nowadays.

Some of the lyrics do reflect a more middle-aged mindset, where mortgages and school runs might take place of rollerblades and school discos. Headaches and Stress are not exactly titles one would have found on a 90s Bis album. Even when the themes are somewhat more universal, the band reveal that they’re in their forties: lead single Lucky Night is a grinning swipe at men who co-opt feminism as an item in their chat-up arsenal (“Patriarchy is a bad scene/ Baby, I’m the vaccine”), but it’s hard to imagine any bar-room lothario under 35 asking for someone’s email address.

The music still packs a sherbety punch, though, regardless of the topics covered, embellishing the fizzy, buzzing indie-pop of old with some sonic references which actually predate the band’s first recordings by 7 or 8 years. Stress is an indie anthem with Walken-tickling levels of cowbell, but also has a vintage rave breakdown, and some perky backing vocals from Manda Rin that sound pleasingly like Betty Boo. (I Got My) Independence – a track title to sum up the Bis ethos in every decade, perhaps – starts with some pounding Italo house piano, before morphing into a, Express Yourself-era Madonna tune via some crisp 909 snare. Lucky Night’s package holiday party sound is like something from the second-tier of Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s roster – think Sonia or The Reynolds Girls – and We Do Structures might have a name like an ancient po-faced Numan B-side, but has a winking hi-NRG rhythm with more in common with London Boys. There’s even a track entitled The Lookback, pledging that “we do the lookback to see where we’ve come from”, in case there was any doubt (and, for the record, the lush synth pads this time nod towards the Madonna of Vogue, with a hint of The Beloved’s melancholy 3AM wistfulness).

The sounds of 1989 are big business currently, and a band like the superb Confidence Man can take some vintage chart pop and some juicy Chicago house basslines to create a night at the Platonic NYC gay club of your dreams, but on Systems Music For Home Defence, Bis bring the same pleasures down to earth. Instead of big budget fantasies the album sound more like someone playing along to favourite pop tunes through fuzzy amps and singing with equal zest and wonky pitching into a marker pen microphone. And if that doesn’t sound like fun to you, you’re probably too old.