Chimpomatic

Stephen Malkmus

The Senator (Single)

On-form return w Jicks in tow & Beck on deck. Love a good outro solo.

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10th Jun 2011

82 Almost Best-of-the-decade albums

Various

The 00s have certainly been a turbulent decade for the music industry, from the rise and fall of Napster, through the MP3 and iPod revolution and on to the reality TV dominated close of the decade.

Drum and bass infiltrated pop music so throughly that it's now just part of the furniture, while Hip Hop blew up to dominate the US charts, nabbing a guest spot on dozens of chart toppers.

Filtering through the hundreds of albums released in the decade is no mean feat, so we've kept our final list strictly democratic - with the top 10 derived from those albums most nominated by our reviewers.

Read the top 10 here - but if that's not enough, here's a lazy, sprawling list of 82 others that come very highly recommended, in no particular order:

Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
Killer track: PDA. More New York cool, a 'go-to' album for so many occasions
TV On The Radio - Dear Science
Pearl Jam - Riot Act
Doves - Kingdom Of Rust
At the Drive In - Relationship of Command
Killer Track: Enfilade. A welcome dose of anger after the fallow years of the late 90s. Added bonus that it was released on the soon to be bust Grand Royal label.
Justice - D.A.N.C.E.
Santogold - Santogold
Smog - Dongs Of Sevotion
Cornelius - Point
Devendra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
Mugison - Lonely Mountain
Midlake - The Trials Of Van Occupanther
Electralane - The Power Out
Radiohead - Amnesiac
Beth  Gibbons & Rustin' Man - Out Of Season
PJ Harvey - Stories From The City
Caribou - The Milk Of Human Kindness
Pearl Jam - Bearoya Hall
Unusual in that it's a live album, this double acoustic set pulls together all that's great about the much-maligned grungers. Spine tingling.
Fugazi - The Argument
Not their best, but still one of the best
Low - The Great Destroyer
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
Killer track: Passing Afternoon. We live in noisy times, everyone should have an album like this to retreat to now and again
Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
The only artist capable of an appropriate 9/11 album.
Blond Redhead - 23
Grandaddy - Software Slump
John Frusciante - Shadows Collide With People
The Early Years  - Early Years
Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
Killer track: Fast Blood. One of those albums that just clicks straight away, some brutally honest songs but never a hard listen
The National - Alligator
Jay-Z - The Blueprint
Despite his fame, his only album that's solid throughout.
The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
Portishead - Third
Spoon - Girls Can Tell
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon - Kill The Moonlight
Spoon - Gimme Fiction
Yes, we like Spoon.
Stephen Malkmus - Pig Lib
Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World
CJ: Their strongest album from a solid bunch of releases.
Kings Of Leon - Because Of The Times
7 minute opener followed by track after track.
Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls
Johanna Newsom - Y's
Band Of Horses - Cease To Begin
Radiohead - Hail To The Thief
Buck 65 - Talking Honky Blues
Common - Like Water For Chocolate
Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
David Berman finally made sense.
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Guided By Voices - Human Amusement at Hourly Rates
Finally a solid album from GBV. One of the best best ofs going - up there with Neil Young's Decade.
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
The Good The Bad And The Queen - The Good The Bad And The Queen
Another surprising side-project from Damon Albarn
TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - By The Way
Titus Andronicus - The Airing Of Grievances
No Age - Nouns
Jay-Z - The Black Album
The Wedding Present - Take Fountain
An awesome return for the Indie legends, embracing a move to the US for Uncle Gedge
Kanye West - College Dropout
John Frusciante - To Record Only Water For 10 Days
Paving the way for Frusciante's magnificent return to form.
The Cave Singers - Welcome Joy
Low - The Great Destroyer
Catfish Haven - Devastator
The Strokes - First Impressions Of Earth
The Invisible - The Invisible
Lightning Dust - Infinite Light
The Decemberists - Picaresque
The Coral - Magic And Medicine
Killer track: Liezah. Some strictly Liverpool uncool. A Coral album is a comforting thing.
Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
Radiohead - Kid A
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
DJ Shadow - The Private Press
Great at home or on the dance floor.
Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
It shouldn't work, but it does. Comedy genius.
Interpol - Antics
Take you on a cruise. Awesome
The Walkmen - You & Me
Killer track: In the New Year. Band of the decade for Chimpovich.
Arcade Fire - Funeral
Why? - Alopicia
Weird indie hip-hop that just works.
Ladyhawk - Shots
My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves
White Denim - Workout Holiday
Killer track: Lets Talk About It. Chaotic, energetic, sounds like a good time was had making it.

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31st Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

Electric Ballroom, Camden

While the Pavement reunion is hogging the column inches, no one has really stopped to consider if we actually need a Pavement reunion. Sure, they are one of the defining bands of the 90's, but unlike the Pixies, Pavement perhaps reached the dizziest heights they are likely to within their own life span. And let's not forget, main man Stephen Malkmus has had a consistently successful solo career since Pavement fell apart.

His self-titled debut was solid, building the Pavement style towards a more polished production. Pig Lib formally introduced The Jicks and is likely to feature in my albums-of-the-decade list. Face The Truth unleashed his inner guitar hero, while recent entry Real Emotional Trash disclosed Malkmus' love of The Wire. Can this guy get any cooler? Apparently there's no need, as he quickly re-establishes himself on stage tonight as the ultimate 90's indie rocker.

Tonight's gig is part of a three show warm-up tour in preparation for an appearance at this weekend's ATP festival - which seems to be the band's first live outing sine May. I've often wondered what the band gets out of a warm-up show and tonight I found out. The track list was mostly a little foreign to my ears - and I consider myself pretty well revised. Less known album tracks got a dusting off, while the 'hits' were largely overlooked. When stand-out It Kills kicked off, the crown soared for perhaps the first time of the evening - but that quickly passed as the band worked the song, re-finding their feet.

While the sound was crisp and clear - making the most of Malkmus' guitar virtuosity - the deafening volume didn't help and songs were drowned out. The band creaked and shuffled, re-started and re-tuned, with stage banter often making the gig seem more like band practice. So that's what warm-ups are for then. A lesson well learnt, I just wish I was there to see them at ATP.

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11th Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pavement

Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedance Edition

Domino

The Pavement re-release juggernaut continues at full-steam (wait, didn't the last review start like that?), with album number four now getting the super-deluxe treatment. Perhaps more than the previous efforts, Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition is truly jam-packed with goodies, stretching it out to an epic 155 minutes.

In the overall canon of Pavement's work, support for Brighten the Corners may be a little divided. The album sold considerably more that it's predecessors - and features a couple of bonifide hit singles in Stereo and Shady Lane - but much of the scattergun rambling charm of the earlier albums had perhaps been polished away. In retrospect, the album shows a logical progression in the band's sound, and pre-dates the evolution of Malkmus's excellent solo albums - and can hardly be labelled as 'conventional'.

Sure, the chorus of Stereo is catchy and conventional, but it's surrounded by unhinged guitar work and primal vocals - not to mention the spoken word interruptions ("I know him, and he does" retorts Bob Nastovich in his best Wayne's World voice, "And you're my fact checking cuz".). Shady Lane crams a 20 minute epic into less than 4, while the show-stopping Embassy Row commits an orchestrated guitar riot to tape.

Conventional, perhaps not - but if you take Spiral Stairs' slightly out of place efforts out of the mix (Date W/ IKEA, Passat Dream), the original album is at least pretty cohesive for a Pavement album. Bring the collected b-sides into play however and it's a different story, transforming this into a sprawling, but thoroughly engaging trip.

Outtake/B-side The Hexx has already been featured on Domino's Worlds of Possibility compilation (albeit in a more concise form than the versions here), while Beautiful As A Butterfly and Cataracts lead into the raft of additional tracks that formed the b-sides of the singles from this period. The highlight of the rarities section of this release has to be the Radio 1 Evening Session, which provides studio quality recordings of the band running through The Hexx, Harness Your Hopes and Winner Of The, with the undisputed highlight being the band's cover of The Killing Moon - a track that provides perfect ammo for a stretched-out work-out.

Admittedly things taper away with some of the other live tracks from the era, but as the zany double barreled finale of Space Ghost Themes I & II come around (from the Space Ghost Coast To Coast TV show), the notion that Pavement had entered a more 'straight-forward' mainstream period is a distant theory.

While the Crooked Rain and Wowee Zowee re-releases arguably watered down their excellent starting points, Brighten The Corners here seems even better that the original - perhaps due to me approaching an album I perhaps was overly dismissive of from a fresh perspective. Either way, as these re-releases have shown, this was an incredibly productive band - kicking out 2 1/2 hours worth of decent material per album cycle, while the young pups these days struggle to produce a 12 track album and a couple of b-sides.

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2nd Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Deerhoof

Offend Maggie

Kill Rock Stars

The first thing you notice about the new Deerhoof record is the muscle in the guitars. The Tears And Music Of Love is an impressive way to open an album and after the first few bars of the duel guitar intro the new Deerhoof manifesto is firmly introduced. With the addition of a second guitar to the front line and an easing off in electronic production, the emphasis is on the live sound. To enhance this they have really stripped down the compositions allowing the twin guitars to stomp around in acres of space.

2007's fantastic Friend Opportunity signaled a veering towards accessibility for these art-rockers and its follow-up continues this trend. Offend Maggie successfully condenses the raw flair of this band and their frivolous tendency towards the unpredictable into near-perfect 3 minute pop songs but without compromising any of their avant-garde values. This is a trick bands have been looking to master forever and Deerhoof seem to do it effortlessly. Satomi Matsuzaki's sugar-sweet vocals are what has always kept this band well left of center and she doesn't disappoint here. She tends to sing in unison with the guitar melodies in a Malkmus kind of directional honesty, and it can really grate on songs like Basketball Get Your Groove Back, but her ability to quarry the purest of melodies out of such harsh musical surroundings is what makes their sound so addictive. She can deliver such cuddly and naive phrasing over jaunty percussion like on Fresh Born or make her distinctive voice float away on the intimate My Purple Past.

Deerhoof have always been masters of conjuring form out of formlessness and Matsuzaki's drifting style leads the way on songs like Eaguru Guru. Instead of the harsh changes of direction that have sometimes lurked around the corner on many of their past songs, the tendency here is to meander almost aimlessly into change with such ease and abandon that you really have to keep up or you'll find yourself in foreign territory quite often. Eaguru Guru strays way off the original course as the vocals drift by like tumbleweed, but those strays thinking that they're on to the next track are violently kept up to date as the whole thing is brought full circle with squealing guitars and calamitous, crashing drums. The effect is that the listener is repeatedly kicking themselves for thinking the band have lost their way.

This band never lose their way and yet again they have created a record that is built on chaos; for those willing to trust them the rewards are great. And though the pop structures that dominate this record make it much easier for the listener to trust than ever before, nothing has been lost. In fact, as a delivery device Offend Maggie is much more streamlined and is able to convey their love of the contrast, from form to formlessness, sweet to sour or soft to hard-as-hell, better than ever before.

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13th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

Real Emotional Trash

Domino

Real Emotional Trash is the fourth solo album from Stephen Malkmus since the amicable break-up of lo-fi pioneers and all time Hall of Famers, Pavement, nearly ten years ago. On heading out on the solo seas, Malkmus opted for an ‘ifitaintbrokedontfixit’ approach; taking that hyperactive yet laidback and slightly surreal sound he so effortlessly brough to Pavement, smoothing out the edges a touch and then just riding with it. For Real Emotional Trash, he obviously thought his well-oiled musical machine still wasn’t broke, so the odd tinker here and there would suffice rather than anything resembling a fix.

Inevitably it’s a maturer sound, but not at the expense of any of that trademark playfulness. “Of all my stoned digressions, some have mutated into truth” sings that familiar conversational voice on ‘DragonflyPie’ and ‘Stoned digressions’ is a neat way to sum up the music of Malkmus; never quite sure what he’s on about lyrically and musically liable to wander off in random directions, but heck it sure sounds nice.

I often forget how good a guitarist he really is, but he’s never one to turn down an extended jam with a range of effects pedals to showcase his chops. Joined by ex Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss (on drums obviously and the occasional backing vocal) R.E.T. rocks frequently, not least on the title track, which, with the aid of some jaunty piano, clocks in at a hefty ten and a half minutes.

While ‘Real Emotional Trash’ presents no real change of direction, it still follows that path forged by the founding of Pavement back in 1989, and what a scenic and above all fun path it is too - with Stephen Mallkmus up there at the front, holding the flag - your ever so slightly eccentric guide on this enjoyable journey.

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13th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Best of 2007

Locochimpo

I write this from sunny Chile. Internet connections are fairly erratic over her, but I've been keeping up to date with the important cultural news from chimpomatic when i can. Very excited about all things Indiana Jones, Batman, Iron Man and the new Malkmus album.
 
So - picking a top 5 is always tough, but it's made harder this time as I managed to lose my iPod on my way to Munich just before i came away. I didn't have time to fill the replacement with many tunes and my brain is now tuned into comedy latin american raggaton and shit pop...
 
However, my 5 for 2007 are:
 
Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Devendra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

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18th Dec 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Libertines

Time For Heroes - The Best Of The Libertines

Rough Trade

I confess. The Libertines passed me by. I'm not sure if I was just not reading NME at the time, but they literally passed me by to the point where I couldn't tell you a single one of their songs. Their influence can (apparently) be seen in the more recent crop of British bands who seem to have taken the band's style and applied it to good music. I'm talking about the Arctic Monkeys and The View amongst others, who of course both have obvious roots and influences, but bring a bucketload of originality with it.

A quick iTunes search tells me that as far as new music goes, 2002-2004 was defined for me by Arcade Fire, Beastie Boys, Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Grandaddy, Interpol, John Frusciante, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket, Red Hot Chili Chili Peppers, Steven Malkmus and Weezer. In alphabetical order. Come to think of it, 2004 is barely a whisper away - but looking back at my list it is certainly dominated by American bands and The Libertines must have presented a tangible alternative to that.

The comeback of the English guitar band is certainly indisputible, with dance music being the most obvious loser, but coming at The Libertines now with hindsight but a distinct lack of sentimentality it's still hard for me to see what all the fuss is about. At least Oasis were huge, loutish, hotel-trashing superstars who would literally walk out of a US stadium tour waving their fingers. Can't Stand Me Now does come across as a melacholic anthem but the songs just seem to be mostly repetitive chorus, which could at least make for a singalong live. In this day and age, there's little excuse for poor production. But The Libertines just seem to make dull, derivative music with very little genuine impact. The band are clearly derivative of many British bands, but strangely the band they remind me of most is So-Cal punkers Seven Seconds. Go figure.

It's not saying much when a band has to cull a 'Best Of' from only two original albums and a few singles and it's saying even less when half those tracks still put themselves forward as skippable. Sorry, I honestly tried.

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29th Nov 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Various Artists

I'm Not There [Music From The Motion Picture]

Columbia

As a soundtrack for his forthcoming Bob Dylan movie I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes has assembled an impressive array of musicians young and old to provide cover versions and re-workings of their favourite Dylan tracks.

Much like the Wylde Rattz project for Hayne's previous rock biopic Velvet Goldmine, supergroup "The Million Dollar Bashers" (featuring Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, Nels Cline and Tom Verlaine among others) back many of the singers, and were put together to bring some cohesiveness to the album. As a cohesive album however, I'm Not There fails conclusively. Clocking in at a whopping 160 minutes, the jam-packed double CD is simply far too long - eclipsing the sprawling White Album and making Red Hot Chili Pepper's 2006 opus Stadium Arcadium seem like a couple of bonus tracks.

Taken as a collection of individual tracks however, the album provides a wealth of ammo for the mixtape masses with more than a few silver bullets in the arsenal. With such great material in the hands of these artists it would have been a tragedy for this album to be a faliure, but cover songs have always been a hit or miss affair - with the artists often taking one of two methods of attack when approaching the material. The most effective method here seems to be the straightforward approach, letting the bands own sound soak through the material. Sonic Youth's understated cover of I'm Not there is a highlight, as are Steven Malkmus' multiple contributions adding only a few restrained theatrics to produce some of his best work.

Black Keys provide one successful modernisation with their fuzz metal version of The Wicked Messenger, but The Hold Steady's version of Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window tries too hard to fit Dylan's square song into the band's story-telling style of a round hole. Not to mention Sufjan Steven's overblown theatrics, which make Ring Them Bells (what else?) smugly saccharine. Eddie Vedder's All Along The Watchtower would make for a live concert highlight, but it sounds pretty straightforward here  - as does Cat Power's solid, but karaoke-like cover of Stuck Inside of Mobile - following Dylan's version down to the tiniest vocal shift, in a way that even he refuses to do in his live show.

Some minor disappointments come from artists who have covered Dylan's work so well previously - such as Pearl Jam's version of Masters Of War or Jim James' superb Billy 4. Jim James covers Goin' To Acapulco on this album, which is a mild let-down when My Morning Jacket could have done a blistering version of something like Hurricane - particularly after they so perfectly blended their own heavy rocking style into Freebird in the woeful Elizabethtown movie.

For all of this, it's the breadth of Dylan's songwriting that is the star of the show - with 70's cowboy-era Dylan coming out particularly well. Calexico's multiple contribution's provide much of that, as do Los Lobos' spirited break for the border with Billy 1. It's when the musicians' really grasp the spirit of the songs that things really work - and while Cat Power's uninspired rendering illustrates Dylan's occasionally drawn out verses, John Doe's version of Pressing On and Ramblin' Jack Elliot's guitar picking on Tom Thumb's Blues provide a celebration of the music itself, rather than just the lyrics.

34 tracks picked from Dylan's catalogue of literally hundreds is in itself quite an achievement, resulting in an album so dense that it's taken me an extra week just to get to grips with it all. If it was actual Dylan versions it might be up their with Mothership in this year's best of (disqualified on a best-of technicality). And in fact, since hearing this album I have drawn up such a playlist, which is working out nicely.

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#CSF

20th Nov 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Film School

Hideout

Beggars

San Francisco's Film School are a band built around frontman Greg Bertens. Formed in the late 1990's, Bertens has recruited members and slowly put out albums and EPs before signing to Beggars and becoming a more permanent band. This album sees a few line up changes - most notably the addition of female bassist/vocalist Lorelei Plotczyk who answered a Pixies-aping personal for "Someone into Husker Du and Peter, Paul and Mary".

Swirlies, Seefeel and Bardo Pond are the name checks on this album though, and while Film School's live show and previous album had me thinking of The Cure, Hideout owes more that a passing nod to the brilliance/pretentiousness of My Bloody Valentine. Hardly surprising due to the fact that MBV's Colm O'Ciosoig appears on the album.

Opener Dear Me and follow-up Lectric set the scene perfectly, with a wall of sound that builds and builds with pounding drums. Produced by frontman Bertens and Mixed by Phil Ek (Band of Horses, Stephen Malkmus, The Shins) the album is a huge leap forward from 2006's  self-title album, which confusingly was their second. Rich and textured, the records feels like a lot of time, love and attention has been put into it. The effects are set to stun and while on several occasions things look like they are going to drift away, the sonic theatrics are kept in manageable chunks and the album remains strong and focused without the directionless ramblings that MBV had a taste for. While the admittedly Cure sounding Two Kinds, with it's bass and 80's John Hughes keyboard sound starts promisingly, it's doesn't quite deliver but tracks like the juggernaut sound of Sick Hipster Nursed By Suicide Girl swirl up a pummeling sound that builds up to a crashing drum finale.

All music has a nod in one direction or another, and shoegazing is a direction that gets little attention in these skinny jeans obsessed days. In my book it would be more than welcome to mooch back into the limelight.

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#CSF

5th Nov 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Takeovers

Bad Football

Off Records

The second album from The Takeovers might suggest that they were the most successful of Robert Pollard's 2006 side-projects (see reviews: 1,2,3) ...but a quick look at the team sheet suggests that nothing has settled down, as there have been a few additions to the squad since then. As well as Turn To Red's Pollard, Slusarenko (GBV) and Dan Peters (Mudhoney), Bad Football enlists super-subs Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), Tad Doyle (Tad) and John Moen (The Decemberists) to pad out the squad.

Malkmus lends his eccentric stunt guitar to opener You're At It, which starts things off in the right direction, with it's lolloping guitars and pounding drums. The album cover is a great Pollard collage and there are plenty of classics song titles here (Father's Favorite Temperature, The Jester Of Helpmeat), although not necessarily corresponding to the best tracks (I Can See My Dog, My Will).

The focussing of Pollard's attention on The Takeovers might suggest a more purposeful record than Turn To Red, but other than the extended team sheet their is no evidence that any more effort went into either the writing or recording of the album. There are definitely a couple more developed songs here, but in typical post-GBV Pollard style it has the sound of a fun side-project, rather than the main event.

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13th Sep 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Dinosaur Jr.

Beyond

Pias

Listening to Beyond, the first album featuring the original 3 members of Dinosaur Jr (J. Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph) since 1988’s Bug (and a subsequent falling out), I was going to write at length about an old interview with Mascis on Snub TV - but, sure enough, YouTube and Wikipedia fill in the back story there. What struck me was the stark contrast between Mascis the interviewee and Mascis the musician. As he himself points out “There’s nothing going on anywhere really, so you might as well sit where you are.” I can’t imagine the Mascis School of Motivation is over subscribed, but put a guitar in the man’s hands and he’s off and running, screaming fury and love, all articulated over the space of 6 strings and a fretboard. 

This is what we want from Dinosaur Jr. Mascis’ shy, laid-back but sweet vocals, hiding behind some simply stunning electric guitar work. Extended solos and walls of effects might be the stuff of Spinal Tap gimmicks and indeed Barlow himself had a couple of digs at Mascis when first starting up ‘rival’ band Sebadoh (“Pedal hopping like a Dinosaur” he sings on Gimmie Indie Rock), but such is Mascis’ mastery that the guitar is the integral part, the character and essence of each song. Now, with Murph back behind the drums and Barlow, surely one of the hardest Bassists around (in playing, if not fighting terms), reconciled and ready to rock, the rhythm section is there to add the muscle behind Mascis’ wanderings and meanderings - you want a power trio? Here you are.

After almost 20 years apart it is in-keeping with the Mascis’ persona that the first song is called Almost Ready and yep, we’re straight into a blistering solo and ‘immediate classic’ territory.  Almost Ready kicks down the door of Indie Rock 2007 and politely screams ‘What the fuck’s up with this party?’ Less of an edge, but no slacking in quality for the poppier Crumble.  Then early favourite Pick Me Up - 6 and a half minutes and what a journey.  The opening riff could be lifted from a scene in an 80s movie, where the baddie is finally getting the upper hand, all adrenaline and activity, working through a chorus that sees Mascis singing - dueting with his guitar before concluding with a 3 minute guitar solo (that’s three minutes). Awesome.  Play it alongside No More Shoes by Stephen Malkmus to get an idea what these two heroes are all about. 

After all that hi-octane, it’s time to bring things down a bit, with Lou taking over vocal duties on Back to Your Heart.  I’m on record as a huge fan of Sebadoh and a large part of that is down to Barlow’s song writing - so when he’s backed by the power of Dinosaur Jr. it’s a no-lose situation.  This Is All I Came To Do lifts the mood again and whilst the title may or may not refer to guitar solo-work, the song contains a couple of beauties.  Drummer Murph gets to flex on Been There All the Time, laying down some powerful rolls as the band rock out. Hard. Mixing things up, they follow the harder, darker, metal-er(?) It’s Me with the light and airy We’re Not Alone and I Got Lost, which has Mascis’ falsetto voice, sitting atop acoustic guitar, tom rolls and a cello. Lou and his bass take centre-stage for Lighning Bulb before What if I Knew bids us fairwell in the way Mascis knows best…that’s right, a blistering solo.

It’s good to have them back. Since re-forming in 2005, they are amongst a very select group of bands I HAVE to see if they tour near me - and I look forward to seeing them punishing the Marshall Stacks with Beyond.

#Music
#chimpovich

30th Mar 2007 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Pavement

Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition

Domino

The Pavement re-release juggernaut continues with their third album getting the treatment this month, now re-branded as Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition. Following in the steps of the exhaustive first two re-issues (Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins), Wowee Zowee has been expanded with a re-remastered version of the classic 1997 album, accompanied by an assortment of B-sides, demos and live tracks from the period.

After the relative radio-friendly hits of Crooked Rain, Wowee Zowee was a relative critial and commercial disappointment on it's release, and the band retreated for a two years before releasing a follow up. In retrospect it is quite possibly the best Pavement album, finding the near perfect balance of the wacky schizophrenia of their early albums with the crafted 24 track song writing of their later albums Brighten The Corners and Terror Twilight. We can only imagine what extended titles are in store for those two.

Eclecticism is the name of the game with Wowee Zowee, and literally handfuls of different styles are covered. From the beautiful opening acoustic chords of We Dance, the music hall sounds of Motion Suggests Itself, Spiral Stairs' trippy Western Homes, or just the straight-up greatness of Black Out, Father To A Sister Of Thought, AT&T or countless others, this is an album that's as hard to define as a collection of Ween rarities.

For all the variation however, this is an album that works superbly. The songs play off each other and make a cohesive, balanced whole - with the highlights enhanced by the lighter, fun numbers.

And so we move on to the bonus material. B-sides from the album's singles (Rattled By The Rush and Father To A Sister Of Thought) start things off, and the Pacific Trim EP is a genuine bonus - recorded to coincide with an Australian tour, this release features all 4 tracks of the Rare EP - including notable mentions for vinyl-only I Love Perth and lead track Give It A Day. A cover of the Descendents It's A Hectic World is disappointing, and rambling tracks like Soul Food serve to highlight Pavement's habit of wandering off into musical cul-de-sacs. A demo of We Dance overlooks the natural beauty of the track, highlighting instead Malkmus' tounge-in-cheek English accent for a song which theories have suggested was influenced - either as a homage or pastiche - by Malkmus' friendship with some of the original Brit Poppers, including Damon Albarn (clearly influenced by Pavement in the mid 90's) and Wire fan Justine Fleischman (a former member of Malkmus' current band The Jicks).

Deeper into disc two a handful of tracks recorded on that same Australian tour showcase the band at their best, with off-kilter humor peeling away to uncover musical magic - illustrated most clearly by Box Elder, which recovers from near disaster to highlight how great this track is - from the often overlooked Westing (By Musket & Sextet) compilation.

One thing this album does bring up is how these re-releases monsters perform as self-contained albums. Is there ever such a thing as too much? The original was always long (56 minutes and 18 songs) and it could be argued that it was already sprawling (check out the re-ordered version here) and it is certainly front loaded with the absolute best-of-the-best tracks. At 50 songs and 156 minutes this new edition certainly adds a lot more to that mix, leaving no doubt that the best comes first - as although there are certainly some gems in the bonus material they never equal the epic heights set by the first two handfuls of tracks off the original.

Should this review rate the album as a whole? Or the original album as a whole, with the disposable extra of 32 bonus tracks? As a devout Pavement fan I'd always choose to have more, but if I was trying to convert a rookie to their majesty this would certainly not be the place to start.

I'm going to plump for something in between on this one, as although it is one of my favourite albums, I'm speculating that it is unlikely I'll be flipping on disc two all that often. But with the age of playlists and compilations upon us Pavement have delivered an ideal gift: A classic album with a selection box on the side.

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7th Nov 2006 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Stephen Malkmus

Kindling For The Master EP

Domino

4 remixes of Stephen Malkmus' latest single provide disco entertainment for mix tapes, but surprisingly it's Hot Chip who take the honors - with their Jan Hammer style re-working.

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2nd Oct 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Stephen Malkmus

Koko, Camden

I made a few Pavement related errors as a younger music fan - most notably missing out on seeing them support Sonic Youth, due to a lack of train fare money. I've been totally loving Stephen Malkmus' solo albums, so I wasn't about to drop the ball and miss this show.

Support came from Clor, who've been causing a 'buzz' on the Chimp Towers 'should-get-round-to-checking them-out' list, and they were great. Malkmus and the Jicks then kicked off, unfortunately disproving the myth that support bands are deliberately mixed badly to make the headliners sound great. The kidney wobbling bass that was working well with Clor's disco groove just drowned out the witty lyrics etc that make Malkmus' songs tick. Dodgy cabling led to a few more sound problems, and while the band were pro enough to ride it out you did get the feeling that it was holding them back.... as they started to run out of banter and never really got on a roll. Moaning aside though, they did kick out some great tracks... notably long form chimp favourite No More Shoes.

3 stars and no grudges.

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26th Sep 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet

Stephen Malkmus

Face The Truth

Malkmus is back with another awesome post-Pavement solo record. This time he's not even with the Jicks - he's strictly Lone Wolf.

Sounding totally assured and confident in his sound, this album is layered and complex - with long building songs (No More Shoes) and faster more immediate songs (Baby C'Mon). A demo of It Kills was already featured on the excellent Matador at Fifteen sampler, and that's now been finished off and is sounding great. Sounding tight, well produced and powerful doesn't mean that he's done away with the weird shit however, plus there's a funky lyric pinched from KISS, and a little keyboard tinkle from Rod Stewart. Malkmus is still operating on his own frequency and sounding totally original.

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13th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet