Chimpomatic

Jason Lytle

Yours Truly, The Commuter

Anti

It was a strange task indeed to review the last Grandaddy album, Just Like The Fambly Cat, knowing that it was to be their last. It was virtually impossible, armed with this knowledge, not to read every word of the record as a suicide note. It's hard to review the album in its own right and not view it in the context in which it was being presented, the full stop to a wonderful decade of music. Since that time the music scene has suffered three years without its most unashamedly romantic and yet seemingly reluctant indie hero, until now that is. Here he returns to our ears with his debut solo record and the task of reviewing a piece of work that finds Lytle at the start of a new road rather than at the end of an old one is an infinitely more joyous undertaking, and made even easier by the quality of the music in question.

Lytle's work has always danced intriguingly around a series of opposites or contradictions. There's the obvious one like a big, bearded country dude singing in such a delicate tone which, in turn, leads on to yet more trickery. In these soft tones he sings of unbridled romanticism of warm summer days, hand in hand or childhood idealism and then trashes them with stories of drunk robots or sudden bursts of feral punk rock. Thematically these contrasts have prevailed and one senses a constant struggle in Lytle between everything from art and pop, town and country, loud and quiet or past and present.

In true form the title of his solo debut is a signing off - Yours Truly. And The Commuter explains this struggle hinting at a constant state of traveling between one place and another, be that physical or emotional or forward and back. Place is a dominant theme here with much talk of "going home." the line in the opening song "I may be limping, but I'm coming home," touches on both his past experiences and what promise the future holds for him now. Back in 1997 he gave us lines like "Here I sit and play guitar, count stars, out in the country, having narrowly escaped my trip into town," from Collective Dream Wish Of Upperclass Elegance. Little has changed as we find him in a similar dichotomy. Lytle is a dreamer and his music has always vividly represented the artistic conundrum between free expression and some sort of existence in society and the rest of the world. The concept of 'home' can obviously be taken at face value having recently relocated to Montana but it could also represent a kind of comfort that he's now finding between these two artistic opposites.

The core of the Grandaddy sound is firmly in place on Yours Truly with a slightly more low-key feel to proceedings. Lytle writes simple songs about simple themes and it's in this pursuit of simplicity that he manages to create some of the most perfect songs of his career. In the liner notes there's a picture of his note pad on which is written "No more weird arrangements...not on this album!!! Very simple. Very nice. rich, Big, but with enough little fucked things." That kind of does my job for me, I couldn't have put it better. It's a lonely record, but sun drenched as always. Themes of loss prevail but hope springs forth continuously. He creates a kind of euphoric melancholia, or melancholic euphoria, depending on your state of mind. Brand New Sun swells with an almost tear jerking sense of promise as two people run headlong into the unknown with the sole purpose of change, whatever pitfalls await them they'll face it together. Birds Encouraged Him sees a character on the verge of giving up on life only to be talked out of it by the birds, this childlike vision of salvation at the hands of nature being a familiar thread.

Lytles work is so packed full of a unique kind of idealism, both innocent and jaded, that one is almost seduced into reading too much into his words. The temptation to do that on the final Grandaddy album was all too great and I don't want to do it here. Whether he's lost or has found his way home is his privilege to know but what he's given us is a wonderfully simple and endlessly beautiful piece of work and a worthy first step on this much anticipated solo journey.

Check out Lytle's notes on the album here.

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18th May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Odawas

The Blue Depths

Jagjaguwar

WARNING: 1983 VERSION OF SCARFACE SOUNDTRACK SPOILER ALERT.

If there are three things the 1983 remake of Scarface is known for it is probably violence, swearing and a truly shocking synth-drenched soundtrack.

However, were it Michael Mann not Brian De Palma remaking Scarface in 1983. And were Tony Montana to be getting high on his own supply of marijuana and not cocaine. And were Tony Montana to come to realise that world wasn’t actually just ‘his’ but infact was there to be shared with Dolphins and Whales and other such sea dwelling mammals. And were Sir David Attenbrough to pop up at some point. Whether you would have a superior film or not is highly questionable, whether you would have a superior soundtrack however is highly likely. And the chances are it would sound something like this, the 4th album from Indiana’s Odawas. Subtle synth tinged oceanic influenced niceness with yet another high-pitched/reverbed/lovely vocal ala My Morning Jacket / Band of Horses / Great Lake Swimmers ……as Tony Montana would say "Oooh that's nice. Who is it?".

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15th May 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Pink Mountaintops

Borderline, London

May 11th 2009

Steven McBean's Pink Mountaintops were in town in support of recent third album Outside Love - and hot from an appearance at the ATP Festival. After storming shows from the Black Mountain mothership last year, McBean is worth catching in any guise and this was no exception.

Perfectly suited to the Canadian-ski-shack-meets-Mexican-bolthole vibe of the Borderline, album opener Axis: Bold as Love opened the show, with the six-man band working as a great base for post-skater McBean (that hidden key chain is a dead give-away) to lead with his great voice. The subtle ebbing and flowing of the at-time hypnotic sounds was easy to get lost in, through tracks like Vampires, And I Thank You and Plasticman, You're The Devil - while older tracks like Sweet '69 and Single Life provided a more up-tempo element, displaying the band's wide range.

Amber Webber's vocals were sorely missed, but team stand-ins Sophie Trudeau and Sar Friedman did an admirable job - with the violins proving to be a rare secret weapon and the additional back-up vocals really filling out the bands sound. Add to that the great drumming and Black Mountain regular Matt Camirand's pounding bass and what's not to like? With the curfew police closing in, the band returned to the stage for a single encore - possible career highlight Tourist In Your Town.

In a style much like their recent album, Pink Mountaintops were laid-back, effortless and engaging - providing a (temporarily) welcome antidote to the relentless precision of big brother Black Mountain. Superior entertainment.

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13th May 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

King Creosote

Flick The V's

Domino

Somewhere between the 2005 Homefires gig and James Yorkston's Year of The Leopard the light that burned in me for the Fence Collective started to dwindle and soon ran out all together. Kenny Anderson AKA King Creosote was evolving into the jewel in the Fence crown with his stunning Rocket D.I.Y. album and to a lesser extent KC Rules OK, but with his 4th release ... I started to lose interest. It was all slightly too sugar sweet and the use of accordion, which was his USP for a long time started to drag. Thankfully, with this latest album, things are starting to illuminate again.

Much of this return to form can be placed at the door of the opening track No One Had It Better. With this Anderson emerges as a more mature artist who is embracing a more varied sonic pallet. The most obvious change is the use of technology. Layers of sampled vocals swim around this opening song and there's a real sense of patience as Anderson takes his time to introduce himself on this record. When he does is very exciting. With brisk drums joining this rising electronic background he comes in strong and with a pace that is sometimes lacking from previous songs. It's the longest song he's made and it really announces this new record with a fresh confidence but still manages to retain Anderson's weary innocence.

This song goes unrivaled on the rest of the record but that's not to dampen any of the other songs. The musical compositions are way more mature in their construction and ambition. His writing has always been of a charming and understated intelligence and I think the reason this record works better than past efforts is that the music elevates this writing to a status far greater than before and the contrast between this bigger sound and Anderson's humble insights makes this work. Rocket D.I.Y. dazzled with its realism and playful wit but with this new release both these qualities are joined by more contemporary company and the partnership makes for a lovely album that blows like a spring breeze, with a slight chill but heralding warmth to come.

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12th May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Great Lake Swimmers

Lost Channels

Nettwerk

There is a quiet beauty that runs through every album by this band but, the strong foundations that support this new release make this beauty sing more clearly and reveal itself with more confidence and power. With Tony Dekker's wistful vocals and the vast musical country-folk arrangements they create visions of endless landscapes rolling out before you in various seasonal warmth or chill.

Their previous work has tended to concentrate on the latter but I am overjoyed to see the sunshine streaming in on much of Lost Channels. Like Fleet Foxes, or My Morning Jacket it's the vocals that do most of the work in summoning up these epic spacial visions and Dekker only has to breath before this fills your mind's eye. But the warmth that accompanies these visions is what makes this record stand out from the others and turn it into a delight from start to finish. Songs like opener Palmistry, Pulling A Line and Still rely on strum-heavy rhythms that take the listener on a soaring flight of pure majesty while She Comes To Me In Dreams, probably the gutsiest track here, breaks this renewed briskness with pounding drums that bust open the back end of this song revealing a cavernous and monumental hidden space.

As well as all this you've got your expected chill that snakes in and out of this warmth. Much of Ongiara dwelt on this aspect of Dekker's voice, lush strings and gentle guitar waft effortlessly along as his feather-light vocals coax tars from each song. Concrete Heart and Stealing Tomorrow are two fine examples of the power of this voice. But it's this contrast, warmth and chill, light and dark, that really makes Lost Channels the album that raises this band to another level. Shearwater did it with Palo Santo and they've never been the same since. Great Lake Swimmers have proved with this record that while picking up the pace slightly and letting the sunshine in they sacrifice none of the spellbinding beauty and ghostly ambiguity that define their work.

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11th May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pulling

Final special

BBC Three

Back for one final hour of drunken romance, jaw-dropping hangovers and scenes of people being superglued to the floor, Pulling is easily one of the best sitcoms we've had in years. It's hard to understand what more they had to do to get another full series commissioned - the characters are hilarious, the situations just the right/wrong side of believable and the one-liners savage. Tanya Franks, Rebekah Staton and co-writer Sharon Horgan all put in excellent performances, with Paul Kaye giving one of the best characters of his career as Karen's disastrous on/off/on/off/drunk/wasted/off/off boyfriend Billy.

Of course, now that BBC Three has morphed from the channel that gave us Nighty Night, Monkey Dust and even the early Little Britain into the home of quality entertainment like Coming Of Age or Horne & Corden, maybe it's better that it's been allowed to die a dignified death and head off into the near-perfect sitcom retirement home (Fawlty Towers was only 12 minutes long blah blah). But it's easy to imagine that Pulling could have become the female Peep Show and ran for a lot longer than just two series and this one hour special. At least it gets to wrap things up enough, and lets us wallow in the wince-worthy antics of Donna, Louise and the mighty Karen once more. 

Donna's dating a braying posho whose idea of a good time is to cover his sheets with cash; Louise is back from a trip round the world with a new loved-up hippy she can't stand, and Karen's somehow settled down with a guy who thinks women should be in the kitchen making him pies. 

It's a total testament to the madness of the modern TV world that this hasn't gone any further, but hey, at least they had the grace to let them back for one last round.

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9th May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Vaselines

Enter The Vaselines

Sub Pop

Talking to a friend about cover versions, he said that his pal always preferred the first version of the song he heard rather than the first one recorded. Anguished, he told how his chum maintained that Jamie Cullum did a better version of High and Dry than Radiohead. With the ‘first past the lughole’ preference in mind, I was intrigued to listen to this aggregate collection of the Vaselines – ‘Enter The Vaselines’. Would the original versions of the late 80’s Scot indie band be better than the versions I knew by Messer’s Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl?

Kurt Cobain (from Aberdeen, USA) was a big fan of the Vaselines (from Glasgow, Scotland). So much so, that he is alleged to have described founder members Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee as his "most favourite songwriters in the whole world”. Which might explain why Nirvana released three Vaseline songs: "Molly's Lips” and "Son of a Gun" on 1992’s Incesticide and the more widely known "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" on the MTV Unplugged album.

Of course it’s unfair to talk about The Vaselines only in terms of being the band wot Kurt liked (which, I’ll confess, I seem to do in this review). However, it seems clear that the loud applause from the Grungemeister has been central in widening their fan base and in encouraging Sub Pop to re-release all their stuff…again (In 1992 Sub Pop packaged up just the two EP’s and the album).

This time the Seattle label has gone the whole way with this deluxe remastered album as it once again contains all the music ever released by the band, but is rounded off with some demos and two live sets recorded in Bristol and London. The two EP’s ‘Son of Gun’ and ‘Dying For It’ were originally on sale in 1987 and 1988, while their only album - ‘Dum-Dum’ - was originally released the week the band broke up in 1989. (Though they did reform - for the first time - to open the bill when Nirvana played Scotland in 1990).

So. A word to the wise: listening to the 36 songs in one sitting is hard work. Hearing three versions of “Son of a Gun” and “The Day I Was A Horse” is tough going (though I was happily humming the former for the rest of the day). The whole thing is much more agreeable when broken down into it's composite bits - with the looseness and humour of the live shows making them the most enjoyable slices.

With strong hints of a Velvet Underground drone, at their best the raw sound delivers catchy pieces of punk pop. However, it does feel a bit one-dimensional and, while it might simply be due to familiarity, I think Cobain picked out the best tunes (with the exception of the horse song). As for the battle of versions: It’s a close run thing, but I think Nirvana just edge it. The songs on Incesticide have more power and pedals, while the Vaselines lose vital points for the squeaky toy that needlessly appears on the EP version of ‘Mollys Lips’.

Here’s an editable spotify playlist of some covers and the originals. See if you can last more than the 40 seconds I managed of Jamie Cullum. 

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8th May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet