Chimpomatic

Escape From Tomorrow

Ambitious Disneyland-set indie flick, hampered by an un-engaging, creepy, surrealist script.

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4th Dec 2014

House of Cards

Classy drama, expanding the original show to fill the Washington landscape, with added David Fincher style.

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15th Mar 2013

Zero Dark Thirty

Slightly self-important and shapeless wander through the post-war on terror landscape.

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31st Jan 2013

Argo

(dir. Ben Affleck)

Trenchcoats, crazy CIA plans, beards and a gripping true life hostage situation - there's a lot to enjoy in Ben Affleck's latest. Following The Town and Gone, Baby Gone, this is another assured directorial job from Affleck, here channeling the spirit of 70s classics like All The President's Men and Klute to craft an intelligent, grown-up thriller that doesn't have to resort to shoot-outs to ratchet up the tension. Bonus points for Van Halen and Led Zep on the soundtrack.

Tehran 1979: Ayatollah Khomeni's revolution is in full swing, the US embassy is stormed, 52 hostages taken - but six staff members manage to escape in the confusion and seek refuge in the Canadian embassy. Back in Washington, Carter-era spooks concoct "exfiltration" plans - with "the best bad idea" being a fake Hollywood production company scouting middle eastern locations for a Star Wars rip-off.

The film keeps the potential for any "Hollywood - so CRAZY!!" stuff to a minimum - managing to contrast it with the intensity of 70s revolutionary Tehran without resorting to Get Shorty wackiness. Max graininess in the cinematography (shot with an Arri Alexa, fact fans, as well as "on film, cut in half, blown up 200%" according to IMDB trivia) combines with actual news footage to build convincing period atmosphere. 

Affleck plays Tony Mendez, the CIA agent leading the plan, a role that plays to his strengths. The rest of the casting is spot on - Bryan "Breaking Bad" Cranston, Tate "Damages" Donovan, John Goodman as Hollywood make-up expert John Chambers (responsible for Planet Of The Apes' apes and Spock's ears), Alan Arkin, Victor Garber, Rory "Dazed And Confused" Cochrane, Titus (Lost's Man in Black) Welliver, Scoot (Monsters) McNairy and a cameo from Adrienne Barbeau in the goofy Argo cast's table read.

For more background, here's the Wired article on the actual CIA operation and the real-life fake movie. It's a great read, though obviously it's pretty much the entire plot. One nice detail that gets a little lost in the film - Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby did the original comic strip-style production drawings.

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24th Oct 2012 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Amazing Spider-Man

(dir. Marc Webb)

Decent reboot with Andrew Garfield's Spidey a skating loner at school, Emma Stone a great Gwen Stacy and Rhys Ifans as The Lizard (so-so CGI, but some nuance in character makes him a bit less cartoony than the shouty villains in the last three films). Bonus points for the Gonz poster in Peter Parker's bedroom. Denis Leary, Martin Sheen and Sally Field all add class to a film that's balanced, remembers that being Spidey is fun, has some good 3D cityscape scenes and works despite the inevitable "climb up a sky scraper and FIGHT" boss level climax. Still not quite sure we needed to see the whole "how Spidey gets his powers" origin story again, but overall it's much more enjoyable than Tobey Maguire's webslinger. BTW avoid the 25 minute fan edit of all the trailers - it is basically the whole film, very odd that they'd give away so much online.

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26th Jun 2012 - Add Comment - Tweet

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Absorbing psychological indie cult-escape drama. Beautifully written, shot and directed.

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4th Jun 2012

Sinoia Caves

The Enchanter Persuaded

Moody synth soundscapes from @_blackmountain_ 's Jeremy Schmidt.

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12th Jan 2012

Pirates Of The Caribbean 4

Couple of ARRRRR jokes, fun all-action escapes, underused Lovejoy, no real plot. marks the spot.

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10th May 2011

The Next Three Days

Unsubtle and hollywood-ized, but still entertaining remake of French escape thriller 'Pour Elle'.

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8th Apr 2011

Moon Duo

Escape

Woodsist

Moon Duo are a San Francisco duo consisting of Sanae Yamada and Eric Johnson who in case you didn't know is the guitarist behind the swirling psychedelia of Wooden Shjips. Escape, their debut full length is very much a continuation of the head-fuck hypnotics that Wooden Shjips ooze out. It spans only 4 tracks and clocks in at just under half an hour as you'd expect. As the guitars whip up a monotonous pounding rhythm Johnson's vocals emanate with a whisper and get buried under the calamitous sonic onslaught. Some are slow and driving and some are nimble but all are bloated with strength.

Escape is a worthy addition to what Wooden Shjips do so well. Eight minute opener Motorcycle, I Love You never lets up with it's narcotic repetition and Stumbling 22nd St fizzes with scuzz. Awesome.

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28th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

The National

High Violet

4AD

Stumbling across Alligator in Fopp on a non-descript weekday afternoon in 2005 worked out to be one of the sweetest and unexpected musical highlights of the past ten years. Since then, this Brooklyn band has consistently honored that experience by confidently building on Alligator's success. 2007's Boxer raised the bar to heights that even Alligator rarely hinted at - and so, expectation was swollen and bloated beyond the humble proportions that this band cultivate. Since Boxer the Dessner brothers have proved themselves to be quite a creative force in today's industry putting out the Dark Was The Night and Long Count projects, so with all that added experience High Violet was set to be stellar.

I have to admit though to feelings of disappointment throughout many of the initial listens here. Boxer's rich soundscapes and widescreen ambition seemed to have been compromised in favor of a much more low key sound. Matt Berninger's dichotomous writing can lift you up on "A wingspan unbelievable" with confessions of inadequacy and insecurity but here seemed to fall short of those heights and feel more content to leave you wallowing. The pace also hints at this redirection of vision. Boxer was a drummers album and High Violet rarely exploits this aspect to the same extent.

But to cut a long story short, now I bloody love it. I must have had it on repeat constantly for the last week and this new direction has seeped into my soul and to this day refuses to release me. I guess a good way to describe High Violet is in depth rather than height. While Boxer could often soar, these songs bury deep and take you to much darker places and all with the same tools. The same rich pallet is employed here as it swirls and builds with intricate subtlety around Berninger's baritone hum. Having their own studio and the gift of time afforded them space to obsess over every minute of this record, but instead of suffocating under these conditions it thrives - and it takes a skilled group of musicians with enough self awareness to achieve such a result. Speaking about their approach to High Violet, Aaron Dessner says "Matt expressed a desire to hear things that "sounded like hot tar. Or loose wool." This goes some way to describe the finished product that is High Violet. Songs like Sorrow and A Little Faith drip out with such thickness that given a decent pair of headphones it's quite easy to lose yourself in their density. Anyone's Ghost and Afraid Of Everyone are hollow depictions of loneliness and isolation, while Bloodbuzz Ohio continues where the Boxer heights left us.

Seeing them on their tour of Boxer I was quite worried to witness the bloated endings that seemed to have been tacked on to most of the songs. At the tail and of the vocals the Dessners' would step forth tho the front of the stage and elevate each song to a Wilco like frenzy of feverish guitars, and it really didn't suit their style. High Violet opener Terrible Love does this too but I am very pleased to see the restraint that this album shows and it never does it again. Given their astonishing rise this band would be forgiven for letting some of it go to their heads but this record shows this not to be the case. It is a work of admirable restraint yet progressive enough to honor the memory of what's gone before.

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13th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

ATP Festival: 10 Years of ATP

Various

Butlins, Minehead

How come ATP get it so right? Sponsorship free, friendly and helpful, smooth organisation and a great fan-base - and the music. Imagine, a festival where the music is the important thing - not the TV exposure or the availability of drugs to make you dance - a place where the crowd will listen patiently to new music instead of baying for a chart-topper. Well, that's ATP. For the 10 year anniversary, the organisers invited back the bands who had curated past festivals (plus some ATP favourites) to come and play together for the fans. There is so much to see and hear at this event, you just couldn't pack it all into one weekend, so there are some tough choices to be made from time to time. I've seen so many bands this weekend, that in order to keep things to a reasonable length and in tribute to the 10 year thing,

I'll say just 10 words about each band I saw  -

Bardo Pond - psychedlic washes of strange yet beautiful noise, flute 'n all
Battles - Didn't really gel on the night. Somewhat of a disappointment
Beak> - Amazing when they're being Can, but boring when playing dirge
Deerhoof - If you fail to enjoy them, your mind is broken
The Drones - All the attitude, proper angry rock music - Aussies done good
Edan - Edan shows how to DJ - choose great records, mix well
Growing - stuttering sheets of broken distortion, almost certainly good on drugs
The Magic Band - Fast and Bulbous, Drumbo and Rockette do it all justice
The Mars Volta - Omar seemed subdued, Cedric lively, and what? another new drummer?
Melvins - You don't mess with Jared - Jared only plays for keeps
MuM  - (pronounced Moom) Icelandic dreamscapes - first brilliant set of the weekend
Om - That's a huge evil noise right there (overlooking the vocals)
Papa M - Pajo stunning with drumless trio - sublime and understated - beautiful music
Shellac - Highlight of the weekend, both sets superb. A real band.
Tortoise - Suitably late night slot in the best sounding room. Sweet.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - brashly rocked a restless crowd after keeping them waiting ages

Special mention to Butlins staff also - the security are friendly and everyone is helpful. The accomodation is more than 1000 times better than sleeping in a tent on a lumpy field, but you'd do well to take your own pillow. Long live ATP.

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#HarrisPilton

17th Dec 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Avatar

(dir. James Cameron)

Yes, they do look like overgrown smurfs running around some Ferngully-like forest that's been designed by Roger Dean in the style of a giant 3D Yes cover - but so what?! This is  an amazing film experience - and one that looks loads better than in does in the trailers (for once).

The story's pretty generic once you break it down - basically a Dances With Blue Wolves eco-friendly adventure in which our ex-marine hero Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) ends up thinking that the natives he encounters on Pandora, the alien planet he's been sent to, might have a better way of thinking about the world. You know, be nice to the planet, and it'll be nice to you maaaan. His job is to try to encourage them to leave their home so the nasty human corporation he works for can start mining the huge deposits of "unobtainium" - and if they don't vacate pronto, the military hardware is going to kick in ASAP and BLOW SHIT UP!

But don't worry about all that - it's just an excuse to let you wander around the world's biggest 3D landscape, amazingly rendered, detailed and immersive - it's the film that this new wave of 3D tech has been waiting for. At times it feels like the start of a whole new wave of game/film hybrids, like you can see where they're going to go with it all once they figure out how to let you play this film. For now though, it's a great ride - would totally recommend the full-on 3D IMAX combo.

The interaction between Sully (a wheelchair user) and his avatar is all pretty interesting, mirrored with the chunky military exo-skeletons and the way the Na'vi communicate with their animals - by plugging their tails in! Sigourney Weaver - the only Cameron vet on this mission - is her usual credible self, even if we've seen her do the hardass to perfection before. It's long, but you can imagine wanting to spend another few hours in this Pandora's box. The plot's generic, but the experience isn't - 4****

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16th Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Harris Pilton's 2009 Gaming Round Up

Various

I can't claim to be any kind of authority on video games. My history of gaming is patchy to say the least, having been an early gamer back when we used "home computers" for such things, but then never owning a PS2. Also, I tend to stick to games which involve shooting at things - so if you're looking for a well-balanced, concise round-up of the gaming year, you might want to look elsewhere.

My gaming life is divided between the Xbox and the DS. The DS is still the best hand-held gaming device on the planet - with an almost resolutely lo-fi approach both sonically and graphically, it's success is down to gameplay and elegant programming. The PSP (with it's high-end graphics and sleek design) is not pulling in the kid-gamer dollars. In the world of so-called casual games (video-crack, more like), the monkey on my back was mostly Peggle and Scribblenauts. Oh, and re-playing the mind-numbingly addictive Cradle of Rome line-'em-up.  As for the Xbox, now I look at the amount of games I've been through this year, I can't believe I had much time for anything else.

The much hyped Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has been ridiculously successful (sales-wise at least), but in my opinion they done jumped the shark. Brilliant, visceral and engaging for sure, but also short, non-sensical, and rather too easy. It certainly delivered plenty of "fuck me!" moments, with breathtaking use of lighting and sound, but they messed with the multi-player, which is clearly a case of fixing something that wasn't broken. Infinity Ward are edging dangerously close to believing their own myth rather like Bungie have with Halo - all self-aggrandising seriousness and stirring martial music that can't be optioned out of your gameplay experience.

Special mention for post-release support goes to two games in particular. Firstly, Burnout Paradise: here's a rare example of a games developer (Criterion) being willing and able to respond to feedback from gamers. On it's initial release, Burnout Paradise was laced with flaws (ie not being able to instantly re-start a race), but Criterion got on the case - addressing issues, improving gameplay, adding decent downloadable content, and then re-packaging the whole lot at a mid-range price. Excellent work those men in Guildford. The other impeccably supported game was Gears of War 2 - with regular DLC packs of high-quality maps, top-notch graphics and sound, and new gameplay features. Had a lot of good times with online friends fighting off the dirty horde.

We nearly saw the birth of something revolutionary this year, with the release of the most ambitious Xbox Arcade game yet - Battlefield 1943. This was only available as a download, and did not feature a solo campaign. Instead, 4 large maps of territorial contest, planes, boats, jeeps and bombing raids with 24 people fighting online. Sounds good, but bit off more than it could chew. To start with, this game didn't even work properly online for the first week due to "unexpected high demand" or something. Then, once it was working, it wasn't quite as smooth as it should have been. Call me old fashioned if you like, but when I point a machine gun at another player who is only 5 virtual meters away from me, I'd sort of expect him to fall down - all dead, like.

A couple of this year's releases didn't quite make the top-list but are worth a mention (a mention? Hey, thanks Pilton, they only took two years to develop). Wolfenstein (not Return to the Son of Castle Wolfenstein, or Wolfenstein 3 or...) is a game I was getting pretty juicy about. Loved the originals and raised my expectations. Turned out ok, but fell a bit flat for me when (after much enjoyable gameplay) my save file corrupted and I couldn't be arsed to go back through it. Batman Arkham Asylum looked great and played really smoothly - yet was the most on-rails game I played all year. Still good though. Also Flashpoint delivered some enjoyable play - the polar opposite of MW2 this is a game that strives for realism even if that meant spending a large percentage of your mission time walking or running over endless landscapes in order to avoid combat with enemy patrols. Realistic, yes, but essentially lots of dull moments punctuated by some very tough firefights. Halo:ODST was the game for which Blockbuster was invented. A week's hire, rinse it out and forget it ever existed. Nothing original about it, but nothing really wrong with it either. Halo is Halo is Halo - the game that thinks it can fart higher than it's own arse.

This year also finally saw the release of Resident Evil 5 - in which the musclebound Chris ventures into Africa for some wholesale zombie slaughter (sorry, 'infected'. They're not zombies anymore). Jill doesn't nearly become a Jill sandwich this time - and in fact those Japanese translation quirks are wholly missing from RE5 - it plays like a global release, looks like a global release and - my goodness - it was a global release. Once I got used to the lumpy control system, and acquired some decent weapons, I had a wail of a time wading through the increasingly ridiculous scenarios and quick-time fights right up until the bit where you get to fire two RPG's into Wesker's eyes (while he's in a volcano). Beat that.

So, you may ask, since you've wasted so much of your time playing video games this year, what turns out to be game of the year for Harris Pilton? The answer comes with the unexpected late arrival of a classic shooter - Borderlands. A first person shooter with a visual style somewhere between Tank Girl and Metal Hurlant. The joy of this sandbox shooter is that it never forgets it's a video game - never tries to be realistic, pitches it's dark humour just right, and constantly serves up new weapon variants and character abilities. It works well online as a co-op, and the game adjusts the enemy AI to match the skills of the human players - getting considerably tougher when gamers have more collective experience. Borderlands has already delivered an excellent download pack and has promised a sequel for release in 2010, and the completion of the trilogy a year later.

Sadly, there's only so much time a man can devote to the noble art of videogaming, and thus I can make no comment on a slew of other much touted releases including Assassins Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Forza 3, and Sheffield Wednesday nil.

#HarrisPilton

15th Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Atlas Sound

Logos

4AD

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox continues his creatively lucrative side project with a stunning followup to 2007's Let The Blind Lead Those Who Cannot Feel. Adopting a more introspective addition to day job's astral soundscapes Let The Blind was conceived from the loneliness of a hospital bed and emanated as a whisper from the cracks of Deerhunter's wall of sound. After the unbridled confidence of Microcastles. Cox reintroduces Atlas Sound with renewed energy and the results are impressive.

Logos is the sonic equivalent of an overexposed photograph. Bleached out with excessive warmth the vocals are absorbed by each sound that gets introduced into the intricately structured sonic compositions. As light permeates every corner of these songs details are washed out with sound creating the trademark dreamscapes that accompany all of Cox's music. But as with Deerhunter it's the moments where the album pulls focus and these otherwise hidden details come into sharp view that the power is unleashed. A prime example is the transition between the lethargic An Orchid and the emerging skip of Walkabout. Similarly the presence of the epic Quick Canal in the middle of the record resembles a fire-break in a forest. As its delicate rhythm creeps into view and stretches out over eight blissful minutes it's like stepping out of the thick undergrowth into a magnificent clearing. Laetitia Sadier's otherworldly vocals blow through the song with such refreshing lightness.

Musically this album is a treasure chest of ideas and sounds. Much like Let The Blind we get programmed clicks and bleeps that jostle against buried acoustic guitar and muffled drums support airy melody that shuffles along awkwardly. Cox's words almost trip over themselves in their reluctance to pick up any kind of pace. The result can be akin to a fine rain that ends up soaking you right through. But it's a welcome soaking.

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20th Nov 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Doctor Who - The Waters Of Mars

(dir. Graeme Harper)

BBC One

Another fun entry in modern Who cannon as the current Doctor heads towards his final episodes. We're off to Mars here, as the Tardis lands on the red planet in 2059, just in time to find the crew manning Bowie Base One in trouble with some H20.

The Doctor's initially pleased to meet the crew, lead by Lindsay Duncan and Peter O'Brien (Neighbours, Flying Doctors and Casualty) - until he realises he's arrived at one of those points in time which just can't be changed - "certain points in time are fixed... Everything else is in flux, anything can happen, but those certain points, they have to stand... This base on Mars... what happens here must always happen." Something about altering the course of future events etc (not that it's really bothered him much in the past) (or is that the future?). So as soon as he arrives, he's getting ready to go. 

Duncan's a good foil for the Doctor here - it always seems to work when they try that that Harry Potter trick of roping in some classy British thesps to bump up the acting credentials on this show. The monsters are quite engaging, even though it's hard to escape the feeling that they're wetting themselves all the time (you'll see what I mean). Even though he's only got as far as Mars, it's fun to see the Doctor getting off Earth - one of the main problems in the new Who is that the Tardis seems stuck on ending up in recognisable moments in our planet's history. Bit of a shame when you could go anywhere in the universe, at any time, really. 

Basically Waters Of Mars is a set-up to remove the Doctor's man of action status and get him to angst over all his interventionist tendencies -  a theme that looks like it's set to play out as we head towards his impending doom/regeneration. Will he ever pay for mucking about with time? Are there consequences when you can keep zipping back and forwards through the time stream?

Was it always this heavy when they used to get near  the moment whenthe actors got worried about being typecast as the Doctor each regeneration? I remember it all being much more of a surprise when I was a kid and Tom Baker or Peter Davison suddenly morphed into view, but maybe that's because I wasn't online wading through the geek soup all day. Does seem to be wavering on that fine line between not taking itself seriously (the GADGET robot stuff here is pretty silly) and then getting disappearing up its own Tardis with the weight of it all. Still, it's a good teatime thriller, and I'm intrigued enough to want to see how they finish David Tennant's tenancy off/introduce Matt Smith in the Christmas specials. 

Whoniverse extras:

The Doctor's back in his own astronaut suit, from The Impossible Planet. 

Nice K-9 ref.

Looks like there's going to be a bit of a greatest hits reunion coming - The Master, Donna and the Ood are all heading our way for the Christmas finale.

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#chimp71

7th Nov 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Kurt Vile

Childish Prodigy

Matador

Oh boy did I need Kurt Vile in my life. This second album couldn't have landed at a better time. With the beleaguered lo-fi scene experiencing something of a wind-down, Childish Prodigy stands proud as a more muscular sound but one that still maintains the ethos of the DIY scene. You couldn't really call this lo-fi with production as tight as this but there is a trail of fuzz that follows Vile's every word throughout the record. It's ragged and loose in its construction but is full of new ideas and blows a fresh and welcome breeze through this scene.

Growing up just outside of Philidelphia, Vile's love for music stemmed from his bluegrass aficionado father who also gifted him with a banjo at the age of fourteen. From this grew an absorption of everything musical which started to manifest itself in the form of a series of lo-fi bedroom recordings that incorporated everything from delta blues and skiffle to the minimalist aggression of bands like Suicide. With a number of releases on various labels Vile's free-flow style and signature languid drawl started to win him quite an underground following. Childish Prodigy is Vile's second album but first for Matador and while it retains much of the magic that pricked up ears years ago it is a much more diverse concoction of scuzz-rock and psychedelic folk and is enhanced hugely by the production of Philly engineer Jeff Zeigler. His touch turns this lo-fi sound into something deeper and more substantial while still drenching everything in feedback and echo.

The dirty blues-rock of opener Hunchback booms with muscle while the following Dead Alive is a simple construction of delicate guitar and vocals which are drowned in hazy fuzz. Like many of these songs it meanders almost without direction with Vile's casual style emanating as a stream-of-conciousness outpouring. Then you've got the mammoth Freak Train and Inside Looking Out which both stretch to around the seven minute mark. Freak Train assumes a brisk Krautrock pace and keeps with it until the fade-out. It's like taking the turning onto the M6 Toll and seeing only open road in front of you. Like the Toll it's long, open and you really don't mind paying for it. While Inside Looking Out is slow and aimless and plods on relentlessly. It's cavernous and dirty, it's claustrophobic and overflowing with effects with Vile hitting the red-line with his shrieked vocals. Then in total contrast you get the following track Unknown which shines in its simplicity. It's just Vile and an acoustic guitar and a bucket load of reverb. It recalls early U2 in the way it paints vivid sonic landscapes with the fewest of brushstrokes. The music undulates on waves of guitar for four and a half minutes of pure bliss. And it's in this contrast that the beauty of this record resides. You can get a whiff of John Lennon then be seduced by the intimacy of Springsteen's Nebraska-like minimalism. It demands patience from the listener though but this patience will be rewarded. His effortless style puts up a mask of simplicity but get this on some headphones and this apparent simplicity reveals untold depths and the songs just stretch out in front of you.

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20th Oct 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Volcano Choir

Unmap

Jagjaguwar

It was relatively late in coming, but the praise that followed Justin Vernon's debut Bon Iver project was unprecedented and warranted. The critics aren't messing about with this new side project featuring Vernon alongside fellow Wisconsinites Collections of Colonies Of Bees - and there has been much frenzied chatter about Unmap for a while now. While Unmap is certainly permeated with a similar bewitching presence as For Emma, Forever Ago it sounds less focused and just what a side-project tends to sound like. It has a different agenda from the music made under Bon Iver. It is totally studio produced and has more formalistic concerns like texture and ambiance than the emotional weight Bon Iver carried. Rather than a mission statement bursting to be released from one man, this sounds like a group of like-minded guys just enjoying the process of music making and all the more so given the success that one of these members has enjoyed of late. But they handle that with remarkable restraint and play down Vernon's now familiar tones to mere texture at times.

It's quite clear this is no Bon Iver follow-up, as the sultry notes of opener Husks And Shells drifts into earshot. With the gentlest of plucking and delicate textures Vernon introduces himself with a series of wordless harmonies that amble along with little fixed direction but create an arresting sense of desolation. He raises his voice in the last 20 seconds with a gradual crescendo that makes room for Seeplymouth, one of the strongest songs here. With a similar structure it builds with layered percussion, synth melody and looped vocals to a massive, unrelenting finale that booms with depth and refuses to let up. And when it does, out of the dust emerges Island, Is, a perfectly carved marble statue of a song that glistens with polished clarity. Vernon's vocals are given new buoyancy with the electronic soundscape that underlies them. Gradually layered levels of melody and intricate rhythm amble along with perfect direction this time and create a sense of warmth that has rarely surrounded this voice.

But for me that is where the magic starts to wane. The rest of the album tends to veer off into more directionless territory. This is indeed the sound of a group of guys enjoying a process but at times it sounds far too much like that. And Gather meanders along in an aimless haze of half baked hand clap rhythm and irritating harmonies while Mbira In The Morass sees Vernon experimenting with a new warble in his singing and when coupled with some awkward percussion the result is less than perfect to say the least. There are of course exceptions to this. The short burst of joy that is Cool Knowledge comes as a breath of fresh air and the reworking of Woods, the Bloodbank EP's curious end note, is a vast improvement and a much fuller and fascinating piece of work. But these delights are too few in the second half of this record and by the time it comes to an end, the treasures of the first half have already started to fade slightly.

For Emma, Forever Ago cast its spell on all who heard it and the effect of this spell is still present here, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I have felt it wearing off somewhat. What Unmap does do is prove that Vernon is no one-trick pony and has a clear passion for experimentation. This is an exciting prospect and one that hints at some truly stunning ideas yet to be realised, but those ideas seem slightly half baked here.

#Music
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5th Oct 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Vivian Girls

Everything Goes Wrong

In The Red

You'd be hard pushed to find a 'best of' list in 2008 that didn't feature this Brooklyn trio's eponymous self titled debut and so the expectation for the followup must have been something of an issue to overcome after such blanket praise. With it's raw punk riffs and flattend-out off-the-cuff-vocals it dazzled with immediacy, excitement and spontaneity - qualities that can easily be eradicated with the slightest bit of pressure from expectation. And when you read that the followup Everything Goes Wrong took double the time to record and is a longer record the signs point to a disappointment. However when that recording period was six days instead of three and the carefree notes of opener Walking Alone At Night greet your ears you'll only chastise yourself for such pessimism.

Everything Goes Wrong is a much darker affair than it's predecessor. With a sombre weight, the girls have jacked up the pace evolving their bubble-gum garage rock into full-on punk rock bursts. There's not such a reliance on the pop melody and seems to draw its influence on the hardcore scene more than the shoegaze tendencies that ran through the debut. All this is to it's credit however and this sophomore album effortlessly sidesteps any pressure by sounding like it was unaware of the pressure in the first place. These changes have been made without the record sounding aware of itself in the slightest. But this is no fresh-faced first-time sound. Far from it, it's a mature sound that has evolved and one that they can start to call their own. There isn't the stand-out joy of their first record and many of the songs come at you in a similar package. But the result is a wave-upon-wave effect that, after repeated subjection, sweeps you up and you're theirs.

The record may be more somber and more aggressive but the sweet vocal melodies are more beguiling as a result. They wash over the feral background easing everything into the distance and taking the listener with them. This form of attack works best on the longer songs and with few of the debuts cuts making it past the two minute mark it's quite a shock to see a good few four minuters here. Can't Get Over You and the soaring Out For The Sun never let up in pace and build a wall of sound around you that is impossible to escape even if you wanted to, and the vocal harmonies on Double Vision cast a blissful spell that seems to sum up the whole record. There's nothing better than a sophomore album that only serves to justify the debut and this builds on the success of 2008 with startling maturity and subtlety without seeming conscious at all. As they plod on to higher ground Vivian Girls cast a spell in their wake while seeming blissfully unaware of its potency.

#Music
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25th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Castanets

Texas Rose, The Thaw & The Beasts

Asthmatic Kitty

Over the years Ray Raposa has trodden much ground with his Castanets. With Cathedral, their 2004 debut for Asthmatic Kitty, Raposa's country roots were laced with noise and free-jazz haze-outs, while 2007's In The Vines welcomed in the warmth with its glistening lap-steel moments. 2008 saw the release of City Of Refuge which increased this warmth to sweltering levels, not stopping until every composition was reduced to dry desert. It was a minimalist opera of stillness and endless bleakness. I don't know how long this approach could have lasted as the listener was starved of any morsel of habitation within these arrangements. Thankfully, Texas Rose, The Thaw & The Beasts arrives like a long overdue rain storm.

The opening track plays out like the entire album. It continues the bleak landscape that ended City Of Refuge. Raposa's frail vocals shivering in this barren world, as dry as tinder and equally as delicate. With only a faint acoustic guitar as company he nudges this album into view. Gradually he is joined by ever-increasing bass drums, lap-steel, mariachi trumpets and stirring back-up soul singers. From here on in, the beauty resides. It gets lonely in parts, as you'd expect from this writer, but it's the beauty that carries it along.

With his trademark instruments, Raposa crafts lush soundscapes from delicate guitar, steel drums, oceans of synths and some expertly chosen touches of crackling electronica that, once introduced to the mix, transform this from your average country record into something achingly linked to the past but fiercely contemporary. Worn From The Fight (With Fireworks) comes off the back of some truly traditional sounds and simply glistens and dances with modern day frivolity. Its frail structure hangs on the deepest boom of electronic bass with glitchy rhythms dancing around it like static from a TV. In this landscape Raposa's vocals assume an intimate tenderness rarely seen.

Ray Raposa comes from the same bleak school as artists like Jason Molina or The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle - and just as the sun has crept into their work of late, the same has happened here. That's not to say he's dropped all the experimentation that made his work so challenging in the first place. Far from it - he's just managed it better here and integrated it with such depth of beauty. Like the previous artists, this record is at first arresting in its simplicity but hides much within. Take your time with Texas Rose and it will unleash endless pay offs.

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22nd Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Big Pink

A Brief History of Love

Big Pink eh? Classics like ‘The Weight’ and ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’ comprised an impressive first album by The Band and in retrospect, while the songs are more divergent than their eponymous...

Hang on, where am I? This isn’t Mojo magazine. Any comparisons to Robbie Robertson’s folk-rock outfit can stop there. We’re talking Neo-Shoegaze baby, we’re talking Shoetronica, we’re talking 'bout Nu Gaze. Sonic cathedrals of noise are all the rage again right now… though when I tried playing my M83 album in the whispering gallery at St Paul’s, I was rudely ejected.

The hype machine for 4AD’s new signing is starting to crank up like a string of Kevin Shield’s effects pedals and if you listen to the radio you’ve probably already heard The Big Pink's single ‘Dominos’ – a catchy FM friendly stomp that equates girls who have inner-ear balance issues to pizzas or South London-based Indie labels.

‘A Brief History of Love’ is a big sounding album. Vast swathes of sound echo wash over you, all fizzing noise and blankets of warm guitar under sweeping skies of analogue static, with a backbone of drums and epic machine-made beats. It makes for a good headphone listen, although I imagine they’ve got other spaces in mind, like playing to the sunset crowd on the Other Stage at Glastonbury – you can pretty much see the light show in your head during the more climactic moments.

More than a few times it brought to mind School of Seven Bells’ album ‘Alpinisms’, which has a similar intricate yet expansive production. Ultimately though, that became my problem with this record, in that ‘A Brief History of Love’ kept coming out unfavourably in comparison. School of Seven Bells minus all the clever sounds would still make for a very weird and interesting listen, with their crystalline harmonies and strange poem-like lyrics. If you strip out The Big Pink’s shimmering soundscapes, what’s left?

Underneath what’s fair to say is an immaculately produced record, I kept on finding The Verve (on the slow, moody ones) or Kasabian (on the meaty, beaty ones). Lyrically, the word ‘baby’ seems to come up quite a lot. But what do I know? I don’t imagine School of Seven Bells sell that many records, while Kasabian definitely do. The Big Pink will probably become immensely successful and next year, as I’m flicking channels and come across their sunset Glasto slot on the BBC iPlayer, I’ll be able to say “I told you so”.

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10th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pastels/Tenniscoats

Two Sunsets

Geographic

In something of a dream team match up, Two Sunsets sees Japanese psych-folk popsters Tenniscoats team up with... Scottish psych-folk popsters Pastels - for an album of psych folk pop.

Joking aside, this is a beautiful record, meeting all expectations for a long-on-hiatus revered band like the Pastels, recently more consumed by the running of their Domino funded label Geographic.

Two Sunsets is dreamy, shoe-gazing pop that is an effortless listen, ebbing and flowing and creating a world and language of its own, although that language is not dissimilar to the work of those other occasional-Japanese-avant-garde-collaborators Damon & Naomi.

The the aptly-titled opening track, Tokyo Glasgow starts things off, while Two Sunsets is a highlight, as is the intriguingly titled closer Start Slowly We Sound Like A Loch - gently layering keyboards and sounds to build up a lush soundscape. Beautiful.

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4th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Nurses

Apples Acre

Dead Oceans

This Portland, Oregon band should count themselves very lucky that I'm going through something of a slack period in my duties for this site. Had I handed this review in last week when I should have, the score you see before you would be devoid of a star or two. Up until last week I found this record an interesting but ultimately frustrating and all too familiarly quirky statement. But then it hit me, in the space of one listen the other day the magic that is locked deep inside this record made itself known to me. The increased appreciation for something that had appeared so irritating is one thing to marvel at, but how a record as seemingly sparse and simple as this can have such delights hidden within is remarkable, there's not many places it can hide. The eery melodies that are coaxed from Aaron Chapman's otherworldly vocals stand alone among the barren sonic landscape, backed by an elementary rhythm section and distant glimmers of percussion the whole sound seems to show its cards from the start, but it's a bluff so don't be fooled, this is great stuff.

Having self released their debut back in 2007 Aaron Chapman and John Bowers have done their fair share of rambling but finally settled on Portland as their home. Picking up a third member, James Mitchell, their sound has laid down roots into the deeply dysfunctional yet joyously elegant psych-pop that makes up Apple's Acre. One way to describe it is Animal Collective on half the budget or Grizzly Bear on half the anal retention. There's an ease to which these songs seem to have been created. They appear shambolic at first with their rickety percussion and decrepit Rhodes piano and Chapman's high pitched delivery, but then out of this mess comes some of the most delightful melodies, and with such scant back-up it's Chapman alone who crafts these.

As a whole, the record swells to incorporate ever growing elements. In the early stages we get the thrifty concoction of voice and piano as in opener Technicolor, the feeling being lonely and haunting. Then slowly the vocals are layered and this is when the finest, most thrilling results occur. Manatarms starts off empty with dispersed voices circling the drums but then each voice falls in behind Chapman's squeak and the whole thing rises like an orchestra. The same can be said for Lita towards the end of the record. This is clearly the standout track here and throughout its three and a half minutes my heart reaches new joys far higher than any delicately crafted Grizzly Bear arrangement. With a trembling piano and plodding rhythm the vocal harmonies take their time to soar but soar they certainly do. But this isn't anthemic soaring we're used to in pop music. This is soaring that could collapse at any point and I guess it's somewhere in this tension that the beguiling beauty is to be found. 

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17th Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Serengeti & Polyphonic

Terradactyl

Anticon

Anticon's newest signing is a textural piece of left-field hip hop that dredges the depths of the human condition but manages to shimmer with excitement in the subtlest of ways. Serngeti & Polyphonic are a duo from Illinois and this is their sophomore record but debut for Anticon. Separately they couldn't have more contrasting upbringing and it's these differences that form the basis of their sound. Serengeti, born David Cohn, grew up in Chicago with his mother - a secretary, atheist and devout Communist on the then all-black South Side and with his father - a stressed, middle class business owner in the then all-white suburbs. So while he was busy handing out copies of Socialist Worker at May Day rallies Polyphonic (Will Freyman) was taking piano lessons at his dad's behest. So what we have as a result of all this is a duo who construct fiercely intelligent hip hop that is acutely tuned to this experience of life, but is surrounded and supported by an incredibly sophisticated musical structure.

Serengeti's delivery is monotone and reluctant, it plods and mumbles as if oblivious of the textures that encircle it. At first his connection with his sonic surroundings seems awkward and jarring. After all, he raps about characters that are constantly struggling to belong or connect with their surroundings so this lack of cohesion with the beats is quite apt. But as the record progresses this disjointedness never changes but seems to become the very glue that binds these songs. Polyphonic conjures some of the most complex soundscapes I've heard in this genre for some time. They are incredibly fragile and once analysed seem to exist on virtually nothing at all. They shimmer like TV static and glisten like a rain soaked city at 2am. They are polished with electronic precision and it's this that makes them bounce off the murky, buried vocals that occupy their cold environments.

Despite the fragility of these beats this music is dense to say the least. It's cold and empty and yet so overflowing at the same time. Like fine rain that goes virtually unnoticed but eventually soaks you to the skin, Cohn's deadpan observations tumble from the crackling atmospherics like dirty water from an overflowing street sewer. His depictions of place and the people that inhabit it are razor sharp and paint a lonely picture of modern-day struggle and confusion. Like Antipop Consortium or Fat Jon's work with Pole, the fusion of hip hop with electronic beats can often evoke bleak and sterile visions of our present day or future world. But with minimal orchestration being employed on songs like My Negativity Polyphonic shows that it's not simply bleeps and clicks here. As eery violin weaves its way throughout these fragile beats or My Patriotism's jaunty spanish guitar dances freely a massive wall of the most complex textural arrangement has risen up infront of you without you even noticing and to focus on it can be quite mind blowing.

The guest spots are used wisely with two Anticon heavyweights adding valuable verses. Buck 65 creeps in half way through La La Lala bringing a sense of nostalgia with his gruff delivery but sits perfectly with Serengeti's smooth rhyming. With the Bike For Three project such a success, Buck seems quite at home against Polyphonic's textures. Just as suited to this arena is Adam Drucker aka Dose One. As Dose's vocals emerge from the static on Steroids his usual delivery is so well disguised it's easy to miss the fact that it's him. Like a cloaked figure lurking in the shadows his voice morphs to the music like an ominous film-noir presence.

This record is tough going. It has a pretty stark outlook on the world we all inhabit but it sure is worth a listen. It takes all that hip hop was supposed to do and brings it fiercely into the present day. It also does exactly what this label was always supposed to do but in recent times has fallen somewhat short of the mark. Terradactyl is as forward thinking as any of the early Anticon releases and just drips quality from every expertly produced second.

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6th Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Bike For Three!

More Heart Than Brains

Anticon

More Heart Than Brains is a creation that has been steadily evolving for many years and across vast distances and comes to our ears now as a fully formed and glistening piece of work. Bike For Three! is the collaborative project of Belgian based electronic producer Joelle Phuong Minh Le (Greetings From Tuscan) and Canadian rapper Buck 65. It all began when Phuong Minh Le found Buck through his Myspace page about two years ago and then sent him a piece of music to write lyrics to. As he explained in a recent interview I did with him (coming soon), he was so taken with the quality of this first and fully formed piece of music she's given him saying "It was was extremely flattering to me that somebody would give me their absolute best best and would push themselves beyond anything they had done before." This first song inspired a blissfully productive series of creative exchanges with Phuong Minh Le delivering shimmering electronic landscapes, all fully formed and unpredictable in their direction, for Buck to weave his intricate lyrical musings. The result is a highly personal and tender opus and probably some of the best things this MC has delivered.

The two artists conducted this creative exchange for many years but have never met. This way of making a record could produce disjointed music with both artists working separately but actually More Heart Than Brains is the opposite. The obvious mutual respect that Terfry talks about is clearly what has driven these songs and what makes both elements merge perfectly. It has also driven each artist to rise to eachothers high standards. Phuong Minh Le's compositions are simply stunning. With an exquisite attention to detail she crafts elaborate vistas built around downtempo beats surrounded in bristling textures. They rarely end up where they start and even though she first approached Terfry the task of matching these compositions with lyrics must have been a daunting one indeed. But it's one that Terfry rises to with equal confidence.

Being presented with such pure and beautiful music has brought out some of the most personal and revealing lyrics he's ever penned. Phuong Minh Le's music stands in front of him like a mirror from which intimate reflections of love and life emanate with arresting honesty. Can Feel Love (Anymore) picks through the wreckage of a broken relationship and all the time Buck's chorus lyrics are shadowed by a subtle and effect laden female voice that only confounds the loneliness. This loneliness is seen again on Nightdriving where Buck's often seen persona as a loner in a strange land takes place in a city at night. The music here gleams like never before reflecting the light that bounces over nighttime urban surfaces. His flow is also severely challenged by this music. This is seen to dazzling effect on one of the albums many highlights There Is Only One Of Us. This song starts with a female intake of breath, as if about to speak. It continues on a steady beat with the lyrics ambling along but then rises on a wash of synths to finally drop into a drum and bass formation with little warning. Buck's tempo excellerates on cue and the whole thing just launches with thrilling pace.

Since 2005's Secret House Against The World it's been pretty tricky to predict what Buck 65's going to come out with next. The following Situation was a highly conceptual album that seemed to rely more heavily on hip hop beats, but it put him in a place that was hard to come back from artistically. This collaboration has proved a wise move for him, taking him out of his one-man-band comfort zone into unfamiliar and yet rich territory. As each artist raises their game, reacting spontaneously and honestly to the creativity of the other, More Heart Than Brains sounds almost like a live feed in an artistic bounce off. It's the sound of two individuals trading intimate thoughts over time and distance and you really can't help feeling honored to be allowed to listen in.

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15th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Foreign Born

Person To Person

Secretly Canadian

Los Angeles based ‘Foreign Born’ release their new album, ‘Person to Person’- and it’s worth getting to know. This band’s sound is weighty and complex, with each song opening up like a landscape; building and growing, widening out into anthemic musical plains of guitar and synth.

'In the summer we survive the heat', drawls Matt Popieluch in the first track, ‘Blood Oranges’ - all tumbling riffs and a pulsing percussion heart. And that’s how it continues for the next nine tracks; guitar driven melodies and overlaid orchestration of strings and brass that invariably lend the songs real sonic depth.

There’s U2 in the mix, more than a hint of Modest Mouse and traces of the ubiquitous Arcade Fire. This music feels determinately optimistic - the cheerful guitars on ‘Early Warnings’ come out of the blue like a sudden interruption from some gig in downtown Lagos and bring a smile to your face. However across the album Foreign Born’s mood oscillates between hazy, summer warmth and the kind of melodramatic grandeur that comes with watching approaching storm clouds.

There are no rainbows without showers and the latter half of ‘Person to Person’ brings with it a soft melancholy in the more reflective songs: ‘It Grew On You’ and ‘See Us Home’. But even here, each track’s increasing momentum is driven along by Garrett Ray’s drums and the band’s enthusiasm that keeps insisting on something golden over the horizon.

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12th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Sonic Youth

The Eternal

Matador

As a teenager, once I got over the total, utter, complete sell-out of Sonic Youth moving from legendary indie labels like Homestead and SST to undeniably major label Geffen in 1990, it was obvious pretty quickly that nothing had changed for the band. While my interest seemingly waned after Experimental Jetset, a quick scan through the back-catalogue reveals that I have inadvertently absorbed every major release - and none could be described as disappointing or flat. After releasing 9 albums with the label, Sonic Youth left Geffen in 2007, before pulling the typically left-field move of releasing a greatest hits exclusively through Starbucks, then self-re-released Master Dik and finally settling with Matador for the release of The Eternal.

While The Eternal is being promoted as something of a new chapter for the band, there's no need to reset your expectations - and you're certainly in no danger of being disappointed. Early single Sacred Trickster kicks things off, before the abrasive pummel of Anti-orgasm lets you know the band have lost none of their power - or their ability to craft a catchy tune. The sing-a-long style of Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso) sits comfortably alongside the screeching rock of Calming The Snake, making for a strangely cohesive record.

Jim O'Rourke may have departed in 2005, but the open slot in the line-up made room for former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold and his contribution is note worthy here, providing a focused spine through many of the songs that the guitars swirl closely around. The best songs on the album follow the same pattern that my Sonic favourites always did: a simmering, bubbling pot of sound that harnesses the power of a storm and takes its shape as a subtly catchy leviathan. Antenna, What We Know, Malibu Gas Station - there's more than a handful of excellent tracks on here that will disappoint no one.

While 2006's Rather Ripped and Thurston Moore's own solo album have arguably moved the band into a more conventionally structured sequence of songs, it's easy to forget how much the musical landscape has shifted since the band's early, pioneering albums of the 80s. The feedback drenched sounds of Sister or Daydream Nation are now considered essential listening - due to the popularity of the 90s alternative explosion that Sonic Youth helped enable. As a result, it's easy not to appreciate how radical a custom-tuned 9.43 minute closing track like Massage The History may have once seemed.

While the girls may be commenting how good Kim Gordon's legs are for a 56 year old, I'm just happy that the band have kept their ambition and refusal to conform. It may not be so much of a new chapter, but at least The Eternal is the continuing story of an old favourite.

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9th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Odd Nosdam

T.I.M.E Soundtrack

Anticon

The veteran Anticon producer follows up 2007's Full length Level Live Wires with a collection of hip hop pieces soundtracking the Element Skateboards' film This Is My Element. Each song is tailored to fit the Element skater it accompanies and so is a slightly fractured piece of work but one that sees this beatsmith on strangely upbeat territory crafting some of the dopest beats we've every seen from him.

Famous for his work on cLOUDDEAD, Odd Nosdam is known for his droney-wash soundscapes that fit better into a sound-art category rather than hip hop. Level Live Wires did much to alter this image of him and with this as its followup we see an already awe inspiring producer evolving into something quite special.

The trademark touches are firmly in place here. His work with cLOUDDEAD was meticulously crafted and every sound was enshrouded in fuzz, haze and feedback. this is an altogether cleaner affair but the beats, whether crunching and ominous like on T.I.M.E In or delicate and floating as in Ethereal Slap, rarely travel alone and are muffled and textured with such care and attention that makes them endlessly listenable. Whereas the emphasis in the past has been on oppressive textures songs like We Bad Apples with its guitar-driven melody and the booming Trunk Bomb transform this record into an absolute stomper.

Not surprisingly these songs work best when experienced in the context in which they were created. Seeing the pop/grind/land sequence in Nyjah Huston's opening section of the Elements film happen to the deep beats of the blissful Top Rank is endlessly satisfying and when Jeremy Wray lands a ginormous ollie over some stairs right on the beak of We Bad Apples it is truly awesome. This hazy hip hop obviously doesn't suit Bam Margera's style of anarchy so an appropriately brutal piece of punk has to be drafted in for his section. Elements boast a pretty hefty line up and with people like Mike Vallely and Chad Muska in this film it can't really fail but I've never seen a skate film's soundtrack entirely composed by one producer and it really unites the film into a concise whole rather than the sum of its parts. T.I.M.E is an impressive work both on film and on record and marks the point where this producer turns a corner.

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8th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

John Vanderslice

Romanian Names

Dead Oceans

John Vanderslice is not the kind of artist that you’ll find gracing the front cover of Q magazine. A media hooked on hyperbole and the shock of the new is probably not going to pin any hopes on a new album from a tried and tested over 40year old singer songwriter and I doubt his record company will reach the FTSE 100 on the back of him. Roman Names could possibly end up camouflaged amongst the masses of CDs in you local charity shop, before finding itself unsought in the 50p bargain bucket and eventually becoming asphalt in a the A127 between Bedford and Luton. If this were the fate that beholds Romananian Names it would be a little unfair, because the album stand up incredibly well to repeated listening.

Romanian Names could have been easy to dislike, it could have been classically ordinary ‘singer/songwriter by numbers’ material, the kind of catchy but empty nonsense that often appears on Radio 2 and is loved by those who own ‘Friends’ box sets and are slowly losing the will to live. All the classic ingredients are there, it’s mid-paced, melodic and it has light fluffy Jose Gonzalez-esque vocals. What really redeems Roman names from AOR graveyard is the subtle experimentation, the strange overdubbed vocals, the electronic landscape lurking quietly behind many tracks. All this happens without ever coming close to indulgence, in fact one of the highlights of the album is its lack of fat; the longest track weighs in at 3min 57 and after 12 song you’ve only invested just over 37 minutes. The album doesn’t suffer from over-reach, it doesn’t suffer the pretence that it’s going to be a classic album, and while there are some pretty ordinary tracks here, Vanderslice has the confidence to keep the songs short and so maximises their impact. The better tracks are also the most quirky, ‘Oblivion’ and ‘Sunken Union Boat’ wouldn’t feel out of place on an Of Montreal album - although they do lack OM’s camp weirdness. Best song on the album is ‘D.I.A.L.O.’, which sound like reigned in and cleaned up ‘Soft Bulletin’ era ‘Flaming Lips’. Worst is ‘C and O Canal”, a song so sickly melodic it sound as if it was made with the intention of appearing in an Apple Nano advert - the irony being, if this album is to eventually sell shed loads, this track will probably be the reason.

I doubt Romanian Names is going to set the world alight, but nor does it fall into the trap of being the only thing worse than being bad - which is being ordinary. It has enough confidence and invention to be well worth a listen and if you do happen to find it in the at your local charity shop. I implore you to rescue it.

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21st May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

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

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

Doves

Kingdom of Rust

EMI

The other day, while shopping in Asda I found my self humming along to Elbow's On A Day Like This which was playing on what I presume was Asda FM and it got me thinking: surely this is when you know you've made it, when your artistic creations filter down to Asda level. Hell, I even heard that song playing in the Rovers on Corrie. This has been a long time coming for Elbow and it couldn't have happened to a better band or with a better album than The Seldom Seen Kid. I've always thought that Doves occupy a similar musical space to Elbow and have always curiously escaped the dizzy heights of Asda. Why bands like Coldplay have rocketed to star status with songs a fraction as good as Doves will forever escape me. By all accounts, based on the work they've put out so far, Doves should be one of the biggest bands in the world.

They're certainly one of the most steady bands performing today. Since their debut in 2000 they've delivered three strong albums full of stadium filling sounds that seem to have been born with the great ease. And yet we don't read about Jimi Goodwin's love exploits in the pages of Grazia. They're the Ryan Giggs of rock if you like - and with the fourth installment, Kingdom Of Rust, they should be getting the golden boot.

The first three songs on Kingdom Of Rust are Doves past, present and future and they're three of the best songs this band has ever produced. Choosing Jetstream as the opening song is a clear statement that the past five years since Some Cities haven't been wasted and Doves have certainly grown. It's a slow building, synth-heavy opener that swells to embrace Doves' previous Sub Sub qualities and levels out to a full-on techno-driven bullet train of a song. The title track is pretty much all you want from a Doves track - Goodwin's vocals riding atop a gently growing wave of delicate guitar work and euphoric melodies. Every one of their albums has one of these songs, the kind that make you want to throw your arms high in the air, The Cedar Room, There Goes The Fear and Black And White Town all had this and Kingdom Of Rust continues the tradition majestically. The Outsiders sees this band emerging from the last five years of silence with a new outlook, a darkly brooding tension and a refreshed muscular intention. Built around a relentless Krautrock rhythm it takes all of the past work and moulds it all into a seriously powerful sound that shows that this band may not have Asda FM knocking but they're not about to start trying to catch their ear. Emerging from the tinkling majesty of the previous track, The Outsiders drops its shoulder and drives forward into this driving, bass-heavy sound. To have a frontman playing bass really positions Goodwin as the central figure here. His ragged vocals are the sound of this band, but more notably than ever, his bass forms the throbbing vein of many of the best songs.

Though the album doesn't quite match the impact of the three-pronged opening assault it is never short of highlights. From 10.03's instrumental grunge breakdown that smashes Goodwin's astral first half to Compulsion's awkward 80's beat-fest, right through to House Of Mirrors ragged and endlessly pounding anthem, Kingdom Of Rust oozes great songs. It's a Doves album through and through, but things have changed. They've been watching the past five years but still do their own thing. It's hard to say that Doves haven't tasted the success they deserve when you see them playing to heaving crowds at Glastonbury - but somehow they haven't and this album is unlikely to change - that but in the shadow cast by that success there's room to take your time with your albums and come out with a stunning piece of work.

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1st May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Crystal Antlers

Tentacles

Touch & Go

Hot on the heals of the re-release of their debut EP this California band drop their first full length Tentacles and as expected it's a longer, more drawn out sucker-punch. Their fierce brand of psych punk enjoys the space that a full album allows and benefits greatly from opening their sound up with instrumental compositions that take the whole twisted ship even more skyward than the previous EP already did.

But that's not to say that they shuffle their feet here. They may have more time to play with but Tentacles is just as intense, if not more so than the EP. Jonny Bell's razor shredding vocals form the backbone of this sound as they scape their grubby nails down every surface of this music. The ultimate success of Crystal Antlers is their ability to wring every drop of melody out of the sopping rags of their swirling, claustrophobic compositions. Your ears are crying no but your heart is riding the endless wave of noise.

Tentacles doesn't feel as demanding as its predecessor and that would be largely down to the fact that they have forty minutes. Songs like Your Spears and the title track encapsulate the raw power of this band with their crammed ferocity and sheer stamina but the majority of this record is way more palatable than before. Moments of breath and space are provided by songs like the opener Painless Sleep and later in the cavernous atmospherics of Vapor Trail. The rest is non stop 60's psychedelia with a razor sharp edge, in fact in a warped alternative universe Andrew would be a full on pop hit. Victor Rodriguez's organ forms the body of this narcotic shit storm that blows through the record and though the guitars squeal and wail throughout it's the melody that wrestles its way out of this twisted, living and breathing organism.

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8th Apr 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet