Chimpomatic

Cadence Weapon

Amersham Arms, London

After the powerhouse album that was Breaking Kayfabe, Canadian MC Rollie Pemberton aka Cadence Weapon is set to release the follow-up early next year. So in anticipation we thought we'd catch him at this intimate venue for a few reasons. Firstly, his debut was so electrifying I was intrigued how it would translate live and secondly, the gig was in a pub round the corner from our South London Division and we'd probable be drinking in there anyway. Well, it was worth the 5 minutes walk. For the first few songs things looked like they were going from bad to worse as the crowd was slow to warm to this full-on assault of electro beats and intricate wordplay. But the sheer exuberance of Pemberton soon stopped the tongues wagging at the back and he had us in the palm of his hand.

Big hitters like Sharks and Black Hand from the debut came out at full force with Pemberton carrying himself more like a rock star, wielding his mic stand and shrieking into his fist. But it was cuts from the forthcoming Afterparty Babies that really rocked the house. His DJ was often allowed to take centre stage with his expert beat skills and the near-house beats that blasted out had the whole place bumping to his every move. With frequent spells into the centre of the crowd, this young MC was captivating to watch so much so that he was cheered back on stage for an encore where he delivered the awesome Oliver Square. His energy was unfailing and though I could have done with a bit more volume on his mic his blend of hard-as-hell electro beats and fierce yet acutely intelligent lyrics, not to mention a surprising cover of Joy Division's Isolation which made this Friday night in the pub a memorable one.

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#BC

26th Nov 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The Heavy

Great Vengeance And Furious Fire

Counter

Sweet Zombie Jesus! First thing I noticed on this record was what appeared to be the ghostly voice of Curtis Mayfield floating in like a spirit superfly from soul heaven. Turns out it's a bloke from Bath, and this the debut album from The Heavy is a pretty good showcase for the band's collective talents. I must confess that this one was a slow grower for me - the tracks are pretty brash and in your face and that initial pop tang had me dismissing the whole affair on first play, but then the old MP3 player shuffle worked it's magic on me (more than once) and I was hooked. This album is chock full of riffs - Zeppelinesque slabs of chunk in a distinctly low-fi sample and loop setting with the aforementioned vocals of Swaby soaring over the top.

The two opening tracks - That Kind of Man and Colleeen lay down the manifesto pretty succinctly, while the occasional slower bluesy numbers give the whole thing a bit of mood relief. There's even a bit of a Stones thing going on in places, but all the while with this magnificent voice making much more out of the riffs. On the whole it's a great debut, and refreshing to hear rock and soul mixed together in a good way - as opposed to all the bad ways we've had to endure in times gone by. The low-fi thing is a real positive factor in this - make it too clean and it just becomes vanilla bullshit, but the grunge element somehow puts Swaby's voice right back in the day of early 70's crunchy production. Good work fellas.

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#HarrisPilton

5th Nov 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Underworld

Oblivion with Bells

Vital

Hurray for techno! It's a least twenty years old now by most reckoning, and rather lazily speaking, Underworld are the best known UK exponents of this genre thanks largely to the success of Born Slippy and it's immaculate placement in the movie of Trainspotting. And a curious position they hold - leaning very much towards the progressive side of things, but thankfully never straying down Rue de Eurotrance - they've always had a somewhat melancholy edge to their music which has meant they can sound a little too serious for that post-clubbing meltdown in the sofa at home.

Their new album delivers a similar experience to Secondtoughestintheinfants (2nd "proper album") - a very solid record which will give Underworld fans what they want. Opening tracks Crocodile and Beautiful Burnout are classic Underworld, before things take a bit more of a housey turn with Holding the Moth - which puts me in mind of the Music For Freaks label. Ring Road is a new take on Karl Hyde's streamofconciousness approach, and Boy Boy Boy sounds like the most original thing here, after which the whole album winds down in pace.

Overall though, this record is unlikely to win very many new fans given that dance music is not as mainstream as it was the last time Underworld released an album. It doesn't mean this album is any the worse for that - in fact it's rather good - but as exponents of a 20 year old musical form which is starting to feel (gasp!) a bit retro, Rick Smith and Karl Hyde may well find themselves classed as underground once more.

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#HarrisPilton

13th Oct 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Well Deep - Ten Years Of Big Dada Recordings

Various Artists

Big Dada

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this truly unique label they choose to shower us in gifts, I wish every birthday was like this - except mine of course. As a mark of this grand occasion those kind people at Big Dada have released an awesome double CD, a DVD and a special anniversary party.

I don't think there exists a label that is so trustworthy that you could buy any record it released in the safe knowledge that you'll love it, but for years I've been buying Big Dada releases knowing that I may not like it but it won't be anything to do with quality. The label has proved itself time and time again for an undying commitment to challenging and innovative music and the hip hop genre has been draped loosely around its neck but has never weighed down its steady upward progression. Label boss Will Ashton wanted to form a label that ran alongside yet independent of the mothership Ninja Tune label and would provide a home to hip hop misfits and pioneers.

Never describing themselves as a UK hip hop label, Will Ashton prefers to see it as simply "a hip hop label based in London" and with artists from the US and France on their books Big Dada must be one of the most international hip hop labels around today, and in this fact lies Ashton's most significant achievement. He has certainly championed some of the most successful UK artists like Roots Manuva, Willy, TY etc. but he has stripped them of their laborious 'UK' title and brought everything down to Hip Hop.

The CD is less of a 'best of' and more of an overview of the labels history and philosophy and it's only when this back catalogue is put together in this context that you start to get a clear picture of just how special Big Dada is. It is truly innovative but certain artists carry this flag more than others and any label boasting releases from cLOUDDEAD, New Flesh, Mike Ladd and TTC can't help to be slightly left of centre. Even from the title it's clear that Roots Manuva is the jewel in the crown of Big Dada and rightly so. I have always considered his debut Brand New Secondhand to be his finest work, but when you put them all together and drop in the flagship song Witness (1 Hope) he really is quite impressive. Mike Ladd's many incarnations keep things interesting and if things were getting a little too hip hop there's plenty of curve balls from TTC, Busdriver and newest signing Spank Rock to mix things up. What other label would put together the smooth storytelling of TY with the low down Grime of Willy? Though not particularly well represented here cLOUDDEAD really stand out from anyone and before their demise they single handedly took this label to places no other artist could go. Wherever they resided this band acted as a simmering cluster bomb blowing apart any preconceptions of genre that a label may have possessed and it took real vision to include them in the early days of this label.

Which leads me on to the DVD. Apart from the Big Dada documentary, this DVD is really about the videos. It has something like 35 videos here which must be everything that's been made. There's an impressive megamix option or you can play each video through one by one or you can set it to random so if your tv's got good enough sound this would make an awesome video juke box. Just stick it on and go about your business but you'd get snarled up on the lengthy cLOUDDEAD tour footage which is so compelling it demands your full attention. Videos from New Flesh and the crazy world of TTC are a treat, but as usual Roots Manuva steels the show with his return to his former primary school for sports day in the Witness video.

All in all this is a wonderful package indeed, and I'm not talking about Roots Manuva in his leotard. It's a great celebration of ten years of forward thinking - and for any fledgling hip hop mavericks with wild ambitions, while Big Dada is around the world must seem like a much more welcoming place.

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#HHG

12th Oct 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Robert Wyatt

Comicopera

Domino

There are few musicians of Robert Wyatt's generation who continue to approach their art with fresh thoughts and enthusiasm. Usually by the time rock musicians reach their 50's (or even their 40's) it's all over - jaded by the relentless treadmill of recording and touring, many simply give up trying to be original. You will find no such excuse making on this, the latest album from Robert Wyatt (b.1945).

Wyatt has a voice like no other - recorded solo it sounds wavering and fragile, harmonising with his own multi-tracked voice it becomes a rich silky chorus of unique character. His songwriting distinctly English, his lyrics effortlessly embracing everyday language, Wyatt's music tends towards Jazz as it's main source - the tight modal chord clusters of Bill Evans come to mind - and yet people who claim that they don't like Jazz would still find much to enjoy here.

Right away you can detect the presence of Brian Eno on this album, which is divided into three lyrically themed sections - the first section includes the melancholic Stay Tuned, and the beautiful AWOL, the second section includes Mob Rule which is not a cover of a Black Sabbath track, but Wyatt's wry observations on town planning meetings. The last group of tracks has Wyatt singing in Spanish, and all are punctuated by quirky instrumental interludes. So, not really a party album then, and an album which demands a bit of listening rather than something that's just there to set the mood. Well worth buying....and knock me dahn wiv a fevver if aint anuvver release on bleedin' Domino. Full marks for spending all that Arctic Monkeys cash on something unique.

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#HarrisPilton

8th Oct 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Band of Horses

Cease To Begin

Sub Pop

2005's Everything All Of The Time was a surprise hit for me, coming from the back of the pack like a young Steve Cram to stream ahead and take gold. The gift that kept on giving, it seemed to just get better and better with the most obvious high point The Funeral quickly matched by several other classic tracks.

After the success of that album things seemingly fell apart from the band, with co-founder Mat Brooke departing to form a new band Grand Archives - leaving Ben Bridwell to continue under the Band of Horses name with a completely overhauled squad for album number two.

May's UK visit soon put to bed any doubts about the band's future, with Bridwell's beefed-up foot-stomping style taking centre stage for one of my gig's of the year. New songs like Lamb Of The Lam and Ode To LRC sounded great - for once, rather than lulling the crowd between the well-known 'hits' it actually really got the gig going. Cease To Begin quickly became a most-anticipated-of-007 release.

That early accolade became a mixed blessing, as while the foot-stomping style provides many of the album's high points - the departure of second songwriter Brooke may also be responsible for some of the albums shortcomings. While it is an album packed full of great songs and no duds, there somehow seems to be less variation between songs and the highs are possibly not quite as memorable.

Bottom line: Is There A Ghost?, Ode To The LRC, Marry Song, Cigarettes, Wedding Bands, Window Blues - all awesome. A great second album from a band that are only going to get better. And they rock live.

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#CSF

26th Sep 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Dylan Donkin

Food For Thoughtlessness EP

Wall of Sound

Dylan Donkin used to be in a band called Echobrain with ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newstead.  But don’t let that fool you into second-guessing what he sounds like.  In fact, listening to new EP Food For Thoughtlessness it’s possible that Mr Donkin himself isn’t exactly sure what his sound is.  But first a bit of post-Echobrain history:

After the band were caught up in a lawsuit with rival band called Echodrain (who’d have thought a band called Echodrain would have lawyers?), Donkin decided to do one and headed to Hawaii, where most admirably he developed a music teaching programme to help parents and children interact musically.  And it’s that sort of optimism, coupled with an inevitable laidback Island vibe, that runs through the 6 songs.

It’s a few stadium sizes away from metal monsters Metallica, but this isn‘t just one surf dude and his guitar a la Jack Johnson. Like Alec Guinness playing 8 members of the same family in Ealing classic Kind Hearts and Coronets or Eddie Murphy playing fat clan The Klumps in Hollywood film: Nutty Proffesor 2, the 6 songs that make up this EP may share the same mellow genetics, but are varied enough to showcase the considerable talents of Mr Donkin.

In mood, it’s a record of two halves (or 'sides').  Single Make a Choice is effortlessly upbeat in a hazy lazy kind of way. You can almost hear the Hawaiian tide breaking on the shore, as a slide guitar works its way over simple bass lines and gentle brushwork on the drums on Diatom Blues and what’s not to like about putting handclaps in a song called Depression Yesterdays.  For the second half Donkin, ever sensitive, gets a bit darker.  Fall Through The Wall and its slightly reverbed vocal recall Jim James or Neil Young.  Instumental The Commonaut is probably the most interesting, a talented yet troubled piano, drunk and misunderstood, wails at the world as a quiet lead quitar agrees and a small choir commentates.  And finally, Yolk bids farewell like a slightly more positive unplugged Kurt Cobain.

It will be interesting to see how Donkin pulls this altogether on a full-length album; will it sound like an album rather than simply a collection of (very good) songs?  Until we find out, the Food For Thoughtlessness EP is an intriguing and excellent appetizer, whetting the appetite for the main course to come.

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#chimpovich

25th Sep 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Mike Wexler

Sun Wheel

Amish

This is the debut album by Brooklyn acid-folkster Mike Wexler and it's a beauty. Once you get past Wexler's impish nasal delivery this is a tremendously rewarding achievement. Fitting somewhere in between the quirkiness of Devendra Banhart and the softness of Nick Drake, Sun Wheel is an eerie labyrinth of tinkering folk and piano driven melodies so delicate they could float.

Many of the tracks are over 5 minutes and take their time without ever dragging their feet. This is a timeless album in many ways. It is swamped in folk nostalgia that it would be quite hard to pin point just when it was created. It also seems to defy time in that each song drifts effortlessly from one tempo to the next and hints at an epic quality of old. This is seen most successfully in Cipher, the albums centre piece. Though one of the shorter songs it changes course with such triumphant confidence that you'd think you were listening to an epic musical journey the likes of which only Canterbury prog could touch upon. Wexler's voice resounds over a rich tapestry of musical instruments and it's depths seem to mirror the piano bass line that holds it all together.

The title track is Wexler at his most beautiful. It seems to meander where ever it feels like until settling down to a fantastic instrumental finale of delicate acoustic guitar and deep piano. Southern Cross has more of a marching rhythm and at almost nine minutes it really lifts the album towards the end with rising, epic majesty.

Sun Wheel introduces us to a talent to behold and the best thing is that it does this with great humility. This is a quietly triumphant record that respectfully nods to its predecessors and yet remains fiercely original. It is intriguing, beguiling, restrained and fantastically giving.

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#BC

20th Sep 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Broken Social Scene

Scala, London

Lynchpin of Canada's sprawling Broken Social Scene, described as indie's wu tang clan, Kevin Drew is a man who evidently has an aversion to pressure. In many ways this mindset has been the essence of the groups burgeoning reputation; but also perhaps provides an explanation as to why BSS have, thus far, failed to progress from a committed cult following and into the mainstream. The reluctance of Drew and co-founder Brendan Canning to seek the limelight is at the root of the collective's organic and diverse sound that invites contribution from a variety of Scene associates and members. BSS are a democracy of stars not a dictatorship or an autocracy. Shorn of the girls (Feist, Emily Haines and Amy Millan) and the brass 'blasters', tonight was very much the Drew show and initially suspicions were that he might not be able to step up to the plate.

Arriving on stage with one hand in his pocket and the other gripping a beer Drew made a little speech which reeked of 'getting excuses in early'. "Stop apologising" he was told by a particularly vocal heckler when observing that 'life is full of pressure. You get out of bed you feel pressure. You cook a meal you feel pressure. There's pressure to get the girl. There's pressure at work. So how about tonight we play free of pressure". Politely requesting the crowd's indulgence he explained the point of tonight's gig was to showcase and trial songs from the forthcoming album 'Broken Social Scene present's Kevin Drew's... Spirit if'. It wasn't the most auspicious start; akin to turning up to see your favourite footy team only to find out that some of the star names had been left on the bench and the rest would actually be playing rugby.

For a man with such a passionate fan base Drew's insecurity was surprising and as it turns out completely unfounded. As promised we were served up songs penned by Drew but interupted by seven of the Scene's stalwarts. Eschewing some of their tendencies towards ambience, balladry or electronica; opener 'Lucky Ones', with three guitars variously take the lead, was a statement of intent. Tonight was about rock. Continuing the earlier theme 'Farewell to the Pressure Kids' cranked up the volume before synth was finally allowed to rear it's head on 'Safety Grip'. Reviving previous obsessions with songs from love's outsiders the gig really kicked in with 'Too Beautiful to Fuck'; a tale of listening to people through hotel walls. Singalong for the fans came in the form of 'Backed Out on the Cocks' which the crowd enthusiastically embraced. Good as his word Drew continued to deliver more new tunes all of which showed potential. Much as it would be marvelous if it were otherwise it just can't be denied that nothing hits the spot in the same way as songs that have already been taken to the heart. After an hour or so the crowd were becoming slightly restless.

Buoyed by the mainly positive reception given to the new material the pressure now seemed to be off so that Drew and the boys began to relax. Rewarding the followers for their patience they stomped through 'Super-Connected'; just one of the winners the crowd had come in hope of hearing. Now on a roll 'Major Label Debut' was rattled through giving a delicate tune a new bouncy feel. Such was the reaction of the congregation to hearing the sermon that they'd yearned for from the cult leader there was still a nagging feeling that this was what the Broken Social scene can really deliver. There was a prevailing sense that tonight's show could have been something really special. Closing the set Drew was reconciled with his most fervent heckler inviting him onto the stage to waltz through the closing of 'Lover's Spit' a song so lush it could have filled the Royal Albert Hall several times over let alone a sweaty Scala. Revitalised by the crowd's enthusiasm for old favourites and now well and truly warmed up the Scene didn't want to vacate the stage but had to confess they had nothing more rehearsed. A quick conference was held to find out who knew how to play what while Brendan Canning stepped forward to point out; 'we're not going to cure any diseases tonight but we'll try to play you a song'. And what a song it was with 'Cause=Time' elevated to a tour de force.

All bode's well for the 'Spirit If' project and in fairness the Scala performance was a success but ultimately the sense was that this was a taster of what could have been. My own regret at illness forcing me to miss out on a performance last year of the whole BSS ensemble was only deepened. To slightly miss-paraphrase Smokey Robinson, sometimes a taste of honey can be worse than none at all.

#Music
#Gig
#Muxloe

10th Sep 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Beastie Boys

Brixton Academy, London

It's only until you see these guys live that you realise just how special they are. They've been around so long it's easy to forget or take for granted the reasons for being a fan. But last night it all came flooding back. There really is no one quite like them. As they waltzed effortlessly through a never ending back catalogue from punk gems like Heart Attack Man, Hip Hop classics like Shake Your Rump and their new instrumental jams you can't help to marvel at how they move from one genre to another maintaining full control and sincerity. They do it all and do it all better than most. Sporting cheap suits and shades and with the exception of a rather elderly looking MCA who stared longingly at his guitar during the hip hop numbers these guys never stopped moving and would run rings around most young bands now. Highlights were opener Time For Livin', So What'cha Want and the ferocious closer Sabotage featuring dare-devil stunts by Money Mark. Truly awesome.

BC - 4 Stars

Both they, and we are now a little older.  The granddaddies of hip-hop/rock/punk/lounge moved casually through the eras and the styles.  Not many acts could pull this off so casually and convincingly. Mix-Master Mike kept the classics interesting with his old-skool beats and occasional lyrical input.  Highlights: Brass Monkey, Shake Your Rump, and the mosh-pitt crowd coming out of retirement for finale Sabotage. I also felt that having heard the tracks live the latest offering The Mix Up is deserving of more attention.

CJ - 4 Stars

21 years since they first hit Brixton Academy, Raising Hell with Run DMC and getting the Sun readers all worked up about the possibility of their VW logos being liberated, the Beastie Boys (II Men) are back. New songs from this year's instrumental jam fest The Mix-Up work much better in the wider context of the BBCatalogue, breaking things up rather than sounding like they're just arsing around in the studio for a bit. Thought the sound was a bit woolly at times, with MCA's bass so distorted that it was on the verge of being some generic low rumble, rather than the kick-ass riff machine it should be, and Ad Rock's guitar a little lost too - Mike D's drums cut through with some pretty crisp beats though, holding down the fort, with Mix Master Mike's turtabletricknologismery pretty entertaining. Stand out tracks for me were Gratitude, Shake Your Rump(ah!), So What'cha Want, 3 MCs and Sabotage - think that's still in at least one version of my all-time top ten. Also amusing to see that Money Mark still jumps up and down on his keyboard exactly the same way he did last time I saw them back in 95 (Hong Kong Stadium, with Foo Fighters and Sonic Youth on the bill - that's a proper support act).

C71 - 3.5 Stars

I must admit I was slightly skeptical about this show. After easily being my favourite live band for many years, 1999's upgrade to Wembley Arena was very dissapointing - although to be fair it was the crowd that sucked not the band (too many fair weather Hello Nasty fans sitting not singing).

All that was quickly brushed aside here, as I couldn't have wished for a better start than Time For Livin' (although technically you could say Biz vs The Nuge was the real opener). Their was never a sign of age kicking in, other than their choice of suits. Mike D's reflections of playing Brixton in '86 ("Google that y'all") brought it all home - this is a band that has always moved forwards and kept things going in their own unique style.

Mix Master Mike has turned out to be the best signing the group ever made, and his constantly surprising beats and pieces constantly kept things fressssh. As a pure hip-hop band they have to be up at the top of the pile with their mic passing styles (So Watcha Want, Ch-Check It Out), but add a punk band (Heart Attack Man, Egg Raid On Mojo), a rock band (Sabotage, Gratitude) and some lounge jazz (Electric Worm, Live At P.J.'s) to the mix and this band is unsurpassable. Brilliant.

CSF - 4 Stars


Set List:
Mix Master Mike Intro
Time For Livin'
Gratitude
Off The Grid
Root Down
Super Disco Breakin'
Sure Shot
Shake Your Rump
Live At PJ's
Remote Control
Electric Worm
Lighten Up
Tough Guy
Brass Monkey
Pass The Mic
Flute Loop
Skills To PayThe Bills
Time To Get Ill
Son Of Neckbone
The Gala Event
Egg Raid On Mojo
Sabrosa
Alright Hear This
Ch-check It Out
Body Movin'
3 MC's
So What'cha want

Intergalactic
Heartattack man
Sabotag

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#Chimpomatic

6th Sep 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Sixtoo

Jackals And Vipers In Envy Of Man

Ninja Tune

Robert Squire aka Sixtoo is a man of many talents indeed and trying to pin him down to any one area is proving rather tough. He emerged from the mid 90's underground hip hop scene as an MC to be reckoned with. Sharing the stage with such visionaries as Buck 65 and Sage Francis he soon became synonymous with the Anticon/Mush collective. His 2002 release Duration saw Squire put down the mic and concentrate on the production side of Sixtoo. This has been going from strength to strength culminating in his 2003 Ninja Tune debut Chewing On Glass & Other Miracle Cures, a compelling album dripping with atmosphere. This years Jackals And Vipers builds on this formula but is an altogether darker affair.

Constructed using meticulously stitched together recordings of various live sets then taken into the studio and rendered down to their basic elements this record works as a wonderfully rich film-noir soundtrack played out in 13 movements. Each track is named Jackals & Vipers In Envy Of Man Parts 1-13 and they are designed to be listened to as a continuous whole.

Things start off pretty dark with a brief intro leading us into the drum heavy Part 2. Creeping along to pounding beats and sinister synths this awesome opener sets the tone of paranoia and pretty much keeps it up until the final movement. Though very much rooted in hip hop Squires touch is often light and it's in these moments that we see him as a master of his craft. Each sound, whether booming or whispering, is bathed in detail. Each beat comes with added effect and the samples are expertly disguised creating an impressive air of mystery that is essential to the whole. This multi layering and constant reworking can produce insanely claustrophobic compositions but can also lean back allowing strings or a delicate piano chord to evoke grand, spatial landscapes.

As the final movement draws to a close you are left with as many questions as answers but all good art should leave the viewer or listener in this way. Jackals And Vipers opens its arms and welcomes you into its hidden world of paranoia and intrigue but once you leave you'll be none the wiser as to how it was all done. It gives of itself only as much as it needs to and the rest is up to you but seeing as over generosity is often the downfall of instrumental albums such as this Sixtoo manages once again to avoid that pitfall and produce a caged piece of hip hop brilliance.

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#HHG

6th Sep 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Superbad

(dir. Greg Motolla)

Another effortlessly funny comedy from the Jew-Tang Clan. Knocked-Up star Seth Rogan started writing this w partner Evan Goldberg when they were 14 apparently - and it feels like they managed to nail that weird teen moment when boys are only really emotionally involved with other boys, but putting all their efforts into scoring chicks.

Taking the one-night template laid down by Dazed And Confused etc, we follow Michael Cera (George Michael Jr in Arrested Development) and Jonah Hill as they try and buy some booze so they can impress some girls and get into a party. Along the way their even geekier buddy Christopher Mintz-Plasse reinvents himself as 25 year old Hawaiian organ donor, "McLovin" with the help of a fake ID and two doofus cops (Seth Rogan and Bill Hader) who let him roll with them after he's involved in a liquor store hold-up.

Pretty much wins you over from the opening credits. The 70s flavoured funk-rock soundtrack lifts it from the now into a generic US high school experience - only the phones and lack of net jokes really anchor it to 2007. What makes this and Knocked-Up work is that it's taking the gross-out template, but keeping it all in the realms of possibility (just), letting the humour come from the awkward tensions of growing up rather than constructing some outlandish string of coincidences and wacky scenes to ramp up the laughs.

#Film
#chimp71

31st Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Spoon

The Borderline, London

Although pretty shattered from a heavy day's work setting up a new field office, some of team chimpomatic still made it down to The Borderline to see favourites Spoon on their second date in London - having played Cargo the night before. The Borderline is a great little venue, and it was nice to see a lack of both fashionistas and cameras in the crowd, just the relatively few Londeners who seem to be aware of this great band.

The songs from the new record fitted comfortably into the live show, with Rhythm and Soul, Don't Make Me A Target and The Underdog interspersed with songs from various older albums - Beast and Dragon Adored and Everything Hits At Once being some of my all-time favourites.

Singer Britt Daniel cut his hand on a guitar string at one point, prompting a bit of chit chat which loosened things up while both hand and guitar were repaired, before cranking straight back into it. The sound at the venue is also worth noting, for once getting the balance of volume and clarity absolutely perfect. The band sounded beefy but you could pick out each instruments' contribution so clearly they seemed to each have their own speaker.

There was something lacking in the show that held it back from being a classic... and all I can think is that all their songs are good to the same level. There was no boring bits, making for no obvious high points. Some of their tracks crank up like they are going to spiral into a ten minute jam, but often they are around the same length, and around the same tempo. Without some of the effects that the records employ, some of the moodier songs are brought down a notch - but where you might expect a solo acoustic version for something like I Summon You you get the full band working the song, bringing it up a notch but taking something away. I'm not sure if that's a criticism of not, and if it is I don't know what the answer would be.

Bottom line is that this is a great band, with a huge back catalogue of great songs that are likely to never disappoint live.

#Music
#Gig
#CSF

22nd Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Kinski

Down Below It's Chaos

Sub Pop

Like a hit-man's shot to the head, silenced through a pillow, Kinski's third album hits the target with muffled ferocity. Deep, wooly guitars rumble and thunder their way through this album sometimes accompanied by minimal vocals or simple melody but often just push forward with pounding drums as their only guide.

I would like to say that opening track Crybaby Blowout was the song that accompanied a certain 'special move' in the game Mortal Kombat where, on tapping a secret sequence of buttons your character shouted CRYBABY BLOWOUT! and rapid-fire-sucker-punched your opponent in the gut for 3.48 minutes. Sadly, it's not - but you get the gist of the awesome power with which this album opens.

And it's this power that is persistently present throughout the record whether it's with driving instrumental muscle-flexing or subdued vocal melodies. The vocals play an important part with Kinski adding much needed variety to the songs but ultimately it's the purely instrumental tracks that really drive this record. Boy, Was I Mad! is a brooding slow starter that never really seems to threaten anything but then opens up into a ferocious cacophony of thrashing guitars and crashing drums while Child Had To Catch A Train is Kinski at their best, with hard riffs backed up by whirling keyboard melodies. Whenever the band tries to show a more sensitive side like on Plan, Steal, Drive the menacing undercurrents of far off trouble creep up until before you know it you're surrounded by swirls of thumping guitars.

This may all sound quite predictable and it could easily be if handled by less competent bands but you must remember, like The Terminator, this is what Kinski do, this is all they do and they absolutely will not stop until you're dead...satisfied.

#Music
#BC

21st Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Shearwater

Palo Santo (Expanded Edition)

Matador Records

For those slackers who missed 2006's dazzling fourth album by Shearwater, Matador are here to save your bacon with a pimped-up re-release consisting of 2 discs and new deluxe packaging featuring some stunning artwork. Palo Santo is the bands first album where Jonathan Meiburg assumes full vocal duties and the result is a grander, more rounded sound that sees them rise like a phoenix from the thick melancholy that engulfed their earlier work. This isn't to suggest that this isn't melancholy. The record is inspired by the life of Warhol muse Nico so it isn't going to be a bag of laughs but while they keep to the icy chill that has become their trademark Palo Santo serves up many moments of awesome grandeur only hinted at on previous records.

Formed in 2001 by Meiburg and Will Sheff, Shearwater was meant to be a vehicle for the quieter songs penned by the two musicians while working on their principle collaboration, Okkervile River. But after the addition of new multi-instrumentalists Shearwater soon grew way beyond initial intentions and Palo Santo is their crowning glory.

La Dame Et La Licorne opens the album and actually mirrors the career of this band quite nicely. It creeps into view with Meiburg's frail, quivering voice barely audible but gradually swells to thumping piano and howling declarations. And this sets us up for Red Sea, Black Sea, one of the albums many highlights. This takes no time to pound with all its heart on the galloping rhythm that dominates this song. It's these moments of real muscle that make this record pull away from the bands back catalogue and race forward with renewed energy and confidence. Seen again in White Waves' gritty electric guitar and Seventy Four, Seventy Five's pounding piano. Having said that, there's still plenty of room for the feather-light delicacy of the title track and the achingly beautiful Failed Queen where hollow landscapes are created with sparse acoustic guitar and the frail musings of Meiburg.

This element is explored in more depth on the second disc where we get demo versions of four of the original tracks. These are drastically stripped down renditions showing the extent to which this vocalist can vary his delivery. Having seen the heat of this voice on the first CD we now get the drifting whisper like a feint trail of smoke from a newly extinguished flame. There are also 4 new songs on this bonus disc including a cover of Skip James' Special Rider Blues.

This is an expansive album from a band who started from humble beginnings but are now evolving into a great rock outfit. Shearwater have always fitted into a tradition of songwriting that seems to capture the great American landscape in all its sparse, lonely beauty but with Palo Santo they have started to evoke the power and strength of this landscape and this refurbishment only serves to enhance that.

#Music
#BC

20th Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Disturbia

(dir. DJ Caruso)

iTunes generation remix of Rear Window, w Transformers star Shia Le Beouf here a moody teen who's spending the summer holidays stuck in his bedroom after getting one of those Asbo electronic tags on his leg.

It's a great set-up that lets the surveillance thrills play out when mom Carrie-Anne Moss pulls the plug on his wired-world - no XBox Live!? - what's left, but for him to stare out of the window? At first it's a toss-up between checking out hot new neighbour Sarah Roemer or keeping tabs on creepy David Morse, but once he's convinced her to come up and play w his binoculars, it's all systems go for them to spend the rest of the movie trying to work out if there's a serial killer living next door or not.

Although there's something of a generic big chase finale, for the most part it's a solid mainstream thriller, less indie than the trailer makes out, but v enjoyable nonetheless.

#Film
#chimp71

1st Aug 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Various Artists

Hallam Foe - Original Soundtrack

Domino

Film maker David McKenzie wanted to free himself from the convention of composing an original score as a sound track to his forthcoming film Hallam Foe. Discouraged by the prohibitive costs of forking out for already licensed published source music McKenzie decided the best avenue to pursue this would be to approach a record label about buying up a job lot. It was a move that evidently paid off with McKenzie and Hallam Foe winning this year's Best Music in a Film Silver Bear award at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival. McKenzie's master-stroke was plumping for Domino as his label of choice. Who better to paint the aural landscape of a coming of age tale set in contemporary Britain than Domino? With the exception of the title track by label luminaries Franz Ferdinand, not a single song in this collection was commissioned for the film but instead the whole Domino archive was trawled for appropriate tunes. It's a deal that pays off for everyone because Domino have the opportunity to showcase some of their lesser known talent. And what a stable of talent it is too. As much as a film soundtrack this is a chance for the label to say 'meet the family'.

Listening to the Hallam Foe reminded me of those big occasions when one meets a whole new family, perhaps the in-laws or a new step family for the first time. In this case the Domino family. Like all family do's it is a gathering of quite disparate characters who all have little more than a name in common. Like a family from a Mike Leigh film, or Jonathan Franzen novel there are inevitably secrets. The Domino's are no exception and provide a soundtrack populated by acts who all have a role to play.

Opening the album is 'Blue Boy' by Orange Juice, with Edwyn Collins in the role of the family hatchback driving Uncle reminding all that he once zipped around on a scooter and chopped out songs with military beats and Clash riffs. King Creosote discloses the discovery of an extra marital affair that everyone pretends not to know about in 'The Someone Else'. Rebellious cousins have shown up with Clinic's 'if i could read your mind' snarled out like Jonny Rotten singing a Smiths song and U.N.P.O.C screeching 'here on my own' like Frank Black attempting a Talking Heads number. Pssap is the cute little niece playing kazoo and singing about their Tricycle. The role of exotic wife of the uncle who made all the money is played by Juana Molina with a sultry seductive voice. Franz Ferdinand are the golden boys who have been overindulged and fail to entertain. The sister who's been damaged by a broken heart comes in the form of the sweet and sensitive 'I hope that you get what you want' by the soothing Woodbine and all the teenage heart break is narrated by James Yorkston with the wisdom of an 80 year old granddad. The gathering is completed by a couple of annoying younger brother's, in particular Double Shadow with their pretentious sub Prince effort and Future Pilot AKA who linger with a brooding air of menace.

Like any big do, it's not possible to remember all names and recall all the characters, some just add a background hum to the atmosphere of the Hallam Foe affair but on this one meeting alone the Domino family are ones that I'd definitely like to spend more time with.

#Music
#Muxloe

31st Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Knocked Up

(dir. Judd Apatow)

Another solid comedy from Judd Apatow and his crew (are they really called the Jew-Tang Clan?). The set-up's pretty straightforward: stoner Seth Rogan accidentally gets out-of-his-league hottie Katherine Heigl (Dr Izzie from Grey's Anatomy) pregnant during a boozy one night stand; she decides to keep the baby, he decides to try and make it work. Meanwhile, she's living w her sister Leslie Mann and brother in law Paul Rudd (the cooler shop nerd in 40 Year Old Virgin), whose constant bitching at each other makes her wonder if there's any hope for relationships ever working out. Seth's bong-loading roommates don't help much either. What makes this work above and beyond the confines of its slacker romcom premise, is that it's played in what passses for a pretty realistic style in Hollywood these days. Guys talk in guy talk (endlessly riffing on pop culture); the girls do girls' world properly. The communication breakdown is played for laughs, but also feels accurate. Populated w cast members from his excellent Freaks And Geeks, as well as past hits like 40 Year Old Virgin, Apatow goes a long way to making mainstream comedy relevant again. Still a bit too long, but it doesn't seem like anyone's heading back to the 90 minute-mark in a hurry.

#Film
#chimp71

31st Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Postal Service

Give Up

Sub Pop

I came across this side project from Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard and Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello after reading Sub Pop's FAQ entitled " I AM MAKING A SHORT FILM FOR COLLEGE THAT IS GOING TO A SMALL FESTIVAL. I ONLY HAVE A SHOESTRING BUDGET, CAN I USE THE ENTIRE SUB POP CATALOG FOR FREE IN MY FILM? OR MAYBE JUST A FEW SONGS BY NIRVANA AND THE SHINS? PLEASE, I PROMISE I WILL THANK YOU?", to which they replied "...to acquire a license for a Sub Pop artist, excluding The Postal Service, The Shins, or Nirvana, which you aren’t going to get..."

Having previously heard whispers about both Nirvana and The Shins, but having never, ever even heard of The Postal Service I found myself instantly intrigued by the 'stay away and don't be so predictable' warning. I pretty soon found myself checking them out - and it caught me off guard. Having never heard Death Cab For Cutie (who by name alone I had assumed were as bad as Hootie and the Blowfish) or Dntel, it was not what I was expecting at all.... but I did quickly realise it was one of the highlights on Sub Pop's Songbook of Songs compilation from 2005. Status restored. I heard heard of them after all and even made a mental note to "check out that band on track 14"

Sounding like beats from in-a-good-mood-Aphex Twin crossed with the storytelling, upbeat style of Ben Folds, the first couple of tracks are superb. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight has all the beeps and squeaks in just the right places, and a building, restless energy. The energy continues into Such Great Heights, which is probably the stand-out track on the album. Not that I know for sure, as at this point I pretty consistently doze off. It's just one of those albums that works like a big glass of red wine - relaxing and easy to listen to in the best way possible. Literal, story telling lyrics over gentle pulsing beeps.... ahh. They also do a great cover of guilty pleasure Against All Odds, but unfortunately that's not on the album.

For the purpose of this review I have done a mild bit of further research, and  things do become a little less memorable towards the end of the album, without being bad - just less striking. There's a definite side-project vibe to the album, although hopefully it's success will help bulk things up with a follow up. Ben Gibbard's voice can get a little too sweet and sccahrine, and I think I just start tuning him out. I guess that's where the FAQ comes in, as there is no doubt these guys would sit very comformably on the soundtrack to a Zack Braff movie of your choice.

#Music
#CSF

26th Jul 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The New Pornographers

Challengers

Matador Records

I went to see The New Pornographers a couple of years ago at London’s Borderline. I hadn’t really heard many of their tunes, but this Canadian 7/8 piece came highly recommended. I can’t say every one of their hard driving indie pop tunes clicked with me, but I was certainly impressed and puzzled by their style. There was something about the structure of their tunes that was odd and original and very compelling. (Plus, their drummer was mental and who doesn’t like to see that?).

Their fourth album, “Challengers”, is similar – there’s such variety in the way they build songs, and some great riffs dotted throughout, that on my first listen I kinda knew I liked it but at times I was perplexed as to why.

“My Rights Versus Yours” is a brilliant catchy opener that builds from a mellow folky start to flourish into an air-punching, foot stomping tune. This is followed by the equally ace “All the Old Showstoppers” which houses some great hooks and again made me do a little jig when it hit the heights. “All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth” is where they sound closest to fellow Canadians Arcade Fire, but the next two tunes, “Failsafe” and “Unguided”, are battling it out as my favourite on the album.

"Myriad Harbour", is another cracking tune where the singer starts the lines only for the rest of the band, like an annoying girl I once worked with, to finish his thoughts for him. This song also heralds the first of a couple of moments on the album, as the vocals get a bit Tenacious D (he asks his local record store for “an American music anthol-low-geeee” – Jack Black stylee), where I’m not sure if they’re having a laugh or being deadly serious.

Singing duties are, however, swapped around four band members (lady singers Kathryn Calder and Neko Case have - I can exclusively reveal - nice voices) and they pepper songs with some pleasant harmonies. These come through strongest in the splendid “Mutiny, I promise You” and the sparse “Adventures in Solitude”.

The main man of this side project (all band members release records as solo artists or with other bands), A.C. Newman, says “Over the years I’ve just learned how to write better songs”. It certainly seems apparent here as it feels like there’s more depth and diversity than on their previous albums. While it might not be as constantly full on as, say, Electric Version (their 2nd album from 2003) - which some of their fans may not thank them for - I think with repeat listens you’ll reap the rewards of this interesting and enjoyable album.


Bonus Trivia:

- The New Pornographers name, its suggested, was inspired by a quote from American Pentecostal Televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, who declared that music was, yep, the ‘new pornography’.

- Jimmy Swaggart also hated gays: “'I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm going to be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died.”

- Jimmy Swaggart also publicly exposed one of his buddies for having an affair - claiming his mate was a "cancer in the body of Christ."

- What goes around comes around… Jimmy himself got busted – twice - for sleeping with prostitutes, but was less forthcoming in criticism on this one:  "The Lord told me it's flat none of your business."

#Music
#Locochimpo

24th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Caribou

Andorra

City Slang

More enjoyable laptop psychedelia from reindeer-lover Dan Snaith. All works pretty well, with opener Melody Day launching things in a melancholy style (great Four Tet remix on the single as well, for once a reworking that takes things down rather than up). Feels a bit more live than previous outings, keeping the samples more in the background. The song to jam ratio is improved this time too; feels like a band rather than a solo project. If you're into the whole acoustic guitars being sampled thing, you'll be happy taking a trip to Andorra. We're still holding his Montague Arms freakout against him at Chimp Towers, but that shouldn't put you off.

#Music
#chimp71

24th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

O'Death

Head Home

City Slang

What do you get if you cross a wailing voice, a banjo and a fiddle? This isn't a joke. Country music right? Well normally yes but in a parallel, and slightly perverse, universe the outcome is O'Death.

Listening to O'Death I'm reminded of the scene from the Blues Brothers where the band reform and secure a gig at Bob's Country Bunker. 'What kind of music do you usually have here?' asks Elwood and the response is "we have both kinds; country and western" whereupon the band are forced to launch into Stand by your Man and the theme from Rawhide before a riot ensues. To me this has always summed up country music. As an outsider it has always seemed to be something of a closed shop existing in a vacuum that fails to acknowledge or incorporate any other form of music. Those on the inside appear to know the ropes and stick to the formula - it's either plaintive songs of heartbreak of the 'stand by your man' ilk or sing-along hoe downs from the Rawhide vein.

O'Death are the outsiders who don't play by the rules, they've left the country bunker and discovered a whole other world out there. Now there is another suffix to add after country; it's not just 'and western' because to the musical lexicon O'Death have introduced 'country and gothic punk'. Based in New York, these are rural boys embracing the attitude of the big city. Theirs' is a sound not so much for barn dances on Walton mountain but mosh pits with the characters from Deliverance on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre farm. This is the riot at Bob's Country Bunker in musical form.

It is an edgy and at moments slightly disturbing journey but O'Death is a travelling carnival of infectious energy. Their relentless refusal to charm is charming in itself and if you get it then it rocks! Melody is certainly not sacrificed.  Most tunes being of the foot stomping variety rest on beats that recall Iggy and the Stooges. These songs could've been penned by Tom Waits imagining them being delivered by a voice that at times could belong to either Frank Black, Jack White or Neil Young. At the end of this barn dance you can imagine that someone has spilt volatile moonshine over a hay bale. A stray cigarette thrown away by the fiddler has caused a fire and the band have to make a sharp exit on the back of a pick up truck. The locals elders are up in arms bemoaning the trail of destruction but the kids have had their eyes opened and will never be the same again.

#Music
#Muxloe

23rd Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Latitude Festival

Henham Park, Southwold, Suffolk

I have always been of the opinion that dysentery is a disease best avoided.  After attending the Latitude Festival however, which took place last weekend in Henham Park, Suffolk, I realise that there may be many of you who are not so fastidious.

By all accounts last year’s festival, the first ever Latitude, was a grand affair; 10,000 people, families welcome (encouraged even), beautiful country park and good music.  Seduced by this proposal I followed a group of friends up the A12 and spent four days in an authentic, if slightly more squalid recreation of an earthquake refugee camp.

I have reached a respectable age and had thus far managed to avoid ever attending a music festival.  As someone who is mildly agoraphobic and plagued by an autistic need to bathe myself once a day, it may not have been a good idea to change the habit of a lifetime. 

With a gleeful wringing of hands the organisers announced on the eve of kick-off that all tickets had been sold.  20,000 people this year but apparently no proportionate increase in the facilities or the size of the arenas.  An excrement mountain due to an inadequate number of toilets; a complete collapse of water pressure and thus showers and overcrowding in several venues was the result.  The heavens took pity and, apart from a couple of heavy showers, blessed the reeking campers with sunshine and merry weather.

Day one; It was all about Wilco.  Two Gallants, Midlake, The Fields, began slowly cranking up the afternoon, but I was already worried that the weekend’s line-up which had looked so promising, might have been a bit heavy on whining and men sincerely frowning over their guitars.  Now Wilco are ostensibly a band of men who frown sincerely over their guitars, but they are also schizophrenic and utterly compelling. 

Before they got on stage I was bored; bored by the many children running around, bored by not being able to bring your own booze into the arena, bored by the crowds packed solidly into the comedy arena sheltering from quite a few boring performances.  The Magic Numbers had bounced the audience around a bit, but I just can’t take the whole beard and siblings thing.  It’s all a bit creepy, inspite of the smiley faces.

Then Wilco walked out and with a great white burn of lights, a heave of the crowd and a wall of guitars, they gave a performance to wake everybody up.  I had seen them in May at Shepherd’s Bush Empire and the hour-long set they played at Latitude shared all the highlights from that night but seemed even more determined.  New album ‘Sky Blue Sky’ got a good outing with storming renditions of ‘Walken’ and ‘Shake it off’.  Albums ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ and ‘A Ghost Is Born’ also got their hits out; teasing the audience with their gentle melodies before snapping into trademark guitar tsunamis and feedback.  Inspired.

Like a musical dose of Valium, Damien Rice must have been back-stage anxiously waiting to numb the crowd from their Wilco-induced high.  His presence in this otherwise exhilarating line-up was inexplicable and who in the world stayed to listen to him I couldn’t stay - but boy, the rapturous noise they made when he’d finished echoed across the campsite. Most disturbing.

Day two;  Bit of a slow builder again.  Herman Dune and Bat for Lashes on the main stage competed for ‘Sound-alike of the day’.  The Cretin who compared the former ‘to the likes of Bob Dylan’ should be strung up with guitar wire; this blatant Jonathan Richman tribute band are within a Nordic-facial-hair’s breadth of copyright infringement.  As for ‘Bat for lashes’, again the literature describes her as having been ‘compared to Bjork, Cat Power and Tori Amos’.  ‘Derivative of’ might be more accurate. 

Prize for most enthusiastic performance of the festival goes to The Hold Steady’.  They run on stage like a bunch of college jocks and front man Craig Finn, announces, ‘We’re the Hold Steady and we’re here to have a good time!’  It’s the last day of their tour and they are clearly over-excited. ‘Stuck between stations’, ‘Massive Night’, ‘Party Pit’ all provoke a lot of finger pointing form the crowd of forty-something-blokes enjoying some healthy man-rock and working themselves up to a belching coronary.  The band strings out every guitar crescendo and look like they never want to leave.  As Craig says, ‘When we started out it was so we could all meet a couple of nights a week and drink some beer.  This is beyond our wildest dreams’.

If Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who followed, had had a modicum of The Hold Steady’s energy they would have avoided my nomination for Biggest Disappointment of the weekend.  As it was, my own hands were reluctant to celebrate contrived, gurney, vocals and a dull performance.  If they’d played the CD’s of their two albums I’d have had a great time. 

And so it was that CSS brought their balloons onto the stage of the Obelisk arena and revived a sagging day.  The crowd needed relief and their vacuous dance-pop perked it up like effervescent vitamin C.   ‘Let’s make love (and listen to death from above)’ closed the set.  With helium in her lungs Lovefoxxx squealed out her appreciation to the audience after an hour of cat suited carnival.

The Good the Bad and the Queen had to headline I guess, but it was another strange change of tempo when they ambled on. ‘History Song’ and ‘Herculean’ are unexpectedly ballsy, in no small part due to the contributions of Clash Bassist, Paul Simonon.  He takes control of the stage with loping strides and a brooding presence, plucking at his guitar and sending his deep bass across the crowd like a defibrillator.  A Dickensian London backdrop and a top hat for Mr Albarn seem to court great Blakean comparisons; Songs of Innocence and Experience.  And although he’s a very clever boy, Damon’s a right annoying twat with it.  ‘Soldier’s Tale’ comes with a sanctimonious nod to the ‘Soldier I met who was going to Iraq’ and when he brings on MC Eslam Jawaad for the encore I’m squirming at the smug self-consciousness of it all. 

When the band plays ‘80’s life’ I can’t help but think of the last Blur album, and clearly I’m not the only one musing on this.  In the audience there are a lot of girls grinning.  Occasionally I hear one of them shouting, ‘I want to fuck you Damon’… which suggests that something less than raging Anti-war sentiments were rousing the crowd’s passions.

Day three; My limbs are crippled, caked with filth resulting from the lack of shower facilities.  An internal build up of noxious fumes as I attempt to avoid going to the toilet and asphyxiation by medieval stench when I finally do, have all left me in a bad way.  So far this whole Festival bollocks is proving no substitute for a good three-hour gig at the Brixton Academy.

But that’s ok because today’s line up is looking good.  I was annoyed to miss most of the Andrew Bird set after collapsing with exhaustion from my third toilet trip of the day.  All this hovering above the chasm and straining is traumatizing me.  What I eventually do hear sounds bewitching in the summer afternoon.  The drummer, Dosh (accomplished electro-musician himself), gives fine support to Bird who provides vocals, looping violins, guitars, glockenspiel and goddam fine whistling.

Next up The National, whom I’ve been anticipating like a child waits for Christmas.  But Oh No! What’s this?…. there appears to be confusion on stage.  Look, there are Messrs Dessner, Dessner, Devendorf and Devendorf, but what are they doing spending so long tinkering with their instruments and sticking tape onto everything?  It transpires that The National arrived at Henham Park ten minutes ago and came empty handed.  None of their instruments deigned to suffer the stench of Latitude so they’re having to borrow everything off the Cold War Kids and Andrew Bird.

It shows.  The band look ravaged and uneasy with their purloined Orchestra.  There are great songs in there somewhere; ‘Mistaken for Strangers’ (from their latest album ‘Boxer’), ‘Karen’ (off of ‘Songs for Dirty Lovers’) and ‘Mr November’ (from ‘Alligator’) but there is no subtlety to the sound.  Lyrical contributions from keyboards and violins that make the albums so symphonic and full are totally swamped by the guitars.  Lines like ‘I used to be carried in the arms of a cheerleader’ or ‘The English are coming!’ should by rights swell this audience to a festival frenzy and the lead singer is trying hard.  He rasps ‘I won’t fuck us over!’ with a kind of tortured mania that seems ironically relevant to the shitty day they’re having but it feels like a bit of a lost cause.  Two songs from the end of this too-short set they kick into ‘Fake Empire’ and it’s almost like they get their conviction back.  I get goose bumps with the rhythmic build and the crowd responds, maybe they’ve just warmed up?!  Well they have, but now they’ve got to get off; ‘Thank you very much! I’m glad we got here because half an hour ago it looked like we wouldn’t make it’.  I feel cheated.

The Cold War Kids do well next and The Rapture, like CSS last night, provide a poptastic interlude which the crowds devour.  I sense that a lot of people are getting a bit tired of some of the slightly dour singer-song writing going on and want a sugar rush.  ‘Get myself into it’ and ‘Whoo!  Alright-Yeah… Uh’ do the job and you have to hand it to them, Matt Safer and Luke Jenner know how to handle their audience.  They tease us by walking on and off stage, bounce off each other vocally and insist on being resiliently up beat. 

Jarvis Cocker is on stage next as the sun begins to sink and if you haven’t been able to make it to the Comedy tent, Jarvis provides plenty of star cabaret.  Again, however, there is the sense that everyone would probably rather be watching Pulp, just as last night they would have much preferred Blur to the drones of Damon and his crew.  But Jarvis encapsulated his previous band more singularly than Damon ever did, so if you close your eyes you can almost daydream that…

‘I stand astride these two monitors like the Rock Colossus that I am’, claims the lanky one as he bemuses the crowd with surreal commentaries on the weather.  He then gains our instant favour by empathising with the epic efforts required to have got this far into the Festival.  ‘The world is still run by cunts’, brings his set to an end and those of us who weren’t expecting much are impressed by a run of songs which have never been less than engaging.  Just as I finish clapping and start to, mentally prepare myself for the festival finale with the Arcade Fire, Jarvis reappears;

‘We were going to end there but I just want to play you one more song which I promise this band will never play again’. 

‘What?  A golden slice of Pulp!’, the crowd wonders eagerly, ‘Common People’, ‘Disco 2000’?!…

‘It’s called, the Eye of the Tiger’.

‘What?’

And so off they go.  Jarvis and his band play themselves out with a sparkling cover of Eye of the Tiger and the exhausted crowd smile and cheer their appreciation.

If day one had been all about Wilco, then I guess the whole festival was really about the Sunday night headliners.  I’m sure that anyone reading this would probably take the credit for introducing their friends to the Arcade Fire, probably the most exciting band in the world at present.  But to find yourself in a field with 20,000 people equally convinced that the band are their own private discovery, throws you a little.

The scene is set with a great red velvet backdrop, several oversized Victorian camera props onto which are projected surreal faces in black and white and a lot of red neon.  Tantalizingly the stage is covered with all manner or paraphernalia; hurdy-gurdies, cymbals and the pipes of a great organ.  In the hands of an army of musicians each gets its moment in the limelight during a performance which just keeps getting better.

The husband and wife pairing of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne take it in turns to lead the way on a comprehensive journey through their two albums, Neon Bible and Funeral.  From the pounding urgency of ‘No cars go’ to the swelling Mariachi trumpets of ‘Ocean of Noise’ there is no escaping the band’s persistent inventiveness and passion.  Highlights were aplenty but the Bruce Springsteen coloured tracks ‘Antichrist Television Blues’ and ‘Keep the car running’ were blistering.  Projected onto the backdrop was footage taken from a camera apparently embedded in the snare drum.  Watching a giant drummer beating the rhythm out so relentlessly was mesmerising as the music continued to build, crescendoing in the ‘Power out’ and as a finale, ‘Rebellion (Lies)’.  As the performance came to a close fireworks showered over the back of the audience and someone lit a series of paper lanterns that billowed softly up into the night sky.  The band seemed just as entranced by the moment as they looked out over 20,000 arms clapping in time to the music; ‘Every time you close your eyes’ they sang but we didn’t dare.

If I’m honest I’d have to say that Butler’s voice repeatedly got lost in the roar of the music and I found myself anxious that he was straining to meet the range which his songs demanded in a live performance.  Perhaps I was just distracted by the tuneless moron next to me who insisted on droning loudly and inanely along with the music: and there are a lot of opportunities to accompany the songs of the Arcade Fire with a choice bit of off-key humming. 

Latitude 2007 will be the first and last festival I ever attend.  Three days of crowds, camping and mountains of faeces, book ended by two fantastic performances by Wilco and the genius of Arcade Fire.  If anything it has convinced me to spend a lot more time in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire enjoying whole-hearted performances by some of the great bands who were compromised by poor organisation and shorter sets.  To my mind learning that may have made the whole experience worth it.

Overall experience - 2
Music in general - 3.5
Arcade fire and Wilco - 4.

#Music
#Gig
#LG

19th Jul 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Bill Callahan

Woke On A Whaleheart

Drag City

Enough praise has been showered on Joanna Newsome in these hallowed pages over the past year or so that it's only fair to give her other half a word or two - if only to avoid any awkward moments round the Newsome/Callahan dinner table. After a long and prosperous relationship with Drag City, Woke On A Whaleheart sees Callahan emerge from the (Smog) and release this little gem under his own name. Though all the trappings of a (Smog) record are present here the name thing isn't the only change that's occurred since 2005's A River Aint Too Much To Love. Callahan's deadpan delivery and startlingly simple poetry have always been the driving force behind his music. Like a tree in the depths of winter Callahan's music has always stood proudly firm in it's stark nakedness and this is where it's beauty lay but as special as this may be it's great to see a new spring time creep into this sound and with Woke On A Whaleheart the tree is starting to bloom.

This analogy seems a fitting one as much of Callahan's lyrics are to do with nature. The opening track continues the river theme where the previous album left off. From The Rivers To The Ocean is the gentlest of openers with deep piano chords and soaring strings. First single Diamond Dancer is more rhythmical while Sycamore is pure bliss. It's a beautiful piece of work with Callahan's baritone musings tunefully weighting down the delicate finger picking that floats effortlessly around this song. Callahan is also joined by some gospel infused backing vocals that feature frequently on this album giving the whole thing some subtle religious undertones. The Wheel continues the country traditions honored by Callahan in the past as does Day with it's rolling saloon piano structure.

The whole extravaganza is brought to a close with a marvelous slow builder that sees Callahan sounding like a modern-day Johnny Cash. It rumbles along slowly picking up instruments and layers along the way until they all come together for the repeated chorus, " A man needs a woman or a man to be a man." It's a glorious end to this album and shows the old Smog tree in full bloom like never before. The inclusion of backing vocals and layers of instruments to accompany the lonely yet warm vocals and guitar have provided much meat to these bones and though it by no means discredits the work that has gone before it signals a welcome new dawn for this avant-garde mystery man.

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9th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

(dir.David Yates)

Another thoroughly enjoyable school year from the muggles, mudbloods and wizards of Hogwarts. Doesn't top the Prisoner Of Azkaban for style, but if you've enjoyed the first four, this doesn't disappoint.

This time round, Harry's dealing with being attacked in the media, who along with Robert Hardy's uptight Ministry of Magic, refuse to believe that Voldemort has returned. At school, he's getting bullied by both pupils and the new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher, Imelda Staunton. She's perfectly cast as the weak-tea sipping Dolores Umbridge, as evil as Voldemort in her own prim and proper way, edging her way to the top of the Hogwarts ladder with an endless stream of nit-picking rules.

If you've read the book, there's a lot to get through, and that's perhaps the only problem here - at times you can feel that it's a very abriged version; that said, it still works, really only cutting a lot of the repetition that JK Rowling uses to draw you into the school year. There's no quidditch match, which is fine, some fun scenes with Dumbledore's Army trying to summon up their Patronuses, and sweeping scenes of the English countryside matched by a few London flyovers which give it a real sense of place. Could have done with a touch more of the scene where Harry sees into Snape's mind and watches his memories of school, but other than that, most of the key moments are included.

The three main kids, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, are all improving as they get older (just hope they manage to film the last 2 before they get too old for the teen roles). And again, it's an exercise in watching the cream of British actors - Helena Bonham Carter, Gary Oldman, Richard Griffiths, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, David Thewlis, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Jason Isaacs, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane etc... you'd feel pretty annoyed if you didn't get the call, really.

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4th Jul 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Dogs

Tall Stories From Under The Table

Weekender

This album has taught me a lot about the current music scene and how I listen these days, and here's how. Despite the increasingly unstable world in which we live the protest song is pretty much non existent. Few bands have the individuality to really describe a certain time or place. Dogs don't make protest songs at all so you might wonder why I'm wasting your time in talking about this. Well, the reason lies in their similarity to bands like The Jam. "But The Jam never made protest songs either" I hear you cry. But what they did do better than most was perfectly capture the times in which they were recording. And since these times were less than rosy their songs become a form of protest. This startling similarity with another band would normally put me right off but although Jonny Cooke's voice is very Paul Weller it's more the spirit of The Jam that makes this record so appealing. It has the same stirring energy that renders it more marching music than moshing music. Plus, Mr. Weller is a big fan and actually plays piano on the final track so that makes it alright.

It has also brought to light interesting observations about how I listen to new records these days. The constantly turning marketing machine makes it very hard for a band's true talent to shine. Even the most sincere music can appear as little more than the result of a board meeting and as a result the innocent faith we used to have in rock has been lost and an emerging ban has a lot to prove for me from the outset. As soon as I see their advertising plastered all around Shoreditch, we've got problems. I realised with Dogs that an album by a relatively new band unfortunately starts off rubbish and has to prove itself otherwise. I came to this observation because that's just what this album has done.

Less than a minute into track one and something is stirring in the belly. Dirty Little Shop kicks this album off with a triumphant fist in the air. The vocals are grimy yet swelling and the accompanying guitars and drums are strong and driving. It's pretty much this from here on in. There really isn't a duff track here. The Jam thing is glaringly obvious and you do start to wonder if this is going to be a problem but your tapping foot tells you to lighten up and just go with it man. And once you get to This Stone Is A Bullet you'll be glad you did. It's the album figure head and it's as near to the mob rousing anthem as Mr. Weller ever got (well ok, it's not, but while you're in it you think it could be.) Forget It All is a driving, spiky little number complete with hand claps while Little Pretenders shows Dogs bearing their teeth in this forceful guitar onslaught that is continued on the awesome, energy bursting By The River.

Like I explained earlier, I can't help my cynical mind working overtime and trying to ruin a lot of new music for me. Maybe it's my age, the honeymoon period I enjoyed with emerging bands has long ceased but in its place there is something more profound. Yes bands have to work hard to rise above this cynicism but once they do they rarely go back. At this age it's hard to fall for the NME hype as it's not directed at you. So you might miss out on a few really special moments in new music as they happen but you'll get to them eventually. Dogs' 2005 debut Turn Against This Land pretty much passed me by but i've found them now and my life is better for it. Dogs are 5 unpretentious Londoners making solid songs direct from their experiences, they recall great bands who did the same back when they were brimming over with the same energy that drives these guys. Highly recommended.

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#BC

3rd Jul 2007 - 8 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Souvaris

A Hat

Gringo

In a music scene overrun with convoluted titles such You Say Clap Your Hands We Say Yeah Yeah Yeah's (is that right?) it's a joy to review this album called A Hat. It would be such a shame if it's brief title was the only reason this record was a joy to review and thankfully it isn't. Following on from their 2005 album I Felt Nothing At All, A Hat is a smoldering powerhouse of instrumental muscle very much in the same vein as Tortoise or Explosions In The Sky but has a healthy spattering of Battles as well.

As if making up or the album's title these songs are anything but brief. Not counting the first intro the shortest song here is over eight minutes and the other 3 are all around the 14 minute mark and for a band that produce uber serious, post-rock marathons they lighten the load with their titles. The second track builds on airy, spacious melodies but gets progressively louder and harder until it finally bears its teeth in pounding guitars and drums, would you believe it's called Quit Touching My Ass?

Hand or Finger? is less sprawling and is more immediately accessible both in its length and spiky guitars and pounding drums. The album finishes on a long-haul of swelling guitars and wave upon wave of crashing symbols that suddenly drops away in place of a home straight of funky bass lines and delicate electronics, and all this under the title The Young Ted Danson.

Each song plays like a soundtrack to its own movie. They change tempo repeatedly, sometimes taking their time and sometimes giving out no warning at all. A strange sense of narrative drifts through them that really holds your attention. This way they maintain the lyrical structure but stay purely instrumental.

Souvaris have a healthy mix going on here. In formal terms they fit perfectly with their post-rock counterparts but with playfulness and a clever ear for the pop hook they manage to pull themselves out of the self-indulgent fog that often lingers for too long in this genre. There is a refreshing sense of irony about this album that if it were a person would be fun to hang around with but would also be capable of great depth. They'd back you up in a fight but could quite easily have caused it in the first place.

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28th Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Broken Family Band

Hello Love

Track & Field

2006's release made it quite clear that Balls wasn't just a catchy title but a manifesto, a mission statement declaring that there was a new sheriff in town and his name was rock. With the latest album Hello Love the plan remains the same and although the steps forward aren't as big as Balls it still moves this band a healthy distance away from their alt-country roots. Not that these roots are something to be disassociated with but the increase in volume and intensity that has occurred over these last two albums have moulded this band into a force to be reckoned with and the country twang which is still very much present but now given extra bite is all the more potent a vehicle to deliver their brand of forked-tongue love poetry. Front man Steven Adams says of this rock element, "We like the fact that we're getting heavier with each record and we all enjoy hitting our things hard. Ten years in, we'll sound like The Bronx."

This comment says a lot about this band. They know where they're going but have no intention of hurrying to get there and from the start this has been their charm. They have a refreshingly light-hearted approach to music and though this album could see them adopting a slightly more serious approach by a: toning down the whole 'Cambridge boys do Nashville' thing and b: singing more about love as opposed to hate the fun and frolics are still kicking about.

Things pretty much continue on from where they left off in 2005. The record hits the ground running with Leaps. Adams' vocals start straight off the bat with the first beat of the drum and we're off and loving it. First single Love Your Man, Love Your Woman is the flagship song on this album. It's got all the balls of the previous record with its stomping drum structure that builds to a shrieking repeated chorus, screeching guitars and thrashing cymbals.

After all the acerbic words of jilted love Adams has penned in the past So Many Lovers sees a certain degree of positivity through hindsight with the line "You should be happy to be among the infinite number of people who have loved and lost." The new softening up is also reflected by the dreamy female backing vocals on songs like Julian and the beautiful You Get Me.

Someone has clearly melted the jaded heart of this band for them to produce such strong declarations of love and with this grand thaw we get honesty such as Dancing On The 4th Floor with its admission "Nearly all the songs are lies except this one." So Hello Love is a duel personality with the softness of this new acceptance of love and the hard musical muscle of some of the more rockier tracks. The result is an ever approaching fullness to this band's sound and their road map to The Bronx may be a long one but the journey has already started well and in the words of Hey Captain "All of us on board believe in you."

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19th Jun 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

James Yorkston

Roaring The Gospel

Domino

The Stones once sang that you can't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need. But such sentiments were written in the days before globalisation and rampant consumerism.  These days you can you usually get what you want even if it's not strictly what you need.  Our local high street doesn't need a new branch of Subway, JJB Sports or Nandos but that's what we're going to get because apparently that's what the punters want.  In 2007 when everyone seems to have a voracious appetite for musical consumption one thing we definitely don't need is another singer-songwriter out of the folky troubadour mold.  Another one just isn't needed.  There's plenty to cater for our needs already.  Where-ever one stands on the spectrum it seems your needs are catered for; from the Magic FM listening tweeness of the likes of James Blunts to the indie kid loving Bright Eyes of this world.  So we don't strictly need James Yorkston but he is what we should want. When it comes to sorting the musical wheat from the chaff this boy would be top of the pile ready to be sacked up and sent to the mill.

Where many of these troubadours subscribe to the notion that 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery' and make little effort to disguise the fact that they have just re-hashed the winning formulas tabulated by the likes of Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, and Neil Young, 'Roaring the Gospel' shows that Yorkston’s influences are wider and deeper than that.  Yorkston is a protege of Bert Jansch and I'd hazard a guess that in addition he is not only familiar with Dylan’s back pages but also knows every nook and cranny of such albums as Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Love’s Forever Changes and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Deja Vu.  'Roaring the Gospel', his fourth album, cherry picks some of the finer moments from his heros and blends them together to tasty effect.  Add to this mixture lyrics and a voice that seeps celtic folk traditions and the brew is quite potent indeed.  It might not be entirely groundbreaking but it is an approach that provides Yorkston’s tunes with a character and identity which is very much distinct from his contemporaries.

It is not just the range of influences that ensures Yorkston is sacked up as wheat rather than discarded as chaff; it is also his refusal to follow the route of many of his competitors who feel the need to return to a back to basics style orthodoxy of 'man with guitar recording songs in the solace of his room.'   As a result he has avoided the pitfalls of introspection and melancholy which some manage to make appealing but most don't.  The range of instruments utilised in the pursuit of a sound that is warm, rich and charming is both daring and dizzying.  Yorkston adds colour to his tunes with the odd unexpected flourish. On 'The Lang Toun' the humming presence of bagpipes is inspired.  Accordions don't often make an appearance in modern music but add a certain panache to 'Sleep is the Jewel.'  And when was the last time you heard an oboe used in tandem with a banjo, let alone to used to such magical effect as on 'Seven Sirens'?

I hope James Yorkston has sharp elbows because he really needs to be pushing his way to the front or he'll be lost and dismissed amongst the crowd of all the other singer-songwriting troubadours we don't need.

#Music
#Muxloe

16th Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Hold Steady

Boys And Girls In America

Vagrant

I started writing this review last year, but the album was already out so it wasn't a priority. It somehow got lost in the backwash and only recently floated up to the top of the pile. It's just in note form - but I think that it captures most of what I wanted to say. And in fact it kinda fits in with the way this album sounds and they write lyrics with really long sentences that tell a long story and don't quite fit with the music but somehow it really works and I love it and Tony's gonna step in here with a guitar solo.

Track 1. The title itself "Boys And Girls In America" somehow seems like a hangover from the American Dream.

"She was a really cool kisser.... She was a damn good dancer, but she wan't all that good as a girlfriend".

The lyrics have a very personal and subjective style, drawing you in to the story. "We thought that Sean Berriman could fly" or (wer'e-gonna-have-a-really-long-sentence-that-doesn't-really-fit-the-music-but-Johnny's-going-to-end-it-with-a-guitar-solo) personal, melancholic, nostalgic, looking back and recounting past events and escapades.

Wave of sound. Occasional piano break. A bit like the bar-room style of the Pogues, and in several places like a long lost Springsteen gem. 3.5

Track 2. Chips Ahoy. Circles of friends - "Some otherguy". Win on the races and "Spend the whole next week getting high". "I think his name was Chips Ahoy". Keyboard break. Grooving Bass. Enthusiastic. Passionate. 4.5

Track 3. Thumping Intro. Telling a story in past tense. "It started recreational, and ended kind of medical". Guitar duel at end. Similar themes to Oxford Collapse. Proms, pool parties, BBQs. Repeated. Simple. 4

Track 4. Can't keep up. "I was kicking it with Kevin". Blues Brothers intro. 2.5

Track 5. Melancholic. Pogues in New York. Drunk. Chas and Dave. "And then last night..." "Holly's inconsolable". Boys and Girls in America. 3

Track 6. Drums intro. Great. Phase 2 mid-album track. At their most Springsteen-esqe. "I guess I met her at the Party Pit". Like a bar in America with a great bar-tender, in a dirty/worn out Hawaiian shirt. 4

Very visual. Soundtrack to an 80's movie. "...and I'm pretty sure we kissed."

*HEAVY BREAKDOWN*

.....and that's as far as I got. Massive Nights is a great track from later on. Chillout Tent is pretty good too. It's certainly a little thin in places, but has some great tracks and some classics.

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#CSF

9th Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

New Young Pony Club

Fantastic Playroom

Modular

The sickly cocktail of spiky electro-pop being all too rampant on the air waves recently and this bands repeated adornment of NME covers not to mention their multi remixed advert friendly singles hasn't done these London newcomers any favors in my narrow-minded over 30 opinion but it's a good job I actually listen to some these records before attempting to review them as this debut is rather good. They may be wet behind the ears and tick all the right fashion boxes but Fantastic Playroom shows a surprising oblivion to all this.

Kicking off with gangly guitars and oozing with bass Get Lucky introduces this bands sound wonderfully.Tahita Bulmer's slightly out of tune vocal style is strangely reminiscent of Seelenluft's surprise hit Manila and backed with their blend of booming beats and percussion driven texture, seen most notably on Hiding On The Staircase, Fantastic Playroom welcomes in fond memories of the much missed Luscious Jackson.

Anyone who's switched on a tv recently will be all too familiar with this bands leading track Ice Cream. But don't let the fact that it features on an Intel advert put you off this pitch perfect piece of electro pop. In fact you probably saw the advert and made a mental note to source out this sound that was forcing your toes to tap against their anti-capitalist will, because very occasionally advert tunes are picked for their clear-cut ability to captivate an audience rather than their tendency to barge into your head uninvited and set up camp indefinitely.

Their intention is quite clear throughout this album and for the most part their desire to create no-frills danceable pop tunes works perfectly. There is very little pretension here, the lyrics are intelligent yet simple, the beats are deep and crystal clear and all the surrounding synths and effects make the whole thing utterly absorbing and very hard to resist. Grey's admission "It's alright, as long as it's black or white," goes some way to describe the simplicity of this sound but as the last notes of the fantastic closer Tight Fight ring out you can almost hear the Queen Of Pop herself illuminate a light bulb above her head having found the sound to her next album.

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6th Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Alex Delivery

Star Destroyer

This new release from the always-worth-a-listen Jagjaguwar label is a curious little thing indeed. It's packed full of fractured beats and trickling melodies that all struggle to be heard amid the ever-present fog of noise that make up this intriguing collection of songs. New York's Alex Delivery have here a fuzzy blend of prog rock, Krautrock and Brighton rock mixing spacey distortion with deafening drums, mumbled vocals and delicate melodies that seem to emerge from disused seaside piers or children's playgrounds.

Self-sabotage is also a favored method here as on the opening track Komad. At just over 10 minutes this song treads the fine line between an utter captivating courage to set up a glorious song structure only to completely demolish it and an irritating tendency to never give you what you think you want. Like a rusty swing in a disused playground this song creeks into view only to be joined by crashing drums and frontman Robert Lombardo's gritty vocals. The swing keeps on creaking for about 5 more minutes until it slowly morphs into a field of distorted synths and muffled beats. Rainbows lays down a bed of delicate clicks that sound like millions of sampled insects then scatters over the top an achingly nostalgic melody. Lombardo's vocals shuffle through all this in a lazy manner but you can rest assured that its the scratchy insect noises that eventually win out and the melody is soon confined to a distant memory.

Scotty is the sound of a crippled merry-go-round on board a sinking oil tanker, its sweet, playful loops barely audible over the crashing sounds all around. But then Sheath-Wet seems to hint at this merry-go-round staging something of a resurrection as its melody rises slowly from the depths, joined by the clumsy clattering of various hard surfaces this plods on for over 11 minutes with vocals drifting in whenever they can be bothered. I don't mean in any way to sound negative about this approach as it is strangely beguiling and if you stick with this song you never want it to finish and at some points you wonder if it ever will. It loops round in a hypnotic, self absorbed fuzz like a child spinning around, eventually losing balance.

As the art work suggests this record has an other-worldly feeling, often mirroring the illogical structure of a dream where nothing seems to fit together but the more time you spend with it the more this disconnection seems to make sense. Until, that is, you try to explain it to someone once it's finished and they look at you blankly, waiting for you to stop. A bit like what I'm trying to do now so I'll shut up and let you experience it for yourself on my recommendation. (I think.)

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#BC

5th Jun 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Dizzee Rascal

Maths & English

XL

My my, hasn't he grown. The third album from the young up-start sees age and experience add eight to his still gritty rhyme style. The blueprint is still the same since his 2003 Mercury Prize inning debut Boy In Da Corner but with the gift of hindsight he is able to craft a much fuller ecord not just in content but also in style enlisting the help of US rappers Bun B and Pimp C, Shy FX and finishing off with an all UK line up of Alex Turner and Lily Allen.

This new maturity is expressed from the outset with World Outside where Dizzee illuminates the importance of seeing the bigger picture that lies beyond both his fame and the ghetto roots that he has come from. You can almost hear Earl's brother look up from his beer with the start of the next track Pussyole saying "Tell me they didn't just go oldskool." Here Dizzee raps furiously over the awesome Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock beat bringing a fresh dose of grime to this classic. Where's Da G's questions fake gangsters while Bubbles is a full-on dick swinging boast-fest about Dizzee's success. But you can't argue with a word he says here as it's all true, it's all to be applauded and it's all rhymed over the tightest production.

Tracks like Hardback (Industry) illustrate just how far this MC has come. This song sounds like Dizzee Rascal's pitch at a school careers evening explaining the pitfalls of making it big in the music industry as he dishes out advice over a deep, booming beat. It's the stark contrast of tracks like this and the ego filled, abrasive moments like first single Sirens and album closer U Can't Tell Me Nuffin' that make this record so appealing. On Suk My Dick Dizzee claims "When I was a kid I had a chip upon my shoulder but it aint getting better as I am getting older." This is so true and somewhere in this line lies the success of Maths & English. The dust certainly has settled on Dizzee's life of Grime but it is the sign of a great artist to be able to preach words of startling wisdom with honest conviction while also retaining the edge that put him at the top in the first place.

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4th Jun 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Elvis Perkins

Ash Wednesday

XL Recordings

I haven’t quite cracked the elusive unifying theory of why I like or dislike a certain song, but what I’ve sussed out so far is that the music I love the best is the music that makes me feel something. Be it happy or sad. I can only guess, having spoken to none of my musical icons on the subject, that such music must have been made by people who were genuinely feeling it.

After the first listen to “Ash Wednesday”, the moving debut album by Elvis Perkins, you get the impression that this man feels an awful lot of the melancholy that the age in which we live in can inspire. It might just be that the first listen to this album coincided with me turning 30 and the hangover that it brings, but it really struck a chord.

His take on alt.folk draws from other troubled troubadours both past and present. With a nod in the direction of Willy Mason, a crib sheet of cryptic Dylan poems and the warmth and feeling of Ray Lamontagne, Perkins has done his homework, but nicely woven the sources together rather than simply plagiarising the lot.

The album opens with the ace While You Were Sleeping which starts off with just his laidback vocal over his acoustic and is subtly built up to fill your speakers with some fine full blooded soul searching by voice and band alike. Those heights are briefly reached again on the excellent Moon Woman II, but the rest of the album is a more sombre and introspective affair.

Seeing him play live, as Muxloe and I did last week (supporting the aforementioned Willy Mason), he injected more joy in the performance than is present on the album. His backing band throw themselves into some of the songs with the gusto of an old rag time funeral marching band, but not losing the emotion of the songs.

After already being convinced of the album and its integrity, I learned that he lost his father (actor Anthony Perkins) to AIDS in the early nineties and that his mother was killed on board one of the planes on September 11th 2001. It suddenly became obvious that the feeling of end of the world hopelessness captured on this album is undoubtedly genuine.

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#Locochimpo

3rd Jun 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton

Knives Don't Have Your Back

Drowned In Sound Recordings

As a fervent fan of the Canadian collective Broken Social Scene I've been an admirer of Emily Haines for some time. In her BSS guise she makes me swoon. Every time I hear 'Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl' from the album 'You Forgot it in People', (the stand out track from an album packed with potential stand out tracks) I wonder why they don't make more use of the mercurial Ms. Haines. Her sporadic presence in BSS always reminds me of a skillful winger stuck out on the sidelines away from the action. As an example 'Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl' reveals all that needs to be known of Emily Haines. Its all about the voice; one that makes me fall in love, believing she must be both beautiful and cool. Beautiful, because she sings like an ethereal siren. Cool, because when she sings of how 'you used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that' she epitomises the existence of everyone who is, or ever was, a bona fide indie kid the world over. 'Knives Don't Have Your Back' explains why sometimes it's not always completely fulfilling to fall in love with the coolest girl around.

Some will know that Emily Haines is not only a sometime contributor to the Broken Social Scene but also the front woman of Metric, a more dancey and punky outfit which took London by storm with their live shows earlier this year. 'Knives Don't Have Your Back', her debut solo album backed by her band the Soft Skeleton, offers a collection of songs that one senses she has longed to reveal away from the limitations imposed by her alternative roles. It is essentially a series of confessions and tales of loss eeked from her soul via the conduit of a piano. This exposure is simultaneously touchingly tender and achingly painful. The obvious comparison to be made, based on fragile sentiments and confident piano loops, is with the early material of Tori Amos; though minus the melodrama. But more than any other act it is the Velvet Underground that springs to mind on first listen. Its not so much the music or attitude of Lou Reed and John Cale that this album recalls but it is the qualities, if not the actual tones, of the two female Velvets that haunts from the grave. 'Reading in Bed' and 'Our Hill' exemplify the manner in which Mo Tucker, on songs like After Hours, manged to display a femine vulnerability while 'Doctor Blind' and 'The Lottery' are reminiscent of Nico's brooding sexuality.

Just as the Velvet Underground were shot through with the energy of New York, Sigur Ros encapsulate the sound of Icelandic fjords, or the Beuna Vista Social Club are the essence of Cuba, the sound of 'Knives Don't Have Your Back' mirrors the geography of Emily Haine's Canadian homeland. The songs are so evocative of skating on frozen ponds with wintery skies and endless horizons. There are moments of absolute sublime beauty; 'Winning' and 'Nothing & Nowhere' are songs that can break your heart and then mend it in the space of just a few minutes. If you had your ipod set to shuffle and any one of these numbers came on randomly you would think that if this chosen song was representative of the whole album then 'Knives Don't Have Your Back' would warrant a rating of nothing less than 5 out of 5. There are no problems with any single one of the songs individually. They are subtley crafted with heart wrenching honesty in isolation, but stacked back to back they can leave one feeling a little cold. There is a longing for some comfort and warmth just as I imagine there would be if one fell through the ice of a frozen Canadian pond. Perhaps she is aware of this; on 'Reading in Bed' she asks 'after all the luck you've had, why are your songs so sad?' I'm still in love with Emily Haines but she's perhaps just a little bit too cool - no matter how beautiful a crisp winter morning is sometimes you just wish for the advent of some spring sunshine.

#Music
#Muxloe

30th May 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Black Milk

Popular Demand

Fat Beats

Though 2005 saw Black Milk release Sounds Of The City he then signed to Fat Beats, making Popular Demand his official debut. Recalling the late, great J Dilla in its looped soul melodies and hollow beats, Popular Demand signals a welcome return to grass roots hip hop. Featuring a whole host of local Detroit heavyweights from Slum Village to Guilty Simpson, producer/MC Curtis Cross has delivered an intelligent record with tight beats and easy-flow rhymes.

After a slow start with the title track, Sound The Alarm is an early highlight with its slow crunching beat and reverberating baseline. Guilty Simpson's deadly serious delivery bumps hard alongside Black Milk's layered production which loops perfectly around the beat. The tempo is stepped up for the next track Insane, a jumped-up, intricately constructed beat that backs up Black Milk's effortless flow.

Popular Demand is a well paced ride with frequent instrumental interludes like the expertly crafted, sample heavy Play The Keys and slower rhymed cuts like the soulful Three+Sum allowing welcome relief from the big beats of tracks like the album highlight Watch 'Em. Here Que Diesel and Fat Ray create a glorious piece of hip hop fitting each rhyme into the rolling, hand-clapped beat with its stop/start confidence that just keeps on bumpin.

There has been much talk about this young talent filling the shoes of fellow Detroit mastermind Dilla and this album shows him more than capable of carrying this mantle. In fact Cross seems more comfortable in front of the mic than Dilla did sculpting his production perfectly to fit his rhyming style. Following in the footsteps of bigwigs like Jay Z or Kanye West and younger MC's like Lupe Fiasco Black Milk is the real deal and this record continues Detroit's underground hip hop pedigree.

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30th May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Boggs

Forts

The Boggs is basically Jason Freidman and Forts is his excellent sophomore LP after 2002's We Are The Boggs We Are. Some new members have been drafted in for this album including Christian Obermaier of Schneider TM and Julian Cross of the Liars and the result is a free-flowing jumble of ramshackled post-punk musings that continuously threaten to collapse in a structureless heap but somehow manage to hold it together. Like Bruce Lee's art of 'fighting without fighting,' The Boggs policy of 'structure without structure' is what makes this record so unique and so refreshing.

Many of the songs, like Remember The Orphans, sound like a basic drum-heavy back bone has been laid down but anything else is fair game. Layered vocals shout from all over the studio to create a spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness feel to the lyrics. There is a healthy urgency to many of these songs like the furious strumming of So I So You or the toe-tapping handclaps of If We Want. But a one trick pony this is not as the raucous band practice is often punctuated with more contemplative moments like the string laden One Year On or the delicate guitar work and deep bass of The Passage. Freidman's unrefined vocal delivery coupled with the often driving music make these songs thrillingly varied.

Forts can slap you across the face with post-punk rudeness, dazzle you with indie-pop charm or slow you right down with shoe-gazing introspection. From start to finish Freidman and friends concoct a mighty broth packed to the hilt with a varied array of flavors that together create a highly entertaining listen. Recommended.

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28th May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Sage Francis

Human The Death Dance

Strange Famous

After hearing the opening track to the 3rd full length from this master of all things spoken I started planning my 'fallen hero' review. With a heavy heart and a heavier pen I began the obituary of this lyrical wizard, combing through his previous two albums trying to find any predictions for this untimely demise. But luckily for Sage Francis and you, my worthy readers, I am not one of these people who writes a review based on the first few tracks, because by track 3 I was beginning to mentally screw up my previous review and was only too glad to find myself back at the drawing board. Where Underground For Dummies started things off with a predictable and unimaginative back-story to Sage's hip hop pedigree Civil Disobedience restores the factory settings and it's pretty much clever wordplay and tight rhymes from here on in.

After a string of EPs it was 2002's Personal Journals that really let Sage flex his lyrical muscles. It was a dark and and gritty portrait of a man on the edge and was followed up in 2005 with the awesome A Healthy Distrust. This was an upgrade from the first album in every way. The beats were massive and the rhymes fiercer than anything that had gone before. I guess Human The Death Dance falls somewhere in between - which is no bad place to reside in the Sage back catalogue.

On A Healthy Distrust, Sage confessed to having "more back issues than Guns n' Ammo," and this album shows that few of these issues have been resolved, instead they seem to have festered and grown more potent over the years. Like friend and fellow poetic genius Buck 65, Sage Francis has always written his own rules and has never complied to any Hip Hop cliche. Instead of dick-swinging lyrics and thugged-out, self-referencing imagery we get an outpouring of anger, self-pity and cynicism slotted expertly into well crafted beats. The variety of beats here is what makes this album so listenable. Clickety Clack describes its beat perfectly while the dark and brooding Call Me Francois sounds like a Terminator chase scene.

But here's something I don't normally say in a hip hop review - it's the slow jams that really steel the show here. The best moments in the Sage Francis live show are when all the beats quit and he goes it alone. He has such lyrical dexterity - and without a beat this really shines. So the closest we get to that on a record is when the beat slows down as in Water Line or is replaced altogether by a full string section as on the epic Good Fashion. But there is a run of glory on the last four tracks starting with the album highlight Hell Of A Year. This is classic Sage Francis - slow, dark and oozing with melancholia. Few hip hop songs are about failed relationships and lost love but this is Sage's forte and the power of this song is still ringing in your ears when you get to the album closer Going Back To Rehab. This is Sage's most adventurous song yet. At just over six minutes it starts with a gentle guitar melody with Sage rhyming fluidly and venomously slowly getting fiercer and fiercer until the beat kicks in and the spit starts flying. It's an angry and powerful way to finish this super-intelligent third album and if it wasn't so damn good you'd be reaching for the phone, dialing the authorities to warn them that this guy's gonna do something bad sometime soon. But musically this isn't that time thank god and shame on me for thinking the Francis crown had slipped.

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23rd May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Zodiac

(dir. David Fincher)

In the late 60's and early 70's, the Zodiac killer claimed responsibility for a series of murders in and around San Francisco, taunting the police and the papers with cryptic letters. After detective David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) fails to conclusively crack the mystery the case becomes dormant, until a young cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) from the paper takes up the challenge.

It's been five years since David Fincher's last effort (the overblown and disappointing Panic Room), and with the opening 20 minutes of Zodiac it's clear he has a far more inspiring story to work with here. The film quickly demonstrates it's support for the Scorcese style of film-making, with the period setting of the story evocatively re-created, some great montages and a high volume soundtrack that works exceptionally well - using Santana, Donovan and other 60s icons, to (relatively subtly) create a believable world for the story to exist in.

Fincher seems to have found his feet a bit more that usual here, steering away from his move overt technique tricks and producing an elegant film, with some excellent directorial flourishes. The opening shot sets the scene superbly in July 4th California, there's a magnificent tracking shot of a taxi from above, and a similar shot following of the first letter to arrive at The Chronicle newspaper.

The acting throughout is superb, but some of the performances are restricted by the slightly clunky format of at least the middle of the film. As the timeline shifts forward at a variety of rates ('2 months later', '20 minutes later', '4 years later') it becomes hard to sustain the supposed 'reign of terror' that the killer had over the state, but once things settle down it finds it's feet nicely. That unfortunately leaves Robert Downey Jnr's character a bit redundant, and focus shifts over to cartoonist Robert Graysmith's developing interest in solving the case. Strangely, that provides a lot more suspense and twists in the plot, with the unsolved nature of the case leading to a bit of speculation, but also some surprises.

#Film
#CSF

15th May 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Arctic Monkeys

Favourite Worst Nightmare

Domino

Last month in the sweaty temple of music known as the London Astoria I worshiped at the altar of the Arctic Monkeys. Their performance was a revelation that mugged me of my considerable cynicism regarding the copius plaudits given to these whipper-snappers from Sheffield. My account of that experience was the review equivalent of Belushi back flipping down the aisles when the Rev. James Brown asked of the Blues Brothers congregation 'do you see the light?' Yes, I saw the light. And like all new converts I felt an evangelical duty to spread the word. The word was that the Arctic Monkeys are the real deal. So it was with some trepidation with which I approached listening to 'Favourite Worst Nightmare.' Having become such a public zealot would I now be left with a considerable amount of egg on my face? Thankfully the answer is no. Like any belief that is successfully put to the test my faith has been affirmed and strengthened. Though this may not be their masterpiece I stand by my assertion that the Arctic Monkeys are the real deal and, so long as they remain so, it is my mission to convert every Doubting Thomas.

The difficult second album. Many a lauded and applauded act has struggled with this one. A variety of approaches have been taken in pursuit of delivering the second coming. The Gallagher approach was to give an airing to the left overs deemed not quite good enough for the debut album. Some, such as the Strokes, take a laissez faire 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' approach. The Squire and Brown tactic was to take previous success as a license for self indulgence. Others, thinking of the La's, just wilt from the pressure. Luckily, the Arctic Monkey's have avoided the pit falls that litter the paths taken by these forerunners. Their sound maintains an energy and freshness which dispels fears they may have rested on their laurels. This is a collection that varies the pace and tone to suggest that they are more than just a one trick pony while the retention of economical 3 minute songs has guarded against any over indulgence.

Just in case the listener is in any doubt about the Arctic Monkey's musical direction they deliver hellos and goodbyes which make their own intentions absolutely clear. Album opener Brianstorm offers reassurance that they won't entirely turn their backs on the floor filling anthems with which the myspace kids first fell in love. Also reassuring is the proof that their heads haven't been turned by fame; preferring to mock boys in 't-shirts and ties combinations' and girls in jacuzzis who 'lay it on a plate' rather than deigning to join them. 505, the final song of the set, however leaves the listener with a reminder that the band intend to let their sound evolve even if outright revolution isn't on the cards. The signs point to the emergence of a more measured less frantic approach. Less brash and more sophisticated. Less about bravado but more confessional. All without discarding what made them special in the first place.

Where 'Whatever You Say I Am' was all about the possibilities of the night ahead, the soundtrack to an evening of escapades on dance-floors, Favourite Worst Nightmare is the journey home. Stepping off the nightbus the streets are empty except for neon reflections in dirty puddles and the rattling sound of the kebab shop shutters being pulled down. There is an air of menace that permeates throughout. It is an album that forces you to look over the shoulder to find you're being followed by edgy riffs, eerie organs, frantic drums, aggressive bass and tales of jealous boyfriends, daggers drawn and noses broken.

The strength of the Arctic Monkey's is that there is no evident bandmaster. They are a collective or gang who back each other up and allow all members a moment in the limelight. All have a chance to shine and impress. Alex Turner is a great chronicler of our times and certainly knows how to deliver a tune but that doesn't mean the rest are his backing band - far from it. The band was famously formed after they were given guitars for Christmas and surely Santa must have also delivered a bumper book of rock n roll riffs too. The versatility of the guitar parts is dizzying; ranging from Jack White-esque axe-smithery to delicate moments like riding the surf with the Beach Boys. The rhythm section play their part too. The bass veers from bullying on 'Teddy Picker' to bouncy on 'Flourescent Adolescent' and everything is held together by drumming alternating from powerhouse to shuffling in a manner which even Remi would be proud. Fortunately when they all raise their game simultaneously such as on 'Balaclava' there is no sign of too many cooks spoiling the broth, on the contrary the mixture of ingredients is magic.

I'm not preaching here in hope of convincing you to pay alms to the Chimpomatic church only to find that I shall later misappropriate these funds for a new life in Rio. It is not an album completely immune from criticisms, though in truth this is knit-picking in order to demonstrate that I'm not just pretending that the Emperor is wearing clothes. Very occasionally as on 'If You Were There, Beware' or 'Do Me A Favour' it is easy to predict the 'here comes the rock out' bit that characterises 6th form bands. Maybe sometimes the band have taken this commission too seriously. The likes of 'The Bad Thing' and 'Flourescent Adolescent' offer a too rare glimpse into the fun that it's possible to have when you're young and in a top rock n roll act. Expectations are high and perhaps Turner over-extends himself when he ventures beyond story telling to message giving. He doesn't need to try to be the spokesman for a generation, he can afford to leave that to someone else. But seriously, that is just knit picking.

So will the Arctic Monkey's prove themselves to the doubters with Favourite Worst Nightmare? Perhaps. Is this a great album? Maybe, though not definitely. Only time can hand out such accolades but respect and kudos needs to be awarded for giving it a valiant try. Are the Arctic Monkey's a great band? Again only time will tell but Favourite Worst Nightmare at least proves that they have the nous, talent and balls to one day deserve to be heralded as such.

#Music
#Muxloe

14th May 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Loney, Dear

Loney, Noir

Regal

It seems like only yesterday that Emil Svanangen aka Loney, Dear first took my ears gently in his hands and whispered his sweet words of quiet and unassuming beauty. Well, he's back to do it all again with a re-issue of his 2005 self-released fourth album Loney, Noir. Made around the same time as last years Sologne this new release provides more of the same. Gently uplifting ditties that skip along playfully to washes of synths, tinkering percussion, rising drums and Svanangen's now familiar vocal tones that can tip toe with delicate grace or rise to soaring falsetto at a moments notice.

Sinister In A State Of Hope takes our hand and leads us gently into this album. "All I want is a state of hope," he confesses here and from this sublime introduction he seems ever nearer to his goal. I Am John picks things up nicely and soon builds to a crescendo of just about every instrument to hand. This leads on perfectly to one of the many highlight moments on this record. Saturday Waits basically does the same as all the others, but somehow seems to raise the bar on hands-in-the-air satisfaction. On I Am The Odd One Svanangen claims "I turned the right to wrong// I came along, I brought the shade," Well tell that to my hands that have been raised skyward for so long they are going numb. This satisfaction rarely fades throughout the course of the album until we are eased out by the final two tracks that take on a more contemplative mood.

Having said all that, there is something missing here that I can't quite put my finger on but it has something to do with familiarity. I can't tell whether this record isn't as good as Sologne or Loney, Dear's spell is too much a part of my life now. After all, the warmth of the sun's rays aren't quite so comforting the more you feel them. Loney, Noir doesn't move things on from Sologne and that will be my only complaint. It seems silly to criticise this guy for providing us with more absolute bliss but I am sure he has more up his sleeve. I will undoubtedly listen to this album, along with Sologne, for as long as I feel the need for hope, warmth and sensitivity but for now I am allowing room for improvement.

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#BC

23rd Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

El-P

Dingwalls, Camden, London

Camden's hive of scum and villainy were out in force last night and were foaming at the mouth for a piece of the Def Jux head honcho. Backed by a band dressed in combat gear and balaclavas El-P arrived on stage in Guantanamo Bay's Spring/Summer collection, a short sleeve orange boiler suit complete with head wounds and a bloody nose. This choice of attire together with El-P's admission "Sorry but we don't have any happy songs," set the tone early and I started to take one step back from my much coveted front and centre position.

As the bass-heavy intro to new album opener Tasmanian Pain Coaster started, the rabid dogs around me moved into position and Dingwalls erupted. It's a fantastic start to the album and it had equal impact here, with the chorus "This is the sound of what you don't want killing you," being spat back by the brawling pit as venomously as it was being dished out by what looked like the cast of Con Air. This was then followed by Fantastic Damage's Deep Space 9mm to the delight of the old school contingency. When El delivered the line "I signed to Rawkus" the crowd were only too happy to scream back the reply "I'd rather be mouth-fucked by Nazis unconscious," which was nice. And so it continued with much of the new album getting an airing. Heavy hitters like Flyentology, Drive and Smithereens kicked out furiously and it seems El's fans are receiving this new stuff as passionately as they did Fantastic Damage.  And so they should as when put next to the older work these songs dispalyed a might all of their own.

An unexpected bonus was the addition of the mighty Mr. Dibbs on beat duty. His beats were as tight as always and he played them with an all-consuming passion and concentration that sometimes rivaled the big man for visual attention. During a short interval - while El-P went off to mop up the blood from his dripping ears - we were treated to the skills of Dibbs, an expert mash up of hip hop favorites - together with Radiohead's National Anthem more than kept the crowd occupied.

Despite the slightly cliched dress code (Sage Francis was rocking the orange boiler suit and bandages years ago) this was an awesome display of El-P's shock and awe brutality and was delivered with all the passion you'd expect from this man. Gripping the mic like he was throttling a chicken he screamed down its neck like a man possessed. His back-up MC shadowed him all the time and whipped the crowd into a violent, heaving frenzy that continued until the last giving the front man cause to show real appreciation at this reception and as we all limped home with real blood stains on our clothes we clung to our ringing ears like trophies of a job well done.

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19th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Cinematic Orchestra

Ma Fleur

Ninja Tune

It's been nearly 5 years since the release of Every Day, The Cinematic Orchestra's finest moment, and anyone who was as totally captivated and seduced by that record as I was would have been eagerly awaiting Jason Swinscoe's next move. The difference between Every Day and Ma Fleur is not too dissimilar a progression from that of debut Motion and Every Day. 1999's Motion seemed to appear out of nowhere and totally went against the run of fashion for contemporary music. Its hypnotic jazz constructions and smoldering film-noir ambiance soon made The Cinematic Orchestra the jewell in the Ninja crown. The follow up took all of the mood from Motion but showed an amazing maturity in progression. It was single minded in its approach and totally dedicated in its focus. It was a truly timeless record and one that would be very hard to follow.

Ma Fleur shows the same degree of progression. Swinscoe has spent years learning from his last record and this is the sound an artist getting closer to his goal. It's a concept album of sorts and is adventurous to say the least. It's the soundtrack to an imaginary film and was constructed during an elaborate back and forth process between Swinscoe and a script writer. The instrumentals were created first then a series of short story scripts were written for these with each track representing a scene. Swinscoe then reworked the music in light of the script and the process continued. The album is supposed to map the journey we all go through from birth to death and the emotions that underpin the three main stages in life. It features three vocalists who represent these stages, starting with Patrick Watson then Mercury nominated Lou Rhodes and finishing with the legendary Fontella Bass who's deep, soulful vocals provided the majority of Every Day with such grandeur and here express perfectly the feelings of loss and regret of the elderly protagonist.

The scale of ambition of this project is awesome and it's what makes it so special, but also what lets it down in places. As always the quality of Swinscoe's production and collaborators is impeccable. Patrick Watson's opener To Build A Home is achingly beautiful and his crescendo vocal range matched with the soaring orchestration makes this song and much of Watson's input a clear highlight. The Cinematic Orchestra has always been synonymous with jazz but Ma Fleur relies less on these techniques. The mood of this grand concept is what is important here and that has dictated the form of the music, resulting in a much more orchestrated structure. It's this structure that really separates this from the other 2 albums. The clear cinematic feel to it makes it flow perfectly as a record and as a film score. The songs are hard to separate and it has obviously been constructed as a whole piece. There is a lot more space between the notes here and when the long delicate periods of orchestration are punctuated with the signature jazz sound it's quite powerful. It's far more contemplative and the definite narrative that runs through it makes it far less immediate than previous records.

This is an overwhelmingly melancholic record and its strict narrative results at times in an album that takes itself way too seriously. The initial beauty wears thin towards the middle and you just want everyone to cheer up. Thankfully the final track Time And Space finishes this journey off superbly. Lou Rhodes has such a delicate and tender approach that gives this song a real feeling of hope. It's a perfect finale and has the quality of a soundtrack to the closing scenes of an epic movie. In these final scenes everything is explained, the pain and sorrow are given a reason and amidst this explanation we are comforted and gently assured that the characters we have been following will be alright. This is a beautifully tender album and though it may not be as immediately satisfying as Every Day it is a worthy successor and continues Swinscoe's reputation as the visionary captain behind this ever pioneering vessel.

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#BC

11th Apr 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Modest Mouse

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Epic

2004's Good News For People Who Love Bad News catapulted this band into the mainstream, earning them two Grammy nominations and selling over 1.6 million copies worldwide. Lead single Float On was given ample airplay and longtime fans held their breath to see if this stardom would be the end of the band. Thankfully We Were dead Before The Ship Even Sank shows them having weathered the storm beautifully. It's as fierce, original and furious as anything that's gone before and then some. Perhaps the addition of Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to the lineup is what's provided these songs with a fresh sense of melody.

After a somewhat lackluster opener, Dashboard is where this record really introduces itself. It stomps around arrogantly with foot-tapping ease, the beat pounding under swathes of strings and a glorious trumpet fanfare. Fire It Up has all the soaring, skyward swagger of Float On, while Parting Of The Sensory pretty much sums up why this album is so good. It ambles along for the most part with a menacing and brooding shuffling of the feet, but slowly getting faster and more intense until it evolves into a drum pounding, fiddle frenzied tirade of "someday you will die somehow and somethings gonna steal your carbon." This song displays the raw edge of this band and their ability to keep this rawness under wraps but always have it looming. When it's unleashed, singer Isaac Brock's strained and maniacal voice spits a venom so powerful it's hard to imagine it comes from anywhere contrived.

Fly Trapped In A Jar has Marr's expansive and solid guitar sound driving the song to fantastic heights, while Spitting Venom is an eight and a half minute heavy-weight that changes tempo all the time climaxing in enough cymbals and trumpets that it really should close the album. But obviously they didn't mean us to end on this high. Invisible firmly draws a line under this album with it's wake-up call of driving guitars and stabbing vocals. The odd tempo of this closer cleverly explains the choice of opener as one could lead on to the other in a constant loop which is more than possible for an album this packed with ideas.

Modest Mouse have always plotted their own course and this album is evidence of their impressive ability to retain their fiercely original edge throughout 5 albums. In fact it heralds a new and expansive horizon for the band showcasing a depth of sound and breadth of vision that until now has only been hinted at. In a music scene inundated with new bands every day it's a treat to hear the work of a long standing lineup honing its sound.

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#BC

4th Apr 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Papercuts

Can't Go Back

Gnomonsong

Commissioned by the Chimpomatic Masters to review Can’t Go Back by Papercuts, released on Devendra Bahart's new label Gnomonsong, I dutifully loaded the album and listened to it at my first opportunity. I was damp from a morning walk in the drizzle, there were no spare seats on the train and the girl who I'd coyly spent the week playing eye tennis with was facing the other way. Papercuts didn't help to lift my mood for a day of temping ahead because to be frank I didn't really get it. Imagine that the Lovin' Spoonful had been shown a vision of life 40 years into the future. No longer would they want to sing songs of daydreams, believing in magic or dancing all night to escape the summer in the city. Instead the 60’s free love and ‘tuning in and dropping out’ would have given way to failed office romances, tales of listlessly stoned teenagers and dumping your girlfriend by a 'dear john' letter for the 277th time. Sure 1967 dressed up as 2007 sounded good but I was left wondering – what’s the point?

Fast forward 24 hours to the weekend and Can’t Go Back began to make perfect sense. The sun was shining, the cherry blossom in bloom, contact had been made with the girl with the eyes and I couldn’t care less for the dues they say I’d got. Papercuts were a revelation; providing the dreamiest of soundtracks for a daydreaming boy all set for a day of, well as the Lovin' Spoonful might have said, 'day-dreaming'. Papercuts are a band for moments when time is most definitely on your side. Shut your eyes and you'll be transported back to endless summer holiday evenings of climbing trees and chasing girls, you might imagine lying in the Glastonbury stone circle watching clouds float over head or picture yourself with bare feet in exotic sand. John Brown chugs and lopes like Luna in lustful mode, tripping through daisies and dandelions with the Jesus and Mary Chain might sound like Unavailable and The World I Love wistfully recalls Mazzy Star.

If musical daydreaming is not your bag then Papercuts probably won't win you over. If, however, it is your usual cup of aural tea then I hazard a guess that Can’t Go Back may just be the soundtrack to your summer of 2007. Lovely stuff.

#Music
#Muxloe

3rd Apr 2007 - 10 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Windmill

Puddle City Racing Lights

2007

Judging by the longest losing streak in betting history Grandma Muxloe’s tealeaf reading powers of prediction seemed to have passed me by. Future forecasts are not my strong point.  But I can already guess with confidence your first two thoughts on listening to Puddle City Racing Lights, the debut album from Windmill.  

First up will be the question ‘haven’t we already heard this before?’  You might wonder if this is perhaps an album mislaid by Mercury Rev at some time after Deserters Songs but just before they lost themselves in a haze of pomposity.  Or maybe you’ll think to yourself  ‘cunning, this boy Windmill stumbled on a stash of out-takes from Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush sessions and has added some 21st century beats to pass them off as his own’.

Secondly you’ll have to make a decision on Windmill’s voice.  It’s a transatlantic lilt, failing to reflect his Welsh origins, which is delivered in a pitch which some might laud as ‘soaring’ but others might deride as ‘grating’.  Its not one for the tabloids to seize on in the manner with which they ripped apart Joss Stone for dropping Devon in favour of LA but it might strike you Indie kids as being an indicator of a possible lack of veracity in Windmill’s credentials.

On both counts my advice would be to ‘get over it’.  Sure, Windmill has worked with a template laid out before but give him a chance because he’s added splashes of new colour to bring it all to life once more. It's like Warhol screen-printing over familiar images – they might be the same but they are also so very different.  As to the voice, it may be an acquired taste but it shouldn’t be enough to put you off.  If it does then you lose out in the way that you would if you turned down Sienna Miller or Daniel Craig (depending on your preference - Muxloe is an equally opportunities reviewer after all) on the basis that you don’t usually go for blondes  - some people will just never be satisfied.

Rather than set his sails to capture breezes blowing down from Liverpool and Manchester or gusts up from Bristol and London, Windmill has unashamedly located his mill facing westward to America.  But that’s no bad thing as the winds whipped up across the Pond have provided more than enough energy and ideas to power a dynamo of a debut album.  The key to his appeal is that, admirably backed by The Earlies live band, he has created sound-scapes so vivid that they suck you right in.  It’s not so much like watching a film but more like slipping on a virtual reality headset.  By the time the album finished I needed to be reminded that I wasn’t actual an asthmatic Model’s Agent caught up in a Tokyo car crash. Big things, and even Mercury Prizes, have been predicted for Windmill.  I’ve checked the tea leaves but have not the faintest clue what they foretell so will not be joining some of these wilder soothsayers.  All I will say is that the boy Windmill has made a cracking start and deserves whatever plaudits come his way.

#Music
#Muxloe

25th Mar 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Love Of Diagrams

Mosaic

Matador

Olé! Matador do it again. Since its formation in 1989, the New York label has maintained its position as one of the main players in Independent underground garage rock n roll whatever you want to call it. Such luminaries as Superchunk, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Pavement have passed through their doors and now, as the good music revolution version 3.0 keeps on rocking, they show no sign of dropping the ball.

Hot on the heels of the fantastic album by The Ponys, Matador have now added Melbourne 3 piece Love of Diagrams to the stable. As CSF has already posted, they are probably tired of the Gang of Four comparisons, so I won’t tire them further with that one. But there is no getting away from their stripped down sound of driving bass, urgent drums and sparse, reverbed guitars underneath it all, with Guitarist Luke Horton and Bassist Antonia Sellbach sharing call and response vocal duties. But this economy of parts does not sacrifice the whole; as smalltown butchers once said (before getting swamped by Major Label, Tesco) whilst extolling the virtues of a particularly fine piece of meat “Look at That. Not a bit of waste on it.”

And they waste no time in kicking off the album, Form and Function is a 90 mph statement of intent, Sellbach and Horton’s dual vocals recalling Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. The next few tracks continue in the same urgent vain, before they treat us to an interlude with the track ’Interlude’ - a nice and moody bass heavy instrumental, which shows they aren’t mere one-trick ponies - it reminds me of how fugazi used instrumentals to break up an album and take a breather. The next track Ms V. Export, is one of the strongest, Sellbach’s chantlike vocals take sidestage to her bass that practically eats up everything else around it.

Pretty much every press release that accompanies the latest hot new group, comes with the promise of incendiary live shows. The energy of the songs alone, makes me think that Love of Diagrams, wouldn’t disappoint on that front. However, until they are passing through your town - give some love of your own and get hold of this record.

#Music
#chimpovich

21st Mar 2007 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The High Llamas

Can Cladders

Every review or article concerning the The High Llamas seems to mentioned Brian Wilson. It must be compulsory I guess, and although it is an easy parallel to draw, it is also a good one at that.

Anyway, they have a new album 'Can Cladders' that is not a radical departure from anything they have done before. So although they still sound a bit like YOU KNOW WHO, they do it better than anyone else and this is their best for a long time.

So if slightly mannered chamber-pop, with lush strings, vocal harmonizes galore, banjos, slightly anodyne lyrics is your thing; then this will possibly be your favourite album ever.

If not you'll hate it with a passion. So either * or ***** depending on where you stand.

#Music
#marmot

13th Mar 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Amon Tobin

Foley Room

A foley room is a place where sound effects are recorded for films. It's totally soundproof, clinical, methodical and has an eerie sense of lifelessness - except for the strange sounds that are produced there. This goes some way to describe the latest album by Ninja Tune's maestro of sound manipulation Amon Tobin. Tobin's previous work was entirely constructed from found sounds, but his sources were usually vinyl. Foley Room sees Tobin turn a corner in his compositional process and the entire album is created from recorded sounds both in the foley room using manipulated instruments and also from street life, zoo life and just about anything you can think of that makes a noise.

Of course, this has all been done before - but Tobin's unique methods and musical understanding make this a truly engaging listening experience. This record crawls, oozes, slithers, crashes, scrapes and sometimes pummels it's way through your head in much the same way that every Tobin record does, but this seems to be a lot more focused. It's a predominantly beat driven record, but the sources of these beats are so expertly masked that your ear soon stops trying to identify recognisable sounds and just allows itself to be taken over by the other-worldly quality of the sound. And this other world is no jolly romp in fields of poppies. Tobin's soundscapes are always ominous and this is no exception. The beats often seem to be created by an army of insects and the orchestral sounds that underlie all this invoke visions of impending doom. Though named after a room devoid of atmosphere, this album is all about atmosphere. It has the feeling of a soundtrack and is incredibly visual.

And talking of visuals, the LP comes with a 20 minute documentary about the making of the record and really helps to explain the process. We see Amon and his team take to the streets with highly sensitive recording equipment and dig out the tools with which this record is constructed. He visits motorbike garages, CD production factories and even a safari park where he records all manner of wildlife. Classical strings and drums are used in the foley room, but are manipulated and reconstructed through the sampling process. Peanuts are scattered on bass drums and drum kits are forged out of metal bowls of various fullness bobbing around in water pools. The interesting thing is seeing all this and Tobin crouched, headphone clad, next to the tracks as a train roars past and then listening to the record and seeing how these recordings have been used to create the most remarkable textures and how some really beautiful music has been born out of this apparent chaos.

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6th Mar 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

David Vandervelde

The Moonstation House Band

Secretly Canadian

It seems that T Rex is having something of a comeback in 2007. What with the debut album by Ninja Tune's Pop Levi and now this - David Vandervelde's The Moonstation House Band. It has all the folk-slide 70's warmth-sleaze of the much missed Bolan but that being said it's still a fine listen. It's a brief introduction, weighing in at just over half an hour, but my appetite is certainly moistened.

In the traditions of the music it aims to emulate Vandervelde has created a concept album of sorts. Much like Bowies fictitious Spiders From Mars, this album is the sound of the mythical Moonstation House Band - a Lonely Hearts Club Band for the naughties. At least 90% of the record is Vandervaldt himself - and at the young age of 22 this is some piece of work. By consciously setting out to recapture the spirit and sound of his dad's 70's records, Vandervelde has managed to strip away all the bravado that came with this music. The camp, glam shenanigans have gone and what remains is crisp musicianship and classic melodies.

Nothin' No drifts in on a haze of woolly guitars and blissed-out vocals telling stories of "gettin' high on your front porch." It has a wonderfully nostalgic feeling to it. It's like squinting in the evening sun as you strain to see a memory long passed. Jacket picks up the pace a bit and has all the rhythmical catchiness and effortless melody of classic Bowie. Corduroy Blues is a sublime piece of orchestral delight while Can't See Your Face No More is a foot stomping anthem that if put to the closing credits to any movie would have the audience leaving the cinema on a high.

It's hard to write about this album and not dwell on the wealth of influences that have made it happen, but at no point does it hide behind these influences or collapse under them. The music oozes warmth - whether its the mid-afternoon blaze of the up-tempo tracks or the early evening haze of the slower ones it washes over you in hypnotic waves. After the lazy, peaceful close of the final track Moonlight Instrumental you feel like the lights have just been turned out on another glorious day in the sun. A day that had it all, laughter, tears, joy and pain but as you gently drift off to sleep you feel excited at what tomorrow has in store.

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1st Mar 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet