Chimpomatic

Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid

NYC

Domino

For their fourth collaborative album in 3 years, Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid turn to Reid's home town for inspiration. Recorded at the famous Manhattan studio Avatar, that has seen artists such as Miles Davis, Steve Reich and The Roots pass through its hallowed doorway, this album draws from the sounds and feel of New York City. With past recordings being challenging to the extreme, NYC seems to incorporate all the ground that these two artists have covered in the past and has managed to bring it all into line for what must be their best and most certainly their most accessible album to date.

All six songs rely on the contrast of simplicity and complexity with each structure being drastically stripped down compositions that employ an incredibly limited musical pallet. Having said that, each song glistens with intricate complexities that are packed into their formless shell with seeming abandon. Hebden is credited with providing simply "electronics" which heavily understates his contribution. Each track is laced with his trademark texture consisting of swirling atmospherics, mumbling white noise and clipped electric guitar. But of course at the centre of all this is Reid's drumming. Like a flock of swallows flying in unison, Reid's drumming holds all the elements together as it darts from one place to the next. It is the basis of each composition and yet drifts along with utter freedom. It can provide backing texture to Hebden's twiddling and samples or it can rise to centre stage with awesome strength and confidence.

The most challenging moment is chosen to lead the album, with Lyman Place kicking things off with an incredibly tense seven minute opener. It's like being in a lift in the tallest building in the world and watching the floor-count rise higher and higher with ever increasing speeds. If you can get past this, the record really starts with 1st & 1st. Like the credit crunch has bitten into the supply of musical notes, this song is built around a 4 or 5 note funk hook that is repeated in all its forms as Reid's drums take on almost tribal rhythm. 25th Street really captures the chaos of Manhattan's streets as frantic drumming churns inside out along with a multitude of fractured samples, including what sounds like the last sips of a McDonalds coke through a straw. Hebden's triumphant EP released earlier this year is brought to mind as this chaos effortlessly slips into a regular 4/4 beat towards the end, but he miraculously manages to restrain himself form this form and structure and lets the beat see out the rest of the song but continue no further. Arrival and Between B&C adopt a more abstract approach and choose a blanket-type structure that covers the whole song in feather-light cymbals and astral synths. But, when mid-way through Between B&C the drum roll ceases and a deep piano melody drops in, the result is electrifying.

Departure closes the album with a ground-mat of delicate, looping glockenspiel that recalls Hebden's early work as Four Tet. It's a beautiful way to finish and it simply gleams with jewell-like clarity and sensitivity. Reid really embeds his drumming deep into the distance and it's from this all encompassing bed of rhythm that Hebden's restrained percussion sparkles. It's a gentle way to close this accomplished recording and really completes the journey through this city, a journey that has been terrifying, mesmerising, hypnotic, exciting and ultimately blissful. Avatar's musical ghosts haunt every beat of this record as it brings into harmony the free-form creativity of MIles Davis, the avant-guard flare of Steve Reich and the The Roots' sense of rhythm. It oozes tradition and yet is acutely contemporary and is the glorious sum of many years of ceaseless creative pursuit by both artists and something not to be missed.

#Music
#BC

6th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Arctic Monkeys

At The Apollo

Domino / Warp Films

With a couple of hit albums under their belts and the band already distracted by side projects, the obligatory live video seems to be one way of maintaining the Arctic Monkeys status - documenting their monster Worst Nightmare tour, which culminated with this show at the Manchester Apollo in December 2007.

Left-field production company Warp Film may be behind the production, but filming wise it's a pretty straightforward affair, with a couple of camera on tracks, a few roaming grainy numbers and pretty much just the stage lighting. A decent effort has gone into the post-production, with a Burt Bacharach/Thomas Crown style intro and outro, and the occasional burst of split screen.

It's a fairly faultless performance from the Monkeys, featuring a pretty conventional set-list waith all the highlights in all the expected places (Teddy Picker, When The Sun Goes Down, 505). There's little banter from the band, pretty much whittling the whole production down to little more than a slightly cooler that normal edition of a T4 concert special. For fans of the band this may be essential viewing, but for any body else it servers as little more than a decent document of what this band were up to, at this particular point in time.

#Film
#CSF

5th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

A Place To Bury Strangers

A Place To Bury Strangers

Rocket Girl

Often hailed as New York's loudest band, A Place To Bury Strangers unleash an impenetrable wave of noise with this solid debut. This is feedback-drenched garage rock that exudes muscle with every song. Their influences can certainly be heard through the fog with My Bloody Valentine and Jesus And Mary Chain being the most obvious but through the course of the record this sound becomes all their own.

Fusing clattering beats, driving, effect-dripping guitar and deeply buried vocals APTBS create a wall of sound that slowly advances toward you like the walls of a dank, creaking chamber. The speed with which this advance takes place varies greatly but the consistent element is its towering presence. Opener Missing You lays down a foundation of guitar that sounds like its being played through gravel but is brought to electrifying life by the lead guitar melody that soars over the top. To Fix The Gash In Your Head builds on a layer of programed beats that come at you like a machine gun. The contrast between this muscular music and the slow, muted and Joy Division-like monotone of Oliver Ackermann is the defining feature and as he calculatedly plots "i'll just wait for you to turn around, and kick your face in," the result is quite arresting. The Falling Sun ploughs a different course, that of painfully slow yet astral grandeur, but the destination is the same.

Like San Francisco's Wooden Shjips, APTBS have one setting and that is BIG but the fascinating thing about this debut is hearing them use this setting to treat various tempos and scales. On the awesome Breathe it's quite mesmerizing to hear this vast sound being employed in a steady, rhythmical way, it's like watching a giant handle a feather.

This record is like unearthing an 80's shoegaze classic that' been buried for years under a mountain of noise. It swirls with narcotic mesmerism and while the spell works its evil magic your head is slowly caved in with terrifying accuracy. Whether they come at you slow or pound your face to dust as quick as lightning the result is total annihilation. It's good stuff.

#Music
#BC

4th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Waltz With Bashir

Ari Folman

Bridgit Folman Film Gang

Powerful examination of guilt, war and repression from Israeli director Ari Folman. Shot in the rotoscoped animation style that both Richard Linklater (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly) and Ralph Bakshi (American Pop, Lord Of The Rings) have used, it's a docudrama take on his time in the Israeli army, as he searches through his past to try and uncover lost memories of a mission in the Lebanon. 

As he travels the world to meet up with old friends and people he was in the army with, we circle round ideas of how people deal with the horrors of war, the guilt of living and the terror of being witness to unspeakable horror. The choice to animate the story allows it to float effortlessly across time and space, weaving together his memories as other people open up the moments his mind has blocked for over twenty years. 

It's the collision between the warmth of seeing old friends and the brutality of their time in the Lebanon war that makes this film such an intense experience. It's been criticised for soft-pedalling the Israeli position, but it seemed to be much more concerned with trying to understand how our minds work to comprehend the shock of war rather than the morality; how people can carry on living after seeing how terrible people can be firsthand. 

#Film
#chimp71

3rd Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Breaking Bad

Season One

Showtime/FX

Engrossing take on the mid-life crisis drama. Bryan Cranston is a revelation as the high school science teacher who's taken a dive off the deep end after being diagnosed with lung cancer, setting up a meth lab out in the desert with one of his drop-out pupils. 

Always thought he was pretty great in Malcolm In The Middle (one of the most underrated sitcoms of the last ten years) - here, he proves he's capable of real dramatic depth too, with a totally convincing performance. It's one of those rare shows that contains moments of silence, at times simply content to let you read his face to understand the range of turmoil he's dealing with. It's also an exercise in transformation. As the cancer takes hold, and he get deeper and deeper into the underbelly of American drug culture to pay off his mounting medical bills, and leave something for his family, you see a surprising sense of empowerment float over him as he realises he has less and less to lose.

If you're a MITM fan, it's hard not to hang out waiting for a joke to come - and there is humour here, but it's pretty dark stuff - acid burning through floors, home-brewed explosives disguised as drugs, short-fused gangsters flipping out at the slightest provocation, meth-fuelled paranoid tweaking behind suburban curtains etc. The first season only runs to seven episodes too - easy to commit to, but you'll miss it when it's over. Roll on S2.

#TV
#chimp71

31st Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Crystal Antlers

EP

Touch And Go

Listening to California's Crystal Antlers is like struggling to wrestle miles and miles of razor-wire into a shoe box, and yet as hopeless and painful as that might sound it is an endlessly rewarding task. This 6 track EP, which is enjoying a re-release from Touch And Go Records, is as abrasive as anything you'll hear this side of a blackboard and yet it oozes soul in the most unlikely of ways. With guitars that screech like bad breaks on a juggernaught and the hoarse vocals of front man Jonny Bell, this debut release is an epic heap of gritty yet soulful punk, noodling psych rock and the odd touch of free-form jazz. It's a record that sets up contradictions throughout its duration and after just over 24 minutes leaves you pondering them as you look for the play button again.

Each song navigates its own route with little regard for formal song structure and from the first moments of opener Until The Sun Dies (Part 2) we are cast into an abrupt mess of driving bass guitar and the instant blast of vocals. This song can just as abruptly slam on the brakes and take all this down a notch to a breezy melody and yet as disorientating as this structure is the result is quite thrilling and after this first song you're ears are bruised but you can't stop. The terms soul and punk are hardly likely bedfellows but they both apply here. Amid the rasp of Bell's vocals is an aching sensitivity seen most powerfully on one of the stand out tracks A Thousand Eyes. As he belts out the chorus "Why do you have to try / to see with a thousand eyes?" you have visions of a man on his knees, clenched fists held aloft. The song veers off into spacey territory for the latter half and then returns for a bracing finale.

Parting Song For The Torn Sky is how this EP is rounded off and by the end of it you'll fully agree with its title. The magnitude of this song will tear a whole in the sky as it climbs higher and higher on ever increasing piles of drums and cymbals. Each throat tearing scream that is jettisoned from this growing construction of sound is like a missile being launched. Free guitar whirls and dives around every crash of the drums like the ghost of Hendrix and after an exhausting seven minutes the machine ever so slowly, grinds to a colossal halt and the silence is deafening.

The sense of awe one feels when noticing life surviving in the most unlikely of places or flourishes of beauty amid barren wasteland is what you'll feel after giving yourself over to this record. There'll be times when you'll think you're listening to the new Cannibal Corpse album but don't panic, push on and you will undoubtedly find a wealth of expansive beauty.

#Music
#BC

30th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Life

Season One

ITV3

Fun cop show with Damian Lewis as a detective who's been released from jail after serving 12 years for a murder he didn't commit. Even though he's scored bigtime on the compensation front - and has a huge mansion, and Adam Arkin to run it for him - he's returned to the LAPD to hit the streets (and work out who framed him). 

If you're not heading for Wire-style realism in a cop show these days, you might as well load up on the quirk factor, and here that's in full force, with Detective Charlie Crews bringing the zen sensibility he developed inside to bear on the crimes he's solving. Think Monk or House for an idea of the flavour, with lots of offbeat comments and a healthy obsession with fresh fruit.

Damian Lewis' accent doesn't falter too badly, the rest of the cast works, with Sarah "The L Word" Shahi as his recovering alcoholic partner, and Chicago Hope's Arkin doing a good job of trying to talk his jailhouse buddy through the intricacies of the modern world he's missed out on. 

Feels like it's going to hit a good balance between the crime of the day, and solving the ongoing mystery of who set Crews up, without making it too essential to catch every single episode. 11 in the first, writers' strike-truncated set, with more to follow. 

#TV
#chimp71

29th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Blitzen Trapper

Furr

Sub Pop

Since Wild Mountain Nation, this Portland band's 2007 critically acclaimed album, there has been much talk about the brazen diversity of the lo-fi gems that littered that record, the way it lurched from avant-guard guitar noise to dreamy country heartbreakers. So it's surprising and refreshing to get this follow-up which seems to turn its back on much of that praise and is a crystal clear exploration of everything from 70's rock legends like The Grateful Dead and The Byrds to all the roots country melody that preceded that. They still embody the Beck sense of experiment but have made a decisive choice as to which elemnt of the previous record they wish to develope.

Furr is way more consistant than Wild Mountain Nation and though it lacks the debuts experimental flare it makes up for it in its ability to roll out songs that range from the wilderness-wandering soul of Stolen Shoes & A Rifle and the psych-rock skyrockets of Fire And Fast Bullets. The charm of Blitzen Trapper is that they are so heavily embedded in a rootsy/country sound but are, at the end of the day, an indie rock group who have grown up with the DIY mentality of bands like Pavement. Put all this together and the result is a sound that wears its influences proudly on its sleeve but at the same time manages to disguise them beautifully.

Much of Wild Mountain Nation seemed to filter Eric Earley's vocals through effects that kept it distant, yet here it is brought to the forefront and is gleamingly clear and intimate. Furr excells because the lo-fi elemnt is kept at a minimum and the intention here is to make complete songs that ooze atmosphere with their embracing of Dylan style narrative as in the story of muder and revenge in Black River Killer. Dusty landscapes roll out infront of songs like these, landscapes that hold in refuge all sorts of fugatives and runnaways. Slide guitar tumbles along, accompanied by the gentle acoustic strum, but the two can just as easily be interupted by swirling, narcottic guitar and playful yet decrepit keyboards. This musical mix and Earley's sometimes soulful and sometimes shrieking vocal delivery seem to ask more questions than they answer and yet it's in these questions that Furr's ultimate success lies. In lesser hands an album such as this would be of no use to the world but amongst its solid songs loiters an unruly side that will keep you coming back for more.

#Music
#BC

29th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

O'Death

Broken Hymns, Limbs And Skin

City Slang

Having developed quite a reputation for their furious live performances this New York quintet have repeatedly fallen short of this unbridled excitement when it comes to their recordings. Enlisting the help of producer Alex Newport for this, their followup to 2007's Head Home, Broken Hymns, Limbs And Skin maintains their bloodthirsty edge but injects a twisted celebratory fervor that brings it in line with the stage experience but also makes it tough listening.

O'Death ooze nineteenth-century americana with all its tragedy and folk lore and with weeping fiddle, jaunty banjo and homemade drum kits they create an image of blue-grass country music being mutilated in the hungry jaws of a feral, gypsy-punk panic. The album is relentless in it's pace and fury and displays an underlying sense of longing and the inevitability of death. But there is also a feeling of jubilation that, rather than coming from a place of hope, displays an acceptance of the inevitable and a reveling in this resolution. It's an orgy of self-mutilating rapture that lurches from one change of pace to another with total abandon and those without the same resolution will find an unsettling sense of doom and viciousness.

Much of the tension can rest at the door of front man Greg Jamie - who's voice has the manic wail of a man insane. From the opening whirlwind of Low Tide to the closing gallop of Lean-To Jamie's urgent delivery sounds like a gap-toothed hillbilly yelling words of condemnation to accusers as he stands at the gallows, head in noose. On Home Jamie's vocals ease off on the grit and drip with Neil Young sweetness but as he starts to shriek "find a sacred resting place where the pecking hens wont harm the eyes," the latter half of the song descends into blood dripping fury. His growl is contorted like a Tom Waits narrative on the ramshackle On An Aching Sea while Grey Sun moans and creaks with pent up melancholy as Jamie's doom-filled words of wisdom spread darkness to all in earshot.

O'Death make no attempt to hide any influences that might have contributed to their sound, bands like Violent Femmes and the murder ballads of The Handsome Family can all be heard here, but the unrelenting sense of doom and the glee in which the band revel in it seems to swallow up any point of reference as soon as it emerges. The result is a truly unique creation albeit hard to swallow. Songs like Angeline, with its uncharacteristic sweetness and softness, are few and far between and offer much needed respite from the storm and I can't help feeling that had there been more moments like this Broken Limbs would be a more well balanced record and much easier to get on with. I'm well aware that to make art more palatable for the audience at the expense of the concept is a mortal sin but while I can certainly appreciate the quality and single-mindedness of this record I can't see it getting much air time on my stereo.

#Music
#BC

28th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Deerhunter

Microcastle

4AD

Fans of this Atlanta four-piece are in for a real treat with the release of their first album for 4AD. Microcastle is the followup to 2006's critically acclaimed Cryptograms and departs from the highly constructed debut by doing away with much of the vast atmospherics, lifting the overall tempo of the record and injecting some exciting muscle into their sound. But this isn't the only treat in store. The release is accompanied by a bonus disc entitled Weird Era Cont. and is an album in its own right consisting of 13 new tracks.

Like The Pixies quiet/loud contrasts, Deerhunter construct their sound using a similar grasp of opposing forces. Their success lies in it's ability to build great, all-encomassing soundscapes of fog that swirl around you like soup, and then in a blink of en eye pierce this density with a clarity that dissipates all around it and appears, standing alone and shining with dazzling intensity. The other contrast widely used here is in scale. Opening track Cover Me (Slowly) launches off with crashing cymbols and soaring melody that instantly evokes visions of an ever expanding landscape growing wider and wider from a bounless basis. In a blink of an eye Agoraphobia follows this with stripped down drum beats and Bradford Cox's intimate vocals and the listener is abruptly jolted down to earth. Cryptograms employed the same use of contrasts but did it from song to song with almost every other song being an expansive and densely textured instrumental composition. Microcastle incorporates all this but does it in a way that brings a smoother flow to the album.

Bradford Cox's vocals shift greatly according to the musical arena they find themselves in. The slow pace of Activa brings with it Cox's thick, laborious delivery as if each word is wading through treacle. Whereas Nothing Ever Happened with it's deep driving guitar and relentless beat sees Cox drift with dreamy buoyancy. Like his side project Atlas Sound, Cox creates very thoughtful compositions where each word uttered is enveloped by bristling synth fuzz, gentle percussion and layer upon layer of subtle sampling and production. But he builds on this greatly with this release adding muscular guitar chords that, in the case of Nothing Ever Happened and closer Twilight At Carbon Lake, gather up all this delicate construction and cary it all away on huge waves of spund that never seem to end. They bring an epic quality to the latter half of the record and continue the trend well into the bonus disc.

Weird Era Cont. is far less considered and benefits greatly for it. The songs seem to be less precious like the hard work was done with the first disc and the pressures off here. As a result it's as good if not better than the lead record. Once you reach the end of this disc you get a dazzling idea of what it was all building up to in the form of the final track Calvary Scars II / Aux Out. It's a ten minute finale of epic proportions that ends up pounding and pounding and in the course of this it changes the face of thsi whole release and it, and the entire second disc bump the whole thing up to a fine score.

#Music
#BC

27th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

(dir. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg)

New Line Cinema

More dumb stoner fun from Harold and Kumar. This time they're trying to bust out of Guantanamo after getting arrested mid-flight to Amsterdam when Harold's smokeless bong is mistaken for a bomb.

If you've seen the first one, you'll know what to expect: mid-to-low brow stoner jokes with enough room and wit for some sly social commentary. That it's a stoner film prepared to actually acknowledge the madness of Guantanamo Bay is all to its credit; obviously it's hardly the most in depth critique, but like their take on racism in the first one, it does make it a film with something to say (alongside all the pot-shots).

There's another great cameo from Neil Patrick Harris aka Doogie Howser, some more trippy nonsense and a realness to the H&K friendship - not bad for a film with a unicorn in it. It's a pretty mindless romp in some ways, ambling along from wacky adventure to wacky adventure, but that's also what makes this likable comedy work. 

#Film
#chimp71

24th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Decemberists

Always The Bridesmaid: A Singles Series Volume I

Rough Trade

As a rule we don't usually bother with singles reviews but this is a special case. Firstly, as it involves the next move from this Portland band since their awesome The Crane Wife and secondly, as this single's release, when put with the other two volumes that will follow it, will form a seven song EP of new songs that didn't quite make the final cut for the forthcoming LP.

Volume I consists of Valerie Plame and O New England. Both are exactly what you'd expect from this band with no surprises but the song to get excited about is definitely Valerie Plame. It's a jaunty little number consisting of brisk banjo, comedy backing vocals, an almost Hey Jude second half and a shameless use of the tuba that will make you link your thumbs into your braces and bob up and down to the rhythm. But what is typical of the work of Colin Meloy is that the song is an amorous tribute to the onetime CIA operative whose cover was blown in a newspaper column. As if continuing the story first explored in Picaresque's The Bagman's Gambit, this song is written from the point of view of one of Plame's inside contacts and is a tale of love found in the most unlikely of places. As is the B side O New England which floats on a much smoother breeze but while being a delightful song might get lost on a full length record.

Volume II, featuring Days Of Elaine, Days Of Elaine (Long) and the curious I'm Sticking With You is released on November 4 and Volume III, consisting of Record Year and Raincoat Song will be with us on December 2. All come gloriously packaged as 12" vinyl and are sure to bridge the gap between now and the next album.

#Music
#BC

23rd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Shred Yr Face Tour - Times New Viking, No Age, Los Campesinos

Electric Ballroom, London. 20/10/08

I'm sure I speak for a large population of this city when I say I hate queuing, I hate the rain and I hate Camden. So standing in a whopping great queue on a rainy Monday night on Camden high street isn't my idea of the perfect way to start the week. There aren't many things at the end of this queue that would make these set of circumstances worthwhile but the opportunity to see this collection of bands certainly seemed worth the discomfort endured. Sadly it wasn't as easy as that. The queue was so big that Times New Viking were all but done as I entered the venue and Los Campesinos annoyed the hell out of me. Thankfully No Age made up for all of it and the star rating you see on your left is largely made up from their performance.

To be honest the LA duo of Randy Randall and Dean Spunt were who I really came to see. Their album Nouns has been the most played for me this year and to see them recreate that DIY sound on stage was well worth the misery that Camden can inflict. And the boys certainly didn't disappoint. From the first note their sound boomed out and resounded around the room with a commanding force. For such a small outfit they can certainly make a noise and the variation of sounds that power out of their two instruments and the odd sampling device defies the sight of the two kids that stand before you. Randy's guitar can assume the roaming jangle of This Should Be My Home, the carefree strum of Ripped Knees or stoop to the deep metallic grind of Boy Void and all the time he's accompanied by the force that is Dean's non-stop drum workout. There's little movement on stage but the sound is so commanding.

Much of Nouns was given a thorough pillaging with stand out moments being Eraser, Teen Creeps, Cappo and Sleeper Hold. The choice cuts from Weirdo Rippers stood shoulder to shoulder with their newer brethren with the finale being given over to a fantastic rendition of Everybody's Down. Thinking they had played their last song much of the crowd drifted towards the bar only for a red light to descend on the stage and the slight figure of Dean Spunt atop a speaker, mic in hand. Away from his drums for the first time he launched into the contorted vocal intro. After this a flashing strobe blinded the crowd and when it lifted Dean was back at the drum kit and the crashing second half ensued with chugging guitar and cymbals firing out with total abandon.

The ease and who-gives-a-shit nature with which No Age churn out their set make a formation like Los Campesinos! appear slightly too much and though they commanded the crowd from the word go they seemed very aware of themselves in comparison. A line-up like this will undoubtedly divide the audience and many seemed to have come for the fuzz and grind of the first two bands and a whole new crowd drafted in for the last act. This crowd were all set for dancing and as the signature tune of Death To Los Campesinos! started up the adoring fans got exactly what they wanted. I, however, had come for a head pummeling and got what I wanted from No Age and the tail end of Times New Viking so the multi-instrumental 7-man line up that stood on stage now did very little for me. Putting the 'camp' into Campesinos this band of merry musicians had more than enough of a following so off I retreated to the 'merch' desk to see if there was any No Age stuff I didn't already have. Sadly there wasn't so it was back into the rain for me.

#Music
#Gig
#BC

22nd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Series 2, ep1

Virgin 1

Was pretty sceptical about this Terminator franchise when it was first mooted - especially after the T3 debacle (a film so bad I forgot i was watching it after wandering off to get a snack and then getting sidetracked by something more interesting. Like the washing up). Ended up enjoying the first series, which seemed to work as a kind of update of 80s TV series. It's nowhere near the depth of a reboot like Battlestar Galactica (but then what is?) - but miles better than the Blahonic Woman.

Ep1 of the second series launches straight in where we left off, with friendly Terminatrix Summer Glau being blown up in a booby-trapped van, the agent who's been on the Connor tail finally confronting the fact that all that nonsense about killer robots from the future is in fact true, and John and Sarah C still trying to do the mom and son thing while also dealing with the impending apocalypse. 

This time round, they're also going to have to contend with Shirley "Garbage" Manson, as the hard-assed boss of some super-tech corp who are no doubt up to good and getting ready to meddle with Skynet's evil plans for tomorrow. Hilarious bit where she morphs out of a loo to attack someone... Next week, in true 80s fashion, Sarah and Cameron wangle their way into a nuclear reactor as janitors... minimum security checks or what? No wonder the human race is screwed...

#TV
#chimp71

22nd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Fucked Up

The Chemistry Of Common Life

Matador

The word "fuck" has become more acceptable throughout the "noughties", leading to bands casually incorporating this once offensive descriptive word. Not too far in the distant past I recall a dreadful funk metal band having to drop the fuck from their name to be replaced with funk; it was fortunate that their songs featured a sprinkling of slap bass. We currently have a batch of bands that incorporate fuck but this does not necessarily define the band to fit a obvious category of music, for example Fuck Buttons and Holy Fuck. Fucked Up in contrast are far more blatant with their intent: they are what it states on the tin - or in this instance on the album cover.

Having spent my teenage years influenced by then present and past performers of hardcore, both Minor Threat and Guerrilla Biscuits are two bands that I still listen to and have great affection for. It has on occasion briefly crossed my mind if any bands had emerged and managed to give this genre a kiss of life - unfortunately Fucked Up fall flat on their angry faces.

Hailing from Toronto, Fucked Up have been banging out their high brow hardcore since 2002, releasing numerous singles and producing energetic memorable live performances. Kicking off their second full length album with a pointless eighties thrash album tactic of beginning a song with a flute or a gentle tinkle of piano keys which is predictably kicked aside with the subtly of a hammer. As an indication of how unadventurous and dull The Chemistry Of Common Life is, the first few seconds are the highlight.

It is annoying to hear a supposedly aggressive band sound so boring. The guitars sound weak and lack any energy or ferocity, vocalist Pink Eyes (all the band have wacky names) is very reminiscent of Nick Sakes from the Dazzling Killmen which is a comparison to a more complex and far superior band.

Fucked Up did make me annoyed but that was due to having to listen to such offensively inoffensive music.

#Music
#R.Hammerstein

22nd Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Desalvo

Mood Poisoner

Rock Action

Desalvo's lead 'singer' P6 wears a Kevlar vest on stage, the cover to their debut album pictures two nuns with ball gags in their mouths and the album is brought to a close with a song called Cock Swastika. All of the above should tell you that this isn't a band that tried out for X Factor this year. Desalvo hail from Glasgow and spew out the most abrasive, feral sound that ranges from the seminal noise of metalcore artists Converge to the brutal compositions of concept-metallers like Mastadon.

Mood Poisoner is a full throttle rape of your ears and never lets up for its short and yet ample 35 minute duration. With driving percussion and guitar chords that drill, unopposed into the sanctuary of your head, Desalvo's debut is unrelenting - and yet out of this overwhelming blast comes a feeling of boredom. Yes it's uncompromising, but its message and overall power is compromised by the lack of variety in its delivery. P6's vocals are like a band saw stuck in the 'on' position and with his high pitch scream I can't help being reminded of the Young Ones.

I know the band will probably come and kill me in my sleep for saying this but I'll take my chances.

#Music
#BC

21st Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Stills

Oceans Will Rise

Arts & Crafts

Oceans Will Rise sees Montreal rockers The Stills return with a third album, and a new home - on Broken Social Scene's Toronto-based Arts & Crafts label.

Bombastic opener Don't Look Down seems like a radio-friendly introduction for what to expect from this album, as it's gently pounding drums and keyboard chug things along - with a catchy chorus and a well-oiled guitar solo. Snow In California continues the radio-freindly sounds, and I feel I've been misled.

The record label and album art might portray them as another bunch of hard rocking Canadians, but there's little here to recommend to the Black Mountain-loving, Kokanee drinking plainsman. Like Pablo Honey-era Radiohead, these guys have always sounded like they have the potential to sell out hit the big time, and that sentiment is only re-inforced here. Through tracks like the anthemic Eastern Europe or Dinosaurs the band seem to have one eye on the stadium rock prize, with a slickly produced and ambitious record. There's a place for all that of course, just not my place.

Oceans Will Rise rolls with the punches here and there and while there's certainly some beef to the sound here and there (Roobius), it's just so polished that it offers little new or engaging. While the lyrics and meaning of the album might be laced with doom and gloom - it all gets lost in the eminently catchy tracks and glossy production.

#Music
#CSF

20th Oct 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy With Harem Scarem and Alex Neilson

Is It The Sea?

Domino

‘They’re really great live…’ people often insist, when I appear unconvinced by their particular musical offering. It is true that a live recording often reveals the real character of a band; there is an immediacy which can lift the music above an album template. There is always the risk, though, that a live performance can expose the over-produced limitations of a band’s music.
No one could ever accuse Bonnie Prince Billy of being ‘over produced’ and Is It The Sea? confirms his natural habitat as the stage rather than the studio. This is a brilliant record which bears witness to one night on BPB’s 2006 tour of Scotland and Ireland. He is joined by Edinburgh’s Harem Scarem on close harmonies, fiddle, flute, banjo and accordion and Glasgow’s Alex Nielson on drums and percussion. Much of the vitality of this recording comes from the contribution which these collaborators have to make. The highland lilt of their fiddle, accordion and flute accompaniments give BPB’s primal tales of love and loss, a real sense of depth. Their harmonies are always pure and direct; there is no great elaboration, only a mainlining of the musical heritage that BPB's revised American folk stems from.

Particular high points include Birch Ballad, a mesmeric Is It The Sea and an increasingly demented version of Cursed Sleep. In the act of performance many of the songs have been turned and twisted from immediately recognizable favourites.

Billie’s music has always carried a kind of medieval foreboding which is dramatically amplified here. In the case of Molly Bawn, the song’s minor key and archaic language are given an extra twist of Celtic wailing. The result is that the balladic tradition from which this song springs, appears alive and well in the hands of Bonnie Prince Billie.

There is a real authenticity to these recordings and a genuine fervour in the audience’s response. We are as far removed from the boot-tapping folksiness of American country as is possible. Instead the backdrop to these performances is that of a European heritage, an aural culture where tales were passed from generation to generation by firelight. Bonnie Prince Billie has appeared to us in many different guises but on Is it the Sea? he is at his most convincing as a kind of musical emigrant brought back to his roots.

#Music
#LG

19th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Lords

Everyone Is People

Gringo

One listen to the Lords sophomore album and it's hard to believe that buried under the weight of scuzz soaked riffs, dirty blues arrangements and howling vocals lie three lads from Nottingham. Sounding a lot more like a bunch of unwashed Thin Lizzy fans, with Everyone Is People Lords deliver an effective if not familiar mix of the afore mentioned Thin Lizzy, the slinky grooves of ZZ Top, the trippy might of Hendrix and some early Soundgarden thrown in to really pad it out. But as helpful as reviews are that name check a multitude of sound-a-likes Lords bring enough of their own muscle to this album to make it a lot more than just a sum of its parts.

Their 2006 debut album, It Aint A Hate Thing, It's A Love Thing, was something of a side project for the 3 band members who were all in other groups but since then Lords have grown into the gravitas of their name and have come back with a sound that expands on the blues-rock success of bands like The Black Keys by dousing it with an obvious love of DC hardcore ferocity and the expanse of 70's rock. The Things We Do For Money is the flagship tune here and does everything you'd want an album like this to do. Treating the funk of The Meters to dirty, driving guitars, it holds a good amount of tension before dropping into the rhythm with amazing satisfaction.

Much of the album does follow this lead, with simmering formless arrangements introducing most songs until, with an imaginary nod of the head, all the band members fall into line and the riffage begins. But instead of being predictable this structure gives the songs the feel of a free jazz jam. It's not all high octane riff-offs either with tight-lipped shufflers like The Boat Don't Float shifting down a gear and building tension and the violins and cello's on opener Good Dog Bad Dog providing the mix with subtle texture and unexpected warmth. Everyone Is People wont change your life but it will certainly make it that much more entertaining.

#Music
#BC

17th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Sic Alps

U.S.EZ

Siltbreeze

With the screech of feedback still ringing in our ears from the career spanning A Long Way Round To A Shortcut, comes this LA dude's first proper full length album. Since their DIY conception, Mike Donovan and Matthew Hartman have been slowly evolving their sound from the bandsaw-like noise of the early singles to the more song orientated blues-fuzz that we heard at the beginning of Long Way Round. U.S. EZ takes the whole gamete of that retrospective and with it we find a band more fully formed than ever and yet unmistakably gritty.

If you mistook that intro to mean that Sic Alps now make nice-and-easy-to-listen-to songs then keep an eye on your graphic equalizer and you'll see that it takes less than thirty seconds for opener Massive Place to hit the red line. Massive Place embodies this entire album as it is split into three definable sections, the first being Donovan's fuzz soaked vocals oozing out, thick as molasses and amid deep puddles of feedback. This tapers off unexpectedly and then resumes a moment later but now joined by what sounds like 20 drums. The third part is introduced towards the end of the song and is allowed roughly 5 seconds to get going before time is called on the whole thing. So in one song we have the near indecipherable and distant vocals together with the much matured and instantly impressive rhythm section which is all thrown left of center by the unpredictable song structure.

Even subjecting this record to this kind of scrutiny seems to miss the point. This band seem to pay little attention to things like structure or form and as a result have crafted a piece of work that flows freely though often on rocky ground. Songs like Put The Puss To Bed, with it's totally abstract nature, dovetail perfectly with a song like Bathman that, amid the wooly noise that surrounds it, sounds like a long lost Kinks demo recorded in an empty warehouse. Much is asked of the listener here, but never so much as the twinning of N##jj and its polar opposite Gelly Roll Gum Drop. N##jj takes all the noise from the early work and shits on it from a high height. It is 1:20 minutes of what sounds like a high speed pile-up involving a dozen 125cc motorbikes and 50 articulated lorries all carrying drum kits. It's a headache to say the least but what emerges is even more unexpected. Gelly Roll Gum Drop is one of the most conventional songs this band have made and plays heavily on their love of old rock n' roll and blues rhythms. Take all this and filter it through the lo-fi DIY filter and you've got a foot-tapping, scuzz dripping masterpiece.

U.S. EZ is the sound of a band emerging from its bare-bones beginnings into the big, wide world. It does this armed with all the tools that made people take notice in the first place, grit, freedom, non-conformity and energy and with all this firmly under their belt Sic Alps seem to march onwards into a new dawn and with a confidence that is a sight to behold.

#Music
#BC

16th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Various Artists

Dreams Come True: Classic First Wave Electro

Domino

Dreams Come True: Classic First Wave Electro 1982-1987 is a compilation by writer Jon Savage, released through Domino - and right away you get the sense that this is a very personal collection for Savage. Billed as a compilation of early electro it bears only a few of the hallmarks that modern (?) electro carries. Essentially, this is the more populist sound of electro which became refined over the following years with the biggest hits yet to come, so what you have here then is early 80's electronic soul music - not particularly intending to be electro, just turning out that way. The sound of the Linn Drum is in evidence throughout, and many keyboard parts are played rather than using sequencers. There are also quite a few guitar parts floating about, even on Klein & MBO's Dirty Talk - the most truly electro item in the collection.

These tracks represent a lot of what was to come - you can be sure that Green Gartside of Scritti Politti was listening to this sound as he was writing Cupid and Psyche 85, and once the likes of Arif Mardin had embraced it for Chaka Khan's '85 comeback, this was a sound firmly in the mainstream. You can't keep a good song down tho' - and the standout track here is Larry Levan's mix of Class Action's Weekend, which would sound right at home on the next Grand Theft Auto soundtrack.

Mostly a moment in time for Jon Savage and a little inconsistent, but an interesting and enjoyable collection nonetheless.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

15th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Abe Vigoda

Skeleton

Bella Union

If Vampire Weekend sound like a bunch of private school kids who lace their tales of life on campus with the exotic sounds of their worldwide travels then Abe Vigoda are their less fortunate counterparts from the state school downtown who too embarked on journeys to far off lands but decided to quit school and stay there. While there they became ensconced in the local cultures and were in turn shielded from any notion of cool and their musical need to make loud noises was bathed in age-old, sun-baked traditions, this being the result.

Since their debut Kid City, Abe Vigoda have forged their own route to musical notoriety and in the process have stumbled haphazardly across what can only be described as 'tropical punk.' Hailing from L.A. Abe Vigoda are a four piece that vacate the emerging scene that surrounds the Smell club and along with contemporaries like Mika Miko and No Age are causing quite a stir with their complete musical abandon that comes at you like a black hole that, having sucked in so many musical genres is now spewing them all out the back end in a form so unrecognisable it's thrilling.

Kid City was this band's warning shot, emerging from their camp with abrasion and venom, and having got everyone's attention has paved the way for Skeleton. Skeleton is certainly less abrasive and as a result gives room to the myriad of elements that make up their sound. Having said that it still packs a punch and though the teeth have been filed down slightly it still aims to dominate completely. From the opening moments of Dead City/Waste Wilderness there is little let up as each song is jettisoned with reckless ease. Guitarists Michael Vidal and Juan Velazquez fire off punk ditties that manage to embody their surroundings of either the steel drum of the Caribbean or the gentle melodies of South America. The mix of the hard punk sound with the warmth of these two distant elements is instantly jarring but electrifying none the less. Neither sits well together and with the under production of Vidal's muffled and inaudible vocals this should, in a sane world, be pure noise. But thank God this world is anything but sane.

Skeleton is an album very much unaware of its surroundings in musical terms but all too aware in creative and geographical terms. Unlike with their debut, Abe Vigoda have paced this album perfectly and allowed just enough space to infiltrate their 'blanket' pace to keep the listener interested. Kid City came at us like a record with so much to say and not enough time but Skeleton has more maturity but still manages to retain the sketch-book like spontaneity of their original sound. In a year where Vampire Weekend's debut and No Age's Nouns have unexpectedly delighted my hungry ears it seems all too perfect that Skeleton should fall between the two. The record rolls along like a ball of knotted shoe laces which makes it very difficult to pull out and separate individual elements - but if you stop trying and just appreciate the knot as a whole you'll see it's a pretty amazing thing.

#Music
#BC

14th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Deerhoof

Offend Maggie

Kill Rock Stars

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

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

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

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

#Music
#BC

13th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Department Of Eagles

In Ear Park

4AD

Though predating Grizzly Bear, Department Of Eagles is the side project of Daniel Rossen - and after a few years off he returns with an album totally different from their debut but one that sounds nothing like a side project. In Ear Park is a collection of songs that are described by its creator as being too personal for Grizzly Bear. It's dedicated to Rossen's father who passed away in 2007 and the title comes from the nickname for the park in Los Angeles the two used to visit. Gone are the programmed beats and eclectic genre shifts in favor of a much more cosistant album of expertly crafted and infinately layered pop songs.

These songs are set on slow release as if they're really not bothered whether you like them or not. Having enlisted many of his band mates Rossen relies heavily on delicate construction of melody that runs through the heart of Grizzly Bear. Rossen's vocals run down the center of each song. They float as light as air and rarely exert themselves but gently rise on the vast waves of rich instrumentation that surround them. The attention to detail on this record is stunning with piano, double bass, strings, flutes, and acoustic guitars all rising and falling as if being encouraged out by a hard working conductor. No One Does It Like You sounds like it's being played in a cavernous ball room while Around The Bay stays so close to your ear it's quite unnerving - and this balance and contrast of space is what makes these songs so compelling. Phantom Other maskerades as a gentle folk song then with the contorted groan of a chello the whole thing lifts like a lost city rising from the sea, then just as quickly it tapers off with the same gentle acoustic pluck like the whole thing was a figmant of your iagination.

Themes of mortality, memory and nostalgia run through this record. The instruments emplayed and Rossen's distant vocals all conjure images of empty music halls, but through this is often a melancholic image there is a vibrant sense of joy the seems to preside. The use of incredibly subtle sampling and a texture built from a miryad of instruments so delicately employed not only create a rich foundation on which these songs lie but also evoke a ghostly feeling. They emerge and recede like spirits from the past, some more dominant and impatient than others but together bring about a feeling of gathering company rather than haunting lonelyness.

The debut album The Cold Nose was an exciting patchwork of beat driven instrumentals, but did play out like a collection of slightly unrelated but good ideas. In Ear Park is startlingly consistent and unified, evoking everything from Sgt. Pepper to Van Dyke Parks to The Beta Band. Form is definitely king here, but the surpressed experimentation that lurks behind each note and every word is what makes this record reveal more of its soul with every spin.

#Music
#BC

10th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Dead Set

E4

"Big Brother House - this is Davina!"

Yes, those of you who find those words scary enough will probably find plenty to enjoy in this horror set in the Big Brother house. Ever wanted to see those smug, myopic sun-worshippers have their cider-guzzling faces smashed in? Check. Think they all deserve a grizzly death after taking up all that air time every summer with their inanity? Check. Want to see Davina herself come to some kind of unpleasant end? Well... you might...

But what lifts this show above the "ooh, we're a nation of zombies for watching Big Brother all the time" level of debate, is that there's a real affection for the actual show itself as well - so if you're a BB fan then there's plenty to enjoy here too. Stacks of former contestants hanging out in the BBLB green room (Makosi, Ziggy, Bubble, Kinga etc - is being a zombie the new Z-list?), behind-the-scenes footage of the production team shouting at each other and living off styrofoam coffee, slagging off the housemates from behind the mirrors, sleazing on the juniour members of the team and then stepping in for some "voice of God" time when things are getting out of hand. And yes, Davina's really in it, lending the whole show the reality it needs to spiral out of.

Horror geeks will get off on the genre touches - Ginger Snaps and Manchester Morgue are just two culty references dropped into the script; Big Brother aficionados will warm to a show that plays out like a behind-the-scenes show, with the added bonus of some BBLB team-ups from housemates from different series.

By shooting the series in a pretty accurate recreation of the actual BB house (the real one was being prepped for BB9), there's none of that sinking feeling that the set doesn't look quite right that you get with so many shows on British TV; it looks exactly as it should because we're used to seeing people running around its artificial living room. Strangely, adding in the odd zombie doesn't detract from this. In a way it's the perfect modern set-up for a group of people who wouldn't know what was going on in the outside world, which writer Charlie Brooker seems acutely aware of. Also, it uses the conventions of the zombie genre effectively because you've actually got a ready-built group of people who have been put together precisely because they probably won't get along - and now they're being forced into a genuine life-or-death team-work situation after weeks of bitching and moaning at each other for eating the last egg...

Decent cast, including Jaime Winstone, Kevin Eldon, Riz Ahmad; artful direction; speedy modern zombies; lots of fast-paced gore. If the rest of the series is as tight as the first episode, this could be the first decent drama Britain's produced for ages that didn't involve some repressed people in bonnets slowly romancing each other while reading poetry in a parlour, or a bunch of middle class people divorcing each other and then uncovering a twenty year old crime in their back gardens coming back to haunt them.

And yes, zombie Davina - that's got to be one of the classic moments of the year. 

#TV
#chimp71

9th Oct 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Melvins / Big Business / Porn

Concorde 2, Brighton, October 6th 2008

The Melvins return to our shores after an 18 month absence to promote their latest album Nude With Boots, and this time they've opted to play only a few regional dates around the UK after a tour of mainland Europe. So it's off to Brighton for an evening at the Seaside in the company of the Melvins and their modular support act system. First up are (Men Of) Porn - Tim Moss's experimental trio with Melvins drummer Dale Crover, and usually a member of the road crew on bass - Moss is the Melvins tour manager so this is really a family affair. What Moss does is to set up walls of guitar distortion which he modulates with all manner of electronics, and tonight things were much more drone than riff. The sound in Concorde 2 was, by the way, crisp and very loud.

Next up are Bass/Drums duo Big Business, who count as 50% of the Melvins. They deliver a short and powerful set including hands up, Shields, Grounds For Divorce, Easter Romantic and several new tracks. Crover comes back on to play guitar midway through the set and the crowd really start to heat up.

After a five minute break, the Melvins start up with the title track from their latest album - Nude With Boots. Twin drummers Dale Crover and Coady Willis are locked together really tight tonight, and King Buzzo looks almost cheerful. They play a great set with lots of tracks from their two most recent albums (the ones which feature Big Business), and a few Melvins classics including Eyes Flies, Honeybucket, Tipping The Lion and a spectacular version of Boris to close the set. Most of the punters are half the band's age, and show their appreciation by moshing ceaselessly. A top night out at the seaside.

#Music
#Gig
#HarrisPilton

9th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Saint Etienne

London Conversations: The Best of Saint Etienne

Universal

It's hard to believe that Saint Etienne have been around for two decades and there is something heartwarming about their longevity, despite their obvious awkwardness. To this day, they remain something of enigma and certainly hard to pin down.

Revisiting their back catalogue is an interesting experience: although there are no revelations as such, it does give you the feeling that there is more to them than you might have thought. You could argue that there was always something of style over content about them, and that their best tune Only Love Can Break Your Heart was their debut single and not even theirs, but Neil Young's. Yet, when it works it, they can be irresistible; the early singles (Nothing Can Stop Us, Avenue) still sound completely fresh; a seamless mixture of 60's Pop, contemporary production, with their tongues slightly in their cheeks.

On subsequent singles they would sail so close to the edge of straight chart Pop, that it's indistinguishable from the 'real' thing. He's On The Phone, one of their most memorable tunes could easily be mistaken for Stock, Aitken & Waterman era Kylie Minogue (unsurprisingly they even ended up collaborating with her), which is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your point of view.

Later tracks, settle into a more laid back and cinematic sound. With which they seem to become more comfortable in their own skin; Bad Photographer in particularly is great. They took this to its logical conclusion with their album and film Finisterre and also a greater sense of documenting their London surroundings, from which this compilation draws its name.

Although it's hardly going to win over a legion of new fans, London Conversations is well worth looking at. As a compilation, it documents their evolution brilliantly and certainly paints a vivid picture of what they are: an inventive, brave band you should cherish; bless 'em.

#Music
#marmot

8th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Jay Reatard

Matador Singles '08

Matador Records

I'm not going to bother with the back story to this prolific punk maverick as it wasn't that long ago that he put out the more than cohesive compilation for his In The Red Records releases. Reatard is a new signing to Matador records and for the last six months they have been putting out a limited 7" which. Each release has been put out in a progressively more limited run, starting with 3,500 worldwide for single No. 1 and ending with only 400 for No. 6. They experimented with multiple formats from picture discs, split 7" and colour vinyl and together they really show Reatard's love for this format and the freedom it brings.

As you'd imagine this collection covers a smaller timescale than the previous one and so sounds a whole lot more coherent. The fierce power-house bursts like It's So Useless have disappeared and the whole sound has changed in an interesting way. It hasn't mellowed, but Reatard has managed to morph his energy into fully-formed rock songs - but still shoehorns them into punk-length packages. So what you get is verse, chorus and guitar solos but all at breakneck speed like each song really has to be somewhere else, like, yesterday. The exception to this general rule is the Deerhunter cover version Florescent Grey which appeared on the split 7", the other song being Deerhunter's returning the favor with a version of Reatard's Oh, It's Such A Shame.

This collection will more than fill the gap for those eagerly awaiting Reatard's follow up to Blood Visions as it plays out like an album. He has experimented with his sound and spans a wide range, from the punk stab of Screaming Hand to the psychedelia of the Deerhunter cover to the full on pop of An Ugly Death. These new strings to his bow and the willingness to experiment are turning Jay Reatard into a power-house of an act that is always guaranteed to surprise. He displays a wealth of of ideas and an exciting lack of preciousness about releasing them. As a compilation this works very well but the real winner here is Reatard's resurrecting of the magic that goes along with the 7" release. It's a dying form, but since joining Matador he has shown that there's plenty of life in it yet.

#Music
#BC

7th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Okkervil River

The Stand Ins

Jagjaguwar

Okkervil River are fast becoming the only band you need. Following last year's stunning album The Stage Names, Will Sheff gives us its sequel - The Stand Ins. It's the band's Amnesiac with the recording sessions for The Stage Names bearing so much fruit that a double album was momentarily considered. Thankfully they bit their tongue and kept us waiting and as much of a treat as The Stage Names was, emerging from the melancholy of Black Sheep Boy with such confidence and grandeur, The Stand Ins swift release simply serves as yet another underlining of the word 'special' when describing this band.

Artist WIlliam Schaff's embroidered artwork that adorned The Stage Names here depicts a haunting skeletal figure with an arm reaching up and out of sight. At the end of this arm is the hand that emerges from the quicksand on the previous cover and lets us know that The Stand Ins aims to be a deeper immersion into the theme of show biz that plagued Sheff's writing earlier. It's the underneath of The Stage Names, it's what goes on behind the scenes and it ain't a pretty picture.

With his cross hairs firmly trained on the world of stage and screen recently, it's the business surrounding good ol' rock n roll that Sheff has it in for here and he treads a strange and complicated line of using the very medium in question to draw our attention to its pitfalls and failings. Lead single Lost Coastlines introduces us to the journey that every band faces and the distance this ship can take you from your starting point. It describes the joys and hardships faced when trying to keep a band together, and ironically, he does this with the help of his old band mate Jonathan Meiburg who, as you all will know, recently left Okkervil River to concentrate on Shearwater. Pop Lie is a scathing attack on the dishonesty of pop music and the manipulation that is used to gather in the fans. He doesn't stop there, and goes on to accuse the fans themselves of lying in the act of singing along. Is he separating himself and his writing from this deceit or telling us, his fans, that we are all a bunch of liars ourselves? Within this doubt lies the success of these songs.

Quite often Sheff places himself on the other side of the limelight, questioning the sanity of adoration. In Starry Stairs, Sheff assumes the supporting role watching the object of his affection being stared at by "these curious sets of eyes" while his heart is stretched to its elastic limit. Similarly in Blue Tulip, Sheff's amorous goals are kept at bay and, downtrodden and beaten, he graciously exclaims "Hats off to my distant hope, I'm held back by a velvet rope." This velvet rope becomes the main theme of Sheff's writing at the moment, standing in for something or someone that keeps us from our truth or our natural home.

Musically Sheff's bow is becoming multi stringed in the most thrilling of progressions. The energetic leap from Black Sheep Boy to The Stage Names was stunning and is continued here. This album follows a similar structure putting it's mightiest songs forward to lead the charge with the more contemplative foot-soldiers following close behind, plotting every step. Lost Highways is the sparing partner to The Stage Names' Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Is It with the jauntiest of basslines rolling unashamedly throughout with Meiburg's croon adding rich texture. The vocals on Singer Songwriter ooze out with a forked tongue as we hear of the musicians who bitch about their woe's when they have everything, while Blue Tulip reluctantly builds to its climax by way of heavy, plodding beats, wailing vocals and an eventual outpouring of the grittiest guitar. As Sheff describes his "distant hope" that is getting ever further away from him the cymbals crash around his words like exploding stars. He portrays a desire of celestial proportions and through the musical magnitude we see his hope collapse like a universe in the final stages of disappearing into itself.

This band may have evolved in the most colossal way since its beginnings but the key facts remain firmly intact. Sheff's direction and obsessive attention to detail make his work endlessly listenable and his courage and forward thinking that led his band out of the type of songwriting that made their name has given rise to this inability to stop creating. The only reason for this album to fall slightly short of its predecessor is that the distance covered between albums hasn't been as jaw-dropping but it seems hardly fair to penalize one creation for being merely as brilliant as the previous one.

#Music
#BC

6th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet