Chimpomatic

Andrew Bird

Noble Beast

Bella Union

In recent years there has been an endless stream of male singer/songwriters oozing out gentle melodies plucked from delicate guitars and swirling with rich, textural strings and I'm quite honestly bored of the lot of them. Andrew Bird, however, provides exactly what i've just described but has always stood head and shoulders above the rest. His 2007 album Armchair Apocrypha won him critical acclaim across the board and topped many 'best of' lists that year. It was the album that lifted his sound way above his previous work and uncovered a wealth of ideas that had until then remained relatively unexplored. Noble Beast does however return somewhat to the earlier, less flamboyant sound of albums like Weather Systems. It's much more subdued in both tone and scale compared to Armchair Apocrypha but like all his work it is filled with warmth and a musical texture that surpasses most.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Bird meticulously constructs the densest musical backgrounds and Noble Beast excels in this area. With some of the skyward intentions toned down here compared to 2007 each song is given the time and space to explore this multi-layered and rich texture. This beauty is seen from the very first note. Opener Oh No introduces this record with Birds trademark whistles and assumes a rather jovial, jaunty tempo while dealing with the theme of pure terror. Inspired by a flight he took while sat next to a wailing child Bird says of the experience "I was struck by the mournfulness of this kid's wail. He just kept crying 'Oh no' in a way that only someone who is certain of their own demise could." And here lies the dichotomy in Birds work and one of the many answers to my earlier question of why he stands so proud of his singer/songwriter piers. Musically this album drips with cosy warmth and yet features some of his most deranged lyrical content ever. Stories of kittens with pleurisy and grown men living inside his body Bird creates here a work of infinitely evolving detail.

This record has some of the longest songs he's ever made. At over six and a half minutes Masterswarm frequently changes direction and with the luxury of time manages to drift off into blissful instrumental segments ultimately fading out to the sound of the rhythmic handclap beat as filtered through an effects program that could be from the Thom Yorke portfolio. Many of these songs feature Bird's enthusiasm for subtle experimentation such as this. Not A Robot, But A Ghost has some gloriously intricate and homemade percussion as its rhythm section that morphs with twitchy laptop beats to form a driving swarm of rhythm that propels the song along at a pace that the afore mentioned Thom Yorke would be proud to call his own.

Recorded partly in Nashville and partly at the Wilco Loft in Chicago this record couldn't fail to be a triumph, and a triumph it certainly is. It's slow burning but its depths are unfathomable at this early stage. It's a worthy follow up to 2007's impressive work and features some of this artists finest compositions. Some of them are so perfect they are in danger of being consumed by the advertising monsters but the ones that escape this pitfall will stick with you for a very long time.

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4th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Phosphorescent

To Willie

Dead Oceans

In 1975 Willie Nelson released To Lefty, From Willie, 10 songs in which Nelson pays tribute to Lefty Frizell, picking 10 of his favorite songs and reinterpreting them in his own unique way. Well now, with To Willie, Matthew Houck aka Phosphorescent returns the favour, with 11 Willie Nelson songs that have been transformed like only Houck can.

Following on from 2007's breakthrough and utterly beguiling Pride, Houck follows a relatively straightforward path with these songs. Pride was unrelenting in both mood and length with many songs passing the six minute mark. It was definitely an album dedicated to mood and would expand from its claustrophobic cage of fear and paranoia to absolute bliss and euphoria. To Willie is much more upbeat and follows the regular song format. That being said it's simply dripping with delicate beauty and fragile devotion.

Houck's live renditions of many of Pride's greatest songs were much more fleshed out and rounded. To Willie seems to be the result of those live experiments. They emerge with a new confidence and don't sound like cover versions in the slightest. They sound lived in and weathered and their gentle harmonies and tales of love are all delivered with Houck's gruff, creaking voice. This record flows with a warmth that rarely showed its face on Pride's hollow and ghostly recordings. Songs like Reasons To Quit and I Gotta Get Drunk are full of a soulful groove that one would not associate with this songwriter. The overall tempo of this record is an instant surprise but Houck's hungover vocals lace it with a narcotic lethargy that unites it perfectly with his previous work. Can I Sleep In Your Arms breathes the vast chords of gathered harmonies that haunted Pride and Heartaches Of A Fool transforms Nelsons original into a cavernous and heart-wrenching moment of arresting beauty.

To Willie is quite a departure for Houck, but showcases an ability to adapt another artists material to his utterly unique vision. His work groans with an effortless power and that is what makes this recording both a loving and honest tribute to a much revered legend and a confident, gripping and beautiful piece of new work by a talent to keep a firm eye on.

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30th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Best Of 2008

CSF

It's been a pretty good year for music according to my ears, and I've struggled to prioritise my top 5. The fifth place provided the most struggle and I narrowed it down to two albums I've overplayed and am currently on hiatus from - TV On The Radio and Vampire Weekend. I suspect they will both remain firm favourites, but song for song I'm going to have to bump Vampire Weekend into 6th place. Other notable mentions go to No Age (fuzzed up easy listening), Silver Jews (these guys finally clicked for me), Tapes and Tapes (an uncut diamond marred by shoddy production), Tindersticks (a comeback I would have betted against), The Wedding Present (it's all fours) and White Denim (lo-fi grandeur).

5. TV On The Radio - Dear, Science
Building on all the promise of their previous records, this one delivered a pretty flawless set of songs, all building of each other and rising to a great finale.

4. Ladyhawk - Shots
"Ladyhawke is in the toilet, she'll be here in a minute" joked band leader Duffy Driediger, as the original Ladyhawk launched into an awesome show at the Borderline - cementing beer-swilling, hard-rocking second-album Shots into a place in my list. No frills rock, with a lot of personality.

3. Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
On paper, this record had to stink. Who wants to listen to the same gags over and over again? In reality, every song provides a remarkable understanding of music history, picking just the right sounds to serve the story - with so many jokes you hear a new one every time. Never, ever fails to light up Chimp HQ on a dreary day.

2. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Another one that may have been temporarily overplayed, but this 70's throwback has been a pretty remarkable debut. Almost slipping unnoticed when it arrived in the office, it has been a solid player all year and I can't help but feel like it's greatness will soon be overshadowed by an even better follow-up. Unless they crack under the pressure.

1. Black Mountain - In The Future
Since it arrived on my desk in December 2007, In The Future has held the top spot for the year - and it still shows no sign of slipping. After a debut and a few side projects that paved the way, this was somehow exactly the record I expected and it never fails to impress me. Every note, every riff, every drum fill is just when and where I want it.

Some musical clangers for 2008: MMJ - Evil Urges (so disappointing), Weezer - Red Album, Breeders - Mountain Battles (only a semi-clanger), Kings of Leon - Only By The Night.

Best Songs: Portishead - The Rip, Port O'Brien - Close The Lid, Catfish Haven - Set In Stone, Fleet Foxes - Your Protector (for keeping BW running, if nothing else).

Best Gigs: Black Mountain rocked hard (again) at The Scala, Davin Berman's Silver Jews thoroughly proved their worth at ULU, Ladyhawk + The Dudes led the Canadian invasion at The Borderline, Oxford Collapse went under-appreciated at The Windmill and Jim James brightly shone a small light for the future of MMJ.

Live Clangers: Ween were truly disappointing.

Best Movies: In Bruges was a must-see despite an awful trailer, Iron Man andThe Dark Knight proved pretty solid superhero action, while This Is England and Dead Man's Shoes proved to be overlooked gems. Perhaps the biggest shock was the fact that the Sex And The City movie didn't totally suck - and in fact addressed the TV shows many shortcomings to make for a great movie.

Movie Clangers: Indiana Jones was as forgettable as you hoped it wouldn't be, while Somerstown didn't follow it's siblings in quality. There Will Be Blood did follow it's predecessors, with style over substance.

TV: The Wire came to a fantastic finale, Entourage continued to provide lifestyle envy, Breaking Bad took an original direction, Mad Men provided some slow-burning drama, while Summer Heights High provided some simple laughs. Undeclared and Freaks & Geeks finally caught my attention this year, wishing I'd caught both much earlier.

TV Clangers: Heroes just gets more and more contrived.

As a final note, headline of the year goes to chimpovich, regarding Men Called Him Mister's support slot for Foals in Madrid: "Band of Small Horses"

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31st Dec 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.

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5th Nov 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.

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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.

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28th 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.

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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.

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10th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

David Vandervelde

Waiting For The Sunrise

Secretly Canadian

A couple of weeks ago, during a particularly stressful time I received an all important and long awaited phone call. Needing to quickly write down the information relayed to me over the phone, I scrambled around in my bag for something on which to write and all I could lay my hands on was the Waiting For The Sunrise press release. Sadly this was as close as this album would come to being essential.

Believe it or not, that intro in no way suggests this to be a bad album. Vandervelde's mini-debut in 2007 was a warm breeze blowing over much of the releases that year. It was heavily steeped in rock history, particularly that of Marc Bolan but was enjoyable none the less. The trick is making that heavy emulation last over more than one album and by the sound of his followup the plan was simply to change the point of reference. This year, soft rock and the sound of Fleetwood Mac are the source in question and much the same enjoyment is gained from this as with the debut but it really doesn't seem enough.

Opener I Will Be Fine is classic Mac as it tip toes in on a delicate beat and dainty piano tinkle. Vandervelde's hazy vocals are light and breezy and allow much room to the music as they fade to the background during extended bridge sections. Hit The Road plods endlessly on amidst a fuzzed out wall of guitars while Someone Like You rises above the sun-bleached haze to produce a nice guitar driven melody and colourful injections of retro keyboards.

Much of the feeling of the 70's is evoked on Waiting For The Sunrise including theinability to stop playing when a song has run its course. Someone Like You hits the 4 minute mark and enters into an instrumental of swirling keyboards that you'd think would see out the rest of the song, but then in come the vocals and the next half begins, but the next half is much of the same and it all just seems like an inability to say goodbye. Need For Now is as non-desrcript as you'll get and it still goes on for over 6 minutes, much of that being the same kind of plodding keyboard instrumentals. Lyin' In Bed is even longer and covers even less musical ground than it's predecessor.

This is a well produced and musically solid album, while Vandervelde has an impressive vocal range and more than achieves his goal. But when the goal seems like little more than emulation, you have to ask yourself what the point of all this is. The reason why there isn't much back story to this review is that I did actually lose that press release when the information adorning the back of it no longer seemed important to me. The same can be said for David Vandervelde unfortunately.

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15th Sep 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Richard Swift

Ground Trouble Jaw

Secretly Canadian

Since the fairly tepid review we gave Richard Swift's breakout album Dressed Up For The Let Down in 2007, he's proved to be a grower and surpassed all expectations with a barrage of mid-season releases - from the electronica of Music From the Films of R/Swift (released under the name Instruments Of Science And Technology), to the low-key Richard Swift As Onassis, to this free EP - available from Myspace and eMusic amongst others.

This release is closer in style to his 2007 LP than any of the other releases, taking in as many styles as a Ween record, while somehow maintaining Swift's own identity (a telent Ween often seem to lack). The sarcastic taunts of The Bully make for an amusing listen, literally kicking off like one of The Pharoahs from American Graffiti, the song takes a swinging 50's vibe and overlays the sarcastic jaunts of local tough guy. "Huh. Nice ending, jackass".

60's Motown is the touch stone of choice on Lady Luck, as Swift again applies his modern touch to a classic sound. The comedy keyboards on The Original Thought and A Song For Milton Feher manage not to disrupt things, highlighting Swift's love of Lennon-era Harry Nilsson,before it's back to a rolling 50's vibe for highlight Would You.

A hook up with Jeff Tweedy (witnessed in person by our man BC) has led to Swift recording his next 'proper' album at Wilco's loft studio in Chicago - and if this EP is the kind of stuff the guy is capable of 'between' albums, I'll be paying far more attention next time.

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26th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Lucky You

(dir. Curtis Hanson)

Warner Bros

Hot shot poker player Huck Cheaver (Eric Bana) struggles to raise the $10,000 needed to get into the World Series of poker. His chances seem slim when his world champion father returns to town and cleans him out. Luckily, he meets aspiring singer Drew Barrymore, who puts a few things into perspective and teaches Huck a few life lessons. A deal with a loan shark gets him into the final and Huck has finally has the chance to prove himself to his father.

Eric Bana's series of hollywood mis-steps continues with this dull poker-drama from 2007. As usual, you can see the thinking behind his unfortunate choice - written by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Ali, Munich, The Good Shepherd) and directed by LA Confidentail man Curtis Hanson. Unfortunately Hanson's reputation is one of inconsistency, having followed LA Confidentilal with a series of not unsuccessful left-turns - the excellent Wonderboys, then 8 Mile, then In Her Shoes. What's the comon demonimator here?

You've seen this movie a million times before - Rocky, Karate Kid, Color Of Money - but with poker the subject matter is so dull that a near-constant stream of exposition is needed to let the viewer know what's happening. "Two Kings? Huck's going to need a Jack or better to win this one!". Hanson's already covered this story in the excellent 8 Mile, and without the captivating double act of Tom Cruise and Paul Newman in Color of Money, or the flashy direction of Casino, this is just another dull Vegas drama.

Robert Duvall is the wise old man who teaches his distant son a thing or two - the hard way. Drew Barrymore delivers a fairly typical sub-par performance, telling Bana the cold hard truth and making him look inside himself. Unfortunately on this occasion he doesn't find a green giant.

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22nd Aug 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Band of Horses

Everything All Of The Time

Sub Pop

THEN: Let's suppose that My Morning Jacket had a younger brother, who hung around the practice sessions and was witness to their particular brand of genius. He's maybe thinking to himself, yeah that's pretty good - but those extended, distorted solos are a bit distracting, at times they get in the way of a nice, clean, imaginative pop song. I like the reverb on the vocals, I'll have that (It's possible that a couple of tracks were actually lifted straight from the outtakes of a MMJ session - Part One and I Go To The Barn Because I Like The could well be from At Dawn). The result is a charming, dreamy album with enough emotional weight to demand full attention. (Read our original review here)

NOW: WIth their popularity buoyed by a total market saturation of the radio friendly / soundtrack friendly / ad friendly awesomness of killer track The Funeral, Band of Horses have exploded - at least in Sub Pop terms. Strengthened by a series of blistering live shows, the band's identity has also matured - lifting them out of the My Morning Jacket sound-a-likes category into a place of their own. Packed full of great tracks - The First Song, Wicked Gill, Our Swords, The Great Salt Lake, Weed Party - rather than fading away, this album his matured and improved, contributing to their top five spot in the Chimpomatic "most-played" chart.

SUB POP SAYS: "Achieving musical transcendence is a tricky feat, almost definitively"

KILLER TRACK: The Funeral (mp3)

NEXT: 2007 - Kinski - Down Below It's Chaos

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15th Aug 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Bowerbirds

Hymns For A Dark Horse

Dead Oceans

In their original incarnation, Bowerbirds were a duo consisting of guitarist and principal songwriter Phil Moore and accomplished painter Beth Tacular (great name) assuming accordion and percussion duties. Before the recording of their debut album, Hymns For A Dark Horse, they were joined by Mark Paulson who has added vital instrumental layering to their compositions, bringing piano, violin and added percussion to the band. This album was originally released in 2007 on Burly Time Records but is given a rerun this August with added tracks by the Jagjaguar affiliate Dead Oceans. Currently on tour with Bon Iver, Bowerbirds continue the gentle wave of grass-roots American folk that is warming hearts across the globe.

An unassuming Hooves nudges this record into the light as it emerges quiet and lonely. The accordion provides glimmers of warmth until the multiple vocals arrive for the chorus. All these elements are exploited to greater effect on the following track. In Our Talons assumes a brisker pace with homemade drums click-clacking in the distant background and the rising voices lifting the song to its climax of "No, you're not alone." Dark Horse's violins soar with gentle melancholic sunshine like kind words spoken to a broken heart.

It's the group harmonies that provide the essential ingredient on this album. Moore's solo vocals have an easy croon to them but it's when he is joined by what sounds like more than 2 more voices that each song is lifted from simple singer/songwriter outpourings to majestic pieces of heartfelt beauty. Musically each song relies on two main factors, the whispering accordion that faithfully accompanies each vocal journey, and secondly it's the DIY drum beats that follow behind. As if being played with sticks on the kitchen table, this makeshift beat provides the record with its earthy rawness and as they seem to come from way back in the distance they provide a hollow element to the sound. The inevitable reaction that takes place when this emptiness is filled by the gathering vocal harmonies is the ultimate success of the record.

The comparisons to the aforementioned Bon Iver come not simply through the record company they are both associated with, but from an obvious ethos that surrounds the music they create and the life they live outside of this music. Moore and Tacular live in an Airstream trailer on a quiet plot of land on the outskirts of Raleigh in North Carolina and it's this sort of organic, rural and simple way of life that permeates every second of this record. It informs its unpretentious wishes and helps deliver on its honest expression. There are differences of course: Bon Iver aims to conjure a greater sense of loneliness and does it with dazzling effect. Hymns isn't so dazzling and Moore's voice lacks the captivation of Justin Vernon's and when left alone for too long can slip into a mediocre folk sound. Album closer Matchstick Maker illustrates this tendency to tread water. With no obvious centre to the song it can drift along in an unfocused haze as if guided by Adem. But thankfully for us this seldom happens and the result is a work of real beauty. Jagjaguar and it's affiliated labels are providing the backbone to this years top releases and while Bowerbirds may not leap from the pile like some of the others, it resides near the top of the heap as a band clearly in love with their craft.

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31st Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Port O'Brien

All We Could Do Was Sing

City Slang

Van Pierszalowski, the front man for this Californian band, spends 3 months of the year on a salmon trawler on Kodiak Island, Alaska which goes some way to explain the great seafaring influence that dominates their sound - and like the sonic waves that wash over every moment of this record, Port O'Brien find themselves on distant and far richer shores than were explored on their debut.

2007's The Wind And The Swell was less of a debut and more of a compilation of the best of their self-released efforts, but it was very much a stripped down folk affair comprising of mainly guitar and vocals and tinny lo-fi drumming. It's very much a different story here with All We Could Do Was Sing, which curiously kicks off the same way their previous album did - with the frenzied group sing-along of I Woke Up Today. It's given a major overhaul this year but does slightly mislead the listener as to the general direction of this record. Stuck On A Boat is way more representative with its deep guitars and hollow vocals. It's a simple song vividly placing Pierszalowski on his Dad's trawler, it takes its time with the basic rhythmic structure but its glorious swathes of pastoral strings instantly hail the arrival of a whole new band. Fisherman's Son sees our protagonist leave his coastal roots and up and move to the city. Great waves of drums pick this song up and launch it into a vibrant gallop accompanied again by the string section.

Port O'Brien have developed many strings to their bow and this record is full of ideas that span more tempos than their debut hinted at. Songs like Pigeonhold show the band baring its teeth with crashing cymbals and truncated guitar solos that squeal and wine, until the strained vocals bring the whole thing to a calamitous close. This electric injection raises this band from the alt-folk wilderness that they threatened to reside in. The penultimate Close The Lid sees them perfect this element of their sound with a textbook indie jangle that lets rip into a joyous ramshackle of drums and raw vocals. Then as a total antithesis comes the frail closing sound of Valdez. More in line with the earlier songs this finishes the album with melancholic fragility and is the sonic opposite of how the record began. These polar bookends that contain this record illustrate perfectly the rich tapestry that Port O'Brien has woven. They may not be reinventing anything here, but as an example of a rock group that strives to evolve their sound, Port O'Brien's journey from lo-fi folk to indie rock confidence has resulted in a full bodied and endlessly listenable album.

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#BC

28th Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Lil Wayne

Tha Carter III

Cash Money

Hailed as the "most anticipated release of 2007", Lil Wayne's first full album since Tha Carter II in 2005 saw such an unprecedented leak rate that it got pushed back for a 2008 release and has since sold more than a million copies in it's first week. All this acclaim and expectation could spell the demise of a hip hop act such as Wayne but Tha Carter III is a piece of work that more than lives up to its hype and sees this truly unique MC occupying even weirder and bolder territory than ever.

On one of the stand out tracks, Dr. Carter, Wayne assumes the role of doctor and the patient is hip hop. Various symptoms present themselves at the start like lack of confidence, bad concepts, weak flow and no style and by the end he claims to have "saved hip hop." This arrogance is justified as he takes us step by step through just why he is more than qualified to be the self proclaimed saviour. And hip hop has never sounded healthier than on Carter III.

With his grizzly delivery and slow, erratic flow Lil Wayne fills every album with an overflowing quantity of ideas. He has experimented so much with his voice and can swing from a deep menacing growl (Phone Home) to weazle-like ragga-monotone rapid fire (A Milli). Each track demonstrates his lyrical prowess as he changes subject faster than a cornered politician. The production is tight with multi layered beats and deep soulful melodies. There is some great samples, most notably the David Axelrod melody on Dr. Carter and Nina Simone on the overlong Don't Get It. Wayne seems so at ease with the music, as he takes his time delivering vivid metaphors it's as if the beats have to keep up with him. Let The Beat Build demonstrates hip hop's unique freedom to allow songs that are about nothing but hip hop itself. The song is centered around Wayne's grasp of beat timing and that's about it, but it works tremendously. Mid-way through the song everything goes quiet until Wayne whispers, "As I hit the kill switch / Now that's how you let the beat build bitch." Songs like Shoot Me Down show the MC soul-searching with dark, brooding atmospherics that build to his end statement "watch me soar, where the fuck is my guitar?" and a screeching chord brings the whole thing to a close. It's followed by it's antithesis, Lollipop. The first official single, this is a made-for-radio song that is centered round a shameless confectionary-based sexual innuendo. It's good but it's nothing 50 Cent didn't already tell us in Candy Shop.

Lollipop, while a solid tune, does contain elements of where this album, for me, strays from its focus and that'll be in its R n B tendencies. I rarely venture into mainstream hip hop such as this, for this very reason. Hip hop is the biggest selling genre in the US and can't do too bad over here either, but I can't help feeling that this statistic comes about largely due to the genre boundaries being heavily blurred and when hip hop strays into RnB territory the market expands. R Kelly isn't hip hop and Kanye West isn't RnB. Songs like Got Money and Comfortable seem to dilute this MC's dazzling writing skills not to mention Mrs Officer, a song who's principle theme is a female cop sexual fantasy.

So that's the bitching out the way and now down to business. This guy can turn a phrase better than most and that's the sole reason to listen to this album. Unlike many of his contemporaries Wayne doesn't lace every rhyme with the same concepts and themes and so in that respect he is hard to pin down. He isn't a thug rapper, a smut rapper or an indie-poet, he's all that and more. He covers many topics with impressive eloquence. Here's a few.

Excretion: You're like a bitch with no ass, you aint got shit. (A Milli)

Grammar: "I don't owe you like two vowels." (A Milli)

Will Smith movies: "I got so many bitches like I was Mike Lowry."(A Milli)

Ailments: "I Got Swagger tighter than a yeast infection" (Dr Carter)

Cooking: "Don't I treat you like soufflé?" ( Comfortable)

Confectionary: "So I let her lick the (w)rapper" - (Lollipop)

French: "I'm all about oui like Paris / Hilton presidential suite already." (La La)

Finance: "You better pay me cos you don't want my problems / I'll be wiling like Capital One, what is in your wallet" (You Aint Got Nuthin.)

#Music
#HHG

24th Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pop Levi

Never Never Love

Counter Records

Pop Levi (aka Jonathan Pop Levi) builds on the promise of 2007's The Return to Form Black Magick Party with this collection of upbeat tambourine-shaking 60s-flavoured boppy songs.

As you'd expect from someone who started out playing bass in Ladytron, there's a strong element of electronica here, but it's blended in with a groovy sensibility - fat Human League-style synth basslines over handclaps in Dita Dimoné etc. You can almost imagine Austin Powers getting down to this if he showed up in a club in 2008 (not to imply it's a joke album, far from it, but there's a lightness of touch to a lot of the tracks here - a track called Mai's Space, and the YouTube-friendly video for Semi-Babe for example).

Might be one of those albums that works better as something to plunder for a mix-tape (or whatever the kids are calling them these days - hit Wannamama, Dita Dimoné, Oh God (What Can I Do?) or Never Never Love for a satisfying sample) but overall it's a fun summery sound.

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#chimp71

15th Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

White Denim

Workout Holiday

Full Time Hobby

My apologies for the late arrival of this review but the sheer workload that is piled on me from this site means I tend to stop listening to a record once the review is done, and I really didn't want to stop listening to this. It seems as far as indie music is concerned all the ideas these days are coming from the US and arriving hot on the heals of the recent No Age record, White Denim's Workout Holiday not only reinforces this perception but positively hammers the point home.

Having been stuck in my car with only this CD for company, Workout Holiday has literally been thoroughly road tested and due to the nature of this listening experience I started formulating some driving metaphors in my head. One of the most exciting features of this band is what I call their 'gear shift' capabilities and by that I mean their penchant for ditching an idle pace for a sudden and electrifying upshift. So I started comparing this record to the experience of, as a youngster, trading your crappy 1 litre MG Metro for a one-time-only excursion down the road in your dads car. But then comparing this band to a high performance dad-car couldn't be further from the truth, I would have to leave that to a Metallica album. No, White Denim is more like getting into the same piece-of-shit Metro with the rusty body-work, decrepit brakes and highly questionable frame, only to find someone has switched your 1 litre engine for a super hybrid piece of engineering complete with flux capacitor that runs on plutonium.

Workout Holiday is highly charged, punk-infused rock that knows no boundaries or limitations. It comes from the Austin, TX trio following their 2007 debut 7" EP Lets Talk About It. It features 4 tracks from the EP which is slightly disappointing, but has become one of the most exciting records to bombard my eager ears for some time. White Denim walk the precarious line between genius and utter chaos, with each song fooling you into thinking it has no clue where it's going. It's ramshackle guitar chords race headlong into the distance with the makeshift rhythm section struggling to keep up, and the vocals erratically punctuating this mess when and where they feel like it. The result is an electrifying run of songs, no two alike, that never end where they start and this unpredictability seems to catch you out every time, making each listen a unique experience.

The EP tracks still form some of the strongest of these 12. Both Lets Talk About It and the following track Shake Shake Shake follow similar structures with furious, guitar driven first halves being taken down a notch at the midway point for an emerging instrumental ending that constantly threatens to finish but, as if with shear enthusiasm, keeps going and going. Sitting changes the pace with a bar-room singalong that sees singer James Petralli opening the vocals like Anthony And The Johnsons. It's a jaunty little number and the most conventional on the album.

Mess Your Hair Up seems to embody this band perfectly. It's opening section is a pretty non-descript mess of buried vocals, but as the mess gets thicker the feint screech of a guitar chord rises from the bog and takes the song off into unforeseen territory. As usual the band seem to be enjoying this change-up so much that they keep it going, reinventing different drum patterns just as the song should be finishing. Towards the end of the record comes a late heavyweight in the form of Don't Look That Way At It. Opening with a sound as erratic as a bucket of marbles being poured over a guitar, it sets up a bubbling cacophony of noise that trickles along at a steady pace, it maintains this complex and crammed formation until the midway point where the fuel injectors kick in The deep drums suddenly give way to crashing snare and cymbal and the complex guitar arrangements are smoothed out to driving chords. It's impressive to say the least.

The two instrumental songs here, Look That Way At It and WDA, sound less like conscious decisions to give space to the record and more like a band who are making things up as they go along and are way too into their instruments to bother with vocals, which may be in there somewhere but have been long buried beneath the ever mounting layers of sound. And this goes some way to describe this album. Each song stumbles into the other and the record just delivers idea after idea without becoming precious about any. They'll set up an impressive first half then tear it down like reckless hooligans. And here lies the diamond in this rough album. A better record may well crop up this year but I doubt if I will see such a reckless approach to an album. As one idea is discarded for another you get the impression that this liberation comes from a knowledge that there are more to follow. You get to the end of the album and instead of wanting to rewind you want to hear the next record, but as this isn't possible you'll have to settle for back to back plays. Highly recommended.

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#BC

10th Jul 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Beck

Modern Guilt

XL/Interscope

Beck teams up with Danger Mouse for his most satisfying album for a while. Much less jokey and random, Modern Guilt is like looking through a digital kaleidescope at the 60s; nostalgic, but not lost in that preserve-the-Beatle-dust sensibility you get in a lot of retro projects. Think Caribou with some tunes.

Ten tight songs of densely-packed psychedelia, upbeat Stax rhythms and fuzzbox guitars that all wraps up at a very compact 30 minutes (why is it that the dawn of the "compact disc" ushered in the age of the anything-but compact album?). This is a set of songs so short you immediately want to play the whole thing again; when was the last time you felt like that?

Single Chemtrails is a dreamy ode to planes with some great drum-fills, Gamma Ray grooves along at a dancey pace and album closer Volcano brings things to a finish with a melancholy dusting-off of some of Beck's trademark questioning: "I don't know if it's my illusions that keep me alive."

Danger Mouse seems to be having a busy time at the moment - Gnarls Barkley came back, and he's also been behind the desk for the Shortwave Set, The Good, The Bad and The Queen and Martina Topley Bird's new one The Blue God. He's obviously on a roll, but the work rate hasn't taken its toll.

If you haven't taken the Beck train for a while, this is a short ride worth hopping back on board for.

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#chimp71

8th Jul 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Atlas Sound

Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel

4AD

"The dream of one summer, this last summer I had. It's almost as if I had one continuous dream and the product of achieving it is the album you have here." And so writes Bradford Cox, the creator behind Deerhunter and this, his earliest incarnation and solo pursuit, Atlas Sound. Let The Blind... is the debut album under this name and "one continuous dream" would be an accurate way to describe it. With themes of nostalgia and childhood infiltrating every pore of this sound much of its conception can be attributed to one whole summer where, as a 16 year old, Cox lay immobilized in a children's hospital undergoing surgery on his back and chest. This lost summer, spent bedridden and gazing longingly at the world, echoes the bleached out warmth of this sound and the endless dream-like imagery that loom in and out of focus throughout the record.

Let The Blind... is the vehicle by which Cox can express the ideas he feels unable to in Deerhunter. It's a one man bedroom recording of great depth and beauty that spends much of its time swimming in hazy pools of warmth while occasionally rising to minimal peaks of focus before receding back again. It employs similar washes of sound as Deerhunter's 2007 Cryptograms but assumes the roll of its more reserved cousin, lonely and sedated it spends its time indoors dreaming and anticipating.

A muffled child's voice clumsily narrates a ghost story in the opening few moments only to be overcome by a slow approaching wave of sampled glockenspiel that blissfully fades to the gentle rhythms and distant vocals of Recent Bedroom. Cox uses repetition to convey this dreamlike state with looping vocal formations drifting in and out of the listeners consciousness like the various stages of sleep. As the distant muffle of Recent Bedroom gives way to the crisp and clear pitter-patter of River Card you can feel yourself rising from slumber with ease and gentleness. Cold As Ice sees you fall back into the abyss only to be summoned back with angelic grandeur by the chiming synths of Small Horror. From the clipped drum roll of River Card to the sunken 4/4 techno beat of Winter Vacation, Cox smothers every minute of this record in rich effects conjured from homemade electronica.

Compared to his work with Deerhunter this is very much the sound of an individual. Sonically and thematically Let The Blind... describes the space inhabited by this one individual, be it the swirling pastoral landscape of his mind or the confines of a hospital bed. This is a very personal piece of work which manages to shimmer with warmth and shiver with icy melancholy. On Quarantined he sings "quarantined and kept so far away from friends," so his only option is to escape into this dream while he lies there "waiting to be changed."

As the closing fuzz of the final title track echoes opener A Ghost Story, you really have to emerge from this record to rejoin the real world. It's effects are subtle and it's not until it fades away that the spell is revealed and you realise how deep you have been taken. This is an abstract musical journey and seems to flow with a disjointed perfection that makes it work best as a unified whole rather than a collection of songs. It's headphone music to really disappear to and like most of Cox's work it's a fiercely original sound that knows exactly where its going and will take as long as it wants to get there. Your only choice is whether you've got what it takes to tag along.

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#BC

22nd Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Cinematic Orchestra

Live At The Royal Albert Hall

Ninja Tune

For those who are yet to see The Cinematic Orchestra live then let this wet your appetite for what is truly a unique musical experience. Without belittling Jason Swinscoe's scintillating recordings this group were born to play live. This is where they truly live up to their name and what better place to convey this than in the Royal Albert Hall. On November 2nd 2007 Swinscoe brought with him an enhanced line up which featured the 24 piece Heritage Orchestra to this historic venue and dazzled an audience of more than 4000 people.

This recording aims to convey this extraordinary live event and really the only fault worth mentioning is that a recording can't possibly do justice to this night and though many of the original vocalists are not present this CD is a close second best.

Opening with Every Day's stand out song All That You Give, this night was all about using the original songs as platforms from which to launch the musical potential that lies within this group. Like any jazz ensemble the musicians here use the original structure of each song as a base to return to after their sonic journeys into the rafters of this great venue. Flite rolls along on the trademark drumbeat while guitar and organ dance playfully around it and great swathes of strings lift and lift. Last spring saw the release of Ma Fleur which featured the achingly beautiful song To Build A Home. Changing up on the vocalist here this live version has little of the magnitude of the original and is one of the few instances where the recording triumphs over the live. However this is all soon forgotten when we enter the opening phase of the epic and now classic Ode To The Big Sea. At over 14 minutes long we revisit in striking glory the jazz routs of this band. Though dazzling in their own right the last few albums have taken Swinscoe's outfit away from the free jazz sound and it really is special to see them return in such style. Skipping along to rain-drop-like piano we build to a frantic drum solo that just about marks the mid way point. A clarinet heralds the change up and with the hall silent the experimentation really begins. Accompanied by electronic bleeps this pair really use the space provided and receive rousing applause from the crowd for their courage when the drums finally rejoin them.

The whole night is concluded with Time And Space featuring Lou Rhodes of Lamb. A sedate yet beautiful end to a very special evening. After experiencing this live show you'd want a recording such as this to keep the memory alive.

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1st Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Band of Horses

Koko, London

February 26th, 2008

Back in the UK for the third time in a year (and with more dates scheduled for July), Band of Horses have picked up quite a following since 2007's show at the Scala. After great support sets from MGMT and Sons & Daughters, the crowd went ballistic for Ben Bridwell's band of hairy truckers. The huge crowd response showed a lot of dedicated followers in the audience - showing that there may be hope yet that a band that has clearly never been made-over by a skinny-jeans promoting stylist can still crack the mainstream.

Cease To Begin opener Is There A Ghost? started the show and set the modus operandi for the evening: amp everything up to the maximum and rock it out. While that worked superbly for the harder rocking numbers like Ode To LRC or Islands On The Coast, the poor bass in the house sound system didn't take it well and pretty much every track was flattened out by the overbearing bass drum and guitar. Only Bridwell's powerful voice could climb out of the rumble, which unfortunately meant a lot of the subtleties of tracks like The Great Salt Lake or The First Song were flattened out and buried. Spirits weren't dampened however and the rock and roll energy of the band carried the show along on a wave of enthusiasm.

It's clearly Bridwell's band and following the personnel re-structuring after Everything All Of The Time that seems like a fairly natural order. Concessions were made to the new members with the first "fake end song before we probably come back on" - a barnstorming rendition of over-looked Creedence classic Effigy - before keyboardist Ryan Monroe stepped in to provide vocals on a new track in the encore, making for a welcome departure and a possible indication of territory a third album might head off into. With Bridwell releasing his grip of iron over the band, things were now flowing fast and loose and foot-thumping party tune The General Specific made for a fine sing-a-long before a flowing cover of Ron Wood's soulful Act Together.

This is a real, working band that are picking up accolades and knocking out good music in quick rotation. Hopefully this is still just the beginning.

#Music
#Gig
#CSF

27th Feb 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Beach House

Devotion

Bella Union

With hazy lyrics, church organs, tambourine and triangle chimes, slide guitars and narcotic vocals the obvious comparison to be made on first listening to Devotion by Baltimore boy/girl duo Beach House is with Mazzy Star. Hand over a basket of dough, cheese, tomato and red meat to an American and they'll cook you a hamburger whilst an Italian will conjure up a pizza. In much the same way Beach House have managed to cook up a sound all of their own even if they have thrown the same ingredients into the mixing bowl. Where Mazzy Star are dusk, Beach House are the dawn. Hope Sandoval sings in tones of a last seduction or a siren calling ships to crash on the rocks but Devotion is the sound of waking on the beach in the moment between sleep and conciousness. The tranquil waves lapping on the shore herald news that the storm has passed.

Mazzy Star might well be the obvious reference point but there are more strings to the Beach House bow. The production on the likes of Wedding Bell is a salute to Brian Wilson and Pet Sounds, Gila is a respectful nod to Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs and Astronaut has echoes of the Ronnette's singing Be My Baby. Thanks to a frazzled 2007 I failed to contribute to Chimpomatic's 'best of' list for 2007. Had I done so then my nomination for album of the year would have been Can't Go Back by Papercuts. If the bed-fellows are a reflection of the lover then the fact that Beach House are currently on a extensive North American tour with Papercuts comes as the highest recommendation.

If you like this kind of thing then you'll love Devotion, but if it's not your usual bag then it should at least be added to your library for Sunday morning come downs or lazing in hammocks outside your summer holiday Beach House. In a word it is - dreamy.

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#Muxloe

27th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Instruments Of Science And Technology

Music From the Films of R/Swift

Secretly Canadian

With Richard Swift's debut release, he introduced us to the twin sounds of The Novelist/Walking Without Effort, before 2007's Dressed Up For The Let Down proved to go the distance and become one of the year's most lasting album's - providing an understated sound that was rich in detail.

With side-project Instruments Of Science And Technology, Swift takes us on another unforeseen journey, once again heading out into different territory to pull together the sountracks to a selection of imaginary films: Music From the Films of R/Swift.

Opener Ashes serves as an intro to the album, before leading into the upbeat INST - more pounding electronica that soundtrack. Themes and repetition are explored with the un-ordered Themes 3, 4 and 5 and the double barrel of Plan A & Plan B, and while there may or may not be actual films to accompany the music there is certainly a cinematic influence. The atmospherics of Brian Eno are the most obvious namecheck, with long, slow soundscapes building up and down altering the mood.

With Swift's characteristic voice virtually absent from the album, it's hard to place this alongside his existing work - as his vocal sound and lyrics are so integral to the success of both the debut and Dressed Up For The Let Down. If forced to view the album as a stand alone work it may not be perceived as the most original or unique record out there, but it's a solid album of textured electronica that adds another string to this man's bow. It also adds another subtle layer to the music he produces for his day job and that layer will hopefully be all the more apparent on future work.

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#NM

21st Jan 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Shadow In The North

BBC1

The BBC continues their adaptation of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart series with this follow-up to last year's The Ruby In The Smoke.

It's another enjoyable Victorian mystery, with Billie Piper's Lockhart on the trail of a dastardly Scandinavian villain (Jared Harris) and his steam-powered weapon of mass destruction, the Hopkinson Self-Regulator.

Like Ruby, this plays out like a modern version of classic BBC kids' viewing like The Phoenix And The Carpet - taking itself just seriously enough to convince, but still having an edge of campy pantomime twinkle-in-the-eye humour: pretty decent family viewing all-round really.

No-one to match Julie Walter's turn last time, but there's a enjoyable cast including JJ Feild, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Matt Smith, John Standing and Hayley Atwell.

Apparently it was shot at the same time as the last one, so it'll be interesting to see if they're able to get Billie P back for more now that she's signed up for another series of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl and will be back in next year's Doctor Who at some stage.

#TV
#chimp71

30th Dec 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Best of 2007

BC

Albums
Radiohead - In Rainbows
The album really lived up to the hype of it's release and it's proving to be their most consistent album yet.
LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
This is a shock favorite. Probably the most played album of the year
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
They had a lot to live up to after Funeral but their second album was bigger and better. One of the few followup albums to actually expand on what made them so good to start with.
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
This was no surprise, they just did what they always do and it wins every time.
The National - Boxer
Some of the richest music put out this year, a near perfect album and just what we wanted after Alligator.

Honorable Mentions
Okkervil River - The Stage Names
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
The More Shallows - Book Of Bad Breaks
Pela - Anytown Graffiti
Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls

Songs
All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem (Sound Of Silver)
Atlas - Battles (Mirrored)
Slow Show - The National (Boxer)
(Antichrist Television Blues) - Arcade Fire (Neon Bible)
John Allyn Smith Sails - Okkervil River (The Stage Names)

Gigs
Beastie Boys - Brixton Academy
Wilco - Shepherds Bush Empire
Beirut - Camden Roundhouse
Black Mountain - Cargo

TV
Sopranos
Flight Of The Conchords
Heros
Prison Break
Entourage

Turkeys
Death Proof (This needs it's own category)

Disappointments
Ian Brown - The World Is Yours
Couldn't even review this as it would mean I'd have to listen to it more than once.
24 - Day Six
Thank God for the writers strike and the incarceration. Although I was pleased to see Keifer taking one for the team by opting for a Christmas sentence so he can be free for shooting next year, that's Bauer would have done.
The National - Shepherds Bush Empire
An album of the year but didn't translate well live.

#Music
#BC

20th Dec 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Best of 2007

chimp71

Top 5 albums
1 Radiohead - In_Rainbows
Just instantly sounded better than everything I'd heard for months - and for once in our instant preview/early release/download era, an album felt like an event.
2 Devandra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
Love the 70s laid-back vibe here, traversing rock, folk and tropicalia effortlessly.
3 LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
Beyond the hipster hype, an album with something to say, and a fresh way of saying it.
4 Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Warm rock, the perfect soundtrack to a snow-bound expedition. Great solos too.
5 Kings Of Leon - Because Of The Times
They disappointed live, but any album that kicks off with a good 7 minutes of slow-burning driving music is a winner round these parts.

Runners Up:
Justice - +
Demented production, great inventive dance/pop that felt like it could only have been released in 2007.
Brazil 70
OK, it's a compilation of post-Tropicalia freak-outs from 70s Brazilian, but most of it was new to me this year.
Burial - Untrue
Intriguing dubstep with soul
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Bit like eating a whole chocolate cake after a while, but still great in small chunks.

Top 5 gigs
1 The Rolling Stones - A Bigger Bang - The O2 August 26
They still rule. Billed as the last-ever tour too, glad to have finally caught them.
2 Prince - 3121 - The O2, August 31
Unstoppable showmanship, amazing guitar, huge catalogue of hits to draw on.
3 Wilco - Shepherd's Bush Empire, May 20
Possibly even better live than on record.
4 Beastie Boys - Brixton Academy, September 4
Good to see the BBs again, still got the skills to pay the bills.
5 Black Mountain - Cargo, December 5
Great introduction to a band I'd only heard on one track before - might have been higher in this list if I'd been able to sing along more.

Also: Cornelius/Matmos - Royal Festival Hall
Laptops, psychedelia, rock-outs and pure pop. RFH refurb works too.
The Vitamin Trip reunion, Joyce Is Not Here, September, Hong Kong
Just about pulled it all together again after ten years.

Top 5 films
1 Inland Empire
Unhinged Lynch. Not sure there's anywhere for him to go after this, but it's hard to beat for showing the extremes of cinema possibility; great performance from Laura Dern too.
2 The Lives Of Others
Brutally sharp in its dissection of recent state madness, and the ways people surprise and disappoint.
3 Superbad
McLovin!
4 Knocked Up
Great way to play both sides of the romcom gender split.
5 Disturbia
Enjoyed the tight scale and execution of this MySpace generation Rear Window.

Runners Up:
2 Days In Paris
Night Of The Sunflowers
Zodiac
Smokin' Aces
The Bourne Ultimatum

Most Disappointing threequel - Shrek The Third
Sucked as much as the first two rocked.

Top 5 tracks
1 Seahorse - Devendra Banhart
2 Bodysnatchers - Radiohead
3 Dear Dead Friends - Von Südenfed
4 Keep the Car Running - Arcade Fire
5 505 - Arctic Monkeys

Plus:
Ghost Ship - Menomena
Ponytail - Panda Bear
I Got Lost - Dinosaur Jr
Tenderoni - Chromeo
Love Your Man, Love Your Woman - The Broken Family Band
Veni Vidi Vici (Diplo Mix) - Black Lips
I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance - Black Kids
Is There A Ghost? - Band Of Horses

Top 5 TV shows
1 The Wire - FX/HBO
Just gets better and better. Does it really have to be the last series next time round?
2 Heroes - Sci-Fi/BBC2/NBC
Took a while to put everything in place, but this was one of the most fun shows around this year.
3 Entourage - ITV2/HBO
Vince and the gang are on a roll.
4 Flight Of The Conchords - BBC4/HBO
Jokes? Present. Songs? Present. Something new worth quoting.
5 30 Rock, Five/NBC
Didn't think this would be as funny as it is - Alec Baldwin's timing is great.

Runners Up:
Party Animals - BBC2
Lead Balloon - BBC2
Saxondale - BBC2
Comics Britannia - BBC4
Californication - Five
Five Days - BBC2
The Sopranos - E4/HBO
South Park - Paramount/Comedy Central

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#chimp71

20th Dec 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Best of 2007

Harris Pilton

Top 5 Gigs

1. Beastie Boys - Roundhouse, Chalk Farm
2. Melvins - Patronaat, Haarlem, NL
3. Fu Manchu (and Valient Thorr) - Underworld, Camden
4. Steely Dan - NIA, Birmingham
5. Prince - 02, Docklands

Top 5 Albums

Love's Miracle by Qui as my fave album of the year. I didn't hear it until it had been released a while so missed the boat on a review. But it's a corker...very original, complex, anguished, not an easy listen.

Beyond that, it's a hard one...not because there was so much choice, but because in real terms nothing released this year replaced older releases in my regular playlists. I must be the only music reviewer on the planet not to have heard (or attempted to hear) the Radiohead album. Not that I'm anti-Radiohead or anything, I just didn't go out of my way to hear it.

So, even the bands who released albums which I like didn't really release anything truly classic this year. I should give honourable mentions to Big Business for their album Here Comes The Waterworks (very original), and Fu Manchu for We Must Obey (not very original, but totally rocking), and Beastie Boys' The Mix-Up, which I did play more than any other new album this year.

Top 5 tracks (listened to this year, but not released this year)

1. Skull of a German - Jesus Lizard
2. Velouria - Pixies
3. The Warden - The Cows
4. Get on Down - Eddie Harris
5. Blood Witch - Melvins

Top 5 movies

Also not a good area for me. Only went to movies twice as far as I can remember. The Simpsons movie (which I thought was really poor) and Transformers, which impressed me with its humour and bludgeoning special effects. I expect I would have liked the new David Cronenberg film, and maybe even Lynch's Inland Empire, but I couldn't be arsed to go and see them. Will probably go see the new Wes Anderson next week (again, if I can be arsed). For me, the audio visual entertainment of the era is video games - hence...


Top 5 Games

1. Call of Duty 4
2. The Orange Box (half life 2 etc)
3. Guitar Hero II
4. Bioshock
5. Medal of Honour Airborne

#Music
#HarrisPilton

20th Dec 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet