Chimpomatic

Condo Fucks

Fuckbook

Matador

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the new album by Connecticut trio Condo Fucks was a long lost demo from a band who's proper recordings sounded awesome, and actually you wouldn't be far wrong. That band is called Yo La Tengo and Fuckbook is basically their new album. Way back in 1997, in the liner notes of Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, was listed a tongue in cheek discography of oddly named Matador releases, Condo Fucks being among them. This led to quite a following of this mysterious garage punk band. Most of these releases became so rare and limited edition that most people never even heard them. Well they're back and though it's not really publicised as the new Yo La Tengo record the fact that Georgia Condo is the drummer, James McNew the bassist and Kid Condo on lead guitar and vocals and the the album's title itself is slightly reminiscent of Fakebook, Yo La Tengo's cover record of 1990 it's not difficult to work it out, oh, and did I mention that this is a cover record as well?

All that aside, Fuckbook is a triumph no matter who gets the credit. It's like a whole album of those gritty garage jams that crop up amid the blissed out numbers on a Yo La Tengo record. It borrows from the 60's and 70's for it's cover material taking songs from the Small Faces, The Kinks, The Beach Boys and Slade and forcing them all through a decrepit mincer. The main point to note here is the production quality, and before all you uptight Hunches fans start lining up in the car park with your knuckle dusters, I like it. It's gritty as hell with great fists of guitars and crashing drums being swamped in feedback and muffled chaos, the vocals are launched from the back of the room and often get totally buried in this onslaught of grimy mess. It's The Stooges, but hardcore.

However, with the line up of songs this approach works magnificently. It sounds like a band free of their usual day job and loving the anonymity of their disguise. It's apparently a recording of a secret rehearsal that took place last March and it sounds like it. From the opening butchering of the Small Faces Whatcha Gonna Do About It? they lurch from one song to the next counting each on in with hurried impatience. The disguise slips on their version of the Kinks' This Is Where I Belong. If Ira's vocals weren't so buried it would be very clear who is behind this record. The Beach Boys' Shut Down brings the mask back up to the face as it races through the surf rock cover with gleeful abandon. The Flamin' Groovies' Dog Meat is a magnificently chugging brut, with James McNew at the helm and the spirit of the era in which this song was originally recorded is evoked to great effect. The band crash their way through this song without a care in the world and the same can be said for most of this record, actually all of this record. It sounds like what happens when the teacher leaves the room or fails to turn up at all. Cast your minds back to that magical moment when it looks like the teacher has forgotten your class and this is what it sounds like. Since I'm Not Afraid Of You... I was feverishly awaiting the new Yo La Tengo record, I'm ok now.

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20th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

It's Blitz!

Fiction

It's quite easy to compare the progression of New York's Yeah Yeah Yeahs with the progression of modern warfare, shit I compare pretty much everything to war. Their stunning debut Fever To Tell saw them engaging in hand to hand combat, homemade shanks were used to gut the opponent or simply the pounding brut force of a bleeding fist. Show Your Bones saw them retreat from the battlefield and adopt a slightly less primal approach, whereas the latest offering It's Blitz! is modern warfare in all its polished glory. There are no ground troops just long range, expertly precise strikes. The brut force kills are now a 'mission accomplished' notice on a computer screen. But the result is always the same, victory.

The last we heard from these guys was in 2007 with the EP Is Is. Since then this short bundle of goodness has become my favored item in their impeccable back catalogue. It's Blitz! isn't quite the cavalry that I thought Is Is was calling but it's still a worthy 3rd roll of the dice and one that takes them into new and rich territory. Karren O's presence still remains steadfast at the centre of their sound but the ship on which she sails has taken a new turn. The minimal crunch of guitars and belting drums have been enshrouded in detailed production and a wealth of synthesizers. The emphasis isn't on power but on depth.

Opener Zero is a massive way to reintroduce themselves. With vocals dripping in echo Karen O is up close and personal with some of the slickest production this band has ever offered. This isn't surprising seeing as TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek is at the helm. Wave upon wave of synth carry this song in directions more suited to Alison Goldfrapp or even Blondie. It's driving power pop and it's quite surprising for this band. Show Your Bones always hinted at this direction but the change has finally arrived. While this is probably the biggest tune here the remaining high points come in more subtle ways. Their ferocity is often punctuated to great effect by their anti-ballads and Skeletons is one of their finest. With grand and distant drums building on an analogue ocean of synthesizers this song sees Karen at her most breathless. Runaway is certainly one of the standout moments on It's Blitz! Introduced with the gentle plink of an old piano Karen sounds lonely among such empty sonic space. With a rumble of strings she is soon joined by the sensitive rhythm and a full orchestra. It just rises and rises on this structure like a flock of migrating birds dancing and reveling in their euphoric freedom. It's loaded with melancholy and tinged with screeching violins but is an utter joy from start to finish.

It's Blitz! is a surprise indeed. It doesn't do what other Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums have always been there to do but isn't it special when a band start to perform other functions. It's the most sensual of their releases. At times it comes way too close to Killers territory for my liking but their front woman steers it away expertly. Her voice has always done things for me but on this record I could just swim in it. They have always flirted with synthesizers but their courage to embrace it here pays off and gives the record an old school charm without sounding retro. They've grown up since Fever To Tell, who'd of thought a woman who brought us such a guttural howl could stand before us on album closer Little Shadow and ask us "will you follow me?" with such monolithic siren beauty. It's stunning and needs to be experienced.

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17th Mar 2009 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Black Lips

200 Million Thousand

Vice

With this third release on Vice from Atlanta garage-rock four-piece Black Lips, the band skillfully manage to side step much of the expectation that has been put on them since 2007's fantastic Good Bad Not Evil. Having started out as a bunch of young, unwashed punks they quickly developed a reputation that got them banned from many venues in Georgia for their pretty wild live shows. After a few decent but hardly memorable albums, Good Bad Not Evil has boosted their stock no end. It stays true to their ragged aesthetic and is full of lo-fi blues rock that frays at the edges but stays this side of unpredictable and is packed full of wooly hooks that guide you through its many ups and downs with surprising warmth.

200 Million Thousand however, refuses to expand on this success and is almost a two finger salute to all the praise that came with the last album. That's not to say it's inferior and the fact that they've chosen such a route off the back of what can only be called a break through album is impressive.

Much of the jaunty bar room jams are replaced here with a much more sluggish soup of hazy narcotic songs that recall bands like The Velvet Underground and early Rolling Stones. They have always nodded towards sounds of old and their success comes from their ability to incorporate these with their gritty, no-bullshit sensibility and throwaway passion for rock n roll. But their references seem more clear here and while not necessarily detracting from the songs does change the overall feeling of the record. The twang of their guitars throw up an almost impenetrable veil of sound that swirls around each song. Cole Alexander's vocals growl and crawl through this mist like a possessed Jim Morrison. It's thick and at times hard going, Alexander seems far away from the listener as he's surrounded by this sound and the distant production.

The moments when this mist lifts and the tempo rises are very effective. Drugs and Short Fuse both have an infectious rolling tempo lead by a fantastic surf guitar chord that dispels a lot of the haze and hints to us that the band haven't totally forgotten what they started on the last record. And I suppose as beacons in the slush they are bound to sound all the more sweet. As we descend back into the swirling dream world of songs like Starting Over and Trapped In A Basement, we wait for these beacons to guide us through but like a drug setting in we feel unable to turn our backs on this sound that is pulling us under. Alexander's proposal of "come and ride with me, I'll make some room in my dirty back seat," seems unattractive to a normal mind but here feels almost too much to resist. This is the kind of music you need to shower after as it's scuzzy to say the least but it's a bit of a fuck you of a direction change and while being slightly less enjoyable than its predecessor it hints at the worth of this band

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13th Mar 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Bishop Allen

Grrr...

Dead Oceans

2007's The Broken String was a triumphant record for Brooklyn's Bishop Allen, packed full of light melodies that refused to leave your conciseness and aided by some very insightful lyrics. The followup Grrr... is more of the same, but somehow fails to rekindle the amorous feeling I felt for their debut.

The Broken String was a collection of EP's released in quick succession over the course of a year which may explain it's sense of excitement and freshness and go some way to account for what is slightly lacking here. I feel tight for even raising these complaints as Grrr... is on the most part a very worthwhile listen, but too many of these songs adopt a rather sugary sweet approach to pop causing the feel-good factor that prevailed before to seem forced and unpalatable. Songs like Oklahoma and The Ancient Commonsense Of Things with their hand clap beats and brisk rhythm skip by without a care in the world but possess none of the edge of some of the previous songs and when we hear the line "imitate the action of the tiger," on Tiger, Tiger you can almost imagine an audience of children mimicking tiger moves as if Bishop Allen were chairing the school assembly that morning. Previous comparisons to song writers like Ben Folds or Eels all but vanish on this release. The very fact that I really can't think of anything else to write here is testament to the effect this record has had on me. It means no harm and probably does what it set out to do but that's really not enough these days.

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3rd Mar 2009 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Loney, Dear

Dear John

Regal

Having lit a fire in my heart in 2006 with his self released gem Sologne and then left me feeling slightly flat with his debut release for Sub Pop Loney, Noir, Emil Svanangen had some work to do with his latest offering Dear John. It's not that I didn't like Loney, Noir, it was just that it did the same as Sologne and at the end of my review for the Sub Pop debut I was looking for improvement. Well I am pleased to say that though Dear John follows much the same path as all the rest it is a very different affair in maturity and all-round scale.

The charm of Sologne was in its DIY simplicity. Simple, underproduced songs delivering perfect morsels of hope and warmth to a barren world. Well Svanangen's sound has grown up somewhat since we last heard him and Dear John emerges from the first moment as a mightier more determined and self aware composition. Airport Surroundings gleams with this new maturity as it breathes first life into the record. From the outset it's clear that Svanangen has no need for his DIY equipment anymore as a highly produced and simmering techno beat form the basis of this first song. It ticks along uneasily while all the time swelling to a gently crescendo. Layers of instruments join the march and Svanangen's own vocals are multi-tracked to great effect as the feeling of amassing detail pile on top of each other for the grand finale. And this is just track one.

As is often the case in life, with added maturity comes added pressure and consequently added tension. Much of this record relies on this brooding tension. Svanangen's warmth and hopeful slant are very much present but everything simmers none the less. The way he conjures up this feeling is the use of the gentle build. Many of the songs follow the same pattern of a tip-toe start followed by a huge rise in sound. It works very well throughout the first 4 tracks with this pattern being followed in varying degrees of intensity. I Was Only Going Out has the same effect but with a more subtle approach, and Harsh Words to even subtler ends. However it does start to get slightly predictable. It's not until we get to Under A Silent Sea that the pattern changes, and it needs to. The song floats on a gentle guitar pick to a point where a near euphoric House beat threatens to take off, but Svanangen resists the temptation to rocket off and instead takes it all down again and replaces it with a stark programmed beat that sees out the rest of the song. It's a masterful piece of construction and pace and actually opens up the rest of the album. It leaves room for the backbone song Summers which will remind any fan of why they fell in love with this music. It bucks the trend of the slow build and just skips along on a blissful beat for 4 perfect minutes. Like all his music this song sees Svanangen whispering sweet tales of loss and regret with great swathes of melancholia and yet your heart dances along all the time. It's the song to see us through this pesky recession. In fact if the credit crunch were a movie this song would be the closing song titles when everything turned out ok.

Svanangen had a more than sturdy foundation on which to build and with Dear John he has really used it to it's full potential. He's got numerous instruments each adding texture and richness to his sound, he's got choral accompaniment, driving production and a voice dripping with sweetness. It's the perfect blend and works a treat here. You need this record if you want to make it out the other side of this cold winter. It's a triumphant marching band of hope that knows the pitfalls ahead and feels the pain of the past but marches on nonetheless.

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26th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Titus Andronicus

The Airing Of Grievances

XL Recordings

If the year 2009 was a person and one of your mates he'd be a right bore. He'd be constantly broke, sighting the credit crunch at every given opportunity - and he'd probably spend most of his time dreaming up ways to shaft you of all your money. Now if The Airing Of Grievances - the debut album from Titus Andronicus - was also one of your mates, he'd have blugeoned 2009 by now, dumped his lifeless corpse into landfill. Not for the reason that he's a diehard optimist - far from it - in fact, he'd be a vicious little fucker, but he just wouldn't stand for any of this namby-pamby fear mongering that goes on and so far The Airing Of Grievances is the only album to kick the broke ass of 2009 firmly and squarely between its limp little cheeks.

Here are some facts, Titus Andronicus are 5 guys from a small town called Glen Rock in New Jersey, a safe suburban enclave to the west of New York City. The Airing Of Grievances is their debut album following a pair of 7" singles and an early EP, it's got 9 tracks, its 45 minutes long and it's fucking brilliant.

If only I could stop there, but in order to justify my massive wage packet I must go on. The Airing Grievances is essentially a punk record but it's way more complicated than that. It's a pit-bull that thinks it's an alsatian, a punk record that thinks it's an Explosions In The Sky record. At times It can sound like Conor Oberst fronting The Wedding Present and at others it could be No Age fronting the E Street Band. It's supremely muscular and feral and yet highly sophisticated. Singer and chief songwriter Patrick Stickles has a voice like a bandsaw cutting through sheet metal, it's almost constantly out of tune and really couldn't give a shit and it stands proud in front of a deafening wall of sound that is the rest of the band. As in all music it's the relationship between this voice and this sound that holds the key to the albums success. Stickles can morph his voice into a blunt instrument of such power and venom as if it's his only way of smashing through this wall of guitar breeze-blocks that constantly towers above him.

From the opening "Fuck You" howl of Fear And Loathing In Mahwah, NJ this record pummels relentlessly, it's massive musical structure rising slowly like a great city being raised from the oceans depths. Each song adds something different to the mix with this huge sound receding to allow room for punctuating guitar work on Fear And Loathing or the driving rhythm of My Time Outside The Womb. Joset Of Nazereth's Blues balances this might with Springsteen style harmonica while the title track foams at the mouth as Stickles spits the mantra "You're life Is over" repeatedly and eventually being joined by the rest of the band for a climactic finale. But it's the two tracks that follow that this record has been building up to. No Future, Pt 1 and No Future, Pt 2 The Days After No Future transform this record from a fiercely original punk pop album to something stella. They play out as one track and together stretch out over more than 14 minutes. It's one of the only times in the record that the tempo slows down and allows a brief breather. But as Pt 1 builds from this breather like a far off wave it drops into Pt. 2 and all hell breaks loose. Massive instrumental juggernaughts speed off at great speed and really open up the album into something magnificently ambitious.

The track lengths grow as the album progresses and so does the confidence. Stickles' vocals stand shoulder to shoulder with the awesome sound that props it up. He howls, screeches and moans over these huge riffs but always sounds raw and unhinged. The whole record sounds like a basement punk tape while effortlessly stretching out over enormous ground. It's this odd juxtaposition that defines their success. As Stickles shrieks on the title track "No more cigarettes, no more having sex, no more drinking till you fall on the floor, no more indie-rock, just a ticking clock," The Airing Of Grievances is a calamitous voice of doom and with a pounding fist draws a line under much of the music I've heard in a long time.

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25th Feb 2009 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Beirut

March Of The Zapotec & Realpeople Holland

Pompeii Records

First of all I didn't write this review for Beirut's second album The Flying Club Cup. However at the time it was written I probably would have agreed with it. I loved the first slice of Zach Condon's sound Gulag Orkestar and eagerly awaited the followup. But on its arrival I thought it was just more of the same. Well how times change, for as I write this the Flying Club Cup remains one of the most played albums in my collection and since its release in 2007 it has become one of my most treasured listening experiences. All my initial criticisms of it have fallen away, it aims at a similar point to its predecessor but via very different routs, in fact I rarely listen to Gulag Orkestar anymore and since I saw Condon's dazzling stage show at the Roundhouse I have been hovering above the Beirut camp like a bird of prey waiting for any little morsel to emanate from its walls.

So here we have the split CD March Of The Zapotec & Realpeople Holland. Some explanation is obviously needed to shed light on this more than ambiguous title. These are 2 EP's, the first is a collection of songs Condon recorded with a 19 strong Mexican band called The Jimenez Band which he found in a town called Oaxaca who's native tongue is Zapotec. The second is the total antithesis. Before launching as Beirut Condon crafted eclectic bedroom recordings through lo-fi instruments and keyboards under the name Realpeople and Holland is a collection of 5 songs that revisit this intimate process.

Judged entirely on their own merits both these EP's are as strong as anything Condon has given us before. His ability to extract regional sounds while lacing them all up with his own unique touch is seen very much on both the EP's but particularly on March. Condon is obviously conducting the band to his own rhythm and his Balkan trademark sound prevails but squeezing through the cracks is this Mexican might in all its mournful sway. In much the same way as The Flying Club Cup oozed with Parisian nostalgia March's south American grandiosity provides a melancholic warmth to the bizarre mix. Holland is a drastic change of scale and is predominantly Condon and a synthesizer. My initial criticisms of The Flying Club Cup's lack of progression would not apply to this release and Holland would be why. Condon's work has always been steeped in regional nostalgia but Holland is about technological nostalgia. His delicate programmed beats bleep with the tinny rhythm your drama teacher was so proud of in the school play or they are awash with great swathes of electronic atmosphere reminiscent of public information broadcasts in the 70's. But then on top of this you have his live musical accompaniment and the aching vocals that describe his sound. The mix is glorious and this EP contains some of the most perfect Beirut songs to date.

I speak here of the central 2 songs, Venice and The Concubine. The former is built around a wash melody straight out of the Boards Of Canada portfolio and then joined by Condon's gentle trumpet making the first half of this song a slice pure instrumental sublimity. Then as the vocals are faded in so smoothly the song grows into near perfection. The Concubine revisits Beirut's earlier sound with accordion, trumpet and gentle percussion propping up Condon's croon. It's Beirut-by-the-book but it's awesome and great to have him back. The only problem is that it's followed by a very poor piece of instrumental Euro pop that goes on way too long and closes this EP.

The problems with this whole release arise when listening to both of these as a complete entity. They don't sound like one and should really be released totally separate from one another. Thankfully they both progress Condon's sound but I must say I am slightly disappointed once again as I really really wanted a full album. But seeing as these two will be my favorite EP's in a year's time it's not much of a criticism.

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16th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

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

Women

Women

Jagjaguwar

This debut from Canada's Women is certainly a rough diamond, but a diamond none the less. Recorded in Chad Vangallen's basement using ghetto blasters and old tape decks over four months Women continue the run of infectious lo-fi music that dominated last year but lace the whole thing with the slightest hint of melody. I would describe this band as the twisted wreckage that might occur after a multi-car pile up involving Animal Collective, The Beach Boys, Liars and Times New Viking. They have the unpredictable flair of Animal Collective, the drifting harmonies of The Beach Boys but can easily turn on you like a Liars sucker-punch. The Times New Viking reference is glaringly obvious as the whole thing bristles with tape hiss and guitar wash.

But where that band take the lo-fi sound to almost impenetrable lengths Women dangle things like song structure and melody tantalizingly close to the listener that it's hard to give up on them. The opening track Cameras is just glorious with it's warm jangle easing us in but after a mere one minute the whole thing descends into Lawncare, a pulsating, hollow and thoroughly unfriendly song that puts the listener on alert from the outset. But they'll rein you back in if you ever started to wander during the hard times with 50's tinged pop of Black Rice or the breakneck jangle of Shaking Hand, a song which awkwardly shifts between tempos with some incredibly nifty guitar work. The vocals are layered and muffled and often act as yet another instrument rather than forming the backbone of the sound. The album can shift from buried yet catchy pop hooks to pastoral instrumental sound experiments like Woodbine. It can also hit you with January 8th, the most Liars influenced track here. It's a relentless barrage of off-key guitars and crashing drums. It plays in the vicinity of recognition but ultimately carves it's own route through highly avant-guard noise. And it also runs into the final track Flashlights which finishes the record off with an all out assault using every instrument going. It's pure noise and acts as a warning to anyone who was about to form an opinion about what they just heard. This is a tough record yet full of rewarding moments. It crams in so many elements and manages to cram them all in to a very unique sound.

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28th Jan 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Best Of 2008

BC

Looking down my list of the best albums of the year it seems that with the exception of Black Mountain, this year has been all about the debut album. Some fine releases from the likes of Calexico, Okkervil River and Deerhoof but it was the new boys who really stepped up. All the surprises for me came from a very healthy US underground indie/punk scene with No Age heading the lot. The highlight of the year would have to be meeting and interviewing David Berman of Silver Jews, a true artist and someone I could have talked to for hours. With the steady and inevitable decline of the Western World to look forward to next year I am hopeful that some new musical talent will rise from the ashes to guide us through it all.

Albums

Black Mountain - In The Future
We've had this so long it almost seems like last year that this rocked my world. It's had a solid road testing for 12 months and is still as mighty as it's first play. A comprehensive delivery of all that was promised on the first record.

No Age - Nouns
This record really lit a fire in me this year and started a frenzied search into the context from which it sprung. It's a furious and unbridled blend of hazy shoegaze, garage rock and dirty punk and is all delivered with remarkable ease.

White Denim - Workout Holiday
A ramshackle chaotic work of genius that treads a fine line between electrifying soul infused garage punk and utter shambles.

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
The whole conception of this debut in total isolation in deepest Wisconsin gave it a great angle to get the critics chattering but since its release earlier this year it has risen from that chatter as utterly captivating and has introduced Justin Vernon as one of the most beguiling voices of the year.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
It's been a tough old year for everybody and this 4 piece from New York has brought nothing but warmth and cheer to it from the start. Even way back in January it was obvious that this would feature in this list.

Close seconds
Tindersticks - The Hungry Saw
Four Tet - Ringer EP
Flight Of The Conchords - Flight Of The Conchords
Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
The Cave Singers - Invitation Songs

Songs
Tindersticks - Intro
TV On The Radio - DLZ
Portishead - The Rip
Bon Iver - Skinny Love
Black Mountain - Stormy High

Gigs
Bruce Springsteen - Emirates Stadium
Silver Jews - ULU
No Age - Electric Ballroom
Black Mountain - Scala
Radiohead - Victoria Park

Movies
The Orphanage
No Country For Old Men
In Bruges

TV
Summer Heights High
The Wire - Season 5

Biggest Disappointment
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges. I really have nothing good to say about this album. I think I'm done with these guys sadly.

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19th Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Shearwater

The Snow Leopard EP

Matador Records

It seems that having gone their separate ways Jonathan Melburg and Okkervile River's Will Sheff have become two of the hardest working and most prolific songwriters on the Americana underground scene. This year saw the release of Rook, Shearwaters mighty and deceptively impressive follow up to Palo Santo and just as the year draws to a close they sneak in this EP, The Snow Leopard. Named after probably the most stunning track on Rook, this EP rounds up many of the non-album B sides and giveaway tracks from the year and also some quite striking recordings from various radio sessions over the summer.

The title track just swells with a power that has become, over the last 2 albums, an expected element in this bands sound. Melburgs sweet voice quivers with all the vulnerability of a flickering flame but then rises with the music to below with dazzling confidence. There's a glimmer of madness in his voice as it reaches its peak only to fall to the floor and quiver once more. Much of this EP demonstrates Melburgs ability paralise the listener with an intimacy that can both freeze you with an icy chill and breath through you with unbelievable warmth. His radio K session performance of Rook, a song that flexes the muscles of this songwriter is stripped of it's strength and whispered with lonely acoustic accompaniment to great effect. Two of the tracks are covers, So Bad, originally by Baby Dee and Henry Lee, a traditional American folk song. They sit perfectly amongst the original Shearwater material and altogether form yet another valuable entry in this bands catalogue. They are an endlessly rewarding group who are really starting to master the many facets of their sound.

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12th Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Thee Oh Sees

A Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending Time In

Tomlab

After numerous acronyms and name changes John Dwyer settles on Thee Oh Sees as his latest incarnation and The Master's Bedroom sees this Bay Area musician belt out churning garage rock in a manner that doesn't take itself too seriously and is so effortless that you will keep on listening despite its repetitive nature.

Sounding something like the B-52's - devoid of all production niceties and jamming furiously in a disused aircraft hanger - Thee Oh Sees create here a dirty assault on your ears but with the best of intentions. Dwyer's vocals are filtered through what sounds like a loud speaker and are often shadowed by Brigid Dawson, whose high-pitch accompaniment adds melody and texture to this muddy concoction. The pace is furious and unrelenting with pounding guitars chiming and jangling forth with delightful energy while being encased in crashing cymbals and pounding rhythm. Songs like opener Block Of Ice and Poison Finger take a punk intensity but inject a pop melody to keep it all sweet. The music is vicious but the overall feeling is palatable and it's all down to the insistence on the pop hooks that force their way through the muck. The only step down from this pace is by way of the thick psychedelia in songs like Grease. These songs employ the same density but at a slower pace they seem almost impenetrably gooey.

While The Master's Bedroom isn't quite so interesting as some of its lo-fi drone rock counterparts that have been lighting me up recently, they certainly have a place in what's going on in California musically at the moment. With only a handful of tempos and a limited sonic palette this album does lack variety but all the same it rocks hard and that's good enough for me sometimes.

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8th Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Guns 'N Roses

Chinese Democracy

Polydor

So it's finally a reality, the album no one, least of all Dr. Pepper (that's not what a company needs in a credit crunch), thought would ever materialise. But it has and as expected it has brought with it the tidal wave of opinions that accompany every move Axl Rose makes. Listening to, and to a much greater extent, forming an opinion about Chinese Democracy is damn near impossible while employing your regular critical faculties. It's hard to compare it to previous Guns N' Roses material, seeing as their last studio album was 17 years ago and Axl is the only original member left. And Axl's dominating presence on the record is the only thing linking it to the previous work, as musically it is a different band all together and fiercely contemporary. It would be a different story if Axl had disappeared for 14 years and now reemerged with a comeback album in order to pay some bills, but as we all know that is not the case here. By all accounts he hasn't done anything else but make this record for 14 years, so to review it is like reviewing history and seeing as I am a long way from where I was 14 years ago it's hard to know if I'm disappointed in Chinese Democracy or if I lost interest in its concept a long time ago.

With this record Axl Rose reveals himself as the Colonel Kurtz of the rock world, or actually of the whole world. Lost long ago, way up the river of obsession and self-delusion, he works beyond the boundaries of reason endlessly creating things that mirror himself. In this likeness comes Chinese Democracy, drifting out of the mist from a place no man has gone, a bloated monstrosity so impressive in size and construction and displaying elements of genius but often swaying with uneasy insecurities. And like Joseph Conrad's character you stare back at him with awe, dazzled by the ambition but all the time filled with terror at the mind that could conceive of such a creation.

Excess has always followed Axl Rose both in his music and his lifestyle. Use Your Illusion was flawed, but few have managed to pull off the double album like he did back in 1991. It too was an over-ambitious project that was filled with fat, over-stuffed, gluttonous songs that aimed for the stars with every note. They often failed but it was hard to fault a band that had produced such perfect punk-rock ferocity in Appetite For Destruction only to set a rocket under all that and change forever what any fan had thought or appreciated about them before. All the signs were there that this was going to be a vastly out of proportion project. Axl has always tended towards the epic and with songs like November Rain and Estranged we saw his gigantic vision expressed, but then with songs like Coma we saw how it could all get out of hand. It's no surprise then that left to his own devices and devoid of the more direct guidance of Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan that Axl would be free to express his tendency to swell each song out of all proportion and cram as many elements into every second of his sound. This is the main critisism here but then it was always going to be.

Underneath the colossal weight of production you can hear some great songwriting. The title track opens the album with some force and with his Mr. Brownstone growl, Axl reinstates himself in our lives and it's good to have him back. As expected, Better is the high point of the album. It's a real powerhouse of a song and shows us how far this songwriter has brought his sound and yet at the same time shows glimpses of the feral energy that got us all hooked in the first place. It also shows how different the guitar playing is now compared to the melodic skyward playing of Slash. It's much harder on this record and the way the guitars chug with the force of a freight train on Better affirms that this is a totally different band than before. Shackler's Revenge sees the same guitar train chug but then unravels into an epileptic guitar solo the like of which this band have never provided in the past. Then there's the impressive Catcher In The Rye or the bewildering Street Of Dreams...enough...this has to stop. Having scratched the surface of what makes this record work I see before me, in my mental landscape, a vast chasm of points I feel the need to express, this must be what Axl lives with on a daily basis, and much like this records history any reviewer faces the same temptation to keep writing and writing. So with that in mind I move swiftly and brutally on to the concluding paragraph.

Ultimately, Chinese Democracy poses more questions on its arrival than it did as a myth. All the way through I find myself scratching my head in puzzlement at some of the bizarre twists and turns that Axl takes his band through. But I don't know if this confusion is down to the fact that I too am 14 years older. My formative years were spent with this band blasting in my ears and I can't say that I was chomping at the bit to get another taste. Few things on this earth are worth waiting such a long time for, except maybe actual Chinese Democracy, so now that it is here I can't say I am disappointed, all I can say is that I don't think I really like it but I do think that it's pretty good. The bright light that is Axl Rose has in no way dimmed as a result of this release, it hasn't tarnished the moments of perfection that soundtracked my younger days and all-in-all it's a very impressive event.

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24th Nov 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Friendly Fires

Friendly Fires

XL Recordings

This infectious debut from the St Albans trio was overlooked at first by my discerning ears, but has slowly seeped into my consciousness and is now a regular feature in my life. I think the initial reason for its rejection was its obvious references and slightly annoying upbeat jaunt. Taking their influences from mainstream dance sounds, 80's new wave, German techno and the classic pop hooks of Prince they make a sound that fuses expansive shoegaze indie sensibilities with driving beats and the result is surprisingly interesting.

Lyrically they are hardly taking by the throat the more weighty topics that challenge us today - themes of jumping in a pool and dreaming about moving to Paris are among some of the issues addressed here - but this hardly matters. Front man Ed Macfarlane's vocals soar like blazing rockets over the lush, synth-washed sonic background. On stage he shakes and gyrates spasmodically with top button firmly fastened on his crisp shirt like a modern day Ian Curtis, but he controls much of the synth sounds and forms the epicenter of this formation. They seem to do what Bloc Party used to do but without the contrived self-awareness. With tales of losing yourself on the dancefloor, many of the songs cleverly reference some classic pillars of house music. On Board is the most blatant as it begins with what could be a TV On The Radio sound but feeds in the baseline from The Source feat Candi Staton's You've Got The Love, while later on Skeleton Boy has the subverted feel of 90's dance hit You're Not Alone.

The longevity of an album such as this remains in question. Music that makes you feel this good must be full of evil trickery that will eventually reveal itself and leave the spell broken - but for now, I'm lovin' it.

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19th Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

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.

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6th 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.

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4th Nov 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.

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30th 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.

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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

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.

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27th 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.

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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.

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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.

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21st 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.

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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.

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16th 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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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6th Oct 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Constantines

Kensington Heights

Arts & Crafts

Constantines have always been a puzzling band indeed. Since their debut they have pumped out a sound that borrowed from so many staple institutions they couldn't help to please. From the punk sounds of The Clash and more recent ferocity of bands like Fugazi, Constantines have managed to fuse this with the stadium-rock ambition of Springsteen and create music that would swell with each listen. And yet none of their albums have quite hit the mark. 2005's Tournament Of Hearts comes the closest and with it came the hope of a fine tuning process that was gloriously close to fruition. Songs like the awesome Hotline Operator showed the band becoming well aware of their strengths. This year's Kensington Heights fails to capatalise on 2005's successes and is yet again a good album - but one that leaves you wanting more.

Named after the street where the band's rehearsal studio is located, Kensington Heights sees their sound heading the other way to what Tournament Of Hearts hinted at. But then it's never as easy as that with Constantines. The first half of the record is bang on target, and the second half is by no means bad, but not the full throttle you were hoping for. Opener Hard Feelings sees Bryan Webb's rasping vocals straining over hard, driving guitars and that's just where you want them. Million Star Hotel is a much more plodding pace; the beats are slow but pounding and the feeling is menacing and brooding with Webb starting to let his voice go over skyward, squealing guitars. Trans Canada is the pinnacle of these two songs and by this point you really feel like things are starting to get interesting and Constantines are beginning to hit their stride. It could be twinned with the aforementioned Hotline Operator as it simmers with hard-fought restraint as it builds its fortress on a mighty chugging beat that swirls with subtle effects. The tension is induced by the idling guitar that haunts every corner of the song like an engine ticking over outside your window. Shower Of Stones is a strange, almost spoken word ticking time-bomb that is unlike any other Constantines song and would be simply stunning if it marked the halfway point where the album disappears into a home-straight of chaotic venom.

Unfortunately it signals the opposite. Instead of summoning the spirit of Fugazi, Buffalo Tom seems to be more influential here as songs like Time Can Be Overcome and Brother Run Them Down drift by on the gentlest of breezes and show the band easing down a gear. They rarely let rip but, like watching someone feed your baby with an AK47 under his arm, their success has always involved tension and the threat of violence. They are a band who possess a great power but as a wise man once said, "with great power comes great responsibility." In my opinion Constantines' responsibility is to wield this power with the iron fist that befits them and sadly Kensington Heights does not do this to the extent that I would have liked.

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30th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Sic Alps

A Long Way Round To A Shortcut

Animal Disguise

The far reaching arm of the internet has empowered the music listening public but changed the way we listen to and experience this music. One of the casualties is the emergence of a 'local scene' and the excitement of feeling like you are one of a select few that is hearing this music hasn't been felt by many for a long time. For a while now L.A. club The Smell has been the epicenter of a small genre commonly known as 'shitgaze' - a lo-fi punk rock sound often drowned in noise and scuzz. The main players are No Age, Abe Vagoda, and this band - Sic Alps. To make it easy for us this side of the pond, guitarist Mike Donovan and drummer Matthew Donovan have compiled the story so far in one nice easy 26 track album gathering together together all their 7' and 12' releases since 2006.

Arranged in reverse chronological order A Long Way Round To A Short Cut puts its best foot forward with stripped down garage rock occupying most of the first half. Songs like Message From The Law and Bells (With Tremelo And Destortion) serve up a solution of dirt covered blues riffs with murky vocals. They rattle with tinny, DIY production and rumble with basslines so wrapped up in fuzz they play out like month-old cheese. It's not until we get to the halfway point of RATROQ that this record changes course. It's a course that you'd be able to see coming but RATROQ marks the shift and downward plummet into the avant-guard noise creations that this band started with. It's like A Love Supreme being put through a bandsaw and it continues on from there with Social Strats and I Am Grass (Restored) following suit.

So from the hiss-soaked blues rock of the latest singles, Sic Alps take us on a back-track through their short but conscientious career through the squinting screech of their feed-back faze and finishing up with the 2006 releases that adopted a kind of stoner-rock lethargy but with added grime. The latest releases are undoubtedly more palatable but the early 8-Track recordings are essential listening when trying to understand this band and the scene they belong in.

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24th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Chad Vangaalen

Soft Airplane

Sub Pop

The Canadian one-man-band returns from the success of Skelliconnection with his 3rd album and one that consolidates all his learnings so far into the best example of his creativity so far. Soft Airplane maintains the DIY aesthetic that Vangaalen has mad his own but manages to inject just enough new-found sophistication to make this record a welcome departure from the previous 2 but familiar enough to keep them relevant.

Using various analogue recording devices Vangaalen lays down a wonderful mixture of dainty folk (Willow Tree), grimy indie-rock (Inside The Molecules) and glitch heavy electronica (TMNT Mask). Using all sorts of instruments from synthesizers, guitars, to any number of home made things that make make noise each song bristles with a creativity and open-mindedness that has always been more than obvious but here seems to sit more comfortably in its skin. The records may swing between genres at an alarming rate but the unifying thread in all his work is the voice. Throughout each tale of death, nightmares and love lost and found Vangaalen's voice quivers with the vulnerability of a flickering flame and yet can rise to a cavernous scale like on the riff heavy Bare Feet On Wet Griptape.

With his mixture of traditional song craft and homemade electronics, Soft Airplane oozes melancholic nostalgia but shines forth with the hope of a contemporary outlook. It's an album so full of ideas it's hard to imagine all this emanated from just one man. It plays out like the work of an artist entirely dedicated to his craft and one who's influences are never denied but instead used as a launching pad for a journey that is all together his own.

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23rd Sep 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Juana Molina

Un Dia

Domino

Juana Molina's fifth album opens with the line, "Undia voy a cantar las canciones sin letra y cada uno podra imaginar si hablo de amor, de desilusion, banalidades o sobre platon." And for those of you who don't know, this translates as, "One day I will sing the songs with no lyrics and everyone can imagine for themselves if it's about love, disappointment, banalities or about Plato." You don't have to dig too deep into this record or even speak her language to understand that she is well on the way to this goal. Un Dia is clearly the result of some pretty ruthless examination of her past work as here, Molina pulls out certain elements that previously lay hidden and fades other's expertly into the background. The two factors to which I refer are the emergence of rhythm and the receding of the vocals. The rhythm and pulse of this music is key and as each groove and beat writhe over and inside eachother, Molina's minimal and whispered, repeated vocals become just another tool for this truly mesmeric and seductive sound. Un Dia is as uncompromising and mesmeric as some of the finest work by Japanese experimental artist Susumu Yokota and not since Joanna Newsom's Ys have I heard such a fiercely original record.

Describing the rhythm in her previous work as being "like a hidden layer in Photoshop," the aim with Un Dia was to bring to the forefront something that had previously been obvious to her but not to others. This rhythm, being played out on wood, cymbal, gentle acoustic guitar and bombo leguero and woven from delicate electronic glitches produces trance-like compositions that slowly gather momentum, taking on more instruments with every revolution until they swirl around your head in a magical frenzy. Molina's voice is heavily sampled and looped creating a complex mesh of repetition that is at the heart of this trance. It's incredibly seductive music but not in a Siren sort of way. The seduction occurs by the sheer weight of sound that rises up before you and the unrelenting endurance of it. Most of these songs surpass the seven minute mark and all build on an initial rhythm and maintain this to the end, gathering a throng of support along the way. And yet it all plays out with the lightest of touches.

With opener and title track Un Dia, Molina's voice is so distant as are the numerous instruments that, as the song progresses, it feels like you are being slowly surrounded by sound. The expert production allows each sound to, in turn, loom out of this impenetrable ring and approach your ear. Some of these compositions are quite unrelenting and refuse to give the listener what they want. This works out to be the ultimate success but the songs that build to what can very loosely be described as a pay-off are simply dazzling. Vive Solo begins with quiet acoustic strums and Molina's voice assumes angelic simplicity. The gentle clap of the rhythm creeps in and this builds the tempo with incredible subtlety until Molina's breathy deliveries evolve into almost horn-like tone and sound out like an instrument of another planet. Los Hingos De Marosa follows a similar structure laying down complexly woven textures of electronic chirps that are eventually punctuated with Molina's blissful voice.

Whether dancing playfully around the rhythm or swirling with nagging endurance Molina evolves and contorts her voice to fit the organic sounds that surround it and its captivation lies in its ability to greet you with the most human of touches and also behave in truly otherworldly ways. Her use of voice-as-instrument here has created a restless, magical, narcotic master piece.

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19th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Lambchop

Oh (Ohio)

City Slang

The task of reviewing a new Lambchop album is a tricky one indeed. Firstly this band tend to make albums so subtle and complex that to form an opinion in only a few listens seems futile as from past experience a Lambchop album will have its delights set on slow release. Secondly, and similarly due to the great wealth of subtleties, the changes and progressions that occur between albums seem minimal or certainly not obvious. Only the more ardent fans will notice any great shifts in style or theme from record to record but to everyone else they all sound pretty similar.

There are however some pretty seismic (in Lambchop terms) changes on Oh (Ohio) and that is namely its accessibility. Kurt Wagner has always crafted songs that ooze romance but the sheer weirdness that has always lurked underneath these lounge acts has always hinted at a tongue being in cheek. The result of this has always put a slight chill in the smokey air and has set our quirky narrator at a distance from his subjects. But from this distance he has always been able to view life in all its detail and pass comment with a unique profundity. On Oh (Ohio) the profundity remains but the distance seems to have lessened and a new warmth has crept into these songs.

Please Rise illustrates this new shift perfectly. Wagner's lethargic vocals stand alone as this song emerges, then slowly it is joined by a delicate and quite distant piano. With cavernous guitars this song gently rises and rises until Wagner's closing line of "stand over me" is enveloped in glistening music that has formed such a protecting layer of warmth that a song that opened with such vulnerability ends with a great sense of peace. This closeness is also evoked by a pleasing increase in pace dotted perfectly throughout the shuffling. Sharing A Gibson With Martin Luther King Jr. is the best example of this. As it skips along on a rolling bassline and jangly guitars, its continuous momentum dipping and peaking forming a fantastic mirror to the monotone vocals that never over exert themselves along the way. On Popeye these two elements are kept separate as the first half drifts by on bristling melodies and thick, dripping vocals only to be rudely interrupted by a thrilling instrumental second half that kicks off hot on the heals of the dying notes that preceded it.

Earlier in the album on the beautiful Slipped Dissolved And Loosed, Wagner is joined by a soft female vocal accompaniment that shadows his chorus like a cool breeze and provides companionship to his often lonely delivery. The opening line to this song "I am not familiar with the typography of your mind," is brought to mind as we near the end of the record with I Believe In You. It's a strikingly intimate way to end a record and reflects the love song we heard earlier and indeed serves as an insight into "the typography" of Wagner's mind. With this song Wagner emerges from the world he creates in his music and puts us and him very much in the now, commenting on everything from God to organic food. It's an apt way to end a record that, with many of his eccentric kinks ironed out, is more palatable, easier to get on with and more safe. His alarmingly high falsetto vocal levels never get an airing here but in those deep tones that trickle throughout Oh (Ohio) there is plenty to listen to.

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16th Sep 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

Ben Weaver

The Ax In The Oak

Bloodshot

Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine producer Brian Deck joins Ben Weaver once again on his sixth studio album and the result is a more experimental sound that lifts this record from the sometimes slow grind of his previous efforts. The partnership here between these two artists is more of a collaboration as Deck does way more than produce this piece of work. The Ax In The Oak sounds more like a question and answer exercise as one artist uses what the other has given as a launching pad for multiple departures.

All the regular trappings are here, with Weaver's gruff delivery dominating every second, his lyrics as bare and exposed as ever but the addition of beautifully subtle electronic texture seems to go some way to providing much needed warmth and support to these exposed vocals. But ultimately it's the vocals that makes Ben Weaver so unique. Like Silver Jews' David Berman, Weaver has an ability to see the world in all its day-to-day minutia and uses this attention to detail to describe the larger concepts we all struggle to understand. Opening song White Snow declares "You get one wish for each dot on a junebug's wing / And there's only one dot on the one I'm holding...I'm not going to waste it on you." Likewise, Anything With Words states "The truth is no rounder than a tired horse's eyes."

The themes in Weaver's songs are as earthy as his voice. Nature features strongly with foxes, hawks, alligators and crows all drifting by the desolate Weaver landscape. This is very real music as every hum-drum experience contributes to Weavers creative tapestry. But reality isn't always pretty and Weaver doesn't shy away from this. His tales of monotony, loneliness and dead birds can sometimes sound awkward but it's in this awkwardness that the captivation lies.

Such wisdom appears quite startling from someone in his late twenties and the manner by which this wisdom is administered is also staggeringly mature. For an artist like this to be so often compared to Tom Waits the mind boggles at what he'll be sounding like in 20 years time. But great music will often disguise both its origins and the direction it intends to go and throughout all six of this guys records both these elements remain unclear. The standout track here is Hey Ray and if this is any kind of hint at the road that lies ahead for Weaver's music then it is more than encouraging. The lonely strums of the acoustic guitar are so shrouded in loneliness that when they are eventually enveloped by Deck's warm bass and delicate beat it's hard not to feel a shiver. At over six minutes long Hey Ray is the most subtly ambitious song to date. It shows Weaver's ability to sing about desolation so convincingly and yet shroud his words with such intimacy. He's left "the ax in the oak and the pot on the stove" but assures us he'll "be back in a while." Mr. Weaver, we await your return with baited breath.

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10th Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

XX Teens

Welcome To Goon Island

Mute

Add one more X to this band and you've got a world of Google strife, but without it you've got a five piece London band who spew out endlessly pleasing, driving art-rock (what the fuck does art-rock even mean?) very much in the vein of bands like The Fall. Formerly known as Xerox Teens, this band have recently signed to Mute for their debut - Welcome To Goon Island. It's pretty much a DIY record which sweeps from genre to genre throughout but always manages to maintain the frantic pace. Front man Rich Cash yelps and screams like a twisted David Byrne but can slow it down to a deep spoken word delivery reminiscent of Damon Albarn. Rolling basslines lay down the cover fire as raging drums and driving guitars leap forward dragging with them all sorts of things that make a musical noise. The result is a impenetrable broth of sound that treads fearlessly on the right side of anarchy and the wrong side of politeness.

An idyllic strumming harp heralds the coming of this debut, then in contrast to its gentle emergence comes the erratic beat and frenzied vocals for opener The Way We Were. This pace and enthusiasm is something you get used to on this record as song after song continues the full throttle drive of this group. B-54 employs the spoken word over 4/4 beats that are quickly layered by the rhythm guitar and crashing cymbals

The ultimate success of this debut is its wide sphere of influence and inability to fall neatly into classification. It squeals with raw punk sensibility but will lace the potion with structured and melodic horns like on Ba (Ba-Ba-Ba). Every composition threatens to come apart at the seams but holds tight to structural elements with driving rhythm and rising melody repeatedly acting as pillars around which the unruly kids play. It has the open-mindedness of a group at the start of their career as guitar is often traded in for saxophone or trumpet. Lead single Darlin' illustrates this perfectly as the brass fanfare announces. Then as the crashing din of every drum in the room storm the stage Cash's muffled and distorted vocals dart fleetingly in and out of audible range. To make things stranger and even more textured the relentless beat is curiously joined by delightfully melodic and thoroughly out of place Caribbean steel drums. With military percussion bringing things to a close Cash confuses us even more with the repeated lyric "the chinese are comin," just as the closing bars are dominated by an electrifying african bongo drum solo.

All these conflicting elements in less capable hands could be a disaster but under the guidance of this band it all works. The only thing that does seem a bit shoe-horned is Brian Haw's monologue that finishes the record. The song itself For Brian Haw is the bands final sonic attack but the lyrics rarely stray further from the title and as Haw's voice fades out with the sound of Parliament Square traffic it does seem like a political statement tacked on to the end of the record. XX Teens may be a part of a slightly over subscribed genre and though they wear their influences proudly if not obviously on their sleeves it doesn't detract from this impressive debut. They fail to live up to the creativeness of many of the bands they reference but their enthusiasm and energy bode well for the future.

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3rd Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Calexico

Carried To Dust

City Slang

Pressing play on the new Calexico record is akin to gently parting the curtains after a restless, fever plagued night to find the new day outside well into it's swing, the world still spinning and the sun still beating down mercilessly. As the light streams in you're weary figure is bathed in its healing warmth and your woes of the night before are banished to a distant memory. And the more this album casts this light on all other offerings from this band, 2006's Garden Ruin is illuminated as something of a blip, a brief moment of bad form, and even though it was by no means a poor album it has become glaringly obvious that Carried To Dust is what this band do best. But that is not to suggest that this is merely Calexico by numbers.

Having opted for the bold yet polite statement of Garden Ruin, Joey Burns turns the haze up once again and he and his blissful music retreat into the shadows. And its from here that the familiar dusty sounds of Calexico emerge gently, feeling no need to hurry or impress, choosing the subtle, time honored approach and allowing their sweeping cinematic panoramas to gradually seep into your being. It's a roaming album that makes its way through sprawling, sun-baked terrain, its eyes set on the ocean ahead as a symbol for new shores. Along the way it picks up many characters from murdered political poets to refugees displaced from their homeland.

Musically, Carried To Dust is a masterclass. Every note played and every word breathed serves the grand purpose. The dry landscape of Two Silver Trees is pricked by the crispest of notes that twinkle like timid sprouting shoots. Burns' whispered vocals step into the light cautiously then as the music swells the song expands to magnificent sweeping vistas. The same can be said for The News About William that follows. The addition of the string section provides the grandeur here with Burns' voice rising from its hushed tones to match the soaring horns and violins.

Calexico can evoke scenes of endless landscapes bathed in light and warmth but in an instant can fill these visions with seething tension. Fractured Air both in title and sound illustrates this perfectly with its clipped guitar and clenched reservation. The apocalyptic Man Made Lake simmers all the way through, the beat and tinkling piano suggesting a twilight where all is not at rest. This tension is brought to a magnificent and unusual head as screeching guitars bring this song to an uneasy but expert close. Then by contrast, songs like Slowness with its sweet female accompaniment and slide guitar and the album closer Contention City drift along on a warm breeze with lazy, idyllic lethargy.

House Of Valparaiso could be one of the most perfect Calexico songs to date. It has all you want from this band from Burns' hushed tones setting the scene then the heat being turned up ever so slightly with the inclusion of gentle mariachi trumpets. These are then layered by the rising vocals soaring effortlessly over head of the pitter-patter rhythm like a thermal riding bird of prey. Carried To Dust consolidates all that this band has learnt from its long history. It doesn't just rehash the many successful elements of 2003's Feast Of Wire but builds on these via the lessons learnt from Garden Ruin. Calexico have always been a band that dare to experiment with the tradition in which they are firmly planted but their need for experimentation never overtakes the music. It is always employed solely to serve the song and this album shows that it's this reserved flair that is the ultimate triumph for these songs.

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1st Sep 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet