Searching For The 'I' Of The Storm
Admiral Fallow, Asgeir, Blondie, Cigarettes After Sex, David A Jaycock, DG Solaris, Fabio de Nascimento and E Ruscha V, Harbour, Haruomi Hosono, Hot Chip, Teenage Fanclub
The classic and the new.
Yours Sincerely : Haruomi Hosono
Best for : Grown up and affectionate nursery music
This is a simply lovely album, a gentle caress to reassure you that all will be well.
Haruomi Hosono is Japanese and was a leader of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Despite that background, this is one of the most acoustic albums you might ever hear. There are synths involved but they're discreet and not in the foreground. Your memory of this album will include wind chimes, wood pipes, acoustic guitars, piano, accordion and music box. If that's not enough, there's also humming.
There are times while listening to this, on a cover of 1950s song 'Sincerely' and in 'Ayurveda' when it feels as if he is observing European music, reflecting it back to us and liking what he hears. Unexpectedly that brings a feeling of warm respect into play, like sincere praise from the person you want to please the most.
It's an album full of simplicity and charm, but it's also intricate in its rhythms and pacing. In just 26 minutes he creates so many moments that ask you to prick up your ears, like a puppy recognising the sound of his master approaching. In 'Note On Mothership' a multigenerational chorus chant their way through the song to a Japanese water music backing. You can hear and feel quiet happiness, and it's contagious.
Some of the pieces, such as 'Happy Holidays' are short. They're ideas turned into fragments, flavoured like canapes before the delicate meals of the longer tracks whichinclude 'Rojiura (Walking Vibration)' and the glorious 'Humming Dream of Love'. The irresistible 'Figlia Perduto' wanders quietly towards Pink Martini territory and sits alongside the accessible section of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
This is an album of nursery lullabies made with love and affection, and as much for the watchful mother as her restless child.
Taster Track : Humming Dream of Love
Children of the Cold War : Phase 7 - David A Jaycock
Best for : Being a masterclass in sustaining musical atmosphere
David A Jaycock wasn't always an electronic wizard. He set out as a delicate guitarist and interpreter of traditional folk songs. His collaboration with Marry Waterson earned a Radio 2 folk award nomination. If there's a connection between then and now it's through the folk horror of, say, The Wicker Man. Both that film and 'Children of the Cold War : Phase 7:' share a sense of suppressed horror lying just beneath a veneer of normality.
From the outset, this is an album that encompasses fears that don't always surface but cannot be shaken off. It chimes with current times in a spirit of uneasy listening. It's the feeling of a noise when you're alone in the house that you can't explain but choose not to explore further in case it reveals something you don't want to know. There's a sombre foreboding that something unavoidable is on its way. These instrumental pieces are around fifty years too late to soundtrack Government information films about nuclear attacks, but they will be up to the task if, Heaven forbid, they are ever needed.
It's a masterclass in building and sustaining an atmosphere that stains normal activities such as shopping on a Saturday afternoon in Manchester. Haunting melodies drift just out of reach in 'Clear Skies On The Lows'. Echoes of disco beats transform 'Butterflies Discoteque' from a cauldron of joy into a state of Dr Who anxiety. There's an underlying throb of a building tension headache behind 'The Wall Has Fallen' and the sense of a slightly accelerated heartbeat that keeps you on edge.
The few, brief spoken word samples are coldly matter of fact but immensely powerful. The lack of lyrics in these instrumental pieces means that the fears they are suppressing take personal form in your mind. That doesn't change, even in the deceptively gentle 'Polaris (U.K. Nuclear Programme)'.
So, who would listen to something that stirs some of their worst fears? Anyone who treasures pristine production and compositions that interlock musical themes in an almost geometrical way. 'Circling The Church' and 'In The Black Forest' achieve this perfectly. It will appeal too, to lovers of German 70s electronic works or to anyone who is attracted to the proposition of The Orb colliding with prog rock.
For all the menace, fear and anxiety below the surface, Children of the Cold War : Phase 7 is listenable and a very good album.
Taster Track : Circling the Church
Julia : Asgeir
Best for : Beautiful songs from Iceland to haunt you for some time
It's Halloween, and what's not to like about a chilling ghost story? Ghost stories don't come much more mysterious than 'Julia'. A moonlit lake, two deaths and at least one of them a suicide. This is a timeless Romeo and Juliet, Charles Dickens set to music. It's mournful but not miserable, and it will send a shiver down your spine not just for its content but for the way it is delivered.
'Julia' is the most explicit example of a haunting song here, but 'haunting' is also the best word to describe much of the album. Asgeir has a unique voice. It's an achievement to write songs in his native Icelandic and then translate them into sublime English poetry. It accounts for the particular sensibility in his songs, getting to the core of Icelandic feeling and expressing it in English to a much wider audience in words that may have no prior experience of such emotions. He's unmistakably his own voice and that helps him stand out in the crowd as something special and worth your attention.
(As a side note, the impact his voice has on me may be triggered by the fact that his 'Bury The Moon' album was the last thing I listened to before Covid lockdown in 2020.)
There's also something unexpected for those who know a little about Asgeir's back catalogue. In the opening two tracks, 'Quiet Life' and ' Against The Current', there's an unaccustomed feel to the songs. I think it's called happiness or at least contentment. 'Quiet Life' sees melody and electronic twinkling dance together. It's meltingly gorgeous and helped by the warm vulnerability of his vocals. Add to that the folk simplicity and timelessness of something like 'Stranger' and you're on to a winner.
At the risk of destroying his magic these happier songs make no demands. They're like waking up in the morning to a clean and tidy house with an empty dishwasher, a freshly brewed cup of your favourite coffee ready on the table and the warm, contented feeling of a new romance coursing through your veins. Let it possess you.
This album hears Asgeir at his best, doing what he does best.
Taster Track : Quiet Life
Aquaticos : Fabio de Nascimento and E Ruscha V
Best for : Drifting towards meditations
This is a lovely collection of piece but, if I learned one thing in its company, loveliness alone is sometimes not quite enough.
At first it's hard to categorise where this music falls. Fabio de Nascimento is known mainly as an ambient jazz guitarist. E Ruscha V has a more Balearic background. That covers some of what awaits, but there is classical guitar too. 'Nascer' opens the album and Fabio's guitar sounds untreated, almost rough. It's smoothed by the synth embellishments of E Ruscha V and keeps promising - or threatening depending on your viewpoint - to break into something more commercial.
As it turns out, everything here is quite abstract and ambient. On 'Rain' the music is loose enough to lose shape like an ice cream sculpture losing definition during a warm spell, but still tasting good. Elsewhere it twinkles decoratively, but doesn't push to be heard as the main event. It's like the perfect starlit sky to accompany a marriage proposal where she says "Yes".
Slowly the album drifts towards the kind of music you might choose if you're about to lie in an MRI Scanner. It drifts in, out and all around. It's screensaver music, peaceful with no sudden disruptions. As time slows down you may come to like it without even noticing it.
After a while though, I felt a faint longing for just one tune to navigate its way to the surface. 'Solar' comes close, but can't remove the suspicion that they're lost in their music to the exclusion of the listeners. It doesn;t reach out to engage with the listener. Don't get me wrong. I understand the purpose of ambient music and enjoy it but enough is enough. This is truly lovely, but little else.
Taster Track : Rain
Tellisford Loop : DG Solaris
Best for : Quiet celebration of the important stuff
In dark times, people turn to the important things. Family and loved ones. Ways of finding calm and peace. Yes, God too. D G Solaris is, first and foremost an excellent singer-songwriter and he captures all that in one peaceful and simply beautiful collection of songs.
There's nothing showy here, just a demonstration of content and form in perfect harmony. They sound like songs recorded at home in the middle of the night, quietly so as not to wake the family. 'Tellisford Loop 'is an album full of the last songs you'd want to hear before going to bed. They're not lullabies. Well, mostly they're not, but they are songs that are restful and encouraging stillness. (If it's lullabies you're after, 'Go To Sleep My Baby' is the one for you. It's a gift for any first time parents.) 'Tellisford Loop' is for the feeling of people moving quietly around you as you recover from illness.
Solaris has songs by the bundle that are addressed to pets and family. They're not twee but seem to contain thoughts and feelings drawn from a bigger picture of life. 'We Meet Our Son!' captures the wondrous anticipation of imminent birth, perhaps a little too much for those who have never experienced it, but prompting thrilling recognition in those that have.
Songs such as 'That's The Way I Live' and 'A Gentle Man' have a more explicit religious content, but it's an intimate and personal feeling and never sanctimonious. You can listen to 'You Will Know' or 'Yearns To Be Free'; and take a Christian message from the song or simply a message about gratitude and beauty. They're about achieving inner peace, songs of belief freed from bitterness, cynicism and scepticism.
Writing unshowy, non evangelical songs about your belief in and relationship with God isn't a recipe for hitting a billion streams on Spotify but, equally, DG Solaris and someone like Nick Mulvey or Natalie Bergman can wrap their belief in sublime pop songs that are accessible to all. It shines through even in the instrumental title track. If the songs on Tellisford Loop featured in church I'd be a more regular churchgoer.
The peace, calm and contentment that's in every crotchet of these songs can be infectious. Don't resist.
Taster Track : Tellisford Loop
Do Not Dare to Dream : Teenage Fanclub
Best for : A flawless depiction of a band's sound
If you've followed Pop In The Real World at any stage, you'll know that I find it hard to believe that Teenage Fanclub could do any wrong. Spoiler alert : 'Do Not Dare to Dream' only strengthens that position.
They're now elder statesmen of all that is good in pop, and they still don't need to dress it up in anything more than High Street jeans and peaked caps. They sound like what they are -the reference point and lodestar for the sound of countless other indie bands. Teenage Fanclub got their first.
Teenage Fanclub are the equivalent of Brighton FC, taking Europe by storm because they don't bother with star signings but play as a team. The band has five indispensable members, each as essential to the whole as arms, legs, ears, eyes and heart are to a body. It's a small example, but just over three minutes into 'Over and Over' there's a single cymbal tap that lifts the song over its hump to coast towards the end. It's perfect, prompting a silent recognition of 'Yes!' that comes along maybe just once a year.
It's been a long while since the sonic noise of their early days. They've stepped back from centre stage to sing and play the feelings of their community. In 'There Was You', 'Be With You Tonight", 'Take Time' and more they've created songs that head sweetly for your heart and leave you loving helplessly in their wake. They don't need to shout to be heard. Their songs are hushed as if one side of a one to one exchange of memories and confidences over a kitchen table cup of coffee.
Their sixties influences can still be heard. Now, perhaps, they jangle less and strum more but they've learned and demonstrate that if you get the melodies and harmonies right, the rest will follow. It sounds fresh because the alternative noise makers, sensitive singer songwriters and plastic RnB acts that make up playlists have lost sight of this.
They also capture the spirit of hope and love from 1966. Even when it's melancholy, there's a warmth there and dreamy wistfulness too. What's new is an elegiac feel, heard best in the lightly washed piano of 'Young and Wise'.
'Do Not Dare to Dream' is as flawless a testimony to Teenage Fanclub as you could hope to find.
Taster Track : There Was You
EPs and Songs
We have a couple of genuine EPs for you this week and a small handful of new songs.
Admiral Fallow, Blondie, Cigarettes After Sex, Harbour, Hot Chip
Starting with the least well known contributor, but the most affecting set of songs, Harbour's 'Sometimes It Is Peace' is a five track EP, available on Bandcamp, that will stir feeling and empathy for those in the middle of hard times. It's also a set of excellent songs that are not a million miles removed from a modern day, stripped back Teenage Fanclub. The lead title track is gentle and almost spiritual in its mantra. It's a reassurance and a musical reaching out . Diving to the closing companion piece, 'It Is Peace Sometimes' we hear a fractured state of mind conveyed in ambient, droning guitar that descends mercifully into peace. Inbetween, 'I Can Face The Day' has the insistent, but despairing hope of those struggling. It's moving. 'Not A Simple Thing' is a reminder that it's OK to feel as you do. If this is music as self medication, it packs a powerful punch. 'I Love Your Brain' introduces a little psychedelic tremor for variety. I don't know the back story to this EP, but if it is drawn from real life, it's uplifting to feel that such beautiful music can come from what feels like ugly times.
Admiral Fallow's four track EP, 'Marigolds (Barbara Please)' shows them continuing to deliver folk rock gems. They trigger feelings of appreciation and regret, together with a determination not to let something valuable slip away. The songs feel domestic, drawn from real life not dramatised as a soap opera. Louis Abbot's vocals are honest and friendly and are heard best when accompanied by Saraah Hayes. It's a musical match made in Heaven. What's refreshing, are the lines of humour running through the songs. In 'Avalanche' he apologises for welcoming a new born into "a song this bad". In 'Headstrong' he acknowledges the difference between something tired and something classic. Admiral Fallow are definitely classic.
The angry birds that open Hot Chip's 'Random Violence' are not the only surprise they have in store. This is the band as you may not have heard them before, poppier and less bound to the club floor. It's an addictively joyous song, a jerky arms in the air celebration and the kind of song to urge people out of the clubs to make their voices heard on the streets.
It's been a while since we heard from Cigarettes After Sex. 'Twizzler' continues to highlight their ability with a haunting melody, with a mild air of obsessive and suffocating relationships. Their songs continue to brood and hint at bad, crime of passion outcomes. It's hard to resist the hypnotic vocals from Greg Gonzalez and the night time smooth menace of the band.
When a band has been as great as Blondie, you don't want them to damage their reputation by carrying on for too long. 'Spectral Eyes' comes from Clem Burke's final sessions before he died, and his drumming is solid. Debby Harry's vocals are no longer those of a coquettish flirt and temptress. They're more akin to the Zelda Southport character in Ted Lasso. The song works, just. It has a decent chorus that grows through the song and the band keeps it tight. But by the standards of their peak period, it's filler and lacks ambition. Head back now to 'Parallel Lines'and you will hear what I mean.