Definitely Not Twitching But Dancing To The Music In My Head
Great music for wherever you are in the world, and whoever you're cheering for in the World Cup
Sol Y Sombra : Rose City Band
Best for : Allowing you to do not very much at all
'Sol Y Sombra' is an album that suggests that secrets to the universe can be found in country songs. And if that is so, Ripley Johnson is the man to reveal them to you.
This is cosmic country. Listen to it as you drift off to sleep in the garden under starlit skies. It's an album that casts a spell, even as you protest it's not for you. It wraps itself around you, weaving its melodies into a protective cocoon and making time stand still.
It's undeniably a source of relaxed pleasure from a man who wants to share the secrets of the universe. And yet there are moments when this seems too much of a good thing, like a never ending creme brulee or a new friend who won't go home. Sometimes it needs to give you space to allow you to take it all in. There's a nod to this with 'La Mesa' which feels like a coda to the previous track 'Seeds of Light' and wanders into a lightly worn dance jam. It's a brief and unexpected, but natural, diversion into something a little more danceable, pulling you from the sun lounger into a gentle sashay towards the bar.
In a way Rose City Garden carries on the kind of endless jams delivered by The Grateful Dead over fifty years ago. The songs are fuller than they might seem at first hearing. 'Rolling Gold' is typical. It has a simple backing while slide guitars provide the colour. One song leads seamlessly to the next, relaxing and soothing as they go. Ripley Johnson's vocals are warm and inviting. His guitar is played with evident pleasure and enjoyment and that vibe will communicate itself to you. It's possible to admire the playing while letting your thoughts run free.
This is ultimately immensely enjoyable and an album that captures the feel of your ideal Summer.
Taster Track : Lights On The Way
An Octave Of Silence : GNAC
Best for : Watching the sun rise in the midst of companionable silence
I'm probably luckier than most of the people who will read this review. Let me explain.
Back when this blog started, part of its purpose was to review albums in the circumstances that actually occur at home, on the train or while the world competes distractingly for our attention. Not for me the professional reviewer's sheltered listening studio, deluxe listening equipment or PR produced press packs. What I failed to take into account is that the best music relates to the real world and is a part of it. If you can happen to catch a record in its ideal environment you can count yourself doubly lucky as they will enhance each other.
I'm going to be annoying now. I can confirm that the best environment for listening to 'An Octave Of Silence' is on a warm terrace ensconced in the middle of Switzerland at dawn, as the sun rises over the Alps. Something magical occurs to make a potentially great GNAC album a sublime one.
It's undoubtedly a pop record but in the way that that themes are allowed to unfold, taking their time to establish themselves before swelling to a romantic climax, they share something of the elements of classical music too. Don't be put off by that. It's a sign of luxurious craftsmanship deployed by the Beatles and others over the years. Its melodies rise in the mix like sunrises and the discreet vocals are perfect adornaments.
The waterfalls slowly tumbling to earth that I can see in the distance are the perfect visual equivalent for the music. It's quietly beautiful and will make you believe you can f swimming effortlessly through warm water, even as a non-swimmer. There's a sweet melancholy in the mix too, as if remembering something special that's now lost. It has the feel of an Englishman abroad, remembering how he fell deeply in love for the first time.
Whether you're in Switzerland or Swiss Cottage, this is music that lets you explore the less accessible quarters of your memories and your heart.
Taster Track : Festooned With Jonquils
[ Sadly I can't find a video of this track on YouTube, but here's a link to the tune on Bandcamp. If you listen to it and like it, please buy it.
https://marktranmer.bandcamp.com/track/festooned-with-jonquils]
Blue Morpho : Ed O'Brien
Best for : Music that reminds you pop can be an art form
Ed O'Brien is one of the guitarists in Radiohead. In interviews he has sometimes seemed to lack confidence. He sees himself as lagging behind Johnny Greenwood in the guitar stakes, just as Ringo was once jokingly described by John Lennon as the second best drummer in the Beatles. 'Blue Morpho' should make it clear that O'Brien is a compelling and creative guitarist in his own right.
These are songs crafted by a man with a vision of how they should sound. It's a departure from the dance oriented feel to his debut 'Earth' as if he's taken a deep breath and headed into the kind of album he wants and feels the need to make. They're not jagged works but they are resistant to being pulled into any other shape. It's only on 'Teachers' that you feel the darker influences of Radiohead. The fluid influences of the solo work coming out of Pink Floyd via David Gilmore and Nick Mason act more strongly on this record.
The songs come at you as if you're tapped into someone else's dream. They're full of soaring and swooping spirits but whether they're demons or saviours isn't understood. They're abstract paintings that swirl into focus for just a moment.
'Incantations' is insistent in its guitar, in the chorus and the backing vocals. It's a voice that is unlikely to be denied. 'Blue Morpho' calls in an orchestra that adds a cinematic feel. It's quite beautiful, an interwoven, tangled piece that works beautifully. 'Sweet Spot' is a song that seems to review where life has gone awry. It's melancholy but with acceptance not recriminations.The quavering flutes of 'Thin Places' sound as if they are bringing recovery after a storm, and 'Obrigado' contains something quite soulful.
This record surprised me. I was expecting something difficult to deal with. Instead I found something that felt emotional, complex and rewarding. It may not be mainstream. It may not even be fashionable but it could be great. Johnny Greenwood should be worried.
Taster Track : Blue Morpho
Neon Summer Skin : Bedouine
Best for : Classic and classy , but sad, singer songwriting
Bedouine is a Syrian American who has toured with Fleet Foxes, Jose Gonzales and others. That gives you a flavour of her music. 'Neon Summer Skin' though is also the result of a troubled heritage seeping into every note that she plays and sings, and that makes for something soaked in sadness.
It's a strangely passionless record as if the personal notes she strikes are unchangeable. She sings of leaving her family home for the last time ('On My Own') and of faltering friendships and relationships moving inexorably to an end.
On one level, Bedouine occupies a space that is firmly in the middle of the road. She's learned to avoid life's bumps and potholes by keeping out of the way. That gives a song such as 'Always On Time' a resigned air. This is the kind of song that featured on Sunday morning Radio 1 in the 70s, that you might catch yourself listening to later that day as you prepared for bed alone. It's the prevailing tone of the songs and she can't offer a way out.
The piano led songs are slow and personal. 'On My Own' isn't the only song that sounds as if it could be the low point of a serious musical before it kicks off into a crowd pleasing resolution, a crowd pleasing resolution that never arrives with this album. The result is a muted collection of songs
These songs should feel emotional. Instead, you may find it a little too easy to let them slip into the background. Any emotions are carried on strings rather than through the lyrics, the melodies and their delivery. The exception is 'Canopies' which packs a punch through its spoken word intro.
There are a couple of songs that manage to break through. 'Deghma Cheega' has a more buoyant feel, perhaps due to being sung in Armenian - but don't translate the title which harks back to the prevailing tone. The quiet Memphis soul additions to 'One Thing Right' are a joy too.
There is no doubt that Bedouine is a classy songwriter. A little more of the bright side would be very welcome though.
Taster Track : One Thing Right
Boxing The Compass : Haircut 100
Best for : Feeling 14 and innocent again
How you feel about Haircut 100 may depend on how old you were when you first heard them. If you were fourteen and not one of the cool kids, they'd have been your favourite band (and wearing your favourite shirts too!) If you were just a few years older in your heard it all, world weary early twenties, the chances are you dismissed them as too twee to be enjoyed. If, surprisingly, you discover them with this album you should feel that they are providers of joyful, disposable pop that brings a smile to your face.
All those responses remain valid. They're still as enduring as the froth on a cappuccino, but as essential too. They were, and to an extent still are, a boy band with the emphasis on 'band'. It always felt inevitable and tragic that they fell out in a kind of friendship group spat.
If you're going to bring back the Haircut 100 name you need to bring back the sound too. There were always two sides to Haircut 100. The one that defined them was the synthetic funk pop that became the essence of good time vibe music. They wrote great indie pop songs too, without the need for brass flourishes and choppy guitars. Both sides are represented here and gloriously so.
'Come Back To Me' is a faultless example of straightforward indie pop, more energetic than the spacier sound of, say ;Nobody's Fool' but just as good. Songs such as 'The Unloving Plum' and 'That's A Start' define 'twee'. It doesn't matter. There's a need for innocent songs more than ever now. 'Vanishing Point' shows that that light, funk pop still courses through their veins and still works beautifully within the confines of a three minute pop song without the need for extended funk workouts. It's 'Soulbird' that brings both sides together, the perfect marriage of their twin personalities.
'Boxing The Compass' is a harmless slice of smiling, joyful music. It's a tonic of an album.
Taster Track : Soulbird
Asymmetry : Alex Kozobolis
Best for : Beautiful piano music
'Asymmetry' is a collection of 12 and a half short piano pieces. The missing half is the atmospheric electronica that brings in 'From Montjuc.' In the right hands, the piano is one of the most beautiful sounds on earth. Controversially maybe, but Alex Kozobolis unintentionally raises a question. Is that enough?
You might wonder how to categorise these pieces. Are they jazz, classical or pop? There's a case for each of them. You can hear jazz influences shyly making themselves felt in '"When This Is Over"'. Each of these tunes would be at home in a BBC Radio 3 crossover show. At various points you can hear Hania Rani without the forays into something danceable or Olafur Arnalds with a lighter tripping touch.
You can't help but fall for the soft, minimalist piano of 'Lost Hours' that allows you to hear the hammer gently hit the strings. Pauses and silences play their part in providing a soundtrack that enables personal thought and meditation. 'Stones Will Cry Out' is typical in sounding both harmonious and melodic. It's not hummable but in avoiding discord it preserves the beauty of the album as a whole. If the impact is occasionally akin to listening to advanced examination pieces, they are excellent demonstrations of skill, technique and feeling for the piano. And if you can shake the image of intense student and musty examiner from your head you'll feel the intimate connection that comes from having just two of you in the room.
Elvis Costello captured the flaw in this album when he released 'All This Useless Beauty'. It's a philistine thought but it's real nonetheless - beautiful though this is, there seems to be something missing. That nagging concern crystallises in 'Icarus'. I didn't have the sense of the human tragedy and emotion contained in the story that lends its name to the piece.
Spare me from a world in which beauty can't exist but, equally, save me from a world where that is all there is. Alex Kozobolis hasn't quite pulled that off.
Taster Track : Stones Will Cry Out
The Set Up : The Delines
Best for : Storytelling in song
Author Willy Vlautin is the man behind The Delines, and it's that story telling background that gives The Delines their special power. 'The Set Up' is less of an album and more an audio book of short stories set to music.
Vlautin writes, and The Delines sing, of desperate, nearly defeated characters you can care for. They come from a world that has ground them down at every turn. They're left needing to numb the effects or to make ever more reckless plans to break free. They're the most literary songs around, full of memorable characters and snappy descriptions. Atmosphere rules so that you're sucked into their stories while remaining helpless to intervene.
This is The Delines at their most ambitious. Maintaining the atmosphere is essential, never letting the fabric slip to suggest these songs aren't about real people. The three connected parts of The Set Up that are dispersed across the album are compelling, and the twist at the end is as unexpected as a kick in the face from a child.
It's a mournful affair, helped by Amy Boone's way with a narrative and her vocals that are a blend of heartbreak, concern, defeat and compassion. Musically the tone is set by the midnight sax, the downbeat piano and the feeling of jazz noir lit up by cinematic colours. The Delines deal in ugly lives placed in gorgeous musical settings. It's a potent cocktail of spoken word, instrumentals and country soul all woven into an intricate and compelling tapestry. There's even a gospel backing to 'Dilaudid Diane'. Songs such as 'Can You Get Me Out Of Phoenix', 'Walking With His Sleeves Down' and 'The Meter Keeps Ticking' are as addictive as the drugs that that have damaged the characters' lives.
The Delines have been honing their approach over three or four albums. Now they're approaching perfection.
Taster Track : Dilaudid Diane