Paperback Raita and A Rubbery Sole
Butler, Blake and Grant, The Convenience, Ex Ponto, Hannah Peel and Beibei Wang, Hemlocke Springs, Melanie Pain, Sister Ray Davies
Music coming at you from around the world and closer to home.
Holy Island : Sister Ray Davies
Best for : Capturing a sense of history.
I don't know. All those Yanks coming over here and taking our history to inspire their songs, calling their album after one of our most venerable, historic sites. I mean, I understand the attraction of going back to the 7th Century when their country, as we know it today, is only 250 or so years old. And if we're looking at history, it's a neat idea to gain credibility by calling yourself after the Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray' and Ray Davies of the Kinks even if the genre you're paying tribute to is shoegaze.
But enough of the ill informed sarcasm. This is a highly listenable album that takes you through the mists of time to feel the cowled presence of monks and the sound of drifting souls upon the wind. The driving bass, free ranging guitars and ghostly electronica make for an immersive listen and a dramatic one. It's a similar effect to that achieved by Public Service Broadcasting, if you were to strip away the archive spoken word. I liked the Celtic feel buried at the heart of a song such as 'Rowans'. It gives a kind of historical travelogue feel to the music.
Three further thoughts. First, it can feel a little programmed rather than composed. There's a steady three to the floor beat that anchors the songs too tightly at tgimes.
Secondly, think of rock duos and you're likely to head down the path trodden by bands such as The Black Keys and Kills. That's not what Sister Ray Davies sounds like. They are less raw, more controlled, a few footsteps away from rhythm and blues towards something a little more prog.
The third issue is more a matter of choice or preference, and will attract as many admirers as detractors. There's a muggy feel to the production that creates a wall of sound at the expense of something more pristine. It's an approach that worked for Spector. Some people love the cacophony it produced with the Jesus and Mary Chain. One effect is that the vocals are so lost in the mix they cease to have a lyrical purpose and become another instrument. Sadly, it's not my favourite approach to music but that doesn't make it wrong.
'Holy Island' is a good album that didn't quite work for me. It happens sometimes. You may fall for it completely.
Taster Track : Aidan
Murmurs : Butler, Blake & Grant
Best for : The intense and heartfelt songs of old men
Bernard Butler, Norman Blake and James Grant reconvene for that difficult second album. Well, this is certainly no compromise. You'll find no Suede in the mix. They're playing for themselves not any fanclub, teenage or otherwise. It's an album made for love, not money.
'Murmurs', as its title suggests, is a quiet album. It's an album that often feels as if the energy has departed from their passion and now they're giving us all they have left. Early on it can feel bleak, akin to Springsteen's 'Nebraska' album with added gospel flavours. And as we know, 'Nebraska' is an album that savagely divides opinion amongst even his most stalwart fans.
'People Move On' which opens the album is less an anthem calling us to take the future and more a weary recognition that it is time to leave this place. Its fuzzily discordant, broken guitars are the sound of defeated old men. Unexpectedly they cover Teenage Fanclub's 'Planets'. It's a rougher, slower, scratched version with the lyrics pushed out and the acapella moment towards the end is a great touch.
The harmonies are surprisingly tender throughout, showing their love for their music and the strength of their work together. THey account for 'Winter' being less of a grind. It creates the sense of three men playing music for themselves that you may happen to like. And it's the harmonies that magically give the album its emotional heart.
'Did I Say' has a more upbeat feel, highlighting how intense it is elsewhere on the record. It feels as if the music is reaching out like creeping ivy seeking to entangle you so that you are unable to leave. 'Last Ship On The River', despite its line " Well it was the saddest, the saddest thing I've ever seen." has an almost celebratory air for something that was once had and was good. Finally, sweet strings arrive in the album to enable 'Does It All Add Up To Nothing' to suggest a willingness to soar.
Cormac McCarthy once wrote a book called' No Country For Old Men'. Butler, Blake & Grant have recorded an album that could be called 'Country For Old Men'. It's surprisingly moving.
Taster Track : Planets
The Apple Tree Under The See : Hemlocke Springs
Best for : Primal pop therapy
Why do a growing number of artists turn to the lower case for their album titles and artist names? If capitals are for shouting, the lower case is for keeping out of the way and not being noticed. Here though, the very act of not drawing attention to itself draws attention to it.
Hemlock Springs does not need that kind of help. She has a mad personality. She sings with the force of someone making demands and used to getting her own way. She dresses up in a very American form of electropop and imbues it with the toy town madness of Lene Lovich and the kookiness of Cyndi Lauper enjoying a sugar rush.
Pop's a wonderful, broad minded thing. It's a long way from the weary, grey songs of Butler, Blake and Grant (reviewed immediately above in this blog) to the scorchingly bling world of Hemlocke Springs. Listening to this is like finding yourself in the glare of a too bright spotlight. You need to look away. Here there are times when you may need to mute the sound to give your ears a chance to recover.
This is a hyper real collection of songs, perhaps more suited to the world of video game soundtracks than the world we actually live in. Each song has a part that gives something, but I'm not sure that's enough. It's like a scary maths teacher whose lessons are hard to follow but always contain one good joke worth waiting for.
'The Red Apple' has a flavour of pink Goth. 'The Beginning of the End' and 'Heads, Shoulder, Knees and Ankles' are two of the songs that position her as a force in the pop universe. 'Be The Girl' shows that, if she's never calm, she can simmer down when the song requires it and the long, proper fade out is truly lovely. And then she's gone, leaving just the aftershock of her presence.
Be prepared. This is not a lower case record.
Taster Track : Be The Girl
How And Why : Melanie Pain
Best for : Songs that show pop's finest traits.
I loved this album. I loved this album because it filled me with gratitude for all the great things pop can bring into your life, and it left me wondering how to describe something that, in its field, is absolutely perfect.
The fact that I found this in an act that is not a household name, that hasn't been manufactured and marketed to within an inch of their life filled me with an intense and pure happiness. For some it may be too polite, too kind, too….. nice. To them I say, put your cynicism, criticism and negative ways to one side and savour the innocence and charm of truly great pop.
Melanie Pain is French, and one of the voices of Nouvelle Vague. Her solo work shares many of their strengths, but they're distilled to an essence that makes for something flawless and super-sweet. The musical mix of these songs includes acoustic joy, folk seasoning, a pinch of jazz, a big dollop of pop and a side dressing of French sophistication. This is pop like an artisan's elite patisserie creation, one that delights the ear rather than the eye. It will fill you with an emotion similar to how you feel when someone unexpected says or does something kind for you.
Her voice is the kind you'd follow through danger and hard times. It's the voice of Pinocchio's good fairy, a beacon of love in a cruel world that draws you ever closer. You know when you hear it that you're safe.
If you're thinking that this sounds too saccharine, it's not and that's its strength. 'Colds Hands' and 'We Were Kids' are a little more sombre. They're the conversations grown ups have when the children are in bed, the voice that you can trust to watch while you sleep.
Nouvelle Vague is one influence, shorn of the bossa nova rhythms. Emiliana Torrini's best moments and Jose Gonzalez's lightest songs are others.
It's rare to hear an album that is so full of the purest, loveliest songs but 'How And Why' is one of them.
Taster Track : Bluer Than Blue
The Endless Dance : Hannah Peel and Beibei Wang
Best for : Percussion and searching out new adventures in music.
Hannah Peel and Bei Bei Wang have won multiple music awards between them. Together they represent the sweet spot where BBC Radio 6 meets BBC Radio 3. 'The Endless Dance' is out there, but not in an overly serious, heavy going way.
Musical academics can talk about how the music here represents the daily rhythms of life, the interactions between two different cultures and the impact of their shared Taoist faith on their music. In the end it's unimportant. The curious among the rest of us can explore and enjoy the different musical universe they have created. Northern Ireland meets China. Electronic music meets percussion. Ears meet new sonic experiences. What's not to like?
In the soaring flight and sudden swoops of 'Wild Geese Arrive' there's a lightness and a surprising dose of humour. 'Awaken The Insects' is startling. The mix of Wang's forceful clicking stick percussion and Chinese chants propels the track into immediate overdrive. All Hannah Peel can do is try to keep up. It's frenetic, but enjoyable and very different. If you thought Adam Ant owned ant music, think again. This sounds like the real thing!
'Feed The Fireflies' builds into more of a tune and captures the mysterious loveliness of the insect world through jungle rhythms and technicolour sounds. Textures are everything. From the variety of percussion instruments, to the range of synth moods and tones to the processed voices of and laughter of 'Grain Rain', this is music that is enjoyable and enjoying life. 'Limit of Heat' will soothe you with calming bubbles.
Wang is a surfer on Peel's electronic waves and that frees her to let rip and experiment with all things new. The results can be heard in 'Tiger Sex' but they apply to the whole album, This is music that creeps, slinks, dances and grooves. Most of all, it's good humoured fun. Their shared delight in what they have created is infectious.
If you're concerned that the collaboration doesn't sound like a bundle of fun, relax. 'The Endless Dance' is as joyous an album as you'll hear anywhere this year.
Taster Track : Tiger Sex
Odlazak : Ex Ponto
Best for : Listening to with your eyes shut
When Sister Sledge sang about being lost in music, I'm not sure this is what they had in mind. It's an apt description of the appeal of Ex Ponto's 'Odlazak' though.
'Odlazak' is a Balkan word for leaving or departure. There's a lot of sinister history in that part of the world, and this music fits right in. Ex Ponto captures the feel of setting out into unknown and possibly threatening territory. 'Odlazak' carries a heavy sense of suspicion and mistrust, threat and menace. It feels like music heard while hiding in a darkened doorway.
It's only part of the story. Travelling alone isn't always fraught with suspected danger. 'Continental Drift' is lighter, due to its guitar, a bigger tune and less reliance on mood setting voices. 'Teatree Fingers' borrows the methods, but not the sound, of jazz. It wanders forth and keeps away from the beaten track, enjoying the freedom to explore and providing space for your own scenarios. These pieces are more representative of the album as a whole and have a clean sound that's more than ambient although it may start in that space.
At times this feels like music for an art installation, or music for a film. It's half the full work. You'll need to provide the pictures and that means that this is music to listen to with your eyes closed. If you want to try that approach 'Sonic Cycle' is a good place to start. Even better are the driving rhythms of 'Climactic Vegetation' - not the most rock n roll title you'll ever come across, but you'll be able to lose yourself in it. Best of all is 'Put' which is sufficiently trance inducing to take you up or down to the layer of consciousness where your creative side can roam freely.
And there you have it. Whether you call this album immersive, interactive or collaborative it's certainly an album where what you take out of it is proportionate to what you put in.
Taster Track : Put
Like Cartoon Vampires : The Convenience
Best for : The nasty, grubby side of indie rock.
It's said that the toilets in the legendary New York club, CBGB's, went uncleaned for years. The Convenience would have fitted right in - for their sound, for their influences and for their attitude.
I like this album because it's part of my musical heritage and lodged in my listening DNA. This is the stuff of John Peel and the crowd who scorned anything with even an outside chance of cracking the Top 40. It's the music you liked even though you would never emulate its makers or be admitted to the first wave of supporters.
The Convenience are the future favourite band of the loner student in his filthy squat. It's cool, but in an anti-hero rejection of all comfort and prettiness kind of way. On first hearing, 'I Got Exactly What I Wanted' is a demonstration of back to basics, raw and ugly post punk indie rock. 'Target Offer' is a punkier version of very early Talking Heads, full of jerky riffs and deliberately off tuning. By 'Dub Vultures' we've been manoeuvred into clear post punk territory.
The first twelve songs are undeniably a furious rush, but it soon becomes apparent that the songs are more complex than they first sound. They contin echoes of many great moments from the past - the refrain of The Police's 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' in '2022' and the sleazy, bad boy cruising of early Stranglers in 'Western Pepsi Cola Town'. It's the total opposite of U2 or Foo Fighters, lost forever in their arenas, and that means there's a corrupted nobility and integrity to their sound
If it lacks anything, it's a sense of release, a cathartic explosion into ferocious joy. The Sex Pistols had it in Johnny Rotten's gleeful cackling. The Cure definitely find it at the end of 'Subway Song'. But then comes the 10'31" of 'Fake The Feeling' and its capture of all that was good about bands such as Television. Suicide and the whole CBGBs roster. It vomits forth the sense of release that leaves you feeling better until the need starts to build again.
The Convenience are strong stuff. Try them,
Taster Track : 2022