Unsung Songs for Lovers Unknown
The Autumn Defense, The Durutti Column, Girls of the Internet, The Loft, Mull Historical Society, Steve Querault
Not only are there excellent albums in this blog, but the album covers are pretty damn fine too!
Renascent : The Durutti Column
Best for : Adventurous seekers of pop's beauty
The Durutti Column are unique. That's easy to type, harder to justify and almost impossible to achieve. Back in 1979 when Vini Reilly released his confusingly named debut 'The Return of the Durutti Column', I can't think of any other band that could claim to have influenced their sound. Nearly 50 years later, they still stand alone, their sound immediately recognisable as them and only them. It's not so much alternative as a whole new kind of music that is consistently eerily beautiful.
If you need an origin story for the band's sound, you'd need to look towards jazz and classical rather than further into pop. That's where you might find clues to how Reilly creates immense emotions from just a few notes. His uniqueness is reinforced by the difficulty you'll encounter finding anyone that has managed to mimic his style. On this album, you might hear from 'Time Present and Time Past' how Hania Rani may have been influenced by him. In 'For Friends Everywhere' you can imagine him sharing an approach with the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, but it's not a typical Durutti Column piece, featuring French Horn and strings rather than electric guitars and electronica.
'Your Shadow In The Morning' bends electric guitars and introduces acoustic flamenco guitar before bringing all elements into an intricate interplay that shifts and changes as it grows. It's a formal dance for which only he knows the moves, a puzzle devised to his own rules that only he can solve. Its companion piece, arriving later as 'Your Shadow In The Evening', carries more menace and foreboding. It captures that feeling of running out of time with still much to do. It's full of machine-like rhythms, bruised guitars and a stale tobacco soaked atmosphere. It's gritty and compelling, not ethereally beautiful. 'Liars' also takes a left turn into a dark, rambling rant. Reilly's hopeless and helpless spoken words gradually grow in the mix as if surfacing from deep within him. It's moving and powerful in its mumbling and recognition of two three word lies - "I am sorry, I love you". 'Agonistes' is ghostly whilst 'Sargasso Sea' is the closest you'll find to a standard song.
'Renascent' is an album that restores your belief in pop as an art form, to be cherished and valued for that alone.
Taster Track : Your Shadow At Morning'
Badges : The Loft
Best for : Listening to on the way to having fun
The Loft have learned one of pop's most important lessons. Keep it brief, keep it simple and write a good tune. 'Badges' doesn't even break the 30 minute mark but the ratio of indie gems to running time is excellent.
The Loft have also avoided one of pop's many pitfalls. They're in their 60s now, having started in 1984, but they've resisted the temptation to age in their music. They only break that rule a couple of times on '1955' and 'Ex Lovers and Long Lost Brothers' which are more reflective and crack the good time vibe. Everywhere else they've kept it fresh, the kind of music you'd listen to with school mates as you make your first forays into a life of your own. Some things are better if they never grow old and serious.
'Badges' sounds nicely retro in two ways. First it's the essence of early Creation Records indie. They've not tampered with a classic formula. Secondly, within that framework, they're also looking back further to the era of 60s Britpop and 70s Glam. The intro to 'Sad Comedian' immediately took me back to the sound of T Rex's 'Metal Guru' before softening into something reminiscent of the Kinks' mid 60s observational pop. 'Beautiful Problem' has the glorious chug of Slade's 'Coz I Love You'.
It's a strong run of songs to kick off the album. It takes a lot of skill to write a song like 'Happenstance' that sounds as if it's a throwaway song but is actually carefully crafted not to be overthought or to have redundant passages. It's brisk and immediately likeable, a short, sharp and cheery slice of jangling rock and roll. It's followed by 'Sad Comedian' and the irresistible catchiness of 'Campervan'.
Perhaps the key track is 'C'Mon Let's Hear It For The Now'. Let's take note and celebrate that it still has space for The Loft and their classic indie. I, for one, am glad they are not acting their age.
Taster Track : Happenstance
Swallow : Steve Querault
Best for : Music as huge drama.
Steve Querault is the bass guitarist with shoegaze icons Ride. This album remains true to those roots, but if you thought shoegaze was a genre for mumbling, introspective songs you're going to have to think again. This is huge.
'Swallow' is an album that sounds as overwhelming as an avalanche, as thrilling as surfing a tsunami and as terrifying as walking through an earthquake. To call it cinematic, confines it. If 'Swallow' was a film it would need to be beamed into the sky or projected onto the side of mountains.
Querault is a master of manipulating your response through shifts in the cadence of a song. With 'Mission Creep' you're thrown straight into a menacing atmosphere, thanks to a dark, deep rumbling drone and a panicky listing of figures and places, From the sense of an unknown threat in progress, to the palpable but short-lived relief when a tune kicks in and onto a return to dystopic feelings by the end. It's an SF horror thriller compressed into five minutes.
It's easy to hear this as something from a dystopian world but it's more nuanced than that. There's a cautious air of hope within the songs as if surveying the rubble of the world before reconstruction begins. You can dare to hope that the worst is over. When the quiet hook arrives in 'Messengers' it's unexpected and in stark contrast to the massive sound around it. Your breath will be well and truly taken. It's a clever move. In the refugee song, 'Motor Boats, the words sound on the brink of tears. They're truly emotional.
It's hard to step away from the overall experience, but there are moments when a disengaged listener might feel that the production has a rough edge as if knocked marginally away from the ideal settings. It makes for something fuzzy rather than pristine. How you feel about that may depend on whether you prefer your art gritty and grimy, or clothed in the bright and shiny colours of a Marvel Universe blockbuster.
If you're a shoegaze fan, you'll find much here to relish. It remains true to Ride's tones and atmospheres. The more dreamy shoegaze of Lush before they turned to Britpop is in evidence too. It's not surprising that Emma Anderson from Lush features on a couple of songs and she fits right in. The other influence that is much in evidence is Mogwai.
'Swallow' by Steve Querault. Wow!
Taster Track : Motor Boats
In My Mind There's A Photograph : Mull Historical Society
Best for : Energy, passion, honesty and sincerity
Mull is a small island in the Inner Hebrides. It's unlikely to ever have a voice on the world stage, but Colin McIntyre is determined to make sure it is heard in music and he's not going to accept anything as being off limits.
He makes a big sound that remains fiercely local, hurled into the sky for everyone to hear. It refuses to be confined to any one approach or genre. Everything is co-opted into the mix - chamber violins, choirs of backing singers with a resolutely community feel and all that you could want to hear in an indie rock song. McIntyre is a chef who takes leftovers from the fridge and conjutes up a Michelin star meal.
At its heart, although with some exceptions, this is music with an anger and an intense passion for how things were. It's not a trivial, indulgent foray into nostalgia but a feeling that something substantial and significant is being lost. In 'Where Are The Heroes' he's searching for the men and women who taught you how to live a life worth living, not for footballers, influencers, billionaires or celebrities. His songs are single minded verse, chorus, repeat songs, as on 'Once Upon A Tightrope' drive the messages home.
'Where Are The Heroes?'' is a slice of slashing rock with a foot in punk and a mind that recognises the humanitarian in the everyday. The album is Scottish to the core and sounds it. 'Wish We'd Taken Mair' is spoken in an accent that makes poetry as musical as the Shipping Forecast. 'Cattle Bells' is a mix of memories and conversations that is still riddled with energy and enthusiasm. The backing singers make a huge contribution to the slightly anarchic feel across the songs. They're not a community choir, but they are a choir for their community. Their energy brings a feeling of loving what they do and provides an uplifting, smiling presence in the songs.
McIntyre's vocals are sometimes strained with the emotion he's feeling. It all adds to the sincerity, integrity and authenticity of the songs. Even as he descends to the personal in the love song 'Dopamine Eyes' it's in the same gloriously 'pop with everything in it' style that carries you along with it. 'Midnight Sun' does the same.
This is an album to sweep you away and it proves impossible to resist.
Taster Track : Dopamine Eyes
Secular Music -Vol.1 : Girls of the Internet
Best for : Serious destressing and those in need of warm comfort
'Secular Music -Vol 1' came as a happy surprise and not just because I had mistakenly believed them to be a garage punk band and, when that was cleared up, this was a foray into DJing by master chef, Tom Kerridge. The Tom Kerridge we're concerned with here is a DJ who has made one of the most beautifully chilled albums of recent times. He's a high priest to the acolytes forming the backing group The Voices of Epoch.
The concept is simple. Kerridge has written six songs of gloriously chilled and soulful soft electronica. He's then repeated most of the songs as extended versions, the exception being the rap of 'Bye, Bye, Bye' which is replaced by an alternative, instrumental version of 'Forever'. It's an album for DJs, yes, but the extended versions also work for anyone who doesn't want to let a good thing go.
This is for those stressful days that last forever. It's music that heralds the moment when you can collapse into a chair or hot bath, cry a few tears of relief that it's over, close your eyes and simply drift into destressing.
'Forever' can be classed as dub soul, bass heavy musically and chilled vocally. 'In My Dreams' and the excellent 'You'll Come Around' have more of a house music feel. 'Melodies' slips down as easily as a Drambuie digestif while 'Blistered' has the electronic stylings of the most chilled parts of Hot Chip. I love the humour in the delivery of the closing regular length song 'Bye Bye Bye'. I'm not a big fan of rap or hip hop (same thing, I know!) but this proves to be very listenable.
This is music that would fit naturally into the very best Cafe del Mar compilation. At times the songs feel like choruses in search of a verse. Or to put it another way, they're like the best part of a song on repeat! In its field, this feels like perfection. Every note, every squelching sound, every word position is unimprovable.
Now breathe. And then smile.
Taster Track : You'll Come Around (extended version)
Here and Nowhere : The Autumn Defense
Best for : Rediscovering the old music before punk blew it away
'Here And Nowhere' is a chance to rediscover and explore the sounds of AOR and American FM radio in the moments before punk rioted through Laurel Canyon and drove anything that didn't fit underground. Fortunately the old music didn't die. It went into hiding, emerging from its safe place only occasionally to check the lie of the land. If punk and indie created the story that the old music needed to be swept away, The Autumn Defense remind us that, you know, the old music wasn't that bad.
Part of the pleasure to be drawn from this album is in the opportunity for musical archaeology, to rediscover what music was like when musicians were given their head. Listening to this is like an archaeologist poring over the discovery of an ancient but perfectly preserved civilisation. That's possible because the production is crystal sharp, brightening every element of, say, 'In the Beginning' to lose nothing in the mix. It doesn't sound cheap to achieve that clarity, but it makes for a rewarding listen.
It means that this is music for listening to carefully, rather than for humming as you walk down the street. Songs such as 'Old Hearts', 'Winter Shore', 'In The Beginning' and 'Underneath The Rollers' are full of expert musicianship and melodies that satisfy over the course of a song rather than the duration of a hook. There's nothing here that is harsh, discordant or ugly but, equally, nothing is sacrificed at the altar of useless beauty. The harmonies are ones that gently lift you away from the noise and busyness of the world around you.
The flutes and the guitar solos that mark out the feel of 'The Ones' and the country twang of 'Raven of the Wood' bear testimony to the heritage of these songs. They are hallmark quality songwriting from the class of the Eagles and Steely Dan, handed down through Gram Parsons to current songwriters such as Father John Misty.
'Here and Nowhere' is an album of luxurious music, allowing you to invest time in listening to it and coming away completely satisfied.
Taster Track : Winter Shore