Dancing The Tango At the mango quango

Starring

Bon Iver, Dummy, Helen McCookerybook, The Suncharms, Tom Meighan

The Front Runners

SABLE fABLE : Bon Iver

Bon Iver’s latest album maintains his different creativeness but also reveals his heart as it enchants and entertains in equal measure.

Some context is helpful before you listen to this album. It’s divided into two. He describes the first part -SABLE - as a controlled burn clearing the way for new possibilities. The second part - wait for it, fABLE - is described as the book that follows. He goes on to explain “While SABLE was a work of solitude, fABLE is an outstretched hand.” And that feels like a very good description.

I’ve always found Bon Iver quite difficult and challenging, twisting away from the easy musical path and full of distortions and bent effects. That’s not the case with SABLE, which is intricate, delicate and intimate. There’s a delight in discovering you’re wrong. I never, ever thought I’d find a Bon Iver track that I’d be able to hum along to, but that’s the case with ‘SPEYSIDE’. It’s sparse but individual, haunting and feeling loaded with significance. 

The clear vocal lines in this part draw you in, but they’re still capable of providing surprises. The music on ‘Awards Season’ creeps up on you, before a group of saxophones launch themselves at you as if from behind a corner, never to be heard again.

The second part is fuller and brighter, as if suddenly bathed in light. It’s attractively wonky rather than synthesised to excess. ‘From’ is as catchy as Bon Iver gets and it’s enhanced not spoiled by the fact that it feels wrapped inside something that stretches it like a hall of mirrors or experienced murkily or like a picture viewed through opaque cellophane. ‘I’ll Be There’ is reassuring and soulful. It’s uncanny how ‘If Only I Could Wait’ sounds like a new beginning although one that’s still shaky on its feet.  ‘Day One’ gives praise to fresh starts with a kind of mutant gospel.

It’s not all plain sailing. ‘Walk Home’ seems to struggle to the end of its lines, probably deliberately. The reach for the higher vocal registers gives voice to the struggle, strength and, yes, optimism contained in the lyrics. It sounds flawed but it also captures the sense that it is flawed las humans are, and the price is ultimately worth it.

Towards the end there is the wonderful, country tinged ‘There’s A Rhythm’ that is like an awakening or a realisation that opens the way to a better life. It’s a suitable end point for the album, with the final ‘Au Revoir’ the music that rolls over the closing credits of a gripping tale.

Bon Iver treats his listeners like intelligent grown ups. Respond as such and you’ll find this to be a rich and satisfying treat.

Taster Track : There’s A Rhythm

The Chasing Pack

Free Energy : Dummy

An invigorating, energy fuelled burst of an album that verges on glorious chaos at times. 

Some may feel there are numerous reasons to dislike this album, but none of those reasons will be able to withstand the sheer force of the imagination, risk taking and creativity that lies at its heart.

This is one of the most adventurous albums I’ve heard in the last year or so. It’s a mix of quite harsh electronica, crunching guitars, sweet vocals and wonderful electronic effects. The bubble and whooping noises on ‘Opaline Bubblestar’ are a delight to hear.

From the off it’s messy and in your face. One track hurtles into the next at breakneck speed. ‘Minus World’ is an example of where the failsafe switch has failed or, more likely, been overridden. There’s a sense that the album is born of an attitude of seeing what would happen if you flicked a switch without knowing what it does. Take a risk and clear up the mess afterwards. It will appeal to you if you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you cooked a metal plate in a microwave. (Note : This is NOT recommended. Do NOT try this at home. It’s almost certainly very dangerous.)

There’s an odd feeling that it’s not fully formed. Angular noises have not been smoothed out. Brakes have not been applied to Dummy’s runaway juggernaut. It feels like the preliminary sketch for a work of art, that is somehow better than the finished one because it brings you closer to the artist than the marketplace.

Anything goes here, and that means that there are also some occasional respites. ‘Dip In The Lake’ offers a pause for breath, the kind you get when riding a bullet train as it enters a long tunnel before burst out into the city once more. The album closes with ‘Godspin’, a piece that fades quietly into soothing ambiance.

In its wholehearted commitment to doing things their way, it reminded me of Stereolab, both in the music and in the surprisingly sweet vocals.

‘Free Energy’ may take you close to chaos territory at times, but it’s an adventurous and highly creative work. It’s quite a thrill.

Taster Track : Nullspace

Showtunes From The Shadows : Helen McCookerybook

With its folksy charm this may, at first listen, sound as if it owes as much to Fiddler's Dram as it does to the punk ethic from which it ultimately springs but, trust me, it’s a grower.

Helen McCookerybook (daft name!) was the bass guitarist with the Chefs back at the start of the 80s. In their various incarnations they have been promoted by John Peel, became part of the Rough Trade family and were invited to support acts such as The Nightingales, Gina Birch and Vic Godard and the Subway Sect. 

She’s as sweet as your mother’s consoling words and as acute as a forensic scientist. Her songs may sound as pop as village crafts, the songs from Playschool and Camberwick Green, all grown up. But they contain lyrics that darken the tone to something like the frightening clowns that haunt your dreams. Try these from ‘Three Cheers For Toytown’

“Where the traditional wooden folk 

Are painted in toxic paint 

And telling offensive jokes 

And the ladies are Sunday saints.”

It’s ‘Lark Rise To Candleford’ meeting ‘The Wicker Man’. It’s punk in the way that it has a back to basics and couldn’t care less attitude.

It’s also the distilled essence of pop. Musically it’s a form of DIY folk, full of warmth and with a broad, slightly unsettling, grin on its face. It’s music from a bygone age, the soundtrack to a country fair, so different as to almost qualify as a novelty record and so authentic as to touch the heart of pop. Like any distilled essence, it may be too much for some.

In terms of recording, it’s a throwback to the days of bareboned Cherry Red minimalists, like the Marine Girls and Jane’s ‘It’s A Fine Day’. ‘The Ginger Line’ is pretty much built around a single bass line. In its persistent charm it’s a next door neighbour to early Jonathan Richman. You can almost hear each song being laid down individually in a country garden shed by someone who knows exactly what’s needed and won’t allow further embellishments.

This is an album that lures you into a curmudgeon free zone and then throws vinegar in your face, but it will still win you over.

Taster Track : It Wasn’t Me

Things Lost : The Suncharms

Here we have an album that captures the sound of ‘00s indie, but distinguishes itself from the crowd in surprising and enjoyable ways.

On the surface this is an album of fuzzy shoegaze, expertly written and performed. But, hold on. You’ve barely registered that on ‘3.45’ before moments of lighter, crystalline keyboard beauty cut through the fuzz. You’re hooked, waiting with keen anticipation for the next appearance out of the gloom.

It’s like a novel with sudden unexpected twists and nothing is quite as it seems. It struck me that there’s a vampire thread running through the album, in the titles at any rate. ‘3.45’ and ‘Daylight Is Here’ reference the approaching sunrise that dispels the horrors of might. ‘Satanic Rites’ conjures up the devil. ‘Whitby’ is where Bram Stoker wrote ‘Dracula’ - the most celebrated vampire novel. ‘And ‘Red Wine Kisses’ - well just think of fangs, neck, puncture wounds and the colour of blood. It’s compounded by an atmosphere of brooding menace in a stormy environment.

Those unexpected moments of beauty I mentioned earlier are the record’s salvation. The storm clouds break. The vampiric threat is held off. Good tunes cut through the murk. The guitar is allowed to step away from the musical maelstrom to have its delicate centre stage solo in ‘Daylight Is Here’. The energy of the music off sets the weariness in the vocals, leaving an impression of enduring melancholy but also of a voice stretching for salvation that is tantalisingly within reach. 

It’s a feeling that is captured in the excellent cover art. A menacing sea is set beneath a stormy sky and, in the middle of the picture, there’s a splash of brightness. It reflects the music of lost souls stretching for salvation.

If the Comsat Angels had been born into 00’s indie rather than 70’s post punk, this is what they might have sounded like. 

This is, above all,  an album to sink your teeth into.

Taster Track : Torrential Rain

The Reckoning : Tom Meighan

Loud. Relentless. Defiant. Three words to describe Tom Meighan’s debut from 2023. Is it too much?

Tom Meighan used to be the 13th best front man the world had ever seen when he was with Kasabian. That’s the view of Radio X anyway. He left following his sustained assault on his fiancee. They’re now married but at the moment he released this debut, the focus would have been on rebuilding his career and earning redemption.

This is a comeback album of sorts and, unsurprisingly, it bears a lot of the hallmarks of Kasabian’s arena sized rock. It’s a defiant comeback showing that nothing has changed on stage and his strengths are undimmed. It’s relentlessly over the top, carrying a whiff of desperation to prove he still has it.

What is ‘it’ exactly? Well, this is rock for raving. It’s music to carry to the furthest reaches of wide open spaces. You need that distance to appreciate it. There’s a weird, but not unattractive, feeling of lost, civilisations wielding clubs and full of tribal energy. Up close and personal it’s harder to appreciate its merits.

Meighan snarls, shouts and sneers his way through songs such as ‘Rise’, ‘Deep Dive’, ‘Daytona Racing’, the sonic battering ram of ‘Shout It Out’, ‘Everyone’s Addicted to Something’ - very nearly all of them, actually. Even on the songs that seek to offer a respite - ‘Scared’ and ‘The Reckoning’ - they continue to strive for the epic. This is an album full of heavy beats, legs akimbo guitar riffs, panicking keyboards, breathless vocals upfront and backing vocals like sirens.  It lacks any sense of restraint and that, perhaps, is unfortunate given the circumstances. 

In performance there’s no doubt this would be fun to watch. He whips up a storm but it’s less clear if it’s empty bluster or a thing of power and substance as it is with Idles or the Sleaford Mods. Meighan comes across as more of Ted Lasso’s explosive captain Roy Kent, the action hero’s Robbie Williams on steroids. At this point he’s an entertainer rather than an agent for change.

This is an album that will have its fans. It’s an album that will play at the biggest festivals as the credits roll. The awkward comeback is complete. Will it trigger a successful ongoing career that puts the past behind him? Maybe.

Taster Track : Everyone’s Addicted To Something

As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.

The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7EjHZr5_M3m0Zn5LEu_F3fMm&si=OhQF-ZPaBjUn4VMT