Vetiver, a band based around the talkents of Andy Cabic, have been around for a while now, without really making all that much of an impression on the music scene around them - I was very surprised to learn this is their fifth record, as I have only heard snippets of a few songs by them in the past and had lumped them in with the new breed of sunshine-laced afternoon pop bands. It's not a disaster getting into them this late, though, as everyone seems pretty agreed that none of their records stray very far from the same basic formula. A few songs stand out - the wistful 'Right Away', the warm 'Worse For Wear'. Actually, any of these songs could be described as both 'wistful' and 'warm' - the album flows through this furrow for long periods with barely any surprises or even points of interest at all. Not until 'Wonder Why', more than half way through the album, do we get to anything that could get radio play. That isn't really to say the album is down-beat, though - barring the beginning and end, where Cabic seems to have placed his most contemplative songs, it really does get quite rocky at points.
There is a lot of very good, pretty varied pop songwriting on show here, and overally the album has an absolutely lovely feel to it. It's all very much of-its-type - a lot of the chord patterns and progressions are obviously very at home on an indiepop record, and there were quite a few points where I noticed big similarities to other bands in the genre (Aberfeldy being the main one, despite this record being much more laid-back and 'swoony' than anything the Edinburgh popsters have ever released). The melodies are pretty, and would make for an enjoyable afternoon in the sun, without ever coming close to imprinting themselves on your brain. Gently strummed jangly guitars, intricate yet discreet drumbeats and softly spoken vocals all seem to accompany each other for much of the album, without any one of them taking the lead, making for a beautiful record that unfortunately seems to melt into the background slightly too often.
Low have been around for a very long time. One of the first bands to break out from the slowcore subgenre in the early 1990s, they have since made 8 albums that have followed roughly the same blueprint - beautiful downtempo hymn-like backing instrumentation covered in layers of some of the best vocal harmonies I've ever heard. Their music incorporates and almost post-rock feel and lays it over conventional song structures. Despite the fact that they have essentially remained the same for 20 years, with only brief flirtations with faster stuff or with electronica on more recent albums, they have managed to completely avoid sounding tired or bereft of ideas in any way, mainly in my opinion because so few other bands are able to do what they do with anywhere near the same levels of success. There are a good few albums by them I'd class as genuinely brilliant, with the pick of the bunch being 2001's 'Things We Lost In The Fire', one of the best records of the last decade. They've only released one album since 2005, however, and even that was a bit of a mis-step for them. From the opening bars of 'Try To Sleep' it is obvious they've re-evaluated what made them good in the first place, and are fully back on song - husband-and-wife vocalists Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker soar together over a lovely twinkly glockenspiel backing with an intimacy that Low have rarely achieved since the release of 'Dinosaur Act' a decade ago.
The first half of the album is slightly quicker, slightly more rocky, than I expected from Low. It contains all the more radio-friendly songs, like 'Try To Sleep' and 'Witches', about Sparhawk's childhood fear of witches and, bizarrely, people who act like Al Green. The lyrics are harrowing, even without the stark instrumentation;
"One night I got up and told my father there were witches in my room
He gave me a baseball bat and said here's what you do
When you have finally submitted to embarrassing capture
Take out that baseball bat and show those witches some pasture"
The second side is what really makes the record. '$20' pushes the emotions slightly over-the-top, milking everything it possibly can from the vocals, but it still works well, and then Majesty/Magic and Nightingale push the builds and dynamics more to the fore, with the album finally reaching a climax in the second half of the epic 'Nothing But Heart' before a gradual build-down into the final track, the almost poppy (compared to the rest of Low's stuff, anyway) 'Something's Turning Over'.
The album feels incredibly inviting, despite the desperate feel, with everything from the title right through to the last track feeling like it is directly addressing the listener. Sparhawk described the album as a kind of tool for companionship in desperate circumstances - "I'm looking in your eyes right now, and we need to figure out how to get through the next moment, together, as human beings". To me, this feels like 'Things We Lost In The Fire' has matured, growing old gracefully. There is a lot less of the straight despair of that record, with it converted into a vague sense of unease that is occasionally dwarfed by overwhelming sadness (the height of this definitely coming in '$20'). I'd say this is my favourite Low album of the last decade, and my favourite downtempo album to be released by anyone in the last couple of years. It might even be the record that tips them from being a cult band to something approaching mainstream success.
As with a lot of people of my generation, I grew up loving the Strokes. 'Is This It?' was released when I was 13, and 'Room On Fire' when I was 15 and just beginning to find my musical feet. These two albums, especially the second, will always be on or around my stereo, as they form part of my musical history. And it wasn't just me - pretty much the whole world of music was thrown off its axis by the release of ITI, as it showed that, firstly, there was still a place for this kind of upbeat, grubby, genuinely exciting rock 'n' roll band in the public consciousness, despite them being surrounded by the likes of Travis and Starsailor. Any guitar band that was big in the UK around that time seemed to hold 'The Bends' up as the height of musical achievement. The Strokes and, ironically, Radiohead themselves changed all that, with the Strokes retreating to 60s-inspired garage rock and Radiohead exploring the more electronic end of the spectrum. Admittedly, both these movements have since gone massively off the rails, but I think 'mainstream' indie rock was, for most of the last decade, in a lot better shape than it was in the 1990s.
'Angles', the groups first album since the disappointing 'First Impressions Of Earth', had the potential to be a disaster. All five members have had extensive other work since the release of the last album, with 4 of them forming side projects or releasing solo albums. An article in Pitchfork from a couple of weeks ago did not fill me with much hope - it seems from the interview that the band aren't really back together properly, and are more just a group of musicians laying down a backing for Casablancas to record his vocals over. The opening lyrics, 'I'm putting your patience to the test', are bound to be interpreted as a sort of confrontationalism that wasn't part of their sound back in the day. The album was recorded in an angry environment, and this is a much angrier album than they've released in the past.
One of the trademarks of the first three Strokes albums was how they kicked in. All 3 start off with a quiet, rhythmic guitar part, before the rest of the band kick in with a clean, quintessentially Strokes-y riff that sets you off on the album so well that you could almost write them yourself from there on in. When Machu Picchu kicks in, it's obvious this is a very different album to anything the group have released before, with a similar kind of structure, but with a very different sound. The guitar tones and Casablancas' vocals have been shot through with an 80s disco vibe, leading to a very, very different overall sound. Many people have said how this album is a return to the Strokes of old, but in truth I can't imagine an opening that was less Strokes-y whilst still obviously following on from their previous releases.
Musically, it is all pretty different. Albert Hammond Jr.'s guitar parts have become much more complex and intricate over the last 10 years, which in theory is a good thing, but it means that they've carried on the 'wall-of-sound' approach of 'First Impressions Of Earth', not really giving the songs time to breathe. Part of the joy of songs like 'Someday' was the way they seemed to keep propelling themselves despite not really being that frenetic. Now Hammond can play fast, he does, which isn't a good thing. When they try to get as close as they can to the feel of 'Is This It?', they write some good songs, such as 'Taken For A Fool', but there are none here that would have made the cut onto either of their first 2 albums.
The best song on the album is 'Under Cover Of Darkness', the lead single and second track. It's more like the Strokes proper, albeit more like their hard-rocking 3rd album phase. A vaguely reggae-y lilt to the guitars gives off some of their vibe of old, feeling genuinely fun and bouncy, 'like a puppet on a string' (I'm still trying to decide in my own head whether that lyric is actually a Sandie Shaw reference or not). It's definitely the Strokes' best single since 'Reptilia', but, fundamentally, it sounds like they were actively trying to make a song in the same vein as 'Last Nite', and there is absolutely none of the effortlessness that made their debut sound so refreshing. It sounds like they've tried incredibly hard to make an album they didn't really want to make. The fact it was written by 5 different people, not really coming together shows in the disjointedness - not only does it not really flow at all, but I find the different parts of the songs don't really flow well into each other, especially on album closer 'Life Is Simple In The Moonlight' - the album really is the sound of a fractured band. They'd been away for 5 years, but that clearly wasn't enough - although they claim to have already started work on album number 5, I think it would be best for all concerned if they just waited until they genuinely wanted to make another one. They've all got other things to do, and they can all churn out imitations of their earlier work individually until then. Some of their solo stuff has been pretty good - try this and this - and manages to recapture for more of the spirit and feeling of The Strokes 1.0.
All this sounds like I'm really giving the album a bad review - I'm not. It is an enjoyable album to listen to. But it could, and possibly should, have been so much better. They're never going to release another album as refreshing as 'Is This It?', and it is impressive that they haven't just stayed in the framework of their first two albums, but I can't see this album really winning over anyone who has never heard any of their older stuff.
Dream Diary sound exactly like a Sarah Records band. Exactly. This whole review will be trying to determine whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. If you already have strong views on Sarah-style jangly guitars, sickly-sweet melodies and breathy vocals, you don't really have a reason to read further - it's already clear whether you'll like it or not.
The supposed story of how the band met also seems to be trying to live up to the indiepop ideal. Apparently the lead singer and guitarist walked into each other on the street in New York, both dropping their iPods, only to realise that they were both listening to 'The Queen Is Dead'. Whether you believe this or not, it's a good story, and one that illustrates that from the very start the band were built on a fairly standard set of influences - you can hear all the various quintessential indiepop touchstones in the album somewhere, from the Ronettes to the Field Mice.
They do it all pretty well, and despite the first few listens falling into the standard Sarah trap and lapsing into aural wallpaper, with no real differentiation between the songs, after a while you really get to know and love pretty much everything on here. Young Veronica and El Lissitzky are probably my favourites, but they all have the same structure and ingredients, with just the melodies and lyrics changing. The guitar tones just don't change at all for the whole 30-odd minutes, which means as an album as a whole it is definitely missing something - there are definitely echoes of POBPAH's debut on here, but it has nowhere near the scope that that record had. It's quite hard to make out most of the lyrics - there's one much-repeated line on the album closer Audrey Of Spirits that I'm absolutely certain is 'sucking my penis' but that surely can't be - which only adds to the overall wallpaper-ness. You just can't deny the quality of the harmonies, which is all this record really aims for.
Fundamentally, you'd probably be better off listening to Primal Scream's 'Velocity Girl' 10 times in a row instead. But that could be said about a lot of albums. Dream Diary have managed to craft a fine album, continuing a very obvious tradition, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's never going to be anyone's favourite album, but I can't think of anyone not enjoying it.
The new Pains album is finally available to stream! I've embedded it at the bottom of the post, if you haven't already heard it.
As a whole, the record is about social misfits, and how there is 'hope' for them, about how there is a place for everyone. It goes into this subject so much that you could almost call it a concept album. The title, 'Belong', is the perfect word to sum this up, the title track is a great opener, its chorus setting up the singer as someone who 'just doesn't belong'. Track 2, 'Heaven's Gonna Happen Now', has been played live for a while, with its wobbly trumpet-like synth refrain at the side of the verse and stunningly good lyrics about abandoning the family home and moving to 'another town', expanding the boundaries of your life and finding a place for yourself. 'Heart In Your Heartbreak' has been around for a while, and my love of it is well known to readers of this blog, at least. It is more of a standalone song, in my mind - lyrically, it is a bit of an outlier on the album.
'The Body' is the first departure from the Pains norm, coupling a vocal melody that invokes 'Atmosphere' by Joy Divison and lyrics about being uncomfortable in your own skin with synth arpeggios and a layer of fuzz. It, as with the next few tracks, is more of a laid-back wash - more like 'Stay Alive' than 'Come Saturday', say. In itself, I'm not sure of it as a track - it doesn't really do very much. But then again, neither does the next track, 'Anne With An E', and I think that is probably my favourite song on the album. It is another song that contrasts singer Kip Berman's new life with how he used to be, presumably when he was in the late teens - 'The posters on the wall that were our only friends, their lives we never knew, but oh how we imagined'. The guitar tones on this song, and the synth sheen, are absolutely stunning - even without any lyrics, this could be an incredibly affecting song.
'Even In Dreams' is more of a classic Pains song, with quiet verses and a singalong chorus (I can see this song being very good live, along the same lines as 'Young Adult Friction' and 'The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart') sitting on top of a layer of soft guitars and punching drums. More of a straight love song, it still focuses on the differences between the singer and the rest of the world ('Yeah, there's nobody like you, is that why they don't like you like I do?') but this song and the last show that he is beginning to carve out a niche in the social spectrum of the kind he could only imagine back when he was an outcast somewhere where he 'just didn't belong'.
'My Terrible Friend' is a welcome return to the upbeat dancey fuzz-pop. It is, again, ostensibly a bit of a departure from the theme, but shows how much the character from 'Belong' has changed over the course of the album - the line 'Everyone is pretty and fun, everyone is lovely and young, everyone is gentle and gone, but everyone’s just everyone' shows a marked change in point of view, and is a kind of summation of the whole album up to this point. Also, and this is a very important thing, this song is just incredibly fun - I think I might have understated this element of the music so far, but TPOBPAH really are one of the most enjoyable bands to listen to around at the moment. They're able to get you thinking about their lyrics, and they have the occasional introspective song, but by and large the driving drums and fuzz just make you smile from ear to ear.
'Girl Of 1000 Dreams' is the one song on the album that hasn't really clicked for me yet. It is slightly grubbier and coarser than the rest of the album, and Kip tries out a more venomous singing style which I'm not sure I like. I can see why it's on there, and it's definitely not bad enough to be skippable or anything, but I can't say I'd recommend playing it to anyone to get them into the band - the melody doesn't really flow as well as most of the tunes on here, and the guitars seem to be missing something.
The penultimate track, 'Too Tough', sounds like a return to the Pains of old, with the introductory churning chords seemingly straight off their debut album. it reintroduces the 'Anne' of 'Anne with an E', this time with her seemingly stuck in a bad relationship. Again, it isn't one of the more memorable songs on the album, which definitely peaked a few tracks ago. The same is true of the closer 'Strange', which has all the raw ingredients of a great album closer, lyrics that sum up the album as a whole coupled with trebly, euphoric backing. As with the debut, the last track is the closest the band gets to actual shoegaze. Still, it feels a bit unsatisfying. But none of this is to detract from the sheer quality of the first 7 songs, and any of the last 3 would be shining lights on many other quality albums.
The band brought in Flood and Alan Moulder to produce, and it has definitely produced a more polished feel. This can often take away from something that sounded as raw as the debut album, but I think here it has just refocused their songs from dirty, fuzzy guitars to having Peggy Wang's keyboards and synths at the front of the mix. Which works very well. Despite this being my most anticipated album in a long time, I'd say it has exceeded my expectations, with lyrics that are a step up from anything they've done before and a theme that makes the album work as more than just a collection of individual songs. The worst you can say about it is that it tails off a bit towards the end, with the last 3 tracks not really up to the stellar standards of the first 7. Best of the year? It's only the 11th of March, I can't say. But if it isn't, then 2011 will have been a good year for music.
Well, everyone's been going crazy online for the release of the new Radiohead album today - I'd be interested to know how many man-hours have been wasted looking up news on and listening to the album - It won't have reached the apparent $120m dollars that Google's stunt of putting a game on its homepage cost the world last year, but it can't be all that far off.
And, to be honest, I'm finding it quite disappointing so far. The opener, 'Bloom', starts off fairly like the opener of the last album, sounding exactly how you'd expect Radiohead to start an album. On their last record, however, that angle was abandoned after only 30 seconds, and the 'actual' album started with a lovely, beautiful guitar tone. It was almost as though they were playing with your expectations and then showing that they were capable of doing something slightly more human. This time, they haven't bothered. The whole first side of the album is pretty electronic, with little of the heart of the last record and none of the invention of, say, Kid A. It's just Radiohead-by-numbers, and not even exciting numbers at that. Think 22/7 rather than π.
The second half is definitely an improvement on the first, but again, it all seems like a retread. What seems so far to be the popular choice for 'best track on the album', 'Codex', is pretty much exactly the same as Pyramid Song, only without the interesting time signature - a rehash of a 10-year-old song, from a band held as one of the more groundbreaking of the modern era. Not that impressive.
None of this is to say I dislike the album. I am going to give it a fair few more plays over the next few days, and might come to eat all the words I've just written. 'Separator' is a genuinely brilliant song, as is 'Give Up The Ghost', making for a fantastic end to the album. The pre-released single, 'Lotus Flower', is pretty good and atmospheric too, even though Yorke's dancing does remind me of one of those air-sock-men you get outside garages (this is a reference to the 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia' episode "The Gang Buys a Boat" - definitely worth a watch)
I'll probably do a more full review later. Until then, I'll probably be re-listening and trying to work out how anyone can see this as remotely comparable to the brilliance that was 'In Rainbows'.
Mogwai really have been around for a long time, so it's understandable that they might want to stray slightly from the forumla they had perfected by the mid-2000s. Their newer material has featured less of the sprawling post-rock (although the band have always despised that label) and more actual 'songs' in the true meaning of the term. Some of the music here is vintage Mogwai, but there are some surprising departures as well, such as the synth-fest that is 'Mexican Grand Prix', the stright-up indie rock of 'George Square Thatcher Death Party' and the soothing, tender piano-led blues of 'Letters To The Metro'. The album overall is almost tranquil, being definitely the most melodic Mogwai record I've heard, with the only real 'builds'-structured song on the album being the sprawling 'You're Lionel Ritchie' - and even this is more along the Explosions In The Sky route to melodic post-rock for the first half, and then very Spiderland-y for the second half, and not really what you would consider in the 'classic' Mogwai style.
The album really does feel like a new beginning for the Glaswegians. They seem to have been trying to find a new direction, away from the abrasive soundscapes of their early work, for a good few albums now, and only with 'Hardcore....' does it actually feel like this could be the benchmark of later- (or possibly middle-)period Mogwai. You can hear how they got here from 'Young Team', with a few moments, especially in the second half of the album, that sound like vintage Mogwai - it seems like a culmination of all their past work. They're one of the few bands still around from the mid-90s who manage to keep themselves sounding fresh, still sounding like they're challenging themselves to expand their sound. They could even expand their fanbase with this - it's probably more accessible than any other Mogwai record, despite the lack of much in the way of vocals, and is in places genuinely tender, but still retains the spirit and fire of any of the band's releases.
Taking a lot from both the Byrds-ian jangle of early Sarah bands and the fuzz-pop of the Jesus & Mary Chain, Bubblegum Lemonade are clearly influenced by a lot of their Scottish forebears. Mostly the work of just one man, Laz McCluskey, with the occasional female backing vocal, the LP and EPs they've released so far have been choc-a-block with pop classics, and this second album (see what they did there?) is more of the same. Opening song and lead single 'Caroline's Radio', a reference to the pirate pop radio station Radio Caroline, gets the album off to a great start, with a great melody and a definite Teenage Fanclub vibe. The rest of the album continues in a similar vein - there isn't a bad track here, and McCluskey doesn't fall into the trap of so many indiepop bands of making it very hard to distinguish between the songs. It all sounds just like McCluskey is having fun, throwing bongos, tambourines and glockenspiels into the mix at varying points on the record.
This album is easily identifiable as a Matinee Recordings release. Matinee were formed in the late 90s as a way of reviving the classic jangle pop sounds of labels like Sarah and Creation. This album is a definite part of that lineage - there really is nothing new here at all, and it's unlikely anyone will be listening to it in even 2 years' time, but for now it is just a fun record with great catchy tunes and jangly guitar. I can see Bubblegum Lemonade continuing like this for a while - even though it is extremely unlikely they'll ever release a hit record, they could well carve out a cult following in this bubblegum pop niche.
This is an EP of a few indiepop bands covering Northern Soul, released back in the pre-POBPAH days, when Fortuna Pop! was an even smaller label than it is now. I heard about it from a really old interview in which Sean Price, Fortuna Pop's 'El Presidente', did a run-through of the label's 10 most significant releases, and I had to track it down. Sean says that there was a fair amount of angst during the recording, especially between Kicker and Comet Gain. Don't quite understand this, as half of Kicker was actually in Comet Gain....
The bands all make a decent fist of it, with Kicker the highlight, doing a brilliant stomping, bass-led version of The Inticers' 'Since You Left' that genuinely sounds like it could have been the original - the singer's voice fits the song perfectly. You can find an mp3 of it here. The other songs are all great though, although I'm still not completely convinced by Airport Girl, Sean's own band. Bar a couple of great singles, they always seem to fall a bit flat to me, and their cover of Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette) by the O'Jays is the weakest song here, with very little of the feel of the original song, but still sounds like a pretty good 80-s style indiepop tune. The Butterflies of Love, possibly Fortuna Pop!'s biggest band at the time, turn in a pretty good heartfelt version of 'Two Lovers' by Mary Wells, and Comet Gain's version of Dena Barnes' 'If You Ever Walk Out On My Life' is really ace, with chiming trebly guitars and a great chorus.
I don't know the originals of most of these songs, but am definitely going to look into Northern Soul a bit more. If anyone has any recommendations, please leave them as a comment - I don't seem to get many comments apart from people under pseudonyms pointing out factual 'errors', and I know a fair few of you are reading this, so take the plunge!
I didn't really like the Decemberists' last album. Having written a few top quality albums of americana-y English-leaning indie folk, they suddenly took a misguided turn for prog. They'd always been pretty theatrical, but 2009's 'The Hazards Of Love' took it to a new level. Now they've abandoned that path, thankfully, going back towards their roots and making an album with Peter Buck of REM fame that is fairly clearly heavily influenced by the college rock progenitors. I'm not sure whether the album's title is meant to be an overt Smiths reference or not, but this is definitely the most 80s-sounding album in the band's ouevre. The sprawling epics are gone, replaced by shorter, tauter tracks. The best song on the album, 'Calamity Song', sounds pretty much exactly like an amalgamation of the first 5 tracks of 'Reckoning'. This is in no way a bad thing though, and indeed makes for one of the best songs of 2011 I've heard so far. 'Rox In The Box' is also a really good song, while being a fairly unadventurous sing-a-long folk ballad. These songs set the pattern for the whole record. Everything here is fairly obvious, but some of the melodies and instrumentations are absolutely gorgeous.
The descriptive, intellectual (and to be honest, pretentious) lyrics that previously defined the band's output are mostly gone, with only the odd relapse ('And the Panamanian child stands at the Dowager Empress' side' - what?). Indeed, much of what made the band unique in the current American scene has been abandoned. It is definitely a lot less artistic than their early albums, and could really have been made by any one of a number of bands. I never thought I'd say that about a Decemberists album. They've made what is a really good, enjoyable rock record, but lost something along the way.
It's been a very long time since 'The Shepherd's Dog', Sam Beam's excellent 2007 album that was his springboard to the forefront of what was then a fairly new & growing american folk revival. Since then, artists like Bon Iver have taken his baton on and carved out their own styles in the niche. It isn't that surprising that Beam has tried something new with his new album, following Sufjan Stevens's retreating figure into the vague realms of electronic music, and that is apparent from the opening of the first track. 'Walking Far From Home' is utilizes almost Beach Boys-y harmonies, backing them with a mixture of synth, fuzz and choirs. The result is an excellent song different from anything he's done before, but still obviously him. The synths take an even more obvious front seat in 'Monkeys Uptown', a song that, to be honest, isn't that inspiring.
That said, it isn't totally different from before. There are still the biblical references and the odd piano ballad and fingerpicked Deep South folk tune. 'Half Moon', probably my favourite song on the album, could have appeared on any of Beam's previous albums. A lilting doo-wop backing vocalist joins him, making an almost calypso-y beat. The swanny whistles and flutes pointlessly warbling could be seen as a mistake, as could the fact that this song, like a few others on the album, outstays its welcome by at least a minute.The songwriting more than makes up for this, however, with this album featuring what is definitely Beam's strongest set of songs to date. There isn't as standout a track as 'Flightless Bird, American Mouth' here, but the songs work really well as an album, feeling relaxing and lilting while having a dark undercurrent. I can see myself getting to know this album better over the next few months, and it definitely has the potential to be one of the better records of 2011, working its way gradually into your brain over repeated listens.
Beam's new marimba-and-synth direction is definitely an interesting one. The album is really good in patches, but I'm not quite qure yet whether it has the quality to really grab your interest for the full length. It'll be interesting to see whether he continues further down this way with his next album, or whether he discards it as quickly as he did the African influences of 'The Shepherd's Dog'. Either way, I really hope he's quicker with his next album than he was with this one.
Written as a concept album documenting an 8-month sailing holiday around the East Coast of America, Cape Dory is very much an album of the moment. It's yet another surf-pop album with female vocals and a heavy layer of warm fuzz. More than a few bands have tried exactly this formula recently, foremost among them probably being the Dum Dum Girls and Best Coast, two albums I genuinely like a lot. This isn't a particularly challenging listen (or even, I'm betting, a particularly challenging write), but I definitely have a soft spot for this kind of stuff. Unfortunately, Tennis just don't really find it.
Some of the more laid-back melodies, like 'Bimini Bay', really are nice, and the album would be really good for a relaxing day at the beach, say. Singer Alaina Moore has a really pleasant voice, but one that it is hard to really follow the lyrics of in any meaningful way - it's more of a calming wash than it is giving anything approaching a definitive statement. Some of the songs on their own are pretty good, 'Marathon' being the obvious choice as a lead single and 'Baltimore' also being a standout track, but they just get washed away when they're part of the album as a whole. Cue bad 'beach pop' sandcastle metaphor.
This record acts as very nice background music. Its very twee (thats the adjective, not the musical style - with a small 't' rather than a capital, I suppose) and extremely inoffensive, but doesn't really manage to impose itself at all. At less than half an hour long, it's very easy listening - and might actually be approaching that much-maligned genre rather than those words just being a description. And no review can be complete without mentioning that truly terrible artwork. I have literally no idea how anyone could have thought that was a good idea - irony doesn't make absolutely everything OK.
(I'm going to start doing Spotify links to songs in posts. There are a few embedded. Enjoy.)
[Plastilina, 2010]
Glasgow's Felt Tips have been around for a while, and have recorded a few singles over the last 3 years, but this is their debut album proper. A lot of the great songs I have been listening to in demo form for a while are re-recorded here, thankfully, meaning they can finally see wider release. Another in the long line of great Scottish indiepop bands, instrumentally the Felt Tips are just an above-average jangle pop band, albeit one with an ear for a great tune. It is lyrically where they really shine.
The lead singer Andrew's voice is perfect for the tales of teenage fumbles, the songs forming genuine stories with proper characters and everything. Bought And Sold, the tale of a trip down from Scotland to London, is a case in point, as is Silver Spoon, a much bleaker tale of a girl from a rich background who suffers horrendous injuries in a car crash. The backing music initially feels jangly and happy, but listening to more than a couple of these songs at once reveals depths, which try to emphasise just how empty and depressing the life that the singer appears to be trying to leave can be. I like to think the album is autobiographical, because the singer's experiences seem a lot more in tune with those of genuine people than a lot of their contemporaries. Maybe my favourite song on the album, however, is Dear Morrissey, a paean-of-sorts to the Morrissey of the 80s, and all that he stood for, which has in many ways been undermined by his latter-day actions (listened to Paint A Vulgar Picture recently?)
Had I realised this album had come out in 2010 when I wrote my run-down, it would definitely have made an appearance in the top 10. As it is, I think I'll just be listening to it for a good portion of 2011, at the very least.
Originally sold to the masses as a 'shoegazey Sonic Youth', Yuck have been building up a lot of hype recently. Chosen as one of the BBC's Sound of 2011 bands, and formed by some of the ex-members of Cajun Dance Party, they had a lot of potential to be truly terrible. The Vaccines, their rivals in the BBC poll, seem to be another in the line of terrible 'indie' NME bands of recent years, but Yuck are actually surprisingly good.
They claim to be influenced by Mark Kozelek and various shoegaze bands, but in reality at least half their songs could have been released by late 80s/early 90s Teenage Fanclub, while the rest draw heavily on a variety of sources, all of which I love. 'Georgia' is one of the lead singles from the album, and probably the most poppy this album gets, with echoes of various older American indiepop bands like Black Tambourine. 'Operation' is, essentially, exactly the same as 'Teen Age Riot', apart from lacking a bit of drive in certain sections. None of this is a bad thing in any way for a band still on their debut album, and they show the ability to be original as well, as in 'Rubber', the monolithic, devastating shoegaze ender to both the album and their live sets. Some of the guitar work really is exceptional, with jangle and fuzz both used to great effect.
Some of the slower songs are also worthy of praise. 'Suck', the only song where the Red House Painters influence really is evident, is much closer in spirit to their acoustic side-project, Yu(c)k, which released a really good EP late last year. Everything they've done until this album is downloadable on their website - I advise checking a lot of it out.
They basically just make bloody good 80s revivalist shoegazey rock music, the other side of the coin to the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's 80s revivalist shoegazey pop music. And I think that was something that was lacking slightly in the music scene until Yuck came along.
Here's the second part of my 2010 rundown, slightly later than originally promised.
5 - Best Coast - Crazy For You
Definitely the most divisive album of the year. I come down solidly in the 'pro-' camp, though. It's neither clever - I lost count of the times she uses the same 'lazy-crazy' rhyme over the first half of the record - nor new, and it's potentially very annoying (especially the lead single, 'Boyfriend', as my housemates can attest). I just love it. There are few genres that can get under my skin more than this kind of summery fuzz-pop. Bethany Cosentino, who formed this band (it was rumoured, with her ex-babysitter) after leaving Pocahaunted, is scarily obsessed with the subject of these songs, enough for some lyrics to send a shiver down the spine, but instead of being a bad thing, this gives the whole album a cohesiveness which means it works well as a full album, something frequently lost in this mp3 age, and especially rare in throwaway pop like this. Not every album needs to be a challenging listen, and some of this album is just brilliant.
4 - The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt
There are obvious easy comparisons with 3rd-album-era Dylan, but in my mind this stretches no further than the fact that a guy with a fairly nasal voice has made a folk album good enough and accessible enough to be taken on and lauded by the wider music community. He's a lot more like Nick Drake, to my ears. The guitar-work especially is a lot more intricate than Dylan ever managed in his pre-electric days, and despite the lyrics being fairly obvious ('I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone', etc.), they are undeniably heartfelt and effective. This album, his second, takes the extraordinary songwriting and emotion from certain songs on his debut and makes it work over a full album. The rise in emotionless pop-'folk' this year (Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons, to name two of the worst offenders) has, to its credit, made this kind of thing fashionable again, and I think we could be about to have a 2011 renaissance of genuine folk albums like this. Even if they do come from Sweden.
3 - Wive - Pvll
An album apparently recorded over the internet, with the band never completely assembling, this is probably the most beautiful, and underappreciated, record of the year. Primarily using a violin and some samples as percussion (including, most effectively, turntable hisses and pops), as well as a few guest musicians, London's own Wive managed to produce an album that combines the kind of rootsy melancholy of Bon Iver's debut with electronics and feedback. If I had to sum this up in one word, it would definitely be 'haunting', but that is to do a disservice to the variety that is present if you just scratch the surface of the record. Listen to 'Lazarvs and Dives' if nothing else.
2 - The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night
In the 'independent rock & pop' sections of the popular press, 2010 seems to have been the year of the Arcade Fire. Good as The Suburbs is, however, I think the Besnard Lakes wrote the best album to come out of the massively enviable Canadian indie scene this year. Very much an album to be listened to start-to-finish, the lush orchestrations and driving rhythms bring out the soaring melodies and implant them into your brain. The twin vocals of the husband-and-wife team of Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas work perfectly together, interlocking and alternating in style. Every single one of the tracks here, especially up to track 5 or so, is a potential highlight. The songs feel like I have always known them, without being 'catchy' per se. After this and their previous album, Dark Horse, the Besnard Lakes are well on their way to becoming one of my favourite bands.
1 - The National - High Violet
In the 3-year wait since their last, and best, album, Boxer, the National had built up some pretty big expectations. Their core fanbase, including me, weren't originally completely convinced, with the new songs appearing to be their attempt to break into the mass market, lacking the knowing witticism and intimacy of their previous albums. However, the album is a massive grower, and succeeds completely at what it tries to do, with songs like 'England' and 'Conversation 16' among the very best of the year. Played live, even the weaker songs develop some remarkable character. In the last couple of months I have begun to appreciate this album a lot more, and think that it (unfortunately for their fans, fortunately for the band) could be the start of their ascent to genuine global levels. A worthy album of the year, from a band it's hard to imagine releasing anything that wouldn't also have claimed that title. Yes, I'm a bit of a fan-boy.
It's not all that hard to guess who Northern Portrait's main influence are. Smiths copyist bands have been ten-a-penny over the last 25 years, and on first listen Northern Portrait are no different to any of the ones that have gone before. Admittedly the situation may be slightly different in Denmark, where Northern Portrait hail from, but the lead singer seems to make a concerted effort to sound as much like Morrissey as he possibly can, without the charm and wit of the original. A lot of the lyrics sound like Smiths lyrics, but only in the sense of flippancy and introspection.
But I just love this kind of jangly, carefree, accessible indiepop. The songs are just of such high quality, especially the guitar playing, that the album manages to make you forget just how much of this kind of stuff has gone before. Indeed, I'd say it was a better album than either the Smith's debut or 'Meat is Murder'. After a few listens, the band starts to take on a personality of their own and move away from their forebears. A couple of the members of the band used to have another group, the Mirror Lounge, which sounds a lot less Smiths-y, but just doesn't sound as compelling. Sometimes, we need bands that are able to reinterpret older styles as well as Northern Portrait do. I can't see them ever being anyone's favourite band, but this is a really good, fun, personal album.
Seeing as it's New Year's Eve, I thought the time was right to do a rundown of the albums I have enjoyed most this year. Here's the first half, and I'll put up my 5 top albums of the year probably tomorrow.
10 - Belle & Sebastian - Write About Love
Of all the eagerly-anticipated albums this year, perhaps none had expectations so divided. Some people, fuelled by the couple of songs released on a B&S TV show a couple of months early, thought this had the potential to be a true return to their late-90s top form. Others, fuelled by the prospect of songs featuring Carey Mulligan and Norah Jones, thought it would be a further descent into the MOR, continuing along the lines of the second half of 2005's The Life Pursuit. In the end, they were probably both right. Some truly amazing indiepop is tempered by some dross, making for an album that is enjoyable but unmemorable. Hopefully they can get a couple more albums out over the next few years and re-find their stride.
9 - Wild Nothing - Gemini
In my review of Wild Nothing's neo-C86 debut, I said that it was a very good dreampop album with few ideas of its own. The couple of weeks since I wrote that review have slightly softened that position in my mind - it has improved even further with a few more listens, and I do now think that this is genuinely one of the best albums of the year. The accompanying Golden Haze EP is well worth picking up too. And, of course, I still love the cover art.
8 - Shrag - Life! Death! Prizes!
Previously much better live than on record, Shrag are one of those bands that seem to be able to churn out songs that feel like you've always known them. Post-punk (specifically post-X Ray Spex) in attitude but almost twee in melodies, they are the perfect band for a specific mood. This, their second record after they released a compilation of singles last year, is their first attempt at a proper long-player. It's just so fun - Tight in August is one of the year's angsty pop gems. Despite the lack of many potential singles, the like of which their previous record was stuffed with, I prefer this album, as it feels much more mature, without feeling like its anywhere near fulfilled the band's obviously massive potential. This makes me pretty excited for their follow-up, although I think it could be a while in coming as they cement their place in the London live music scene.
7 - Beach House - Teen Dream
Probably the biggest dream-pop album of the year, this record got pretty much universal acclaim form a variety of influential sources. I do think it is a genuinely stunning album. I can see how people might see it as slightly 'boring' and ineffectual, as it is not exactly imposing, but the melodies and harmonies gradually unfold and wrap themselves around you, in a similar way (although obviously not as powerfully) as 'Loveless'. Indeed, the more I listen to this album the more shoegazey I think it is, although with sweeter melodies and less abrasive noise than many albums of the genre - the most similar genuine oldschool shoegaze band would probably be Slowdive, but there are also a lot of other obvious influences among their contemporaries - I definitely think they've been listening to quite a lot of 'For Emma, Forever Ago'.
6 - Allo Darlin' - Allo Darlin'
I got fairly obsessed with this album back in the Spring. They, as with many bands this year, are incredibly open in their influences - in this case, 90s K and Sarah bands. 'Dreaming', the opening song, takes all the best elements of this scene - the boy-girl interplay vocals are straight out of 'C is the Heavenly Option' - and packages it with a ukulele. Some of the songs are weaker than others - I don't normally skip songs, but even I find 'Heartbeat Chilli' virtually unlistenable - but they seem to be able to put their mind to most things in the indiepop spectrum with a remarkable degree of success, and you can't help but be utterly charmed by the album as a whole. I think I definitely overplayed it, as I haven't listened to it much at all over the last couple of months, but there is no way I wouldn't put it up as my favourite British indiepop album of 2010, and there is some very strong competition.
Here are some other albums I heartily recommend from this year, but that didn't make the final top 10.
11 - Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz
12 - Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
13 - Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo
14 - Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
15 - James Blackshaw - All Is Falling
16 - Freelance Whales - Weathervanes
17 - Math And Physics Club - I Shouldn't Look As Good As I Do
18 - The Arcade Fire - Suburbs
19 - Free Energy - Stuck On Nothing
20 - Delorean - Subiza
21 - Standard Fare - The Noyelle Beat
22 - Teenage Fanclub - Shadows
23 - Thee Silver Mt. Zion & Tra-La-La Band - Kollaps Tradixionales
24 - Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Let It Sway
25 - Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
I heard about this album from a spin.com article on artists' favourite albums of the year. Everyone else just gave the usual two lines on how Beach House's album had 'beautiful harmonies' or whatever, but Patrick Stickles, frontman of Titus Andronicus, turned in a screen-long summary of why he loved this record, showering it with praise, saying that it is "the sort of album you will put on ten years later and be amazed that you still know all the words". I had to have a listen, obviously. The first track jumped out at me - as bands like POBPAH and Talulah Gosh well know, if you have a song with the same name as the band, it has to be bloody good. And this is. You can definitely see why Stickles likes it - it has a very Titus-y feel, especially for the first few songs. The backing is tight, the tunes are solid. After about 3 plays through I can already say that I love this album, although whether I'll still know all the words in 10 years is another story....
To be honest, I can't better Patrick Stickles' review above. Go to the link, then go to Spotify and find the album. You're in for a treat.
I've been pretty slow at getting into Wild Nothing, a band led by a man called Jack Tatum from Blacksburg, Virginia, who play luscious, dreamy lo-fi indiepop. Along with contemporaries such as Beach House and Avi Buffalo, they've been part of what has been quite an interesting year for American indie rock, but have a much more poppy slant than either of these two bands. Wild Nothing have much more in common with old-school British C86 bands like the Field Mice than with much of the rest of the modern American music scene, bar some of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's more dreamy moments. They manage to blend this with a touch of what sounds to me like electro of the early New Order type, making a very enjoyable album from start to finish, albeit one with more than a hint of 'background music' about it. Some of this album, such as the second track, Summer Holiday, gets pretty close to the quality of the very best of its forebears. Nothing very original, but it is hard not to make an enjoyable album with influences like these, and Wild Nothing succeed surprisingly well. The fact it boasts my favourite artwork of the year is a bonus.
I can see this album making many end-of-year lists, not least my own, but find it hard to imagine that I'll still be listening to it regularly 5 years down the line. The onus is on Wild Nothing to push forward this potential and write a second album with which they can definitively state that they have something new to offer to the dreampop world.
Here's a video for my favourite song on the album, Summer Holiday.
London band Absentee have built up a loyal live following in the Capital with their twee indie alt.folk, featuring the twin vocals of the fey, angelic Melinda Bronstein and the dark, brooding baritone of Dan Michaelson. The wide variety of backing instruments, including such things as glockenspiels, vibraphones and melodicas, gives a bright summery sense of novelty to some of the songs, only slightly diminished by the ‘trampish’ drawl of Michaelson. The heavier songs, such as Boy, Did She Teach You Nothing?, quicken the tempo slightly and keep the album from becoming tedious, while the slower songs, such as They Do It These Days, give the album its quirky character. It is hard to understand why Absentee are not much bigger than they are, as they have memorable hooks and choruses far better and more accessible than a lot of the bands regularly played on the radio, as well as a large side-helping of cynicism to win over the critics. It is hard to work out whether their almost uniformly positive world view is tongue-in-cheek or not; even though the lyrics deal with heavy subjects such as heartbreak and rejection, the music and vocals try to make light of this and point to an undiminished sense of childish hope. Although not an album to listen to every day, this is a very solid collection of songs that immediately fasten themselves in your brain which, although not always good, is definitely a plus point in this case. It makes for a genuinely enjoyable album, which never really threatens to turn into anything more.
