St Vincent – Actor

St Vincent - Actor

Not that I want to make any broad, sweeping generalisations or anything, but the British music scene is currently dominated by female singers, song writers and musicians who all seem to be doing much the same thing. Little Boots, Florence and the Machine, Ladyhawke, La Roux and the rest are all nestling somewhere on the sound/look radar between ‘the 1980s’ and ‘twee’ and it’s boring. There have been numerous articles in the British press where writers have applauded the industry/themselves for managing to move on from backward-looking blokey bands to backward-looking, pretty women. La Roux’s hair may be a work of art, but that’s about it.

Those seeking some kind of relief from the kind of music that we in the UK are currently being told to like could do a lot worse than picking up the new album by St Vincent. Actor is a huge step forward from her still impressive 2007 debut, Marry Me, finding her coasting along delicately on gorgeous, string-laden backdrops one minute, before wielding a guitar in the middle of all that prettiness the next. There is real experimentation here, while the lyrics swing between dry humour and pathos; both reveal themselves with each listen. Oh, and her hair’s pretty good too.

St Vincent, real name Annie Clark, has constructed a wonderfully intricate album, both musically and lyrically. More often than not, the songs are built around her string arrangements, which are deliberately Disney-esque; however, she builds up these fairytale worlds in order to knock them down. Her guitar playing is extraordinary; she’ll tear into these distorted riffs suddenly, almost splitting her songs in two. These moments of energy sound like real pockets of release; they are the catharsis that Clark avoids in her mannered, controlled vocal delivery.

Like artists such as Kate Bush or PJ Harvey before her, Clark adopts characters for her lyrics. On Actor, she concerns herself with women trapped by relationships, suburbia or normality, and the strings-guitar bi-polar music perfectly suits her words. Lead single ‘The Strangers’ is a case in point; wedding day fights and Playboys under mattresses are repressed until the song erupts half way through.

‘Save Me From What I Want’ is jerky mix of percussion and processed guitars with Clark declaring ‘I’m a wife in watercolours, I can wash away/What seventeen cold showers couldn’t wash away’; it sounds like some kind of despair experienced through a Prozac-clouded mind. The tension breaks a little on ‘The Neighbours’, where the watchful gaze of nuns, parents and neighbours provoke a rare crack in Clark’s delicate voice. It works brilliantly. … Continue Reading

Patrick Wolf – The Bachelor

Patrick Wolf - The Bachelor

Did anyone else widen their eyes in glee when Patrick Wolf said he’d been miserable after the experience of touring The Magic Position (2006)? Yes, he’s got his pain back… so much so that he’s virtually re-made Wind in the Wires (2004) track for track.

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Tom Brosseau – Posthumous Success

Tom Brosseau

You’ll spend the first minute or so of Posthumous Success unable to decide whether or not Tom Brosseau is vaguely incompetent or a genuine craftsman.

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Cody ChestnuTT – The Headphone Masterpiece (two disc re-issue)

Cody ChestnuTT – The Headphone Masterpiece

Sometimes, you stumble across something so terrible, that it’s an actual effort to drag yourself through it once more, for the purposes of reviewing. For whatever reason, that album review you were supposed to finish hangs over you like a dread spirit of reviewers past. See, if you didn’t have to review it, you could just confine it to the trash and never hear it again. But as you’re reviewing it, there’s a feeling of guilt if you don’t listen to it at least once more, just to confirm it was that terrible, just to pull something out from the mire to make a reference to.

That The Headphone Masterpiece is one of these albums should already be obvious to you. The thing is, it really didn’t have to be this bad. Cody added those sly licks and sharp, dirty asides to The Roots version of The Seed 2.0, which was without a doubt one of the best crossover hits of the past decade. Smooth, dirty, witty, sharp and with a huge funk lick, it was a massive single, and deservedly so. … Continue Reading

Jason Lytle – Yours Truly, The Commuter

Jason Lytle - Yours Truly, The Commuter

When a former (or indeed current) member of any band you like releases a solo record, I always think it’s best to try wherever possible to treat it as a completely separate entity to the band’s output. However, in the case of Jason Lytle, it’s difficult to view his debut effort Yours Truly, the Commuter outside the context of Grandaddy.

The album has all the ingredients you would expect from a Jason Lytle album. It’s bursting with melodies, often masked with fuzziness and occasionally backed up with nice electro touches. His delivery is as woozy and forlorn as ever, which makes it increasingly affecting as he enters his 40s.

On the record’s title track, Lytle leaves us in no doubt about his feelings regarding the recent past, and his hopes for the future: “Last thing I heard I was left for dead… I may be limping/But I’m coming home”. This is a bold statement of defiance, tellingly placed as the album opener. It encapsulates the bruised sense of hope which few people can generate as well as Jason Lytle. … Continue Reading

Hatcham Social – You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil

Hatcham Social - You Dig The Tunnel, I'll Hide The Soil

The recurring theme of 2009 is ‘The Eighties’, whether it be the pop renaissance spearheaded by La Roux or Lady GaGa, the countless indie bands who dip into new wave and post punk such as White Lies and…. well almost every band on the ‘mainstream’ circuit right now. Then to crudely capitalize on the zeitgeist and make one last pay cheque before they collect their pensions, acts from the eighties like Spandau Ballet and Madness have reformed; there has even been a new album from Depeche Mode.

You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil tears me up a bit, as a child of the eighties I can fondly remember listening to the likes of Aztec Camera, Kate Bush, Fine Young Cannibals and *cough* Men at Work, yet I don’t really want to hear ‘new’ bands putting out a slightly better produced version of what has gone before. I don’t know whether the concept of a band that consists of a bassist, guitarist, drummer, vocalist and the occasional keyboardist or synth player is dead, or whether we just happen to live in an age that is culturally fatigued, and so inevitably ideas are just recycled for a new audience. The reality is that Hatcham Social was never going to be the groundbreaking band that I seek, but it is possible to enjoy their music nonetheless. … Continue Reading

Noisettes – Wild Young Hearts

Noisettes - Wild Young Hearts

The music industry is stuck in a strange place here in 2009. Much has been written about what seems to be the current trend; signing a band then releasing a single to generate enough hype to make it onto the ’sound of 2009′ or ‘ones to watch in 2009′ lists, releasing another single or two before unleashing the album in a whirl of press and promo, only to be met with a backlash of over-hype, and poor album sales, subsequently resulting in the artist being dropped. Rinse and repeat with the next big thing and you end up with plenty of one-hit wonders and an increasingly small number of career artists. Bands who develop and evolve their sound over a period of three, four or five albums simply don’t have the time to flourish. Hits must be produced or they’re out the door. The Futureheads and The Zutons are two recent examples of this. Impressive debut albums were followed up by lacklustre second or third releases and suddenly these artists have no-one willing to put out their music.

Which brings me onto Noisettes. With a debut album that flew under most peoples radars, one would have expected them to have been carted off a credit-crunch hit label the same way as a multitude of now-forgotten artists, something, however, saved them from the chop and they are back with second album Wild Young Hearts, and as a thank-you to whoever has saved them from the bargain bin at your local service station, they really have pulled out all the stops. … Continue Reading

Foreign Born – Person To Person

Foreign Born - Person To Person

Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste once called LA-based Foreign Born his favourite new band. That’s good right? If Grizzly Bear are good, the music they consume must also be pretty good? Alas, it’s been two long years since Foreign Born’s last album, so the ‘new’ tag surely no longer applies. Plus, band recommendations are always quite an unpredictable element with which to base musical assumptions. So read this instead.

Person to Person is their new album. Following the 2007 debut, On The Wing Now, this album finds Foreign Born continuing to pursue the anthemic echelons they strived to accomplish on their first album, and with heartening results.

‘Blood Oranges’ is the first track, and the timbre commences with brilliantly optimistic aplomb. All twangly guitars and uplifting breaks. Staccato drum fills shaking and jolting the track when vocalist Matt Popieluch begins, his howling backed by haunting vocals. It’s a blinding opener, instilling a sense that this will be a good record. This is rather disappointingly sullied with the following track, ‘That Old Sun’. This one’s a tad irksome. It begins with a guitar lick that at first is tolerable, but soon becomes tiresome and finally darn unpleasant. Sadly, this little nugget of annoyance persists throughout much of the track, which never really seems to go anywhere.

Thankfully, much of what follows on Person to Person has generous smatterings of good, solid rock. ‘Vacationing People’, the first single from the album, demonstrates the finer compositional structures present throughout the album, seemingly tapering, before launching into an uplifting chorus. The results of which are jubilant and anthemic, slow yet ultimately rewarding. Similarly, following track, ‘Winter Games’, rolls along with a confident demeanour, eventually making way for a melodious, stirring chorus. Later track, ‘It Grew On You’ follows a similar formula, harnessing thumping beats and emotive harmonies. It’s a successful template, combining a swaggering beat – not dissimilar to Kasabian, yet not quite as ostentatious – with rousing harmonies.

However, it’s not all swagger and strut. ‘Early Warnings’, a Paul Simon/Graceland-esque ditty, owes much to Ariel Rechtshaid’s superb bass lines. Popieluch again mewls, much like Richard Ashcroft, occasionally breaking to allow the band to utilise the exuberant harmonies that make this album positively engaging. It’s steady in its attack, as is the next track, ‘Can’t Keep Time’. The pace of this one juxtaposed with sweeping synths and graceful backing vocals.

The final two tracks on the album, ‘See us Home’ and ‘Wait in this Chair’ are more sombre affairs and, owing to their pace and length, pass by relatively unnoticed. Alas, the subtle and swaying nature establishes this band’s ability to create mellow tracks. While these two tracks lack the exultant chorus present in the other songs, they act as quite a nice wind down.

There are a couple of tracks that debit the luster off of an otherwise brilliant album. Several songs demonstrate an ability to build on something truly enjoyable and emotive. When this band aims for the lofty highs, they do so with alluring gusto – and it’s great.

Various Artists – Tectonic Plates Volume 2

Tectonic Plates Volume II

The evolution of new musical forms is strongly influenced by sociological, political and geographical factors, as evident everywhere from the protest songs of the sixties to the territorial nature of east London grime.

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Jarvis – Further Complications

Jarvis - Further Complications

It’s just not a very conceivable story, is it? This man playing basically the whole 1980s in an unsuccessful band, being on the dole to boot.

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