Royksopp

For a short while there, it was looking as though Röyksopp may fall into that “band from that car/phone advert” category.

One minute you’re revelling in the success of having 30 seconds of your kooky tune played everywhere, the next, you’re playing the daytime slot at a festival, watching the audience grow weary of your set, until you play “that song…from that advert…with the balloons”. Alas, Röyksopp have staved off post-ad obscurity with a glut of good tunage.

Their latest, ‘The Girl and the Robot’, is the second single from the Norwegian duo’s upcoming album, Junior. The pair have wisely enlisted the vocal capabilities of Swedish starlet, Robyn, who brings brilliant composition and a Kylie-esque sounding tone to the table.

Without delay the track kicks off with a driving beat and euphoric choral backing. The opening synthetic choral effect hinting at what Radiohead might sound like if they dabbled with electropop house music during their OK Computer time. The timbre is pulsing, robotic and continually builds to one of the most blissful choruses. The track’s delightfully camp, leaving you with a feeling somewhere between that of harbouring a guilty pleasure, and out-and-out camp adoration.

The simply delicious, yet awkward and ominous chord changes, and the use of string synths give this track a fresh and epic quality. Dance music commonly balances on a fine line of tiresome repetition, however, this track never goes stale. Due, in part, to the vocals, which concern the plights of a woman who’s enduring a mundane relationship with an individual resembling an automaton. It’s basic love song fodder, but who cares when it’s this damn good.

‘The Girl and the Robot’ is what the monotonous dance crap they play in clubs frequented by morons should sound like. We’re suckers for a good pop tune, and to use the parlance of the valley girl, this track is hot.

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.

Lytle is at his best when delivering seemingly innocuous lyrics in his most melancholic voice for maximum effect. We see this on ‘Rollin’ Home Alone’ when he sings ‘I bought you something nice/I got you something warm/For when the weather turns’.

Another tearjerker is ’This Song is the Mute Button’ in which he lays ’And I see the pretty in things/But you disappear like a dream/I wish I could laugh now/But I’ll never see you again’ over a simple piano melody. The result is something desolate and beautiful, and probably the saddest point in the album.

Only once does Lytle indulge his space-rock tendencies. And he does so with typical panache on ‘It’s the Weekend’, a short, punchy song which provides a nice little bit of breathing space in the middle of the album.

Having set such high standards at the outset, and lived up to them on a number of occasions later on, it’s perhaps inevitable that the album peters out slightly towards the end. It’s forgivable, too given the lovely moments that Lytle has managed to deliver here. And besides, he is able to leave things on a high note, in the form of ‘Here For Good’, a fragile, piano-led lament.

All told then, Yours Truly, The Commuter is a major success. It’s all very Jason Lytle, but this is by no means a bad thing. It’s heavy on emotion and packed with ideas. In these uncertain days, there’s something reassuring about the fact that one of indie’s royalty is still able to deliver such a strong piece of work.

You Am I - Hourly, Daily

Quite possibly the best kept secret in Australian music since The Saints had to leave down under and break London to get noticed, this album should by rights be part of the collection of anyone who has even a passing interest in guitar-based electric music – following on from the proto-grunge of debut Sound As Ever and the poppier Hi-Fi Way this is pure mod-pop heaven.

The (at that time) trio, You Am I, set out to both ape and update the sounds of the likes of The Creation and The Small Faces and with George Drakoulias (producer of a couple of Black Crowes albums and a number of film soundtracks) at the control board for two tracks and producing the rest themselves, they succeeded in releasing a disc at once both instantly accessible and consistently playable. An undercurrent of melancholia runs through the entire 15 tracks lending the whole product a pseudo-concept album feel but that’s not to say that it lacks cheer – to my mind it’s one of the most uplifting discs I own.

That melancholic air makes itself known from the off with the title track sharply focusing the listener on a semi-acoustic pre-dawn musing on the state of play in the world. Positive times arrive though when the alarm clock goes and our muser says ‘Good Mornin” and ‘Mr Milk’ rowdily voices his thoughts on how to win his love’s hand whilst on his rounds. ‘Soldiers’ ventures into the rose-tinted martial territory of Sgt. Pepper and ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’ complete with band-on-the-green brass fills. Youthful swagger and the desire to sweep your would-be sweetheart off her feet are expertly portrayed on ‘Trike’ and can you really get enough of that organ and those handclaps?

‘Tuesday’ brings with it a return of the blacker mood (akin in tone to much of Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish) but the brass is still there trilling away to show all’s not as bad as it may seem. To drive that point home ‘Opportunities’ bursts on to the scene and brings with it the album’s first eminently singalongable moments. Next up is the three minute soap opera of ‘If We Can’t Get It Together’. Pass the hankies Bruce… Taking our minds once more off of the negatives in relationships we get ‘Flag Fall $1.80′, which owes a fair debt to both Lonnie Donegan & Pete Townsend. Stomping along in tenth place comes ‘Wally Raffles’ with yet more feedback drenched near mayhem.

Calming down and benefiting from the introduction of a string quartet things take a more serious turn on ‘Heavy Comfort’ as brief hope in a dying relationship is recounted. ‘Dead Letter Chorus’ recaptures some bombast before the best feel good track of the lot arrives in the shape of ‘Baby Clothes’ – you can well picture a young Jagger stalking around the stage sneering this one out. Reflection time on the penultimate track, ‘Please Don’t Ask Me To Smile’, that clearly foreshadows singer Tim Rogers’ solo Americana career that now runs concurrently with that of YAI. Completing the trip is ‘Who Takes Who Home’, an emotionally charged end of the party suburban love song. There’s a hidden track about five minutes after the end of this one but I can’t put a name to it.

In the 12 years since this album was released the band have become a four-piece following the addition of Davey Lane (also of The Pictures) to the ranks and have released the nearly as good (as in 9.5 out of 10) You Am I’s Number 4 Record and Dress Me Slowly, the less good Deliverance (a slightly mis-judged foray into alt. country), the near return to form Convicts and last year’s Dilettantes, as well as the enjoyable live album Saturday Night, ‘Round 10. Transcopic Records released No After You Sir… An Introduction to You Am I six years ago at which time I was lucky enough to see them live (for the first time since doing so when they toured this album) and even luckier to avoid The Vines who they were unfortunately supporting (good too on that bill were Rocket Science) but as a starting point Hourly, Daily is definitely the prime place to begin discovering these guys. Excuse me whilst I press “play” again…

Junior Boys

2009 welcomes the return of Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus, more commonly known as Canadian dance act Junior Boys. Three years have passed since their last release, the critically acclaimed So This Is Goodbye. But can Junior Boys replicate their past success on their latest album?

Begone Dull Care fizzes into life with ‘Parallel Lines’, a slow meandering track which matches the traditionally light vocal of Greenspan with a cute, yet calculated synth pattern before the end of the track ebbs into ‘Work’ and the pace of the album makes an effort to pick-up, albeit ever so slightly. Next up is ‘Bits & Pieces’, and whilst this is amongst the most upbeat tracks out of the eight on this record, it’s still highly unlikely that you’ll hear this doing the rounds on the indie dance floor with songs from fellow dance pioneers Justice, Simian Mobile Disco or Hercules & Love Affair (for example).

The pace is maintained at the midpoint of the record, and ‘Dull To Pause’ is the first time that the lyrics really match well with the ambience of the track, offering a sense of urgency offset by a calmer veneer through some sharp rhyming couplets: “With every morning chore/you look around once more/so that your eyes will adjust/to all the grain and dust”.

It’s clear at this point in the record that Greenspan and Didemus’ modus operandi becomes clearer; long gone are the raw bleep-beats from tracks on the previous record, seen on ‘Like A Child’ and ‘In The Morning’, replaced with a softer, more understated feel. The production values have been vastly improved, meaning Begone Dull Care is a more polished finish than anything Junior Boys have released before, and several of the tracks are cleverly weaved into one another.

Lead single ‘Hazel’, and to a lesser extent, ‘The Animator’ are realistically the only two tracks aiming to prevent the tail end of the record from petering out, leaving the listener with a slight sense of disorientation between the alternate styles. Whilst there isn’t a bad track out of the eight on this record, there is a sense that neither end of the spectrum of moods covered seems fully willing to accommodate the other, leaving almost a disjointed feel.

What is often prevalent in this album and in the previous two from Junior Boys is that songs are peppered with lyrics which can be deliberately vague, which leads to the problem that it can be difficult to pick up on a narrative throughout; whilst in some aspects this is good (the listener is to an extent forced to derive a meaning that they can connect with) the overriding risk is that for a casual listener, large chunks of the record can almost wash away like sandcastles at high tide.

Begone Dull Care is not an album which strikes with its immediacy; but the rewards are definitely there for those prepared to invest some time in it. Whilst it isn’t quite the life-affirming follow up to So This Is Goodbye that some hoped for, this is a record which can combat the stresses of modern life, if only for roughly three-quarters of an hour.

Passion Pit

This time a year ago, Passion Pit were on very few people’s radars. That altered with the Chunk of Change EP, half an hour of cute, vibrant electro-pop. They even came ready-packaged with their own convenient little piece of indie mythology, that the EP was originally recorded by the band’s mainstay Michael Angelakos as a Valentine’s Day gift for his girlfriend.

After the success of the EP, and the credibility-sapping seals of approval it generated (BBC Sound of 2009, anyone?) the threat of the seemingly inevitable backlash has been drawing ever nearer. Well, with ‘The Reeling’, the first single off their debut album (Manners, due out here on May 26th), Passion Pit haven’t given the indie community too much cause to sharpen the knives just yet.

It’s a solid effort, and a promising taster for the album. Stylistically, it’s not drastically different to the songs on the EP. All the band’s endearing characteristics are on display. The track shows the inventiveness we saw on the EP, the warm electro textures and Angelakos’ distinctive shrill vocals. It’s driven on by a harder beat than we’ve heard from them before, and the “oh no” hooks create the same sense of euphoria which infuses the EP.

One minor gripe about the song is its production. Chunk of Change is by no means a lo-fi recording, but ‘The Reeling’ is definitely a good deal shinier. This time out they managed to land just the right side of over-produced, but it’s a fine line, and Passion Pit will need to be wary of falling into the trap in future.

For now though, ‘The Reeling’ will hold us just fine. It’s a strong single, which shows signs of progression. It may be a little less urgent than most of Chunk of Change, but it’s likeability increases with each listen, and it’s done the job of whetting our appetites for the album.

Tiga

Madonna is about as vocally accomplished as a dying dog; she continues to abuse audiences at her faux-spectacular live shows, and her acting career has been about as successful as my last effort to win the lottery (I didn’t understand the damn thing and gave up).

What she can be eternally applauded for, however, is the team she surrounds herself with. Despite her limitations, this entourage has written catchy pop tunes for her across countless albums, kept her looking young and in fashion, and spun the media perpetually in her favour. You may be wondering what all this has to do with the first single off of Ciao!, the latest album from Montreal’s Tiga. Well, Tiga himself has revealed that a “very famous international superstar” is his guest vocalist on the track, but that this guest had insisted on complete anonymity. Almost zero research on the net revealed to me that this guest was none other than Her Madgeness. Another gem of an idea from one of the world’s great marketing teams? Well, it may have been, but it seems another department of her suited minions has failed to do its homework.

True to Tiga form, ‘Shoes’ has a wobbly bassline that juggles with your internal organs, while the two vocalists share their passion for haircuts, gloves and, er, shoes. It is funky electro equally as adept as his earlier work, and would most certainly bother the dancefloor… in 2005. Tiga was an electro master half a decade ago, and although he’s doing nothing wrong now, times have changed, and he’s fallen prey to what he celebrates on this record – the changing face of fashion. Consequently Madonna’s crew, who usually have their paws so firmly on the pulse, have also tapped into a four-year-old scene. Perhaps even they are starting to creak from rust. Lets hope she is confined to the scrap heap sooner rather than later.

A Scholar & A Physician

Coming on like a combination of Young Knives and Klaxons, A Scholar & A Physician’s title track is a high octane love ode to the Wicked Witch of The West it seems, with tongues firmly planted in electro-boy cheeks of course. A great single to usher in British Summer Time with from the Abingdon/London duo, who are also the production team behind a lot of the upcoming Chicks On Speed album.

Track two, ‘Not Normal’, is a shouty wee number that owes a little to Faith No More’s ‘Be Aggressive’ in the chorus department. The third track, ‘Shouldn’t Dwell’, nods meaningfully towards Air circa 10′000Hz Legend with its blissed out relaxed vocals over an increasingly strident backing track.

On the strength of these tunes I’d say they’re a good bet for meteoric rise over the summer months but have my doubts about future sustainability. Junior/Senior spring to mind in that respect.

Filthy Dukes

This reviewer prescribes to the school of thought that music criticism should never rely too heavily on namechecking other bands when describing the sounds of a new album.

Granted, it can be a quick and easy answer to “so what are they like?”, but who wants to spend months in the studio carefully creating a collage of songs you think represent you, and that you enjoy playing, and you hope others will like, only then to hear the world’s critics explain to everyone how much it sounds like somebody else?

It is against the backdrop of this that the Filthy Dukes‘ debut long player, Nonsense In The Dark, must be appreciated. The London duo, real names Olly Dixon and Tim Lawton, are successful residents of the capital’s Fabric nightspot, where their cutting edge electro-eclecticism has earned them a solid reputation as dancefloor extraordinaires. However, they have gone about their debut with too many ideas and come out the other end with a collection of tracks all craving radio play but with no common thread. Such disparity may have paid off if the tunes themselves could hold their own, but sadly for the Dukes, most of them do sound like one of their peers, and nothing else, leaving me with no choice but to unwittingly offend them in the above maner.

‘What Happens Next’ borrows those hard guitar stabs from the slightly overrated MSTRKRFT, and come across as a poor man’s Justice. ‘Messages’ could quite easily have been one of the (many) forgottable album tracks from Caged Baby’s debut a few years ago. ‘Nonsense In The Dark’ would fit snugly on Fischerspooner’s largely ignored sophomore effort (except it has The Maccabees’ Orlando Weeks’ irritating vocal all over it). ‘You Better Stop’ is paid a compliment by sounding like it could’ve made the Chemical Brothers’ last album. ‘Somewhere at Sea’ is a quarter-decent stab at a Depeche Mode ballad. ‘Tupac Robot Club’ may have the best chance of achieving the group’s goal of hitting the charts, sounding as it does like Evil Nine on a very bad day without any weed. Strangest of all, ‘Light Skips Across the Heart’ reeks of that bizarre eighties collaboration between Giorgio Moroder and the Human League’s Phil Oakey.

Of course, sounding like other artists is no bad thing at all. To their credit, the duo have created a decently paced pop album of eighties synths and vocals, rave piano and atmospherics, and chunky breakbeats. But this was being done five years ago, and with more panache. Today, the niche the Filthy Dukes are trying to inhabit is already being majestically carved by the electro pop wholesomeness of Cut Copy and their slightly more bombastic Aussie cohorts The Presets.

By trying to sound like all of their influences, The Filthy Dukes’ own personality has gotten lost. In today’s diluted iEnvironment, maybe they should have pooled their efforts into making one stonking tune instead of stretching their talents across the increasingly outdated format of an album.

Metronomy - Radio Ladio

No amount of volume will ever be enough for this little beauty. At first coming across as a simple, fairly repetitive number, Joseph Mount’s bug-eyed “what’s your name?” cry has the effect of reducing your brain to a mesh. A mesh of hungover nonchalance. Or a mess, depending on your inclinations.

It’s like the specificities of life have been flung out of the window in a rampage and replaced with an airport walkway taking you to the morning after. And no, I haven’t lost the plot. The Radioclit Swedish Remix (er, what?!) is mostly perfunctory but for the strange inverted effect of the piped whatever mcthingy at about the 2.05 mark. Makes you feel like your living your life on a one-second time delay. Add some tribal inclinations and you’re practically braindead.

Fair enough they’re milking it because there’s no new B-sides and this track has been hanging around for what seems like my life, but the Radioclit FRENCH Remix (yes, globe-spanning) is yet more feral than the original. Featuring Marina’s vocals on the “R-A/D-I/OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH/L-A/D-I/OHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!” bit, it almost makes me want to engulf my own senses. Not quite though.

Moving swiftly on to the last of the four tracks on offer here for the Metronomy-keen, Micachu is drafted in for another take on the very same bountiful track. It sounds like what happens when you’re playing back a scratched up record at the wrong speed, namely a way slower one. Sinister.

Reaction to this release, then?? Pretty futile in and of itself, as whoever’s into it will already love it, but Metronomy are incredible. The original version of ‘Radio Ladio’ is astonishing in its use of layer upon layer of syncopation, and never tires. Listening to it for the 143rd time reveals yet another line of electrogasm that you hadn’t heard the first time. Let’s get together and pray that Metronomy are in charge of our collective future, it’ll be great.

Patrick Wolf

March 12th, 2009

A new side of Patrick Wolf emerges with every record he releases. Lycanthropy saw him trudging the darkened streets of London and Paris, obsessing over Virginia Woolf and writing mutant, breakbeat songs about childcatchers. With Wind In The Wires, he fled to the coast, with only a ukelele, a laptop and the elements for company. 2007’s The Magic Position, meanwhile, found him decked out in bright colours and platform shoes, straddling a deer on a fairground roundabout, though the glitz and Charlotte Church Show appearances hid a darkness that continued to lie at the core of his songs.

Free of the major-label headaches that blighted the Magic Position tour, Patrick Wolf is ready to return, with perhaps his most dramatic transformation yet. He is set to release the first of two records due this year in June, entitled The Bachelor; The Conqueror is due later. Judging by Wolf’s performance in London, his reclaimed independence, alongside a new long-term relationship, has allowed him to find a new confidence and sense of freedom.

As he emerged after a prolonged intro to a largely adoring crowd, we were given our first glimpse of Patrick Wolf, circa 2009. His bleached blonde hair went down past his shoulders and he wore a strange black cape, with shoulder pads that reached out more than a foot on either side. And then, most surprisingly, there was the headset microphone, which he wore all night; like Madonna, but without the botox or the cynicism. This allowed him to concentrate, for the most part, on singing and interacting with the audience. As a result, the barrage of new songs didn’t alienate the audience; instead, we got a performer clearly comfortable with his new material, and intent on delivering them to his listeners.

The new songs veer from beefed-up, electric guitar-led tracks, to string-drenched ballads where Wolf comes over half Joni Mitchell, half Mariah Carey (except I’ve never seen either of those two topless, hitching their leather trousers up with one hand mid-melisma). ‘Hard Times’ and ‘Battle’ are very much along the same lines lyrically as ‘Accident and Emergency’, though they hit harder. The smattering of familiar songs were slightly altered too, to fit in with the new live show. ‘Bluebells’ has lost some of its fragility with Wolf’s new band line-up, to the extent where some members of the audience attempted to pogo to it; it didn’t quite work. ‘Tristan’, ‘London’, ‘The Libertine’ and ‘The Magic Position’ went down a storm though; the new songs see him embracing his many different sides that you can find in these older songs, sometimes all at once.

For the encore, another costume change was in order, and Wolf emerged with his face painted and two large, feathery wings for new single ‘Vulture’, which finds him channelling Bowie in his vocal ticks; it sounds like Scott Walker gone electro, with Wolf undergoing an existential crisis over sleazy, compressed beats. ‘Bloodbeat’ follows, and we’ve come full circle, back to a song he wrote at the turn of the millennium. Over a rapturous reception at the end, Wolf declares that it’s good to be back, and his fans cheer in agreement. An antidote to soulless, personality-deficient pop crossovers like Lady Gaga or insular, ambition-phobic indie bands, you wonder whether he’ll get the success he craves this time around. Whether he does or he doesn’t, you can bet that there’ll be another Patrick Wolf, ready to emerge next time.