Album Reviews: October 2010
KES TRIO
Black Brown Green Grey White
(Mistletone)
The music of Kes twists and turns and has done so in beautifully psychedelic ways for four albums now – blossoming from one man and his guitar to full luscious pop melodrama, all the while infusing his unique falsetto to part the clouds and let the sun shine through his songs and us alike.
However Kes’s fifth album, here in trio form, has not simply embraced the pink elephants of Syd Barrett’s damaged music, but also a heady amount of Norwegian Wood perplexity. From the opening shards of the album’s title track, Kes chops at his axe, splintering off hollow and tormented sounds from its strings. What starts off as a decidedly ugly pop freakout finds its feet with ‘Wise Eyes’ and ‘The Alarm Clock’, but the Melbourne swamp psychosis that first inhabited Kes in his distant Sea Scouts days seems to have forcefully returned here to play havoc.
Kes has always been an undeniably great musician with a real unique and fractured pop sound. So while this album revels in being something quite different, it’s easily just as entertaining as his past efforts – maybe not as alluring, but full of drama. This is reinforced by the crystalline sheets of guitar that shatter like a storm front coming in off the coast throughout ‘Won Seventeen’, with protection from the darkened skies finally found in the warm burrow of ‘Living Underground’ and the kaleidoscopic soup of ‘Thieves Beat’.
Karl Scullin has never made the same album twice, each new chapter further enriching his unique dream-pop reality. Black Brown Green Grey White is definitely a weird trip and a captivating one that has the bold imagination of a child’s crayon drawing underpinning the detailed calamity of a Salvador Dali painting.
SOUNDGARDEN
Telephantasm
(A&M/Universal)
Firstly, if this is to be of any use to anyone calling themselves a Soundgarden fan, then be sure to indulge in the deluxe double CD/triple vinyl version of this strange release. Anyone unfortunate enough to be saddled with this standard 12-song artefact otherwise known as a best-of will be left scratching their head as to what all the fuss was about. Sure, this compilation is made up of mostly singles but it has very few of their “best” songs on it, with the showcased early numbers and some limp later ones not indicative of this band’s strengths – for example, where the friggin’ hell is ‘Jesus Christ Pose’?
Along with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden made up the holy trinity of grunge. Now, grunge was good, and it was a worthwhile musical movement that washed away the pap of the 80s and gave us our guitars back. Nirvana might have brought the melody and the feedback, but Soundgarden were responsible for taking the dirge and the riffs of Sabbath-era rock and placing them into the world’s Top 40 charts – to this day their greatest gift.
Chris Cornell has this past decade shown himself to be a singer of questionable quality, but history needs to refocus the light onto guitarist Kim Thayil. His guitar here bridges the pummelling riffs of underground rock from the 60s onwards with the convergence of modern metal’s tight, choppy punch. Kim Thayil is also the only part of Soundgarden that doesn’t sound horribly dated today!
Lastly, if you can’t make it past the horrible artwork, then there’s a much better version of it adorning the sleeve of the recent album from the band Shrinebuilder – the band Soundgarden should have become. Save your money and don’t spend it on the past unless you’re buying Badmotorfinger!
DEERHUNTER
Halcyon Digest
(4AD/Remote Control)
Once upon a time, Deerhunter were four guys who blissed out on the edifice of Kevin Shields’ psych-pop. They made their name on such things, turning it into albums like 2008’s Microcastle. While echoes of that once vibrant, fuzz-filled exploration still exists here, the haze has definitely lifted from this band, their dreamy-pop still the driving force of these 11 songs, only now with a drier sound comes a potentially less interesting band.
In 2010, Deerhunter are simply a folk-infused pop band that plink and plonk along, the dreary drawl of Bradford Cox quizzical at best. Sure, there’s a myriad of teeny, tiny embellishments, counter-melodies and sounds from the watery droplets that drip from ‘Helicopter’ and the rude interruption of saxophone in ‘Coronado’, but there’s little point swelling the periphery of your music when the main melodies are lacklustre at best and uninspired as is the case far too often here.
Possibly Halycon Digest, as the title suggests, is in fact denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful for these four fellows. It would make sense, seeing as the mood here is more carefree than the palette of sounds on offer. In the first half of the album, the taste-test of 60s pop and garage doesn’t last long enough to flourish. Eventually though a vibrance, like thin summer sunbeams, shines through as the album comes into its final chapters.
Somehow it makes more sense to look at this album as the shedding of the band’s skin – one they grew into over their first few albums and have now outgrown and cast aside with these 50 minutes of music. Fingers crossed, they can flesh out the skeleton re-started here and hopefully bring it to blossom again.
DIMI DERO INC.
Cremation Day In The Court Of Miracles
(Merenoise)
I’ve never heard of Dimi Dero Inc. but they sure as hell have heard this country’s best rock’n’roll bands! With their third album getting a local release through Brisbane’s Merenoise record label, a few listens to these 12 songs shows that the grass might, in fact, be greener on the other side!
Plenty of the music here harbours a dirty rock groove, but that’s not what makes them more than the long lost Luxedo or The Surrealists – it’s the attack of a rupturing bassline tightly wound around locomotive percussion. Plenty of moments swivel with a stovepipe swagger, but we’re not counting bad seeds or good sons – it’s just with that French accent and bursts of guitar that shoot like sheet lightning across the night sky, this is instantly familiar and yet so exotically new.
These four guys make sweaty and sexy rock with a chorus line aimed directly at your loins. When they push it into the red though (which is from the very outset of the album’s opener ‘Unfair Enough’), it’s barbarous in the way I remember Die Haut attacking the rhythms of rock‘n’roll. On the flipside, euphoria comes with that release only distortion pushed hard through speaker stacks can hold. ‘Bored’ and ‘Euterpe’ are fine examples of getting the mix just right and sending it back at you with a dose of insouciance that the French seem to easily master.
Dimi Dero Inc. quite literally should be adopted by this country (we’re good at that), they should share the same podiums as The Drones or Beasts Of Bourbon and we should make the bars swell when they come to our town to remind us of how rock is done when it’s done oh so right! It’d be like selling ice back to the Eskimos.
BELLE & SEBASTIAN
…Write About Love
(Rough Trade/Remote Control)
This Glaswegian group sometimes swell their numbers to that of a small community in one man’s pursuit of the perfect pop sound. That man is Stuart Murdoch and given the devotion that his band elicits from its audience and the singular narrative that has made up their eight albums, it’s not exaggerating to say that Belle & Sebastian might be the most carefree cult you could ever be hypnotised to join.
It’s a dreamy haze that these 11 songs swim within, bright and sparkly guitar lines twinkle like light playing upon calm seas as ‘Come On Sister’ and ‘Calculating Bimbo’ come in on the breeze and leaving you to float along in all their loveliness. Belle & Sebastian are also heartbreak by a thousand papercuts – go back and listen to ‘Calculating Bimbo’ again, or even ‘Come On Sister’ and it’s hidden within the song, a wry and scathing wit that has always made this band as cattie as your ex-lover’s scornful eye.
You could charge Murdoch and Co. with indulging in a bit too much of the schmaltz on this album, but you can’t go past the album’s title without it being a necessary ingredient. Still, there’s plenty of that trademark 60s bomp with ‘I Want The World To Stop’, ‘I’m Not Living In The Real World’ and the title track raising the hemline just enough to shimmy and shake off the cashmere. These moments reap the most reward, with giddy glee having always been the best Belle & Sebastian mood.
It’s best to think of this album minus the Nora Jones contribution (briefly ruining its British Isle sensibilities) and indulge in the intellectual indolence that works to the band’s long-held strengths. Years on, this group is still tethered to the intimacy of its pop utopia.
78 SAAB
Good Fortune
(Other Tongues)
Whereas their friends from Youth Group soared and dipped in and out of success, 78 Saab have always flown just under the radar – producing equally timeless indie pop only with the kind of humility that endears and has now endured for more than a decade.
Having not heard so much as a peep in the last few years since the release of The Bells Line, 78 Saab still show themselves to have a firm grip upon what is intrinsically a Sydney sound made up of little embellishments and plenty of swooning melody. Somehow these four guys seem to be stuck in a vacuum, with the songs they wrote 10 years ago sounding familiar today – and you know what, that’s a good thing! ‘Avarice’ could very well be this album’s ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Warm Jets’ rekindles those unabashed, snaky guitar lines that you just don’t hear elsewhere anymore.
What makes their endurance so poignant in 2010 is that classic pop songwriting is a scarce commodity, traded in far too often for hooks that will offer that brief slice of celebrity. To be unassuming and in turn creators of songs that are long lasting is the greatest lesson to be learned from these four fellows.
All the overt loveliness however does mix with some gravel and grit, when the crunch of guitars comes in to shake up ‘All At Sea’ and ‘Chasing The Light’, but not even this can crack the austerity and poise that makes this band sound so effortlessly elegant in everything they do. Good Fortune won’t jump out at you and it won’t be found on bus-stop billboards, but it will stay with you like the best-kept secret that really everyone should be in on.
MY DISCO
Little Joy
(Shock)
At least they haven’t gotten sparser in their strange and unabashed post punk/rock sound. My Disco have achieved more already over three albums than most bands can ever hope to achieve in a whole career – they have become the masters of an electrified sound that is utterly and wholly unique.
Drifting at what seems like tectonic speeds of change, these three Melbourne lads have moved from the stark minimalism of Paradise into a kind of Kraut hypnosis with album number three. Still obsessed with the power to build up a song and grind down a listener with repetition, the recent pulse of Ben Andrew’s guitar is here an instrument of full-bodied circulation. But just because they’ve found more push and pull in their songs doesn’t mean that Little Joy isn’t an endurance test and an exercise in stamina – having said that, anyone already a fan is coming to the party knowing this and subsequently looking for the challenge, even though newcomers may not make it past the home stretch of second track ‘Young’ and the monotony of its guitar chug.
Lovers of sound and the sheer power that tone alone can hold will revel in the bass rumbling and guitar shriek that is often the primary focus of the music, while the most joyous outbursts here are to be found not in Liam Andrews’ monochromatic vocals but in Rohan Rebeiro’s percussive grooves and downright tribal passages in ‘Turn’ and ‘Rivers’.
Much of My Disco’s past has sounded reactionary, whether to something external or personally internal to its members. Little Joy may too have that impetus, but it’s an album that sounds much more visionary. Its execution calms more than agitates, convinces us with its melodies before challenging us with its dissonance and most poignantly lets its emotion be seen for the first time.
NEIL YOUNG
Le Noise
(Reprise/Warner)
Neil Young is a relic whose relevance in this century is a redundant debate. He is and will always be godlike to those who have followed his journey and completely anonymous to the majority of today’s rebellious youth. Neil Young is a beacon on the horizon that burns like an eternal flame, never tiring and never fading into the night. Neil Young is dichotomy and that’s what still makes his art so engaging!
Le Noise seems ominous with its black and white artwork and abrasive title and it’s a rumble of disquiet that awaits you throughout these eight songs. Not since his abstract conquests of distortion and doom that comprised his 1996 soundtrack for the Jim Jarmusch film Dead Man has his guitar sounded so tortured and twisted. The first run of songs roll in like storm clouds filled with dread, although Young never once raises his voice – his whisper holds just as much hard-learned authority anyway.
‘Love and War’ and ‘Peaceful Valley Boulevard’ are the coin’s flipside and the album’s oasis. Folk tunes like the ones of yore, they’re the threads that have gnawed at Neil Young since he was a young man watching the times a-changin’ and here they sound like questions he will continue to ask us all until his last days, knowing no answer will ever come.
Again washing himself in the crunch and rumble of his electrified six-string, it slowly becomes obvious once you become comfortable with the feedback and the drone, that there’s no Crazy Horse, no band backing him at all. This is Neil Young wrestling with the ugly fire that still burns in his belly. Le Noise calls out like the final albums of the late Johnny Cash, a man taking stock and laying everything bare – telling it on his own and on his own terms.
ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS
Swanlights
(Spunk/EMI)
The striking thing about Antony Hagety’s fourth album is how understated it is. This is from an artist whose wrought songs have generally been saturated with emotions that spill over onto the listener and symbiotically well up within them. Still in command of that beautifully operatic voice and lifting it with his piano, here Antony shines through a diversification of his songs, their structure, instrumentation and delivery.
A real high-wire act between the delicate beauty of his songwriting and the tempestuous rollercoaster of his burning ardour, Swanlights ventures even further into an orchestral setting with ‘Ghost’ the first of many songs drenched in full accompaniments of strings and more. A much lighter mood adds what is almost a bop to ‘I’m In Love’ and ‘Thank You For Your Love’, a buoyant bass line, organ or horns striding out to ensure the clouds don’t ever encroach too close.
Rightfully so, the album’s centrepiece is its title track – with reverberated apparitions of electric guitar swirling aloft, this song is an eddy that builds to a whirlpool that sucks the music, Antony and us through to new panorama.
‘Fletta’, an utterly arresting duet with Björk, makes so much sense. The only question is why it took so long to happen – two of pop music’s most unique voices happily playing on each other’s considerable talent.
All this is encased within an immense 144-page book that also features paintings, drawings and more by Antony, reaffirming that nothing here is an idea of sketch, but a very deliberate and detailed odyssey. In fact, whereas previous albums have left residual feelings of calm, sombreness and even a pensive sincerity, here it’s an assured confidence in his own redemptive powers that draws Antony Hagerty to not simply follow his muse but to become ours to follow.
SUZANNE VEGA
Close-Up Vol. 2: People & Places
(Cooking Vinyl/Shock)
The problem with Suzanna Vega is not Suzanne Vega! The problem is the external forces that have over the years aligned her music and stories in with the middle of the road pap that fills daytime radio. The popularity of a few key songs has meant that the breadth of her talent and storytelling abilities has not been fully appreciated. Chances are she’s not going to top the charts any time soon, but the Up Close series of albums thankfully is allowing her talents to shine – unhindered by the gloss of pop formula.
Following Volume 1: Love Songs, this second of four instalments comes with the narrative of individuals and that single biggest character that has shadowed so much of her career: New York City. Up Close is essentially Vega stripped back to an acoustic guitar and a voice and it’s so refreshing to hear songs like ‘Luka’, ‘In Liverpool’ and yes, even ‘Tom’s Diner’ (truth be told), delivered with power, finesse, clarity and not a skerrick of schmaltz.
And even when there’s a bedrock of bass, percussion or a string quartet to bolster some songs – giving them the kind of bounce that comes naturally to Vega’s music – subtlety is always the key and is executed impeccably here. All of the 13 songs are from her back catalogue, but this isn’t a veiled best-of collection, with many songs sounding anew and others emerging from deep within almost forgotten albums.
‘Tom’s Diner’ might have come out 25 years ago, but it’s the album’s latest addition, Sparklehorse collaboration ‘The Man Who Played God’, that highlights Vega’s continuing vitality. Old or new, many of the songs here show not only the humility in Suzanne Vega, but the endless wonder in the pictures her words continue to paint.
THE VASELINES
Sex With An X
(Sub Pop/Inertia)
Eugene Kelly and Francis McKee never asked to be legendary or influential. Hiding away in Glasgow in the late 80s they crafted pop that resonated – most famously in the ears of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain – guaranteeing them immortality when he covered and championed the band.
Those same pop smarts have not dulled in the 21 years since Dum Dum, even though initially Sex With An X bares little resemblance to their debut. Apart from the initial strains of ‘Ruined’, the garage and clang is sparse. In its place, buoyant and bubbly melodies – the kind you’d usually associate with the land of the long white cloud. It helps that backing our veteran duo are two Belle & Sebastians and The 1990s’ Michael McGaughrin, adding a vibrant and sweeping feel while never letting the songs become cluttered.
As traditionally elegant as a midsummer waltz, ‘’Turning It On’ talks to your tender side while ‘Overweight But Over You’ and ‘Poison Pen’ have a rhythmic stomp that invigorates the traditional jangle that’s inherent in all these songs. Many times throughout this album you get the feeling that Kelly and McKee want to dirty things up, but the songs sound so good clean that they hold back. When they do decide to flippantly add some vitriol it’s comical, as in ‘I Hate The 80s’ and ‘My God’s Bigger Than Your God’.
As this album plays out, it’s as if the band get more used to being The Vaselines again. The final few songs are dramatically different to the first few and more akin to the band we’ve held onto for all those years – ‘Whitechaple’ the strongest amongst them. Some moments here are instantaneous while others hold back, aloof and pensive, but given the time, all 12 tunes weave an equally infectious spell that will easily sustain us, maybe for the next two decades.
BRIAN ENO
Small Craft On A Milk Sea
(Warp/Inertia)
Brian Eno is a master of sound and manipulating the moods that sound can produce. In fact, the trouble with Eno and his legendary status is that he can put out anything with as much or as little musical composition as he likes and it is still generally lauded. That’s pretty much the case here as Brian Eno teams up with Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams to execute a mismatched and muddled assortment of ideas.
Small Craft On A Milk Sea starts off beautifully. Undulating piano wells up upon a sub-harmonic bass throughout ‘Emerald And Lime’, with a variety of sounds wafting across it all. This ambient and entrancing scope continues for the next few songs with a mixture of abstract sounds and acoustic guitar creating whole landscapes to explore. It’s almost impossible to fault the growing beauty and sparseness that has made Brian Eno such a unique proposition for the past 30 years – it’s what he does well and does so impeccably here.
Then comes the crude jolt of ‘Flint March’ as the small craft runs ashore. The track’s booming four-four beat and stammering electronics come off like an Aphex Twin offcut and it quite simply spoils all the music that’s come before it. The following ‘Horse’ and ‘2 Forms Of Anger’ have a similar execution (and pointless electric guitar), the album coming to mimic being rudely awoken from a pleasant dream by the harsh bite of cosmopolitan noise.
Sure, the album comes adrift and sails into calmer (and dubbier, Fridge-like) waters again with ‘Bone Jump’ and others, but the inconsistent clash of song ideas ruins any possible narrative that could have existed. There’s easily two great albums (or extended EPs) here, had the rough not been made to mingle with the smooth – the two rights here accumulating to one annoying wrong.
SWANS
My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
(Young God/Remote Control)
Much has changed between the birth of Swans in 1981 and now. Many collaborators and cohorts have passed through and Swans today is a vastly different hydra, but one thing has remained constant – the nightmarish depths that Gira is prepared to drag us down to show us the reproach of human malcontent.
After declaring the death of Swans in 1996, Gira sought refuge in the more threadbare persona of Angels Of Light. Something however was boiling in his belly, corroding and festering enough to make him exhume the grave of Swans. His main collaborator for many years, Jarbo (and her bloodcurdling scorn), is sadly and wholly absent from this reconvened outfit, but that doesn’t take away from the impact of Gira’s baritone, which still bears the gravity and confusion of a judge handing down a life sentence of purgatory for uncommitted crimes. While some of the musicians of old remain and these eight tunes don’t grind with the same industrial force that Swans once did, the weight of emotion and brevity hasn’t waned.
Like the maturation of peers such as Einstürzende Neubauten and Sonic Youth, this album is ablaze with noise and industrialised instrumentation brought into remission, sculpted and refined into tangible passages of music where the beauty is now wholly visible (‘Inside Madeline’). There’s often a chain gang-like propulsion where the sounds of hammers on steel and leather breaking skin are almost audible (‘Reeling The Liars In’, ‘Eden Prison’), continuing the mythology of Gira’s punishing gaze. So consider Swans’ eleventh album to be the halfway point between the stripped-bare intimacy of Angels of Light and cacophonic madness of first-generation Swans.
Swans (and in turn their beating heart of Gira) have acquired a real sense of wisdom in their assassination of the discourse and fears that hide in the shadows of all of us.
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