Alex's opinion and documents of music

BECK
Guerolito (Interscope/UMA)

Ahhh yes, the remix album! A staple in all of today’s big pop and rock acts catalogues. And for our later day chameleon, this collection of 15 tracks is a bit more of a surreal, almost laid-back affair. Collecting up various artist like Air, Boards Of Canada, El-p, Diplo and more – we find the tracks from Guero crammed through the flamenco filter (‘Ghost Range (E-Pro)’), reinvigorated with that 80s Sting styled pop slickness (Heaven Hammer (Missing)’) given a dub reggae dose of dreamy echo (‘Terremoto Tempo (Earthquake Weather)’).

An old-school electro sound comes to the fore in ‘Ghettochip Malfunction’ and ‘Scarecrow’ still giving you a good excuse to shake your ass around. Like the mellow in-between albums that punctuate Beck’s big studio extravaganzas, Guerolito is an interesting distraction and quirky creation from an almost indescribable individual.

THE MEOWS
At The Top Of The Bottom (No Tomorrow)

Barcelona’s Meows have all the right components for some soul-shaking rockity roll, but from the outset they suffer from their obvious influences. Tracks like ‘Just One Time’ have singer Francis pulling off his best Bon Scott, while the songs are continuously held up by a grooved Stones-esque rhythm section (‘Function At The Junction’, ‘Hear Me Say It’). Almost every other song has that equal mix of guitar crunch with flailing flourishes and solos that’s been beautifully perfected already by bands like the Hellacopters and The Hives.

This is garage music! And that’s cause it’s the kind of homebrand rock’n’roll made by every Tom, Dick and Harry in garages far and wide.

THE SKYGREEN LEOPARDS
Jehovah Surrender (Jagjaguwar)

It’s with a Magical Mystery Tour vibe that this Californian duo releases each of the six songs on this mini-album, a hazy psychedelica wafting through each note and drawled word.

Think of the acoustic pop tunes of the Flaming Lips and it’s not too dissimilar to ‘Apparition Of Suns’ and ‘Play For The Spring’ here. ‘Let The Lion Be Swallowed By A Dove’ is all acid-soaked folk and dreamy jangly pop, the outcome being a trip that ends way too soon for its own good.

VAN SHE
Self-titled (Modular)

Is there an exorcist in the house? No really! Because these four poor boys from Sydney have somehow been consumed by the spirits of The Cars and The Human League.

With such 80’s pop pulp coursing through their veins, they’re left with no option but to boost the falsetto in ‘Kelly’ and dose up the saccharin synthesisers in ‘Sex City’. The six tracks here leave no respite from the lightweight blue-light disco fever that was definitive of pop music 20 years ago. Do you want French-fries with that?

SYSTEM OF A DOWN
Hypnotize (American/Sony)

It would seem that the album Mezmerize was only half of the story for S.O.A.D., Hypnotize picking up lyrically and musically where that album left off to create a larger, broader-sweeping statement that is still no less cryptic.

When focusing on a culture of excess, it would seem that you can’t have too much to say, these 12 songs unfurling as an impressive cultural backlash as artistic statement. Again it’s our consumer fetishes that are magnified here (‘Hypnotize’, ‘Stealing Society’) as well as the follies of aggression (‘Tentative’, ‘Attack’) and the isolation of failure (‘Lonely Day’). These heavy topics are a lot harder to adjudicate than devils and demons when draped upon their trademark knife-edge pummelling of synchronised guitars and drums.

It’s getting to the point where, for better or worse, we almost know what to expect from S.O.A.D.’s tight chops and grandstanding. But while they still make this music, maybe it will continue to act as a conduit for change and not just escapism.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Feels (FatCat/Spunk)

Somehow, this New York collective come band have transformed themselves from noisy avant psychedelica fringe dwellers to something that sounds closer to the off-kilter majesty of Mercury Rev. Luckily though, there are more than enough twists and turns throughout this 50-minute journey to leave you blissfully confused and entertained, from the shrill (and extremely unsettling) screeching in ‘Grass’ to the hyper-kinetic pace at which ‘The Purple Bottle’ extends its aural tentacles (in at least eight directions at once).

All these moments of wide-eyed enthusiasm are weighed up with tunes like ‘Bees’ and the epic ‘Loch Raven’, which are filled with melancholy, surreal ambience and at times an almost oriental instrumentation. Ultimately, the Animal Collective have created one of the most original ‘pop’ albums in quite some time, in turn stretching that strange term to cover the vastest terrain possible.

MY MORNING JACKET
Z (Sony/BMG)

There is a certain grandiose pomposity to the music of My Morning Jacket that both aids to give it a symphonic air and detracts from their ability to sustain a single idea. For Z, these two opposites work in the most dramatic ways, from the Crazy Horse guitar breaks in ‘What A Wonderful Man’ to the 60s bubblegum melody in ‘Off The Record’. Still, these things are never far from the inordinate beauty of Jim James’s shimmering guitar and yearning vocals that clearly steer everything on the good ship Morning Jacket.

The marauding waltz of ‘Into The Woods’ is one of the more noticeable roads previously untravelled by the band, its haunting pedal-steel adept at trying to lift you out of your surrounds. Have they played every card in their country-rock deck? I’m guessing not. Z is definitely not the end point of their dreamy frontier sound.

BABYSHAMBLES
Albion (Rough Trade/Shock)

On the back of the rowdy sing-along first single, now it’s time for the ballad and that’s what Albion is. It’s with the same mixed sincerity as when he’s screaming that Doughty drawls out his words for this tale of escaping it all and running far far away.

The two b-sides though are less remarkable than the title track, ‘Clementine’ coming off as a slice of snotty-nosed British pop-punk and ‘…Break My heart’ being the kind of jumbled pop that seems very off-the-cuff; still the accompanying videos are funny.

BROADCAST
Tender Buttons (Warp/Inertia)

The now duo line-up of UK’s Broadcast have returned with possibly their most sublime recording to date. James Cargill and Trish Keenan having toned down the overt pop moments that drove their previous albums, sparse electronic beats backing up the guitars, bass and humming keyboards.

Buoyant tunes such as ‘Black Cat’ and ‘America’s Boy’ have a refreshing effervescence to them, these juxtaposed by ‘Bit 35’ and the title track, which take the darker moods of their film noir sound and frame them in a bygone romanticism.

Never have Broadcast sounded more European and continental than here, doing that thing that Stereolab do where they sound French in one song, Italian in another and something entirely different in the next. Still, there’s a warmth here that Stereolab have never had.

It will take some time for all the sounds to unfurl, making Tender Buttons an album as much about embracing the present as letting go of the past.

DEVASTATIONS
Coal (In-Fidelity)

Possibly vying for the title of ‘most melancholy album of the year’, this Melbourne trio has followed their dark and sombre debut with this forlorn and pained follow-up: 10 songs of pure and unadulterated heartache and sorrow that are as cathartic as they are crushing.

It’s the vocals of bass player Conrad Standish and guitarist Tom Carlyon that hold the most weight here, the songs acting to hold their words in the air long enough to make a mark. With every song a sad ballad, it’s moments like the wounded and screaming guitars that erupt out of ‘Take You Home’ that jolt you back into focus and allow you to see beyond the bottom of your drink.

With radios full of happy pulp that seems so far from the truth, the songs of Coal are both a bitter pill to swallow and healing ones as well, ones that can cradle you through long nights alone.

JEFFREY & JACK LEWIS
City & Eastern Songs (Rough Trade/Shock)

For his third album, New York anti-folk/DIY maverick Jeffery Lewis has finally brought his younger brother and others off of the stage and into a real studio, the outcome being Lewis’s most elaborate and fulfilled collection of songs yet.

While the album starts off as you would expect – quirky and folky – it’s ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’ that at first both boggles and blows the mind, its rambling stream-of-consciousness lyrics reminiscent of a Ginsberg tirade. This song alone is worth the price of the album. After listening to and deciphering ‘…Oldham Horror’ about 10 times, you’ll finally be ready to enjoy the jaunty, almost punk ‘Something Good’, ‘Time Machine’ and ‘New Old Friends’.

Traversing the real life scenarios of self-appreciation and deprivation, ‘Art Land’ and ‘Anxiety Attack’ are songs that possibly any of us could have written… but Lewis beat us to it. And really it’s hard to think of anyone actually creating this kind of informal, embraceable, ramshackle punk-folk any better.

OKKERVIL RIVER
Black Sheep Boy Appendix (Jagjaguwar/LTI)

The dark, funereal sounds that permeate the corners of the Black Sheep Boy album are here much more prevalent, from the outset of ‘Missing Children’ to ‘A Garden’. This Australian tour EP/album appendix is seven polarising songs of wrought emotions that find vocalist Will Sheff strained and sounding near breaking point. In a lot of ways, these elements are where the band’s greatest appeal lies, making it a relief that it’s for only 25 minutes that you have to sit as a passenger on such an amazing but heartbroken ride to hell and back.

BLOCKHEAD
Downtown Science (Nina Tune/Inertia)

The music of Blockhead is a wondrous thing, multi-faceted and like that of a chameleon. This second album further delves into the urban landscapes that, like colours to a brush, have been transformed into kaleidoscopic aural backdrops.

The songs unfurl their sounds and moods in a way that’s reminiscent of the early trip-hop of Massive Attack or Tricky, but with Brooklyn-styled grittiness. The rhythm pulses like the dub of Bill Laswell, but with a realism that allows you to almost see the sounds coming from the street corners. Horn breaks, Motown soul, lilting Billy Holiday-styled vocal refrains and funky organ samples all call to you like shopkeepers as you pass on by, the songs melting into each other and coming together like the old men who gather together their tall tales and truths.

Downtown Science could be the sound of the city Blockhead strolls through, a funky, jazzy hip-hop home that’s always kool.

RYAN ADAMS
29 (Lost Highway/UMA)

Becoming a rock or pop star can leave you layered in 65 different types of bullshit. This has certainly been the case for wünderkind Adams, who has created some kind of folklore reputation due to his prolific and varied output over the past few years.

Well, it would seem that for 29 Adams has stripped all that slickness and excess away, leaving an endearing country record that exudes a sincerity absent from his past few albums. From the rolling thunder of opener ‘Twenty Nine’ to the series of solemn piano and acoustic-based ballads that are the next five tracks, it’s an extremely personal document that Adams has created. ‘The Sadness’ though is at the heart of what makes this album so great. Like one of Calexico’s or Roy Orbison’s country heartbreakers, its yearning vocals melt into Morricone-styled flamenco guitar that crackles like open flames. Ending with even more sadness, 29 re-instills the faith that his is a talent not wasted.

SKALPEL
Konfusion (Ninja Tune/Inertia)

For this Polish duo, the mood is almost as important as the music itself, their second album of electronic breaks and jazz-noir a much darker excursion.

Dwelling in the cultural heritage of their country’s past jazz scene (one which was once banned by the Communists) there is an air of pressure applied to these 10 tracks, the inspiration drawn from the musicians and music re-invented here through a mixture of live and electronic instrumentation and sampling. The sensual horns that fill tracks like ‘Flying Officer’ are all smoke and mirrors for the music’s varied meanings. This is often juxtaposed with languid bass, such as throughout ‘Long Distance Call’, which beautifully envelops broken jazz percussion. There are many long-lost leads sampled here, only to be reborn anew, original but with an authenticity of the past.

Definitely esoteric, even existentialist in feel, the music here is late nightclubs and back alley bars that keep as many secrets as they tell.

TEST ICICLES
For Screening Purposes Only (Domino)

Reminiscent of a child having some kind of hissy-fit, this British trio is like a boiling thermometer that raises its temperature from brooding rock to high-speed spazz punk, bypassing clichéd post-punk disco rock.

Like a horror theme to a computer game, there is both a superficial novelty and scathing aggression interplaying within the songs, the screeching vocals of Sam Danger sitting starkly above DevMetal’s gyrating drum tracks. Where the true twists and turns lie are in the guitars that grumble like McLusky offcuts, only to splinter into jagged Locust-like shards.

There are brief moments of gyration in ‘Boa Vs Python’ and ‘All You Need…’, but they are soon replaced with the almost Atari Teenage Riot-sounding ‘Catch It’ and heaving ‘Sharks’. The album’s remaining few tracks are thrown out like Blood Brother fits in this spastic excursion of sound.