Alex's opinion and documents of music

THE HELLACOPTERS
Rock & Roll Is Dead (Psychout/Universal)

These shred-heavy Swedes seem to have taken a few steps back in time with their 10th album. Still wailing and flailing with their guitars, there’s a noticeable smoothing off of ragged edges of old and obviously more attention to the overall feel of these 13 songs.

The Hellacopters are almost a genre unto themselves, their sound is so distinct, giving you everything you’d expect. The Blue Oyster Cult rock’n’roll vibe that’s woven into the songs is present from the outset, but there’s also the same kind of swing that fuelled Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard or The Who. Whether it’s opener ‘Before The Fall’, ‘Monkeyboy’ or ‘Murder On My Mind’ the songs display a simplicity that comes out of the speakers as a vibrant, distilled new chapter to their music and extinguishes any validity to the album title’s claim.

THE FEATURES
Exhibit A (Universal)

This debut album by The Features leaps at you in the same way as The Kinks’ ‘My Sherona’. Melding a bop poppyness with steamrolling rock riffs, these four boys from Tennessee are all hooks and shaggable mod revisions.

Landing in the same recent ballpark as The Caesars, songs such as ‘Me & The Skirts’, ‘Exhibit A’ and ‘There’s A Million Ways…’ fuse rollicking organ with jumpstart guitars and a propelled backbeat that will far too easily move your hips right out of your chair.

Some songs unfortunately hark back to the best bits of bands such as Weezer or Fountains Of Wayne in a less than subtle way (‘Blow It Out’, ‘Leave It All Behind’), which takes some of the sheen off the album’s longevity. Still, with all its saccharine pop-rock qualities, it’s great fun for an immediate hip-swingin’ fix.

KINSKI
Alpine Static (Sub Pop/Stomp)

For their newest outing, Kinski have again veered off into a grand void. The more ethereal elements and sweeping grandiose waves of guitars present on Airs Above Your Station have been force-fed a heavy dose of distortion and made totally guttural.

Possibly it’s the recent time spent with Acid Mothers Temple and Comets On Fire that has infused their music with a malignant sense of chaos, which it has to be said is only a good thing. ‘The Party…’ is a perfect example of the heaviness of their guitars and the even heavier weight that comes from their silence, Think of the dawning years of Krautrock being fed intravenously into the blood of 60s Sabbath and Cold War paranoia.

This is psych-rock, but rather than the lofty interstellar explorations of the 60s, this trip has you blindfolded at top speed through the asteroid field, where it’s plausible that at any moment everything could disintegrate into a million pieces.

AVEO
Battery (Barsuk/Stomp)

Melding an ear for jangly guitar melody and brooding rock, Seattle’s AVEO have extracted an intoxicating mix of whimsical British pop of the 80s with the American indie of now. This second album provides a superb urban soundtrack made up of as many layers as there are lives in a housing estate apartment block.

‘Awkward At The Knees’ takes the vocals and guitars of William Wilson and harnesses the same yearning that swam between the notes of The Smiths’ songs. ‘Haley’ on the other hand takes you deeper than a diving bell, its watery guitars building throughout the song with ever greater pressure.

All of this is counterbalanced with a buoyancy (‘Hypochondria…’) that never lets the album sound too self-absorbed and in the end it feels as though you really have taken something of a journey, and we’re not talking about a Sunday drive in the country.

PORCUPINE TREE
Deadwing (Lava/Warner)

Sincerity is often the most difficult element of progressive guitar music to recognise and translate. It’s being this element that Porcupine Tree and specifically its nucleus, Steven Wilson, have been trying to perfect for more than a decade now – album number 12 even further refining the delicate balance.

Whereas contemporary progressive rock is more like bad jazz for art school guitarists, Porcupine Tree draw a much straighter line between their two extremes, from the sheer metallic edge of ‘Shallow’ to the more subtle ‘Arriving Somewhere…’. The latter’s 10-minute voyage through both acoustic and electric realms is entirely captivating and emotionally disarming.

The guest inclusion of King Crimson’s Adrian Belew provides not only two unsurprisingly exploratory guitar solos but also some of the least interesting parts of this album. The only real kindred spirit to this band, album and in particular ‘Start Of Something Beautiful’ would be Tool – minus the apocalyptic overtones, of course.

MALCOLM MIDDLETON
Loneliness Shines & No Modest Bear (Chemikal Underground/Stomp)

There is a vibrancy in these two songs that is instantly striking, an energy that is totally in opposition to that which exists in Middleton’s day job as half of Arab Strap. ‘Loneliness Shines’ excites with its shimmering and crackling organ, while ‘No Modest Bear’ squelches and lurches, drums and Moog-sounding keys expanding in anticipation of something just out of reach.

AMINA
AminanimA EP (Speak N Spell)

Both part of the unique sound of Iceland’s Sigur Ros and a string quartet in their own right, the four women of Amina have finally ventured out on their own with this debut EP. Comprising mainly viola, violin and cello, the additional use of mallet instrumentation anchoring these four songs, the overall affect something like being lost in a remote forest.

Closer to the campfire than to the celestial stars, AminaminA is a strikingly beautiful addition to Iceland’s rich tapestry of music.

DAFT PUNK
Technologic (Virgin/EMI)

The latest single off this French duo’s new album is either a hypnotically droned-out dance gem or a really monotone, out of place commentary on a world out of control. Personally, the jury is still out. A looped list of hi-tech tasks preformed by most of us daily rides over a squelched trademark Daft Punk house beat. The three remixes that back it up simply add more static, dot-matrix printer or in Peaches’ case, dumb the song down even more.

GANG GANG DANCE
God’s Money (Social Registry/Smash)

This New York quartet has clearly gone beyond the melding of genres or styles. They are even beyond melding cultures, this second album utilising a synergy of civilisations – from ancient to futuristic – to forge a unique cacophony of sound.

With what sounds like a car-yard of drums and percussion, the songs’ rhythms, melodies and multiple counter melodies interweave with synthesisers and triggered sounds. This musical concoction has astoundingly hypnotic qualities – made more so because of its live execution. Songs such as ‘Glory In Itself’ and ‘Before My Voice Fails’ are as long as a pop song but as deep and as mind-boggling as a black hole. God’s Money, while tribal in many different ways, is in fact a musical future plugged into our time of information overload.

WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY
Giving Up The Ghost (Secretly Canadian)

A lot has changed since previous album We Fight Till Death, W.F.T.D. growing from the original duo of Dan Matz and Jason McNeely to a four-piece, the addition of keys, bass and drums now apparent within almost all of the songs. Plus whereas WFTD was previously two people at opposite ends of America, now it’s four folks holed up in Philadelphia.

So it comes as little surprise to find this album holding more continuity and a more complete world of sounds. Their atmospheric and moody lo-fi pop again dredges up folk-sounding pasts (‘Giving Up’), foggy almost forgotten memories (‘The Front’) and a crackling and splintered guitar pop (‘Gathering’). Think of Blonde Redhead, but instead of being lost in a musical Renaissance, being lost within a void of information and cultural definition, where the failing human condition is given sounds and, as is here, songs.

SLOAN
A Sides Win (Singles 1992-2005) (Reverberation)

Covering the whole expanse of their career, this compilation displays Canadian quartet Sloan’s ability to craft a finely woven power-pop cloth. It has to be said though that like last year’s or last decade’s fashion, these songs don’t glow with the same vibrancy that they possibly once did.

Placed within their original albums, the songs definitely shone brightly as wonderful and whimsical tunes but gathering together all these little shining stars has unfortunately created one not-so-bright light. ‘Underwhelmed’, ‘Coax Me’, ‘The Lines You Amend’, ‘Losing California’ and ‘If It Feels Good Do It’ still stand out as some of their finest, but as a whole these 16 tracks (and more than two hours of bonus DVD footage including documentaries and every video they’ve made) serve simply as a time capsule of a band that sadly went almost unnoticed in their time.

THE TEARS
Here Come The Tears (FMR/Independiente)

Upon first listen the essence that was within the 1992 debut album by Suede is immediately present here on the debut album by The Tears, the core of both being the singer/songwriter combo of Bernard Butler and Brett Anderson.

The years together and apart have taken the edge off both individuals, Butler’s guitars rippling and grandiose but minus the metallic coarseness of the past. Anderson on the other hand still croons, his voice drifting from a pretentious falsetto to a sombre tenor, not as wrought with emotion as in his last band but definitely just as absorbed. There are moments of great songwriting like ‘Co-Star’ with its Depeche Mode undertones or ‘Brave New Century’ with its snake-like guitar; these unfortunately sharing the stage with decidedly average moments.

A more mature and refined band, in some ways mediocre compared to the trail they once blazed but hopefully just a group finding the brilliant stride they definitely possess.

FRANK BLACK
Honeycomb (Cooking Vinyl/Shock)

For a while there it looked as though Mr Black could be mellowing out in his old age, but the reformation of The Pixies and the continuation of their rock squall proved that untrue. So what then of Honeycomb, the new “mellowed-out” album? Well, it’s the first truly solo album he’s written since 1996’s Cult Of Ray and while not faultless, it now seems clear that this is the avenue in which the eclectic, poppy and angst-less Frank Black wishes to dwell.

Laid-back, almost country but still multi-coloured, ‘I Burn Today’ revives a beautiful Byrds mood. ‘Another Velvet Nightmare’ has an almost Tom Waits jazz-bar vibe and ‘Go Find Your Saint’ is entirely blue-collar Springsteen. ‘Dark End Of The Street’ could be a Van Morrison cover, if the liner notes didn’t prove otherwise.

A man of many names and faces, some Black, some Frank, some Francis; this one is of beautiful pop maturity and unquestionable songwriting craft.

THE DIRTBOMBS
If You Don’t Already Have A Look (In The Red/In-Fidelity)

Sensory overload, rock’n’roll overload… in fact, everything about this Detroit garage band is based on pushing it all into the red and leaving it there to writhe. Covering the ridiculous output of 7” singles, covers, compilation tracks and one-off experiments that have occurred over their 10-year career, this two-disc, 52-song (!!!!!) collection is quite simply one of the finest garage/soul/rock’n’roll documents stuck onto a piece of round plastic.

Disc one is mostly made up of the bazillion 7” singles the band has put out (clearly the finest R’n’R format). Every song is awesome and with 29 in a row it really is quite intimidating. Disc two is all covers, from the expected garage and soul luminaries of the past to the some surprising additions (including Elliot Smith, Adult, ESG).

At the band’s epicentre is mastermind Mick Collins who, like Iggy and Kramer, finally deserves a place in rock’s pantheon, this collection of songs putting The Dirtbombs squarely beside The Stooges and MC5 as supreme rulers of garage rock rebellion.

CURL UP AND DIE
The One Above All, The End Of All That Is (Revelation)

Their latest album sees Las Vegas’s Curl Up And Die lay down a collection of songs that see-saw from over-wrought mid tempo behemoths to messy full-bore hardcore.

Over 33-minutes, these 11 songs knee jerk along, seeming more overblown with each chapter. ‘Instrumental’ and ‘Back Out’ are two slower tunes that hark back to some demonic slow burning black metal from the 80’s while ‘There Is Never Enough Time To Do Nothing’ and ‘Blood Mosh Hips Hair Lips Pills Fuck Death’ are simply over-wrought, flailing and fail to connect. Above all this are the vocals of Mike Minnick, who just seems to choke and strain on his words, his thin croak never capable of a full-blown roar or scream. Can’t someone please just get him a lozenge?

REGURGITATOR
Pretty Girls Swear (Valve)

Unsung chameleons – that’s what Regurgitator are. This five-track EP is the latest document to prove Regurgitator’s uncompromising originality. Stripping away the noodling, ‘Pretty Girls Swear’ is damn close to the band’s beginnings, simply rocked hard and wearing a good-time grin. From there, things morph into the down tempo and eerie ‘Sent By God’, the tense sonic tug-of-war of ‘The Rock’ and totally glitched-out Akira-esque sounds of the 30-minute ambient avant-garde ‘Pillowhead Orchestra’. This shit is truly out there… w… a… y… out there.

CAITLIN CARY & THAD COCKRELL
Begonias (Yep Rock/Didgeridoo)

Whereas her past collaborator Ryan Adams sounds nothing like when they were both in Whiskeytown, Cary’s country twang still holds true now, and there there’s something about how her voice plays out when matched with that of a male’s tenor – in this case, that of Thad Cockrell.

These 11 duets comprise the hurt and bruised style of classic country, one that pines for happiness but finds a much rockier road. Their voices sometimes play wistfully together (‘Something Less…’) and sometimes in painful crossfire (‘Please Break My Heart’). Drifting beneath this is beautifully accompanying beds of pedal steel, clear and crisp twang guitar and shuffled brushes.

While not wanting to draw too much of a comparison with Cary’s days in Whiskeytown, Begonias has an air that is undeniably similar to the beautiful and brittle torch songs of that group and, maybe because it’s Cary, perfectly fill the hole they left that Adams has not been able to fill.

BABY SHAMBLES
Fuck Forever (Rough Trade/Shock)

Man, it’s really hard to wade through the shit and notoriety that surrounds frontman Pete Doherty and reach the actual music. That said, the ex-Libertine still obviously has the knack to pen a tune so infectious it will leave you swearing out loud in the streets. ‘Fuck Forever’ is then backed with another four fine tunes and, for all their ramshackle sounds, there’s something within these songs that we all can hook onto.

MAGIC DIRT
Locket (Warner)

Back with big balls-out rock chords and the saccharin sweet voice of Adalita, Magic Dirt’s first single has all the elements that have made them so much fun on the past. But for all their similarity, these four tracks are all really quite different, from the stomp turned squall of ‘Sucker Love’ (and feedback not heard since ‘Ice’) to forlorn ballad ‘Gap’ and heartbreaking ‘1 Thru 5’. This is a band definitely not to be forgotten about.

GENTLE BEN & HIS SENSITIVE SIDE
Dogs Of Valparaiso (Spooky Records)

Once local enigmatic crooner Gentle Ben has over the last few years morphed from crazed hick to softly spoken lady-killer to now emitting some coarse-voiced, whisky-fuelled squall. ‘Dogs Of Valparaiso’ has none of the hallmarks that made Corbett so alluring. The B-side, a cover of Wall Of Voodoo’s ‘Don’t Spill My Courage’, is sped up, missing its mark. Gentle Ben & His Sensitive Side are a great band, but unfortunately that case can’t be proven here.

AKRON/FAMILY
Self-titled (Young Gods/Spunk)

Like finding a strange, foreign but totally beautiful radio transmission in the distant night, Akron/Family comes into view like a passing satellite burning in the atmosphere.

Delicate voices emanate from almost random pulsing sounds while static clatter and picked guitars interweave, particularly throughout ‘Before and Again’ and ‘Suchness’. These lulling songs are bookended by intermittent static bursts. Turning rural and ambient but with a brooding darkness (‘Italy’), you can hear a real kinship between these four fellows and their labelmates Angels Of Light or a more acoustic Flaming Lips. The album’s later tracks hold at their core a sombre, rustic psychedelica.

Everything about Akron/Family has an air of dreaming about it, and as twisted as dreams can be, there is also nothing obvious about this, an album to live with, enjoy and slowly understand over time.

THE FUZZ
100 Demons (Reverberation)

Backing up two blistering EPs, Perth’s The Fuzz are the latest of a long line of rock bands to stick it to the east coast. Sounding as though they’re trying to cut themselves from the same cloth as Joan Jett or Susie Quattro, these 12 tunes are a half-hour slab of big rock chords, flailing solos and guttural attitude.

Songs such as ‘S.O.B.’ and ‘Long Wheel Base Blues’ shine for their stomp and groove, but the flurry of Hellacopters-style chords that fill most of the tracks actually take the shine off the band’s sound and at times leave them sounding like a whole lot of Oz bands. Certainly better than most of what’s littered round the country and made better by the moments when vocalist Abbe May lets wail, but unfortunately 100 Demons is just lacking that final sucker punch.

PAJO
Self-titled (Drag City/Spunk)

A musical chameleon over the past few years, swapping his time between rock group Zwan, a post rock Slint reformation and his solo on-the-road EPs, this is the first full musical statement from Dave Pajo since 2001’s amazing Whatever, Mortal.

Again based around the acoustic, almost country guitar of Pajo and his airy sombre voice, this latest collection of songs veers between the lonely, rural sounds of ‘Ten More Days’ and ‘Mary of the Wild Moor’ and the more adventurous and electronically abstract ‘War is Dead’ and ‘Baby Please Come Home’.

Truly a brilliant and wandering troubadour, Pajo’s solo career over the last decade – while not as celebrated as his name-swapping friend Will Oldham – needs to be recognised as being just as unique and alluring for many, adding to a still unclassified arm of contemporary modern folk/country music.

Richard Young – River Through Howling Sky (Jagjaguwar)

Inhabiting some kind of twilight world where the shadows are long and vision gets hazy, Youngs latest album recorded in his hometown of Glasgow, is painfully sparse but dense with emotion and mood.

Recalling scraps of Ed Kuepper’s soulful voice with parallels to David Sylvian’s avant electronics of recent years, these four tracks, stretching over __ minutes have the same air of patience that defined Nick drake’s brooding genius. All blending with percussion and electric guitar that crackles like a fire.

Not an album for the background, it is only upon immersing yourself in tracks like the 20-minute ‘Red Cloud Singular’ that the full world of sounds becomes apparent and the songs journey begins.

UNCUT
Those Who Were Hung Hang Here (Paper Bag/Shiny)

It’s hard not to cop out and simply reference the surface similarities these Canadians have with a bunch of other ‘popular right now’ bands. But this album deserves more than associations, Uncut evolving into a more sophisticated beast as their debut album unfurls.

The first track, ‘Understanding The New Violence’, has all the hallmarks of what currently propels bands from obscurity to the cover of NME. Pass the brooding guitars, though, that makes you dance as much as rock, and you’ll find a classic pop songwriting style that in ‘Copilot’ and ‘Taken In Sleep’ don’t stale after two weeks. This pop element stands in stark contrast to an almost clinical-sounding edge that’s usually associated with electronic dance – here combating the warmth of the guitars with a cold structure.

After listening to this album for 11 months (it’s only now been released locally), Those Who Were Hung… is definitely a stayer, energised with punk and tempered with style.

NECRO
AKA The Sexorcist (Psycho+Logical/Shock)

If any publicity is good publicity then this album probably shouldn’t be written about, ’cause Necro is definitely the biggest waste of space rapper in the history of the genre.

It’s understandable that this self-described “extremist” rapper would release his records on his own label ’cause no-one else would ever tolerate this barrage of inbred mentality. For his latest tirade, he presents 22 rhymes about deviant sex, all of which are completely about deriving pleasure from the extreme degradation of women. It includes tracks endorsing the rape and sadistic murder of underage girls – these are ideas that in any other artistic format would see Necro getting arrested and his work banned.

As distasteful as it is to listen to, it’s even worse to think that someone would actually enjoy this. And, chances are, anyone who’s into it probably has a few screws loose.

RICHARD YOUNGS
The Naïve Shaman (Jagjaguwar)

Not since Scott Walker’s Tilt or Michael Gira’s Drainland has an album or artist created such a frighteningly beautiful descent through the darkness. Somewhere between haunting and spiritual, The Naïve Shaman finds Youngs carrying a world’s weight of abstract sound on his voice, a rumbling throbbing bass the only constant throughout this strange 50-minute journey.

Youngs’ angelic turn of phrase wafts and whips through the speakers, building to echoed chants and lulling to simple whispers. Manipulated guitars, squirbly electronics and glitch sound housing an intimidating mood, and while this is spread throughout five songs it comes across as one winding whole. ‘Life On A Beam’ and ‘Sonar In My Soul’ are two chapters that it’s impossible to wrestle your attention from.

This album is remarkable for not only it’s beauty, but Youngs’ ability to capture what sounds like lost souls.

MATTHEW HERBERT
Plat Du Jour (Accidental)

While Matthew Herbert might have left the big band jazz behind for now, it’s that same stylistic perspective and attention to detail that fills this, his umpteenth album. The progressions and interplay of sounds, whether it’s soloing samples or old-school ebbs and flows of mood – place this album as the 21^st Century’s electronic equivalent to the Chicago jazz of the 60s.

Conceptually based around the social and political act of human food consumption, Herbert veers from a dub-fuelled, chicken-filled opening track to eerie glitch and plonk (‘These Branded Waters’). Always exhibiting an element of loose restraint, never do the tracks fill to cacophonies of sound, like say Aphex Twin would, or allow the interplay to produce the tension he previously has possessed under other guises.

Acutely akin to Matmos’s To Cut…, Plat Du Jour is heavily sampled with life’s little morsels and grand feasts, a beautifully truncated work, like a window to somewhere expansive that hopefully Herbert will let us see more of in the future.

CURSIVE
The Difference Between Houses And Homes (Saddle Creek/Stomp)

Angsty rockers Cursive have filled the gaps in for you, the devoted fan who for whatever reason never got all those rare 7” singles from back in the day, these 10 tunes covering the band’s little plastic catalogue from 1995 to 2001.

They’re also nice enough to add two previously unreleased tracks – that way if you’re dedicated enough to have all the vinyl, then you’ll just have to buy this too.

Still reading? It must mean you’re not running down to the store to snap this up and really, I find it difficult to see a reason to do so – while these tracks work as singles, here they sound overblown and without any flow, making this a more painful than enjoyable ride. Most tracks, like ‘Sucker & Dry’ from ’97 come across as well-recorded demos, Tim Kasher’s vocals usually horribly out of tune.

This lacks the finesse of the band’s albums, too much effort having gone into making this jagged collection work, and that’s why it doesn’t.

CHAD VANGAALEN
Infiniheart (Sub Pop/Stomp)

Whether it’s delicate acoustic pop or crunchy indie rock guitar, the songs of VanGaalen have a curious nature about them, songs translating as quizzical questions that engage rather than stories to simply receive.

Varying from beat-programmed pop in the vein of Postal Service (‘Kill Me In My Sleep’, ‘J.C.’s Head…’) to swaths of bristling guitar a la Built To Spill (‘Clinically Dead’, ‘Red Blood’) and the occasional homemade violin (‘Blood Machine’), these elements are just the surface to the 16 songs here. This one-man project encompasses a lot more sound and subtlety interwoven in a way that only becomes apparent after wearing Infiniheart in.

If VanGaalen’s music makes it out from under the radar, then whole scenes of indie pop kids will swoon, hearts a-flutter with the blips, vulnerable falsetto and beauty that is throughout this unique album.

THE VANDAS
Didn’t Come Here To Be Alone (Liberation)

The Vandas project an air of sophistication that after a few listens ends up sounding all too adult-contemporary. Their urban country-tinged pop is immaculately executed with the vocals of Chris Altmann coming across as a not entirely fulfilled copy of Tom Petty. The tracks ‘Silence’ and ‘Capsule’ have a catchy clip-clop rumble to them, but in the end it’s hard to find anything that’s memorable.

(CS)