Alex's opinion and documents of music

THE FRENCH KICKS
Two Thousand (Vagrant/Stomp)

All the spiky, snaking and angular guitars that first made the French Kicks stand out seem to have been almost totally ironed out, album number three swollen with lulling melodies and meandering indie rock.

Everything seems to be suspended from the vocal melodies of main-man Nick Stumpf, his now soaring voice the only real conduit of emotions here – tracks like ‘Knee High’ and ‘No Mean Time’ see this working to the most effect. Otherwise it’s hard to find the mid-paced music of these 11 songs remarkable. There are similarities with The Walkmen and lesser Wilco pop, but whereas these other bands twist and turn the listener, The French Kicks now simply sway in the concurrent breeze.

AGAINST ME
Americans Abroad: Live In London (Fat Wreck Chords/Shock)

Apart from the one new track (‘Americans Abroad’), it’s hard to decide what to make of this live document. You get the full set of 17 songs that sound good, have appropriate crowd cheering and that loss of true impact due to the fact that it’s recorded live. What you don’t get is anything that adds to their awesome albums and songs. Tracks like ‘From Her Lips To God’s Ears’, ‘Miami’ and ‘Don’t Lose Touch’ simply make you want to go grab the album versions and crank your speakers. Given the whole sing-a-long element to Against Me, ‘Reinventing Axl Rose’ and ‘Those Anarcho Punks…’ do have 10 times the amount of “whoa ohs” in them, thanks to the crowd.

This album works if you’re going to see these four, forever-touring Florida lads in the near future. Otherwise, it just reminds you that you’re missing out… and there’s no need to rub it in.

F.O. MACHETE
Blaze Of Flashes (Jam/Shock)

Visceral rock that takes all the gristle and sinew and strips it back to something more barebones, where the white marrow of jagged pop hooks can be gleamed into something prominently visible.

The air of fun that surrounds the 10 songs on F.O. Machete’s second album sits starkly against the aggression that lies in the delivery of the music. The whispered voice of Natasha Noramly more often fast turns into screaming vocals with guitarist Paul Mellon also chiming in. Remember the glorious outbursts that defined McLusky? Well F.O. Machete have taken that same game plan and simply sweetened the pop hooks and vocals! The only down side is that prolonged doesn’t reveal anything all that long lasting or overly remarkable in Blaze Of Flashes, so while (as the title suggests) it’s an album that burns bright, it’s not one that burns long.

DR. OCTAGON
Aliens (Shock)

Hip-hop’s favourite schizophrenic Kool Keith has exhumed the long-AWOL Dr Octagon, ‘Aliens’ the latest track to drop from Octagon’s sophomore album. A heavy air melds with thick beats and a slew of sci-fi sound effects. While not of the standard of his now cult debut, this slice still sits way out on the left-field – a cerebral remix by Sydney’s Fiasko adds a more cut-up feel to the track – definitely one to scare the kids with.

ROGERS SISTERS
Why Won’t You (Too Pure/Remote Control)

What makes ‘Why Won’t You’ such a refreshing change is the fact that this song finally gives the The Rogers Sisters the balls their music has always needed. Driving guttural guitar and bass lines pack way more punch than their new-wave punk-funk ever did! It’s groovy, it’s catchy and it has a Stooges energy that’s instantly infectious. But don’t fret, the B-side remix is more of that ESG throwback sound, so the scenesters still have something to poonce over.

AUDIOSLAVE
Original Fire (Sony/BMG)

Oh God! It just gets worse… so much worse. ‘Original Fire’ sounds like Iggy’s ‘Lust For Life’, only totally turned to shit. I can’t explain in so few words how soulless this song is: 1.The white funk is way to high in the mix. 2. Morello is still doing that same wiggy wiggy lead break. 3. What’s with ripping off Lenny Kravitz’s backbeat? 4. The three live B-sides do nothing more than prove people seem to actually like them. Whatever happened to ending slavery?

CYANN & BEN
Sunny Morning (Ever/Inertia)

Somewhere between the grandiose-rock of Porcupine Tree and the post-rock blitz of Mogwai lies Cyann & Ben. This four-track debut EP covers a lot of ground during its 23 minutes. From the glitch electronics of ‘Let It Play’, the claustrophobic ambience of ‘Damaged Memory’ and the bombastic majesty of ‘Sunny Morning’, the whole thing is very epic, but maybe a little too so.

GIDDY MOTORS
Do Easy (Fatcat/Inertia)

Some four years ago Giddy Motors burst out of England with their ferocious debut album and then seemingly disappeared just as quickly. Well, while time waits for no-one, in the case of these three lads it hasn’t healed any wounds or dampened their aggression either – these eight songs a tight 33 minutes of piss and vinegar.

Filled with guitar that resembles shrill screams more so than clusters of chords, there is a real sense of unease in every track, each delivered differently but amping up the tension a notch each time. ‘Panzrama’ and ‘Down With A High Heel’ stand out, coming across like McLusky covering Big Black. In fact, it’s more like an extremely psychotic Big Black covering Giddy Motors’ debut. Don’t get me wrong, melodies do exist here, it’s just that they’re the kind that resemble someone rubbing slithers of glass down the back of your neck!

CATFISH HAVEN
Tell Me (Secretly Canadian)

These days there are a lot of folk who rock, roll and caterwaul, but there are few who still ‘choogle’. Credence choogled like no other and these three fellas from Chicago do a pretty damn good job of delivering that back-porch white rye boogie.

In the same ballpark as The Black Keys and with the spirit of Otis Redding, Catfish Haven are a wonderful mix of southern soul and white boy blues – the cool thing is that they’re not pretending to be anything they’re not. Songs like ‘Down By Your Fire’ and ‘This Time’ come straight from the churchyard while ‘If I Was Right’ throws some decent Americana into the mix, making these guys sound way less dated than their more famous, current contemporaries.

Still, it’s the swagger and swing of ‘I Don’t Worry’, ‘Let Go’ and the like that will best get you tappin’ away the day and hootin’ and hollerin’ into the night.

XIU XIU
The Air Force (5RC/Trifekta)

Xiu Xiu take subtlety and beauty and twist it, contort it until it’s no longer recognisable as beauty, but much more beautiful because of it. Like Edward Scissorhands to time-old pop formulas and in fact even their own formulas, the band seems to revolve around epicentre Jamie Stewart, who sucks you in, gobbles you up, spews you out, sucks you in again, gobbles… and so forth. This happens 11 times here, each song using something different as the hook but always with you as the catch – the creepy Scott Walker-esque vocals of ‘Buzz Saw’, the rapid fire electronics of ‘Vulture Piano’, the cataclysmic air of ‘Bishop, CA’ and the ambient sadness of ‘Pineapple vs Watermelon’. There’s so much more too, but you won’t find any true meanings here on a page… you’ll have to search this shrouded masterpiece yourself for those.

THE MARS VOLTA
Amputecture (GSL/UMA)

Welcome aboard to the interstellar Amputecture space flight! Strap yourself in…

Album number three finds all the transitional creases ironed out as these prog rockers take their tonal and sonic explorations to a Bitches Brew level. It needs to be stated that Amputecture can’t been absorbed as an album of eight songs, it’s one 76-minute story, one linear highway made up of various scenic landscapes and half-explanatory signposts. We get here every colour imaginable and almost every style possible, with no two melodies alike. Sure, there’s the Yes-sounding fretwork, but these eight individuals (conducted by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez) take it way further and strike a balance here that was missing in Frances The Mute – punk melts into abstract noise only to be reborn as an Afro-salsa beat and burst forth into larger than life Zeppelin-esque rock. Also this time Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s voice works really well within the music, not just riding roughshod over all the layers and textures.

This isn’t average music by normal musicians and its wondrous complexities may be lost on many… I can’t help but wonder though, have The Mars Volta pulled from the cosmic soup the album that Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix never got to make?

MSTRKRFT
The Looks (Last Gang/Modular)

Coming hot off the heals of his cooler-than-thou disco-punk band Death From Above 1979, bassist/keyboardist Jesse F Keeler has again teamed duo style, this time creating straight dancefloor electro. For anyone who has enjoyed Daft Punk, the exact same French-styled electro house is in full effect here, but unfortunately apart from the confusing vowelless name there really is nothing much here that’s all that engaging.

The whole album sounds like it came from a Roland 303 in about as long as it takes to play these eight songs out. ‘She’s Good For Business’, ‘Paris’ and ‘Neon Knights’ is nothing more than Saturday night Vice-party, techno-barn fodder that will sound mindblowing if you’ve spent most of your night fucking your brain with blow!

THE ALBUM LEAF
Into The Blue Again (Sub Pop/Stomp)

Like his San Diego neighbours The Black Heart Procession, The Album Leaf somehow transforms melancholy and sobering sounds into gloriously uplifting declarations of love and life’s vast adventures.

At the group’s epicentre is Jimmy LaVelle, who  – after working with friends in his hometown and as far away as Sigur Ros in Iceland – has gone it alone for his fourth album. The outcome of this is a more majestic scope than anything attempted previously, as a majority of intricately layered organic and electronic instrumentals (‘Shine’, ‘Red-Eye’ and ‘Into The Sea’) intermingle with scattered and forlorn stories with ragged outcomes (‘Always For You’, ‘Writings On the Wall’ and ‘Wherever I Go’).

The mood here is everything, all the little twitching sounds filling the air like crackling flickers of flame that warm and draw you near – Into The Blue Again is a beautiful album that you can quietly go hide in for a while.

LAMB OF GOD
Sacrament (Sony/BMG)

The little sticker on the cover states that these five guys are “The Future Of American Metal”. Now while those little promo stickers are usually to be ignored, in this case it just might be an accurate declaration!

Album number five is all the elements of the past pieced together with absolute precision, a delicate tightrope walk of brutal ferocity, accessible melody and enough tech invention to turn you on your ear. Your ability to simply shred isn’t enough these days and in times when being heavy required new ways of seeing, tracks like ‘Again We Rise’ with its symphonic scope, ‘Pathetic’ with its bellowing breakneck bottom end and the album’s absolute masterpiece ‘Descending’ really take all that’s vital about the metal genre and inject it with renewed life.

In the long line of over-amped aggression that gave birth to Slayer, Pantera and Sepultura, Lamb Of God are worthy successors – Sacrament shows their readiness to rule!

VARIOUS + LONDON SINFONIETTA
Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters (Warp/Inertia)

With Drukqs we saw the transition of Aphex Twin from cut-up electronic maverick to someone capable of more organic compositional depth – the piano pieces that littered that album were almost a precursor for the wonderfully realised visions here.

A double album of 19 tracks, this collection documents a series of live concerts in the UK in 2003 that found the Warp avant electronic artists of today interpreting their left-field forefathers as well as orchestrated interpretations of their own work – this all realised with the aid of the London Sinfonietta. Placed side by side, the intrinsic connection between the works of Steve Reich, Squarepusher, John Cage, Aphex Twin and the concert’s fellow composers is remarkable, parallel visions for the first time empowered with the same tools.

Aphex Twin’s ‘Prepared Piano Piece 1’, John Cage’s Sonatas, Steve Reich’s ‘First Construction In Metal’ and Kenneth Hesketh’s arrangement of ‘Polygon Window’ are enough to completely turn around any hi-tech music lover to the power of the previous century’s old classical form.

YOUTH GROUP
Catching & Killing (Ivy League)

The fully envisioned rollicking pop rock of Youth Group’s latest single is hard to deny. After being taken in by the millions with their cover of ‘Forever Young’, it’s testament to their realised vision that this track is as strong as any of Australia’s top lauded songwriters. Backing this single up is an acoustic version of ‘Forever Young’, as well as the beautiful B-side ‘Late Last Night’.

CODA
Calling Mission Mu (Silent)

Over the course of their career, Sydney five-piece Coda have taken their music from a simple cloth embroidered with other’s off-cuts and details to a finely woven tapestry of colours that come together like elements of refracted light, individually varied but intrinsically interconnected.

Given its instrumental make-up and vast variety of instrumentation, Calling Mission Mu can become as detailed or overarching as your ears wish it to be. There are many peaks and valleys as this aural story travels through moody eastern European rock (‘Shoes, Your Rhythm’), lush folds of raga and dub-filled organic electronica (‘Marine’, ‘Superpod’ and ‘Palms Of Shangrila’) and rich French Riviera-sounding lounge (‘Loveliner’).

Their precision goes beyond post rock, pop or electronica, culminating in a document as wondrous and diverse as our own 21st Century.

AKRON/FAMILY
Meek Warrior (Young God/Stomp)

The simplistic rustic musings of their 2005 debut are no longer all that encompass Akron/Family, a cosmic cloud of cluttered noises descending upon and dissipating these four fellows. Opener ‘Blessing Force’ is a real litmus test, bursting forth with mammoth ragged tribal percussion only to collapse into swarms of free jazz saxophones.

Upon exiting the other side of this black hole, we again find the raga acoustic guitars and campfire vocals that defined their previously stunning output. Choirs of raw harmonies (‘Lightning Bolt Of Compassion’) regularly lift songs from their introspective beginnings and long, Jacki-O-Motherfucker-style musical passages (‘No Space In This Realm’) give way to simplistic psychedelic pigeonholing. There is an underlying aggression to these seven songs – not sonic aggression, but an aggressive push to take their music and themselves far beyond all perceived limits, where the space and time of song is as much the fabric of space itself.

WOLF EYES
Human Animal (Sub Pop/Stomp)

Having become known the world over for their crushing abstract sonic overload, this Seattle trio have for their latest creation intensified their work not through their ability to keep everything in the red but through the tension of restraint, through insinuation and a density of mood that could feasibly be recontextualised into some kind of documented descent into madness.

It’s the space here that freaks you out, the darkness between the sounds, eight parts that could well resemble being kidnapped, blindfolded, taken to a dark, dank basement and then just left there – the fear of not knowing what’s around you is the key to this music’s power. Voices come and go, and hissing, scraping and thuds swirl around you – there isn’t so much structure as story being unfolded here. This is the latest Second Annual Document, Drawing Of OT for 2006. Not as punishing as Burned Mind, but far superior in its scope and achievements.

BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY
The Letting Go (Drag City/Spunk)

Will Oldham hasn’t made an album like this in years, filled with subtle beauty, aching melodies and whispered turns of phrase.

There’s something as definingly new as timelessly old in these 12 songs, and that thing could well be lush swaths of strings! With his usual comrades in tow – brother Paul on bass and Jim White on drums – this is classic Palace music, only whereas those albums held a lonely yearning, Letting Go has no lonely, besotted desperation to it. ‘Cursed Sleep’, ‘Lay And Love’ and ‘Then The Letting Go’ finds Oldham sharing his musings with siren Dawn McCarthy, their stirring voices coming together to take Oldham’s intimate tales towards something sounding complete for the first time.

All the overt weirdness of this strange chameleon has been left behind with Letting Go, the delicate acoustic country that first made him special here in all their ragged beauty.

MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO.
Fading Trails (Secretly Canadian/Trifekta)

The distinctive voice of Jason Molina just cuts through everything – his musings of past lovers and ghosts that won’t leave him be seem to mean so much more through his yearning and soaring voice.

This album leans slightly more than past efforts to the early Crazy Horse side than the Neil Young solo side, but that’s not to say that anyone’s copying anyone else – it’s just that same driving honesty and ability to affect the listener is present throughout. That West Coast country sound hasn’t shone so bright in so very long, ‘Don’t Fade On Me’, ‘Lonesome Valley’ and ‘A Little At A Time’ drawing the listener to a palpable level of heartbreak. The bone dry piano that carries ‘The Old Horizon’ might as well be the last will and testament to anyone’s happiness. Still, there’s a certain amount of comfort and solace in these 10 songs as Molina again manages to craft another perfect set.

There’s saloon country and then there’s Fading Trails, country that carries you alone into the sunset as the credits roll.

THE SLITS
Revenge Of the Killer Slits (EXO)

Why the hell can’t people just leave history alone? Twenty-five years after calling it a day, two-thirds of a reformed Slits deliver three tracks that are unfortunately pale comparisons of their original work. The hollow chanting vocals and breakbeat drum programming that make up ‘Slits Tradition’ and ‘Kill Them With Love’ are not a shadow on what made Cut legendary. The only redeeming factor is ‘Number One Enemy’, dredged up from the 70s and with Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook filling out the sound. Don’t bother with this!