Reviews: May 2006
DANIELSON
Ships (Secretly Canadian)
At the crossroads of where folk and pop intersect lies rich and fruitful soils, where many have wandered by and already discovered the blossoming fruits of Joanna Newsom, Devandra Banhart, Sufjan Stevens and more. Now these soils reap Danielson, after many years and albums of germination, the time seems ripe for one and all to savour the spoils.
Both collaborative and solo, at its core is Daniel Smith, guitarist and distinctively erratic, castrato vocalist. There lies real grandeur within these 11 songs, from the choirs that fill ‘Did I Step On Your Trumpet’ to the strange electronic quirks that skim through ‘Two Sitting Ducks’. Sombre moments are within ‘When It Comes To You’ and ‘My Lion Sleeps Tonight’ but usually the revelry is high – like how the Flaming Lips can be serious and joyous all at the same time. Embellished with a frolicking rhythm section, album number nine for Danielson like discovering a foreign civilisation, already fully evolved and self-sufficient but openly welcoming.
JOLIE HOLLAND
Springtime Can Kill You (Anti/Shock)
As new as this album actually is, every song, note and wavering vocal melody sounds as if it has come straight off a pristine old 78’, a lost rural… almost deep south feel emanating from the songs of Jolie Holland.
Simmering and smoky in her voice and extremely sublime in the instrumentation – these 12 songs at times recall when blues and jazz of the Deep South was the beautiful articulations of life’s hardships. From the moan of steel guitar in ‘Stubborn Beast’ to the lost horns that wander through ‘Your Not Satisfied’ and the solum piano that holds up ‘Please Don’t’, there is as much a sense of tragedy as there is beauty in Holland’s soulful voice, one that it is all but impossible to not compare to Billy Holiday’s.
The thing about Springtime… is how it rises itself above any sense of melancholy, the songs as a whole being a quite uplifting and enjoyable journey.
ISLANDS
Return To The Sea (Equador/Spunk)
Some of you might remember Canada’s Unicorns, they came to Brisbane a while back, played a show, went home and then just broke up! Now while that story ends there, another wonderful one starts here with Return To The Sea.
We simply take the drumming Unicorn and the singing, guitaring Unicorn, surround them with a menagerie of musical friends and call the whole thing Islands – this debut having that same whimsical, fun, lust for life sound that you’ll be familiar with. Gone though is the abstract wackiness that the previous band had, Return To The Sea instead creeping more delicately into new sounds and building weird and grand songs rather than just blurting out hooks. Opening with the strangely beautiful nine-minute odyssey ‘Swans’, there are many reoccurring head-bobbing moments (‘Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby’, ‘Rough Gem’). Everything here though has an element of subtly that makes this album blossom over time – not necessarily better, just a wonderfully different parrel universe.
GORILLAZ
El Mañana/Kids With Guns (EMI)
This double a-side single shows the more sublime and darker side of this rag tag bunch. ‘El Mañana’ almost trip-hop with its down tempo step and Albarn’s lost vocal melody. ‘Kids With Guns’ on the other hand kind of sounds like a 21st century reinvention of Madness’s ‘Our House’. Still down beat but a little lighter on the mood. As for the beautifully orchestrated ‘Stop The Dams’ it has to be one of the least obvious but best Gorillaz tracks yet!
ZOOBOMBS
Way In/Way Out (Valve)
This time round Japan’s Zoobombs enter the arena with a little less bubblegum on the soles of their shoes and a lot more grit and rock abandon.
From the Flailing MC5-esq guitars in ‘Texas’ to the “Kick Out The Jams Motherfucker” t-shirt in the band photo, you can’t ignore the heavy dosage of garage and dirge that this quartet has taken. And really, it’s brilliant, it’s been so long since a rock band, unfettered by ego has perfectly mixed pop hooks with the kind of rock grunt that makes you want to put your neck out. It’s not just jam about putting it in the red though, tunes like ‘Get It Together’ while only be five minutes long feel like some kind of time warp continuum as resonating organ drives a 60s styled Pink Floyd guitar exploration, it all coming crashing down in a triumphant cacophony of sound.
Bubble-gum pop just got glued to psych, garage and the best rock the bomb have dropped since Jon Spencer found the groove!
ANI DIFRANCO
Carnegie Hall 4.6.02 (Righteous Babe/Shock)
The first commercial release of her online bootleg series marks a pivotal point in time and DiFranco’s career. Just seven months after 9/11 and playing solo for the first time in years, this sold out show in New York’s Carnegie Hall captures the electricity in the air and the crowd.
As for the songs themselves, the emotion is very close to the surface, DiFranco forcing her audience to come out of denial of their surrounds and take stock. ‘Two Little Girls’ and ‘Out Of Range’ in particular, are delivered with an astounding force that sees her guitar contorted and attacked by her hands. Aggression, sadness, resolve and hope are all offered up in these 15 songs – made stronger by the direct communication of DiFranco solo.
What makes this performance though is the 20 minutes towards the end in which DiFranco unfurls two brand-new poems/songs (‘Serpentine’, ‘Self-Evident’) that are laid upon her audience like the lost shadow of the twin-towers. This document capturing some of her most moving music to date.
YOU AM I
Convicts (EMI)
Rocking like a resurrected McLusky, one of Australia’s best ever rock bands return with their seventh album. On Convicts they belt out 12 songs with an intensity and vibrancy not heard since the heady days of Hi Fi Way.
The first fistful of songs come at you like a volley of punches, rocking hard, fast and without pause – Tim Rogers leaves the crooning behind as he yelps, yells and screams his vitriol. The needle does fall from the red for ‘Secrets’ and ‘Thuggery’, where the hooks bring out the band’s ability to swing – horns making this even more so. Again it’s back to the future, with ‘By My Own Hand’ and ‘Gunslingers’ having a ballsy No.4 Record charge to them.
Mr Rogers’ up-and-down life of late has produced a record that’s every bit the You Am I we know and love, but with a maturity and quality that’s a new peak.
DESTROYER
Destroyer’s Rubies (Merge/Architecture)
The seventh album for Canada’s Destroyer is a signed, sealed and fully glossed folk-pop package – from the ever-so Bob Dylan-esque melodies of ‘Your Blood’ to the recurring sounds of The Go-Betweens in ‘Painter In Your Pocket’, ‘3000 Flowers’ and ‘A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point’.
Evocative while never being over-emotive, these 10 songs at times crackle with guitar (‘European Oils’) and twinkle with piano (‘Looter’s Follies’), the shrewd and rollicking pop tunes sometimes seeming a little too perfect for their own good – almost like main man Dan Bejar is trying to outdo his other pop outlet, The New Pornographers.
As perfect as it all seems, Bejar does inject a brazen streak into Destroyer’s Rubies, present throughout the album’s nine-minute opener and in other places. But it never derails the band as a whole, it just colours things – like a good bottle of red.
STEVE TOWSON
Shah Mat (CrimInAll)
The rough-around-the-edges recordings that have previously born Steve Towson’s name are a world away from this album of impressive rock come folk-flavoured punk.
Twelve bawdy songs in a Clash/Pogues style, the tales are from as far away as Europe (‘Straights Of Gibraltar’) to as close as the western suburbs (‘Long Drive Through Ipswich’). Fully backed with a band, the rollicking feel is infectious, a cavalcade of rocked-up balladry and camaraderie-filled songs such as ‘Billy Hughes’ Army’ and ‘The Remains Of Us’. There are moments like ‘Tonite We Storm The Bastille’, where Towson lets loose in a flurry of sound and fury, these balanced by moments of reserved introspection (‘6am’).
No longer a man in a shattered state, Shah Mat marks Towson’s unique songwriting talent getting the chance to be heard properly for the first time.
THE SABOTEURS
Broken Boy Soldiers (XL/Remote Control)
Just because it’s got The White Stripes’ Jack White in it, doesn’t mean it’s instantly brilliant, OK? What it does mean though is that the swath of rock hooks laid out here is going to be huge.
Made up of long-time Detroit friends White, Brendan Benson and the Greenhornes rhythm section, it’s a fuller, more T.Rex-sounding garage rock outfit than what we know the individuals for. Given Benson and White’s songwriting talent, it does sound like it took them a total of 10 minutes to write this album – songs like ‘Broken Boy Soldiers’ and ‘Intimate Secretary’ are good, but uninspiring and forgotten quite quickly. But there are definitely moments that stop you in your tracks, ‘Store Bought Bones’ being one of those, pulling out all the stops, power chords and vintage synthesisers.
A quick stop-off bit of fun or the start of something much bigger? Let’s hope this is only temporary!
ELF POWER
Back To The Web (Ryko/Stomp)
There’s an elegance to the music of Elf Power – now eight albums into their career, they’ve refined their luscious psychedelically-tinged pop to an absolutely sparse beauty that has the power to completely engulf you.
From the bittersweet opener (‘Come Lie Down With Me’) to the haunting guitars of ‘An Old Familiar Scene’, the momentum that careers through all 12 songs is never enough to undo its well tailored parts, all flowing smoothly into its different dreamlands.
Think of late 80s R.E.M. with lashings of Brian Jonestown Massacre and you’ll hear the alluring guitars and strings that propel the songs. Intermingled within all this is an English folk feel that recalls The Fairport Convention, it all coming together in a whimsical fashion. The eclecticism of Elf Power can’t be understated in the continuing metamorphosis of their sound, these freak-folk flavours possibly their most accomplished to date.
PHOENIX
It’s Never Been Like This (EMI)
French darlings Phoenix have wiped the slate clean so to speak, returning with a much more live organic pop rock. Still with a core of honeycombed melodies, it’s the delivery that is the most striking and the variety of sounds that is the most refreshing.
The considerable lack of overall slickness means tracks like ‘Consolation Prizes’ and ‘Long Distance Call’ have a loose vibrance that help bring out a lighter air that was present in parts of their debut, but lacking in Alphabetical.
Bopping along to ‘One Time Too Many’ and ‘Courtesy Laughs’, you can’t help but think that this might be perfect pop, not so cosmopolitan and a little more open-air-springtime in its feel. In fact, Phoenix have all but patented the kind of pop that lacks cheese, instilling the room with an uplifting and happy air – regardless of the surrounds.
THE DRONES
The Miller’s Daughter (Bang/Fuse)
Not everybody can be there from the beginning and that’s where The Miller’s Daughter comes in – made up of tracks, old, limited and in some cases, left to wither and die. These 10 unhinged, ramshackle nuggets of pure rock abandon come together to make a wonderfully cohesive whole.
It’s in moments like the title track and ‘Stop Dreaming’, when it seems like they’ve totally given up, that The Drones come into their brilliant own. From deathbed ballads (‘I Believe’) to shit-storm swaths of abandon (‘Slammin’ On The Brakes’), there’s something crazed and unsettling about these songs that’s hard to define, but is key to this band’s appeal.
With overseas garage rock sounding more and more fucking polished and pathetic, it’s nice to know that The Drones exist, as much pure destruction as creative genius.
THE CHURCH
Uninvited, Like The Clouds (Cooking Vinyl/Liberation)
The logical follow-on to Forget Yourself, Uninvited… suffers from moments of stunning beauty surrounded by a lot of plain-jane material.
Opening track and first single ‘Block’ really sets the mood for the album, for better or worse – its brooding air, if anything, brings down the lighter songs such as ‘Unified Field’ and ‘Pure Chance’. The whole album is interwoven with a strange sense of unease that’s not been as prevalent in Church albums for decades now.
The standout moment is actually ‘She’ll Come Back For You Tomorrow’(a Marty-Wilson Piper song), it’s guitars carrying a dreamy feel and his voice working with Steve Kilbey’s to wonderfully classic effect. Peter Koppes’ ‘Never Before’ continues the dream-like sequence.
Almost on the sedate side, the spark and crackle of their earlier years are here smouldering and glowing embers that older fans are sure to easily warm to.
BE YOUR OWN PET
Let’s Get Sandy (XL/Remote Control)
Thank god this is a CD, ’cause it sure as hell sounds like a record at the wrong speed. The title track is a fast solid slab of gristled punk rock, while the B-side is a downright weird, spontaneous number recorded on the tour bus and made up of mumbling voices and out-of-time clapping. What are these kids on?
THE KNIFE
Silent Scream (Hussle/EMI)
Their previous album Deep Cuts was an electro-pop filled affair with shades of both dark sweetness and heavy mood. This time around, the Scandinavian duo have created a darker world in which to inhabit.
The saccharine sounds that we fell in love with have fallen away, from the self-titled opener and ‘Neverland’ there’s a heavy, pulsating backbeat that binds sublime melodies and heavy atmospherics. Still, this mood is like a fog that draws you in, alluring and for the first few listens, quite mysterious and recalling the Dead London of Future Sound Of London. The ambience of ‘Captain’ is weighed down with an obvious sadness, while ‘We Share…’ bubbles itself up into a feverish torrent of sound.
What makes Silent Scream so appealing is that all this dark dance music is never depressing in any way, the blips and pulses of sound filled with melodies that make you move, sway and take you off into a wonderfully foreign world of lost electro bliss.
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