Reviews: July 2009
THE LOW ANTHEM
Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
(Nonesuch/WMA)
Invoking images of dimly lit oil lamps and smouldering log fires, this Providence, Rhode Island outfit stokes the embers of all of Americana’s disparate ancestors, gathering up the ashes and delivering an album of smooth and eloquent roots music.
Initiating proceedings with a string of songs wrapped in the intimacy of folk, Appalachian country and stirring strains of gospel, openers ‘Charlie Darwin’, ‘To Ohio’ and ‘Ticket Taker’ are completely disarming as they draw you in. Then when you think they’re starting to fall into a torpor, this group bursts to life with ‘The Horizon Is A Beltway’ and ‘Home I’ll Never Be’, rambunctious tunes, highly akin to the mule variations of Mr Waits.
And thus the good and the evil, the dark and the shade, the heavenly and hedonistic sides of this trio are made clear, and from here the pendulum swings freely between the two. At all points along the way, there is a stoking ferment, a fire and brimstone undercurrent that pins down the angelic ‘Cage The Songbird’, plucks at your heartstrings throughout ‘(Don’t) Tremble’ and cuts out a swaggering ramble with ‘Champion Angel’.
The urban trappings of contemporaries like Wilco or Son Volt are entirely absent here, but somehow never once does the hokey, single-minded traditions that too often detract from folk and country raise their well-worn little heads. No, the thing that makes Oh My God, Charlie Darwin an appealing proposition is the fact that it manages to stand at arm’s length from all the various chapters of its own history that have obviously come to inform the musicians here. The Low Anthem sound uncannily like all that has come before, in a way that sounds unlike so much of what has come before.
KING CREOSOTE
Flick The Vs
(Domino/EMI)
When Beck first emerged on the horizon, no-one knew where to place or pigeonhole the pint-sized blonde kid. Scot King Creosote is a similar talent of such varied dimensions that it’s nigh on impossible to easily pin him down to a sound, mood or lineage – such a confounding proposition though is not a stumbling block to this striking album.
Sure, the man known amongst friends as Kenny Anderson can claim this as his fifth release and so has had time to iron out the creases, but still, these 10 songs come out of the box totally ready to wear. Mixing folk and pop sensibilities with electronic percussion, guitars and an myriad of exotic instruments littered throughout such as African drums, Moog, dulcimer, saxophone and xylophone, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the outcome could be an eclectic mess. But almost everything here has an understated and subtle way of spellbinding, and Anderson’s airy vocal presence and boisterous sense of melody are no less gripping.
There’s nothing sombre about ‘Two Frocks At A Wedding’, but the main line of “You’re scaring me now” slipping form Anderson’s lips is sure to send an unnerving shiver down your spine. ‘No Way She Exists’ is reminiscent of a Belle & Sebastian ditty filled with all the barbed sweetness you desire while the Casiotone micro-melodies of ‘Fell An Ox’ prick at your ears like the whisper of personal secrets.
King Creosote need to be placed alongside perplexing Scots like Arab Strap who have taken the pessimistic and transformed it into something glorious. You’d be forgiven for thinking it rained every day of the year in these lads’ towns, but light shines through the cracks of the homes where this music is made – delivering songs that might not keep you warm, but will definitely warm your heart.
THE DACIOS
Monkeys Blood
(Solar/Sonar)
Ah yes, the world of rock. It’s a bit of a quarry these days what with garage, glam, grunge, good old fashioned R’n’R and the many variances on those big, burly three chords and a yowling voice atop it all.
Melbourne’s The Dacios are definitely down in the pit of rock’s unruly rabble, this five-piece not bothering themselves with the spit and polish that sterilises most rock bands. No, these guys and gals sound as though they’ve hopped straight off of an all-night stint on the back of Joan Jett’s motorbike – cylinders still growling in the engine room of these songs. In fact, this debut is as rough as guts in all the right ways, as the wailing vocals of Linda Johnston crack open all those great memories of rock bands from the 90s like Babes In Toyland and L7… and going further back, The Runaways.
‘Liberty Lovers’ and ‘Monica’ rip straight through you while the title track deals out a heavy dose of swagger that seems to characterise so much of Melbourne’s rock.
You’d have to admit that while not reinventing the wheel, these cats sure have got the plot down well and good and you’d be hard pressed to find flaws in their surly, spit-filled songs – though you do get the impression that what’s here on disc is only half of what you’d find at the foot of the stage.
Adding some sugar and spice to the mix is The Bites’ Kirsty Stegwasi on bass and The Nation Blue’s Tom Lyngcoln on guitar in ‘Grey Machine’. Monkeys Blood is an old-fashioned rock record, tried and true and out for a good time… whether you remember it the next morning or not. Hold your beer aloft, let your hair hang down and soak up the sound.
DARKEST HOUR
The Eternal Return
(Victory/Stomp)
Let me dictate to you verbatim what Darkest Hour wants you to believe: “this band has damn near defined the entire new wave of American metal. Faster, heavier and deeper than anything they’ve ever recorded – the absolute modern thrash metal masterpiece that may very well be the next blueprint for all metal bands to follow”.
What a crock. And this is exactly what’s wrong with “modern” metal. This idea that precision is the key to making an impact with the listener. In fact, this album is about as heavy as a custard donut squashed on the footpath. Firstly, for some time metal has been in desperate need of a paradigm shift. No longer can it be about being faster, trickier or more gravel-voiced. The heaviest music out there fills the air thick with a mood and a sense of consequence, not a flurry of notes and beats. The Eternal Return is so clinically executed that the precision actually sucks any menace from the music. This is sterile metal unaided by vocalist John Henry – it’s Henry’s cookie-monster caterwauling that’s the most flat. Damn, a car crash on the six o’clock news is heavier than his self-absorbed flatulation of all things grim, hardcore and metal.
The most intense thing here is the production techniques and you’d guess the heart and soul of the songs aren’t at the bequest of the mixing board. Songs such as ‘Death Worship’ and ‘Blessed Infection’ are like wet blankets in a blizzard, suffocating and inducing only numbness.
If this is music to raise your blood pressure and rile you, then it does exactly that – but it’s not with, but against what is presented here that will stoke any emotional response. If this is the modern American metal blueprint, it’s nothing more than the emperor’s new clothes!
COURTNEY TIDWELL
Boys
(City Slang/Spunk)
There’s too much sex and not enough sensuality in modern music – the voyeuristic grotesque of the flesh overtaking the subtle wink, the inferred glance and the mystery of what you can’t see. In the case of Nashville’s Courtney Tidwell, it’s what her striking and mysterious voice infers as much as communicates, what sits between the notes and the words that sets your imagination aflame.
Thankfully Tidwell isn’t some re-hash on bygone days, but a bold and daring amalgamation of disparate moulds – all broken down and re-glued back together to form her second album, Boys. There’s a strong thread of romanticism throughout these 11 songs (the kind often heard heavily inferred in so much of Hope Sandoval’s music), which can as easily melt into intimate acoustics (‘Being Crosby’ with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James) as it can be bolstered by electronic treatments and beats transported from the future (‘Watusii’).
Widely touted as “Nashville’s own little sparrow”, it’s a remark that’s spot on here and goes to the core of Tidwell’s appeal as the almost siren-like inflections within her vocals and lyrics draw you in just as Piaf must have once done to all who heard her. But also amongst the mist and mystery is a bold streak of strength and triumph, the kind that ultimately defines this album – the almost overt pop numbers ‘So We Sing’, ‘Palace’ and ’17 Horses’ are full of determined melodies and soaring chorus lines.
But for all its reassuring poise, it’s the moments of intimacy that hold you. Boys is an album of beauty, with Tidwell squarely the object of desire. The mixtures of old and new, emotive and oblique make this album appealing in the way that Thom Yorke and Radiohead melted together old-fashioned longing and cutting edge music.
BRITISH SEA POWER
Man Of Aran
(Rough Trade/Remote Control)
Deviating from the pop aplomb that has brought them much popularity and acclaim, British Sea Power have taken to giving us a history lesson of sorts. Man Of Aran is the 1935 dramatised documentary film, focusing on the people and Islands of Aran just off the coast of Ireland, our quartet having resurrected this striking piece of cinematography and re-scored it beautifully.
Recreating that sense of epic majesty that encompasses the hardened individuals and their struggles within what to is us, a completely foreign world, British Sea Power’s predominately instrumental affair is highly akin to similar soundtrack projects by groups such as Yo La Tengo (…Sounds Of Silence) and Piano Magic (Son Of Mar) in that, it takes the notions you may have had of the band and peels back all the glitz, all the bluster and leaves just songs of sombre splendour – vast and atmospheric, almost post-rock pieces that undulate and feel completely out of step with modern times.
Mogwai couldn’t make music this disarming, they’d have to throw several guitar fits into the mix – thankfully there’s only one here (‘Spearing The Sunfish’) – the sensibilities otherwise coming from an entirely different end of the musical spectrum. A comatosed piano splutters to life in ‘The Currach’, lifted by violins and a waltz like melody that transports you back 50, 80-years. That is until a lilting guitar line reels you in like the massive fish-lines whisked by the black-clad fishermen of the film and the tune comes to life like a freed shark from it’s captors.
The music stands alone with it’s own radiance but it’s only half the story with this album also coming with a DVD of the film. Its here that all the breathtaking beauty hinted at in this music is realised and emboldened by a compelling visual story.
MALCOLM MIDDLETON
Waxing Gibbous
(Full Time Hobby/Pod)
The problem with climbing mountains is that once you’ve scaled great heights, you’ve got to climb all the way back down, go home and still do the dishes. Well, Scot Malcolm Middleton reached a pinnacle of sorts with his 2007 album A Brighter Beat and so it’s hard for any listener not to desire a repeat performance with the 13 songs on offer here.
Waxing Gibbous is not the same album as its predecessor, that one saw a man making the sweetest tasting lemonade out of his lot. This one does have the same vibrancy (‘Red Travellin’ Socks’), boisterous instrumentation (‘Kiss At The Station’, ‘Subset Of The World’) and that ever present laconic tongue that is unique to Middleton and his storm clouds sitting just above his thoughts and ruminations. What’s different with this album though, is a greater sense of wariness on the part of Middleton – there’s a sense of one-on-one intimacy missing here that made his last album neigh on perfection that’s slightly deficient here. It does exist in small pockets, ‘Carry Me’, ‘Shadows’ and ‘Made Up Your Mind’ recalling that hand on heart declaration of our imperfections as we all avoid having to walk through our days alone. Hands are held and a chorus of voices reach its zenith with ‘Stop Doing Be Good’ and it’s what Middleton does best with the maxim of folks making it work.
Love is a hit and miss affair, and therefore songs about love and loss are always going to be submitted to the same odds. There’s way, way more hit than miss here but Waxing Gibbous does sound like a man who has reached a logical conclusion in his little old singer songwriter mould and is ready for the sun to break through the clouds
SUNN 0)))
Monoliths & Dimensions
(Southern Lord/Stomp)
You can’t paraphrase Sunn 0))) with choruses, verses or a middle-eight breakdown. Sunn O))) begin at the point of breakdown! This duo come formless collective of like-minded individuals spans avant garde, classical and metal as well as several continents and is rooted to a sound as mysterious as it is amorphous. Sunn 0))) are not a musical expression of sound, they’re a concentrated esoteric expression of the Earth’s pulse.
The seventh album offered up by the band’s core of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson sees the evolution and shift here lie in the aesthetics of the music (and yes, it’s still music if your scope of sound is broad enough). Whereas once the guitars and super-low frequencies were all about seismic shifts that could rattle bones, the group has matured their sound… almost in relation to time itself. An earthquake lasts for minutes and the downstroke of a de-tuned guitar holds similar sustain, but land masses eat one another over much quieter spans of time and it’s this essence that the band has channelled into the limited space of a recorded disc.
Fans of the familiar, fear not. Still, you have to wade through the silt of ‘Aghartha’ and unfurl the castigations of Atilla Csihar, but beyond this are shafts of the angelic creeping into the doom – ‘Big Church’ held aloft by the Viennese Women’s Choir, horns, harps and string ensembles. For the first time in a decade, the band seems at the behest of its own transformative powers in the form of ‘Alice’, a piece spellbinding for its beauty, not its evil prowess. Driven by Sun Ra’s trombonist, Julian Priester, it’s 16 minutes of redemptive doom that is overwhelmingly breathtaking – not suffocating – and leaves you, upon the album’s close, with an absolute feeling of peace. Monoliths & Dimensions is for now, music’s event horizon.
FUTURE OF THE LEFT
Travels With Myself And Another
(4AD/Remote Control)
There’s a caustic melodrama about this trio that encompasses all that was worthwhile in 90s underground rock. You can hear David Yow’s unhinged howls in the voice of Andrew Falkor (‘Arming Eritrea’), those snaking Shellac At Action Park bass runs (‘I Am Civil Service’) and uppercut backbeats that this decade’s tastemakers seem to have comfortably swept under the carpet and out of sight.
But rather than the barbed accusations and claustrophobic paranoia that has underpinned much of these protagonists’ past efforts, there’s a more inclusive nature to Future’s second album. Look no further than ‘The Hope That House Built’ with its catchcry of “come join our lost cause” and it really is a hypnotising sales pitch into oblivion. The most welcome addition to this band that is highlighted by these 12 songs is the heightened sense of melody and space – ‘Throwing Bricks At Trains’ is a wonderful rallying tune of lacerated rock.
But let’s not kid ourselves, this band isn’t pooping out bricks of gold or anything. This is ugly music and there are a few tunes here that pass by all but unnoticed, but the satirical wit and base-level standard of acrid joy here is unlike anything enjoyed as much since The Pixies (and you’d have to throw Falkor’s McLusky in there too). This is the album though that shakes off any pining memories of McLusky.
“You need satan more than he need you?” It’s such a shouted-out, throwaway line, but it’s actually more poignant than anything here when you realise that sometimes the ugliness that we bask in, revel in and elate ourselves with, is a warning worth heading! We might be stuck down in the shit (travelling with ourselves and another) but goddamn it, let’s have a great time while we’re here, stuck amongst the tyre-kickers!
TINY VIPERS
Life On Earth
(Sub Pop/Stomp)
The solo female singer and her acoustic guitar is a long and well-populated tradition. For every Joan Baez, Chan Marshall or Ani Difranco, there’s countless who strum, pluck, whisper and wail but never make it beyond their local bar or crackling campfire. Tiny Vipers is Jesy Fortino and this is her second shot at being heard beyond Seattle’s city limits.
Haunting in its mood, with plenty of darkness breathing throughout these 11 songs, Life On Earth is a solemn journey of memories, adjudications and stories – one that recalls the obliqueness of Will Oldham’s world. To be straight, what is it these songs gives us that many six-string strummers haven’t many times over? Not much… in the traditional sense. But remember this, you tell 10 people to walk the same road and at the end, no 10 stories are going to sound the same – so the context of genre and instrumentation shouldn’t be the conclusion and it certainly shouldn’t dampen the emotions wrapped up here.
The major acoustic pitfall that is sidestepped here is the sappy, listless sound that often undermines the strength of so much folk music. That strength is palpable in songs like ‘Time Takes’ and ‘Cm’, songs that crackle like the campfires that adorn the album’s artwork and grow as each refrain is ingested. Inside these songs are delicate and sobering sounds, warm and inviting, like the fire’s flames.
A heavy desolation pulls at such pretty notes. You’ll find that in the title track and it’s a mysterious mixture of sensations, but it’s enthralling. Maybe at first you’d flippantly fob off Tiny Vipers as more of the same, but these stories are Jesy Fortino’s and hers only – they’re beautiful and it’s a gift worth receiving.
WOODS
Songs Of Shame
(Shrimper/Stomp)
The lo-fi ruminations that have been around as long as the eight-track still pulse, crackle and click in the back rooms of suburban homes. Indie folks bashing out melodies for the world to hear – tapes and CDs of uncut gems and lumps of coal, depending on your leanings in the realm of raw honesty and music.
Woods here are Jeremy Earl and Christian DeRoeck and regardless of the technical prowess or technological tools at hand, these fellows makes music that sounds like a dug-up demo from 1983. Their third album, Songs Of Shame scarcely resembles its title, as guitars, bass and a smattering of drums are bashed upon with glorious abandon and wailed over with glee. And while it’s easy to attribute these 11 songs with a Lou Barlow vibe, they actually sound nothing like it with ‘September With Pete’ and ‘Echo Lake’ blossoming with a freak-folk vibe that swims waist-deep in a mellowed-out psychedelica, while the carefree ‘Down This Road’ finds Woods firmly sitting atop Mount Eerie.
No, Woods don’t give you any more than you absolutely need – bare-boned songs, raw with emotions and instrumentation that sound so much better for it. There’s something overwhelmingly personal about these songs… like maybe, just maybe, there’s no-one between you and the men who made this music. These songs are reminiscent of the music of Jad Fair, Daniel Johnston, John Frusciante or Melbourne’s Kes, undiluted and without the abashed pretension that stops songs being a direct form of blissful communication. Sure, in reality we know there’s record companies and such, but it’s the untainted feelings of direct and unfiltered communication that makes these songs sound special and unique. More of it, I say!
SUNSET RUBDOWN
Dragonslayer
(Jagjaguwar/Stomp)
Sweeping melodrama and indie rock are not always comfortable bedfellows but Spencer Krug’s Sunset Rubdown make it a perfect marriage… if not a fairytale one.
Quirky, kooky, tightly woven and with a permanent sense of elation, this is a fast-paced set of songs filled with a vibrancy that springs from Krug’s keyboard and infects all the other instruments that can be squeezed into the mix. This quintet aren’t willing to be confined to any false sense of song structure as verses and choruses give way to more verses, choruses, breakdowns and reprises in this eight-part indie-art-rock mini-opera. Yes, if something’s worth playing or saying on Dragonslayer… it’s worth doing several more times than necessary.
But all the constant bluster doesn’t necessarily equate to timeless tunes, with the constant flurry of mini-crescendos often lifting you up and leaving you nowhere in particular (‘Idiot Heart’). We’re talking about musicians who are great at what they do and these tunes are filled with a heightened sense of visionary scope (‘Black Swan’, ‘Dragon’s Lair’), but there’s something that just doesn’t coagulate from dropping Ziggy Stardust, Built To Spill, Morrissey and Interpol all together into the melting pot.
Sunset Rubdown are great at one thing and that’s the verbose and hyperbolic. Just one of these songs would be any other band’s grand finale and that’s what sullies the depth of the tunes here. Not every day is your birthday and not everything needs to be an ostentatious declaration bellowed from the rooftops… it’s just tiring.
A HAWK AND A HACKSAW
Deliverance
(Leaf/Inertia)
The duo of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost have all but carved out a sound of their own, steeped in ethnic gypsy traditions, rural flavours and antiquated instrumentation that, melded together, come to encompass something gloriously vibrant and unique (even several albums into their career).
Over the course of four albums, this band has built upon a bed of erratic, vibrant and intricate piano compositions, a variety of accordion, percussion, horns and foreign sounds, all intertwined into something that is both universal and provincial.
Just below the bombastic cloak of these 10 tunes lies a stranger brew of darker, more sinister and ultimately compelling themes and emotions, coming to you like the switching of street signs to throw you off any obvious scent. The only hurdle (for many) is that this music is so stylistically specific that it is made for the already initiated and for longtime fans. This isn’t something you’d just stumble across flicking through the radio stations and it is most certainly not music that allows itself to just be in the background.
A wonderfully woven tapestry where no one song, or even soloed instrument, stands alone – everything feeding back into its rambunctious self. This album plays out like a well-written novel, its abstract story wrapped up inside an instrumental overture and all delivered through a mysterious and altogether foreign language. What you find and how it plays out are ultimately where the magic and challenge lie.
DO THE ROBOT
First Names
(RR Records)
There’s an evolution of sound that’s clearly present with Do The Robot’s second album. Moods and misty opaque reverberations hinted at with their debut Amps On Fire are here given room to breathe and meld into something that sounds much more natural and less like their once obvious influences.
Immersing themselves in the syrupy din of shoegaze, Matt and Sarah Deasy have stripped back the 80s pop polish to focus on languishing and beautifully layered guitar lines and loping drumbeats, with the Julie Cruise-style vocals of Sarah Deasy the one constant that has stayed with the band.
The more murky the layers within the songs, the denser the moods you get to wade through, the more enjoyable this music is. The loops and stratums of shimmering guitar, akin to Curve or Sydney’s Knievel (‘Moon In The Sky’) are enticing – although these eight songs aren’t ones to offer themselves up easily, often sitting off in the distance with a thin veil of disinterest, which is, and always has been the Achilles heel of this kind of dreamy music.
So First Names clearly shows a duo stronger, more at home and freer with their newly found, less rigid pop structures. This album does fall short of being entirely captivating, but it will most likely compel you to seek out whatever may come next, if the band is willing to nurture their experimental inclinations.
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