Alex's opinion and documents of music

Natalie Merchant – The House Carpenter’s Daughter (Warner)

This limited edition album is the accumulation of Natalie Merchants quest to bring together a musical heritage lost to most of us, yet still an inspiration to many musicians.

In a time when folk music is possibly one of the least popular styles in music, Merchants power lies in her voice, rich in it’s ability to convey the pain, joy and struggle of past generations. Artists such as The Carter Family and Florence Reece are revived, there are contemporary musicians such as Richard Thompson and seven tunes that have long since lost their authors but are kept alive with each generation’s recording.

Once simple folk tunes, Merchant orchestrates them with a lush array of instruments – making them sound anything but traditional. If you have an open ear, these 11 tunes are an important history lesson of the path that music has travelled, continuing the songs that in their time, helped keep people alive.

Einstürzende Neubauten – Perpetuum Mobile (Mute/EMI)

Some 25 years after their formation and now with Blixa Bargeld a full time member since leaving The Bad Seeds after 16 years, Perpetuum Mobile’s sound still holds to the bands long standing blueprint of man and machine.

Possibly the most defined album to date, where once there were jackhammers and cement mixers – now it’s the use of air compressors and deeply bellowing springs. The ten-minute title track rumbles with a hypnotic rhythm, ‘Selbstportrait mit Kater’ has a crushing use of percussion while ‘Ozean und Brandung’ is dark and formless.

There’s an undeniable theme of air throughout the album, from the soft wind to the punishing storm. This theme manifested through both the music and Bargeld’s words, this time given power by their content rather than excessive delivery. Easily equalling the creative apex of past albums, time has provided E.N. with the ability to perfectly balance cacophonous noise and spacious calm.

The Immortal Lee County Killers II – Love Is A Cahrm Of Powerful Trouble (Smash)

Long time ago the great blues-men hitched round the country playing any old juke-joint that would have em, worth their weight in hard luck and a dime-a-dozen. Well that time is almost upon us again, sort of.

With dirty blues rock duo’s coming out of the backwoods every five minutes, you could be excused for thinking there was a bandwagon rolling past – but it ain’t all like that. Around long before you ever heard of them, the Immortal Lee County Killers unleash their second dirt soaked record. Slide guitar and ramshackle drums is all you need, with a little help from some massive amplification. Eleven furious tracks of chopped-and-channelled traditional’s and kerosene soaked originals to get drunk to, soak ya sorrows to and all n all have a great time to.

Sure, you can file this one beside your Mess Hall, Vagas Kings, White Stripes and John Spencer CD’s, but what’s so bad about that. If there’s room enough for 1000 great blues players well then there’s room enough for these few folks.

The Von Bondies – Raw and Rare (Smash)

The honeymoon is over and not everything with the word Detroit after it has the sun shining out its ass. Decent bands with good songs will remain and the rest can piss off back to where they came from.

The Von Bondies are not a new revolution in motion. They’re only rock-n-roll but their pretty-damn good at it. This live album is straight up testament to that, 15 white-hot tracks full of swagger from around the world, untreated and the truest account of what this band is capable of.

Undoubtedly the illegitimate spawn of The Who, Jack White may have delivered them to the world but it’s the band that delivers the limited number of 1000 copies of this album to nowhere else but Australia.

Soledad Brothers – Live (Smash)

Can two white boys from Detroit be Soledad Brothers, well I guess that depends on how bad they got the blues. With names like Ben Swank and Johnny Walker, they were probably born more for rock-n-roll.

The thing is that while Swank and Jack White have been best friends for almost a decade and subsequently the band gets lumped into the new Detriot rock scene, these seven live tracks over 32 minutes prove that the brothers are through and through blues. Sure they’re amplified and full of the devil but its only spit between the classic Stones, T-Model Ford or R.L. Burnside.

Delivering tracks from their first two albums as well as traditional’s ‘Goin’ Back To Memphis’ and ‘Up Jumped The Devil’, it’s T-Model’s nod of approval that comes to mind, “Dem young be doin’ good to da blues”.

David Viner – Mr David Viner (Smash)

The album opens deceptively with ‘Nobody’s Fault’ which comes across as a more lively Nick Drake plucking away at his guitar. 12 bar ramblings soon follow and it becomes painfully obvious that it’s a white guy from the British isle puppeteering the blues.

Something has to be said for living your art, and those old blokes from the Mississippi sing the blues because their down-trodden lives, hardships and generations of segregation give them no other voice but one of anger and woe – where as Viner’s chords and plucking on “Ode To John Fahey” are so clean and precise that they lack any feeling what so ever.

Sure he can physically play the blues but this album shows no trace of that feeling that makes the blues so potent. I would not be surprised to hear this album coming down the escalators at David Jones.

Mountain Goats – Palmcorder Yanjna (4AD/Remote Control)

There is something haunting and painful about the voice of John Darnielle, his songs stripping everything from the moment and it is this same distinct quality that makes the Mountain Goats so compelling and amazing.

Utilising a full band, these three songs hold similar territory to 2002’s Tallahassee, acoustic guitar propelling the first two with bass and piano the third. What is striking about this first single is that within it lies an unarguable sense of hope

Ursula Minor – Silent Moving Picture (Smells Like Records/Stomp)

With sparse piano/guitar/drums arrangements throughout most of this New York trio’s debut album there’s an exotic feel throughout that will either appeal or leave you cold.

The heavy sultry voice of vocalist Michelle Casillas skirts the group into Tori Amos territory, the creative adaptation of Jane’s Addiction’s ‘Summertime Roll’ through shows the group able to make any song truly sound their own.

Ursula Minor should be spared from endless comparisons due to the way instruments like the accordion, clavinet and strings balance out, grounding the songs around the guitar and keyboards, ‘Steady’ rollicking along and showing plenty of grunt. After a while though the similarities fall away and the album finds its own ground and from there it’s real appeal starts to shine through.

Chris Abrahams – Streaming (Vegetable)

For his third solo piano album in 22 years Abrahams creates the perfect bridge between his past work and his many years in The Necks.

Four pieces over two disc’s range in length from around thirty to ten to twenty minutes. Progression being as important as the length – the first track ‘Room’ holds a constant rhythmic movement, notes pelting down, each like a single raindrop in a powerful summer storm. From there each piece displays a greater level of calm, ‘Hung Out To dry’ bouncing the notes around more than rolling them along.

Disc two is devoid of any overbearing sounds, music swimming around and the spaces between playing as important a roll as the notes themselves. The final track ‘Motional’ soft and almost without any discernible direction, trickles the album to a close. Abrahams ability to draw such a vast landscape out of the piano is remarkable and impressive.

The Start – Death Via Satellite (Nitro/Shock)

Punked-up bastard children of Blondie, borrowing as much from punk as from The Cure and Billy Joel (check the chorus of second track ‘Big Shot’). With healthy doses of synths, crunchy chords and the raspy, sultry vocals of singer Aimee Echo, this six-track Ep is their debut for Punk as label, Nitro records. Better than the Distillers.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – Soul Fire, An Introduction to… (Island/Universal)

With Mr Perry touring the country, this is a well-timed ‘Introduction’ to his music and vast legend. Released by Island records, a company Perry has reportedly despised since the 70s (He refers to them as “Vampires”).

Focusing more so on the early days of the dub sound which was intertwined with Perry and the final years of his Notorious Black Ark Studios, we are given a selection of artists such as Junior Murvin (‘Roots Train’), Augustus Pablo (‘Vibrate On’) and the Heptones (‘Sufferers Time’). Perry’s wares are on display here with four signature tunes (‘Soul Fire’, ‘Dread Lion’, ‘Zion’s Blood’ and ‘Bird In Hand’).

With as much fiction as fact surrounding Perry, this compilation’s focus on the zenith of Perry’s Dub sound is a worthy entry point to the hazy Jamaican music world.