Albums Roundup - 2005/06
1/5
By: Toby L
2005/2006 has been a blessing for LPs; of the pickings...?
'Angel Milk' from Telepopmusik (*** - EMI) continues the French foragers' ambitious waltzes into cinematic art-pop, and also manages a few collaborations along the way (Mau, Angela Mc Cluskey, or Deborah Anderson, anyone?). Trouble is, it gets a bit earnestly muso-y, at times.
And Martin Grech gets a bit whiny ('Unholy' - *** - Island). His sleeve may be caked in gothic fervour, and could be perceived as pomp tripe, but with a voice such as Grech's and trudging prog-gems such As 'Guiltless', we're awash with the misty-eyed gaze of this youthful nutbar visionary. Pretension is so seldom afforded this grotesquely. Embrace it.
The garish-seeming 'Twisted' (*** - Vertigo) is a compilation, meanwhile, housing 'Indie Floorfillers For A Twisted Generation'. Tasteful. So it means that The Killers, The Bravery, The Rapture, The Others, Depeche Mode, Mylo, Kasabian, !!! are given the once-over by the likes of Paul Eppy-worth, Whitey and Black Strobe to pleasingly crossover zeal.
Malcolm Middleton proffered one of the year's finest - 'Into The Woods' (**** - Chemikal Underground): a desolate, pain-stakingly brittle and classy outing from the Arab Strap-ian; single 'Loneliness Shines' still basks in the righteousness as album centrepiece, with its glistening guitars, fading vocals and sincere reservation, whilst opener / closer couplet 'Break My Heart' and 'A New Heart' makes for a cunning break 'n' repair job. Beautiful.
Mildly lower-brow is Juliette & The Licks - film-star Ms Lewis' first and semi-valiant embarking into the realms of rock-chick superdom is bolshy and embarrassingly assured (*** - 'You're Speaking My Language'). Tracks such as the garage-y title-stomp are schlock-by-numbas, but with this much vivacious bounce and noisy, ramshackle angst, and some of the ferocity of 'American Boy No. 2', we're not trading it in. Just yet.
Didn't Saint Etienne split up? No, being the resounding response. Here's a double-album. And it's a concept one, too. That's determination. Thus, 'Tales From Turnpike House' (*** - Sanctuary) features yet more Sarah Cracknell-doting, wishy-washy indie-sap-pop with a ear for lush orchestration and arrangements that aren't so much conventional and saccharine-infused as puppy-dog-cute.
Frank Black proves that there's life outside of heavy-cashed reunions, by introducing umpteenth solo LP, 'Honeycomb' (**** - Cooking Vinyl), and bedazzling us with lo-fi Americana paeans designed to console the soul, rather than wedge up the back pocket. Recorded in just four days, the collection ranges from the downtrodden, to the most deeply half-finished and sumptuously intimate/ramshackle, largely acoustic, and portly in its minimalist, melodic meanderings, weighing in with fourteen tracks.
Kid Carpet is a touch more fun, with 'Ideas and Oh Dears' (**** - Tired & Lonesome). Crassly, what's not to love? The guy's, quite clearly, a f**king impotent muppet. Bashing out anthems on his toy instruments and collating tracks ranging from 'Bristol Carpet Factory' and 'Hip Hip Hooray' to 'Granny's Message', this is nonsensical DIY hip-pop without much cause. And it's all the more salacious for it.
Patrick Duff (** - 'Luxury Problems' - EMI) / Johnathan Rice (** - 'Trouble Is Real' - One Little Indian) lead the bitterly truthful, stridently earnest front for singer-songwriters across the land with their individual exertions, Duff perhaps pipping Rice to the proverbial post (what is it with such gagging surnames?) of silliness by penning an ode called, simply, 'F**ked'. We're all for restrained balladeering; just consider the scope a bit more, chaps.
'Beneath The Surface (Volume 1)' is (****), by default, more enthralling, as it comprises Simon 'Cocteau Twins' Raymonde's Bella Union label into one handy package. It's delightful. The Dears' '22' is a modern tango-anthem; Laura Veirs a heart-wrenching fiend; Explosions In The Sky a break-taking, instrumental cacophony of artistic refinement in noise-core; and The Czars a hoarse-throated, emotive document of all that went wrong. Gorgeous stuff.
The title of Elbow's third LP 'Leaders of the Free World' is a misnomer (****). No, the band has not made a musical polemic about global events but has instead produced an album with a very sumptuously homegrown feel to it. Listening to the LP, you get the impression of being in the studio with the band that intimately experiment with ideas and play around with sound, and avoid wasting precious studio-time by making fart noises. 'Station Approach' is a strong contender for the most beautiful track of the year and, elsewhere, gentle acoustic guitars and a lo-fi approach such as that in 'Mexican Standoff' show Elbow at their indie best. Hopefully this year the criminally underrated band will take the free world by storm.
Claire Sproule - LP (Parlophone) (***) This debut album ticks all the warm, summery boxes satisfied by the likes of Jamie Cullum and Katie Melua but succeeds where the former fail in creating a warm fuzzy feeling inside without the nausea. The songs, having been written by Sproule between the ages of 17-19 show remarkable accomplishment and honesty for someone so young and give Carly Simon and Carole King a run for their money.
Too Pure keep up their 'oddball label proffering oddball treats'-type persona with Tracy & The Plastics and ('Culture For Pigeon'; ***) - a dual CD/DVD disc type thing of bizarre, epic proportions - they are, after all, 'as much about the visual as they are the audio.' So expect flamboyant, arty rocking of minimalist keyboard-ness.
'The Definitive Lennon' (another one? How are we to, literally, know what is the ideal Lennon these soddin' days?). (Parlophone - ****) Of course, it's brilliant, and the artwork is, for once, stark and tasteful. But you know it all. You own it all. We won't even bother beyond that.
Wilco pardon the silence with a return of sorts - 'Kicking Television: Live In Chicago' (Nonesuch - *****) is a fearlessly indulgent, but fantastical concert recording of one of the world's most popular small bands. Aching, 'One By One' and 'Spiders' on one two-disc listening with steely ambience and reverent crowd reception makes for a chilling entertainment.
The Beta Band beat the Xmas rush with their 'Best Of' (****) - God, they're hardly missed, until this begins. 'Assessment' was as big as they got, trumpets and all; before that, it was a strictly hushed affair - the shuffly, acoustic warmth of 'Dry The Rain', 'Dr Baker' and 'She's The One' demonstrated a band at its peak, whilst 'Human Being' and 'Gone' expressed a Scots combo wont to gradual, gripping change in a refined and subtly, hardly claustrophobic, expansive sense. Bless 'em.
Ian Brown, too, embraced the market with a similar cash-in, 'remember me'-style retrospective - 'The Greatest' (Fiction - ****), encapsulating a chronological 17(!)-tracker of all post-Roses goodness, from 'My Star' to 'Return Of The Fisherman' (we presume it's a new one). His sweeping 'F.E.A.R.' remains one of the greatest singles of recent years.
Doing the compilation route is Manchester's Akoustik Anarkhy indie-label: 'Class aA: Beyond Entertainment' (***), featuring eleven choice cuts of their salacious indie output/live-promotions thus far - it's a mixed bag of predominantly loud and proud upstarts from the north of Blighty giving it a good bit of melodic whack, namely Nine Black Alps and 'Over The Ocean'. Also worth a look-in - a live version of the talented Longcut's 'Transition' and The Harrisons' 'Man Of The Hour'.
Another compy comes from Heavenly, and their 'Sounds of Monsterism Island (Volume One)' (***). Know Pete Fowler? He's the bloke that does the SFA sleeve artwork. Genius. And he's elected a compelling, collage-like soundtrack of strange stuff to listen to alongside his Monsterism artwork, and we're, frankly, a bit worried. The influential electro scatterisms of Silver Apples mesh with some act called Sagittarius, and we run to the hills marked 'Obscuro-ville' and, promptly, turd ourselves.
How many 'Best Of' collections do Blondie have, now? I swear I alone have about three - 'Sight & Sound: Blondie's Greatest Hits' (**** - EMI) goes a little better than the rest in that it adds a plush DVD full of all the band's videos to the package, and is more comprehensive in that it follows the band's career right up to the present day, rather than just celebrating once again all the old classics. However - one must remember that recent Blondie is hardly vintage Blondie, and what makes this compilation somewhat less worthy in places than previous attempts to provide a retrospective of the band's career is that the quality has been sacrificed due to a want to provide the fullest picture. Still, despite the wearisome repackaging of stuff you've probably already got and the lacklustre nature of the more recent material, there's no doubting the strength of those old corkers.
4AD do the retrospective thing much better on '1980 Forward' (**** - 4AD), their way of celebrating the past 25 years of glorious music they've been kindly throwing our way. From the classic Pixies anthems and shimmering Cocteau Twins compositions of old to the efforts of modern day troubadours like the impossibly dark grooves of TV On The Radio and moodiness of Blonde Redhead, it's a place both to reminisce and to look with anticipation toward the future, and as such, does a ruddy fantastic job.
Those at 4AD better leave space on their next compilation for Celebration, whose self titled debut (**** - 4AD) is pregnant with something extraordinary. It's the sound of a woman openly admitting to trying to sing like a man, an eerily fantastic concoction of bastardised grooves, battered organs and otherworldly howls. On the closing 'Stars', the record rumbles and mumbles its way towards one heck of an infectious, deathly funk, the rest of its steps towards this dramatically fun, queer, final peak themselves each worthy of close attention. Best thing about it? It suggests that things will only get weirder, murkier, and ultimately better. Cause for celebration indeed.
Calla are a slightly confusing one - their recent effort 'Collisions' (*** - Beggars) has its fair share of charming hooks appearing out from the blanket of introspective, epic sounding indie rock, but fails to really muster anything with a noticeable bite. It nibbles on the earlobes rather than tearing a chunk from them. But, perhaps that was the entire point, as the feel of the record is, we can only assume intentionally, much more of a laid back, somnolent one than one overly concerned with the more raucous, joyfully abrasive potential in the electric guitar. If it weren't for the few moments where those niggling, catchy guitar riffs break out, we'd have no problem slating it. As it is, we beseech you to try to decide for yourself on this one. Jury's out.
You can picture the scene at the recent Rockfeedback round table meeting - after an intense discussion on the topic of world domination over a few beers (OK, so it wasn't that intense), we get on to doling out the records. "Anyone fancy listening to something called 'The Little Willies (** - EMI)'?", clucks up Toby L - and myself, being a childish idiot who was giggling inside at the mention of the world 'willies', said yes. Heck, good for a chuckle, no? No. I got home and found out I now owned a Norah Jones record. Nothing I could do about it - there it was, right in front of me, a Norah Jones album. The worst thing? It's actually not too terrible - Jones and some pals herein get together for this eponymous effort to return to their roots on a selection of exercises in the music of the deep south of the US of A, and the hoe-down, celebratory feel carries the whole project very well, certainly raising it higher in my estimation than the coffee table adorning nonsense I'm usually used to from these folks. Two reasons for its worth - it makes me think of pretty ladies, and the name, still, prompts a smile.
(reviews - tom hannan & toby l)
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