North Atlantic Oscillation - Grappling Hooks

North Atlantic Oscillation - Grappling Hooks
album review for DiS

Mibbe it's just their name, but I can't think about North Atlantic Oscillation's debut album without thinking about water. It's in the depths and swells of their song structures, the thin fluid sweep of their synths, and the drums which splash and spray across everything. North Atlantic Oscillation are an Edinburgh-based trio who eschew verse-chorus-story in favour of elongated washes, proggy effects and ever-inventive drumming. Grappling Hooks is an ambitious and accomplished-sounding record, that nevertheless doesn't hit the heights it aims for.

North Atlantic Oscillation's debut does excel in one area, and that's rhythm. Every track showcases drummer Ben Martin's restless impulse, stretching for fills and rolls where a lesser drummer might content himself with four-fours. Fourth track 'Some Blue Hive' is a good example, the grand opening rolls giving way to a relaxed, lolling groove, before the flourish-dotted outro that grabs tight to the song instead of letting it drift. Next is 'Audioplastic', a cinematic near-instrumental that rides atop a stuttering, shifting rhythm like a milder version of Primal Scream's 'Blood Money'; it just wouldn't be possible without a good drummer.

Whether North Atlantic Oscillation have a good singer is a more awkward question to answer. Sam Healy's androgynous vocal tone is nearly always filtered and in falsetto, giving it an otherworldly sense which works best on lead single 'Cell Count': his deadpan "it's amazing what they can do... to you", delivered over skittering flashes and whirrs, sounds like an alien observation of human science or the politics of power. But in other places his lyrics are unclear, or his delivery reserved, rendering his effected voice an instrument among all others, like a different tone of synth. Of course, its potential is to be far more expressive, so it isn't used to the full here.

There's nothing especially new on Grappling Hooks, but North Atlantic Oscillation's borrowing isn't usually problematic. '77 Hours' is a heated-up and stretched version of Boards of Canada's 'Roygbiv' that slowly builds towards a manic climax, and it's the highlight of Grappling Hooks' second half. 'Ritual', on the other hand, suffers from its rather blatant Sigur Ros-isms: not just in the slow build-up and ecstatic release, but also in the high harmony vocals which sound suspiciously Icelandic as they're reversed.

Although that's the only track worthy of specific criticism on this generally consistent full-length, Grappling Hooks doesn't reward repeated listens with new discoveries. Its tempo changes and pressure shifts flow in mostly predictable sequences where a few deep dives or bends-inducing leaps would be welcome. For such a rhythm-based record - where other potential qualities like beautiful harmonies or gritty passages of noise or big choruses aren't so relevant - it should be aiming for extra points on the dynamics of structure.

The many reference points to other bands Grappling Hooks fits in - in addition to the forementioned, Grandaddy, Flaming Lips and Holy Fuck all make ghost appearances - suggest North Atlantic Oscillation's burgeoning identity is still more composite than characteristic. That's entirely understandable for a new band, and a minor gripe even at that. Grappling Hooks is a strong debut by a band who can get stronger.

6/10

Amy Millan - Masters of the Burial

Amy Millan - Masters of the Burial
album review for DiS

If there exists such a thing as a die-hard Stars fan, then Amy Millan will find out when she counts the sales of her second solo LP Masters Of The Burial, because it's hard to imagine anyone other than a devout Stars acolyte being interested enough to buy it. If mediocre first album Honey From The Tombs didn't put the casual and curious off, mediocre second album Masters Of The Burial certainly will. It's an intimate, country-influenced half-hour that's very easy to miss because there's so little actually to it. For every delicate moment of prettiness, there's a dozen that are just too delicate to register. It floats on, never daring to infringe your day, except possibly to help you end it. If there is an appropriate utility for Masters Of The Burial, it could be as a late-night anaesthetic.

Amy Millan has a very pleasant voice, it's true, and she uses it throughout this album, which is a good idea of hers. No guest singers for Amy's ballads, but Amy takes on four written by others, and these are among the strongest on the record. Richard Hawley's pensive ballad 'Run For Me' is sung slowly with just a chiming electric guitar for backup, and Amy's voice is very clear to enjoy on Jenny Whitely's 'Day To Day', which she sings with only a basic drumbeat. One of the more maximal arrangements features a really lovely string backing: Sarah Harmer's wistful ballad 'Old Perfume' is the album's stand-out. You get the point: everything's a ballad.

And yeah, I get it too -- it's intentional, Masters Of The Burial wants to sound intimate and cosy and warm -- 'Lost Compass' in particular sounds like it was taped within an inch of its happening. The problem is: albums prized for their sense of intimacy need points of connection -- a terse turn of phrase perhaps, a few cutting and convincing lines, or a soulful vocal performance, or a brief rush of vim and vigour -- because otherwise they're not intimate, they're just reserved. Like a lot of great records, Masters Of The Burial is minimally arranged, slowly performed and quietly recorded; but there's never a spark here because Millan doesn't give enough of herself to it. Her lyrics are familiar and generalised, so her personality is kept shrouded. She covers Death Cab For Cutie's 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark' and I don't believe a word of it. In 'Low Sail' she repeatedly tells of a determination to "find my way back to you", but it already feels like a foregone conclusion. She wants her man to stay with her in 'Finish Line', but it's more a polite request than a plea; I don't think she really cares, so neither do I.

Masters Of The Burial ends on a high note, literally. By leaving the final bar unresolved, Millan creates the tiniest hint of tension, the only such moment on the whole record. An unresolved ending in a film would suggest a forthcoming sequel; but not even Stars fans could get excited by that prospect.

5/10

Starless & Bible Black - Shape of the Shape

Starless and Bible Black - Shape of the Shape
album review for drowned in sound

There's a King Crimson album called Starless and Bible Black, but this Manchester-based group say that's not their inspiration: it's in fact a 1965 track by jazz pianist Stan Tracey with the same name. That's not easy to believe judging by this record: second full-length Shape of the Shape involves no piano, lots of prog signifiers, and jazz in only the broad sense that includes lounge music (so, not very jazzy jazz). Lounge acts frequently hire vaguely exotic European singers, so Starless and Bible Black have a French lady who we could luxuriously refer to as a chanteuse - Hélène Gautier. But French female singers aren't always as gorgeous-sounding as the word used to describe them, and Gautier's unremarkable voice can do little to save a record mired in impeccable mediocrity.

To briefly give it some due, Shape of the Shape is lovingly produced, every pluck of a guitar string resonating in full, every gap between sounds given time to breathe. If your dad is like my dad -- caring more about the precision and clarity of the sound reproduced through his high-end speakers than about the melodies or rhythms or whatevers of the actual composition - well, Christmas is just around the corner and Shape of the Shape has a real warmth of sound. And there are a few lovely moments, such as when an angelic chorus revitalises fourth song 'Radio Blues' as it drifts towards its close by entering really high, in contrast with the low descending bassline.

But those moments get very lonely. Everything on Shape of the Shape is mid-tempo. Mid-tempo's fine, it's necessary, but like a referee, when you notice it it's a problem. Every song features at least one instance of the UFO synth effect, landing or taking-off or swooshing across the sky, like they do. Fine, sometimes. Nearly every song starts with the slow strum of an acoustic guitar, giving the whole record a grounding in folk. Of course, that's OK, in theory. Gautier's voice is high and weedy, she hits the notes, has little character. For the most part, trying to transcribe her lyrics is like trying to transcribe Liz Fraser, because she sometimes sings in French, and sometimes just poorly enunciates. The successes aren't encouraging: "Hold me down now my mind is open / tell me how many hearts are broken / how to see family tree, treasured, lost in history." Add meaningless mush to indecipherable yawning and the vocals are clearly not a strong point. But it's hard to know what might be a strength here, production apart. There are no hooks, no memorable tunes. There's no rollicking rhythmic excitement, no dynamic shifts, no climaxes, no purges. No one-liners, no discernible stories, no themes. No risks taken, no happy accidents occuring, no disasters, no distastefulness, no surprises. Shape of the Shape is bland and instantly forgettable.

One song breaks the mould a little, the nine-minute album centrepiece 'Les Furies', which achieves a kinetic energy we might be able to describe as 'upper mid-tempo'. After three whole minutes of stereo-weaving buzz effects - like having your head shaved with different-sized clippers mowing tangled patterns - 'Les Furies' gains a chugging guitarist and a drummer with a sense of urgency. His flailing fills and rolls towards the end are the only passages where Shape of the Shape rises out of its dreamy inertia.

Vocals aside, Shape of the Shape is a good articulation of how I imagined Emerson, Lake & Palmer might sound in their quieter moments, though I'd never actually listened to them. On Spotify, I found 'From The Beginning', which pretty much nails this album in four minutes. It's what prog became after its first flurries of invention - complacent, conservative, self-satisfied, cliched - not 'progressive' at all. It's sometimes hard to condemn an album as inoffensive as Shape of the Shape, but nobody is a music fan because they love competence.

4/10

Sweet Baboo - Hello Wave

Sweet Baboo - Hello Wave
album review for drowned in sound

I wish the diplomats who argue against the need for negative music criticism would spend a bit more time sucking on bogeys like Sweet Baboo's Hello Wave. Yes, you can download anything you want for free on the internet, but the pounds you save in your pocket can't buy back the time you've just wasted. Occasional exposure to albums like this are actually to be recommended for anyone pretending to be a music critic; they give you a grounding. If your listening diet is nothing but critically lavished and 'important' albums, it's easy to lose sight of where the borders of Sturgeon's Law are to be drawn. Sturgeon said that 90 per cent of everything is crap, and he was right; but his 90 per cent doesn't apply to the vaguely disappointing third albums from your favourite band, or slightly underwhelming debuts from hyped-up new scenesters. It's stuff like this, Hello Wave, that floats under the water waiting to sink your ship.

It makes no-one feel big or clever to lay into a well-meaning musician who operates entirely for love not money. Sweet Baboo's Stephen Black is probably a good guy who'd buy you a pint if you shook his hand and told him you enjoyed his music. And that must be why this album, his second, exists, because of stingy, thirsty sycophants. It's only 36 minutes long and it's difficult to get through. The first song, laboriously titled 'If I'm Still In Love When I Get Back Home From Travelling (America)' is the same knowingly cheesy novelty song the every-night resident at your local live music bar plays under the presupposition that the simple act of playing a guitar and singing is entertainment enough for folks. That's why you avoid that bar, because it isn't. Here is also where the first signs of Sweet Baboo's tedious 'quirkiness' arise: he nonsensically interjects "cheese!" after referring to the city of Philadelphia har har; he claims to have shot a seagull and then admits to making it up, cos he's wacky like that; and you know when he twice concedes he was "quite drunk" that it can't be a winking understatement because these drunk stories are rubbish. But he decided to write a song about them anyway.

It's got to get better and it does, kinda, marginally. The following song sports some niftily agile fingerpicking and third track, 'It's Three Let's Go', is a shuffling Broken Social Scene intro extended into a pleasant enough three minute-long instrumental. But don't lose track of your standards just yet. Stephen Black's voice has yet to show any more expressiveness than my dog's, and his personality is somewhat harder to locate too. In 'Hello Bullfrog, Hello Wave' -- we're at track seven now - Black fantasises about being washed away by a river into the sea, drearingly singing "take me from here, to there, from there, to here, from here, to there" for, god, ages. At 5:05 it's hardly an epic, but it's the longest song on the album by a full minute, and it really feels like it. He's melancholy, because pretty girls don't reciprocate his feelings, and his rabbit died and there's other odd references to death, but he still hasn't given me a reason, in his lyrics or his melodies, to give a fuck. "In the night sky I hear him calling me," he begins the next song, and if you read that in a booming Nick Cave voice it could seem quite dramatic: "and although my hands aren't tied and I tried with all my might, the demons have a hold and I've got no place left to go." But Sweet Baboo isn't Nick Cave, so he's singing it lightly over a jaunty two-chord campfire singalong strum. I could be listening to 'Stagger Lee', but no, I'm listening to 'Kumbaya' instead.

And then he interjects "Steve!" after "I hear him calling me", to further demean his own declared demons, and I wonder if even the Monday night guy down the road would sing this song to three punters and the barman. It's hard to think of a 36 minute-long record as indulgent, but Hello Wave is about half-an-hour longer than it ever earns.

2/10

The Phenomenal Handclap Band

The Phenomenal Handclap Band - The Phenomenal Handclap Band
album review for drowned in sound

http://drownedinsound.com/releases/14506/reviews/4137332

How much trust can you put in a band when their first big creative decision - their name - is a stinker? And what if the record sleeve is terrible too? The Phenomenal Handclap Band, the name, is surely a play on The Incredible String Band - and not a very funny one at that. Rightly or wrongly, there's so much music available now that people make snap decisions on what's worth trying, and I can't help but feel that The Phenomenal Handclap Band have given themselves hurdles before they've even recorded a note. Nobody needs another Polyphonic Spree right now, you might fairy think, so let's try something else. Fortunately, despite the name, The Phenomenal Handclap band are nothing like The Polyphonic Spree.

For a start there's only eight of them, all formed around New York-based DJs Daniel Collás and Sean Marquand. Collás and Marquand apparently got bored of playing other people's records, deciding they could do it better themselves. There's much to like in The Phenomenal Handclap Band's loose, languid style, which embellishes its disco beats with George Clinton's psychedelic funk, Curtis Mayfield's blax-light grooves, and on 'Dim The Lights', Marc Bolan, generally. There're spaceship swoops, pulse pad percussion, high buzzing synth riffs and cowbells (of course), but also harmonica solos, alternately weeping or grinding guitar licks, and melodramatic echoing whispers for full Funkadelic props. And the beats, which step, stride and swagger unhurriedly throughout, cohere all 12 tracks together into a nonchalant but focused whole. Following in the footsteps of Sound Of Silver and Hercules And Love Affair, this is a disco record that believes in the rockist concept of an album, rather than the dance stereotype of the good and not-so-good singles collection.

This album's first two singles - 'You'll Disappear' and '15 To 20' - are probably the standout tracks. Taking musical cues from LCD Soundsystem and CSS respectively, they both use casual but cute female vocals to portray a playful self-assurance about potentially awkward topics. But after that 11-minute mid-section peak, there's a noticeable drop in standard towards the end. At 66 minutes long, The Phenomenal Handclap Band isn't particularly long, but the final three tracks could certainly have been lopped off without detriment. Penultimate song 'Baby' irritates because its repeated soulful refrain - "Baby/ I could rule the world/ with a girl like you/ on my arm" - is a terrible chat-up line; or if he's addressing an established partner, even worse to be that girl. Once would be forgivable, but repeated over the whole song it speaks to a lack of ideas. Then, final track 'The Circle Is Broken' takes nine indulgent minutes to announce the end of the record - "The circle is broken, the people have spoken, no reason pretending, our time here is ending" - which, like the guy at the party who has to personally say goodbye to everyone three times before leaving, is just a bit exasperating.

While the first nine tracks are harder to criticise in specific terms, there's perhaps something self-defeating in The Phenomenal Handclap Band's own coolness. It's hard to get excited about music which never gets too excited itself. What good ideas The Phenomenal Handclap Band do have are spread a little thinly on this debut.

6/10