Meursault / Happy Particles at Glasgow Science Centre Planetarium (****) Sunday October 9 live review for the skinny
The planetarium isn't just a novel location for the sake of gimmickry, since a certain brand of rock music routinely provokes descriptions like "star-gazing" or "cosmic" and can feel emotionally profound in the same vague, mindclutter-emptying way as staring at the stars.
Sunday's first band Happy Particles fit the bill perfectly: even without a domed ceiling of stars and planets above them, they might fairly be described as a space-rock band. Before they start, the seated crowd is treated to a brief introduction to astronomy by planetarium staff member Simon, who amusingly talks to all us trendy music types like we're six years old again. "Look out for Geoff the Whale!" he tells us, before the stars above start to orbit the room, and Happy Particles slowly shift between chords.
Theirs is not a clean or intricate game, preferring to play in the mud of indistinct guitar noise and heavily processed vocals, but it’s perfect for right now, gazing at flickering stars, what looks like Mars, and some dubiously drawn constellations (how can you get a dog from two dots?). Happy Particles should never perform in a wee bar again; please, talk to Simon about a residency.
Meursault, perennial kings of Edinburgh’s gentle acoustic scene, could be a less appropriate choice for a setting that encourages us to consider infinite size, and the closer, a sparse take on ‘...Fields’ familiar to any fan, is somewhat swallowed by the "endless canopy" above it. But the new songs that dominate tonight's set reveal a heavier sound than ever before, which fills the room, if not the universe. Neil Pennycook’s songwriting has taken an angry turn, so his bandmates wallop the drums and strangle the guitars, but Pennycook’s voice is still a versatile emotional tool, and some of the new piano melodies are startlingly pretty. Meursault may benefit from more intimate venues, but Detour deserve a lot of credit for thinking outside the pub.
Top 10 of 2010 No.1 Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me feature for the skinny
Pay attention: it's hard – when there are photos, graphics, animations, videos and flashing coloured boxes, links to definitions and further reading and green cards and prizes, pages left and right and a billion others nearby, comments to make and songs to hear, hot new bands and unknown cult heroes and trends and friends and not enough time – to focus.
On one thing.
Until its end.
Without jumping away.
We apparently have to hand more information about the last eight years than about the preceding fourteen billion, because every new second spawns gigabytes of data: every sparing thought is a status, comment or tweet, every idea a blog post, every sight a photo, every sound a song, every song a dozen videos and on it goes. It's impossible to keep up with all this... everything, but we try. Multi-tasking is the new relaxing. We’re over-stimulated by unlimited content from an over-populated planet. Nothing sustains; it’s next, next, next, next.
At no point in the history of recorded music has a triple-album been a good idea, but especially not this point in history. It's just too long. Less is more, Joanna. Doubles are already pushing the limits. It just shows you don't know how to edit yourself, Joanna. To an iPod shuffler, filler is the biggest crime of all, and triple albums are serial offenders. To a multi-tasker, patience is an anachronism and subtlety a hindrance. A triple album by Joanna Newsom!? Next!
Have One On Me, astonishingly, wouldn’t be improved by editing. It's truly a first: a triple album that justifies its entire length. With Joanna Newsom, more is more.
After the elaborate fantasia of Ys, Have One On Me is comparatively straight-forward: instead of sinister pacts between runaway animals, here we have songs about the familiar twenty-something concerns of love and relationships, beginning with a blissful announcement of new love and ending with a sorrowful admittance of loves failure. But it's not an easy listen: her voice, modified after a throat injury, is still to newcomers thin and affected; her arrangements are sparse and delicate, her melodies subtle to tease out; her lyrics, more direct than before, are still shrouded by erudite poetry. And – did I mention? – it's more than two hours long. Have One On Me is not casual listening. It pays to pay attention to it.
Joanna Newsom is a dazzling lyricist, in both the positive and negative senses of "dazzling", but now almost wholly in the positive. On her first album, she sang "never get so attached to a poem you forget the truth lacks lyricism" and duly remained so attached. The Milk-Eyed Mender and Ys were full of beautiful lines, but lots of them were impossible to parse; Have One On Me is full of beautiful lines, but few are pure show, and many more lay their truths bare. In Good Intentions Paving Company she develops the story with wonderful phrases like “It had a nice a ring to it, when the old opera house rang, so with a solemn Auld Lang Syne, sealed, delivered I sang"; then she delivers a sucker punch at the end with the plain appeal “I only want for you to pull over and hold me 'til I can’t remember my own name.” Those moments hit right in the gut, because they're a reminder that emotions don't wait for the mind to articulate them. Joanna Newsom is meticulous, but her heart is not.
As carefully as she places each syllable, she places each note. There's not a gramme of fat on Have One On Me. Esme, 81 and On A Good Day are entirely solo, just Newsom and her harp. Baby Birch and Go Long feel just as sparse, every slow string twang allowed to live its full life to create an incredible intimacy. Then jaggedy guitar slaps burst through the former, a heavenly kora rains down in the latter, and they both very gradually build to stirring conclusions. In California, one of the album’s most beautifully frail songs, has 14 credited performers, unbelievably, as does the title track, which develops over its eleven minutes with quite staggering dexterity. Some players shuffle in for a brief flourish and then vanish; it's sufficient. No silence is filled without reason, no solo supported without cause.
Have One On Me stands out in 2010 because it's stimulating art, not just stimulation. Music and technology are moving towards convenience as a common goal, but Have One On Me is not convenient, it’s a challenge. The vast availability of music to the modern listener promotes a box-of-chocolates approach – many flavours, tasted briefly – but Have One On Me defies brief sampling, requiring many listens to reveal all its charms. Scenes and fashions can often be relied upon to flesh out a musician’s image or ideas, but there's no scene or fashion supporting Have One On Me. It’s a unique and uncompromising album, and in the age of tl;dr, that makes it a totem for the independent artistic ideal.
Caribou, Four Tet, James Holden @ ABC, Glasgow, November 21 live review for the skinny
With a line-up of James Holden, Rocketnumbernine, Nathan Fake, Holden again and Four Tet before Caribou, Sunday evening’s ABC lineup has a mini-festival feel to it. James Holden's mercurial dinner time techno slot tricks this sell-out crowd into thinking it’s 2am Saturday night, partly because we've been dancing for a couple hours already. He slides between bass-heavy bangers, slivery grooves and laser-driven mechanical shuffles until we’re all just about ready to spill out home to bed.
But it’s still only 10:15, and time for Four Tet to take over. Despite his albums’ more delicate style, now is definitely not the time for Kieran Hebden to slow down. So Holden's huge 4/4 kick drum remains, but louder now, so that its low frequencies grind all over the more fragile sounds of his new album. Everyone keeps dancing, of course, but there’s a feeling that Hebden might’ve been able to exercise a little more subtlety had he played earlier in the night.
After five hours of continuous beats, the 15 minute break for Caribou to set up as a four-piece band is a bit of a mood-killer. For their first few songs the crowd seems tired, and faced with Caribou’s more complex rhythms it takes some cajoling to get everyone moving again. That we would could never have been in doubt: a spectacular Niobe, propelled by clattering cymbal fills on every eighth bar, sets it up; more terrific drumming and scintillating noise for Melody Day ratchets the energy levels up again, and we’re not even on to the Swim stand-outs yet.
Jamelia, sung well by an unwell bass player in the absence of Born Ruffians’ singer Luke, swings cutely over a clickety woodblock rhythm before exploding in shimmering squall; Odessa's deep parping bassline and clattering rhythms sound profoundly weird and utterly compelling on this huge scale; and trippy encore Sun is stretched and pulled and pressed and dropped and revived til it’s mesmerised us all three times over. It’s a huge end to a night that seemed to have peaked too early, before Caribou proved it had never peaked at all.
Beach House @ Oran Mor, Glasgow, November 20 (****) live review for the skinny
Dream pop duo Beach House are a band whose live reputation is always going to be closely tethered to that of their albums; they’re perfectionists in the studio, so there isn’t much space for reinterpretation, and they’re permanently bereft, so they’re not much in a mood for energy. But in the darkness of Òran Mór, with a golden light fading in and out with singer Victoria Legrand’s breathy intros, fairy lights behind them twinkling like stars, and the aural haze enveloping each lovelorn song, they create a dramatic and intimate atmosphere.
There’s a stream of highlights from 2008s Devotion and this year’s Teen Dream, but the biggest moments come towards the end of the set. Heart of Chambers allows Legrand to really open up, roaring the melancholic chorus like it still hurts two years later, and mighty kick drums lend encore pair Real Love and Ten Mile Stereo an explosive edge. At the end of an evening of melancholy, the mimicking of Alex Scally’s skyscraping guitar line by the shimmering stars behind him makes for a stunning finale.
The Last Battle - Heart of the Land, Soul of the Sea (**) album review for the skinny
For a band of six, Edinburgh’s The Last Battle sport a frail, minimal sound on debut album Heart of the Land, Soul of the Sea, based almost entirely on singer Scott Longmuir’s acoustic guitar. Tasteful cello flourishes and wispy female backing vocals don’t do much to fill out the palette, so The Last Battle ensure there’s some variation by, for example, splitting the short record with a monologue from a deep-voiced bandmate, and introducing a shuffling squeezebox to Cutlass.
Despite the stylistic difference, it’s that monologue, Photographic Memory, which encapsulates the album’s main problems: it’s sorely earnest and full of lyrical clichés. Heart of the Land's relentless sincerity becomes difficult to stomach if you’re not in a teary mood, and lines like "I'd like to sail away with you forever in a heartbeat" would surely earn derision were they to come from a soppy pop star, however melodiously they're delivered.
Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea(**) album review for the skinny
Warp’s signing of Brian Eno was a symbolic coup for the label, the spiritual homecoming of a common ancestor to their entire roster’s two-decade output. But Small Craft On A Milk Sea does not indicate a return to the cutting-edge for Eno, who’s been wallowing in abstract ambient sound design for longer than Warp’s lifetime.
When Small Craft summons some energy, as in early tracks Horse and 2 Forms of Anger, racing drums, buzzing insects and squawking mechanical birds form a frightening scene, before the latter track’s guitars explode and enflame for a full minute.
But for the most part, Small Craft drifts aimlessly in featureless ambience. For all that he achieved in his first decade-or-so as a musician and producer – and his legacy of innovation in rock and electronic music is peerless – it’s difficult to detect anything of genius or inspiration in his 2010 output.
John Legend & The Roots - Wake Up! (****) album review for the skinny
Few musicians seem to make overtly political records these days: the Iraq war moved few songwriters to sing out, and despite its catastrophic effects, there’s not much rhymes with “credit crunch”. John Legend and The Roots’ Wake Up! is a covers record featuring new versions of old soul classics like Donny Hathaway’s Little Ghetto Boy and Mike James Kirkland’s Hang On In There, among others, updated with Black Thought verses, though these songs’ themes of faraway wars and local poverty need no updating. It’s beautifully produced, so when those two songs and sole original Shine develop into galas of piano, organ, strings and bass, it’s like listening to peak-era Stevie or Curtis. A lethargic Wholy Holy can't compare to Marvin Gaye's original, and a 12-minute take of Bill Withers' I Can't Write Left-Handed is a good three minutes over-wrought; but Wake Up!’s lush recordings make it a treat for any soul fan.
Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love (****) album review for the skinny
If the near-five year wait since The Life Pursuit and last year’s brilliant brace of albums from Camera Obscura and Butcher Boy led you to question Belle & Sebastian’s standing as indie-pop kings of Glasgow, wait until you hear Write About Love.
While arguably not as consistent as either of those disciples’ recent triumphs, there are parts of Belle & Seb’s eighth studio album as great as anything they’ve done before: When the light and lilting I Didn’t See It Coming is resurrected, after dissolving into space, by the late arrival of starry synths and Stuart pleading “make me dance, I want to surrender!”; when a fragile, metallic shimmer subtly emerges from Come On Sister, and ecstatic male backing vocals less subtly burst from it later; pretty much the entirety of Northern Soul stomper I Want The World To Stop, and the surreally hilarious I’m Not Living In The Real World, a coming-of-age caper inspired by early The Who and Beach Boys.
But perhaps the best moment of all is the final line of closer Sunday's Pretty Icons: a simple, undramatic remark of devastating kindness that’ll leave you choking over the glistening organ outro. Wonderful.
This song really reminded me of Frankie Valli's The Night, even before it got to the "the night, the night!" bit. So, for comparison's sake (and because this is an amazing song that you should listen to right now anyway):
Eminem @ T in the Park, Balado near Kinross, Scotland, 10/07/2010 (***) live review for The Skinny
Five years after his last scheduled UK gig -- and seven years since he last actually performed in Scotland -- it's teasing to have to wait 40 minutes past showtime for Eminem to finally take the stage to close Saturday's Main Stage lineup. But when Marshall Mathers arrives, it's a relief to see him still youthful and full of fight; considering the drug problems and the rare public appearances, my subconscious feared he’d turn up in a string vest and pyjama bottoms, or unshaven and greying at least. But seven years away haven’t aged him at all, physically; artistically, it’s a different story. Growing up is a difficult subject to navigate, for any person or any artist, but it’s extra hard for artists who have a stage persona and a real personality as messily intertwined as Eminem’s. So, just as a new greatest hits release from Em would sound strangely incoherent, tonight's set contained songs as if written by a few different Slim Shadys.
His earliest persona -- the funny one -- is who everyone’s here to see, but he leaves most of that for the end. The first half of the show is almost entirely Recovery and Relapse tracks, plus a three-song set with D12, and it’s underwhelming for all but the Stans on the barrier, frequently shown on the giant screens reciting every word. Presumably the cause of the delayed start was technical, and technical problems with Em’s wireless mic persist - entire verses are lost while his sidekick MC is fully audible. When it comes to Stan -- the song -- Em’s mic problems frustratingly remain: after the crowd sings along to Dido’s intro, the first verse is a washout.
The mic is working by the time Em wants to talk to the crowd, pitting all the boys and girls against each other in a noise-making contest, and encouraging all the boys to turn to the nearest girl and say “fuck you bitch!”. That’s Slim Shady talking, but then comes the real head-fucking sequence of the evening: he asks the girls “how many of you ladies feel beautiful tonight?”, dedicates the next song to every girl in the crowd, and sings “don’t let them say you ain’t beautiful”. Minutes later, the girls are singing along to Rihanna’s Love The Way You Lie hook, as Eminem threatens to tie her to a bed and set the house on fire.
Beautiful is on Eminem’s 2009 comeback album Relapse, but who is it by? Is it by a fake Slim Shady? Who was Kim, by? Is Beautiful by the real Marshall Mathers? Is Beautiful by the same artist as Kim? Is Beautiful by the same artist as Not Afraid?
Well yes, those two seem to go together: they’re both morose, self-pitying ballads that look for strength and hope but find cliche instead. Not Afraid, tonight’s second-last song, is a power ballad that sets Eminem up like an inspirational moral guide: “Everybody come take my hand, we'll walk this road together through the storm” and so on. What happened to “you can suck my dick if you don't like my shit”? That was only 20 minutes ago.
He created a monster, but it was a fully formed and living monster: as writer Jeff Weiss put it, he was “the id of every 16-year old boy in America”. Now what is he? A hotchpotch of moods, attitudes and beliefs: a normal adult? It’s hard to believe.
Eminem closed his T set with a furious Lose Yourself, but it was the other song to sandwich Not Afraid, Without Me, that was most revealing. 18 months after Stan, his comeback single declared an intention to be provocative: “...we need a little controversy, cos it feels so empty without me”. Now on another comeback, Eminem provoked boos from the T crowd whenever he addressed it as “Edinburgh”. It’s a reasonable mistake to make -- we’re well within a Ryanair definition of Edinburgh, at least -- but some fans weren’t happy. “Oi Eminem!” a little lass behind me yelled. “I’m fae Glenrothes!”.
Remember when Eminem was intentionally provocative?
When M.I.A. released a song attacking journalists just days after a scathing recent New York Timesarticle, it either demonstrated a remarkable speed of execution, or that she had lots of room in her personal protesting schedule. That article exposed some of the half-truths in the M.I.A. mythos, including the discomforting leak that – having broken through as a pop artist with Paper Planes two years ago, and since got engaged to a multi-millionaire boyfriend – she's now very rich and famous. That's common for pop stars, but it leaves M.I.A. vulnerable: her rebel shtick could make her look like a trustafarian in a Che Guevara t-shirt if she isn’t careful with her words.
On new single Born Free she acknowledges that problem, singing “I don’t wanna talk about money, cos I got it”. She’s been forced to rein in the rhetoric, and thankfully she doesn’t say anything stupid on Maya about terrorism or truffles. But the problem with Maya is rooted in a far more mundane circumstance than the disorientating effect of celebrity: it’s that contentedness cools creativity. The NYT piece gave her a cause to fight for – her own reputation – hence the quick turnaround. But everything’s gone right for M.I.A. in the three years since second album Kala, so it’s no surprise that Maya is missing the spikiness so central to her personality.
Born Free is the stand-out, though – blowing through a four minute declaration of freedom in a frenzy, using an amped-up Suicide sample for its irresistible momentum. Story To Be Told combines heavily processed wailing Bollywood vocals and a low-flying jet with a cutting, juddering synth bassline, while Tell Me Why takes the Panda Bear route to psychedelia by endlessly looping and echoing choral samples. XXXO is probably the closest thing Maya will have to a hit, with a great shimmering synthline and a cloying hook: “you want me [to] be somebody who I’m really not”.
But it’s hard to take anything from, for example, Steppin’ Up, except the conclusion that the use of chainsaws for percussion is nowhere near as cool as it should be; or Teqkilla, which somehow stretches the dubious idea to pun on various drinks brands over six minutes of stuttering noise. If the politics of rebellion are now off-limits for M.I.A., then she’ll have to find something else to get angry about; we know what she thinks of journalists, so her fourth album is bound to be better.
Dirty Projectors + Björk - Mount Wittenberg Orca (***) album review for the skinny
Dave Longstreth is a man with great ideas: his breakthrough album as leader of Dirty Projectors, Rise Above, was an attempt to reinterpret Black Flag’s Damaged despite not having heard it in 15 years. By the sounds of it, Mount Wittenberg Orca could be a similar attempt at a from-memory version of Björk’s Medúlla, only with Björk on hand, and not enough time to finish.
In fact it’s a 21 minute suite, available to download in exchange for a charitable donation, about a family of frolicking whales spotted by vocalist Amber Coffman last year. As with Medúlla, it’s almost entirely vocal, with Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle providing percussive chanting and precise harmonising to support the gymnastic lead roles of Longstreth and Björk. On And Ever Onward is the keeper, featuring Björk as the mommy whale celebrating the pleasures of a lifetime in the sea, with her calves cutely singing the title back to her.
Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid (****) album review for the skinny
It's easy to hear why Janelle Monáe has taken four years since her breakthrough as a guest on OutKast's Idlewild to complete her own debut album: The ArchAndroid is a staggeringly ambitious attempt. It's a first-time shot at a grand conceptual masterpiece that makes you wonder whether, considering the struggling record industry, she's perhaps pegged this as her only chance. She'll surely get another because her talent is obvious – the Big Boi-featuring Tightrope shuffles to an African rhythm before heckling horns intervene, Faster glides effortlessly and exuberantly like a Solange take on Stevie Wonder's Keep On Running, and Neon Valley Street showcases the full expressiveness of Monáe's voice. Almost inevitably for an 18 song opus, there are missteps – Make The Bus, featuring Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes, irritates as a Love Below pastiche, and the psychedelic ballad Sir Greendown frustratingly interrupts the momentum of a fantastic opening sequence. There is a masterpiece here, but it’ll take a little skipping to find it.
Sadly, the A Sunny Day In Glasgow founding member who would be most excited about playing with his band on an actual sunny day in Glasgow has left the group, leaving co-founder Ben Daniels to understatedly point out the obvious irony to the packed Sleazy's crowd.
This Philadelphian band have gathered a lot of attention round these parts for their bizarre name; and held that attention longer with two beautifully textured albums. Unfortunately, in Sleazy’s ASDIG are unable to fully replicate all the depths of noise that they wash their sound with on record, which exposes a frailty common to any dream pop-type band whose melodic nous is anywhere south of Kevin Shields’.
Precisely: if the 'dream' goes missing, the 'pop' has to stand on its own. The cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere certainly achieves that, but the band's own songs gasp for a little more fog.
Conquering Animal Sound (***) spend half of their time on-stage crouched, and if you're at the front you can see why: pedals and knobs, wires and cables, gizmos and toys on the floor. It's fascinating to watch the Edinburgh duo use their array of devices to build up a song: they make a noise, loop it, pick something else up and loop it too, singer Anneke Kampman miaows and Jamie Scott fingerpicks his guitar and those sounds are looped; and six minutes later the pathwork is complete, it drops to silence, and there's huge cheers. Tonight their four rolling collages could do with a few more focal points, but it's clear to see why CAS are picking up plaudits.
In contrast, Glasgow quintet Olympic Swimmers(***) are pretty conventional, being a five-piece indie-rock band in the vein of Yo La Tengo, female lead singer aside. Like the New Jersey band, Swimmers' slow, brooding songs don't exactly set pulses racing live, and they are also apparently handicapped tonight by the absence of their usual rhythm section. Final song Father Said is the standout, redeeming a somewhat sleepy set by growing from a tenuous start towards an epic, shimmering finale. More songs like this please.
Finally it's Meursault's (*****) turn to launch their second album All Creatures Will Make Merry in front of a hometown crowd so keen the venue sold out almost a week ahead. They opt for the slightly risky strategy of playing the new album in full, despite few of the songs being known to anyone, but it's clear from the off how focused they all are on their performances. Sparse ballads, where singer Neil Pennycook is backed by just a cello and toy guitar, are interspersed with songs with racing beats and abrasive textures, and each one is met with roars at the end. On this form, Meursault are nothing short of awe inspiring.
LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening album review for the skinny
The first thing James Murphy ever did as LCD Soundsystem frontman was confess to a serious music addiction. Losing My Edge, his 2002 debut single, was an acutely observed and very funny monologue about the one-upmanship of music fandom, expertly name-dropping bands in a way destined to endear himself to music geeks, bloggers and critics. "He's one of us!" we thought. "He knows who Pere Ubu are too!"
So when his self-titled debut album eventually dropped in 2005, it was easy to look past the myriad obvious influences – The Fall, New Order, Can, David Byrne, Suicide, funky Beck – because he'd already declared his deference to elder musical heroes in that first single. And there was more: the very first thing he sang on the debut LP was "Daft Punk is playing at my house", boasted like a connected fan rather than as a musical peer. By bridging the gap between fan and artist, James Murphy earned our empathy and the benefit of any of our doubts. By the time of the second album, Sound of Silver (2007), LCD had developed their own characteristic style, and added a whole new dimension which had been missing from the debut: love. We knew he was a party guy, and we knew he was occasionally a balladeer, but previously his slow songs had been inward-looking; in the core of Sound of Silver, Someone Great and All My Friends, Murphy allowed himself 15 minutes to be sincere about others who were important to him. He wasn't schmaltzy, he just explained from within; and it didn't ruin the mood because both songs retained a propulsive motion that the next song was able to pick up again from. Having quickly mastered motion, he'd now mastered emotion too, and he meshed the two so convincingly on Sound of Silver that his musical inspirations became irrelevant.
At the risk of cliche, Sound of Silver showed a maturity Murphy had previously lacked, or perhaps been scared to show. All this time one of his main concerns has been aging, about gradually feeling like he was getting too old to party. Now forty years old, we can't be ironic about it: the kids are coming up from behind, and James Murphy just might be losing his edge.
There are four Sound of Silver-worthy songs on third album This Is Happening, which is a pretty good ratio considering that high standard. Yet, the flaws of This Is Happening suggest a regression back to the naivety of the debut self-titled album. The central inspiration here is David Bowie: four of the nine songs could be traced closely to Bowie's late-70s Berlin period when he worked extensively with Brian Eno and Iggy Pop; another song is very similar to Iggy's Nightclubbing (written and produced by Bowie), and there's still more Eno, Byrne and Can references. Even the cover is like that of Lodger, Bowie's final Berlin album. But Murphy is no longer just a talented fan with great taste. He crossed that bridge long ago.
The best segment of This Is Happening is a stretch of twenty minutes or so in the first half which features three consecutive keepers. One Touch builds in bizarrely with sharp silver scratches and wet slapping synths, but it really takes off in the chorus when Murphy's automatonic vocal is counteracted by a childlike yell from keyboardist Nancy Whang: rough noise and fluid bass, the girl and the robot all complementing each other. Then it's All I Want, which initially prompts a cringe because of its e-bowed guitar line that's instantly recognisable from Bowie's Heroes. It's the backbone of the entire song and, as Heroes is such a universally known and loved song, it feels kinda cheap, especially when Murphy's vocal melody hits a corresponding "Heroes" note. Nevertheless, the way All I Want progresses with neon-bright keyboard flashes towards Murphy's pleading climax makes its second half irresistible. Finally in this stretch is the piston-disco of I Can Change, a sweetly heartfelt offer to compromise sung gracefully over what sounds like an extended mix of something from Low's Side A.
The closing track, Home, is another success, combining cowbell and mobile phone interference for percussion, and building into a celebratory groove supporting Murphy's David Byrne-like vocals.
Unfortunately, between that ecstatic twenty minute spell and the triumphant finale are three of Murphy's weakest songs yet. Hit is a nine-minute-long grumble about label pressure for a hit song, which definitely won't be a hit itself because it's intentionally flat and tuneless. It's just petulant: the way to react to undue influence is to ignore it, not to propel yourself in the opposite direction. Pow Pow isn't much better: it's a Losing My Edge-style rambling monologue over a rolling groove, except without any of the the wit, and with an inane chorus of "pow, pow pow pow pow, pow pow pow pow" yelled repeatedly. Then there's Somebody's Calling Me, a heavily sedated version of Iggy Pop' Nightclubbing that drearily plods along under the occasional brightly flaring drone.
These songs give credence to the notion that Murphy is doing the right thing by hanging up his LCD Soundsystem boots with this album. That LCD would resort to the third-album cliche of whinging about the music industry, for almost ten minutes, would've seemed so unlikely to early fans: he made jokes about Captain Beefheart, he surely must know about these well-trodden pitfalls? And This Is Happening's reliance on familiar sources of inspiration is not what you expect from an established artist. But, though Murphy crossed that bridge long ago, he remains a talented man with great taste, and that results in a clutch of thrilling tracks. Like the album that inspired its cover, This Is Happening is a fine – if flawed – end to a largely magnificent trilogy.
Super Adventure Club - Avoid Zombies (****) album review for the skinny
In theory, Glasgow (via Livingstone) trio Super Adventure Club could be a nightmarish proposition: they have a singer/guitarist, Bruce Wallace, who screeches, wails, screams, howls and croons; sometimes he sings too; and they have a drummer, Neil Warrack, who shifts between rhythms in a song like a girl trying on dresses in a shop. It could add up to a hellish noise, but in fact their second album Avoid Zombies is a scarily imaginative and hugely amusing trip, the most incongruous thing about it being the final track, a pre-emptive self-defence against anticipated criticism that really isn't necessary.
Before that final track, Super Adventure Club have spent the preceeding half-hour being totally unselfconscious, showing a buoyant disregard for any sensitivities that might get in the way of their fun. Some bands don't seem to know it, but making music is supposed to be fun. The intro to Avoid Zombies' first song -- Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle -- is five seconds of fast n' mindless single-note pinging, before an unexpected eruption of noise as Wallace and bassist/singer Mandy Clarke crazily rave "If you can read this, your head's on fire". The mania of it is startling: a few bars into the album, they've already asserted their presence, declared their intentions, and shown more personality than some bands manage in a whole hour.
When the singers aren't ranting and the guitars aren't in overdrive, SAC like to slow it down with some breezy, light-hearted laments. Pick Up Sticks provides such a counterpoint to Hip Hop etc's abrasive full-tilt intro, as Wallace wonders aloud about being stuck in a rut, and in My Other Brain he considers extreme measures to deal with sexual frustration: "...but John Wayne Bobbit did alright, and his looks like it's stuck on with Araldite." Best of all is SAC Attack, sung sweetly by Clarke over a fantastic leaping bassline and a scratching, scathing guitar: "phone your mum, make the tea, avoid zombies," she reels off her to-do list for the day, "lock the door, feed the cat, avoid zombies". Always set achievable goals; that's just good advice.
And don't worry too much about what other people think of you; that's implicitly advised throughout too. When a band is described as inoffensive, it doesn't mean others go around abusing the ugly, it means this: others, like Super Adventure Club, take risks knowing they might lose as many fans as they win, and they don't much care about that. Nosferatu is the seven-minute multi-part centrepiece of Avoid Zombies; it's very funny, full of ideas, and honestly a little baffling on first listen: it's Super Adventure Club in one song. Starting with an incomprehensible rant over a quick-breathing bassline, it slows into something eerie about spontaneous combustion, before shifting gear again in time for Wallace and Clarke to abuse someone for looking like Alan Carr (wait, what was I just saying?), then calming again for a guitar solo that fades to almost complete silence halfway through the song. For no apparent reason, just because they want to, and then they fade back in again and there's another twenty parts before the song ends.
But SAC's indulgent tendencies -- like beginning an album with a heart-attack-inducing shock and fading out to near nothing halfway through another song, not to mention the soloing and tempo shifts -- aren't a negative, they're intrinsic to the band's appeal. Other apparently good-time bands would be too self-conscious to try half this stuff, so it wouldn't be convincing. On the contrary, you know Super Adventure Club are having the time of their lives, because they're not stopping to think it over, analyse it, write down their options, arrange a meeting, draw a graph, run it by the boss. Time flies when you're having fun because you don't stop to check the time. Super Adventure Club's brio is natural, most of their risks pay off, and the joy is contagious.
Until we get to the appendix, the apologetic Pointless Self-Indulgence, ironically their least indulgent and most pointless song. It's like a new best friend saying sorry for one corny joke. It's actually quite charming, when taken on its own. Two minutes, no big deal.
We Were Promised Jetpacks - The Last Place You'll Look EP (****) review for the skinny
The Last Place You'll Look reprises two standout tracks from We Were Promised Jetpacks' underrated debut LP These Four Walls – Short Bursts and This Is My House – in slower, more restrained versions. Despite Adam Thompson's primal wail being one of the band's strengths, it actually works quite well, highlighting the dark inspiration for those vocal dramatics. By now Jetpacks have the slow-build-to-ecstatic-release thing down pat, exemplified on With The Benefit of Hindsight, which accelerates from nothing into a magisterial finale. Opening track A Far Cry is even better, gathering steam with bump-and-rolling drum fills and brief flashes of big guitars, before somehow managing to keep its climax going for a full minute-and-a-half. Jetpacks' know what they're good at, and they're very good at it.
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.
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach (***) album review for the skinny
Last year a couple of L.A. producers gathered an all-star cast of guests for an album about peace, love and understanding: N.A.S.A.'s The Spirit of Apollo was an idealistic dream that proved impossible to execute. Gorillaz' third album Plastic Beach is reminiscent because its impressive and wide-ranging cast list – Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Mos Def, Mark E. Smith and more – has gathered to grumble about consumption and pollution issues, and because the variety of guests has forced Damon Albarn into some dizzyingly eclectic styles.
When Snoop's drawl gives way to bongo rapping and a shimmering synth line is replaced by an ornate flute melody, you have to check you're not set to shuffle. The star of this show is Bobby Womack, whose pained warble adorns Cloud Of Unknowing and brilliant first single Stylo; beyond that, there's a lot of filler. That's the problem with all-star albums: it's hard to cut the lesser tracks when you made them with your heroes.
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.
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