I don’t normally like writing summaries of what’s been out so far this year until at least the summer, but January and February have been embarrassingly good, and I’m not really reviewing records for anywhere at the moment (increasingly I can’t see the point in writing reviews, for various reasons), but I still feel like there are various things I want to say about some of the things I’ve heard. So I will.
(And there are still records I fully expect to be great due in the next couple of weeks; Liars, Hauschka.)
Elbow – The Take Off and Landing of Everything
Thinking of re-doing my iTunes genre tags, because genre tags are so vague as to be essentially useless and irrelevant. I’d put Elbow down as ‘Real ale prog’ these days. Take that as a pejorative, I think. The opening song here consists of seven minutes of acoustic guitar and mumbling. I don’t remember a beat at all. I don’t remember much, actually. I’m not sure why I bought it; some sense of loyalty to the band they were for their first couple of records, some hope that one day they’ll be really awesome again.
Because Elbow have ascended to a kind of tasteful stateliness over their last three albums, a middle-aged comfort and mild melancholy that’s seemingly devoid of edge and excitement. This is fine, if you like. Emotional northern men. We should have seen it coming from the second side of Leaders of the Free World. The creepy, creeping, occasionally cacophonous disquietude of the first two albums has almost entirely dissolved. I’m kind of happy for them that this is the case (that they’re not angry / distressed / etc anymore), but it’s taken a great deal of the tension and release out of their music, and that tension and release was a key part of why I loved them.
All that said, “Fly Boy Blue / Lunette” is pretty wonderful (that brass! that bass!) and maybe other bits of this record will reveal themselves unto me over time. I thought the same about the last one, though, and it didn’t.
Get the Blessing – Lope / Antilope
Bristol jazz; I have the debut album by these guys (when they were called The Blessing, before legal nonsense forced a prefix) and enjoyed it a lot, so I bought this, which is about their fourth. I’ve not been disappointed; it’s really good. I don’t know what to write about jazz; it’s kind of a default listening choice for when I just want to listen to something musical and semi-exciting and intricate and groovy (which is a lot of the time) but don’t want (mostly) to get really emotionally involved. This is rocky – it has a back beat (albeit and intricate one) most of the time – and it shouldn’t scare anyone off. There’s no real honking. It’s not free. It’s just tunes. Get over it. Get up with it.
The Notwist – Close to the Glass
Back to electronics; in fact, way deeper into electronics than before, in some ways. After the rather enervated last album (which was still beautiful, albeit in a very subdued way), there are some proper pop moments here (“Kong”), and far more energy, but still shot through with a sense of melancholy that comes from the linguistic distance of the lyrics and their delivery (ie because the singer’s German). They cover a lot of ground here – as well as being more deeply electronic, some tracks are more overtly rock, too; “Seven Hour Drive” is a pure My Bloody Valentine tribute, layers of (digital?) distortion and scree with melody painted through them. I wasn’t expecting much, six years on, but this has been a really, really pleasant surprise, especially given that it came out the same day as Neneh, Wild Beasts, and St. Vincent, and I expected this to be the runt of the litter.
Wild Beasts – Present Tense
There’s been lots of talk about this being brave and a change and a statement from various people – including the band themselves – and suggestion that they didn’t just want to produce Smother all over again (not that there’d be much wrong with that, as Smother is excellent, and moreish, and a grower). Which is fair enough; change is a good thing. Except that, to my ears, off half-a-dozen plays or more, this does, in many ways, just sound like… if not a repeat, than a logical progression and minor evolution, rather than a radical break or a revolution, from Smother. Which is also fine. Smother with synths, if you will. The sauciness is slightly more domesticated, perhaps.
There is not enough whooping, not enough drama, not enough noise, I’m tempted to think at times. It’s still beautiful and compelling, and they’re still wonderful, I’d just prefer it if, after the deeper one sings “the destroyer of worlds” at the centre of the album, the synths actually did rend and destroy, with a dramatic dynamic leap and edges of chaos, rather than just oscillate beautifully once again, albeit slightly ominously. I have absolute confidence that this will unfurl layer upon layer of sound and tune and interpretation over the next 12 months and beyond; I’d just prefer it if they’d taken some of the roiling chaos of latter day Talk Talk as well as the subtlety. (I’ve said it before and will again; everyone leaves out the chaos.)
Neneh Cherry – Blank Project
Some context regarding creation: Neneh wrote the songs for this, and then sent the vocals – with nothing else at all – to Rocketnumbernine, who wrote the music around it. Kieron Hebden has been eager to explain via Twitter that he pretty much just pressed ‘record’, rather than ‘producing’ it in the way that, say, Timbaland might produce a Justin Timberlake record, despite people’s assumptions. Anyway, this is fabulous; vocals, drums, and synthesizers, with a really light, improvisational feel. Rocketnumbernine are ostensibly a jazz duo, in some ways, and given Hebden and Cherry’s involvement this spontaneity makes perfect sense. Wonderfully open sound, some great hooks, and just amazingly rewarding to listen to; the lyrics are darker than you might think, with several songs dealing quite bluntly with depression, and whilst Neneh sometimes relies on borderline cliché phrases, that fits the aesthetic perfectly. Brilliant.
Warpaint – Warpaint
I was baffled by a handful of reviews of this (part of the reason I can’t see much point in writing reviews – people do just hear things differently) which complained at a lack of hooks and tunes, talked about it meandering and grooving aimlessly in pejorative terms. Who the hell comes to Warpaint looking for a soaring chorus and a churning middle eight? Go to the Embrace album for that. Warpaint’s entire raison d’être is meandering, aimless grooves and subtle, barely-perceptible hooks; they’re brilliant at it. They’re like really early Verve stripped of Ashcroft’s ego and the squalling, post-shoegaze guitars.
Anyway, we saw them live a few weeks ago and I vaguely expected them to go full-on Grateful Dead, jamming everything out into 10-minute spectral hazes, but actually they played stuff incredibly tightly, almost exactly as it is on the albums. Which could seem pointless, if the sheer volume and physical weight of sound that live PAs are capable of didn’t make their groove an awesome experience. It also made me reconsider how I’ve got them mentally filed; they’re clearly not quite the ‘jam’ band I thought, and now I get the idea that their songs are highly taut, composed entities.
Polar Bear – In Each and Every One
More jazz; less rock-influenced and more in thrall to dance music, I guess, and minimalism. This is almost the opposite of the Melt Yourself Down record from last year (they share some personnel); where that was frenetic and chaotic and taut and hook-driven and rocky, this is loose and strung-out and sparse. I find it fascinating. Some of it gets close to drone, almost, and there’s a lot of playing around with space and rhythm. And, because it’s Polar Bear, there are tunes and melodies coming out of its ears even so. Marvellous.
Planningtorock – All Love’s Legal
I need more time with this; it seems a little one-dimensional in terms of tune and sonics compared to Shaking The Habitual, to which it is clearly related, although “Let’s Talk About Gender Baby” perhaps does everything that album tried in 80-odd minutes in just under four and a half.
East India Youth – Total Strife Forever
Fisher Price electronica. My first krautrock record; it tries a little bit of everything, settling on not quite anything. And a really bad, weird pun for a title. This is perfectly fine, but I’m not getting the hype, quite. The songy-songs are definitely better than the tracky-tracks, as it were; his reach exceeds his grasp as far as technical skills go thus far, but he has an ear for a tune. I’m intrigued to watch him develop.
St. Vincent – St. Vincent
All hook and no tune? Possibly, but that’s harsh. Certainly more direct and poppy than Strange Mercy, but I fear it won’t be as long-term rewarding as Actor, which was a fabulous grower. But time will tell. And right now, the weird, arty hooks and strange turns and over-processed percussion and weird, pseudo-lo-fi scratchy guitar sound of this are massively beguiling, because Annie Clark is a disgustingly talented musician, and listening to disgustingly talented people make music is great.
Sick Mouthy 