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Saturday, 04 July, 2009

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You are browsing the album reviews. We rate them with pretty little stars so you dont waste your money on crap.

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Folk / Folk Rock

Tara Jane O�Neil

Folk / Folk Rock

This is the fifth album from Tara Jane O’Neil, or TJO as she’s often known, and her first attempt at pop. She describes her earlier records as ‘cloud music’, which is a pretty good summary of the experimental, meandering offerings that have established O’Neil as an unusually talented solo artist. A Ways Away , though, is tighter than her previous efforts, with each track sufficiently succinct to satisfy the attention span of the popular audience. The mood created by this album is at once understated and magical. A Ways Away enchants from the very first track, Dig In, in which O’Neil’s quiet, ethereal vocals combine with the soft, steady jangle of a tambourine to conjure fairytale images of remote woodlands inhabited by tiny warbling sprites. If O’Neil’s voice was a dessert, it would be lemon cheesecake; bittersweet, with the impression of being nourishing, and ever so delicious. And then there is the smooth, rich, ringing guitar sound. It has the pleasant warmth of a bath in winter that soothes but doesn’t scald; it thrums in the background, rising and falling, lingering in one place and then another. Some of the songs sound like dreamscapes, as in the more abstract lyrics and ambient tempo of Beast, Go Along, but other tracks lift the listener as if from sleep to the clarity of misery. Howl has the yearning melodies and tragic folksy narrative of Sarah MacLachlan’s Full of Grace, and ever so gently pierces the eardrum with the kind of comforting melancholy that makes you want to hug yourself. Drifting between lonely-vulnerable and quietly confident, and wistful throughout the record, O’Neil has penned a compelling set of tunes to contemplate your most recent personal tragedy by. Close your windows and shut your bedroom door, light some candles and turn this up loud. Prepare to tingle with strangely happy sorrow. Eleanor Rose A Ways Away is out on K Records, 20th July.

tags: | tara jane o�neil | more...

Indie / Dancepop

Indie / Dancepop

Matt and Kim’s second album, Grand, has been available in the US since January, and to be honest I’m amazed I hadn’t heard of these guys before I was handed the CD today. Reputedly brilliant fun to see live, it seems Brooklyn-based DIY duo Matt and Kim have built up a sizeable cult following in the US by touring relentlessly and preferring grimy warehouses and basements to clubs and bars, which is bound to make them popular with party crowds everywhere. They’re also notorious on the New York scene for encouraging crowd-surfing, and have caused a ripple of controversy by stripping off in Times Square for their latest music video. I realise as I listen that these guys have a good chance of being the next buzz-band; and by that, I mean that their album is almost certainly going to be overplayed in Topshops across the country and, let’s face it, will probably cause many a wince of irritation by this time next year. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Full of upbeat zeal, this record is full of luminous synths and the kind of simple dancepop beats that make MGMT so nauseatingly popular. It’s genuinely uplifting stuff, with the charming simplicity (if not the depth or scope) of fellow New Yorkers TV on the Radio. The first single from the album, the much blog-hyped Lessons Learned, is more or less guaranteed to have you bouncing round your bedroom in a ‘thank fuck it’s summer’ glee dance, and tracks such as Daylight and Turn This Boat Around boast anthemic choruses and teeth-grindingly catchy hooks. The nice touch about this album is that it was recorded in Matt Johnson’s parents’ house in the arse end of nowhere. He says of his Vermont home, ‘I had a friend in New York come up once and he was like, “How did you even find out about college?”’ It’s always good to know that musicians have feet of clay. Eleanor Rose Grand is out on Artwerk Music, July 6th.

tags: | matt & kim | more...

Jagged Electro / Trippy Beats

Fucked Up Friends

Anticon Records

Jagged Electro / Trippy Beats

Tobacco’s debut album, Fucked Up Friends, has been available in the states since 2008 and will be dropping onto UK shores in July. For those unaware (which included yours truly until the CD dropped through my letterbox), Tobacco is the pseudonym of Tom Fec, a Pennsylvanian best known as the frontman of Black Moth Super Rainbow. Trippy, beat-skipping electro and sketchy psychedelic tendencies are the way with the band, so you’d be forgiven for thinking Tobacco’s solo project would offer much the same. In some respects it does; in other respects it highlights an attempt to disassociate himself from prior projects, beats leading the way ahead of any lyrical journey. As that rare breed of modern music enthusiast who finds electronic music as appealing as shit fetishism, I was thinking I’d give Fucked Up Friends a big Fuck You. Somewhat surprisingly, I quite enjoyed it. Maybe it’s because tracks like opener, ‘Street Trash’, with their edgy beats and electronic ebbs and flows and highs and lows, were on a par with the frazzled post-weekend brain-trauma I was experiencing. It’s freaky electronic music, music for the weak and vulnerable of mind. Psychedelic electro? Maybe. Tobacco certainly seems to fill a void between the trippy side of musical exploration and music currently leading the way for the alternative, night-dwelling younger audience. ‘Hawker Boat’ features a lo-fi sound like the opening to a kids’ TV show, broken only by head-nod, drum-beat solos and the occasional pipe melody over-lay; a pleasant rest-bite from head-fuck tracks to follow. ‘Gross Magik’ is one of the few tracks featuring vocals and ‘Tape Eater’ is reminiscent of pill-popped eyeballs being stretched-out with a pitch-fork; your mind crashing from a high peak to the fiery gates below. Other tracks are a tad lighter on your subconscious, including ‘Yum Yum Cult’, which highlights Tobaccos clever use of overdubbed acoustics and drums, creating a more dance-oriented feel to your standard instrumental track whilst keeping in synch with the rest of the album. ‘Dirt’ is the most hip-hop track on Fucked Up Friends, with vocals courtesy of Aesop Rock and mind-bendingly remixed vocals helping to spin the basic beat into a perfect stoner haze. All in all, Fucked Up Friends is a pretty Fucked Up album, which deserves a place in any section of a record collection labelled COMING UP or COMING DOWN. Fucked Up Friends is out on Anticon Records, July 6th.

tags: | tobacco | more...

Art-house / Indie / Pop

Flare Acoustic Arts League

Affairs of the Heart

Art-house / Indie / Pop

Flare Acoustic Arts League’s (FAAL) album, ‘Cut’, arrived on my desk yesterday morning. It’s the latest project from New Yorker LD Baghtol, better known as the brains behind experimental band, LD & The New Criticism. Sometimes we read the first line of a CD’s press release and toss it straight in the bin like a used wank rag. But we read the press release for ‘Cut’ and figured – “What the fuck, this looks interesting” – and stuck the CD in our disc drive. Perhaps it was because the album features a vast array of artists, including members of Arcade Fire, Magnetic Fields and Belle & Sebastian, that FAAL caught our attention. Who knows? Certainly wasn’t the CD sleeve, which, let’s not beat about the bush, is a little bit on the crap side. The previous CDs we’d listened to hadn’t cut the mustard and so on hearing the beginning of Cut’s opening track, Reminiscences of Minnesota State Training School Alumnus, Class of 1905 , we experienced something akin to unearthing a long-lost gem. Opening with what sounds like an old recording of a gypsy band, it kicks into an instrumental pic-n-mix of stunning orchestrated-pop. This is all well and good and certainly gets the old heart moving, no doubt by pulling on its strings, but where to from here? Well, there’s no doubting that Baghtol has talent as a lyricist, but where the album falters is the lack of musical ebbs and flows. Musically it represents placid water, bar the odd track like ‘Ballad of Little Brown Bear’ as performed by NYC’s gay rugby team. Hardly a highlight, but there’s certainly something trippy about burly men singing in camp, fairytale baritone about a ‘little brown bear’; especially if you’re sinking into your sofa having reached the perfect stoner high. As a whole, ‘Cut’ is an example of an album trying a little too hard to be clever and emerging somewhat pretentious . Then again, when it comes to the whole art-house music movement, isn’t that the whole idea? Let’s face it, we just about passed our GCSEs, just about scraped into college, blagged our way into University and almost failed to graduate; maybe our brain lacks the capabilities of registering just how good this album is. Who the fuck knows? Cut is available now on the Affairs of the Heart label.

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Dance

Ministry of Sound: UNCOVERED

Various Artists

Ministry of Sound

Ministry of Sound’s new compilation CD: ‘UNCOVERED’ claims that it’s a “UNIQUE COLLECTION OF COOL COVERS”. So, let’s investigate that claim. Investigation No.1: Is it unique? Yes. It features a bloke called Earl Zinger singing ‘Song 2’ by Blur and Roots Manuva singing ‘Yellow Submarine’ by The Beatles. Both have never covered their respective songs before. Nor have any of the other artists covered the songs they cover across the 42 tracks and 2 CDs contained within the album. At least not to our knowledge. Investigation No.2: Is it cool? Well, bit of a bold statement. We think that Snooker and John Surman are pretty cool, but I’m sure there are people reading this who disagree. Although, if you’re toking on a reefer, you will find solace in both snooker and John Surman. In fact, I’m willing to bet my mortgage on it and that’s a bet that you can’t win, because I don’t have a mortgage. So fuck it. I win. So, is MOS UNCOVERED any good? Well, it’s a bit like telling your vegan girlfriend that you like chilli con carne. So she invites you round for a meal and serves up this real good looking chilli, only it’s made with Quorn mince; nothing short of a culinary crime. You eat the kidney beans and sauce and everything but the Quorn mince, scooping it into a plant-pot when she’s not looking. On the one hand, half the tracks on UNCOVERED are pretty tasty. Yonderboi manages to make one of The Doors’ best-loved tracks (Riders on the Storm) from arguably their best-loved album (L.A. Woman), a pretty chilled-out number that you could easily get stoned to on a lazy summer’s day. Ditto Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, with their cover of Janet Jackson’s What Have You Done For Me Lately . It’s a funky little number with echoes of a 60s East-End boozer and it’s arguably better than the original. In the same way, you skip passed half of the tracks on UNCOVERED because they’re remixes of songs that deserve their status as brilliant but have been screwed up the arse and left to dry in their own excrement. You know this 10 seconds into the start of said tracks. Example: Cicada covering Roxy Music’s 1980 hit ‘Same Old Scene’ and making it into the sort of tech-track you’d find meat-heads and orange-glow tarts dancing to in suburban night-clubs. In a nut-shell, and because we’ve gone over our designated word limit, UNCOVERED will appeal to fans of previous MOS remix albums. As for those with a great disdain for beats, bleeps and all things dance related, there are gems to be found within this double album, too. Good ones to boot.

tags: | ministry of sound | more...

Indie

Wonders Never Cease

Outstanding Records

I remember the first time I heard Pink Floyd’s second album, ‘A Saucerful of Secrets,’ having drunk a bottle of vodka, a quart of whiskey and opened a sacred bottle of household Courvoisier. It was a defining moment; a moment when you wish you were tripping off your nuts, instead of drooling like a tramp on cheap vino. The story goes that on the final track, the only track featuring frontman Syd Barrett and the last track he performed with the Floyd, the acid-freak invited a Salvation Army Band to walk into the studio mid-way through. It’s all perfectly captured on record, on the legendary ‘Jug Band Blues.’ Sadly, such tales are cast aside like wank-socks in the vault of music history; lost times of trippy psychedelia and quintessential Britishness [sic], locked away with the asphyxiations and free-love fucking on the riverbed. But STOP PRESS: Mr Solo’s debut album, ‘Wonders Never Cease,’ has opened the vault [if only ajar], and pulled out the treasures of yore, mixing and blending and mashing them together in a beautiful/haunting musical collage (depending on how many tabs you’ve dropped). ‘Going Up In The World’ is a rarity, a track about the shit and strife of life, with echoes of 60s psychedelia, delivered in a Donovanesque [sic] baritone that is anything but depressing. ‘Astrology’ is a fuzzy, electro-rock space journey that would garner a wink from the odd eye of Bowie; whilst title-track, ‘Wonders Never Cease,’ climaxes with a big brass band, ‘Jug Band Blues’-style moment. And here’s the thing: despite the diversity; the range of influences; the different methods from track to track that make this album so good, it’s the strain-of-conscious-free-flow of Mr. Solo’s very British lyrics that make it such a prize. DD

tags: | mr solo | more...

Hip-pop / Electro / Calypso

Our Time Records

Hip-pop / Electro / Calypso

I get a great deal of pleasure out of emptying my bowels. There’s something tranquil about sitting there, reading a few chapters whilst your mind and stomach release their burden. It’s one of the few times you’re ever truly alone; not worrying about the other kind of shit, like work, love and money. So when someone in the office turned their nose-up at Man Like Me’s debut album and said: “They’re a bit like Goldie Lookin Chain” (which roughly translated means (A) they don’t have enough ammo in their repertoire and (B) are a bit of a fad), I remained open-minded. After all, one man’s shit is another man’s gravy. You only have to look at Man Like Me’s MySpace page, which contains a 14-track download of B-sides and rarities, to realise that they love their music and that a growing legion of fans do too. Add the number of singles the hip-pop band have released, and it’s apparent that they haven’t just blagged their way to an album release. It has taken time, energy, and the carving out of their own distinct electro sound; a carnival atmosphere created via distinct bleeps and beats. This despite lead-vocalist and song-writer Johnny Langer’s lyrics often exploring the shit state of affairs in modern London. Paint a picture of the night-life in your average suburban town, with chavs pissing up walls and diamond-studded piss-heads having a ruck, and it’s explored on Booze; trials and tribulations of single parenthood are explored on Single Dad, with its calypso drum-beats and brass infusion; whilst 9 Lives appears to explore the cross-road of love and friend-ship in a society littered with sound people and those who live life on the edge. Singles to have made it onto the album include Doughnut, Oh My Gosh and MLM’s latest and most urban release to date, London Town. As far as albums go, it certainly brings a bit of brightness to an otherwise shitty day. I should know, I work for Planet Notion. Dave Dryden 'Man Like Me: Man Like Me' is released May 11th on Our Time Records. MySpace.Com/ManLikeMe

tags: | man like me | more...

Pop / Synth-pop

Pop / Synth-pop

This, their 10th album, following 2006’s reflective Fundamental , occupies a similar space to 1993’s upbeat Very, which followed their downbeat career-highlight, 1990’s Behaviour . It opens with the barnstorming single, Love, Etc. a bonafied hit, which reveals new subtleties with each listen. After faltering on ‘All Around The World’, which never quite gels, the 60’s pastiche ‘Beautiful People’, with lush strings (Owen Pallet – Last Shadow Puppets) and harmonica (Johnny Marr) sails on a verse as sweet as anything they’ve done. Marr returns with a Smiths-guitar hook on ‘Did You See Me Coming?’ which competes with Isaac Hayes’ ‘Hold on, I’m Comin’ in the double entendre stakes, and is a summery pop song, sounding like it took 5 minutes to write – like all good pop songs should. The gentle, Spanish guitar-led ‘Vulnerable’ harks back to the Behaviour -era; sounding like an outtake from their Liza Minnelli album sessions, albeit with contemporary, electronica flourishes. It is on these quieter (and increasingly more typical) PSB moments, such as ‘King of Rome’, that the album most shines. Nevertheless, the highlight (other than the occasional Chris Lowe vocal), is ‘The Way It Used To Be’, seizing the baton from ‘Being Boring’, an elegiac piece demanding repeat the moment it’s finished. Perhaps most impressively, this album captures the healthy hooks of Xenomania contemporary chart pop, thus its times perfectly, and building on the ‘return to form’ established on Fundamental , places them back where they should be, at the very heart of British pop music, if not the charts. Tom Hocknell

tags: | pet shop boys | more...

Minimal Techno

When A Banana Was Just A Banana

Ovum Recordings

Anyone (like me) who wanted an album of bangers in the vein of 1995’s ‘Higher State of Consciousness’ is going to be severely disappointed by When a Banana Was Just a Banana, Josh Wink’s eighth studio album. Subtle techno is the name of the game here, with this mixed track album evoking images of being in an underwater strip club or aquatic brothel. Unearthly, eerie sounds and faint repetitive beats make for an almost ethereal aural experience. ‘Dolphin Smack’ verges on psy-trance but thankfully manages to stop itself before it sinks to those unforgiveable depths. As the nine songs on the album merge seamlessly from one to the next (this itself being evidence of Wink’s skills as a DJ as he slows or speeds up each track to make a perfect transition) it’s hard to get excited by nor identify a particularly stand out track; but opener ‘Airplane Électronique’ and closer ‘Stay out All Night’ are reasonably catchy. It must be remembered that this is minimal techno, and the only thing this mediocre genre really breeds is poncey bars in small towns packed full of local types wearing Zara chatting up bland girls in highlights loving something that ultimately is a bit dull as they think it’s some kind of soundtrack of the city… compared to some of this ilk, it’s really not that bad. It’s hard to take this album seriously when it has such an absurd, almost puerile name, and on first listen, it’s easily forgettable. Whilst it arguably lacks much of a punch, it’s not so slumbersome it makes you want to contact Mr. Wink and advise him to change his first name to ‘Forty’. Maybe ‘Thirty-Eight’, but certainly not forty. Apricotte Gold

tags: | josh wink news | more...

Melodramatic Indie-pop

My Maudlin Career

Melodramatic Indie-pop

You know when you wake-up in the morning and your guts are churning and a big fuck-off bull is running around your skull, real pissed-off and wanting to break-free and you don’t have a love-life and your job stinks and life stinks and everything stinks? Well, PlanetNotion reckons that sticking on Camera Obscura’s new album, My Maudlin Career, lets you know that, sure, all of the above are true, but what the hell does it matter anyway? Get up, get out and get down the pub, because today is a NEW DAY with new beginnings and, probably not a new job but the end of your current one. Mainly, though, the theme of the album appears to be the effect love has on an individual. It’s a collection of love songs for the degenerate generation, delivered in a not-so degenerate way. It’s for the guys and gals who think the first port of call when God’s thrown a fish needle in your eye, is to get fucked-up and worry about the consequences when the come-down hits you. It’s sweet and twee and might even make you cry, mainly due to Tracyanne Campbell’s stunning delivery. Opening track French Navy treads down the indie-pop road, happy and cheerful, only exploring the dilemma of love vs. life. The Sweetest Thing kicks off like a lost track from the closet of Brian Wilson, exploring a relationship that has come and passed. It’s a song about whoever Tracyanne is singing about fucking off and leaving her to deal with rejection alone, probably downing bottles of vino by the gallon and popping pills like a manic-depressive-stay-at-home-house-wife. Then you’ve got Careless Love, which seems to be about those guys or gals you start seeing more as a pity-fuck than anything else and it hurts so bad when you ditch them, because they’re probably hurting so bad, that you “Don’t think we can even be friends.” And that’s basically the road the whole album treads down. Pain, rejection, love gained, love lost, depression and nights at home watching Desperate Housewives and having a wank. Course, we could be wrong, but that’s what we got from it. A quite beautiful album. Dave Dryden My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura’s debut album under record label 4AD, is released April 20th 2009

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Garage / Rock / Psychedelic / Punk

200 Million Thousand

Garage / Rock / Psychedelic / Punk

With their debut album on Vice Records, Good, Bad, Not Evil , the Black Lips created the perfect sound-track to getting fucked on a lethal cocktail of drugs and booze. The kind of cocktail that leaves your brain throbbing like an erect donger and your dreams shattered by cold-sweats and demons, intent on robbing your psyche until the come-down surpasses. All this begged the question: would the Atlanta four-piece garage-rock band’s latest offering, 200 Million Thousand , live up to the wall of expectation created? Well, like Good, Bad, Not Evil , the Black Lips tread the boundaries of rock, swaying from psychedelic brain-warping tracks like Old Man and Trapped In A Basement - the kind of track that envisages sun-light pouring through the curtains, exposing a floor of comatose bodies after a hectic house-party – to good old fashioned rock tracks with a nod to the 50s, the phlegm in your face Drugs being a prime example. Drugs may contain the black-humour we’ve come to expect from the Black Lips, but for PlanetNotion it’s lyrically spot-on, dealing with those Catch 22 situations where you get fucked-up snorting shit because you’re a failure with women, but failing because of it: “Rad attitude and my nose is runny / I like you lots but you think that I’m a dummy.” Who the hell hasn’t been there? The Drop I hold features the kinda beat you’d expect from a hip-hop track with lyrics suggesting that it’s a piss-take of the genre, whilst I’ll Be With You is the nearest you’ll get to a Black Lips ballad, dealing with love/friendship or whatever other shit people hold dear. Booze in our case. All in all, 200 Million Thousand far surpasses expectation and may even surpass the efforts of Good, Bad, Not Evil as an example of the complete album. Top Drawer. And pretty fucking trippy too. Dave Dryden Black Lips, 200 Thousand Million, is released on Vice Records March 16th.

tags: | black lips news | more...

Funk

Jalapeno Records

Danny Hybrid first came to prominence in the late 80’s with his house productions under the guise e-illustrious, but, disillusioned, he returned to his funk roots and house’s loss is most definitely funk’s gain. The album starts with the reasonably accessible ‘My Place’, but for me track two is where things start for real. ‘Hot & Cold’ is a heavy workout laden with mammoth brass stabs and Hammond organ licks that makes you want to get down and dirty. Next up is the aptly titled ‘Soopasoul Theme’ that sums up the album completely in 4 minutes. Flute licks that float like feathers in the wind are matched by brass, funk guitar and the backbone of any great track, a killer bassline. Other notable tracks include the dancefloor friendly ‘Ya Lookin Tight’ which takes the tempo up a notch, and ‘It’s Just Begun’ which continues the staple funk elements and chucks in the legendary funk riff from Jimmy Castor. Finishing off is ‘Do Me Wrong’ which is possibly the highlight of the album, a strong song and catchy vocals. How ‘Twin Stix’ will do in this electro-driven age remains to be seen as the whole album centres on live instruments, though that for me only adds to the appeal. Words: Curtis Zack

tags: | twin stix news | more...