My week in Jukebox (w/e 31/07/09)

Gaggle - Crows [5]
Jessica Jarrell - Armageddon [8]
Muse – United States of Eurasia (Collateral Damage) [3]
Matt & Kim - Daylight [3]
Chrisette Michele – Blame It On Me [8]
Gloriana - Wild at Heart [8]
Lily Allen - 22 [6]
It's Not Me, It's You is a frustrating album for its wild extremes of quality, from the divine "The Fear" to the unlistenably dire "Fuck You". As much as that, though, it suffers from too much stuff like "22" - sweet and accomplished pop with some of Allen's better serious lyrics that nonetheless doesn't achieve anything that The Bird and The Bee don't do better.
Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone [4]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 24/07/09)

Format taken from Alex Ostroff, as I like it. A few bonus ones from the end of last week as this is the first time I've made a post to link to all of my reviews, and I'll put in any of my blurbs that weren't used (only one this time).

Chicane - Poppiholla [0]
Colbie Caillat - Fallin' For You [4]
Kings of Leon - Notion [5]
Back in 2003 I would never have picked Kings of Leon out of a line up of NEW ROCK REVOLUTION bands as the ones who would become pack out arenas. But fair play to them as unlike, say, Jet, they have consistently improved with each record and got more accessible to boot. Here we are four albums in, and they've reached the dizzy heights of adequacy.
Boys Like Girls - Love Drunk [7]
Lady Antebellum - I Run to You [4]
Misstress Barbara ft. Sam Roberts – I’m Running [6]
Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity of Huge [9]
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Fever Ray at Shepherds Bush Empire (16/07/09)

Thanks to Jukebox editor William Swygart I have been nominated for a post on the best music critics aged under 25. Between that linking here and actually having access to a keyboard (seriously, 90% of Jukebox reviews are done from my phone), it seemed the right time to update again.

Handily, I went to a gig yesterday! I am going to lots of gigs at the moment. This is partly due to work circumstances allowing, but also thanks to last.fm taking all the pain out of finding them. It notes who I listen to and informs me when someone I like is going to play in London - so useful. Yesterday it was Fever Ray (whose album I wrote about when it came out).

The support act was a guy who bowed, stood in the dark and played one long and quite boring ambient track, bowed again and left. Normally this would have been quite annoying but I was on my own and feeling antisocial, so an excuse to browse the net more without offending anyone was ok. He was Simon Scott apparently, according to last.fm again.



Fever Ray's set was heavy on literal smoke and mirrors. Plus lasers. Those were the only source of light for most of the set bar a few weak lampshaded lights, and it took several songs to work out which of the mysterious figures on stage was actually Karin Dreijer Andersson. Quite disorientating, especially as they started with an "If I Had a Heart" where she was buried deep in the darkness aurally as well, pitch-shifted even further into the depths than on the album.

Once she let both masks slip, from a plaintive "Seven" on, she was almost too pitch-perfect, the treasonous thought of 'why don't I just listen to the album?' raising its head on occasion. The live percussion saved the day on that front though, forcing the beats into the forefront in a way that they rarely are on record and lending a new urgency and immediacy to the distant. When they synced with the lasers to totally occupy the room, the idea that this was a better way of doing things than watching someone singing made total sense.

Back

A couple of pleasantly surprising returns.

Hope of the States seemed like the most exciting new thing for a long time for a while in 2003 when "Black Dollar Bills" and "Enemies/Friends" hit, taking all the intensity and scale of post-rock and fitting it into something closer resembling immediate pop songs. Things then went wrong in all sorts of ways (although making the mangled bitter howl of "The Red, The White, The Black, The Blue" a top 20 hit was quite something) and debut The Lost Riots stands as a not-quite-there testament to what could have been.

I had just been thinking back and listening to it again in light of Broken Records releasing a excellent debut that captures more of the early Hope of the States appeal than anyone else since, although has a certain extra focus that both makes for a more cohesive album and means they never quite extent to such highs.

And then, coincidentally (?) The Northwestern came to my attention. They are Sam Herlihy and Simon Jones of HotS, along with others including Jonny Winter from fellow defunct widescreen guitar proponents The Open. And "Telephones", apart from being washed in more layers of guitar noise than HotS ever indulged in, is very much a return to the ambition that they did so well.


The second is even more exciting. See, there was this band called Buffseeds, who released my favourite album of 2003. A series of almost spooky collisions between their lyrics and things that happened to me during its preceding run of singles certainly helped burn it into my life, but it was amazing stuff regardless. JJ72 were the inevitable regular comparison, but they were like a JJ72 shorn of bluster and pomposity and able to cut precisely to heartbreak. In Kieran Scragg they had a singer with an astonishing androgynous voice and a way of making familiar sentiments totally believable and vital.

After Buffseeds split up, Kieran went on to form Iko. I seem to remember the name comes from the Japanese for orphan, presumably like another Ico. Fitting for their album I am Zero in 2005 which was a dark, sad record of largely acoustic despair that was almost uncomfortably intimate at times but rewarded perseverance a great deal.

After they struggled to even get that released fully and was followed by a four year gap I had to fear for the worst for any future music from them. Then I listened to Iko for the first time in a while and soon afterwards got a message on last.fm. From Kieran Scragg! An extra exciting moment because it said that they had a free EP to give away on their myspace, the Ctrl Alt Delete EP, and an album to follow.

At this point I would have been happy for any new music from him really, but the EP went way beyond my expectations and is the most fully formed and impressive Iko release to date. The last three tracks largely carry on where they left off before and are no less beautiful for it, but the preceding "This Room Needs a Priest" and "CtrlAltDel" are revelations. The former veers from choral harmony to rattling rock with more of a punch than even the Buffseeds days. The latter sees Kieran's voice cut up and distorted against a loud and chaotic backdrop, glimpses of the delicate song it might have started as just occasionally slipping through the haze, beautifully hopeless. Can't wait to see what else the album has to offer.
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Jukebox extras #3

VV Brown - "Shark in the Water"
Something about the massive, unselfconcious enthusiasm this transmits, along with the number of clashing hooks that are thrown together in the presumption that some will stick, makes me think of Natasha Bedingfield. That and VV's voice sounds a bit like Tashbed's. An unlikely sound for the next big thing, but as long as she stays more "These Words" than "Single" I approve. [7]

Regina Spektor - "Laughing With"
"Fidelity" was one of my favourite discoveries of the old Jukebox era and still makes me smile without fail when it comes up on shuffle. It's actually a bit upsetting then that this is so hopeless, displaying none of the attributes that made that so swooningly charming. Instead it's a one note ramble, musically and lyrically, that doesn't even get across its message clearly and gives away its weak, weak pay-off in the title. Bah. [2]

Lady Gaga - "Lovegame"
Lady Gaga currently has the number 1 and 2 best selling singles of 2009 in the UK. That's Spice Girls levels of chart domination. Since this follows the formula to the extent of reusing the "Just Dance" melody several times, and helpfully flags up its 'disco stick' talking point at the start, middle and end, it's all too easy to see it following suit. Little else to take offence at, all competent as ever, but nothing new is offered to make hearing this everywhere an attractive prospect. [4]
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Doves at Brixton Academy (02/05/09)

Making atmospheric guitar music with a clear familiarity with dance, it makes sense that The Invisible should be supporting Doves. It's slightly lighter and funkier genres that inform them, resulting in a sound that at its best recalls the cruelly overlooked Grand National. The deep bass squelch and happy bounce of "London Girl" in particular gets very warmly welcomed. At times, though, the lack of a commanding voice means less punchy material drifts out without connecting; there's some potential there nonetheless.



Doves themselves don't exactly have the world's greatest live vocalists at their command, though all three take to the mic by the end of the show. Jez is able to carry the likes of "Jetstream" and "Words" off no worse than on record, but Jimi is more variable. Frequently rearing back from the mic with each word as if overpowered by what he was singing, he suits the likes of "Rise" and "Snowden", with their brooding, beyond-words emotions and heavy musical weight, really well but elsewhere sometimes sounded curiously distant. "Caught by the River" resultantly becomes an odd choice of old song to bring out for the end of the main set.

Said set is mainly drawn from the new album Kingdom of Rust and (narrowly my favourite) The Last Broadcast. The best sequence is the pairing of the title tracks of each, both powerfully immediate and played with country jangle to the fore, forging a link between the two that wouldn't wotherwise be apparent. Those aside, a punchy "Black and White Town" and "Pounding" are highlights. My opinion on much of the rest of the new material (slight improvement on the last album, too lumpen to really recapture past glories) sadly doesn't get changed much, but the general reaction to the new stuff suggests plenty are a lot more won over.
The real treats for longstanding fans unsurprisingly come in the encore, beginning with a gorgeous acoustic rendition of B-side "Northenden" that melts away the distance between band and audience and brings to mind those pesky Elbow comparisons for the only time of the night. There's some position-swapping for "Here it Comes" and then the joyous, triumphant finale of "There Goes the Fear" and "Space Face".
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Withdrawn from memory

Doves live review coming soon, but an amusing pre-script(?) to it first. I was going to write about how good it was to finally see a Doves show as I'd never seen them properly before, having only seen them at V2001.

Before the show started at Brixton Academy yesterday, something by The Magic Numbers was being played over the sound system and I had a memory of seeing them as a support act before their first album at the same venue. I worked out that it must have been early 2005, but couldn't think of a show that I'd been to that it could have been.

I've just done some internet research and turned up that it was, yep, Doves that they were supporting. I also found my ticket and saw that that was the one show at Brixton Academy where we ended up with seated tickets without realising. The fact that I'd totally forgotten about it may have as much to do with the huge distance from the stage of the upper balconies there as anything.

Bat for Lashes at Shepherds Bush Empire (19/04/09)

No doubt that the word to leap to in describing School of Seven Bells is shoegaze - their guitarist, long fringe covering his face, even maintains the correct downward facing pose throughout. Their differentiating tricks are light electronic beats and their two singers, weaving between unison and harmony in a manner that my friend very distractingly (but sort of accurately) compared to Abba. All quite enjoyable but the fine definition needed to appreciate for more than a couple of unfamiliar songs doesn’t really work in a large-ish venue.




It occurs at some point during Bat for Lashes' set that Natasha Khan constantly mines a very limited and specific lyrical vocabulary to remarkable effect - not quite on the levels of Brett Anderson in his prime, but not far off. Possibly it’s the realisation that running in the dark/night is central to both “Daniel” and "Pearl's Dream" that tips it over the edge. Two Suns’ repeated twos, hearts, fires, space, stars, moons and darkness clearly and deliberately step the thematic links up a gear, but it’s not like they weren’t there before. Musically she has moved much further from the early days to expansive and dramatic variety of sounds of the new album.

That actually poses a bit of a problem live when it comes to some of the new songs that are heavier on context and studio work – “Peace of Mind” just doesn’t work without its choir. “Travelling Woman” also unsurprisingly flags as the closest thing to filler on Two Suns. Where the songs fall within the scope of the band to deliver, though, they are on top form. “Glass” makes for a monumental opener, between Natasha building from subdued to accessing previously unknown vocal range and its intense rhythmic climax. The amazing, forceful drumming is also foregrounded in “Two Planets”, the most fully realised tying of the record’s themes to music on a similarly cosmic scale.

But although the second album is the better by far, it’s the cherry-picked highlights of Fur and Gold that stand out even more and get the warmest reception, from the galloping statement of purpose “Horse and I” to whimsical “The Wizard”. An excellent bare-bones harpsichord version of “Prescilla” even inspires multiple uncoordinated attempts to clap the rhythm, about which the best to say is that hearts were in the right place.

Of the new songs "Moon and Moon" (which she has been playing live since at least the show three years ago that I linked above!) is the only one to achieve the same charged emotional intimacy as powered Fur and Gold and makes for a beautiful encore. Then she almost wastes all the good work by coming out for a second encore to play current single "Daniel" for a second time. Really unnecessary and a long way from the best she has to offer.

Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

We’ll start off with another unused Singles Jukebox entry, from a while back:

‘Fight Like Apes - Tie Me Up With Jackets
I'm a bit torn on this one. The acceleration from the burbling opening into the blaring technicolour chorus is thrilling, but the singer's voice is a harder sell and by the end the shouting is just a touch too much. Similarly the zany lyrics repeatedly grate through trying far, far too hard but the Simple Kid reference makes me grin and 'we'll play lovely noise' is just about perfect as a dumb chorus statement. I still approve of anyone taking emo-minus-angst as a starting point and at the very least it makes me want to see what else the band can pull off.
[7]’.

Well, I did, and it turns out rather a lot that is much better! I’d like to say that I just hadn’t heard of Fight Like Apes before that, but sadly in fact I had but on the basis of Irishness and having a primate related name I’d somehow merged them together with Humanzi in my mind and therefore not bothered listening. Oh well, better late than never. Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion is actually just about a 2009 album by UK release date at least.

For all that I complained of trying too hard in the lyrics (and the occasional contrived moment does sneak in elsewhere), the album is actually characterised mainly by being blissfully free of self-conciousness that might otherwise have held them back. So they rally their pop sensibilities and day-glo keyboards and head off in noble pursuit of the base and immediate, firmly rooted in Los Campesinos! style indie-pop but continually harder and more direct, and armed with Maykay’s yelp and embittered cursing and whoever it is that also does vocals sounding, to quote another Jukebox contributor, like ‘[a] guy who wanders in from a hardcore band near the end’.

They combine the heady thrills that result from this all out assault that with enough other tricks to ration it over the whole record. “Jake Summers” alternates between gauche and studied cool, its synthetic heartbreak interludes like Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Maps”. “Digifucker" sets itself up as coy and quirky even more convincingly than “Tie Me Up in Jackets” before you realise that it was just a pose to allow the surge into the vein-popping outrage of its chorus (“So did you fuck her??/Did you stick things up her??”) to hit you round the head even harder. They have a thing with plummy voice samples from B-movies too, cutting them up to increasingly amusing and unsettling effect in that song and others.

Best of all is “Do You Karate?”, a whirlwind tour around everything they do best in just over two minutes. Pummelling drums, inventive profanity (‘you’re about as much use as a cuntless whore’) a chorus that collides the two vocalists at full pelt, and an enormous synth hook that lights up the middle of it and serves as another indie reference, following the line ‘he doesn’t even know you like Stars!’ and resembling said band’s “Reunion” turned up to 11.
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Jukebox extra #2

Chrisette Michele - "Epiphany"
Chrisette easily has the confidence and class needed to come out of this kiss-off sounding undeniably in control and on top. Not only that but she also makes the touch uncertainty and doubt present in arriving at that point believable and compelling. She's helped along by a pretty sweet piano hook but most of all I love the breathing as rhythym track, especially when everything else drops out. [8]
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Jukebox extra #1

Stuff that I write about singles that doesn't get used.

Placebo - "Battle for the Sun"
Placebo made a decent stab at continued relevance last time round but this overreaching wannabe epic sounds like an outtake from the second JJ72 album, with the dubious addition of the dominating presence of Brian Molko. It doesn't help that the bits where he repeats the same word five times just sound like he's forgotten what comes next. [3]
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Somewhere else II

To continue responding to my lack of substantial writing by trying to palm you off with other things, I'm also now on Twitter.

Something on the Fight Like Apes album coming soon.
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Somewhere else

I'm not sure how big an overlap there is between interest in the music covered on ifblog and interest in vegetarian food in Japan. If you do fit into both of those though, or in the more unlikely event that you have an obsessive desire to read everything that I write, you'll be interested in the new blog that I am co-author of.
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Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

I've long loved the way that Gruff Rhys and fellow Super Furries completely unselfconciously make the unlikeliest of subjects seem like perfectly natural lyrical concerns. Gruff has outdone himself with first single from their new album "Inaugural Trams" [free mp3 from website], an excited bounce of a song that puts its love in terms of town planning, or possibly vice versa ('We could promenade down the infra-nasal depression/The streets of your hands will never know a recession') and has a repeated call of 'trams!' as its most virulent hook of many. It's difficult to imagine many other bands singing of triumphs like 'we have reduced emissions by seventy-five per cent' with such winning sincerity.

I mention a Gruff song first as it's perhaps not surprisingly the most instant joy of their ninth (!) album, but the key to Dark Days/Light Years' triumph is actually the decision to divide up vocal and songwriting duties among the band. Said division was probably a large part of what made their last two albums a relatively weak patch (i.e. merely really good) but it's now paying dividends big time as everyone hits their stride. Cian Ciaran's sweet and affectionate "Helium Hearts" and Huw Bunford's intricate yacht rock update "White Socks/Flip Flops", its unlikely steals from Moody Blues solo records included, are album highlights. At least I think that's whose they are as with only the digital release so far songwriting credits are unclear.

Anyway, the band has long revelled in stylistic diversity and the different voices present (both figuratively and literally) add yet another dimension to this. There's a range of languages too of course, with the blissful Welsh harmonising of "Lliwiau Llachar" and the just-brief-enough German rap that Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand tears into midway through "Inaugural Trams". The variation all flows together without pause thanks to some particularly neat sequencing. Almost every track wending its way totally logically to an end in a brief snatch of a completely different tune before the following begins from there - a sort of aural palate cleanser mechanism that is very effective.

Perhaps of necessity Dark Days/Light Years is quite a different beast from the major label opuses of Rings Around the World and Phantom Power, with a more pared down and direct sound than previously. Focussing on tighter grooves with a sprinkling of kraut-rock and recalling Guerrilla most of previous albums (the fuzzy, itchy guitars and unhinged vocals of "Crazy Naked Girls" are initially a dead ringer for "Night Vision") suits the current model of the band a lot more than the harmonic pop of Hey Venus! did, although more important is that such an overview no longer really gives a fair reflection of the scope and ambition at work.
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Polly Scattergood - Polly Scattergood

Polly Scattergood's debut shows off a talent for pop with a twist. Or rather, the pop is the twist in deceptively fragile and downcast songs which frequently turn out to have been smuggling expansive choruses all along. "Unforgiving Arms" switches seamlessly from contemplative to embracing with typically deft electronic touches, and the not all that cheery acoustic "Please Don't Touch" suddenly turns to handclapping jaunt in surprisingly effective fashion.

Elsewhere the vacuum packed glide of "Bunny Club" pitches its eerie emotional distance just right, and makes for a strong later section of the album alongside debut "Nitrogen Pink". Just about claiming status as most epic emotional blowout of the album, that one shows off her piercing voice to great effect, frequently just on the verge of cracking but holding the song together. To go for my usual comparisons to artists no one remembers, it's all quite Martin Grech, which is a good thing.

It's not all so excellent - she gets bogged down by a couple of too slow, sparser ballads and these in particular expose a pervading lyrical immaturity, with the naked blub of "Poem Song" and its 'ribbons on my fingers and cuts on my wrist' feeling uncomfotably like emotional voyeurism. Similarly "I Hate the Way" builds excellently from fragile verses through Muse guitar pounding to another big chorus, but then ends with a coda of Polly intoning 'maybe if I skip my dinner make myself pretty and thin and maybe then he'll love me' and it's all rather unnecessary. With that being something that time may hopefully fix, there's definite potential for greater things ahead.
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Ordinary northern blokes

I was going to make a very brief post commenting on a live review of Doves that had said their new album was like Elbow's last one and 'deserves similar success', since I find it amusing when six years ago there were numerous pieces saying much the same with bands reversed. Thing was, I forgot which paper I'd been reading and had to do a search for it.

Turns out it was the Independent but also that they were far from alone.
The Guardian's 'the Cheshire trio who have accumulated so much critical goodwill during their steady but so far unspectacular 11-year career that much of the music press is willing them to follow Elbow into the winners' circle.' just about works at a stretch if we're only caring about awards now.
The Evening Standard's 'Plenty of signs point to them becoming this year’s Elbow — a bunch of ageing, remarkably ordinary northern blokes who find that after such a long time, a huge mass of people realise how terrific they are all at once.' is just plainly lazy rubbish, though.

Comparisons are obvious enough that it would be silly not to expect them to be made but totally missing the point to shoehorn them into a slightly more compelling story is another matter. The real question is whether after four years away Doves can still win back all the fans who put The Last Broadcast and Some Cities to number one when they were the ones getting mainstream coverage and succeeding on their own merits.
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You need more

An update on my predicitions from my previous charts analysis which saw comparatively poor single performances in the singles chart from long established acts as being part of a trend in changing purchase patterns rather than down to individual failures or even general increasing irrelevance.

Despite the Brit Awards appearance and Xenomania declaring it a hit, Pet Shop Boys' "Love Etc." has indeed missed the top 10. Its 14 matches "Home and Dry" rather than setting any new record low and I can't decide if that undermines or strengthens my case. Anyway, next up are Depeche Mode.
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Wolf at the door

Pictured above: the cover to the first of two forthcoming Patrick Wolf albums (the other is The Conqueror). Not entirely clear if this is the Tilda Swinton narrated one, or if that is actually both of them.

Clearly Patrick has long had a vision of his role as a pop star that extends well beyond the content of his music, and his successful careful matching of persona to music was a part of what made Wind in the Wires era shows magical. By the multiple costume changes of the next album it was something to be indulged as often as admired but still worked. Sometimes. Things have gone a little bit further now, perhaps as a result of a taste for the freedom provided by fan-financing as opposed to the major label deal of The Magic Position. First exhibit: that cover above (although it's probably the choice of font which is the biggest weakness). Second: the new (and not safe for work) video "Vulture" with its bondage gear and general dubious art-ness.

Possibly more telling, though, was his bizarre hour long show in the middle of Club NME at Koko last Friday. It was not so much the bare chest, leather trousers and return to bleach-blond hair that were the issue. No, it was the way that a desire to put on a show translated as donning headset microphone and dancing uncoordinatedly. For all the energy he put into it, it basically left him looking a bit lost on stage and detracted massively from the mystique of older songs. The problems were most obvious when he was tethered to the spot by the necessity to play ukelele for "The Libertine" and suddenly was a believable figure again.

Except that after appearing to have finished and left everyone baffled, he finally came out for an encore covered in silver glitter and weilding some kind of sparkly skull, and hit us with the aggressive, stuttering electronic of that new single and its obvious predecessor "Bloodbeat", and we last we really did actually have a cohesive, emphatic spectacle to behold, as intended. So I still hold out some hope, if not of receiving any kind of return on my 'investment' in The Bachelor.
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Back!

Probably my favourite part of the still much-missed Stylus was the Singles Jukebox, in which a large team of writers took on songs from the charts (in some cases the charts of Poland, Serbia, Japan and so on) and mercilessly scored them out of ten.

Well, now there's a new, standalone Jukebox! 'Pop, to two decimal places'! I'm not on the first entry but there may well be some of my work up on it by the time you read this.
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Fever Ray - Fever Ray

It was actually listening to Robyn's The Knife-produced "Who's That Girl" that I realised the key difference between Karin Dreijer Andersson's solo album and those of The Knife. It's the booming, metallic percussion sounds that most mark that song as one of their productions, and they are all but absent from Fever Ray, putting in just a relatively restrained appearance in "Keep the Streets Empty for Me" as the album nears its end.

Some trademarks from the group's fantastic Silent Shout are still around with electronic base, a very similar production and pitchshifted vocals still around, but the overall shift is clear; this is a less immediate album, more subtle in its effect. While Karin's voice is still frequently obscured, distanced, it's never distorted into the terrifying shapes of "One Hit" or "We Share Our Mother's Health". There's still a shivery hopelessness seeping through the day-to-day of "Seven" (is it 'and your toes cold now'?) but it's less explicit, a more typical domesticity foregrounded, not least in the ear-catching line 'We talk about love/We talk about dishwasher tablets'.

The determinedly monochrome sound serves to make Fever Ray a slightly underwhelming listen at first, with even the single and lead-off "If I Had a Heart" never reaching the resolution to its droning tension that you might expect. Yet somehow its completely unified atmosphere and the way that unveils its secrets so slowly, fractured narratives and feelings buried deeply, makes it even more addictive than Silent Shout.

Difficult to pick highlights but "Concrete Walls" is particularly effective in its claustrophobia writ large, its distorted 'I leave the TV on/And the radio' repeating and echoing into a coping mechanism mantra. The brief cracks of light in the aforementioned "Keep the Streets Empty For Me", with Cecilia Nordlund's gorgeous guest vocals and some unlikely panpipes, are all the brighter for feeling so hard-earned by that point. By five or six listens, absorption into the album's world is complete and by the time closer "Coconut" slowly stretches out its clicks and minimalism for seven minutes it feels like it could very happily go on for much longer.
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