The Temper Trap... boys will be famous

Conditions by The Temper Trap came a-tumbling, fully formed and delicious, from my ipod yesterday like some amazing test-tube synthesised love child/ gene experiement of 80's soul, Noughties indie and American AOR. I've developed an instinctive suspicion of an music too immediately accessible, but ... ahhh... this lot just s-h-i-n-e.

It has that same luminescent joy which burst over the musicverse when the Strokes and then the Killers arrived to rescue rock and the rest of us from stodgy, post-Nirvana grunge. Like those also, there's a vibrant energy and a gloss that's charms you instantly. The blockbuster-big production is superb and reeks of serious major label bankrolling. To be fair though, it does edge dangerously close to sugarfree-MTV-ism, but when the hooks are this good who really cares.

What's going on in Australia that we're now being invaded by credible, mainstream and yet somehow immensely likeable pop-rock? For some reason the TT sound vaguely like cousins, say, of the antecedent Jet - the album is more a collection of pop songs than a coherent piece of work and the indiscriminate poaching and adapting of anything and everything in transatlantic pop history is also a hallmark of australasian music. Done badly this can make the music sound outdated, but done well and it sounds universal and timeless.

So ok, yes, TTT are just a regulation four-piece set of rock boys with guitars. It's such a restricted formula, and yet somehow, it keeps shaking out newly wonderful slivers of delight such as this. One to watch, if they tour hard and long they'll conquer everyone.

Highlights: "Love Lost", "Rest", "Fader"

Personal best of 2009... a year of brilliant pop

So, in no particular order, here are my picks for the standout acts of the year. I've found myself continually surprised at the quality, the inventiveness, and the freshness of pop this year.

Miike Snow - Animal
La Roux - In For The Kill
Friendly Fires - Kiss Of Life
Animal Collective - My Girls
Grizzy Bear - Two Weeks
Pearl Jam - The Fixer
The Swell Season - live at NPR
Ian Brown - Stellify
Wild Beasts - All the King's Men
Franz Ferdinand - Lucid Dreams (live)

With honourable mentions for the oldie's keeping the live rock 'n roll fires a-burning - Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, CSNY, Neil Young, U2, Christy Moore ... all redefining the meaning of contemporary popular music as they maintain an artistic life years and decades beyond their youth.

And a ya boo sucks to the disappointment of the year - Echo and the Bunnymen.

Grizzly Bear...sumptuous, modern, psychadelic

Grizzly Bear's 2009 release Veckatimest (Warp Records) has been widely nominated as one of the best albums of the year, and I'm not about to argue.

Commonly classified as 'psychadelic pop', theirs is a richly layered, indie-does-baroque sound, a sort of Gershwin reincarnated for the 21st century . The songs on this album sound as though you've arrived embarassingly late for an alternative-universe broadway musical, and you've foolishly missed the bit at the beginning that explains what it's all about. The melody is a strong thread, weaving it's way steadily through the music, while around it there's a focused intensity to the orchestration - sometimes bordering on the operatic, or elsewhere pounding dramatically along like a reinvented prog-rock for the metrosexual age. 

With such well developed work it's difficult to identify sources and influences, but to my ear they're perhaps drawing on the visionary late 70's prog-rock wave from the likes of Pink Floyd, Genesis... Queen... Supertramp... More latterly, in places they can be dreamy like Sigur Ros, naturalistic like Wilco, or experimental like Animal Collective... as you might imagine, they're a fascinatingly "now" hybrid, and the breadth of the soundscape suggests a maturity in their collective artistic lifecycle. Quotes from the band point at fullly collaborative writing, and this is evidenced in the kaleidoscope of ideas. For direct familial likeness they're possibly closest to the Flaming Lips, but leaving off the sci-fi weirdness and surreal humour.

Thus, opener "Southern Point" begins with a jazzy swing, using double bass and accoustic guitar before the chorus bursts into a widescreen fuzzed out romp. "Two Weeks" - recalling somehow the charming, strange, pop experiments of Brian Wilson, has ringing piano chords and vocal harmonies underpinned by a marching snare, perhaps the only track on the album that could plausibly find itself tagged a pop-single.

The album's momentum builds theatrically from the intital, catchy yet complex pop variations, then slows up for a breather in the middle with the ethereal folk of "Dory", before rallying again with the likeable, summer-tinged and shimmering "Ready, Able", and the carefree, cart-wheeling "About Face".

The dissonant "While You Wait For The Others" raises the intensity before a stunning climax is reached in the penultimate "I Live With You", the song rising, falling, teetering, crashing and overflowing with a violent, dramatic tension. The piano-led, dystopian closer "Foreground" is a poignant, bittersweet catharsis.

The song structures, and the confident, easy changes of tone and pace show a real depth and vision in the songwriting. But the enormous richness in the production comes through the orchestral use of a string section and choral arrangements. There is throughout a constantly varying use of rhythm, constrained everywhere to be strictly in step with music and rarely if ever dropping into simple 16-bar rock. This shifts the music out to the edges of what could be called rock or pop, allowing melodies and harmonies ample time and space, and connecting to the listener directly on an emotional level.

A timeless masterpiece in it's own right, and another gem from the frankly amazing, subversively inventive Warp Records.

Two weeks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjecYugTbIQ

Album download available on emusic.com

Depeche Mode...gloriously sexy middle age (live at O2, London, Weds 16th Dec 2009)

Depeche Mode, and Dave Gahan in particular have always had an androgonous decadence, a nihilistic 'bring it on' essence. At the O2 they proved undiminished in desire, in inspiration, in energy...in any respect.

Having never seen them live before, I was expecting a harder, clubbier, techno and house influenced edge to the gig, but instead they stayed beat perfect to the original versions of everything old and new.

Whereas their early records, like (nearly) all music of the 80's, nowadays sound a little thin, the live show has been brought up to date with a fatter, fuller production and truly impressive visual set. Indeed the graphics were perfectly balanced to the music; constantly interesting and varied to the point of almost distracting from the music. (Graphic's highlight was the super-saturated, infinite feedback live video behind "Hole to Feed").

Their sound is pure pop ... made as deep and heavy as it's possible to go, but keeping the groove and  without getting lost in tuneless dirge. One can imagine Britney pouting and body popping her way through "A Question of Time", but DM take it down to the diesel-stained gutter. In comparison with their 80's peers, they're more successful artistically than the derivative Echo and the Bunnymen, more elegant and worldly than the Cure and less hopelessly alienated than the Smiths. They're more rock 'n roll than closest cousins New Order, and they're darker and heavier than the cultured adult pop of Tears for Fears. There's a shared sense of that 80's pop-rock sex-god thing that Hutchence did with INXS.

I'd forgotten, I think most people do, quite how huge they really are and quite how fantastic their music can be. It's a very high quality show, completely faultless really, and still there are dozens of great tracks they didn't have time for. In fact my only complaint - it could've easily been another 2 hours longer.

They opened with the first three from "Sounds of the Universe", and in the context of the live show the new music works well, sonically and thematically seamless, but with a slightly slower pace that allows space for the more sophisticated rhythm harmony of the work. Later there's a version "Miles Away/The Truth is" also from the album, but the set as a whole broadly spans their career.

Gore's solo numbers have a reflective melancholy a rock cabaret reminiscent of a less outre Freddie Mercury. He has a fine voice in his own right, amply demonstrated in a moving rendition of "Home" with just piano for backing. For me, with his intelligently executed, controlled guitar, keys and strong vocalsm, he is the star of the group, he injects the magic.

After the poignant "Home", they drop into the more rock end of the catalogue, but avoiding the macho they maintain the ambigious sexuality; Gahan topless, lean, tatooed... Gore in his chrome suit and metallic make-up.

The highlights are bracketed around the encore, they close the first set with a monstrous, heavy "Never Let Me Down Again", and then come back for a red-hot, taught and sexy trio "Stripped", "Behind the Wheel" and "Personal Jesus".

Besides the self-evident declaration of their staying power and consistency what's most impressive live, is the balance of the group. It's utterly transparent that the three core members collaborate equally in the music. Very little is said during the show, each is completely focussed on their individual jobs, perfectly in time and aware of each other and taking an honest pride in the quality of their craft. When Gore takes the centre stage to sing lead, Gahan has quietly, respectfully gone from sight - there's no clash of personalities or barely submerged grudges that might be expected from a group with so many years together.

Long may they prosper.

setlist - O2 Arena, London, Weds 16th Dec 2009

recommended: Singles 81-98

Sting... no lord's feast, just a humble pie

Sting's latest album If On a Winter's Night, is a surprising departure from his usual all-you-can-eat, radio friendly buffet. In fact, it's deliberately, quaintly obscure. It's an album of old, (very old) christmas and generally wintry nothern folk songs, played on traditional instruments, with an understated nobility and a cool passion.

For many years I've been mentally begging Sting to go do an accoustic album and I suspect the current folk revival, championed by Fleet Foxes, has finally given him the courage to attempt this.

Personally I think he has a grossly underrated voice, and that he's a wonderful songwriter, but to date it seems he has either some deep insecurity, or simply a bad habit of production ill-discipline that leads him to drown his songs in lavish studio-gravy. Too many instruments, too much tweaking, and the whole thing loses it's warmth and character. Here, he almost escapes himself; and as hoped what happens is that his oak-rich alto subtly blooms. Instead of supersynths, percussion and vocal layering 10ft high, there's a core chamber-set of acoustic guitars, lutes and mandolins, but with a stream of tasteful, considered, guest appearances from pipes, horn and trumpet, dulcimer, a cello, and close harmony vocal support... it sounds as if it was recorded live in his living room. My highlights are "Soul Cake", "The Snow it Melts The Soonest" and the genuinely impressive, touching, "Christmas at Sea". Throughout there's an intimate, brandy-fire cosiness to the album.

For the Sting-haters out there, this is simply more evidence of his absurd pompousness. For the more generously inclined, this is creatively ambitious and a refreshing change of pace. Nevertheless, it's probably one for the more loyal fans or the folk traditionalists. I'd still like to see him strip back the raw  ingredients further and do a series with just, say, piano, double bass and drums...if only he had the courage.

The Swell Season... a music maturing

Strict Joy, second album from The Swell Season, unveils Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová in confident swing. Their musical relationship has grown and matured at a rate of knots - fuelled by a deep artistic empathy. They fit together and complement each other in a rare fashion; male and female voice, guitar and piano. Him garrulous, extrovert, heart on the sleeve, her reflective and circumspect.

They're writing what I call 'pure music'. What I mean by this is music where the delivery and presentation is unimportant, and where the time and place and context are unimportant too. So for example, on the live recording accompanying this CD they perform "Falling Slowly", with the Frames musicians and a high school choir joining them for backing - while equally the same song holds true if it's just him on the acoustic guitar. More broadly I mean that the songs are so strong as compositions that it would be no leap to hear other musicians, in completely different genres, playing them in a different key, at a different tempo... the essence survives. The classic example is "Wonderwall" - and Noel Gallagher's famous comment about knowing you've made it when buskers are singing your songs. If the song is strong enough it'll work with a wide variety of situations and performers and still hold its essence. The downside is that you're also running the risk of being X-Factor-ed, or Westlife'd... Alexandra Burke's cover of "Hallelujah" being an obvious case in point.

While the first album was wonderful, nevertheless it felt a little bit like a sketch... partly because it has reworked Frames songs (and more included in the live show), but also because it's more of a stylistic mixed bag. By contrast Strict Joy sounds more deliberate. The deep pleasure is the balance between them in the harmony singing, and the interplay between her piano and his guitar. Irglová's piano is often childlike in its simplicity and melodic playfulness, full of twinkles and plunks, or otherwise backing Hansard's acoustic with a restrained, hand-in-hand pacing. The album also has a more consistent tone, for me sounding (if anything) inspired by mid-seventies folk-rock of say CSNY, and particularly Van Morrison. All but two tracks are credited to Hansard, but Irglová's two more than hold their own. Throughout they're backed with a gently understated skill by friends and musicians from The Frames.

The album is wistful and sad; there are starry fables, sorrowful regrets, and above all a searingly honest intimacy. Thematically, Hansard is writing about a relationship maturing - the songs are about a man who finally stops running away when things get serious, about facing up to broken promises and disappointments, and about finding in the end a kind of workable redemption in love - where moments of ecstasy still come along now and then. Clearly they're allowing us to be tempted by the thought that the songs are autobiographical, but the songs are really so well crafted that this doesn't necessarily follow (I suspect this usefully helps to add some mystery to aid the marketing - why spoil the illusion?).

It's intricate and subtle, and this makes it hard to nail down. "In These Arms" is a gorgeous love song as good as anything they've done. "Fantasy Man" is a sophisticated folk in a traditional style with Irglová singing lead. "Paper Cup"... sounds (surprisingly) a little like Cat Stevens, while "Love That Conquers" has that sun-baked David Crosby 'after-the-summer-of-love' sort of feel.

Highlight for me is the coda that closes out "High Horses", a perfectly, exquisitely balanced change in tone and momentum that shows a true master at work.

But really there's not a fault in the whole thing and I simply can't recommend it highly enough. If you've enjoyed say, Fleet Foxes, or Bon Iver... this will more than live up to expectations.