The National... mood swings and poetry

What do you do as an artist if you sound like someone else? Where do you take your art if your own true voice bears close resemblance to a contemporary peer? If you're say, a youthful, musically ambitious Neil Young in '65 and Dylan's just released Highway 61 Revisited?

Earlier The National albums (this is their fifth) suffered by sounding a bit too much like the slightly more successful Interpol. I'd argue that you just stick at it; the art that survives is generally that which reflects the truth of both artist and audience.

This time out there's a more unique voice expressed. The National specialise in a kind of brooding indie balladry. Occasionally it can be macabre, elsewhere self-loathing, elsewhere again more hopeful. The lyrics have a kind of enchanting impressionistic feel and so they seem, perhaps , to be more of the REM school of indie, than being, say, Radiohead-ites. Matt Berninger sings with the self-assured, knowing baritone of Leonard Cohen, leavened with the urbane, louche, cool of Bryan Ferry. They use piano well, it gives the music an emotional base that swells and drops.

On High Violet songs are thoughtfully woven around simple melodies and fairly traditional musicianship. Opener "Terrible Love" hums and crackles, slowly building to a stately power. The simple four line chorus to "Anyone's Ghost" clicks inside your head and will never quite leave again, as does the lonely, struggling cry "Afraid of Anyone". The legacy-nerves they twitch in places have echoes of Springsteen, or Nick Cave, or Jesus & Mary Chain. The second half of the album is a little less inspired, "Runaway" and "Conversation 16" seem somewhat meandering. However closing track, the slow burning epic "England", about missing a friend/lover who is imagined to be somewhere in London, is more than worth the wait.

Current favourite is "Bloodbuzz Ohio", this time with not just piano, but horns too and thereby sounding a little like one of Springsteen's paeans to escaping New Jersey;

  I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
  I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me

  I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
  I never thought about love when I thought about home
  I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
  The floors are falling out from everybody I know

  I'm on a blood buzz, Yes I am
  I'm on a blood buzz,
  I'm on a blood buzz, God I am
  I'm on a blood buzz

(from lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/the_national/#share)

Given time to grow on you, The National gradually endear themselves. They're more virile than simple melancholy, and more hopeful than grey misery.

links:
Bloodbuzz Ohio - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxoHBK0Iq3M&feature=player_embedded

Crowded House... consumate professionals, and charming too (Hammersmith Apollo, June 9th 2010)

What always strikes you about Crowded House is their relaxed, hilarious interaction with their audience. After two and a half odd decades their antipodean sense of humour is undiminished and was in evidence at the Apollo - awarding an impromptu prize to an exceedingly particularly enthusiastic fan near the fan, or after a momentary mental twitch that caused Neil Finn to think of Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing" -- diving headlong into full scale, improvised rendition of the real thing, or Seymour's stream of consciousness rant about cats having sex outside his window at night.

Their set was a mix across the full catalogue, with a heavy weighting to the as yet unreleased album Intruiguer. The new tracks sounded much like recent Crowded House output - consistent, accessible... slightly lacking that really unique wit and sparkle of their very best work, but still great songwriting and worth investing the time.

Early hits Don't Dream It's Over, Something So Strong, and World Where You Live were all given a small twist with a particularly plangent 80's synth backing, the latter being my personal highlight for the evening.

Also impressive were the Together Alone tracks - Distant Sun, Private Universe, Fingers of Love... this is inarguably their best work - deeply evocative and soulful. Inspired equally by the Finn's Irish heritage, and by the native tradition of the south pacific islands, the whole album has a timeless spirit that strongly evokes the New Zealand geography and always makes me quite homesick.

Mark Hart - adds the spice to the group - lead guitar, slide, keyboards ... He does backing vocals too and this is the one place where he can't quite cut it - Tim Finn's voice is just so good and meshes so well with Neil's, the songs always sound best when he's there too. New drummer Matt Sherrod struck me as perfectly complementary, but a little less liberated with the music than Hester used to be. Hester knew not just the music, but was the closest of friends with the writers too, and was a great drummer to boot... he was freer to propel the music along rather than sitting within it. Still it works.

set list - http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/crowded-house/2010/hmv-hammersmith-apollo-london-england-4bd42ffa.html

Tracey Thorn... diary notes on bohemian sexual politics

It's been over a decade since the runaway success of the Massive Attack collaboration and then the subsequent, also highly successful, Everything But the Girl dance pop reinvention. After 1999's Temperamental, Thorn and Watt disbanded their own group and went to work on their respective solo projects. Thorn's first output was 2007's Out of the Woods, a veritable chocolate box of alternative electro-folk-pop gems.

On new album Love and Its Opposite Thorn has evidently returned to her true artistic self. No longer working professionally with husband Ben Watt, she now releases music of contemporary folk, where there's not a pop song in sight, but the odd, subtle dance flourish quietly betrays her experience on the frontline of the Top40 warzone.


The album is languid and soothing, like a balmy, slow summer afternoon. It has something faintly operatic about it - I suspect it's the deliberately, accurately detailed vocal melodies - her singing is clean, high and central in the mix. The accompaniment is selected for variety and squeezed firmly to the edges of the tracks, almost as if the vocals were recorded firstly and acapella, and the music added later.  She variously seeks to accentuate the mood through the use of playful, sitting room piano, gentle acoustic guitar, or washing, soft strings - but the emphasis is steadfastly on the vocal - which is always weaving, always unformulaic, mostly un-rhymed. One can tell she takes her poetry and her art seriously in the way each syllable is delicately placed on exactly the right beat, and exactly the right note.

Lyrically, Thorn explores the suburban adult themes of failed relationships and damaged hopes, dubious affairs and wistful fantasies (I'm determined not to use the cliched "housewife" here - it's neither fair nor accurate). The narrative viewpoint has a measured, wry and sometimes pained outlook... without falling into melodrama or cliche. Opener "Oh, The Divorces!" presents Thorn as a sardonic observer of both the gossip, and the very real fallout from the collapsing marriages of friends (".. oh, oh... the honeymoon... the wedding rings... the afternoon handovers by the swings").

"Long White Dress" looks back at a girl's coming of age and her young fear of the sheer finality of the adult world. An uncommitted partner is grappled with on "Why Does the Wind? ( - blow through my house at night, why does the wind blow through my heart each time I look into your eyes...)" There's a deliberate ambiguity in the way she sings of "you" and "me" - the songs are intimately personal, but at the same time they don't have the unvarnished, direct, rawness that usually comes with the autobiographical (let's say, Tori Amos for example).  Track six is "You are a lover";

   You are a lover, from today... (this is the first day)
   can you afford to dump a friend? (one friend less)
   will you ignore me again? (once again)
   will he, always be there?

Like any good poet, she draws on both the imagined and the real to conjure a brew that's more vivid to the listener.

My own highlight is the achingly deep, ponderous soul  of "Kentish Town" - strongly referencing the oeuvre of earlier EBTG. It's an album ideal for a grown-up dinner party, perhaps one followed by a risque game of truth or dare.

"Oh, the Divorces! (live at home version)" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9h1ooI2iMg

Love and Its Opposite by Tracey Thorn, released on BuzzinFly Records, available to download on emusic.com