Chromatics - slow, dark and dreamy...

I was tipped off by a brilliant sounding blurb in the ultra-now underground(ish) WeGotTickets weekly gig flyer;

"Chromatics were originally described as a no-wave band but have since been associated with a slow, dark and dreamy take on the Italo Disco sub-genre."

... 'slow,dark and dreamy' rang my bell so I checked this lot out on Spotify.

Italo-disco was an early 80's pre-cursor to house, led by Italian label ZXY, generating lo-fi pop based around the new drum machines and synthesisers. It's enjoying a fashionable clubland renaissance right now, as we continue to evolve, mash, and diverge from all things electronic. 

Generally, Chromatics play blue-filtered synth pop which gratifyingly evokes many of the currently electronica giants - variously swinging between sounds similar to the XX, James Blake, Blondes, Bonobo, Crystal Castles... but without the eccentric flair of any of those, perhaps by design aiming for a more accessible pop vector. 

The XX's 2009 debut was such a massive, globally gravity-shaking moment, that it must surely be hard for any vaguely similar act in their wake to avoid casual accusations of derivation. The Chromatics, however, date back further, birthed out of the Portland lo-fi punk scene, but by degrees and line-up rotation morphing into today's uber-cool quartet. 2007's surperb Night Drive was a major step forward and the new album continues that sound. 

Counter-intuitively, album Kill for Love  begins with Neil Young cover "Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)" - deconstructed as a spaced-out, slowed down pop ballad. Clever. It works as a track, but I'm not yet convinced about the placement.

The first half tends toward indie-ghhirrl vocals, with simple, sequenced rhythms, and cutesy harmonies... as noted above, often suggesting the XX but without the latter's righteous minimalism. This is best evidenced on "The Page" - shimmering and reberb laden, spare melodies on the electic guitar echo to and fro with the vocal, noise washes and heartbreak. 

"If I could only be your lady, baby you could be my man... " -  "Lady" struts the sort of densely acidised, electro synth wielded by Crystal Castles, here worked into another sparse, indie-electronica-cum-disco bite.

"These Streets Will Never Look the Same" has heavily vocoder-ed voice, is reminiscent of Tears for Fears - that 80's tragi-romantic vibe, pulsing with simple layered synth patterns.

In the middle, the album turns the heat way down, slowing up into broken, ultra-sparse electro-hymns, the guitar leaving large gaps washed instead by synth, or just air. Then the album rolls back to into more of the moody synth-pop. 

It's quite a strong work, but overall it falters slightly and i'm tired of it by the three-quarter mark. What goes wrong? I think they never get big enough, though the second last track nearly gets there - "There's a Light Out on the Horizon" - it's instantly filmic in feel, using the classic (selectively anachronistic?) answerphone message sample motif, and some sweet, amply volumous bass work. 

Thus... bittersweet easy listening for the nu-goths, early euro-pop geeks, and net-cafe surfers.

Best tracks: The Page, These Streets Will Never Look the Same, Birds of Paradise. 

Soundcloud: 

http://m.soundcloud.com/johnnyjewel/chromatics-kill-for-love-album

Magnetic Man go mainstream together, Skream goes off on his own...

Magnetic Man are the supergroup of the already successful and well reknown dubstep producers Artwork, Benga, and Skream. Born out of Croydon, they are among the young pioneers of a scene which is gaining ever increasing international acclaim, from critics and from a wide cross section of music fans.

This is their first album and, being such an attractive proposition, it's heavily supported by the record label. They're on tour at the moment, starting off in smaller clubs and progressing to larger venues in 2011. When I saw them at Heaven, in central London in October the club was mostly though not totally full, the audience mostly young, hip and white.

The album is something of a showreel for dubstep - targeted squarely at the mainstream audience it's a patchwork of the current styles and trends in the genre. There's everything from moody, urban, ambient instrumentals, through classy, modern pop and on to the more usual, club-focused and frenetic, dubstep breaks. The standout tracks are the two big singles "I Need Air" with Angela Hunte, and "Perfect Stranger" with current it-girl Katy B.  This is arguably the sound of 2010 - medium paced, with romantically epic synths running regulation four chord progressions on a continuous loop, big autotune-saturated vocals, and slickly modern beats. "I Need Air" is followed by "Anthemic" - which is a kind of cookery show '..and here's how we did that' - an almost identical blueprint this time without the vocals - throwing together the basic dubstep recipe of breaks, big synth chorus and subterranean bass 'whfomp whfomp'. Most disappointing is the second Katy B track "Crossover", which is frankly just dull, a simple chorus repeated far more than necessary. Final track "Getting Nowhere" surprisingly features a rootsy, soul vocal from the respected John Legend - but here the dubstep struggles to match the soul, the beats sound lumpen and it misses the mark on feel.

In general, while there are some nice arrangements and some clever moments, MM's ideas are stretched a little too long and hard, the tempo drags a little too much. The album seems half done and lacks a clear vision of what it wants to be, opening the door for the faint suspicion that - like most supergroups - this is actually a canny, record company vehicle rather the serendipitous product of musical collaboration. Most damning is the way it is enlivened significantly by the personalities of each guest vocalist. It's perhaps an unfair comparison, but if compared to the decade-defining, social landmark that was Massive Attack's Blue Lines, then Magnetic Man falls some way short of its potential.

In clear contrast, Skream's latest solo album Outside The Box is a coherent, surprisingly lush, pleasure of an album. Slower in tempo and with a reflective mood it's clearly a labour of love from a thoughtful, boundary pushing artist. It calls to mind an autumnal dusk in South London, those lurid orange streaks across the sky, a smoky damp in the air and brown leaves permanently rotting across every street and pavement.

Opening with the sad "Perferated" it eases smoothly into the sparse, scatty, "8-bit baby" with rapper Murs in fine toasting form. The bones of Outside... are similar to the Magnetic Man, but here, rather than pushing ideas beyond their means, Skream has confidence to allow his ideas the space and time to breathe and as a result it has a more natural heartbeat.

Throughout, the production is superb and the sounds and sonic layers have been crafted with purpose and care. There are echoes of a number of last generation electronic musical sources; as an ambient, electronic, urban journey it calls to mind the Goldie's midnight epic Timeless. The softly emotive, melodic synths are reminiscent perhaps of something from Boards of Canada (surely an influence). Elsewhere there's pop-ology from Sam Frank and La Roux, the latter appearing on the exquisite "Finally". Personal highlights are the cavernously deep, dark dub of "Metamorphosis", and the elegant nostalgia of "A Song For Lenny" which goes beyond the dubstep brand and out into true electronica.

This is still a baby of genre, and it's being nursed by artists with a broader music taste and ambition than is typical of most dance/electronic scenes. Magnetic Man is commercial music made by a collective of talented producers; it's a strong idea, it's pop ready, and it'll work well in clubs, but it's perhaps not built to last. Still - better things may come. If you like Radio 1, or you subscribe to the annual Now.. collection, then you'll enjoy the singles. If you're keeping up with trends, then Magnetic Man may be as perfect a momento of this point in time as a digital photo on your mobile phone. Skream however delivers a more personal, introspective listening experience, made for, say, an interminable ride on a London night bus, or as the soundtrack to your post-club, weekend wind down.

Links:
Skream on RinseFM (dubstep pirate station): http://www.beatsfortheplanet.com/2010/04/21/skream-live-on-rinse-fm-14th-april-2010/
Magnetic Man - "Perfect Man" (live with Katy B): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93AU5IkvDPY
Skream - "Where You Should Be (feat. Sam Frank): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVNpsg7rYS0

The Frames... lads having fun, Live at Shepherds Bush Empire, 8 Dec 2010

After raving incessantly to all my friends about the brilliance of the Swell Season, I was curious to see Glen Hansard in a slightly different context - back with his original band the Frames on their 20th anniversary tour. The result was more than positive. On the one hand, I can see why the Swell Season is so necessary to him at this moment in his artistic life; as suspected - the instinctive musical intelligence and mutual intuition involved in his partnership with Irglova allows him to explore his ideas with greater freedom. Specifically; her clever vocal harmony and piano and somehow her general female-ness complements his melody, his guitar, and his general male-ness. So the Swell Season's work has more grace, it's a little slower, a little more cultured, and there's a clear, strong, woman's viewpoint in there.

The Frames, by contrast, are a Irish rock band, a band of musical brothers - bonded by shared experience, by manhood, by nationality and hard won understanding. They're much more fun because they're less controlled, they're a lot more spontaneous. Whilst Glen is quite definitely still the leader - the rest of band contribute their own ideas confidently and are openly supported in doing so, so the sound has different voices. A trademark of Glen and the Frames' is the gleefully peverse way they like to break into other songs from within the midst of one of their own. So last night they suddenly break into a Clash-esque punk rendition of their usually gentle, wistful ballad "Lay Me Down", or at the end of the first set bassist Joe Doyle takes them out with a sweet version of "The Most Beautiful Widow" by Sparklehorse. The effect is to constantly surprise and delight the audience, never more so than when some peverse spirit seizes Glen and he breaks into a faithful cover of "Like a Rhinestone Cowboy" - hilariously incongruous in this context.

Personal highlight was an intense, gigantic, emotionally overwhelming "Finally", it's like a Bach overture with it's fantastic momentum, building with all the force of a runaway train. The passion with which Glen throws his entire body and soul into a song is unforgettable.

If you've not seen them before - check out this legendary end of tour show from 2007 recorded by NPR. Download it if you can and save it for when you've got a couple of hours trapped in a car or somewhere and you can listen to it end to end.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9796328
Set list: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-frames/2010/shepherds-bush-empire-london-england-7bd29a60.html

Autotune obesity

The ever more ubiquitous autotune is a new millenium phenomenon. First used, according to Wikipedia on Cher's "Believe" it has become ever more widespread since. It's a music production tool that will take a vocal recording and use a digital processor to adjust and filter any off tune frequencies to be perfectly on pitch. The effect, as we know, is to output a sound that is pitch perfect though robotic in sound. Presumably the robotic effect comes because the software filters out some of the wider frequencies to leave only the simple tones. 

A technical note on timbre; sounds are made by the combination of lots of tones overlapping and interfering with each other. In a musical instrument, each note is made of a basic, dominant tone, combined with the frequencies of multiple octaves above and below, along with a small amount of off tune frequencies. The variation in the volume and the combination of octave and other frequencies is what gives each instrument it's unique sound quality - timbre. A trumpet generates lots of additional high frequencies which bounce easily around the trumpet's brass body to produce a bright, hard sound. A guitar's long strings and wooden body allow for plenty of bass tones to echo and amplify. With a synthesiser, you can build your own sounds from the ground up by selecting frequencies and ways of combining them to create your own waveforms.

So; the autotune. It is beloved of producers because it's easy to process in studio; no matter how "unique" the vocal "artist" you're forced to work with, you can magically autotune the hell out of their vocal and produce something that's commercially acceptable. It's beloved of radio station programmers because the production is bright and loud and simple and well-defined, not quirky and awkward to program in a 9min commerical slot. Music like this is continually grabbing your attention, there's no time and space for your brain to wander off in other directions. This makes it very ad-friendly, very urgent and dynamic sounding.
And finally it's beloved of the demographic that listens to pop on any device - on a mobile phone, or a laptop, or a car radio. Sound fidelity is not a criteria. A simple, recognisable melody and the associated visual-social cache is the only point. So the autotune sounds just as great on a mobile phone speaker as it does when you watch the youtube on your home pc.

Why do we like it, why doesn't it drive us all crazy? My theory is that it's ear candy - something about the perfect pitch is instantly appealing. Ally it to a catchy melody and you've got yourself Pop Gold.

So what's the problem? Well, I'd argue that we're overdoing it, that we're now continuously gorging on this junk music and the effect it has, in a word - is monotony.  It's the sound it filters out that's the problem. The frequencies it leaves behind are the ones that provide character, uniqueness, personality. The vocalists on the majority of today's top 20 are literally interchangeable. Most of the time you can still tell whether it's a male or female singing, but beyond that it's any body at all.

Is this a fad that will pass when we get bored of it? Hopefully. But the fear is that the brain deadening banality of it will turn a whole generation off music altogether - what's the point when it all sounds the same.

Crystal Castles... anarchic, obtuse, and brilliant

This is arguably the new punk. In the age of X Factor and the robotic auto-tune, the age of blank, monotonous euro-disco, Crystal Castles don't just swim against the tide, they rage against it. They're willfully difficult and confrontational, and their sound is fresh and vital and sodden with pure cool. 

Live at the Roundhouse on Friday 15th October and with bold directness, their set opened with a moody, thundering drum solo by current side-kick Christopher Chartrand - the effect was electrifying (why don't more acts do this simple trick?). Through an impressive set lapped up by a knowing audience, the pace never dropped for a moment. Performed live, their melodic, digitised snapshots and half-sketches (in no recognisable way are these 'songs'), become funky, fierce technopunk. On stage there are live drums, synths (sonic "architect-in-chief" - Elliot Kath), and what can only be described as melodic and a-melodic, re-processed screaming for vocals (Alice Glass). This is underground and counter-culture in the way it used to be - the literal, living antonym of Ms Gaga and Mr Cruiz. Free of persona, free of market engineering.

And yet, it's leavened with a dance-pop sensibility. On record, the makeshift and liberal use of sampled sounds is contemporary and liberated, anti-snobbish even. They're most famous for using sampled sounds taken from the naive, lo-fi, 8-bit electronics of old Atari games, but they're equally likely to use the slick, compressed, 21st century electro synths or hi-fi drum samples more usually found on a Radio 1 chart hit - so this is also punk in it's disregard for genre-norms and cavalier "we'll do whatever we damn well like" attitude. 

The most interesting thing about Crystal Castles is the absence of any personal image. They play in a club-by, low light. Glass's lyrics are purposefully incomprehensible. The band do not speak to the audience or personalise the artistic vision by explaining it. Artwork and promo shots deliberately obscure their faces. Even song titles are mysterious. This stubborn, enforced distance between performer and audience leaves the audience with no choice but to focus on the music, the pure sound and the experience. More subtly, there's a counter-intuitive intimacy; we're aware of the discreetly shrouded emotion but cannot know it... like watching a stranger crying on a bus - we empathise directly with the feeling behind it but can never know what caused it. And finally, it's presumably a deliberate artistic statement against the fame-worship of our modern culture.

To date they've put out two albums and, true to form, they're both called simply Crystal Castles, forcing us to label them (I) and (II) so we know which is which. Produced pirmarily by lead band member Ethan Kath, the tracks span a kaleidoscope from harsh, noisy techno, through to altered filter ambient electronica.  At their most user-friendly, such as on the early singles "Crimewave", and "Vanished", they're catchy indie-pop, remix ready and surfing the electroclash wave. More stirringly, recordings such the album's second track "Alice Practice" sound like a robot being dismembered and then crushed. The album seems to oscillate around between head nodding disco-tronica ("Courtship Dating", "1991"), and ear-assaulting, electrical gagdet mutilation (viz. "Xxzxcuzx" - all the insane silicon energy of a video games parlour, later "Love and Caring"). In another nod to punk, the 18 tracks are largely short and sweet - often barely 2mins.

The second album invites a number of guests - Iceland's fantastical melodicists Sigur Ros, Swedish chanteuse Stina Nordenstam, hip electro-beats producer Jacknife Lee, legendary indie producer Paul Epworth and likeminded collaborator Alex Bonenfant. Each of these appears to have been filtered through a Crystal Castles magic black box - Nordenstam's vocals for example, are equally obscured as Glass', but retain somehow her ethereal sweetness.

(II) opens with distorted electronica "Fainting Spells" - like a spear thrust in the ground, daring the listener to proceed further. Those that do find "Celestica" sounding like a backtracked Kylie with it's euro-disco burst of a chorus, and "Doe Deer"'s raging, punk stomp which echoes perhaps MC5. "Baptism" is probably what near constitutes a hit single in this context - co-produced by Jacknife Lee it's bigtime, bright-lights, Ibiza-style house with a cool, vibing verse and a wall-of-synth-glory of a chorus. Elsewhere Sigur Ros, Nordenstam and Bonenfant add shimmering, strange vocals and melodies through the middle section of the album.

The unassuming highlight of the album is the futuristic industrial funk of "Birds", reminiscent for this listener of late period Bowie - say, the Tin Machine phase, while the album closer "I Am Made of Chalk" throws it all together in some kind of next millenium proto-punk dream.

Those with a sweet tooth could download the singles, while those looking for an edge could go straight for the rest.

Links:

Xxzxcuzx me - http://youtu.be/_uJ_gdEdMp8 ... this is much like the live experience.
Baptism (Optimus Prime mix) - http://youtu.be/ZNeRBB6kdGE ... they're remix friendly, big techno.
Celestica - http://youtu.be/JITI0FskSG0 ... and alt.radio friendly too,,.

The Swell Season... live, Royal Festival Hall, 26th October 2010

The Swell Season made a happy, triumphant return to London on Tuesday evening, with the large, appreciative RFH audience vociferous and adulatory from the moment they stepped onstage.

Hansard likes to mix up the set and usually throws in some unexpected covers, while respectfully playing the major hits. This time the covers were from Van Morrison, a fierce, howling, solo accoustic version  of "Astral Weeks", and later a faithful, soulful take on "Into the Mystic". Both were unexpected highlights, with Hansard both paying genuine homage to a musical ancestor, and demonstrating his own fantastic ability.

There was a relaxed atmosphere throughout, with Irglova often taking centre stage to sing her bittersweet, romantic songs. Also an interlude for violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire's original work "Emer's Dream", and in the encore a guest appearance from alt country artist Sam Amidon.

Overall highlights were the Morrison tracks, everyone's favourite "In These Arms" and "Falling Slowly"... and all of it really. They never let you down...

Links: Setlist.fm - http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-swell-season/2010/festival-hall-london-england-3bd57cd8.html

Villagers live... Scala, London, 5th October 2010

Conor O'Brien's Villagers played a crowded Scala in Kings Cross on Tuesday evening. Demonstrating his typically strong-willed artistic auto-prerogative, he opened with a couple of new, solo acoustic songs (titles unknown) - confident that his focused, single-minded stage presence would force the bubbly audience to rapidly hush. And the gig floated upwards and outwards from there, each song gradually raising the level. With just the debut album in the repertoire there's not a great deal of material, but nevertheless, what there is is rich and deeply moving.

In stark contrast to most artists, the deliberate effort and control he puts into vocal enunciation is already something of an O'Brien trademark and  is even more obvious live than on record. Like a poet, it's not just the words that matter, but the aural sound of each specific syllable - he caresses and cajoles them like any other capricious instrument.

It was also a joy and a relief to hear him still tweaking and fiddling with the songs, rather than drilling through them on auto-pilot. So the odd chord was altered, a new bridge squeezed in, the instrumentation rebalanced... This showed an artist in love with his music and his muse, but also working hard to keep that fire burning.

A flame like this is special and doesn't tend to burn very long (.. is anyone else also half dreading the next Winehouse album?) ...  let's hope it's bright a while yet.

Groove Armada... an urban soul renaissance

Groove Armada were formerly reknown for their catchy, accessible mix of coffee table electronica and house party breakbeats. With mega-hits "Superstylin'", "I See Ya Baby", "Madder".. their music is perfectly engineered for, say, a suped-up boy racer car stereo, or a Saturday afternoon barbeque soundtrack.

Previous album Soundboy Rock turned the GA focus to urban r'n'b, but new album Black Light takes the band again in a new direction. Essentially GA have taken the 80's clubland melting pot where disco, soul, r'n'b, white-boy funk, pop... et al. all mucked in together with varying exploitations of the revolutionary new electronic technologies - the synthesiser and the drum machine, and have run it through their own superb production factory. At their best they weld a near-perfect union between pop and club, taking (i.e. writing) real songs and producing them using dance based technologies, rhythms and aesthetics.

This 80's musical renaissance has clearly gone well beyond simple nostalgia or ironic retro-fashion. Bands are delving deep into the work of Talking Heads in particular, but also all the early synth based pop, and are digging out and refining beats, tones, moods, effects (especially the saturating, arena-sized reverb).  Here GA take on the big stage, soulful pop of say Yazoo or Level 42, and re-engineer it with a deeper, fuller, sound more suited to this new millenia. Andy Cato has pointed to the band looking back to Bowie (presumably his post Ziggy work - Heroes perhaps?), Numan, New Order, and perhaps this is indeed in there too. Noticeably absent is anything in the way of their trademark, gentle "retail electronica" - there's no "My Friend" or "Hands of Time". The pedal is to the floor (well, relatively speaking at least).

As ever GA rely on guest vocalists and this time out for the majority of the album the vocal baton is passed back and forth between Nick Littlemore (Empire Of the Sun) - doing a kind of punky white boy rap thing, and Saintsaviour - chanteuse dramatique - who is perhaps on a holy quest to find Stevie Nicks' heart-torn-rock-queen tiara.

"Warsaw", with Littlemore, is based around a large 'n dirty electro-house bassline, it's a get-the-party-started raver's whistle of a tune.  With a weird juxtaposition but to good effect Will Young features on the album's recent single "History". This has the bittersweet pop-funk of say Tears for Fears, but with a subtle undercurrent of house throbbing through the insistent beat, and the beefed up bass.

"Cards to Your Heart" is a new wave funk track hounded along by a fat electro synth, while "I Won't Kneel" with Saintsaviour's multi-tracked, reverbed vocals sounding like the Bangles, or Belinda Carlisle, is exuberant, glossy urban soul, you half expect Meatloaf to appear any moment and sweep her in his arms. (Check out the video - it's spectacular http://youtu.be/te800CeEjBM )

Possibly the best track on the album is "Shameless" which features the surprisingly fresh sounding, bona-fide 80's legend Bryan Ferry, with his trademark breathy, louche and coolly distanced crooning, this understated house track has ample mood-space.

"Look me in the eye sister", with Jess Larabee standing in for perhaps Joan Jett, or Pat Benatar is a regular soft rock song - big guitar / faux guitar chorus, in the tradition of say "Power of Love". This is followed by "Paper Romance", which sounds exactly like something by MGMT, and that's no bad thing at all, while "Time And Space" with both Saintsaviour & Jess Larabee, has shamelessly lifted the iconic bass line and more from Roxy Music's "Love is the Drug", but done it so well you can't help but  love it.

"Fall Silent", with Littlemore again, clearly shows the influence of GA's younger contemporaries - say, Animal Collective, with multi-layered 'group sing' vocals and super-chorused synths, this is indie music played on electronic instruments. Album closer "Just For Tonight" is more Fleetwood Mac-esque soft rock, adroitly carried by Larabee's fine vocal. 

In summary, yes - you can't escape the retro, and no, there's nothing remotely new in it at all - this is exactly as mainstream as it could ever really be. If you're looking for something a bit more adventurous and unexpected, try instead the new Gorillaz album Plastic Beach. But for comfortable, masterfully produced, nearly-cool but-unfortunately-too-white, dance pop you can certainly rely on Groove Armada to deliver.

Links:
Paper Romance -  http://youtu.be/UbpWBDfpUBA

LCD Soundsystem... punk-dance, yes, but mellowing...

James Murphy is a punk-dance trickster, deftly shuffling musical styles and references in a quick fingered blur. He's famously iconoclastic in person, but on record he's also resentful and acerbic, vengeful and sarcastic, yet somehow finds a way to make a perfectly likeable brand of dark pop.

This Is Happening is his third album under the LCD... moniker and it's the sound of a talented middle-aged man facing up to his flaws, but still not shy of throwing a few punches when he sees fit. Where earlier albums ranted and raved (often against the corporate music industry), here he's coming to a reluctant detente, as on "Pow Pow" - ".. from this position.. oh just relax, from this position... I make some stand, I make my peace with the man..."

This is Happening is a brief nine tracks long, but each track gives ample space for the groove to ferment and rise. Key reference points, as on previous albums, are Bowie, Eno and Reed, 80's art rock, dirty New York disco, and 90's acid house. And yet this album is calmer, the synth's are less abrasively toxic. Seen live, LCDS are essentially a regular indie band playing dance music, but on record he writes and plays nearly everything himself, in true enfant-terrible fashion. Typically, Murphy will set up a groove - be it house, funk, disco, rock - run a vocal riff over the top, and let it build toward some kind of climax. His David Byrne-esque, shouty vocals are not particularly strong, but they are distinctive and simple in a way that lends itself to catchiness.

"Dance Yrself Clean" starts out as a simple disco groove, before a super-fat, electro-house synth comes wading in over the top, squashing everything in it's wake. "Drunk Girls" is a bitingly sarcastic party song with hand claps and a mocking "Oh oh I be-lieeeve.." chorus. At the mid-point "I Can Change" is about domestic battles and a man clinging on to love. This is followed by the particularly 80's sounding "You Wanted a Hit", where he returns to beating on the music industry. Highlight is the off-message and sentimential album closer "Home", where Murphy briefly sheds the self-loathing and bile and allows himself a little hope.

This is Happening is an engaging and enjoyable album, but it lacks the edgy progressive-ness of earlier work. This is a little disappointing considering the promise engendered by the debut, and especially so when compared to the freshness coming from contempories such as, say, Crystal Castles. The LCDS work is released on Murphy's own DFA label, which is a current hotbed of the more transgressive and genre-breaking, leftfield end of dance (The Rapture, The Juan McClean, Hot Chip..), and so the singles generally come with a variety of leftfield club orientated remixes which can be more liberally inventive than the original format.

Links:
Drunk Girls - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdRaf3-OEh4

Broken Bells, Field Music... thinking person's pop and looking back to psychadelia

Broken Bells and Field Music are two of the current wave of groups who hark back to golden era of psychadelic pop. The Beatles, The Kinks, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, the young Pink Floyd and others... shared a similar ethic and influenced each other. They began as hit parade outfits, outgrew the medium and went on to explore other possibilities.

The music they carried on to make was both lyrically and melodically dense. While in their later period The Beatles were more liberally experimental, the Kinks and the Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys kept the song at the centre of focus - not straying off into cul-de-sacs of strange, looped sound effects and throwaway half ditties. For us today though, after punk, after Velvet Undergound, the Clash, the Jam, and the after shocks which reveberated on into post-punk, new romantic, gothic, grunge... - music largely became simpler; no mid-song changes in tempo or time signatures, melodies are generally borne by the lead vocal with the lead guitar taking a back seat unless there's a bridge.

The psychadelic sophiscation in structure can be readily heard in the use of multi-layered melodies, tightly packed lyrics, the folk-ish use of backing vocals right through the verse, the occasional lack of any lead vocal in a chorus, and the use of multiple phrases or segments in a song well beyond simple verse and chorus. All these elements were a movement away from pop music's roots in the simple blues forms.

Curiously, the two new albums are both eponymous - Broken Bells and Field Music (Measure) , this is usually taken as a statement of artistic identity - "This is the real me". Although both albums evoke the psychadelic period, they're still fundamentally rock-pop, but exploring the busy, inventive end of the spectrum. Further, it sounds as though there was also deliberate engineering choice to aim for the more 60's type of sound - Hammond organ sounding synths... basic, overdriven electric guitar... regular wooden drums rather than electric or digital sounds.

Broken Bells are the American duo James Mercer (vocals, guitar, bass), and Danger Mouse (real name Brian Burton, playing bass, drums, vocals, keyboards). Danger Mouse is the more famous of the pair following his banned Grey Album (an unauthorised mash up of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album), followed by a stellar production career working with Gorillaz, The Rapture, Beck and the Black Keys. Mercer is otherwise the lead singer of the Shins and formerly Flake.

An early archetype for this type of song was the Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. The most obvious example here is Broken Bells' "Your Head is On Fire" - beginning with a multi-layered intro that presages the chorus - it has synths, a melody and a repeating group chorus, before the song stops, changes tempo and rhythm, and an enters verse with accoustic guitar and strings... there's a stop, then it changes back into the chorus phrasing. "October" is like a 21st century retake of the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon", so laid back it's almost wearing board shorts and a straw hat.

However there's a lot more going on here than Kinks raiding - BB also have a fine sense of soul. "The High Road" has a 70's folk-rock groove, and "Vaporize" continues the vibe with Hammond style organ, perhaps mining a similar heritage-seam to recent Radiohead work. "The Ghost Inside" adds a slight Motown/Stax swagger to its 'post-world' cool strut, with slowed up funk bass, handclaps, and a great hook of a chorus, it's reminiscent of the better Gorillaz output (say, "Kids with Guns") and possibly the best song here.

This type of music is often about uncontained creativity - songs are not whittled down into a more classic 3minute pop structure, and the ideas are not puffed out beyond their merit - so you tend to end up with lots of slightly disjointed, unfinished sounding phrases. I tend to find it can lack flow, or momentum and can be hard to follow. The constant stop-start nature of the tempo disrupts the way I personally experience music - groove first, then harmony, melody, and finally lyric.

It's sophisticated, and that adjective doesn't necessarily mean a value judgement of either or bad, any more than it would (or should) imply such in another art form. As ever, the value judgement is more about personal taste, but also about the resonance of the ideas conveyed and the skill with which this is done.

That said, with DangerMouse's ever-smart, efficient, pop editing and ear for a hook, they can't go too far wrong and this album is likeable and accessible.

Measure, although inspired by the same period, has a slightly different vibe and it's also quite definitely an album of two halves. It begins with cheerful, seaside-pavillion pop, perhaps a little over-consciously sounding like the '67 Beatles' (Sgt. Peppers or Magical Mystery Tour). There's acoustic guitar and handclaps, noisy drums, loads of harmony, and bouncy, barroom-singalong choruses. Then, in the second half, things go a bit prog, specifically they go quite a lot 'early Pink Floyd'. "Clear Water" has a strange, stompy cack-handed rhythm to rival "Money", and "Lights Up" is a stoned, escapist fantasy (say, from Meddle), lazily dragging itself up into standing for the song to eventually start. before again wandering off into the night.

They resemble the early Floyd in a number of ways. Firstly there is that sense of the opaquely meaningful. The lyrics all seem to be about deeply mystical, very important things... but you've absolutely no idea what. This is heightened by the regular use of deep harmonies during verses.  A second reason is the use of a main melody on a bass guitar. This is a neat trick, retaining the melody in a phrase, but also giving the song a cavernous sense of space to float around in. Then there's Floyd-ish use of vibraphone, and strings (obviously), and 'ambient' sound effects (again - obviously). And a final reason is the falsetto vocal. This is usually a pet hate, but in this context it's not unlikeable.

"All You'd Ever Need to Say" is a monstrous riff-jam, packed with melody lines and harmonised phrases of just a few bars at a time. It can be a bit dizzying. It's core is a funky riff - but with the legs and arms chopped off leaving it not all that funk after all. The final three tracks form a movement "Something Familiar / Share the Words / It's about time", with repeated melodic themes running throught the set. "Something Familiar" is just the kind of sprawling "kitchen-sink-and-everything-else" song that Queen, or better yet - Meatloaf, are famous for (written for the piano perhaps?)


A irritating shortcoming is that at a number of points in the album, there seems to be unintentional similarity or direct repetition of earlier riffs and melodies. So I kept finding myself thinking "Hold on.. didn't I just listen to this earlier...?".
 

Measure is actually very good - it's packed full of ideas and melodies, it's very well executed and engineered, coherently produced. It's just not my taste; there's the frustrating lack of actual groove... the falsetto vocals... the obscurantist lyrical direction. There's a rock opera in here struggling to break free. If you like this, make sure you also check out the Flaming Lips - especially their last album which is fantastic.

Villagers...strange fables and young passions, a new star arrives

It seems that each Irish generation throws up a new songwriting genius. Carrying the sacred flame of Van Morrision, Christy Moore, and Glen Hansard, is newcomer and Villagers motive force Conor J O'Brien.

After his charming, entrancing performance on Jools' Holland's Later, and a relaxed, under the radar set at Glastonbury comes the critically well-received new album Becoming a Jackal, which accurately reflects the depth and power of O'Brien's music. Self-penned, playing nearly all the instruments, self-produced, emotive, poetic, astoundingly self-assured, this is perhaps the most promising young talent since Jeff Buckley.

He songs muddle about with dreams and our inner, private reality. At times he's as sweetly, as naively melodramatic as any heart torn teenager ("The Meaning of the Ritual"), elsewhere he delves into the grotesque absurdity of the dream world.

"I Saw The Dead" opens with jingling bells, a rolling piano and strings and relays a strange story of temptation and guilty regret. In "Becoming a Jackal" O'Brien apparently looks with distaste at the selfish appetite required of a performer, fantastically imagining himself becoming a jackal, and revelling the wild freedom whilst perhaps betraying the trust of a lover. The epic, (penultimate) finale "Pieces" begins as a lazy, porch-step blues, before running wildly off and ending with frenzied guitar and abandoned wolf howling. Closer is the quietly reflective parable "To Be Counted Among Men", curiously placed and sounding almost like a postscript.

In places he sounds like a youthful Neil Finn - "That Day", "Home" are that just kind of rock-pop; strongly balanced and singalong-able yet somehow inoffensively saying not very much, while "Set the Tigers Free" with that American MOR groove that is just irresistably catchy. At other times are echoes of type of the childishly romantic, soulful troubadour thing that Cat Stevens used to do.

He has a true poet's loosely nimble way with words, easing them around corners, and pushing them through narrow gaps. 

The music supports the songs faithfully, but without any obvious virtuosity to steal the limelight of O'Brien's own voice and the songs themselves. Shifts and transitions in the music have a loosely held, natural momentum, amplifying the mood and justifying O'Brien's editorial choice of full band rather than going down the road of a sparse, naked solo act.

Highlights:
Becoming A Jackal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3sBblnrGik ,
Pieces - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ins3IryV-NU
The Meaning of the Ritual - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCdCuUKdx04
The Pact - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8XSNQjRYbw

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/villagers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/06/new-band-villagers

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

New folk #1... young exponents inherit the spirit

What is folk? We usually mean it as a shorthand for acoustic, western music. Folk adherents would advise that it is simply the people's music, (although by that rule then is modern folk is the Radio 1 top 40?).

By another view it's commons music - a space where there's no social distinction between performer, patron, and audience. Reflecting in this way the universality of human experience folk can transcend it's local roots, cross continents and speak to more distant cultures.

Whereas rock, for example, is at least partly about the liberating, anarchic rebellion of noise, and jazz is about pre-conscious expression, folk is principally about the vocal message, so the instrumentation is decoration. The acoustic guitar is the instrument of choice generally, as it's about the most versatile instrument there is. You can hitchhike with a guitar. You can play one quietly in a corner, or loudly in a bar. It has a large range of tonality. It's simple to learn, hardy, and it's cheap to maintain.

The more strident would argue that the 'western' part of the definition is simply a quiet form of racism, which implies that 'foreigners' make a different, more exotic and strange form of music which is not folk as 'we' know it. This seems unnecessarily argumentative - a more generous spirit would say that our definition of folk as western is simply the natural result of our historical development and long familiarity with our own common form.

There's been a resurgence in folk in the past decade, and it's spiritual influence has spread through much of popular music. My thesis (which I completely accept is unscientific and poorly researched, ok let's call it a pub theory) is that the crossover appeal of new folk began with Jose Gonzales' backings for the Sony ads, which somehow touched a raw nerve in western culture. We're in an age where there's 24 hour news, wars and disasters, and greater or lesser moral chaos everywhere. All the big social ideas of the last century have been discredited, but crucially, there's no emergent, darwinianly stronger, philosophical world view to cling to. As such we're somehow in psychic limbo in a tarnished, messy world. It's this rift which has bred a yearning for the mental-cosy-log-fire reassurance of a music which is simple, clean, and uncomplicated (i.e. unsophisticated?).

The slow, soothing, timeless harmonies of Fleet Foxes are probably the gold medal winner in this space. Equally you can see the ever growing, persistent interest in the authenticity of world music. Or the enormous, baffling success of Seasick Steve's blood-raw blues (not some digitally hyper-processed, post-modern, reality show mangled, iBlues - but actual, authentic, blues?! in the 21st century! It's quite incredible.).

It's an example of quite how endearingly strange we are as a civilisation that in this globalised, digitized, compressed and homogenised age, an album as far out of it's own time as The Wild Hunt, by the awkwardly monikered The Tallest Man on Earth, can be made anew. If you've not heard him before then you'll immediately be struck by the voice - as raw and sharp as a flesh wound from a rusty nail - it keeps grabbing your attention, but it also detracts from the strength of the songwriting. The songs sound as if they were written in an empty carriage of a freight train by a stowaway hobo, and then recorded in a motorway underpass. TTMOE is clearly in thrall of Dylan's early Bob Dylan and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Still, if you're going to choose a hero, you may as well make him one of the greatest ever. It's a fine compliment to TTMOE that the result is not laughable in comparison, particularly on the eloquent "Love is All" - his emulative version of the Dylan classic "Don't Think Twice (It's Alright)". There's real talent here, both poetically and musically. For most of the album he accompanies himself with fingerpicking a small, hard bodied acoustic guitar, and there's no intimate introspection here - the songs are belted out like a busker competing with passing buses and aeroplanes. "King of Spain" is a cheerful daydream about escaping to a new life in the wild south. The highlight of a relatively brief 10 song suite, is the final "Kids On The Run", with heavily reverb'ed and wistfully melancholic piano usurping the guitar.

Laura Marling is an artist that seems to straddle a raft of apparent dualities. She's a European girl singing melancholy country-folk, like long-lost Joni Mitchell songs. She's a deep, mature voice - on a surprisingly young head. 

On I Speak Because I Can she sings of the pull, and the power, and the pain of our very closest relationships.. father, mother, lover, children... She catches us - not looking back on our past, but right in the heat of the moment, thereby giving the songs an intense emotional immediacy. All over there's real confidence, in contrast to her more simple, slightly more distanced and referential Alas I Cannot Swim. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that a sizeable part of the credit is due to producer Ethan Johns - most famous for his work with Kings of Leon, but more pertinently the man responsible for Ryan Adams' "Gold", Ray La Montagne's "Trouble", and the last Crowded House album. Together, Marling and Johns have used country and western motifs and sounds for the music - the banjo, a fiddle, gospel based harmonies...

Highlight's run throughout the album and there's nothing you should miss, but in particular there's the fallen but unbroken "Rambling Man" (But give me to the rambling man, let it always be known, that I was who I am...).

Links:
TTMOE - "Burden of Tomorrow" - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126739806&sc=nl&cc=sod-20100511
Laura Marling - "Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUi9teTRCgk

If you like this, also check out Diana Jones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Numk9kXDV1o

We Have Band... genetically engineering disco to survive in the modern world

In somewhat unusual fashion We Have Band came to my attention from an ad on an unsolicited, unwanted gig flyer which I absentmindedly scanned while in a London venue door queue. They sounded interesting and I was delighted to find they're even better than expected.

We Have Band stand squarely between the romantic, "dance" orientated pop of 80's stars like Flock of Seagulls, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, OMD... and the new millenial, more abrasive and heavy, rave orientated, electro-house.

Debut album WHB begins with "Piano", as genuine a homage to Tears for Fears as you're ever likely to hear.
"Buffet", by contrast is listful, with a gorgeously gentle, melodic pulsing.  In turn "Divisive" has a squelchy bass and synth with tribal drumming a la Talking Heads.

As we might arguably deduce from history, successive generations should learn from the mistakes past, and advance further than their forebears in both skill and knowledge. Whether that's true or not, it seems that after a respectful, grateful nod to the 80's generation, the current synth pop wave have evolved to make better use of the synth and the studio. Where the previous generation explored all edges of the new electronic technologies and modes of music... the new generation has assimilated the pertinent lessons to make tracks that not only sound generally better engineered, but are also both pop-pier and dance-ier... viz. MGMT, Crystal Castles, Hot Chip... there's more balance to the music, and fewer embarassing mistakes. Unavoidably there's also generally less revolutionary spirit and radical invention (Grace Jones, anyone?) .

For example, the track "Oh!" takes a straightforward post-punk rock beat and bassline, and a Byrne-esque half spoken chorus, and pulls it through the decades by raving up the percussion and bringing in a filtered vocoder on the verses - taking the track into the territory of 21st century, post-French-disco-wave style house.

Further in "Honeytrap" is Paradise Garage style dirty disco with a fat, p-funk bassline but with Britpop era indie boy vocals... before a plot twist where Dede comes in with vocals that sound exactly like Kate Pierson from the B-52's.

"Centrefolds & Empty Screens" conveys the epic indie of, say, the Doves, but with a cheekily funky cowbell. "You Came Out" is sassy, funky.. bass propelled (and more B-52's-ish-ness), while "Hero Knows" is slowed down, with a looping set of his and hers vocals, a loping bass, and hard edged fuzz guitar detailing, giving it echoes of Beck-ish eclecticism - it's a track longing for a barn-dance step routine.

My favourite is the cheesy, casio-tone, pogo-pop of "Hear it in the Cans" - multiple vocal, a great bassline.. simple, sugary, pop heaven.

In all WHB is accessible, varied and stacked with fun. A great party album for your student dorm, kids of any age will love it.

http://vimeo.com/8215535
http://www.myspace.com/wehaveband

Sennen... yet more fine, youthful retro

Sennen are, by genus, your classic shoegazer type, but share in the millenial generation's evolved genes -  a pop hook sensibility. These days our introverted and serious geeky noise fiddlers have bolted on vocal harmony. And lyrics you can hear. About stuff. Most unusual. On the one hand it profanes all their pathologically earth-fixated forefathers held dear. On the other hand it's... well... nicer.

The marketing soundbite, one assumes is that they're "My Bloody Valentine crossed with (say..) Snow Patrol". Which I know is a dreadful, slanderous thing to say... but very broadly covers it.

Sennen are, on the face of it, both a bit wet behind the ears and at the same time quite irritatingly talented. They sound like they're young enough to still Believe. In fact they sound like they're young enough to still be struggling with puberty related skin issues.

The recent Age of Denial is their second full album, released on Hungry Audio and it is a respectably consistent, engaging album. There's some sweet jangle, some endearing harmony, plenty of wall-of-indie-boy-noise, some promise of epic-ness. I read a review declaring that they've taken on the mantle of underground brit-pop heroes Ride, but they're definitely a few steps more toward the mainstream than that might infer. The album has variety and pace, with merely the occasional lacklustre filler. Centrepiece of the album is the creditably Stone Roses-esque, momentously dark and brooding, "Can't See the Light"... hyper-drenched in white hot guitar ,.. It's presumably their slash and burn concert finale.

On balance I doubt it will really stay with me long term (though actually it just might) as there's not been time yet for blood, guilt, or failure..  but I expect to thrash it senseless a while longer - and happily rediscover it again in future.

Highlights: Age of Denial, A Little High, Can't See the Light
Links:
http://www.emusic.com/artist/Sennen-MP3-Download/11843985.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVt-_7pX-bQ

ATFC - bigtime, bignoise, club friendly house

I've been on something of a dance detour in recent weeks. Last week I downloaded Defected Records' compilation of recent output from the house production unit ATFC - ATFC In The House London '10.  Dividing their time, as they all do, between guest remixes and inhouse originals, these guys have a big canvas, mass market, globalised view of the house scene and it's opportunities, though as a result they can end up sounding rather forumlaic. Predominately vocal and disco inflected, this is definitely the Ministry of Sound rather than the Fabric end of the spectrum.

 This kind of stuff is not something to consciously listen to, it's a background ambient effect that simply gets your body going. So it's great for working out to - energetic, uplifting, pacy.

Defected in general, and ATFC in particular are a reliable brand of quality clubland beats, rarely changing all that much. There's a general trend to an ever more digital, ever more compressed sound quality. But the blueprint is pretty constant - breaks, percussion, some bass, some synth, and intermittently a sampled vocal... all layered together in various structured combinations. It ain't rocket science, but nevertheless it's hard to do well.

Highlights at present are;
-  the head bendingly funky "Hey Hey" by Dennis Ferrer - quite insanely catchy like nothing I've heard since OutKast's planet shaking "Hey Ya". 
- ATFC's own "I Called You" - heavyweight action.
- Tonight by the H Foundation - as previously tweeted. cool urban soul.

playlist - March 2010: Johnny Cash... Deplhic... Girls... and more

Johnny Cash - Ain't no Grave: the "final studio" album from the old fella, posthumously completed by Rick Rubin and tail ending the indispensable American Recordings series. This one is spine-tingling; he sounds ancient, weary, but still disturbingly strong and unbroken, like some 500 year old vampire-wizard-king, ... if you were unlucky enough for him to take a mild dislike to you, he'd slit your throat with a long fingernail and drink the warm blood with an air of resigned sadness. Don't look directly into his eyes... r.i.p Johnny.

Here We Go Magic - Here We Go Magic: noodling and atmospheric, powerfully evokes a physical landscape, like a soundtrack to some lost european art-house film about young love and camping. An anglicised, less fantastical Sigur Ros, reminiscent of a less bloody minded My Bloody Valentine.

Massive Attack - Hegioland: ... oh I dunno. Sounds well constructed but somehow a bit dead. Not bland, just lacking some kind of soul. Like they found a master tape of Guy Garvey vocals from some lost album and appropriated them... completely out of context. Bring back Tracey, boys.

Girls - Album: unapologetic, radio-friendly, teenage surf rock. Handclaps and guitar riffs. Simple, singalong choruses, a band to hire for your high school dance... very much in the vein of Urge Overkill. Liking "God Damned".

Beach House - Beach House: oh cripes. The Carpenters @ 2010. dearie me. I'd like to throttle them. You know the way kid's tv presenters will perform some stupid, trite song slightly too slowly and with over enunciation... in a word - twee.

Delphic - Acolyte: on first impression they sounded a bit too much like the Editors. On further investigation they sound like the Editors via Duran Duran, with a liberal sprinkling of New Order... which is definitely No Bad Thing At All. Yet again I find that the nefarious machine that's been stoking the hype behind these lads is uncannily on the money. More club-by than expected too... good driving music and uber-radio-friendly. The review's album of the month. (cheers M for the tip off).

ps... Vampire Weekend, live at Brixton 16 Feb 2010

I think at this stage the jury is out as to whether Vampire Weekend are to be a gimmicky fad, or whether there is a seriously influential career being born here.
Undeniably, their pop hooks have the inescapable power of a heavyweight's punch, and they now have an intelligent, developed versalitility that wasn't immediately obvious on the first album.
The comparison is perhaps exaggerated, but their set suggested an alternative universe where the youthful late-50's Quarrymen, instead of being weaned on american rockabilly and blues, had instead been enchanted with a wave of African rhumba. Simply, they're a regular rock and roll band taking instead the sunny, joyful, lyrical pan-african reggae as a launch pad. It's no foolish choice either. This music has conquered the entire continent, pushing the real tribal music to the traditional fringe. As a genre it has proved it's credientials for mass appeal.
Live - they looked so impossibly young and clean cut.
Respect due also for the inelaborate stage design; just an oversized poster of the album cover, a set of chandliers like the one on debut album, and some elementary lights.
Having said which, I tired of it all after an hour. There's no real sex appeal (well, not as far as I can tell) in what they do, no violence and no politics. There's no forceful, charismatic personality fronting it all, and so what you're left with is simply the pop songs themselves... which are great, but just as yet they don't sustain a full sized gig. Still, there's more to come I'm sure.

Highlights: ..the best of the new album - "Horchata", Diplomat's Son"..

p.s. if you like this, check out the euro-african dance fusion outfit The Very Best.