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.