come taste my mind

“Both are vast, deep and occasionally elegiacally beautiful”

Loch Lomond: Little Me Will Start A Storm (Chemikal Underground)

Written for and published in The Herald, 19 October 2011

Like The Manchester Orchestra, Loch Lomond are an American band who looked to the UK for nomenclature; unlike The Manchester Orchestra, they had no idea what their moniker actually referred to. Signing to Scotland’s own Chemikal Underground may have provided them with a geography lesson, but the Oregon-based sextet already had plenty in common with their inadvertent inspiration: both are vast, deep and occasionally elegiacally beautiful.

Little Me Will Start A Storm is chamber folk at its most exquisite, created and performed by masterful players who aren’t afraid to break with convention. From the throbbing Factory-funk bassline that underpins first track Blue Lead Fences, through the rapturous build of Blood Bank all the way to the final gorgeous drone of Alice Left With Stockings And Earrings, this is an album full of unexpected delights — yet every song is also an object lesson in melody and harmony.

There’s nothing flashy or showy here, and as such it’s not an album that rewards careless listening. Instead, allow yourself to be immersed.

Was it worth the 90 seconds it took me to post this? Er …

The Computers: This Is The Computers (One Little Indian)

Written for and published in the Sunday Herald, 15 May 2011.

“RECORDED IN STEREO DIRECT TO TAPE” states the cover of the Exeter four-piece’s debut, stencilled in stentorian capitals as if it REALLY MATTERS. Me: I couldn’t care whether it was recorded on a wax cylinder or on an Apple Mac orbiting Mars as long as it betrays some evidence of interesting musical ideas, and this is the bit The Computers have overlooked.

What they’re doing with this excitable little yelp of an album – just under 25 minutes – is a thrashy, punky and ultimately slightly pointless take on rhythm and blues. It’s nothing that hasn’t been heard a hundred thousand times since the 1950s, although if you’re 14 and you’ve never heard a proper rock’n’roll band then it’d be as good a place as any to start.

Wilfully reductive and stubbornly regressive, The Computers would probably be fantastic playing a Tuesday-night set at the other end of a provincial pub – but if they don’t come up with something new soon, that’s sadly likely to be their fate. 

“His best album since A Grand Don’t Come For Free? Absolutely, but that’d be faint praise”

The Streets: Computers And Blues (679/Locked On)

Written for and published in the Sunday Herald, 6 February 2011.

You’ve got to feel a little sorry for Mike Skinner. Not because of the downbeat tales of everyman woe that make up his best work as The Streets, but simply because it’s been downhill all the way since 2004 and that happy summer when his second album went to number one. A concept album by a British rapper, about losing a thousand quid down the back of a telly?  You’re ‘avin a giraffe, as Skinner might have put it were he not too busy marvelling at his sudden — and deserved — success.

A Grand Don’t Come For Free was a joyous record, turning Skinner into a Cockney-accented spokesman for underachieving twentysomething blokes everywhere (which was surprising, considering he comes from the West Midlands). Seven years and two desperately disappointing follow-ups later, he’s resurfaced with a fifth record, Computers And Blues, and the announcement that he’s jacking it in: no more Streets.

Perhaps it’s a shrewd move. His career under that moniker pretty much spans a decade; pretty much spans his twenties. A lot changes when you hit 30. (We might even hope something will change now we’re out of the celebrity-obsessed vacuum of the 2000s.) It’s a good time to move on. But what’s he left us with?

It begins with piercing electronic noise giving way to the cloudy textures, needling riff and menacing bass of Outside Inside: musically one of the most interesting things he’s done, but lyrically yet another of his meditations on getting mashed with your mates and thinking there must be more to life. Thing is, Mike, we know you know there is. So why keep going on about it?

Skinner’s most effective work has always been melodically simple: but, given melodic simplicity is something of a trademark, so has his worst. While he’s occasionally hit on something as perfect as Dry Your Eyes (seriously, go back and listen to it — it’s a 24-carat modern gem), in the main people engage with his songs because of what he’s saying; those savvy little vignettes that sometimes put him closer to thoughtful stand-up than musician. Yet for every classic there’s one that’s forgettable or irritating or both: here, for example, there’s Roof Of Your Car, a song about nothing set to musical nothingness.

But there’s much, much more that stands out. There’s the clever conceit of Puzzled By People; the touching yet slightly chilling Blip On A Screen, addressed to his unborn child (“only a hundred pixels on a scan”); the melancholic and unsettling Soldiers; the wonderful wordplay of ABC, OMG and Trying To Kill ME, which could almost — almost — be a song cycle in themselves.

His best album since A Grand Don’t Come For Free? Absolutely, but that’d be faint praise. This is a fine swan-song but it also suggests a new direction for Skinner’s sometimes erratic talent: something a little more, well, grown-up. The Streets is finished, and it’s probably not a moment too soon. What Mike Skinner does next will be well worth watching.

January 10 and a contender for album of the year already

Stone Ghost Collective: Unrequited Lovesongs (Shark Batter)

It was kindly suggested to me by a friend and some-time colleague that I should post more here than merely the reviews I do for the Sunday Herald. Given my previous blogging inertia, I’d say: don’t hold your breath. Still …

ONLY a total chancer would start wittering on about albums of the year before February was out, right? Let alone January. Then again, I think I was probably right about The Unwinding Hours. And while Stone Ghost Collective’s Unrequited Lovesongs doesn’t move me to quite the same giddy passion, it’s probably something a lot more people will adore — if they come across it, of course.

I’ve written elsewhere about Borders-based Shark Batter records. The problem with bigging up small labels is it starts to sound like you’re being all indier-than-thou; trust me, I’m not. This is an album to melt any heart, with an old-fashioned beauty about it that recalls myriad magical melodicists. Alan Morrison, the excellent chap who commissions those Sunday Herald reviews from me, pointed up Brian Wilson, the Flaming Lips, Teenage Fanclub and Take That in his own review (which I’d love to link to but which doesn’t seem to be online), and he’s absolutely right.

You’re probably not going to come across this on display in your local soon-to-be-closed-down HMV. But you can listen online to the whole thing (I think) here. And I hope you will.

“Seven minutes and 11 seconds of this is essential”

Written for the first edition of the new magazine-format Sunday Herald, published on January 9, 2011.

British Sea Power: Valhalla Dancehall (Rough Trade)

As the gulf between genres grows ever greater, and any pretence at a unified theory of pop music topples helplessly into the void, British Sea Power must feel reasonably safe. Like Field Music, they’re one of those bands so beloved of the ageing indiescenti who keep Radio 6 alive: all assured melodies and stolidly impressive songwriting that belies a listening history long on white canonical rockers and desperately short on surprises. It’s meat-and-potatoes music — albeit of the farmer’s-market variety.

Valhalla Dancehall is the Brighton-based band’s fifth album, and you might even go so far as to call it adult-oriented rock for the early 21st century. It’s informed and aware (just listen to those little electro-squiggles in among the crunchy riffs of Stunde Null), yet with far too many forays into the studious and predictable (does anyone really need a six-minute slow ballad called Baby?) For the first seven tracks there’s an almost suffocating sense of control about the music, so much so that the frightened horse on the sleeve begins to suggest a cover-artist with a finely honed sense of irony.

It’s round about the halfway mark that things pick up a bit. Living Is So Easy and Observe The Skies are simpler and more direct than anything that’s come before: like British Sea Power have stopped trying so hard and are being the band they want to be, not the one they think they should be. But it’s the mini-epic Cleaning Out The Rooms that’s the show-stopper: a beautiful repeating viola figure slowly drenched by a gargantuan, slow-motion wave of sound. The restrictive rock structure is abandoned to a howling wind of guitars, and British Sea Power erupt into something elemental, mesmeric and absolutely pure. Is there any chance of an album’s worth of this kind of thing? We can hope.

In the meantime, there’s a whole hour of music here. All of it is admirably crafted; none of it is any less than worthwhile; seven minutes and 11 seconds of it is essential. That might, just about, do for now.

“Probably Commodore 64 users”

A review of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, originally written for the Sunday Herald in December 2010. I never know from one week to the next whether these things will be published on the HeraldScotland website or not; I figure I might as well start posting them up here too.

Daft Punk: Tron: Legacy (Disney)

LET’S be honest: Tron was a rubbish film. Pioneering, certainly — a special-effects tour de force by the dark-age standards of 1982 — but almost inhumanly tedious with it. Watching Jeff Bridges boring his way around a big blue grid, or finding exciting ways to get the family’s shiny new ZX Spectrum to print “SIMON IS ACE”? No contest.

Of course, not everyone saw it that way. Despite its dullness, Tron gained a kind of cult status — probably among Commodore 64 users — and it’s surprising it’s taken 28 years before some panicking Hollywood executive saw the value in a festive family sequel. But while I’m finding it remarkably easy to contain my excitement about Tron: Legacy the movie, the soundtrack is a little more interesting.

Like Tron, French duo Daft Punk have never struck me as deserving of the praise they get. While their repetitive robo-electro is broadly effective, it can also feel contrived (and occasionally downright lazy). So a commission like this could be the chance for them to show some emotion; to prove to us they’re human after all; to try something a little harder, better … oh, look, you know where I’m going with this.

Initial signs weren’t good. The first thing Daft Punk did was draft in an orchestra, announcing that they couldn’t possibly do a film soundtrack with two synthesisers and a drum machine. But why not? They’re part of a long line of pioneers who’ve proved you don’t need “real” instruments to connect (even if this pair always seemed wired for the feet rather than the heart). Who says every Hollywood soundtrack has to feature the ersatz emotion of predictable strings? Didn’t Daft Punk listen to Wendy Carlos’s score for the original film: the one she said was pretty much ruined by Disney’s insistence on hiring the London Philharmonic? (Actually, let’s hope not, for their sake.)

Either way, Tron: Legacy suffers because of this. There’s a lot of frankly unnecessary swelling and parping and portentous rumbling here: the same old sound of hired musicians dutifully doing their job. By far the most compelling moments are when the electronics come to the fore: when the synth scythes into life two minutes into Disc Wars, or when The Son Of Flynn unfolds shyly into a small symphony of sequences, or the entirety of End Of Line and Derezzed, icy pieces of death-disco that do what so many of today’s pale imitators fail to achieve, staying true to the electronic spirit of the early eighties while still sounding perfectly contemporary. 

And ultimately, among 22 tracks, there’s just enough of this — just enough brilliance amid the bombast — to make Tron: Legacy worthwhile. If you’ve got a taste for saccharine superfluity, you’ll no doubt love the rest of it too. Me: I’ll hold out for the next Daft Punk album proper, albeit with substantially higher hopes.

Blaze of glory

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (Sonovox/Merge)

MAJESTIC might seem an odd attribute with which to define any rock band, let alone Arcade Fire. I mean, just look at that picture. No-one wearing braces can be truly majestic, right? 

Well: yes, they can. In May 2005 I was lucky enough to see Arcade Fire play Glasgow University, just after their debut album, Funeral, had been released to slow-burning rapture. They finished by stepping down from the stage and walking in line through the centre of the audience, still playing. That such a raggle-taggle-looking bunch could produce not just such an exquisite noise but such an oddly beautiful spectacle has lived with me since. It was noble, it was stately, it was … majestic. As I wrote at the time: the geeks shall inherit the earth.

And they did. Well: they got a gold record and opened for U2, which isn’t quite the same thing but is still pretty impressive for a collection of Canadian art-rockers on a little independent label. Five years and one more album down the line, the Montreal-based septet remain a genuinely big deal: one of the few truly international indie acts.

The Suburbs, then, has a lot to live up to. Does it deliver? Categorically yes — but not in anything like the way you might expect. Frontman Win Butler said it was going to sound like Neil Young crossed with Depeche Mode, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the breadth of what’s going on here. This 16-track album, clocking in at an hour and four minutes, is a glorious stylistic gallimaufry, held together by a vague overarching conceit, a charm that manages to be both wide-eyed and cynical … oh, and some absolutely incendiary songs.

The title track begins the album almost jauntily — albeit with an encroaching darkness from the strings and bass — betraying that Neil Young influence straight away. “Sometimes I can’t believe it/I’m moving past the feeling,” Butler sings: a lyrical leitmotif, returned to both directly and indirectly, that deftly encompasses the confusion of maturity. Almost all the lyrics here are vignettes rather than narratives (Butler is reportedly a big fan of TS Eliot) but the sense is invariably of growing up, growing old and being deeply unsure about the process.

In 2005, of course, Arcade Fire were ingenues. Now Butler and his wife/fellow band member Regine Chassagne are in their thirties and justifiably a little hacked off with the world. So Rococo (acoustic guitar; a maelstrom of strings; huge, broiling bass underneath) is a not-desperately-affectionate swipe at the “modern kids”, while Month Of May (heads-down garage-rock) asks how the same kids hope to achieve anything while they’re “standing with their arms folded tight”. With age comes maturity, but also an emotional letting-go.

I have a suspicion the band see the eighth track, Half Light II (sequenced bass; what’s either a Mellotron or a string section doing a wonderfully woozy Mellotron impression; umpteen melodies that meld into something almost tearily Caledonian) as the focal point, and it probably is: a miniaturised epic about home, family and loss that I’d need to listen to at least a hundred times before I could possibly do it justice. But the other magnificent standout is Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) — and yes, there’s a Sprawl I just as there’s a Half Light I — sung with elegiac weariness by Chassagne over a crystalline piece of post-disco perfection that puts Arcade Fire in an unexpected universe alongside Sparks and Blondie. And its message? A simple but universal one: don’t let the bastards grind you down.

There’s so much more I could say about this beautiful oddity of an album, and in six months’ time I have a feeling I could double it. Right now it isn’t so much to be listened to as to be discovered, immersed in, treasured. A majestic band. A crowning glory.

This review was written for and published in the Sunday Herald, 1 August 2010.