ROUND-UP OF MY FAVOURITE NEW LISTENING THINGS THIS WEEK:

Todd – Purity Pledge (Southern)
These delightful Texas-via-London beserkers have discovered the exact place where Napalm Death meets Suicide. They’ve set up a happy homestead there, and it’s a brutal place where whisky flows instead of water and strangers had better be across the county line by sunset. They probably invite former members of Penthouse and Killdozer round for arm wrestling contests. Stereo Sanctity registers enthusiastic approval through a haze of blood and broken teeth. Fucking great stuff.

Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands (XL)
Ok, so I’ve finally got round to hearing this. Perhaps the absurd amount of hype surrounding this chap has spoiled things slightly, but the promised feast of dazzling protean beauty isn’t quite happening for me just yet. Not that I don’t like it – Mr Banhart’s guitar playing is superb and his songs are fiendishly well-crafted, despite their initial air of childlike simplicity – like music that’s been weaved rather than composed.
Basically, for those still in the dark about him, Devendra Banhart essentially sounds like a long lost 1930s folk/blues practitioner trying to return to his musical cereer following a year long peyote binge in the baking Mexican sun which has left his brain completely short-circuited. If that was what ‘Rejoicing in the Hands’ actually was, it would be completely joyous and mindblowing – instant freakbeat outsider art cult fascination object classic! As it is though, my enjoyment is slightly hampered by the knowledge that it was recorded last year and is all a little, well, contrived really.
When Devendra twitters away in his strange squeeky voice about shaking hands with beards and taking his teeth out dancing, I just can’t get past the fact that he’s a nice, well adjusted young man who probably owns a mobile phone and an ipod and probably doesn’t take many drugs. That isn’t a problem in itself of course – the problem lies in the fact that often his music lacks the power to make us forget that context. At it’s worst, it seems like an over-studied simulation of psychosis and weirdness, lacking the genuine unpredictability and wild stabs of confusion of a Syd Barrett or a Roky Erickson.
At it’s best though, it’s really rather lovely – it fits into a musical tradition I unquestionably love, and it flows, it weaves, it shimmers, it tickles all the places it’s supposed to tickle, and trying to write a negative review of it seems unthinkably mean-spirited. No doubt in a few listens time my initial reservations will die away and I’ll find myself adoring it as much as everybody else does, and so what if it’s a bit closer to the wine bar than it is to the psycho ward?

The Animal Collective – Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished (FatCat)
I remember Matthew Flux getting very excited about this record when it was first issued a few years ago under the name Avey Tare & Panda Bear, and as usual he was totally on the money. I retrospectively salute you Matthew, because this is an absolutely stunning album. I’ve been fairly underwhelmed by most of the other Animal Collective related stuff I’ve heard – all very nice in theory in theory guys, trying to invent an entirely new intuitive music from scratch and all that, but in practice it all sounds so totally ephemeral, obscurist and self-indulgent that it’s hard to care.
‘Spirit They’ve Gone..’ is a different story altogether though. Whilst the novel, naïve and frequently baffling multi-layered textures that characterise all the AC’s output are present and correct, this album is also focussed and emotionally involving, enthralling and beautiful. If the purpose of good psychedelia is to draw the listeners entirely into the musicians’ sound-world, to send them sprawling through an unguessed at internal landscape whilst memories of the ‘real’ world fade away, then ‘Spirit They’ve Gone..’ forcefully succeeds. Much of this kind of weird, meandering music demands a deliberate effort to make the most of it – fail to invest the necessary concentration and it can wonder off into the background leaving you to your own devices. Not so this album – stick this on your headphones of an evening and you’ll be falling down the rabbit hole into darkness before you know it.
Part of the reason for this of course is the duo’s exquisite palate of sounds, ranging from heavily processed electronic noise to primitive baroque chops on piano and acoustic guitar via murky fields of tape looped ambience and Panda Bear’s gently off-beat jazz styled drumming (paging The Wire..). But the key to the whole thing I think is that when you get beyond the initial impression of aural chaos, it swiftly becomes clear that this album is lovingly and carefully STRUCTURED. The songs are very much songs in the traditional sense – they have melodies, choruses and riffs. They have tension, build up and release. They have words, and if you listen hard enough, the words are pretty good, and they’re, like, about stuff. Some of the songs are shimmery psychedelic thingys, some of them are anguished songs of frustration and pain, and a fair number of them are pure unashamed pop. Avey Tare’s genius on this record is taking such universal musical structures and reconfiguring them sideways and backwards out of new and fascinating raw materials, but still letting their form shine through bright and strong from within a totally alien landscape.
Which still doesn’t get anywhere near to fully explaining why I love this album (available in a double package with ‘Danse Manatee’ which I haven’t listened to yet) so much. Let’s just say that in terms of sublime, naturalistic and completely uncategorisable music, this is one to file alongside the prestigious likes of Can, Robert Wyatt, Bjork, cLOUDEAD, the Boredoms etc., and as such you should check it out.


Rough Trade Shops: Country 1 compilation (Mute)
You know that great feeling when you’re half listening to the radio, and something you’ve never heard before (or maybe something you heard once a while ago and forgot about) comes on, and it just floors you, and you think “Damn! That is one hell of a song!”? Well a brief glimpse at the post-Peel BBC schedules suggests that opportunities for getting that feeling from the radio are going to be few and far between from now on, so it’s just as well that we can rely on these amazing Rough Trade compilations to give us nearly fifty hits of that feeling for the price of a regular CD album (or for 50p if you’re a cheapskate like me and get your music from the library). It’s way better value than drugs, kids.
As expected, my initial disappointment that the Country comp is merely a survey of the relatively modern alt-cunt / roots-rock landscape rather than a guide to classic Country (as in ‘& Western’ – whatever happened to that, huh?) dissolves almost immediately as the first few killer tunes hit home. Damn, those Rough Trade guys know their shit. As with their Rock n Roll, Post-Punk and Indie-Pop excursions, ‘essential’ barely does the music found herein justice.

Until next time, Restless Souls Enjoy Your Youth!