Here are reports on some sounds I have recently been subjecting myself to. All except the Mountain Goats were bought at a record fair for £1 or something similarly reasonable.

The Mountain Goats – the Sunset Tree (4AD)

I’ve been trying work up a review of this since I got it a couple of months ago, but the task is akin to climbing Everest. I could plough through a 4000 word review and still not give voice to everything that needs to be said here. And I won’t do that, because such is my admiration for John Darnielle’s songs that I’ve always found it difficult to write about the Mountain Goats without immediately descending into gushing superlatives and declarations that he’s the greatest currently active songwriter in the world. And this album – perhaps his best yet – is even more of a challenge to write about, seeing as how it’s an autobiographical song cycle dealing primarily with domestic abuse suffered during his teenage years. Now, needless to say, I’d rather hack my own ears off than be subjected to what would happen if most of today’s breed of indie ‘troubadours’ decided to tackle such subject matter at length, but honest to god, there’s not an inch of fat on this record. Here is a list of things this album is NOT: self-pitying, overwrought, cringeworthy, dull, depressing, sanctimonious or emo. Darnielle is a master songwriter, and even when dealing with this evidently painful and personal stuff he maintains his essentially punk sensibility, and his narrative drive; he jams econo. Rarely exceeding four minutes and rarely utilising more than his voice and two instruments, the songs go straight for the jugular – they set up their story, make their point and end, leaving you feeling like you’ve just finished a climatic chapter in a great novel or watched a pivotal scene in a classic movie. Here is a list of things this album IS: gripping, dramatic, triumphant, beautiful and moving. It’s one of those records that it’s pointless trying to write about, I just need to play it to you – then you’d get what I mean. Album of the year contender for sure.

The Icky Boyfriends – A Love Obscene (Menlo Park)

The name and cover art instantly sold me on this one. A 2 CD retrospective of a band who, I would imagine, alienated and frightened everyone they came in contact with whilst active in San Francisco in the early/mid-90s. They seem to have styled themselves as the ultimate talentless, fucked up loser band and rather resemble the Electric Eels – less in deliberate homage one suspects, and more just because fucked minds think alike. The sleeve notes tell great tales of disastrous gigs and general freak-flag flying, and inform us that the band’s favourite song was one called ‘Pigs’ which they’d play at every practice and up to five times at each gig. So I cue it up on the CD – it’s 18 seconds long and consists of a thunderous two note bass riff and free-from drumming over which the singer yells “I WANT TO TAKE SOME PCP AND WASTE SOME FUCKING PIGS!”, and then it ends. They’re that kind of band. The Icky Boyfriends’ working method appears to have been similar to that of the Fall, only far more ramshackle and without Mark E. Smith’s purity of vision – basically the guitarist and drummer wait until they hit some kind of horrible, caveman groove and then the singer yells whatever’s on his mind over the top of it. Lots of their songs seem to be about menstruation, or travelling on buses. There are 57 songs on here. About one song in every ten is a quiet, weirdly affecting love song, and they seem to have had a strange obsession with John Lennon – they cover his ‘Love is Real’, and their own number ‘Nervous Guy’ would be a beautiful song, except that it’s blatantly just ‘Jealous Guy’ with the lyrics changed slightly. How these weirdoes lucked themselves into a CD retrospective I’ve got no idea, but do I really need to tell you what an essential addition to your music library this will be?

Whiteout with William Winnant & Jim O’Rourke – china is near (ATP)

Whiteout are a New York drums / electric organ duo. I don’t have the recording info, but from listening to this I’m assuming they’re aided here by Winnant on percussion and O’Rourke on laptop / electronics. The sound of this album is bloody-mindedly cold, distant and inaccessible but still has a lot more in the way of guts and substance than some of the more unappealing avant-abstraction on the market. There’s a distinctly unsettling air to proceedings – nothing you could drift off to sleep to here. The drumming is interesting – harsh, fast and crazy, but understated and quite low in the mix, keeping us looking over our shoulder. There’s a lot of scraping and shuffling, like somebody dragging a robot carcass down a back alley. The electronics by contrast lean heavily on rich analogue textures, and are thus weirdly comforting and familiar, giving Whiteout’s long, dark improv workouts the air of long-suppressed satanic BBC Radiophonic Workshop experiments. Whiteout are hard work in places, but this is an intriguing and evocative listen nonetheless. It makes me think of drunken Cybermen staggering across the surface of the Tenth Planet and the ghost of William Hartnell, exhausted from fleeing down endless black and white corridors. Moonbases, syringes in the garbage and black skies.

Gravenhurst – fires in distant buildings (Warp)

What the hell happened? Gravenhurst’s ‘Blackholes in the Sand’ mini-album was very good indeed – menacingly pretty Wicker Man / Six Organs.. styled folk gear from sick at heart English boys. This full length effort on the other hand sounds like dreary Joy Division worshipping sixth form indie rock. Fucking dreadful… what’s the deal??