An administrative note:

As you can probably tell, I've decided to move this weblog's Side-bar to the bottom of the page, for the convenience of Apple Mac users and anyone else who was suffering from the 'big empty space' syndrome when viewing it.

It's a shame that all my finely compiled links are now a bit hidden away, but there we go - if I can come up with a good html solution to the main column and the side-bar irritating each other, I'll put it back, but otherwise I think we'll stay like this for the moment.

So what do you think? Does this suck? Do you care? Does it look tidier? In particular, does the site still look ok to PC users? - let me know, particualrly if there are any problems.

Otherwise though, consider normal service resumed and please enjoy my depressing review of a depressing Mountain Goats album;

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS – Get Lonely (4AD)

‘Get Lonely’? Is that an order? Or an extension of the group name, ala The Ramones Leave Home? A low-key release in every sense of the word following The Mountain Goats recent trilogy of masterpieces on 4AD (which, as I keep telling the world to no avail, constitute a body of song-writing prowess that could easily stand up to, say, Dylan’s mid-60s form or the first three Leonard Cohen albums or whatever your benchmark for such things is), and lacking the usual dedications, explanations and sundry clues, fans are likely to be on the look out for any narrative hook to help illuminate John Darnielle’s latest collection of songs.

As it turns out, it’s clear by about halfway through the first listen that the title tells us all we need to know. The 12 songs herein all concentrate unremittingly upon the thoughts and travails of a man who has been abandoned by his beloved and is left heartbroken and alone, with no friends, no purpose to his life – just empty space stretching out ahead of him. As is often the case with Mr. Darnielle, it’s difficult to tell whether this is old heartbreak or new, real or imagined, or whether it’s even the same character speaking through each song, but the theme is undeniable and this is one of the most thoroughly isolated, bereft, LONELY albums you will ever hear.

And god is it ever depressing – the tone here is not so much Rimbaudian raging and self-affirming howls against the dark as it is simply.. nothingness, entropy, a lack…. a vast expanse of time to waste – nothing left to do but torture yourself with stinging thoughts and memories until the pain dulls to nothing. So in the extremely unlikely event that you’re reading this John, and you need someone to talk it all over with, drop me a line (I’m not being facetious either).

Musically, Darnielle has abandoned the drama, determination and punk performance aesthetic that have characterised much of his earlier work. Gone is the yelping and thrashing of yore as he sings his softest, accompanied by purely functional strumming, with occasional bone-dry, Warren Ellis-ish violin or piano melancholy providing the only real counterpoint.

Absent too is the sense of very solid, no-bullshit pain and strife that made itself felt on previous albums – no domestic violence, no alcoholism, no juvenile delinquents or doomed love affairs present themselves here – the pain of ‘Get Lonely’ is purely internal and subjective – “ghosts and clouds, and nameless things..”.

All of which sadly leaves the Mountain Goats open to hesitant forays into the kind of singer-songwriter cliché I’ve previously applauded them for avoiding – the narrator of ‘Get Lonely’ is entirely self-absorbed, allowing for none of the almost unbearable empathy for the plight of outsiders that gave ‘We Shall All Be Healed’ and ‘Tallahassee’ much of their power. The arrangements on some songs are sparse and sluggish above and beyond the call of duty, touching on the kind of sub-Will Oldham / David Pajo tight-lipped ‘misery-by-numbers’ shtick that afflicts so many in the lower leagues of the guy-with-guitar hierarchy.

Above all else though, there’s a suspicion here that for the first time in his career, Darnielle is pulling his punches. The capital sin for this kind of song-writing; he doesn’t give it to us straight. For all the album’s abject unhappiness, he IMPLIES, remains archetypal… there’s an ‘I’ and there’s a ‘you’ and the ‘you’ has gone, but without the obviously-too-painful-to-elaborate back-story, is this enough for us to inject gravitas into endless songs full of fragmented every-day trivia and staring into space? Ok, many would justify this in terms of writing songs with universal appeal and they might have a point, but if I’m going to sit through all of these descriptive verses about looking at trees or standing in lakes, please give me the fucking facts or my attention is going to drift elsewhere.

Harsh words, and he doesn’t deserve them, for just like Husker Du’s ‘Candy Apple Grey’, this initially underwhelming piece of work is one that can become a FINE record, can maybe even save lives, if it hits you in the right circumstances, with the right level of blood-alcohol and wretchedness, with the right emotions and brain-chemicals doing a number on yr soul and skull. For the one thing Darnielle hasn’t thrown out with the bathwater is his verbal imagination and his understanding of the hammer-blow power of words – you can put this album on, make a cup of tea, scratch your head, write an email – but when he hits you with “..and an astronaut could see / the hunger in my eyes from space..”, you’ll pay attention. Whatever else I or others may say about ‘Get Lonely’, no one will doubt that it is genuine, that it is compelling and intermittently beautiful. Whatever the Mountain Goats choose to say to the world, I’ve still got a lot of time for it, and for all it’s concessions to vague, maudlin, pleasantly-arranged singer-songwritery-ness, ‘Get Lonely’ is, as the 4AD press release sagely notes, “never merely pretty.”

It’s arrived a month or so late for me (I hope!), but this is the kind of record for which the wisdom of your decision to listen to it won’t hinge so much on such issues as ‘enjoyment’ or ‘appreciation’, as on how much you NEED it. Recent heartbreak? Intolerable loneliness? – give it a try. Feelin’ groovy? – nothing for you to see here.

The previous albums – particularly last year’s incredible ‘The Sunset Tree’ - you should get hold of no matter who you are or where you're at, just, y’know, BECAUSE. But this one is a different kettle of fish entirely. This one will depend;

When the violin comes in gently for the chorus, and John sings;

“..And I will get lonely,
and gasp for air,
and send your name up, from my lips,
like a signal flare”

Do you ignore it, do you just think about it a bit, does it reach your knees, tingle in your spine…. or does it get you in the gut?

VOICE WITHIN YOU

Charalambides – Dead/Live (Wholly Other)

A 2004 live recording – limited edition CD-R with hand-written info packaged in glorified tissue paper… of course, of course. Pretty sweet, but I’m not sure if it’s flimsy physicality will stand up to a lifetime’s labour in my CD mines. Anyway, musically; an utterly devastating set – the special-est thing I’ve so far heard pressed onto plastic by this most very special of bands. Way, way removed from their recent restrained/quiet form, this is intense stuff; heavy on shrieking webs of cheap metallic distortion and strangulated no wave un-solos coming straight from the gut, but still so fathomlessly beautiful that only a fool would bother trying to stuff it’s pregnant silences and pre-vocal messages with words.

GOIN’ TO THE BARN DANCE TONIGHT!

American Roots (record label / origin unknown!)

This is a 4 CD box-set that I copied off my friend Alex (his second namecheck in as many posts), and… it kicks ass! Effectively doing for crazy rockin’ old-timey folk/bluegrass/blues what ‘Nuggets’ did for ‘60s garage-punk, this is the absolute motherlode of great ‘30s-‘50s white rural American music, but crucially one which is compiled more from the perspective of hit recordings and famous songs than from any aspirations toward Alan Lomax style ethno-musicology, so we run the gamut from long forgotten backwoods porch-sitters with a few killer tunes through to big names like Woody Guthrie and definitive hitmakers like The Carter Family. Just like Nuggets, every song is rendered kinda familiar thanks to the long tradition of stuff it’s referencing and the subsequent decades of music which have in turn referenced it. And, also like Nuggets, every song rules! Who among us can honestly say they don’t have time in their lives to listen to Fiddlin’ John Carson & Moonshine Kate laying down a few tunes every now and then? Oh, and I’m glad Uncle Dave Macon isn’t my uncle – he sounds mental. Needless to say, ‘essential’ hardly covers it.

RED HAIR AND BLACK LEATHER

Richard Thompson – Rumour and Sigh

I don’t know if I ever mentioned it before, but when my friend Alex and I went to see Richard Thompson a while back, we were the only young people in the audience who hadn’t obviously come along with their parents. This irked me so much that I made a point of coping ‘I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight’ – one of the best collections of songs recorded by anyone ever, period – for several young people in the hope they’d appreciate it. Well anyway, regardless, ‘Rumour & Sigh’ lets my side down by positively reeking of old folks music – it has that whole Mark Knopler/Chris Rea ‘old man playing politely rockin’ tunes with nostalgic lyrics about motorbikes and troublemakers and slick ‘80s production to audiences of other old men, politely rockin’ back’ vibe about it for sure. Even the cover art is a really sucky '80s yuppie neo-primitive sort of effort. But you know what? It doesn’t matter, cos Richard Thompson is fucking good, and writes extraordinary songs full of wide-eyed romanticism and honesty and triumph and despair, and this album flat out rules. Yes, not ‘it quite good considering..’, but RULES, like Springsteen rules (seriously – check the “let’s do Glory Days!” accordion on ‘Feel So Good’!). It’s gotta be his best post-70s album for sure.

Those who’ve had a listen to the recent Rough Trade Shops ‘Singer Songwriter’ compilation will already know what an incredible song the obvious highlight ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning’ is, but just about every other song here manages to hit a similar alchemy of guts and gusto and star-gazing (not to mention some typically awesome guitar playing!), and no amount of unnecessary keyboards and bass guitars making a fuss and uncool English middle-class accents and unwelcome images of mortgages and people-carriers can hide the fact that this is top stuff all round; “well I’m 21, I might make 22, and I don’t mind dying for the love of you!”

HELL IS NOW LOVE

The Dead C – Vain, Erudite & Stupid: Selected Works 1987 – 2005 (BadaBing)

I saw the Dead C an absolute age ago, supporting Sonic Youth. I seem to remember they were good – they played guitar and bass and drums whilst twiddling with a formidable looking rack-mounted set-up that made whatever they were doing with their guitar, bass and drums sound like one big, immersive pile of noise. Good memories of that, together with the almost supernatural reverence in which this New Zealand band are held in certain psyche/noise circles, prompted me to check out this ‘sensibly priced’ retrospective of their work.

It’s chronologically ordered, and dear god, the ‘80s stuff is horrible – imagine the early DIY Half Japanese records if instead of crazy fun-loving dudes they’d been severe depressives with high art ambitions. Tracks begin with a kinda furtive basement scraping and build up into vicious, narcoleptic thud-fests, like cavemen trying to do Spacemen 3 and failing. The singing – which generally accompanies the quiet scraping sections - sounds like the guy from Simple Minds being fucked with a bottle. Unwelcome imagery I realise, but it’s pretty unpalatable stuff we’re dealing with here.

Having had my fill of that, I give the second disc – chronicling the band’s more recent work – a go. Hmm, well, the bass and drums seem to have largely disappeared, as has the singing, thank god. What’s left is a lot of menacing rumble and long sections of what sounds like a guitar plugged into a DOD distortion and a really wrecked old amp being held by the neck and dragged back and forth across the floor like a vacuum cleaner… in a fairly half-hearted and depressed sort of way. Ho-hum.

That a lot of fairly obtuse and abstract noise can summon up such concrete feelings of misery and futility in the casual listener is in a sense a vindication of The Dead C’s artistic relevance / success, and if you’re big into Wolf Eyes and Jandek and whacked out noise tapes you’ll probably dig this sort of nonsense. And frankly you’re welcome to it – listening to this is like spending all day at the doctors and leaving without a prescription.

Ok, so if I can tear myself away from fooling with iTunes for a few minutes, I promise to get myself in gear and to make up for my recent weblogging slackness by posting some words, thoughts or revelations about some record or other EVERY DAY from now on (or until I get bored or run out of things to say or, y'know, whatever..). So without further ado, let's go...

A PERFECT MONSTER HAS NO END

Roky Erickson – Gremlins have Pictures (reissued last year of Rykodisc)

It’s become such accepted practice for mentally damaged musicians to start recording menacing, simplistic songs populated by demons, witches, vampires, the devil etc. that in a way we’d almost be disappointed if they didn’t.

Rather than taking the usual approach of cowering in fear before these two-dimensional and (sane/unimaginative listeners are apt to assume) allegorical predators however, Roky stands alone as the only troubled recording artist to declare them his allies, pitch his camp beside them and joyously howl through the night sky with them in search of victims. And furthermore, he’s the only one do so via the medium of storming metal-influenced garage-punk with his backing bands The Explosives and The Aliens (who kick it like Radio Birdman doing Cheap Trick), and alone with stirring folk anthems that could make the grade as post-Dylan protest songs if the lyrics weren’t so bizarro;

“With you, God shows me his wife
Lucifer and the Mother of Witches
In marriage they unite

I promise, I promise
My green and blue eyes to you
I promise, I promise
My green and blue Eyes to you

May 9th 1976, Satan came to earth on a May night
Gremlins have pictures, of the anniversary of Christ
The square root of zero is something smaller than zero
That keeps getting smaller..”

I don’t know about you, but I can relate.

Other songs speak of alligator-men, the Bermuda triangle (which Roky seems to interpret as the entirety of Bermuda), appeals to the ghost of Abraham Lincoln, the occult origins of mankind and some far-out metaphysics, and the travails of mysterious characters such as “The Interpreter” and “John Q. Lawman”. And obviously he never misses an opportunity to remind us that he worships Satan either.

Quite why Roky’s solo career is so often written off as a footnote to his work with the 13th Floor Elevators I’ve got no idea, as albums such as this one make it abundantly clear that he absolutely SLAYS.

Roky is a demon and he loves rock n’ roll.

So go on, help buy him a place to live.

YOU GOT TO GET UP TO GET FREE

Hey everybody,
I must apologise for my continuing neglect of this weblog – this will hopefully rectified soon as have a computer and a bunch of new stuff to write about, but in the meantime, a couple of updates;

1.
For those wondering why I didn’t review it here at the time, my highly condensed review of June’s excellent Eggstock event appears on page 61 of the new issue of Plan B magazine. It has David Berman of the Silver Jews wielding a broomstick on the cover, and the list of featured artists also includes Magik Markers, Gogol Bordello, Mudhoney, Deathcab for Cutie, Dresden Dolls, Ut and motherfucking CAN, so clearly you have no excuse for not buying a copy.

2.
Yes, I have my new laptop. Unfortunately, it sucks for a number of reasons which I won’t go into here. With a bit of luck though, this will soon be resolved. One relatively minor issue is the ugly realisation that for some unfathomable reason Apple Mac users are still viewing this site with a massive bloody empty space at the top! I still have no idea what’s causing this, but as soon as I’ve got my shit together I’ll endeavour to sort it out. (If anyone’s got any idea what might be up with this, please share the geek-wealth and let me know.)

3.
I’m currently rocking the new Oneida album ‘Happy New Year’, and once again it’s a stone-cold groove – as fine a mix of future-fucked psyche-pop and brooding techno-medievalism as could possibly be hoped, although perhaps with an overall more laidback feeling than previous outings. The way these guys can turn in a singularly ambitious, hard rocking album, each more varied and free-wheeling than the last every 12 months as if by clockwork is a thing of beauty.
(New Mountain Goats and Herman Dune expected soonish too, so expect another excruciatingly predictable end of year list as the dawn of 2007 rolls round!)

4.
My body may be tired and my spirit shredded, but never let it be said I’m short of love to give.

Your Round the Clock Rock n’ Roll Obituary Service.

I just found out that Arthur Lee has died of leukaemia.

I'll have to do this post without the cool pictures of him I've just spent an age looking up because this shitty laptop and shitty blogger.com won't let me post pictures or whatever and I've no time left to piss around.

Out of touch as I am, the sad news reached me via the rather un-rock n’ roll medium of the midday news on Radio 4. It’s nice they mentioned him at all I suppose.

“Arthur Lee, singer and guitarist with the sixties band Love…”

The world stops for a second as I start to pay attention and wonder how this sentence is going to end - ...has unexpectedly scored a no#1 single? has shot somebody, or been arrested again? Has broken the world record for solo hot air balloon flight? Has announced weird and outspoken views on the conflict in the middle east? Has burned a Paris hotel to the ground?

No, realistically of course, there’s only one thing Arthur Lee could have done to merit a spot on the BBC lunchtime news.

And as with the deaths of so many cool people over the past couple of years (and why is it that musicians who are boring and unremarkable never seem to die? Why is it always the inspiring, elusive, iconic dudes whom we want to live forever? – first Syd, now this, give us a break universe!), synchronicity jumps in my face so much it’s not even funny. Weird and alone, I’ve been doing what comes naturally and blasting ‘Forever Changes’ loads over the past week or so.

There wouldn’t be much to gain in becoming the 1,128th writer to go on and on about how great it is, but needless to say, if any rock album ever had ‘masterpiece’ written all over it and became more of a masterpiece the more you listen – this is the one. And if anyone begs to differ, I hereby empower my readers to ignore, belittle and taunt until they see sense. Harangue them for being insufficiently mystical, for being just too damn square to pick up on the sheer Blakeian post-teenage confused, visionary WHAH that Arthur Lee is laying down amid progressions and arrangements so spaced out and ambitious and unique and fully formed as to make any serious connoisseur of ‘60s pop music flip his or her wig in a matter of seconds.

And the first two Love albums are pretty fucking good too – heavenly flower-punk dementia writ large.

I was lucky enough to see the reformed Love (effectively Arthur Lee + backing band, but never mind, they were good) twice; first at All Tomorrow’s Parties, playing an absolutely triumphant set, blasting most of the modern bands on the bill out of the water with pure messianic garage-rock grandeur, with Arthur on fine form, rejoicing as the audience of teens and 20-somethings sang along to every word of his weird, old songs. And secondly, they played in Swansea, whilst I was living there. This was a cosmically significant event for me, because NOBODY at all EVER played in Swansea, and as I’d spent the proceeding three months wandering the streets, parks and beaches aimlessly, listening to Forever Changes incessantly, to learn that the dude behind this genius album I loved so much was rolling into town to play at a dilapidated Victorian pavilion 400 yards from my house was obviously kind of a trip!
That was a great show too, surprisingly well-attended and mega-loud with a sort of slightly crazed hick-town atmosphere – y’know, where every stoner and weirdo in the whole county seems to turn up whether they know the group or not. But that kinda worked well. I was lucky it seems, as I hear sad rumours that many other Love/Lee shows on their seemingly endless tours of the past few years were grinding and tragic disasters, with Arthur too tired or ill or freaked out or whatever to really perform. Up to today I had no idea he had Leukaemia. No wonder he had trouble keeping it together sometimes.

I’ll be back in Swansea next week, doing some work on the house I used to live in. I’ll probably be walking past that pavilion many times. Once again, the sun is shining, and once again I have real idea of where to go or what to do. And I’m already on another ‘Forever Changes’ jag, so I see no reason why I should stop blasting it now.


And if you see Andmoreagain
Then you will know Andmoreagain
For you can see you in her eyes

And you hear your heart beating
Tum-tum-tum-tum

And when you’ve given all you had
And everything still turns out bad
And all your secrets are your own

And you hear your heart beating
Tum-tum-tum-tum

And I’m trapped in my armour
But my things are material
And I’m lost in confusion
Cos my things are material
And you don’t know how much...

...I love you

Arthur Lee was 22 years old when Love recorded Forever Changes.