THE FIFTY BEST RECORDS OF 2009: Part #2

45. Crocodiles – Summer of Hate (Fat Possum)

So maybe it was just me, but it seems like everything I heard/read about Crocodiles in advance of giving this album a spin was fairly negative. Folks said that they were dull, arrogant hipsters, that their live show sucked, that they were just yet-a-fucking-nother aimless J&MC rip-off band jumping the lo-fi/whatever bandwagon a year too late, etc, etc. All of which may be true for all I know, but I’d just like to take a moment to say: actually, I think this album is pretty damn good. And I don’t think it even sounds that much like the ‘Mary Chain, contrary to every Crocodiles review ever written, except maybe for a bit of ‘Honey’s Dead’ era drum machine and sunglasses-after-dark shape-throwing. Oh, and that blatant steal of the verse phrasing from ‘Head On’ on ‘I Wanna Kill’, but I don’t mind a bit of stealing – after all, if you listen to bands like this enough, you learn that stealing is danger and danger is cool! Anyway, to my ears, what we’ve got here is a pleasingly ambitious heap of theatrical synth/guitar LA power-rock executed on a 4-track budget, with wave-yr-arms stadium choruses, sleazy fuzz riffing, maniac echo-abuse, strung out Lynchian dream-pop, weird druggy noise bits and lots of songs that are probably about strutting around neon-lit streets in a leather jacket, lookin’ for danger. In a straight to video movie. In 1986. Um… actually I’m making it sound pretty bad here, aren’t I? A Primal Scream support slot probably beckons. I don’t care. I like this. All the sounds on it please me. It’s good. Feel the danger!

Mp3>Soft Skull (In My Room)




44. Pens – Hey Friend, What You Doing? (De Stijl)

Ha ha – the guy from Pitchfork hates Pens. Yep, they really get him riled up, to the point where he loses it and yells about how they “can’t play”, thus disqualifying him from music crit discourse forever. Good times! Anyway, even if we take him at his word, it’s bullshit – Pens aren’t some primitivist art project, they’re a punk band, and they can play drums in time and play guitar and keyboard riffs over the top and shout real good and what the fuck more does he want? Something that’s boring and knows its place, I’ll wager. Something that’s not a bunch of one minute explosions of distorted-to-fuck self expression speaking of teeth-grinding frustration and lunatic hedonism, clawing back a sense of the same anyone-can-be-a-rock-star-now ethos of punk rock that brought us The Germs, The Ramones and the 70s-era Fall, most likely. What Pitchfork guy is probably trying to convey in his own ignorant fashion is that Pens certainly aren’t easy listening, and that their trash compactor assault course of a debut album will likely drive you up the wall, if it hasn’t already driven you out of the front door on a mission to end the evening sitting on a distant kerb crushing lager cans into your forehead. It certainly won’t inspire you to sit at your laptop nodding politely and penning a positive review, that’s for sure. Unless you’re me, I suppose. TWO THUMBS UP!

Mp3>Freddie





43. Liechtenstein – Survival Strategies in the Modern World (Slumberland)

As you may recall, I was mightily impressed by an earlier single I picked up from this Swedish trio, deeming them to possess “..the whole essence of a great band, playing some defiantly UN-twee pop, with dignity, substance and self-belief”. Subsequently, this 10”, nine song almost album initially left me a bit disappointed by comparison. In blunt terms, this one’s a lot less post-punk, a lot more indie-pop. Less stern, more cutesy; meh. That was a really dumb conclusion to jump to though, because this is a real grower if you give it some time. With its bedroom closet sound, thin, DIed guitars, shimmery vocal harmonies and super-crisp reverb, ‘Survival Strategies..’ could easily pass for a lost artefact by some obscure early ‘80s girl band. And if Slumberland had fraudulently marketed it as such, I’m sure we fans of such things would all be holding it to our hearts as a holy relic of all that era’s goodness, as Liechtenstein survey the landscape and pick up some wallflower reserve and heartbreaking unhappiness from The Marine Girls, some strident tough love melodicism from The Shop Assistants, pop sass from The Mo-dettes, and just a touch of LiLiPut’s strident agenda-setting still creeping in at the edges. Beyond the wishy-washy sonics and cozy genre references though, repeated listens reveal a kernel of genuine anger and disaffection beneath Liechtenstein’s songs that still really sets them apart. The lyrics might not jump out and get in yr face like I hoped they would, but the fragments that do cut through the harmonies are brutal and disconcerting enough to give pause for thought, especially as the band quietly twist a cinematic moodiness into the pop framework, via the distant, Morricone-ish whistling of ‘Sophistication’ and the brooding guitarwork of my favourite song here, ‘Wallpaper Stripes’ – all frozen breath on the bus window and 6am cigarettes on the runway, like The Marine Girls ‘Flying Over Russia’ blown up into Fellini-scale widescreen. Also worth a mention is ‘The End’, a beautiful, bereft 3/4 acoustic lament whose speechlessly gorgeous melody recalls Ellie Greenwich’s ‘You Don’t Know’ or Carole King’s ‘Crying In The Rain’. More proof, lest I should doubt further, that Liechtenstein are a very good band indeed.

Mp3>Wallpaper Stripes



42. Mastodon – Crack the Skye (Reprise)

By rights, Mastodon should suck by now. Two albums since they signed to Warners, three since the astounding “Leviathan” when people started proclaiming them the natural successors to Metallica, and they waved goodbye to their death/grind past, setting out upon the treacherous path toward longer songs, a cleaner sound, ‘progressive musicianship’, and collaboration with Bruce Springsteen’s producer. Yep, much as I loved “Remission” and “Leviathan” (best metal album in, like, forever, dude), the omens for their continued relevance do not look good. So it was more out of curiosity than with fiery conviction that I picked up “Crack the Skye” second hand. Then I put it on, and ‘Oblivion’ burst forth from the speakers, and… I felt my hands describing familiar patterns in front of me, I felt my neck involuntarily start to nod back and forth, tossing my hair into my eyes…. I was air guitaring, like I haven’t since I was fourteen. Spread the word: “Crack The Skye” ROCKS, in ten foot high capitals. Sure, songs may ramble on past the ten minute mark and have – cough – ‘mature themes’, like Opeth or something (like, I don’t think any these are even about monsters, man), and I could definitely do without the quiet bits and Neurosis style angsty, operatic vocals, but when Mastodon get down to the essential business of layering up mountains of huge, volcanic, time-shifting RIFF, with elegiac lead lines crashing down atop them like the angels rising over Mt. Sinai, they still blow the doors off the joint. Listening to this, I can imagine their corporate label boss – who I imagine being, like, some old school Lou Adler kinda dude who makes a big show of caring about the music - standing outside the studio smoking his cigar as the band work out some multi-octave middle eight in 7/14 time or whatever, and thinking, yep, we sure signed up the right boys this time. Those who fear the spectre of progressiveness (and there is much good reason to) need not fear, as Mastodon prove here that they have the necessary skill and good taste to adopt the King Crimson approach to prog, eg, being really, really fucking GOOD and playing mighty, intensely focused music that is fun and uplifting to listen to, with self-indulgence excised at the planning stages (or at least, kept within carefully monitored boundaries). Everyone in this band is a powerhouse, and they’ve all got enough discipline to stay on-message at all times, with face-peeling results. Mastodon still make me want to raise my fists triumphantly, and go “GRRR!” and daydream about mountain ranges and commanding legions of tanks, and, yes – air guitar. Say what you like about metalhead fourteen year old boys, being one was fun.

Mp3>Quintessence


41. Zola Jesus – The Spoils (Sacred Bones)

Although operatically trained, Nika Roza Danilova most frequently favours a deep, resonant tone reminiscent of a ‘60s soul diva on her solo recordings as Zola Jesus. When listening to the dense fog of distorted sound being slowly forced into the shape of songs around the anchor of Danilova’s voice, I find it hard not to picture some Tina Turner of Martha Reeves figure, all set for her big TV appearance, with the bandstand set, the lights burning and the cameras rolling, only to find as she steps up to sing that the floor has fallen away to reveal a bottomless, starry void, and that the brass section has transformed into a sticky mesh of floating cobwebs that are encircling her, stopping her from falling. Then the mics are feeding back everywhere, and the audience are ghosts, and the steady hand of the drummer has been replaced by a menacing robot crocodile that’s stalking closer, eating up the backing singers. But she’s used to taking things like this in her stride, so she goes with it, tailoring her performance to fit in with the overall vibe of hallucinatory terror. In fact she could get used to this – it’s kind of a blast. By rights, you’d expect Zola Jesus to deal in lonesome, emasculating dirges in the lineage of Nico, Diamanda Galas et al. The elements from which she builds her musical style are instant shorthand for fragmentation, distance, confusion, loss, entropy… and an imminent collapse into gothic cliché. But, brilliantly, there’s no negativity or angst in these songs at all – each one conveys instead a feeling of exultation and wonder, like a romantic sunset-on-the-baloney moment, preserved forever in bedroom portastudio overload, each with the degraded skeleton of a massive, Ronettes-level pop smash hiding deep below the surface. And OMG, Wikipedia says she was born in 1989 and has been releasing music since ’06! Why aren’t all angry 17 year olds making a great noise like this? Verily, it is a deep and comforting and righteous listen.

Mp3>Clay Bodies

Labels: best of 2009, Crocodiles, Liechtenstein, Mastodon, Pens, Zola Jesus