THE FIFTY BEST RECORDS OF 2009: Part #4


35. The Loves – Three (Fortuna Pop)

Ah hell, what can one say about The Loves? They were here a few years ago, recording wonderful sessions for Peel as a gaggle of bubblegum pop crazed Welsh teenagers, and they’re still here a million line-up changes and the best part of a decade later as a gaggle of ‘adults’ doing more or less the same thing, and it’s still fucking brilliant. Basically, if you’re in a band, and your set-list doesn’t look like this..

…better find out what the problem is, and FIX IT. Ask The Loves, they can probably advise.

Mp3> Ode To Coca-Cola

34. Peaking Lights – Imaginary Falcons (Night People)

Peaking Lights is Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis (she used to sing and bang drums in Numbers, if you remember them; I don’t know what he used to do). It’s difficult to really explain the appeal of their first proper album, but I do know I’ve played it incessantly – far more than a lot of the other albums on this list, if iTunes is to be believed. And I’m confident that if you have a copy, you’ve probably played it incessantly too. It’s hard not to. Anchored by cheap, comforting drum machine and electronic burblings, phased out wordless vocals and beautifully enticing guitar and keyboard textures, I’d say Peaking Lights essentially resemble, oh, I dunno – a version of Harmonia raised in the ‘00s tape-trading underground, making soothing sounds for a very weird baby..? Try that out for size. I keep biting my tongue, because I don’t want to say that this album is pleasant; that’s the worst back-handed compliment there is, and it wouldn’t speak for the frequent invasions of hissy, metallic scuzz or warped echo labyrinths into this music, the stuff that’s constantly jumping out, demanding your attention. But Peaking Lights manage to pull off something here that has eluded most makers of long-form psyche/drone/whatever music through most of the decade – namely, they make music which is welcoming, harmonious, non-snobbish and, well, happy, but that also never cops out and fades into ambient boredom or druggy new age drek. Layers of instrument/noise are built up carefully and deliberately over the central metronomic pulse, so that they complement each other perfectly, fusing into songs (they do occasionally resemble songs) that are just lovely, lovely patchworks of sound, drifting off and around and taking you places and coming back again and smiling and gurgling at you and letting you know you’re safe, like crazy electronic lullabies from a warm, caring place. It makes me happy before I go to bed on weekdays, like hot chocolate – I’m gonna go put it on again.

Mp3> Wedding Song

33. Boston Spaceships – Zero to 99 / The Planets are Blasted (GBV)

The period immediately following the final dissolution of Guided By Voices in 2005 will likely be remembered by devotees as Bad Times In The Church Of Bob (a song title I hope Mr. Pollard will get around to one day). Verily, it did hurt to see our hero, his energies now free to dedicate wholly to his solo projects, knock out album after album (six a year? one every two months? – I dunno, I lost count), each more dispiriting than the last, each trying vainly to stretch fragments of the kind of inspiration he was blowing his nose with and discarding fifteen years ago across twenty or thirty tiresome stabs at tunes… or else twelve four-minute plus trad-rock groaners. Was ANYONE other than the reviewers still listening? Well, you may have noticed I’m speaking in the past tense, which is perhaps a tad premature, but I’m crossing my fingers here as I say, rejoice ye faithful: these two discs from Bob’s new trio Boston Spaceships are pretty damn good. Not quite up to the level of a turn of the century GBV album, needless to say, but our man seems to have brought a renewed sense of energy and, most importantly, some killer tunes to these sessions. Maybe not many for the greatest hits (unless your greatest hits is pushing beyond the seven disc mark), but we’re talking at least a 60-80% hit-rate here, and that’s good enough for me. Generally speaking, ‘Planets Are Blasted’ seems to concentrate more on the bittersweet, mid-western janglepop end of the Pollardverse, with ‘Dorothy’s A Planet’ and ‘Queen of Stormy Weather’ hitting all the buttons that used to make critics reach for the erroneous R.E.M. comparisons, whilst ‘Zero to 99’ instead revs up some of the ol’ windmilling, British invasion thrash and Sydian quirk, and I mean, who the HELL would imagine he’d still be getting mileage out of all that after all these years? If the answer’s not you, just take a listen and tell me keepers like ‘Exploding Anthills’ and ‘How Wrong You Are’ lie. I know I’ve largely spoken in numbers and percentages in this write-up, rather than my more characteristic impressionistic blathering, but Pollard’s borderline autistic comings and goings have long given his fans reason to learn to speak in the most heartfelt and emotional numbers and percentages known to man, and it’s good to have him back on-message.

Mp3>
Dorothy’s a Planet (from ‘Planets are Blasted’)
Let It Rest For A Little While (from ‘Zero to 99’)

32. Micachu & The Shapes – Jewellery (Rough Trade)

As you may have gathered by now, this blog is not a big advocate of chasing ‘originality’ in music for its own sake, but that’s not to say that we don’t like it when something genuinely new-sounding marches in of its own volition. As such, let us welcome the arrival of Micachu & The Shapes with a superb album that stands out as one of the best slices of experimental pop since people started casually throwing the phrase ‘experimental pop’ around. Much of Micachu’s palette of sound seems to stem from East London ‘urban’/club music and the early ‘00s ideal of commercial/avant pop, with throbbing, distorted bass pulses and menacing, chopped up drum programming thundering around all over the place, but these elements are mixed roughly with a sharp strain of art school DIY pop, as characterised by the weird, otherly tuned plunkings of Mica’s home-modified acoustic guitars, random looped racket from vacuum cleaners and kitchenware and a sense of oblique, emotionally raw lyricism that sits at the heart of just about all these songs. There’s something Beefheartian about the way Micachu puts her songs together – attempting to derail that ‘ol’ mother heartbeat’ with a mix that pushes harsh frequencies, jolting discords and maximum clatter. Also like The Captain, she manages to marshal a collection of sounds and techniques that would be absolutely insufferable in the hands of any other musician, but her surety of purpose helps steer the whole strangely articulate mess to a more than satisfactory conclusion, with her songs throwing out stinging vignettes of distrust, infidelity, disappointment and all the rest expressed through weird, brute simple modern day imagery (titles like “Guts”, “Golden Phone”, “Calculator”, “Curley Teeth” and “Worst Bastard” tell their own story), leaving you unexpectedly moved and involved with these semi-abstract tales, just as surely as Beefheart’s batshit ramblings always, somehow, manage to hit the heart of the matter when you least expect it. To write off the astonishing creative energy behind ‘Jewellery’ simply as the product of “talent” would scarcely do justice to the possibilities Mica and her pals are bringing to the table here.

Mp3> Vulture

31. Chain & The Gang – Down With Liberty… Up With Chains! (K)

Observing the unsavoury developments of the past decade, Ian Svenonious and his comrades have clearly taken some time out to reconsider their strategy and develop a whole new concept in “the responsible use of rock n’ roll”, the musical/aesthetic results proving as didactic, lateral, inscrutable and inspired as ever. In whoe name, Svenonious seems to be asking, have the corporate and governmental atrocities of the twenty-first century been committed? In the name of freedom, of course. And what is it that has stopped us, the citizenry, from rising up against the prevailing system of exploitation and brutality? The freedoms that the system has provided us with of course; the ones we’re loath to lose by biting the hand that feeds us. Thus, the only remaining route to change: ‘Down With Liberty… Up With Chains!’ Befitting this new austerity, Chain & The Gang have traded in the queasy, anything-goes funk/glam/psyche stew of Weird War, and retreated back to the DIY pop bosom of K Records in the cold North-West, recording an album with seemingly little more on hand than a drum kit, Calvin Johnson at the controls, some bass or acoustic guitar (rarely both at once), and the girls from Finally Punk dropping in for some backing vocals. The results, it must be said, are a mixed bag. Some tracks come off as hokey, undercooked jams, begging for a few more instruments or a more developed melody to render them worthwhile, but hearing Svenonious taking advantage of his new ensemble’s open spaces to let rip on some stream of consciousness jive is an absolute joy - “What Is a Dollar?” and “Interview With The Chain Gang” are cool as fuck, and album centrepiece “Deathbed Confession” is just about the best song he’s ever written. And when Svenonious is on form, the rest of the band seem to follow suit, throwing together some riotous, threadbare soul and ‘60s-influenced pop on the best tracks, fusing inevitably into the same flaming, declamatory fun-fests that have helped keep us hooked on Svenonious’ output over the years. As ever, those who like their party music and political statements to be clearly sign-posted and delineated will be infuriated beyond words by Chain & The Gang’s glorious jumble of sounds n’ symbols, but as the man himself says; “What’s my stance? Y'know I like to dance… and smash things up when I get a chance”.

Mp3> Deathbed Confession

Labels: best of 2009, Boston Spaceships, Chain and the Gang, Guided By Voices, Ian Svenonious, Micachu, Peaking Lights, The Loves