You could reasonably argue that Ian Svenonious has been making variations on the same record for at least the past two decades. But when the questions he is raising remain largely unaddressed, whether within pop music or in society at large, can we really say that his output has become any less relevant (or indeed enjoyable) in the intervening years?

NAY I say, and with Ian and his rotating cast of collaborators now comfortably settled into their Chain & The Gang identity, his core agenda (both aesthetic and political) felt more pointed than ever in 2014, and this, the group’s strongest LP to date, hit the sweet spot for me in a big way, needless to say.

I was actually quite pleased with the review I did of it back in June, so why not go and read that, if you missed it the first time around.

Listen and buy from Chain & The Gang on bandcamp, or get the vinyl from Fortuna Pop in the UK, Dischord in the US.

Labels: best of 2014, Chain and the Gang, Ian Svenonious

“With CHAIN & The GANG there are no excursions, no diversions… no trip to the moon, no jaunt to inner space… nothing original, no new system to integrate… just SIMPLE facts & BASIC math. Fewer WORDS, fewer BEATS, fewer NOTES… you’re tired of hearing them, we’re tired of making them…”

Bravely defying the long-standing convention that sees rock n’ roll groups beginning their LPs with a call toward energy and motion (y’know,‘Get Up’, ‘Raw Power’, something like that), Chain & The Gang instead open their latest vinyl missive by declaring their intent to ‘Devitalize’ - exhorting their listeners to shut up shop, to “just go home”, and, most scandalously for the dyed-in-the-wool rock n’ roller, to “keep it down”.

In an era in which we are urged by our suppliers of electronic equipment and accompanying media content to ‘think positive’, to ‘move forward’, whilst the geopolitical landscape around us slides ever-further into the dark ages, Chain & The Gang offer a welcome reaffirmation of negativity in rock n’ roll.

They are, as Ian Svenonious was keen to remind us during a recent performance at London’s Tufnell Park Dome, the only group of their kind. Beginning their career in 2010 with a cry of “down with liberty… up with chains!”, they are the only group who seek to impose a limit upon self-expression, who acknowledge that “originality is the enemy”. They are the only group (in the entire history of Western popular music, more likely than not) who proudly declare themselves to be pro-censorship. They recognise, no doubt, that censorship is always with us – no more opposable than gravity - and that the real question is: who censors who? Only by engaging, instead of blithely disowning, can we stand a chance of moving from the second ‘who’ to the first.

As Ian S. might well cop, the key to writing an effective political pop song is to appear extremely specific in your demands, whilst remaining extremely vague. The Chris Hillman/Gram Parsons-composed country-rock standard ‘Sin City’ (as performed by both The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Mekons within my own record collection) provides a good example. A spirited diatribe on the subject of civic corruption within an unnamed town that may or may not be intended as a microcosm of wider society, the song purports to communicate a great deal of information, praising some participants in the struggle, whilst condemning others to a storm of divine vengeance.

In spite of such apparently clear sentiments though, further analysis of the lyrics reveal the songwriters’ message to be ambiguous in the extreme. Depending on each listener’s personal understanding of such nebulous concepts as ‘sin’ and ‘clean[ing] up this town’, the song could be taken to represent either an extreme left wing or extreme right wing viewpoint, or alternatively could be adopted as an anthem for just about any single-issue pressure group you’d care to name.

The way the song succeeds however is by distracting our attention from this chronic lack of specificity simply by offering a composition so compelling and apparently heart-felt that it is nigh-on impossible for us not to get swept up in its ‘message’, and thus map its generalities over our own specific concerns. In fact, when performed well, the song generates such a weight of righteous indignation that even a listener wholly lacking in political conviction will find him or herself forced to affect an opinion for the duration of the song, thus to temporarily share in the emotions the performers are conveying. Like a successful politician, the song sells the idea of an outsider’s struggle for fairness and decency against a greedy, autocratic enemy so well that the actual details of the speaker’s platform become irrelevant.

Chain & The Gang do not perform ‘Sin City’, either on this record, or anywhere else to my knowledge. I’m sure they realise perfectly well that such material would not become them. Discussing the song at length as part of an assessment of their work is an unwarranted digression on my part, for which I apologise.

Nonetheless though, I feel that the lessons we can learn from examining the song provide a pertinent demonstration of the machinations common to socio-political songwriting - the same machinations that Chain & The Gang seek both to exploit and to deconstruct, allowing us to enjoy them whilst also exposing their workings to plain view.

Masterpieces of opaqueness, the songs performed by Chain & The Gang, particularly those found on ‘Minimum Rock n’ Roll’, are built from apparently innocent snatches of associative wordplay and playful mutations of common phraseology. ‘Mum’s The Word’, they sing. ‘Crime Don’t Pay’. ‘Got To Have It Every Day’. By further investigating the logic of these apparently banal pronouncements though, the group seek to create a base-level dialogue on the language of confinement and freedom, need and surplus, free will and determinism, power and lack thereof, that will (one hopes) prove applicable to most potential situations.

Just as Chain & The Gang strive to offer a convincing vision of implacable ‘cool’ (both musical & sartorial) that transcends temporal and geographical boundaries, so their songs aim at addressing questions common to all systems and power structures. “I got to have it every day”, Svenonious chants during the song of that name. “I don’t care how I get it / I could get it from a tree / I could get it from a stone / it doesn’t matter at all to me”. But WHAT must he get, the inquiring mind will demand to know, even as the poised musical delivery soothes and reassures. What ‘IT’ are we talking about here? Well, that’s for us to decide. What do YOU need every day? And how do you get it? Chain & The Gang, their dedication to aesthetic minimalism firmly in place, are not going to provide any pointers.

“What are you in here for?”, Ian asks his hypothetical fellow inmates in the song of that name. And, more pointedly, “why are THEY out THERE?” He is “in here”, he conjectures, for “loving too much”, for his “tender touch” . They are “out there” because “their blood runs cold”, because they “do what they’re told”. Upon what scale is the metaphorical construct here supposed to operate? The musical ‘underground’, as opposed to the ‘mainstream’? The poor and powerless of society, as opposed to the enabled rich? The existential ‘outsider’, as opposed to the socially integrated ‘insider’? An actual imagined correctional facility? It really doesn’t matter. Wherever there is an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ to contemplate, an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, the song is of use.

By leaving their statements so open to interpretation, wisely stripped of the didactic and retrospectively embarrassing specificity that so often limits the geographic & temporal worth of artistic expressions of discontent, Chain & The Gang are doing a great service to all of us who feel, or may in the future feel, disaffected from our society – maximizing the potential usefulness of their songs, whilst still appearing clear in their declaration of intent.

After experiencing a Chain & The Gang record or concert, the listener is apt to feel certain that the group is driven by strong guiding principles. S/he may even feel an immediate kinship with the gospel they are espousing. But, if questioned, the exact nature of their project remains elusive.

Like all successful producers of ideologically-inclined music, the group are manipulative. Like the writers of ‘Sin City’, they initially make us FEEL their argument, not consider it. BUT, there is a crucial difference at work here. As befits a combo led by a champion of “the responsible use of rock n’ roll”, Chain & The Gang’s manipulations are both transparent and benign. Beyond the ‘feel’ with which they hook us, we find not ill-advised generalities, but questions and challenges. By raising these questions whilst refusing to make so much as a scribble in the ‘answers’ column, the group encourages us to think for ourselves, to adapt the methodology of our own approach to life to the oppositional framework they provide. As quoted above, “SIMPLE facts and BASIC math” are the only building blocks they require.

Unlike many socially engaged musicians, Chain & The Gang are also generous when it comes to ensuring that their records and performances remain wholly entertaining, whether one wants to engage with their wider programme or not. Fervent refuseniks, or those who merely seek a good time - both are welcome, and both will leave satisfied.

In this regard, ‘Minimum Rock n Roll’ is arguably their strongest platter to date, the group’s new credo of minimalism allowing them to deliver tightly-wound, ecumenical doses of rock & funk elements, carefully selected to wring maximum effect from the barest of ingredients (that of course being the central aim of all progressively minded rock n’ roll, when you get down to it) – a perfect expression of Ian’s back cover manifesto.

Gently malevolent, the group’s self-defined “crime-rock” is menacing in much the same way that ‘50s Juvenile Delinquent literature or ‘60s ‘roughie’ sex dramas are menacing – a brew that consciously evokes the cynical yet romantic legends of outlaws and urban deviance in 20th century America, fashioned, of course, as a reflection of the alienation and confinement that the group feels in the 21st century.

Garage-punk churn, flick-knife funk rhythms, cyclical Link Wray/James Burton guitar figures and girl group call & response chants: all of these elements evoke a spirit wholly distinct from the Official Culture of the United States, and from those outside of that culture (beat poets, hippie artisans, indoor hat-wearers, indie bands) who would seek, consciously or otherwise, to be included within its comforting embrace. However much of a calculated fantasy it may be for the group’s membership, Chain & The Gang’s music presents a wholly working class conception of historical outsiderdom: noble, self-defined, growing from the bottom up and fighting its way to the top. Simplistic maybe, but EFFECTIVE. “Crime don’t pay,” they acknowledge, “but how can I live my life this way?” As ever, the question is left open. It will be your own answer that provides the next step.

Listen and buy digitally from Chain & The Gang on bandcamp, or get the vinyl from Fortuna Pop!.

Labels: album reviews, Chain and the Gang, Ian Svenonious

THE FORTY-TWO BEST RECORDS OF 2011:
Part # 6

20. Zola Jesus – Conatus (Sacred Bones)

It’s difficult to fathom why this one isn’t in my top ten. Hopefully it’ll be in a lot of people’s top tens. It’s pretty good. I guess it’s naturally gonna be Zola Jesus’s big ‘coming out party’ record, sitting on the verge of mainstream(ish) success, and it is SOLID, building on the template established by her ‘Stridulum’ material and hitting all the buttons you’d expect it to hit.

Only trouble is for those of us who’ve been following ZJ’s career, we’ve heard it before. Up to now, every record she’s made, from ‘New Amsterdam’ through ‘The Spoils’ to ‘Stridulum’, has been a quantum leap forward from the one that has preceded it. Having apparently hit peak performance with total KO songs like ‘The Night’ and ‘Can’t Stand’ though, ‘Conatus’ sees her settling back into cruising speed, rolling out a fresh, LP length reiteration of her established style, hopefully picking up a lot of new fans & supporters in the process, but fostering an unavoidable sense of diminishing returns for those of us who’ve been rocking the aforementioned for 18-plus months.

It doesn’t make the music any less good, but it makes it less exciting if ya know what I mean. Don’t ask me why. I could listen to, say, The Queers or ‘70s Black Sabbath making the same album a thousand times over and be perfectly happy, so I don’t know why my expectations of young operatically trained electro-pop ladies from Wisconsin should be any different. Who knows. This subjective/personal music crit is a mug’s game sometimes.

Eleven new cuts of earth-shaking neon-industrial bombast is still nothing to be sniffed at though, and needless to say, when I feel a Zola Jesus itch in the near future, I’ll be reaching for this one to get the job done with less of a sense of over-familiarity. That sounds a bit cold, but hey the world is cold – with fame and fashion and the inevitable dilution of identity knocking on her door, the fact this record stays on-message is an achievement worth celebrating in itself. That Nika Danilova has managed to find a route into mainstream consciousness without compromising the essential ?!?!? of her work is pretty fucking awesome.

Much here is veering hazardously toward the smooth, of course, but all is premeditated, nothing is chronic. Tracks like ‘Vessel’, ‘Hikikomori’ and ‘Seekir’ all have a certain steely calm to them that was missing before, a steadier pulse alongside their menace, to soothe the spirit on those long walks through underground stations and departure lounges, rather than abandoned hospitals and municipals wastelands. Indomitable human spirit amid the burnished chrome, and all that sort of thing. In short, much of ‘Conatus’ seems to be tapping into the same zeitgeist as the ‘Drive’ soundtrack – a sort of brooding electronic dream that can keep on brooding forever so far as I’m concerned. A well-guarded headphone wall to undermine the coldness without.

But all of this is build up. When the hiss of digital noise reemerges ever so slightly, when the weight of melodramatic angst starts to build and break on the astounding ‘Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake’, we’re back where we’ve always been with ZJ, back in the 2019 wasteland, standing atop the burning building, helicopter shot as the credits roll.





19. Veronica Falls – s/t (Slumberland / Bella Union)

Funny thing – I’ve been going to see Veronica Falls play for so long, I’ve played their singles (the re-recorded A sides of which constitute the immediate highlights here) so much, that their ‘long-awaited’ debut album almost seems like an anticlimax in spite of its abundant quality.

In a weird sorta way it’s almost too good; superbly recorded, with a careful balance between live energy and studio clarity, it sees the group inhabiting their chosen persona – that of a jangly indie-pop band who’ve died and returned as lovelorn gothic ghosts – with such calculated completeness, it almost makes me uneasy.

All of which is neither here nor there in the greater scheme of things, so rest assured if you neither know nor care what I’m going on about, this is a great record. If the one sentence sales pitch in the preceding paragraph at all appeals to you, you should totally check it out.

As has consistently been the case since the band stepped fully-formed into my consciousness on the night Michael Jackson died, Roxanne Clifford and James Hoare’s twin guitars provide a curtain of flawless Velvets strum, working in agreeable union with Patrick Doyle’s frantic stand-up drumming, creating an appropriately tempestuous backdrop for these raised eyebrow tales of doomed love and graveside angst, the trio’s crystal-cut voices (bassist Marian Herbain doesn’t join in the singing, to my knowledge) giving the songs a bit of a chilly, melodramatic English folk feel - the perfect musical accompaniment to a march ‘round Highgate cemetery on a freezing autumnal Saturday morning, winter sun glinted through the trees.

Which, conveniently, is exactly the situation portrayed in their video to ‘Found Love.., or their similarly wintry, forest-set clip for ‘Bad Feeling’. See what I mean? Always doing exactly what they should do, this lot. Too perfect.





18. Chain & The Gang – Music’s Not For Everyone (K)

So I could hold forth here about how Ian Svenonious will likely never manage an LP that matches up to his riotous, inspirational live shows, and about how he presumably doesn’t even intend to, at least not via the indulgent idiosyncrasy of the “me plus whoever else shows up” Chain & The Gang set-up. I could talk about how inflated expectation aside though, this is a real fun listen. I could reflect on how much I enjoy Ian’s sly digs at the current lethargic/depressive mindset fostered by constant warnings of impending economic collapse and the slowly degrading quality of life in America, on tunes like ‘Why Not?’, ‘Not Good Enough’ and ‘It’s a Hard Job (Keeping Everybody High)’.

But that’s the kind of bland, reasonable analysis I’ve been churning out for every one of these records, and it’s starting to get to be a drag, man. As a well-needed break, let us reflect instead on Chain & The Gang’s message to their people, as elucidated on this record’s back cover, and reiterated in spoken word form at the start of side two for benefit of the short-sighted or illiterate;

Everyone might switch on the radio
But they don’t get it
No matter how they try, they can’t or won’t
Don’t tell them about it
I know you wanna share
The thing you love so much…
But don’t!

Everyone in this country might own a personal listening device
Everyone might have a state of the art hi-fi
Everyone might have a home library of record albums
Or compact discs
Or even a compiled stack of concert set lists
But music’s not for everyone

[…]

Music’s not for them
It’s for you and me

Does a moth know a flame just because it’s drawn to it?
Does a body know a bullet just because it’s hit?

Does a lemming know the void that waits for it …
At the bottom of a cliff?

Does the worm know the mud
Does the salt know the sea
Does the universe understand infinity?

A clock spends its life marking time
Does it understand mortality?

Do people who listen to music even like it?
Do people deserve it even if they buy it?
Music is not for everyone

Music is for the few, for the brave
Don’t try to explain it to them though
It doesn’t matter what you say
They can’t understand

They’ll never understand
Just sneak away to that hole
Where the music makes its stand

Ludwig Van Beethoven is not for everyone

Shirley Ellis is not for everyone

Helen Shapiro is not for everyone

Bo Diddley is not for everyone

Bobby Fuller is not for everyone

(et cetera)





17. Tieranniesaur – Tieranniesaur! (Popical Island)

An album that I’ve been trying to get a chance to write about for months if I’m honest, Tieranniesaur is very much the kind of thing that I enjoy and approve of without having much to say about it beyond a basic thumbs up RECOMMEND. A full-scale joycore sensation of some kind masterminded by Annie Tierney of Chicks and Yeh Deadlies, this is a galumphing great ten tracks-worth of funk/rock/electro/dub/80s hiphop post-generic pop amalgamation, guaranteed to demolish indie discos worldwide with it’s enthusiastically ramshackle takes on Le Tigre / Go Team / LCD / Funkadelic / ESG type tropes… if only they got a chance to hear it.

Built around a realiable foundation of programmed drums, monster bass and agreeably zany trash-talk rhymes, cuts like ‘Rockblocker’, ‘Sketch!’ and ‘I Don’t Stop’ are total winners on any potential internet-era Jukebox Jury, appearing out of nowhere brazen as you like and marching ‘round like they own the place, demanding remixes, chart positions, hit youtube videos, all the rest of it… and, uh, I guess I’m not very good at finding things to say about upbeat, dancey type music, but GREAT times to be found here, in case you were short on them this year.

Frankly, being hit with a platter like this when you were expecting maybe a nice little folk album or something is weird enough, but midway through, things get weirder, as Tieranniesaur start conquering styles like gleeful mountaineers dishing out flagpoles. Euphoric disco on ‘Pretty Girl String Quartet’, Graceland-esque faux-African pop on ‘Candy’ and ‘Azure Island’, and a sublime bit of straight-laced cinematic funk on the superb ‘Here Be Monsters’.

An astoundingly FUN pile o’ music, full of great lines, great rhythms, awesome tunes, raucous energy and random guest appearances by people I’ve never heard of, ‘Tieranniesaur’ kinda sounds like an audio record of one of the best parties ever, and as such is an experience I can wholeheartedly recommend.





16. The Real Numbers – 12” (Three Dimensional Records)

I caught Minneapolis’ Real numbers almost by accident earlier this year, at the same show I saw Crawling Age, and through the fog of a few beers, they were a revelation - breakneck pace nerd-bounce! Fast, snappy, funny, catchy songs! Loads of energy, small, raucous crowd, amazing fun.

Bought their 12”, and verily, it is a blast. Eight genius weirdo pop-punk songs, over before you’ve really registered them. Occasionally sounding like a Television Personalities record played at the wrong speed, this is the kind of music I will never not love. As their label puts it, there’s “nary a duff cut” to be found here – about fifteen minutes of flat-out joy, nix on the fat – sides A and B both open with total pogo classics ‘Might I See You Tonight’ and Undertones-ish ‘All About You’, both of which I’ll be DJing the fuck out of opportunity allowing, whilst ‘Boats & Cars’ showcases a slightly more nuanced side of the group, sounding not unlike the TVPs played at the correct speed.

Not much else to say really, especially since I’m away from home at the moment and can’t play the vinyl in search of further wordly inspiration. Closest thing I’ve heard recently to the particular kind of greatness found on Nodzzz first LP, this is one of the absolute best of the year from America’s garage/punk/whatever underground. Total winner!

Labels: best of 2011, Chain and the Gang, Ian Svenonious, The Real Numbers, Tieranniesaur, Veronica Falls, Zola Jesus

Pointless Lists Week # 1:
The Thirteen Best Live Performances I Witnessed in London during 2010.



1. Chain & The Gang, Cargo
2. The Ex & Brass Unbound, Tufnell Park Dome
3. Those Dancing Days at the Lexington
4. Jonathan Richman at the Amersham Arms
5. Zola Jesus at Camp Basement
6. Dick Dale at the Luminaire
7. Hard Skin at the 100 Club
8. Betty & The Werewolves, all the times I’ve seen ‘em this year
9. Calvin Johnson, what was that youth club place in Dalston called again?
10. Bracelettes at the Birds Nest, Deptford
11. Pastels & Tenniscoats at Bush Hall
12. Sylvester Anfang II at Cargo
13. Horowitz at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes
14. Best Coast at the Old Blue Last

Labels: Chain and the Gang, Ian Svenonious, live reviews, Pointless Lists Week

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