THE FORTY-TWO BEST RECORDS OF 2011:
Part # 4

30. The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck (4AD)

That this is my least favourite Mountain Goats album since John Darnielle signed to 4AD all those years ago should be self-evident from its placement this low on the list. Deprived of a central concept to work around, it seems to find his songwriting flailing around in a number of odd and unsatisfying directions, as the band’s sound falls back on a competent but uninspiring strain of MOR acoustic indie-rock that’s getting pretty damn old, its few self-conscious attempts at experimentation (in particular, the Disney-ish dude choir on ‘High Hawk Season’) emerging as unwelcome embarrassments – the kind of thing that reinforce all the worst clichés about this band and its fans.

Nevertheless, there are many good and worthwhile songs here. ‘Estate Sale Sign’ is an immediate favourite - a breakneck sprint through ritual sacrifice, decrepit shopping malls, fading movie stills and birds of prey circling on high, it sticks around just long enough to throw up hints of a cruel and bizarre story beneath whilst remaining thrilling and elusive – a perfect Mountain Goats song really, recalling the fractured narratives of “We Shall All Be Healed”. ‘Beautiful Gas Mask’ is a similarly killer tune, threading lyrical non-sequiturs into a great bit of “no idea what it’s about, but it sure gets the blood pounding” goodness. The self-explanatory ‘For Charles Bronson’ is almost an absolute stormer, it’s momentum sapped somewhat by over-polite production and an unnecessary middle section, a fate shared by the half-great ‘Prowl Great Cain’. Perhaps tellingly, two of the best cuts here recall the more brooding, relatively low-key approach of 2009’s ‘The Life of the World to Come’ – piano-led opener ‘Damn Those Vampires’ (which fleetingly conjures the dusty desert-horror fables of movies like ‘Near Dark’) and, probably the overall highlight of this record, the richly evocative ‘Age of Kings’, which perhaps breaks interesting new ground for Darnielle, building it’s atmosphere not through any blood-curdling lyrical invention, but simply through its elegant, burnished gold string textures and stately melody.

A lot of the other songs here I don’t really ‘get’, but that’s ok, really, I mean, that’s fine – after all, a lot of the old boombox era records only mange maybe a 50% hit rate in all honesty. Darnielle has had an absolutely spectacular run since ‘Tallahassee’, and it would be churlish to expect it to last forever. What’s more worrying is that the crazy passion and fury that’s fuelled The Mountain Goats for twenty odd years seems to be dissipating here. Like many successful songwriters before him, Darnielle is starting to feel the effect of his being a guy who sits in an office all day with a piano writing songs for a living, rather than some desperate ne’erdowell trawling the highways trying to make a buck, or whatever. Basing one’s career almost entirely on compositional chops is always going to be a uneasy balance between “that’s an interesting subject, I should probably write a song about it” and “here’s something terrifying that happened when I picked up the guitar this evening, I don’t know where the fuck it came from”, and if you insist on being prolific, that balance is always gonna get a bit off-whack sometimes.

Then again though, a lot of people seemed to like this record just fine. The reviews were good. Is it weird that for some reason I think the songs on last year’s throwaway Extra Lens side-project way overshadowed even the best ones on this album? On what side of the band/listener divide is the energy really draining away here? Are The Mountain Goats changing, or just me? Something to ponder in the dark hours of the night. Whatever - # 30 dudes.

Beautiful Gas Mask




29. Maria Minerva – Tallinn at Dawn tape / Cabaret Cixous LP (Not Not Fun)

Two whole albums of laptop transcendence from the prolific Ms Minerva, rising above blog-hype and cool-label-anticipation-disorder and “TRIVIA FACT: interned at The Wire” to really make her mark on the world of…. whatever the hell you call this kind of thing.

‘Tallinn..’ is ostensibly the weaker of the two sets of recordings, but there’s a stark naivety and sketchy pop minimalism to the songs herein that I really love. It’s just awesome, untutored homemade songs really, assembled out of little more than random samples, midi synth lines, Maplins-mic vocals and cheap effects, but within this evidently limited framework, Minerva reveals a great knack for sound-assembly and an uncanny ear for a really haunting melody. All of the record’s strengths are fully in evidence on the tremendous ‘Sad Serenade (Bedroom Rock n’ Roll)’, one of my favourite tracks of the year, which fuses chunks of some long lost youtube rock star interview to bass and drum patterns that sound weirdly organic despite never claiming to have known life outside a harddrive, spinning swathes of psychedelic burble like week old memories of some euphoric nightclub moment, topped with a shivering vocal like something out of one of Marianne Faithful’s weed-inspired greenhouse dreams. Or something. I dunno. Point is, it’s great. Twenty seven iTunes plays and counting.

‘Cabaret..’ is a far more elaborate affair, often a bit too amorphous to really get an angle on, on first listen seeming like an endless blissout of disconnected, muffled-through-the-walls club music and pan-cultural East End art blather that’s engrossing without ever manifesting anything really distinct. On repeated spins though, attention is drawn once again to the strength of Minerva’s tricky vocal melodies, and their central role in organising the dubbed out clouds of this sound into something not just tangible but pretty damn magical, as heard on the superb ‘Honey Honey’ - not so much blissful as a second-hand descriptor but more, y’know… actually blissful, heavily phased vocals fading into a haze of reconstructed Indian street-singing as the track progresses. Again, it never really sticks around long enough to sign off on its beauty, but fleetingly there’s something pretty special there. Similar feels can be felt in ‘Soo High’, submerging mixing skeletal r’n’b structure under heavily processed ice-cream van chimes and reverb layers to sublime effect, and ‘Pirate’s Tale’, a fully-formed masterpiece of this nameless whatever, taking us from Spitalfields out to sea, knocking on the doors of all the adjectives I’ve thrown around in this review in the process.

Ineffable, irreducible DIY hypnogogical cosmopolitan collage-pop of the highest order, Maria Minerva’s records will inevitably sound dated as shit to our stupid ears five years down the line. All the more reason to enjoy them now then, I’d suggest.

Sad Serenade (Bedroom Rock n’ Roll) [from ‘Tallin at Dawn’]


Pirate’s Tale [from ‘Cabaret Cixous’]




28. Yeh Deadlies – The First Book of Lessons (Popical Island)

From May:

“Come on in and relax, these songs seem to say (without getting too happy-clappy about it), everybody’s welcome. Maybe life’s not perfect – in fact we are going to tell you in lyrical form about all manner of awkward situations and personal upsets - but the sun’s shining and it’s a quiet afternoon and we’re all on the same page here, so grab a pint and we’ll weave our merry tunes for ya.

And fucking merry they are too, full of great, interesting melodies and attention-grabbing little musical bits and pieces, and they tell us about a bunch of stuff that’s maybe taken from their lives or maybe just made up, and for once you actually care. As Yeh Deadlies have moved away from the more overtly folky approach of their earlier recordings and assumed the mantle of a full electric pop band, joint singers/writers Padraig and Annie have correspondingly developed a real knack for cramming odd and personal details into the songs whilst never letting them meander too far from their core function as strong, emotionally resonant pop songs. Most song lengths remain on the right side of three minutes, tempos remain upbeat, and collapses into diary entry banality are strenuously avoided, but each number still succeeds in communicating the essence of a situation, an idea, a feeling, whatever. So, uh, I’m no expert or anything, but I think that probably adds up to official Real Good Song-Writing. Well done everybody!

Although Dublin is a big city, this really sounds like a rural album to me. Or it really hit the spot when I put it on whilst barrelling through the countryside last month, at least. Maybe I’m just projecting, but the songs seem to pull together to create an agreeable picture of life in a small-ish provincial music scene, from the reflections of a DJ at a small town club night surveying the 3am carnage in “Disc Jockey Blues” to the tale of a kid growing up and joining a band in, er, “The Kid’s in the Band”, and so on.

If ‘The First Book of Lessons’ was a movie, I think it would probably be one of those ‘90s British indie movies where young people in brightly coloured clothes live amid drab, dilapidated surroundings, and they go to transport cafes, and go surfing, and sit together on the cliffs and stuff like that. Hopefully it wouldn’t be shite (because most of those kind of movies were shite), but y’know what I mean.

In a field submerged ‘neath a flood of bilious careerists and terminal hat-wearers, Yeh Deadlies sound like good people playing good music, and that’s really something to be thankful for.”

No Rock n’ Roll Dreams (in Empty Beds)




27. Jeffrey Lewis – A Turn in a Dream Songs (Rough Trade)

Jeffrey Lewis’s previous LP ‘Em Are I’ was my favourite record of.. when did it come out again? Year before last? Ok, yeah – 2009. In particular, admired the way that Jeffrey managed to take the fallout from what was obviously a pretty devastating break-up and turn it into a set of songs that was enjoyable, profound, funny, musically ambitious and generally optimistic, transcending the moansville routinely occupied by about 98% of spurned singer-songwriter types.

Kind of sad then to hear him returning this year with a record as thoroughly down-in-the-dumps as this one, nixing the raucous punk and rock n’ roll outbursts the gave colour to his previous albums in favour of what is largely a one man acoustic trawl through different flavours of listless self-pity.

Anxiety and morbid self-examination have always been at the heart of Lewis’s songwriting of course, but in the past he’s always managed to put a good spin on it, using humour and weird, homespun wisdom to engage with a more universal sentiment – a talent that often seems to elude him here as he offers a number of dreary strumathons bemoaning the fact that girls don’t like him and he’s forced to go to restaurants on his own and aimlessly wonder the streets and stuff and DUDE, for christ’s sake, it’s sad that you feel so bummed out, but carrying on like this in public isn’t going to help matters! Pull yourself together, go play some great shows and draw some awesome comic books, you’re great at it and you’ve got loads of wonderful friends, and everybody loves you! Jeez, some people.

Thankfully though, this is still a Jeffrey Lewis album, and Jeffrey Lewis is awesome, so there’s plenty here to enjoy. For one, ‘Cult Boyfriend’, a perfect example of the kind of instant classic yeah-you-got-my-number-buddy pop culture referencin’ hits that got us loving him in the first place. For two and three, there’s ‘Krongu Green Slime’ and ‘So What If I Couldn’t Take It’ , intricate, image-packed rambles that seem like weirder tangents from some ‘60s underground comic in audio form, telling tales of primordial retail economics, cosmic entropy, hallucinogenic suicide rampages and flunked mafia executions. ‘Time Trades’ is a good one too, vaguely recalling Richard Hell’s similarly named song and stretching a dark-hours-of-the-night philosophical tangent into a convincing trail of reassuring wisdom, bypassing our cynicism in a way that only Lewis can really get away with. Opener ‘To Go And Return’ is real nice as well, a gentle, shimmery folk-psyche fingerpicker enlivened by droning, discordant brass.

In fact, who am I kidding – at least 50% of ‘A Turn In The Dream Songs’ is really great, and it’s at least 100% better than it would have been if some other bearded jerk had made it. It would be easy to pull apart the threads of depression and narcissism that underpin even the best of these songs, but why bother, they’ve always been there, they’re part of what makes Jeff Lewis the writer/performer he is, and here’s hoping he can take some inspiration from the noble sentiment of songs like ‘Time Trades’ and work up a more positive frame of mind for the next time he hits the studio.

Cult Boyfriend





26. Y Niwl – Album (Aderyn Papur)

Behold – the best Welsh language surf album of the year!

But seriously folks, even if there were dozens of Welsh language surf albums to choose from (and I sincerely wish there were), I’d like to think Y Niwl would still be riding high on the hog with this lovely effort.

I should admit that I’ve actually been listening to a lot of surf music this year. I really like it, in fact I think it’s one of the greatest musical forms around.

It’s a genre that works best I feel when completely disconnected from all the mouldering aesthetic bumpf that goes along with it. I remember once hearing an old interview with The Pixies, where they were talking about their fondness for surf music, and how when they listened to it, they weren’t thinking of hotrods and beaches and Californian dudes surfing and all that stuff, but instead of “crazy little people, running around, doing stuff!” That just about sums it up I think. It’s evocative, exciting music that deserves a wider framework of imagery to work with. Thus I really appreciate the fact that Y Niwl play great surf music without making any effort to try to harness the ‘surf’ aesthetic. No stripey shirts or tiki lounge kitsch for these guys – in the one press shot I could find of them, they’re standing in somebody’s back garden in the rain, next to a conservatory, having a cup of tea. Stubble and bobblehats and rain macs – classic SFA/Gorkys Welsh stoner guys really. Much respect to them for taking this fine music wholly on it’s own merit, and playing it so well, devoid of period goofery.

On the scale of surfitude, I suppose you might say Y Niwl are more on the relatively laidback side of things - the kind of surf band one imagines might enjoy a quick joint or two before practice. Not for them the rip-roaring fretboard theatrics of Bambi Molesters or Los Straitjackets. Largely, Y Niwl prefer to explore a woozier, more psychedelic take on surf conventions, their sound crisply recorded as the genre demands, but swathed in a heavily atmospheric undertow of beautifully cavernous reverb and echo, rolling in across the tunes like Aberystwyth sea mist, genre-defying electric organ riffs chiming in too to add a whole other layer to a beautiful sonic, uh… layered thing? By which I mean, a brilliantly recorded, imaginatively rendered, good-natured, instantly enjoyable pile of vaguely trippy instrumental rock. Nice work!

Undegpedwar

Labels: best of 2011, Jeffrey Lewis, Maria Minerva, The Mountain Goats, Y Niwl, Yeh Deadlies

10. Yellow Fever – s/t (Wild World)

I bought this album at a Vivian Girls gig last February. I’ve been meaning to write something about it ever since, but… god, what to say? Yellow Fever are like pop music’s final checkmate against blathering critics like me. Songs reduced to such an elegant, self-explanatory simplicity that the act of describing them seems absurd.

If Yellow Fever remind me of anything, desperately scrabbling around in my big book of possible comparisons, I suppose it’s probably Young Marble Giants, or unfairly forgotten Athens, GA duo Oh Ok.

Yellow Fever’s female participants are gifted with the kind of crystal-clear voices that in a different world could be belting out the trad arr hits down Cecil Sharp House of an afternoon. Here though, they also assume the function of a great, swinging rhythm section, realising a series of brilliant, elliptical pop songs. Some of the tunes also add guitar, but that’s not very interesting. Like a strange, art school ESG, it’s the bass and drums and mechanized group vocals that carry it.

“The cutest boy / I ever saw / was drinking cider / through a straw”, they sing on ‘Cutest’. “My brother and me / went to a show / we saw every / one we know”.

“Donovan’s pretty famous / he’s got a suitcase full of songs / he dug up old Atlantis / and know everybody’s growing their hair long”, they sing on ‘Donovan’.

It’s almost as if, by stripping these songs to bare musical essentials and emotionless statements of fact, Yellow Fever are questioning the way in which songs – dumb rhyming words set to repetitious, formulaic melodies – can make us so absurdly happy. It’s as if they’re testing the formula under laboratory conditions, to see how easily they can make it work.

And they can make it work extremely well – I’ve listened to this album dozens of times. Its numerous moments of dry wit make me grin and cackle as I walk down the street; “Why won’t you recognise / how psychedelic I am / and love me?” runs the chorus to ‘Psychedelic’, in between perfectly executed verses of flowery, acid trip imagery – the perfect riposte to five decades of paisley-clad sitar-botherers.

For all the irony though, there is also a vein of sorta dark, anthromorphic cartoon-folky imagery running through these songs that I rather enjoy, perhaps reminiscent of the weird majesty of Michael Hurley’s early songs, although they’re far, far, far removed musically speaking. I like the way that the protagonist of the song ‘Donald’ seems to start off as a household pet (“you were such a happy baby / now you’ve grown up old and lazy”), but seems to transform into an untrustworthy friend/lover whom the singer repeatedly warns not to “go downtown”. Maybe it’s nothing, but that uncertainty is kinda interesting, and uneasy, a feeling that extends into the odd campfire singalong vibe of “Hellfire” and “Joe Brown”.

‘Original’ seems an odd word to use in relation to an album that pilfers its melodies from playground singalongs and hymns ‘60s pop singers, but I guess I must be perfect guinea-pig for Yellow Fever’s experiments, because this one of the most charming and unexpected records I heard all year.

Mp3> Alice


9. People of the North – Deep Tissue (Jagjaguwar/Brah)

My favourite Oneida record in years, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s not even by Oneida. The history of People of The North dates back, I believe, to some time early last decade, when the duo of Kid Millions and Fat Bobby would tour under that name when other commitments prevented Baby Jane from being present to complete the mighty O.

The project also has its origins though in the song “People of The North”, which appears in different versions on Oneida’s “Anthem of the Moon” and “Each One Teach One” albums. That song has always been one of my favourites in the band’s repertoire, a perfect synthesis of their strangely-scaled medievalist psyche-rock song structures and their yen for assaultively repetitious space-rock hypnosis. It is also a brilliantly evocative song for me, never failing to bring to mind visions of future-earth cyborg-Nordic warriors enacting fierce, pre-voyage rituals amid frost-covered standing stones, and undertaking mystic quests through never-ending vistas of barren, Arctic coastline.

Yeah, it rocks that much.

And happily, the album that has eventually emerged under the People of the North moniker sees Kid, Bobby and collaborators taking their cues directly from that by-now-venerable mother-song, spreading the ‘People of the North’ aesthetic out into forty minutes and four tracks of icy, martial cosmic journeying music.

In general, I like to make a habit of punching myself in the face every time I use the term “krautrock”, but there’s no getting round it as an easy shorthand for music like this – long-form stretches of buzzing/propulsive minimalist rock, driven on under the twin sails of KM’s legendarily energetic/imaginative rolling percussion and FB’s brutalist analogue keyboard stabs, swathes of heavily ‘verbed guitar feedback cutting in for purposes of depth and texture.

“The Vastest Island” is particularly great, beginning with a mysterioso echoed vocal lament set against shimmering synth-strings and electronic noise, building up into a lethargic jungle march through unknown zones – a stirring track, reminiscent of such landmark O jams as “Antibiotics” and, well, “People of the North”.

It’s hard to really explain why I enjoyed this album so much, when last year’s “Rated O” still lurks in my CD pile like a triple disc mountain of smog-blackened, perilous terror. “Deep Tissue” certainly does little to assuage my worries that Oneida have abandoned their fine song-writing instincts, shifting more toward a morose, heads-down power electronics jam band kinda vibe. I think it probably comes down more to an overall feeling. “Rated O” and “Pre-Teen Weaponry” both hit me as very anxious, bilious records – claustrophobic and urban and kinda punishing. “Deep Tissue” on the other hand sounds clear and wide-open, like a Viking sunrise, as the longboat powers STRAIGHT AHEAD. I dig that.

Mp3>The Vastest Island


8. The Extra Lens – Undercard (Merge)

Another year, and, with no new Mountain Goats LP immediately forthcoming (don’t worry, he’s got the next one out in a few months), another dubious extra-curricular release from John Darnielle was definitely on the cards. This one is based around his long-standing writing/recording partnership with Nothing Painted Blue frontman Franklin Bruno, the two having previously billed themselves as ‘The Extra Glens’ (no, me neither).

What we have here is not quite an equal partnership I fear, with Darnielle taking lead vocals on all songs, and with recognisable Mountain Goats themes and song structures predominating throughout. Much as I love John D, I’m sure he’d appreciate my instinctive support for the underdog in wanting to hear Franklin stick his oar in a bit more, but well… pure conjecture on my part here, but I feel Bruno’s contribution to this record’s success is just as great as Darnielle’s, but perhaps more… subtle. I mean, like, I think he’s bringing some serious quality control to the table – perhaps helping to highlight the moments in JD’s song-writing that tend to get a bit over-familiar or undercooked when he’s left 100% in charge, and maybe tweaking them into something a bit more vital or unexpected.

Anyway, whether there’s any truth in that suspicion or not, the fact is this is probably the strongest sets of songs Darnielle has ever turned in outside of his primary Mountain Goats albums, all the more so for the fact that these songs’ various characters and situations seem comparatively, well… easy-going, compared to the weighty, heart-on-sleeve themes explored on the last few Mountain Goats records. If not exactly frivolous, songs here are refreshingly concise and to-the-point, each one making use of Darnielle and Bruno’s mighty skills in the field of narrative song-writing to create a whole world for itself, a cross-section of a whole feature length presentation compressed into two or three minutes of perfectly measured wordplay and melody.

‘Cruiserweight’ for example investigates the inner-life of a struggling boxer, doggedly pursuing his dreams against the uninspiring background of Cleveland Ohio, 1985. Even when deep into the realm of story-telling, it is rare to find a songwriter who can deliver a line like “take two shots straight to the liver / and remember what the food was like in prison” with a quiet authority that bypasses Springsteenian bluster.

Sticking with the noble theme of fruitless struggles in the 1980s, ‘Only Existing Footage’ takes a straight-forward look at the pitfalls of low-budget international filmmaking (“red-eye back to Belgrade with the footage that we’ve saved / end up with one can because / the baggage claim’s an unmarked grave”), whilst the more oblique ‘Communicating Doors’ injects anxious horror movie imagery into the dreams of a worn out political candidate trying to catch some sleep mid-campaign (“I know people who dig up graves / just to label the bones”).

For whatever reason, some of best songs here seem to a)deal with adultery, and b)cheerfully recall old Mountain Goats song-writing strategies we’d assumed were a thing of the past. Electric guitar and pro production aside, the frenzied “Adultery” could easily double for one of the atom-bombed male ego classics from 1994’s ‘Zopilote Machine’, whilst the wryly titled “How I Left the Ministry” refits the sexy car-wreck thrills of ‘The Sunset Tree’s ‘Dilaudid’ to present the ninety second history of a civil servant, his neighbour’s wife and a sticky end for everybody.

A few of the songs on “Undercard” – like ‘Some Other Way’, with its goofy conceit of a guy testing out various forms of suicide only to decide that none of them will quite get the right message across to his ex - may betray this album’s songwriting workshop roots, but the bottom line is that even the least impressive of the songs Darnielle and Bruno knock out together are the ones that every other middle-aged dude with an acoustic WISHES he could have come up with first. An A+ from song school right here, and an easy, no-obligation reminder of how great these guys are when they’re on form.

Mp3> How I Left the Ministry


7. Zola Jesus – Stridulum EP / Valusia EP (Sacred Bones)


From November 2010:

“I was thinking up shit like that in my brain before the metronomic drum loop started thudding, and our man and his brother-in-keyboards start pounding out the ominous, elegiac sustained chords that begin “Night” (although it could just as easily be any of the dozen or so inexplicably gigantic, overwhelming monster-songs Zola Jesus has recorded over the past eighteen months). As when I listen to the recorded version, something clicks to ‘OFF’, and by the time Nika / Zola J herself appears, my mind is pure and empty and defenceless.

[…]

Why do I like this music so much, anyway? It’s not like any of the stuff I usually listen to. I don’t feel any emotional connection to any of these songs, I have no cultural baggage tied in with them. All this pomp and darkness and this art studenty girl yakking in interviews about avant garde opera and ‘transgressive’ noise acts – not really my sorta thing, is it?

But, as per The Boss, clearly I like it because I’ve not been given a choice in the matter. I mean, you didn’t think this new world of grand, Wagnerian girl group synth-angst would be a democracy, did you? This is music that saps you on the back of the head and drags you into its cave. The monumentally simple, direct songs Nika Danilova has hammered out since she embraced ‘clean’ production and verse/chorus pop structures last year do not ask questions or seek advice. They’re like alien laser-stares or speeding trains – get out of their way if you must, but if you hold your ground, resistance is futile.

Every one of these songs is the kind of breathtaking fucking awesome, overblown song that plays when people run out of a burning building in slow motion or dissolve into the neon rain in a (yes) ‘80s movie. If you’ve ever spent time pausing the bleary song credits at the end of the video, trying to figure out who the hell that one incredible song was by and decided it was probably by some act with a completely lame/unpronounceable name who subsequently turn up a blank on allmusic – don’t worry. It turns out they were lying to you. All those songs are actually by Zola Jesus.”

Mp3> Night


6. Teenage Fanclub – Shadows (PeMa)

From July 2010:

“I may have skipped over their past few records, perhaps unfairly, but the songs from “Shadows” that have been creeping into my head via BBC6’s playlist as I do the washing up have stood out as wondrous compositions, full of warm, happy sounds; a veritable embarrassment of sweet, guitary riches.

From Norman Blake’s blinding, Rolling Stones and Go-Betweens referencin’ stadium rocker “When I Still Have Thee”, to “Baby Lee”, like a Big Star acoustic number all grown up without the angst, to the grand slow-burn of Raymond McGinley’s “The Fall” (for the first few minutes you’ll think it’s shit, but if you’re still not digging it by the post-guitar solo choruses, you’re probably a bad person), the whole record has the air of a triumphant, late-period classic from a band a lot of people would have preferred to see condemned to the arena of fading boring-ness years ago.

Naysayers would have it that Teenage Fanclub are doomed to never rise above the level of mere ‘niceness’. ‘Niceness’ of course being the ultimate anathema to all you intense artist cats out there who thrive on the howling furies of humanity pushed to new, blood-curdling extremes, or failing that, The XX.

But c’mon, fuck that. I’m nice. My flat is nice. Friends are nice. The weather in the spring is nice. Breakfast in nice. And as they roll on through contented middle age, Teenage Fanclub have become INTENSELY NICE, so powerfully nice it’s almost frightening. They may have called their album “Shadows”, but I’m not sure why, as I find few dark patches within the words and music of these thoroughly contented fellows.

I know I often put forward the notion that good music always has to be fighting against something, but… I dunno, somehow Teenage Fanclub seem to get a free pass from me on that one. Somehow the exultant spirit with which they seem to be welcoming us into their happy place in these songs overcomes all. Theirs is a fiery niceness that sits far distant from any notion of mediocrity, and only a chump would confuse the two.”

Mp3> When I Still Have Thee

Labels: best of 2010, Oneida, People of the North, Teenage Fanclub, The Extra Lens, The Mountain Goats, Yellow Fever, Zola Jesus

THE FIFTY BEST RECORDS OF 2009: Part #9

10. Vivian Girls - Everything Goes Wrong (In The Red)

From my review a couple of months back:

“The idea of self-defined, punk-birthed musicians paying tribute to the mechanised emotion of girl group pop is a fascinating one, and it won’t have escaped your notice that it’s become a pretty ubiquitous notion in pop culture over the past few years. Which is no bad thing, obviously – it’s easy and fun to tip a wink to the classics and vamp on some Spector-isms. But what sets the Vivian Girls apart, particularly on this LP, is that they approach this terrain with the spirit of total, deadly seriousness that’s necessary to give such angst-driven material life, recognising the Spector/Morton canon for the bloody heart of darkness it is, and responding in kind with an album that’s dead-eyed, blank-faced, introverted and drained of all the usual affectations and signifiers. It’s got its fingers in its ears, and it’s not listening, especially not to YOU. Tantrum music.

Like the classic NY girl group productions, ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ strikes me as an urban record – a barrier to block out the noise of the city, to create a safe space for internalised melodrama to thrive. This album is the sound of The Shangri-Las out on their own, beaten, rejected and building a wall; a wall the like of which those fucking producers couldn’t even imagine. Not an exotic, enticing wall to trap the listeners inside, but a razor-wire topped prison wall of senseless repetition and tinnitus-inducing distortion, compressed to fuck to keep the hurt inside and keep EVERYONE. ELSE. OUT. Just like some pissed off hardcore kid jamming a tape in his walkman circa 1985.”


Mp3> Can't Get Over You



9. Let's Wrestle - In The Court Of The Wrestling Let's (Stolen)

Opening track: “My friends are in prison / and that’s where I want to be / cos I hate everywhere / They said if you want to help / just kill yourself / but I won’t / I won’t do that”.

On this debut full length, the very real angst and depression that has always lurked at the heart of Let’s Wrestle, barely concealed beneath the scrappy, self-deprecating humour of their terrific series of singles and EPs, finally breaks out and makes itself known. Initially, that may seem an unsavoury development, for the scrappy, self-depreciating stuff was an absolute blast that left us with a handful of absolute classics of DIY pop carnage, whereas there’s certainly no shortage of white guitar bands moaning tiresomely about the sad state of their affairs. But thankfully, Let’s Wrestle’s process of development here is somewhat akin to when The Television Personalities moved beyond singing ‘Part-Time Punks’ and ‘Where’s Bill Grundy Now?’ and presumably surprised everyone still paying attention by knocking out the flat-out best run of masterpiece albums of the 1980s. Ok, so Let’s Wrestle haven’t got that far quite yet, but with Wesley Patrick Gonzalez’ substantial song-writing talent, his ability to put across a loveable, sympathetic loser persona to accompany his tales of woe, and the band’s ragged power trio drive and smirking underdog jollity, they’ve certainly thrown together a fucking brilliant record, one that speaks of the travails of going to the job centre, watching TV, getting dumped, buying a new mattress and, above all, not having a girlfriend, and leaves you feeling that you’ve just spent forty minutes in the company of some wise, witty and noble adventurers, rather than just three suburban misfits with self-esteem issues who like to shoplift lager from Sainsburys and daydream about one day being Dinosaur Jr. Musically, they’re bursting with ideas and ability, but one gets the feeling that, like Dan Treacy or the Swell Maps before them, they’re never going to sound *quite right*, no matter how much they work at it. They’re never going to qualify for whatever race it is guys in rock bands are supposed to be running. Awkwardness hangs over them like a weird cloud, and, to a substantial extent, that’s what makes me love them, what makes me recognise them as MY PEOPLE, pulling out all the negative and pathetic aspects of my own character and parading them around in front of me in the form of goofy, hilarious rock songs that would probably still sound like they were held together with sellotape and twigs if Sony signed ‘em and let ‘em have a year of studio time. And amen to that – I hope they keep doing it forever.

Mp3> It's Not Going To Happen



8. The Cave Weddings - EP (self-released)

So regular readers will have got that I love The Cave Weddings by now. For those who haven’t, here’s some blather to prove it:

“Boy do I love The Cave Weddings! They really are just awesome piled upon awesome. Since these songs have been in my possession, I’ve listened to nothing else. I suppose grumblers and those of an anxious disposition may be apt to claim that bands like The Cave Weddings sound contrived and generic, that they’re just writing catchy pop songs to a formula, reducing lyrical/emotional signposts of unrequited (boo!) vs requited (yay!) love to a near abstract gesture. Well claim away dudes; that’s what Buddy Holly and The Ramones were doing, and when the formula is turning out a 100% hit rate to rival Buddy Holly and The Ramones, criticism is futile. These songs are SO GOOD.

How do they get it so right? Just a gallophing great rhythm guitar, a twangy, catchy lead line, some simple, enthusiastic drumming, a real likable wasn’t-made-for-singing voice straining to hit the right notes, some ba-ba-bas, tried & tested melodies of elephant-killing power…. it ain’t rocket science. But when all the elements are in alignment, when the band sound so damn happy to be here… you can’t beat it.”

If you can accept that rock n’ roll doesn’t always have to be about noise and terror and teenage frustration, but can just be happy and cool, then these five songs are perfect rock n’ roll.

Mp3> Let's Drive



7. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - s/t (Fortuna Pop)

I first heard this one in, like, December ’08, but it was officially released in Feb ’09, and I got far too excited about it in May ’09:

“Needless to say, it was during one of my periodic retreats to the Welsh hills that the tables turned, when I downloaded a leak of The Pains album on a whim and stuck in my earphones to go for a nice long walk. BOY, is it an album. Outside the city, far from any music scene backbiting, my above reservations started to seem like the petty, snidey, insular bitching they undoubtedly are. Fuck ‘indie-pop’; what I was listening to as I barrelled down Welsh country lanes was rock n’ roll the way the Velvets rewired it forty years ago: the drummer plays simple stuff real enthusiastic, the organist holds down big, single chords and lets them ring, the bass doubles back on itself in sweet melodic patterns, and the guitars go FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, covering everything like a happy rainstorm. The recording is huge, with everything amped up, filed down and maximised to digital-age, killer proportions, the chord changes are lovely, the songs are heartfelt and the lyrics are memorable and smart. What’s not to love?

My friend and I spoke briefly to the guy from The Pains at one of their gigs, and he seems like a really sweet, modest sort of fellow. I’m sure his band didn’t MEAN to make a Battle-Album. I think they’re just careful, ambitious, and very good at what they do. But nonetheless, they have made a Battle-Album. In one fell swoop, they manage to out-twee the neo-indiepoppers, to out-Superchunk the neo-indie rockers, and even to out-‘Gaze the neo-shoegazers on the longer tracks, with their motorik rhythmic drive and luxurious layered distortion. Within their designated sphere, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are kings of the castle. If you’re into any of this kinda stuff, they are henceforth the band to beat.”

Mp3> Come Saturday



6. The Mountain Goats - The Life Of The World To Come (4AD)

Trying to find a concise quote from my review of this album was hard work – it’s a pretty…um… ‘one paragraph following directly into the next one’ type piece full of digressional pontification, although it’s probably one of the better things I’ve written this year. And I know I’m always a dreadful bore on the subject of The Mountain Goats, but I really think this is one of the most beautiful collections of songs released in recent years, regardless of your thoughts on their previous work. It’s also one of, I think, only three introspective, acoustic songwriter type records in this top 50. Maybe I’m cheering up in my old age. Anyway, here are a few bits from the review that kinda get to the heart of the matter:

“The album’s true heart lays somewhere else entirely, in the sparse, ringing piano chords that underscore John’s voice on ‘Genesis 30:3’, one of the simplest and most beautiful devotional songs Darnielle has ever written. When I say ‘devotional’, I’m not sure whether the song expresses devotion to a lover or to a God, but to be honest it scarcely matters. As with several of the best songs on the record, Darnielle intentionally blurs the distinction between earthy and metaphysical faith, and in the process succeeds wonderfully in rising above the knuckleheaded bickering and terminal point-missing that blights 99% of contemporary discourse on religion, instead cutting straight to essential core of belief. In these songs, he speaks of the reality of feeling something within you that stretches beyond yourself, of the overriding sense of faith in the beauty of the world, and of a sense of purpose and an unwavering certainty that can be clung to throughout the very worst of times, whether it manifests itself as devotion to a church, as a gnostic ‘spark of the divine’, or simply as time spent in the arms of your beloved, or with an equally beloved family – for what, after all, is the difference?

[…]

Darnielle’s success here comes in the way he approaches his subject matter not as a dogmatic Xtian, but as the kind of flawed, spiritually bereft post-industrial human that modernist novels always used to warn us about, picking up the lessons of the scriptures for the first time and finding them more relevant to his own being than he ever suspected. As the chaotic, self-doubting protagonist of ‘Romans 10:9’ confirms for us in a rousing chorus adapted straight from the text:

‘If you can believe in your heart
And confess with your lips
Surely you will be
Saved one day’

And if we can put aside our kneejerk secular distaste for such phraseology and take that at face value, is it not a pretty fucking righteous note on which to start the day?”

Mp3> Genesis 30:3

Labels: best of 2009, Let's Wrestle, The Cave Weddings, The Mountain Goats, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Vivian Girls

The Mountain Goats –
The Life of the World to Come
(4AD)

Ah, another baleful, frozen-skied, back-to-work autumn setting in, and another grimly introspective Mountain Goats album, right on cue to accompany it. Long may the annual cycle continue thus.

Those paying close attention to the ebb and flow of John Darnielle’s ever-prolific songwriting mojo (waves hello) will have noted some curious developments in his work of recent, with his attempts to expand his palette and keep his inspiration fresh perhaps showing through a little too clearly at times as he ploughs ever onward through the cathartic possibilities of words and chords.

Fans will have noticed the growth in what, for want of a better term, we might call “referential” songwriting – by that I mean songs that take some specific moment or event from history or popular culture, and deal with it in the abstract, creating an impressionistic picture of the emotions and characters involved, without venturing to spell out any specifics. Darnielle then tends to assign the song a title that hints – sometimes rather obscurely- at the original subject matter, and leaves the listener to do the detective work re: piecing together the song’s eventual significance.

Sometimes this technique works brilliantly, and a song like ‘Sept. 15th 1983’ from last year’s “Heretic Pride” was, if anything, even more fascinating and unusual BEFORE I figured out that its lyrics referred to the murder of reggae legend Prince Far I. Similarly, one doesn’t need a background in South East Asian cryptozoology to appreciate the feeling behind ‘Tianchi Lake’, or to google ‘Roger Patterson Van Crash’ to enjoy the song of the same name.

But on other occasions the device can prove extremely frustrating, serving to alienate more casual listeners. ‘Michael Myers Resplendent’ for instance may be one of the most effective moments on “Heretic Pride” when taken in context, but its significance could easily be lost upon anyone who failed to clock the title at a live show or missed the reference to the cinematic serial killer. This problem became especially galling on last year’s self-released ‘Satanic Messiah’ EP. If you happen to be familiar with the music and influence of cult Brazilian proto-Black Metal band Sarcofago, then sure, ‘Sarcofago Live’ is quite enjoyable. If not, what do you get? Just some verses about some people, somewhere, “raging” in a basement. Even more obtuse is ‘Wizard Buys a Hat’, which still leaves me puzzled. Sure, I like looking at the title, and picturing a wizard buying a hat, but beyond that...? A middling tune and some words about some guy wondering around town, seemingly hiding from some pursuers? Whatever. These songs are ok, but they fail to hit home the way that first rate Mountain Goats material should. When you’re listening to a song with an obscure backstory to it, the power of the song should sell an interest in the context to you, not vice versa, y’know what I mean?

But, for better of worse, this seems to be the way the wagon is heading, and if the stew of literary and cultural reference points successfully weaved into “Heretic Pride” marked The Mountain Goats out as a band whose albums can come complete with an implied reading list, then “The Life of the World to Come” takes things one step further, effectively presenting us with a *compulsory* reading list – albeit one limited to a single volume. Framed in its press release as “twelve hard lessons learned from the bible”, each song on the album takes its name from the bible verse that inspired it. That Darnielle should be a fan of the good book is scarcely surprising, given the fire & brimstone and narratives of sin and redemption that underlay much Mountain Goats material, and that he should prove to be predominantly an Old Testament man is equally unsurprising.

After the macabre blowout of “Heretic Pride”, “The Life of the World To Come” is a more somber, low-key affair, much in the vein of 2006’s “Get Lonely”. It is, some critic with a deathly pallor and dust for brains is laying in wait somewhere to pronounce, the most “ ‘ mature ‘ “ Mountain Goats album to date. So ‘mature’ in fact that much of it veers closer to the perspective of a elderly patriarch contemplating the inevitable from his deathbed than to the desperate, self-immolating young people that Darnielle has often spoken through in song. Within its grooves, a series of anonymous narrators calmly confront such issues as faith, loss, loneliness, earthly devotion and the persistence of hope, leading, inevitably, to the direct consideration of grief and death. It is, to put it bluntly, pretty grim stuff.

Like his fellow bible-basher Nick Cave, I gather that Darnielle now rents an office space that he uses solely to work on his song-writing on a nine-to-five basis, a decision that we might be able to see reflected not only in the two men’s shared interest in the good book, but also in their fondness for funereal tailoring, slow, sustain-heavy minor key piano chords and, most worryingly, a certain emotional detachment that has started to creep into Darnielle’s work, and that has arguably consigned Cave to dreary self-parody for years.

What was always most thrilling about The Mountain Goats material in the past was its immediacy, and its unflinching honesty. Even when working through wholly fictional narratives, Darnielle’s driving need to throw every ounce of his often frightening excesses of emotion and empathy into his music was beyond question, and mistakes, repetitions and self-indulgence could all be overlooked simply because his songs sounded like bulletins from a life being led in a state of permanent flux, all laid down on tape in private in a spare few minutes before the next crisis, the next revelation, the next bus out of town, all suffused with the shadows of experiences too overwhelming to easily deal with. Whether or not they actually were conceived under such circumstances is besides the point – they sound as if they were. Listen to ‘Sweden’ or ‘Full Force Galesburg’ or ‘The Coroner’s Gambit’, and that’s what you’ll hear: truth and desperation; one man against the world; all that stuff.

It’s a state of mind that every wouldbe alt-cowboy singer/songwriter ever has taken a shot at and almost without exception failed to realise, simply because, unlike Darnielle, they’re not there already, and if you find yourself trying to get to some dark, mixed up place just so you can write songs about it – I mean, what the hell dude? Put the stetson away and get a fucking job. The Mountain Goats have never made a virtue of suffering – they’ve just thrown it at the world and hoped for the best.

But, having exploded their approach into widescreen perfection on their initial string of classic 4AD albums, more recent ‘Goats material is starting to show a similar tiredness of spirit to all the Van Zandt wannabes they render irrelevant, and to Cave for that matter – the feeling of ‘songwriting as an exercise’ that presumably comes from sitting at the piano all day staring at the wall for inspiration, and the “reference” songs are only the most obvious symptom of this change of pace.

Nonetheless though, we can put such fears aside for the moment, as ‘The Life of the World to Come’ comes out on top once again. Spending some time in the new record’s company serves to affirm the essential strength of Darnielle’s A-grade material, a strength that lies beyond any change of circumstances or change of pace in the songwriting/recording department. Whilst they may no longer be crashing through your motel room door with flying fists, the songs herein are thematically consistent and assured meditations that aim at universal relevance in a way this band has rarely attempted before. They may be almost entirely removed from the baggage of monsters, teenage runaways, self-destructive addicts and doomed lovers who populate the ‘Goats back catalogue, but, after living with the album for a few weeks, we come to realize how little we still need these familiar faces, and we can be reassured, and moved, perhaps more gently but more firmly than we’re used to, by the way in which these songs attain a solemn, self-contained beauty that is all their own.

Before the new calm takes hold though, we’re still rewarded with one last sociopathic bellow-fest, in the form of the second track here, ‘Psalms 40:2’ (the King James says: “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings”). With the full band launching into a rolling, melodramatic vamp reminiscent of ‘Sax Rohmer #1’, and John spitting out his words like a crooked preacher, this is the most authentic fire & brimstone moment on the album by quite some distance, and the one that connects most strongly with Mountain Goats past. Through clenched teeth and fists, the song seems to tell the story of some people undertaking a traumatic crime spree/road trip through the bible-belt, investing their actions with a religious grandeur as if daring the Lord to strike down the monsters He has created. “Left that place in ruin”, they growl of a desecrated chapel, “drunk on the spirits, high on fumes”. Startling and unnerving stuff.

Another gift for those of us looking for the cheap thrills of yore is track 5, ‘Hebrews 11:40’, (“God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect”). A brooding little number that comes straight from the playbook of ‘Get Lonely’, it becomes remarkably compelling after a few listens, with Owen Pallet’s deliciously creepy string arrangements (more subtle than Erik Friedlander’s strings on the last album) coming to the fore. Beginning with a wealth of graveyard/horror movie imagery, this song seems to concern a man who is entirely alone in the world, rising from the tomb, either literally or figuratively, and assessing the challenges ahead of him, calm in the certainty that some implacable faith will see him through to his goal… whatever that might be. He talks of having to invent an imaginary family to keep him going, “if it comes to that”, and of his willingness to hurt whoever stands in his way. Although there’s no obvious wider context here, you don’t feel inclined to doubt him as he sings, “If not by faith then by the sword / I’m going to be restored”.

Never before has the idea of The Mountain Goats releasing records on 4AD (“eerie madrigals on the campus eggslicer” and all that) seemed quite so appropriate, as songs like these emerge as beautiful bits of gothic, sounding like miniature Castles of Ontario, the perfect soundtrack to some black-clad early ‘90s Vertigo comics epic.

On any other Mountain Goats album, these outbursts would mark the calm before the storm, but here they’re more like the storm before the calm. The album’s true heart lays somewhere else entirely, in the sparse, ringing piano chords that underscore John’s voice on ‘Genesis 30:3’ (“And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her” ), one of the simplest and most beautiful devotional songs Darnielle has ever written. When I say ‘devotional’, I’m not sure whether the song expresses devotion to a lover or to a God, but to be honest it scarcely matters. As with several of the best songs on the record, Darnielle intentionally blurs the distinction between earthy and metaphysical faith, and in the process succeeds wonderfully in rising above the knuckleheaded bickering and terminal point-missing that blights 99% of contemporary discourse on religion, instead cutting straight to essential core of belief. In these songs, he speaks of the reality of feeling something within you that stretches beyond yourself, of the overriding sense of faith in the beauty of the world, and of a sense of purpose and an unwavering certainty that can be clung to throughout the very worst of times, whether it manifests itself as devotion to a church, as a gnostic ‘spark of the divine’, or simply as time spent in the arms of your beloved, or with an equally beloved family – for what, after all, is the difference?

Obviously the rather curious choice of bible verse complicates matters, but that aside ‘Genesis 30:3’ reminds me more than anything of the scene in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenin’ wherein Levin, the tormented agnostic, realizes for the first time his sense of underlying, unshakable faith when presented with his newborn daughter. As usual, John D. gets it in one; “for several hours we lay there, last ones of our kind / harder days coming maybe, I don't mind / it sounds kind of dumb when i say it but it's true / I would do anything for you”.

This idea of the love song expanded to cover universal faith as well as personal devotion is returned to again and again on the album, as the prisoner serving life and tormented by monstrous imaginings in ‘1 John 4:16’ (“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”) testifies as if in prayer, “And I won’t be afraid of anything ever again / because I know you’re thinking of me, as it’s just about to rain”.

Not every song on “The Life of the World..” works for me, I’ll admit; I’m just discussing my favourite ones above. Some of the others leave me cold, some a merely a bit odd, and one in particular I just don’t wanna hear right now – it doesn’t seem like the right time. Sitting at the centre of the record, the cornerstone that puts the rest into context perhaps, is ‘Matthew 25:21’ (”His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord”), a straight-forward narrative about traveling to visit a loved one dying of cancer for the final time. At six minutes, it is probably one of the longest Mountain Goats songs to date. It opens with “They had you hooked up, to a fentanyl drip / to help mitigate the pain a little bit”, and gets progressively more hard going from thereon in. No gospel-aided philosophisin’ here, no declarations of self-belief, just a plain account of death, and a grief that it sometimes seems like the rest of the album exists to try to cushion. Musically, it’s flat, awkward and repetitious, just like the situation described probably would be, and I confess, as a carefree young-ish sorta person, it’s a freaking downer – one I’ll skip through if it’s all the same to you.

But at the same time, I know that if or when I find myself in similar circumstances, it’s the first song I’ll search out on my mp3 player, to see if it helps or reassures, to find solace, to compare notes or just to fill the journey to the hospital with something that won’t drive me to distraction. And that’s what this song, and the others on the album, are essentially all about, the same thing the archetypal good-hearted priest is all about – trying to help. This particular song might not be meant for me, right now, but if it manages to hit even a few people at the right time, if they hold onto it to some small extent in a hard place, Darnielle will have succeeded, and can be proud of his achievement, like a steadfast pastor of no fixed denomination.

You may think this is all getting kinda mealy-mouthed and sanctimonious – hell, you may have reached that decision as soon as you heard about the bible verse song title gimmick. But Darnielle’s success here comes in the way he approaches his subject matter not as a dogmatic Xtian, but as the kind of flawed, spiritually bereft post-industrial human that modernist novels always used to warn us about, picking up the lessons of the scriptures for the first time and finding them more relevant to his own being than he ever suspected. As the chaotic, self-doubting protagonist of ‘Romans 10:9’ confirms for us in a rousing chorus adapted straight from the text:

“If you can believe in your heart
And confess with your lips
Surely you will be
Saved one day”

And if we can put aside our kneejerk secular distaste for such phraseology and take that at face value, is it not a pretty fucking righteous note on which to start the day?

Mp3s:

Psalms 40:2
Genesis 30:3

Buy "The Life of the World to Come":

Norman
4AD

Labels: album reviews, The Mountain Goats

THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008: Part #6

5. Those Dancing Days - In Our Space Hero Suits (Wichita)


Dear Diary – Ok, I’ve got to admit it – I’ve got a MASSIVE crush on Those Dancing Days. A purely platonic, impersonal musical type crush I mean. I wasn’t really sure what to make of them when they first showed up; I’d see them from afar, played on the radio or, like, mentioned on some weblog, and I couldn’t even decide whether I liked them or not – they’d play a song, and I’d be like, wow, I know on some level that was completely incredible, but somehow… I dunno, I don’t know if I get there they’re coming from. I guess they just run with a different crowd. Like, people who read Artrocker, or Pitchfork, or college students or something. But – don’t ask me why - there was a certain something about them. They stuck in my mind. So I asked the people I knew about them, and some of them said “Yeah, I know them, they’re cool”, and other people were like “no way, you don’t wanna hang out with them, they’re lame!” But by that stage I just couldn’t stop thinking about them, and I had three songs by them that I’d just play over and over, and then their album came out, and it was even better. Every single song was amazing! And then one night I saw them, and and… I couldn’t help myself, I just blurted it all out:

"Wow, Those Dancing Days were FANTASTIC last night! One of the best live bands I’ve seen in ages…. If there’s one thing I don’t like about their records (and that’s a big IF) it’s that they’re a tad over-produced, so I’m so, so glad to have seen them totally rocking all those incredible songs live to a half empty hall of about a hundred students (and about eight people over twenty sticking out like sore thumbs) on a freezing Monday midnight. As is obvious from the records, their drummer is INCREDIBLE – she looks about twelve and rocks out like John Bonham doing session work for ’80s Madonna. And the rest of them are no slouches either – not much in the way of show(wo)manship, but that’s fine with me since they’re busy playing the living hell out of their songs and looking like they’re loving every second of it. The intro to every single song, even album tracks and b-sides, got an immediate “yes! I love this song!” reaction from me and/or others in the crowd, and it’s the first gig I’ve been to for ages that had a proper, spontaneous encore. Not to mention dancing on a Monday night. Shrug ‘em off if you like, but in their own way Those Dancing Days are DIY as fuck – no gimmicks or hype bullshit or pandering to genre/gender/age-based preconceptions, just five cool, characterful girls working hard to make the biggest, best, skyscraping, optimistic pop music they can imagine. WOW. I LOVE THIS BAND SO MUCH!”

Mp3> I Know Where You Live


4. Vivian Girls - s/t (Mauled By Tigers / In The Red)


I think I’ve probably said more than enough about these girls recently. Y’know, stuff like:

“Subject of a rising tide of hype, listeners in search of the latest outsider skree may be surprised to discover that Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls are initially a dead ringer for, well, The Shop Assistants. The sing-song melodies and echoes of ‘60s girl-group pop, the frantic, stand-up drumming at hardcore tempo, gloriously messy live-to-tape recording and skin-peeling early JAMC distortion – it’s all here, though admittedly with the C86 giddiness kicked out in favour of deadpan NY cool. That’s the formula, and as far as formulas go, you’d better believe it's a good one. But there’s more to the Vivian Girls than that. There’s something that’s hard to define creeping around the edges, something timeless that reveals scene-making hype for the sad joke it is, and that makes this record, this band, very special indeed.

The brittle love chants of “Wild Eyes” and “Tell the World” and corresponding temper tantrums “No” and “I Believe In Nothing” are almost vicious in their simplicity and emotional directness, dragged straight from the brain of any film noir teenage daughter of yesteryear, trying to make sense of a threatening, staccato black & white world. Pure, sinister, feminine rock n’ roll. But the girls wait until the stunning “Where Do You Run To” to really hit their stride, slowing down to a brooding, mid-tempo psychedelia, leaving shivering harmonies and tamed feedback hanging in the air like a frozen moment in some David Lynch directed dancehall of the soul – orange moon sinking on the horizon, sunglasses on stage, and there’s something bad waiting outside, but that’s ok, cos you’ll never have to go there.

Here is the kind of ineffable suburban teenage forever that Spector/Wilson wannabe producers sweat over their LA studio consoles for years to fleetingly recapture, reborn as a ragged punk howl and laid down raw and alive by three girls with little more than a couple of mics and a reverb unit. Such is the joy of life in 2008.”

Play loud.

Mp3> Where Do You Run To


3. The Wave Pictures - Instant Coffee Baby (Moshi Moshi)


The Wave Pictures have been around for a few years now, and they’ve made records in the past, and I’m sure they’ll continue to do great stuff in future. But I’m also confident that when future pop historians look back to tabulate our age, they will deem this one THE Wave Pictures record – the perfect moment that encapsulates the essence of everything that’s great about this band.

I must have seen The Wave Pictures play half a dozen times between mid ’07 and early ’08, and every time they were incredible – wowing the crowd, kicking out the jams, bringing a great, good natured atmosphere. Everything a live band is supposed to do, everything their mentors Herman Dune used to do at the peak of their powers a few years back. You know that feeling when you see a group play, and they’re trying out new-ish songs, and you’re just *floored * by how good they are, thinking “oh man, they’ve GOT to record that one for their album; no wait, this one’s DEFINITELY got to be the single” etc? You don’t? Well either way, it was a bit like that. Then along comes ‘Instant Coffee Baby’, and it’s got a full scorecard of all those songs that blew me away in their live set – ‘Just Like A Drummer’ and ‘that oranges one’ and ‘the one with that great line about the Italian coffee machine’ and so many others – only now they’ve got names, and they’ve been laid down live to tape over a few days in a basement studio, with perfect, clear sound, and with hand-claps, ad-libs, background laughter, guest appearances, rockin’ solos for everybody… all the energy and spontaneity of their live shows! “Tell ‘em about it on the bass guitar!” Fucking perfect!

David Tattersall’s star is blazing bright throughout this album, as a songwriter, guitarist, singer – love him or hate him, he’s definitely stepping up to the plate of the greats as a rock band central presence here, stamping every second of his songs with his personality, making them impossible to ignore. Desperately running down the joy and wreckage of a lifetime’s worth of romantic disasters, small town English upbringing and poverty-stricken touring exploits, he’s by turns arrogant, absurd, hilarious, spiteful, tender, baffling, bereft, naïve, spine-chilling, tender, dumb, hateful, lovable, conceited, heartbroken….. you get the idea, and like it or not, you know you’re gonna be playing these songs twenty, thirty times and enjoying the hell out of them before you get to the bottom of it all. There’s always been something almost militantly unpretentious about The Wave Pictures’ approach to music: three friends, whatever instruments are lying around, a three chord turnaround, a killer rhythm section, a few handfuls of real life-derived lyrics, a great melody on the chorus, a rockin’ solo just for laughs, and an unspoken sneer at anyone who needs more than that to get their point across. And on the strength of this album, it’s hard not to see their point. “And I read your letter / about how you love Sgt. Pepper / but I know one day / I’ll do better!”, David sings on ‘Kiss Me’. Mission accomplished, and then some.

Mp3> Instant Coffee Baby


2. The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride (4AD)


I threw more than enough words onto the fire regarding this one back in February. But regardless, here are a few more. Listened to with ten months retrospect, Heretic Pride above all seems like a chronicle of mental breakdown, reinterpreted as a masterpiece of imaginative songwriting, in which the turmoil of real life is projected back at the listener through the prism of gothic horror and pulp fiction imagery, to startling effect, as mist-shrouded agents block a desperate flight home, as a band t-shirt glimpsed in a bathroom reveals a desiccated corpse, as knives in an ex-girlfriend’s kitchen gleam like weapons in an inescapable killing ground, as a store clerk’s smile brings on visions of cosmic annihilation…. there but for the grace of god, etc. An extraordinarily powerful record, in every sense.

“I dreamt that I was purged atop
A throne of human skulls
On a cliff above the ocean
Howling wind and shrieking seagulls
And the dream went on forever
One single static frame
Sometimes you’ve got to go where everybody knows your name”

Mp3>How To Embrace A Swamp Creature


1. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City)


This year, I found myself devouring, internalising and generally clinging on to the Silver Jews back catalogue, much like a post-apocalyptic caveman who’s just discovered the bible. So it was with perfect timing that David Berman released one of his band’s strongest, and certainly their brightest, collections of songs to date, right on schedule to catch me at the height of my devotions. In a brief Q&A with Plan B magazine back in May, Berman said: “Touring gave me a good look at who I’d be speaking to when I wrote again. In the past I only had a blurry face to go on. What I saw was a lot of tender-hearted young people with little in the way of wisdom gained from harsh experience, leaving them vulnerable to the saturation and aftermath”. And indeed, his newfound confidence as a mentor to his listeners is obvious throughout ‘Lookout Mountain Lookout Sea’, as he steps boldly forward from the emotionally shaky foundations of 2005’s ‘comeback’ record ‘Tanglewood Numbers’, combining the gutter-bound wit of old with the infectious wisdom and musical perfectionism of a man born again, ready to share some lessons learned.

As with most truly great albums, this isn’t some epic attempt to paint a sprawling musical picture of the whole of life or something; it’s just thirty five minutes comprising ten carefully selected songs from the pile the band happened to have lying around, no more no less. Ten songs that, without wishing to overlook the band’s oft wondrous arrangements, any bum can recreate with a cracked voice and a handful of fingers; in fact a chord sheet and tabs are helpfully provided in the LP for that very purpose. But nonetheless, ten songs so densely packed with wit, wisdom, and crab-walking suburban profundity that their resonance will (I would like to think) echo long through the minds and hearts of the kind of people who listen to the words in songs and like to seek more songs with better words, long after Drag City has gone kaput in the face of the forthcoming dark age and the ‘Jews have retired to their poverty-stricken critical laurels.

I know I’ve used the words ‘wit’ and ‘wisdom’ twice in scarcely the space of a paragraph, but fuck it, wit and wisdom are what Silver Jews in 2008 are all about. Like every genius out there, Berman recognises that the funniest things and most serious things in life are one and the same, and, above all else, ‘Lookout Mountain..’ is uproariously entertaining. “San Francisco B.C.” has gotta be the most inspired long-form narrative song since the Velvets’ “The Gift” or Dylan’s “..115th Dream”, highlighting the most graceful wrangling of a rhyming dictionary I’ve ever encountered, whilst “Aloysius, Bluegrass Drummer” and “Partybarge”, initially sounding like goofy, confounding joke-songs, reveal delightfully skewed depths on repeat spins. “Suffering Jukebox” could launch a rousing singalong in any hypothetical honkytonk of the soul, its central conceit still flat-out killer after hundreds of listens, whilst closer “We Could Be Looking For The Same Thing” would raise bittersweet tears from the same audience of imagined mountain men moments later – simply a straight-up, beautiful and wholly honest love song – no gimmicks, no jive, no spikes.

‘Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea’ is one of those records, like Leonard Cohen or Richard Thompson used to make, like Jonathan Richman still does make, that is hugely enjoyable, but that teaches listeners something important at the same time, asking nothing in return. Edutainment for the soul. Quite what it’s teaching you exactly, I wouldn’t care to elaborate, that’s up to you to figure out, but let’s just say that if previous Silver Jews records were near-biblical masterpieces of self-pity, this one starts from the same square, but approaches the game with a hell of a lot more get up and go.

(Oh, and best cover art of the DECADE also, I think.)

“Somewhere in a foggy atlas
Lookout mountain, lookout sea
First life takes time, then time takes life
Now the next move’s up to me”

Roll on 2009.

Mp3>Strange Victory, Strange Defeat

Labels: album reviews, best of 2008, Silver Jews, The Mountain Goats, The Vivian Girls, The Wave Pictures, Those Dancing Days

THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008

Introductory Notes:

I’m not sure whether it’s because I’ve been exposed to more of it, because I’ve taken more of an interest, or simply because there’s been more going on that’s hit the right buttons for me, but regardless – 2008 has been a fantastic year for new music.

Whereas 2006 and 2007 found me listening mostly to old records and reissues, and struggling to scrape together a decent end of year top 10, this year I could easily have knocked out a list of fifty records I’ve enjoyed. Compromising slightly, I’ve got it down to a list of thirty really good ones.

And, for the first time in Stereo Sanctity history, I've put them in order too. I'm not sure why really; I guess there's just been so much stuff worthy of love this year, I felt the need to establish some kind of hierarchy to outline precisely which records had the biggest impact on me personally, and to stop the results just looking like a big, confusing mess of disparate music, or something. Obviously my numerical placements are pretty much arbitrary, as I realise that putting a recording of a symphony for 400 guitars next to a South London punk band next to one of Africa's most accomplished musicians next to Jonathan Richman and trying to decide which one is the best is a ludicrous proposition. But no matter, I've done it anyway!

Naturally this means I’ll have to count things down backwards, from #30 through to #1, split across six different posts that I’m gonna put up over the next couple of weeks, which will look slightly confusing if you’re reading ‘em all in one go, but c’mon, you’ve all got your GCSE maths (or nearest local equivalent), I’m sure you can figure it out.

Oh, and, er, THE RULES, as it were: everything I’ve heard during 2008 that was released in 2008 on a longer format than a 7” single, and that consisted primarily of music being released for the first time, has been considered for inclusion. So EPs, 12”s and other miscellaneous misshapes have been included, but no singles, and no reissues or compilations of previously released material. This means that possibly my overall favourite release of the year – Comet Gain’s singles & rarities comp ‘Broken Record Prayers’ – hasn’t made the cut… but that’s probably just as well, as trying to condense the essence of it’s twenty song motherlode of howling, singular expression into a couple of hundred words is somewhat beyond my writerly skills, at least until I’ve had a chance to live with the thing for a little longer.

And so, with these caveats in mind, we say: Hey, Ho! Let’s Go!:

THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008: Part #1

30. Michael Yonkers & The Blind Shake – Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons (Farm Girl Records)


You may recall my write up of Michael Yonkers’ debut LP ‘Microminiature Love’, on which he indulged his yen for DIY electronics and guitar vivisection, resulting in a mixture of detuned blues primitivism, suburban shut-in nihilism and all-out racket that rendered the record not so much ‘off the wall’ as ‘circling round the ceiling, shrieking like a robot hummingbird’ in the musical context of 1968. Well since then, Yonkers has been remained an elusive figure through necessity rather than choice, his recordings and live appearances sporadic since an industrial accident left him partially disabled during the ‘70s. But, on the basis of this new outing recorded with garage-rockers The Blind Shake, age certainly hasn’t mellowed our man, and his peculiar and terrifying sonic imagination remains undiminished. Coming on like a cacophonous mixture of Cleveland proto-punk, Sabbathian metal thunder and industrial circuit-bending skree, ‘Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons’ finds Yonkers and his collaborators still mercifully oblivious to any notion of canonical respectability, genre convention, or indeed sanity, as his perpetually dissatisfied songs see him taking umbrage with everything from non-specific liars n’ cheaters to the laws of organic chemistry. I recommend playing this one on the stereo at work, just to see the beautiful look on your colleagues’ faces as any hopes might harbour that you’re actually a productive, upstanding citizen with whom they can meaningfully communicate fall away in an instant.

Mp3> Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons


29. Cheap Time – s/t (In The Red)


Not much to say about this one. It’s just a killer album of noisy, punk-ass, home-recorded power-pop. Fourteen songs, each one loaded with exactly the kind of hooks and windmilling guitar licks you wanna hear (or I wanna hear them anyway), thirteen of them clocking in under 2:30. Nice! Echoes here of the songs that actually rock on any given Sloan album, The Nazz, Buzzcocks, Redd Kross – you know the score. All busted out on four-track with mega tape compression and weedy, yelped vocals, and they don’t piss about dragging every mediocre tune out to four and a half minutes like most power-pop outfits either. If Cheap Time are lacking anything, it’s character; tracks fly by in a pretty uniform fashion, and lyrics are mostly pretty inconsequential, but who cares, let’s rock!

Mp3> People Talk


28. Cars Can Be Blue – Doubly Unbeatable (Happy Happy Birthday To Me)


Cars Can Be Blue are, for me at least, the kind of band the ‘skip’ button was invented for. The duo’s more straight up, 100 second guitar/drums pop-punk blasts are vicious things of wonder, directed straight to my musical pleasure points. Three chords, killer melody, zero instrumental fat, a GO GO GO pace and lyrics that alternate between bitchy, cynical insecure ranting and heart-rending straight-to-the-point honesty in a thoroughly beguiling manner more akin to The Queers or Bratmobile than their supposed indie-pop peers. If all 16 songs on here were as good as the opening one-two punch of “Sun Blows Up” and “Coattails”, they’d be top ten, no questions asked. Unfortunately though, CCBB have also built their notoriety largely on a tendency toward one joke potty-mouth comedy songs and skits which are, well… absolutely dreadful to be honest. I mean, that kinda stuff’s not really my scene at the best of times, but CCBB’s contributions to the oeuvre really seem to suffer from a drop in musical standards and a loss of the charm of their better material, rendering them merely kinda tedious and nasty. So for every song here that’s GREAT, you’ve got one that’s kind of ok, and then one that’s just…. NO. The brilliant twelve minutes or so of this record is still some pretty special kinda brilliant though, so here’s hoping for more of it in future.

Mp3> Coat Tails


27. Jennifer Gentle – Effervescent Land EP (Heron Recordings)


If the old, two-man Jennifer Gentle sounded like an alien Syd Barrett impersonator trying to get to grips with earth technology, their current quartet line-up is more like the ten armed, helium-voiced hindu monster spirit of Syd himself, freefalling back into our dimension with enough sugarcubes to kill an elephant and a whole load of new tricks to show off. What the new incarnation has in common with old though is that it still makes about the most utterly joyful, hyper-imaginative, lunatic psychedelic pop available to us on this mortal plain, as revealed to great effect on this splendid four-tracker. Seeing these guys in the flesh for the first time was definitely one of my favourite gigs of the year – just breathtaking. Everything about their music is so, so WRONG, from the affected, temper tantrum shrieking, to the ham-fisted Morricone dramatics, the prog-afflicted mellotron excursions, multiple kazoo solos, wacky slide guitar licks, blaring feedback… dear god, how do these strange Italian men manage to combine it all into something so wondrously RIGHT..? Pop from another dimension in which the Olivia Tremor Control were slaughtered Giallo-style by full moon crazed loons, who didn’t mean any harm, it’s just… it’s just what they do.

Mp3> She’sAlright


26. The Mountain Goats & Kaki King – Black Pear Tree EP (self-released tour 12”)


A great example of two artists with their own highly distinctive working methods getting together in the name of mutual appreciation to make something together, each shedding an interesting new light on the other’s work. John D. brought along a handful of top notch songs, oft recalling the desolation of ‘..Get Lonely’ with an added dose of morbid apocalyptic imagery, along with his new-found fondness for hammering away dramatically at the piano, Nick Cave style. Kaki meanwhile brought her expressively muscular guitar style, her gift for killer arrangements and sound textures, and her hesitant, dislocated vocal harmonies. The result: six very strange and beautiful songs that sound like both, and simultaneously neither, artist. Some pleasantly head-scratching subject matter is on hand too; ‘Roger Patterson Van’ chronicles the death of the bass player from the band Atheist (thanks, wikipedia), whilst ‘Thank You Mario, But Our Princess Is In Another Castle’ appears to be written from the point of view of one of those frogs or mushrooms or whoever the fuck it is that Mario rescues at the end of each level in Super Mario Bros. And it’s a far more earnest and well-developed character study than you’d suspect any song written on that subject by a sane individual really should be, too. I think ‘Supergenesis’ might be about a video game character too – a troubled, pixelated warrior snake it would seem: “feel the wet leaves pressed against me / cling like drowning men / try to hoist myself upright, again, try again..”. I know Darnielle has never been one to do things in half measures, but he might want to consider cutting down on the Nintendo in future. Despite such eccentricities though, these six songs share a rich vein of low key brooding weirdness that I feel renders them this year’s best soundtrack to pondering historical oddities in dilapidated autumnal churchyards.

Oh, and I’ll take this opportunity to note that Kaki King’s album ‘Dreaming Of Revenge’ is really, really excellent too, and should definitely be in this top 30 somewhere, except I can’t think of anything in particular to say about it, and I’m not entirely sure it was 2008. It’s a splendid piece of work anyway, and if I were her I’d be pissed at having been left off the list in favour of a bunch of trashy rock rubbish, and would boycott this blog forever.

Mp3> Black Pear Tree

Labels: album reviews, best of 2008, Cars Can Be Blue, Cheap Time, Jennifer Gentle, Kaki King, Michael Yonkers Band, The Mountain Goats