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

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

I swear, one year I’ll get these damn things finished before January 1st. Happy New Year, everybody.


15. The Girls At Dawn – Call the Doctor (Norton)

Finally acquiring a copy of the Girls At Dawn’s debut LP, my reaction was mixed – immediate confirmation that this is strange and instinctive music that I am duty bound to love, combined with the sad realisation that it is inevitably going to be pretty misunderstood.

I’ve not actually read any reviews of “Call The Doctor” yet, positive or negative, but given the inelegant toings and froings of modern day music crit discourse, I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna be a holocaust. I think that for a lot of people out there who’ve been fuming over the deductive hype accorded to Vivian Girls, Waaves and so on, the very existence of a band like this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

And unfortunately, the fact that Girls At Dawn are really, really good in their own quiet way is liable to be lost as soon as reviewers have grokked their publicity photos and list of the groups they’ve shared bills with, and as soon as they’ve heard the thin, shaky reverb-heavy sound of this record’s first side ring out, flagrantly lacking in the kind of ‘ideas’ and ‘hooks’ by which impatient listeners are understandably want to judge such product.

Would I be listening to this lazy-ass crap if these guys weren’t pretty girls from Brooklyn recording on a bunch of trendy labels…? I dunno man. Would we be listening to Black Sabbath if they were a group of Mexican women recording in the 1930s? Enough with the meaningless cultural-context choked sneers already.

Fact is, I find a stirring strangeness and subtlety to Girls At Dawns music that may not be immediately obvious; something that may take a receptive listener to appreciate, and something that I’ve avoided trying to talk about thus far cos I don’t know quite how to get at it. To me, there’s something lost and mystical in GAD’s essentialist take on garage/pop dogmas – their ‘Back From The Grave’ guitar, stand-up drummer thud and nervous schoolgirl chorusing – it’s like The Juju’s singing “D’You Understand Me?”, if they’d been raised in a woodlands shack, poring over medieval manuscripts.

They may be a band that lives in the city, but spiritually speaking everything on this record seems to dwell deep in the woods. I dunno which woods – maybe just the adolescent creepo woods that anxious teenagers go for walks in when left alone in their bedrooms, maybe the woods where ‘Sabbath went to do that weird, frowning poster insert for “Master of Reality”, maybe werewolf-haunted woods of Roky Erickson, obliquely hymned here on “The Evil One”.

Whilst there’s nothing here quite as spine-shivering as their amazing “Every Night” single, this album is a definite step up from the Captured Tracks 12”. The songs are simple, strong and knocked out with a stubborn, heads-down determination. The production is also simple, strong and real cool, with some nice underplayed psychedelic flourishes. At different points, Girls At Dawn take a shot at ‘60s girl group naiveté, at mutant Nuggets garage and at chiming ‘00s reverb-pop – but wherever they go, they just can’t shake those woods – and I like bands that leave me lost in the woods.

Mp3> Reach Me (Don’t Forget)


14. Purling Hiss – Hissteria / Public Service Announcement (Ritchie Records / Woodsist)


Oh man, is it time to write about Purling Hiss? Fuckin’ A! I love this guy!

I know Ron Asheton wisely kept off the smack during his time in The Stooges, but if we imagine what a perfect Ron opium reverie might have sounded like circa “Funhouse”, that’s what “Hissteria” delivers – flying fingers of fuzz-wah flame spazzing out endlessly across a sea of primeval delinquent stomp whilst some dude yelps stuff like “shake, c’mon” and “UGH” through a ceiling fan in the distance. The ambience may be strictly stoner/psyche 4-track overdub-land rather than a true live-band beatdown, but basically this stuff is pure distilled rock n’ roll, delivered in absurd, elephant-killing doses. And hopefully I don’t need to tell you that it’s fucking brilliant. I’m sure we’ve all got plenty of examples in our record collections of lead guitarists blundering around interminably for ten minutes, so to find a guy who can lay it down for that duration over a locked groove two chord boogie and have us floating to the ceiling throughout is surely an event worthy of celebration. A wager for any Hawkwind/Razilles/Allman Bros devotees out there: “Down On The Delaware River” for the most ass-ripping fourteen minutes of cosmic, eternal-now choogle you’ve heard this year, or your money back.

“Public Service Announcement” meanwhile is somewhat of a different proposition, but perhaps one of wider appeal. Opener “Run From The City” is a short-form cosmic hard rock masterpiece, with a central guitar hook to die for. It is painstakingly assembled and period appropriate, but recorded at what sounds like mono 4-track quality. If someone had told me it was some long-lost acetate from 1973 dug up from the vaults of a derelict studio, not only would I have believed you, I’d still have put it on just about every mix CD I make for the next eighteen months. It occurred to me for the first time today that maybe, just maybe, that riff gets a bit monotonous and he should have varied it a bit more. Apparently that was on my sixteenth listen.

The rest of the album regrettably does not follow suit, but it does at least sound like a highly creditable demos/odds n’ sods collection from a very talented guy, mixing instrumental noise sketches with a handful of dazzlingly groovy ascousitc-ish psyche rockers, gaining Purling Hiss a bonus merit award for song-writing alongside his peerless achievements in the fields of fuzz guitar mastery and all-purpose noise oblivion, as “Dpm” and “Beautiful Earth Creature” in particular fly by blissfully, distant kin to Gary Higgins’ “Red Hash”, The ‘Elevators “Splash # 1” / “Tried To Hide” soul stirring, or maybe even some particularly blitzed Posies/Lemonheads power-pop.

Mp3> Run From The City


13. Modern Witch – CDR (Disaro)

From June 2010:

“Creepy and lifeless as it may initially sound, I think that a hell of a lot of attention and imagination has been invested in this Modern Witch record, and a wealth of effective and chilling moments are the result… if you’re ready/able to pick up on ‘em.

Why has “In Your Eyes” – a hypnotic disco blissout that could have been pulled from a Larry Levan DJ set – been deliberately muffled to the extent that we could be listening to it through a brick wall in the alleyway next to the club? And what are we to say to the dot matrix printer that rampages in far higher fidelity over the end of the track? What dark secrets lie behind “Not The Only One”, in which an emotionless narrative of “buying food items” with a unnamed an co-conspirator is paired with an impossibly sinister Zombie Flesh Eaters backing track, while the singsong chorus states “I was not the only one / who believed what you said to me”?

“I Can’t Live In A Living Room” is the ‘hit’, swaying closer to punkoid reality by way of sounding like Niagara from Destroy All Monsters fronting a New York claustrophobia-wracked version of The Screamers, but even here they’re very knowingly playing to a crowd for whom descriptions like that actually make sense, almost DARING you to mute your enjoyment long enough to call foul on such internet-era retro-plagiarism. I don’t wanna do that though, cos the song f-ing rules.

And if the more jarring, fragmentary blurts of sound here sound like they could have been pulled straight off the soundtrack to “Liquid Sky”, then similarly, one is dared to recall how that film’s producers had to queue up for the chance to wrestle with a gigantic, public access synthesizer to realise their impossible dream of a twisted fashionista future, whereas Modern Witch presumably had a pretty chilled out time plugging some cool bits of old gear she/he/they/it got off ebay straight into the laptop and letting rip.

Perhaps *because* of such easy availability, the idea of some untarnished progression and innovation in pop music has seemed pretty dumb to me ever since people got bored of listening to exploding-harddrive post-Aphex Twin music a few years back. What else have you got in the future box? Atari Teenage Riot are getting back together to do nostalgia shows – it’s hilarious. Thirty three years after “no future”, is it any wonder that the most fun way to approach the future is to reimagine a new past and project it forward? Will I break some sort of record if I pose any more rhetorical questions?

And furthermore, the early ‘80s seem a particularly effective battleground for such shenanigans – a period in which the scary proclamations of the original Italian futurists seemed to finally trickle down into popular culture, as people started consciously making their music and movies rich with FUTURE. Even today, bands essentially playing Joy Division-style post-punk get lauded by The Guardian for their bleak, futurist vision, even as their reliance on before-we-were-born nostalgia means they might as well be doing a set of Hollies covers. By contrast, Modern Witch represents a prime vehicle for some more worthwhile re-enactment. Like the British hauntology records, all the jumping off points for a complete sensory experience are right there in the sound. Close your eyes and the visuals will come.”

Mp3>Boyz


12. LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus 12” (Not Not Fun)

From July 2010:

“Consciously modelled on one of those classic “so-and-so meets so-and-so” dub platters from the ‘70s, what we essentially have here is the sound of two spooky, stoned 21st century rich girls making a kinda temporally disconnected, neon-midnight stab at a dub record.

I don’t mean that to sound dismissive; after long years in which the thoughts and doings of spooky, stoned rich girls in the USA were nowt but a cruel mystery to me, I feel happy and privileged to live in a world where awesome things like this can exist and filter their way into culture so casually.

[…]

[LA Vampires] does the stabbing synth-bass riffs, sliced up ‘80s electro rhythm tracks and cosmic horror echo webs here, while [Zola Jesus] gets to hear some of her distinctive vocal melodies and operatic reveries stretched and laced up across the music, left to float alone in distant wells of mega-delay. Songs are present, and they are cool, but structure swiftly fades in favour of, well, y’know… dubbing it up. Imagine if, god… I don’t know; imagine if Scientist had done a score to ‘The Hunger’ or something. Sounds good? Hop in!

LA and Zola’s reinvention of Dawn Penn’s “No No No” is playing right now, and it’s as sweet and terrifying as you’d expect. You don’t love me, yes I know now (creeping up, knife in teeth.)

It’s easy to wax lyrical on a record like this, but let’s put it plainly – these ladies are so fucking talented they’re making GOTH-DUB sound like a brilliant idea. Think on that for a minute, and then pay whatever Rough Trade are asking for a copy of this.”

Mp3> Bone is Bloodstone


11. Cinema Red & Blue – s/t (What’s Yr Rupture?)

Hard to tell quite what the Cinema Red & Blue project represents in terms of the David Feck songbook – sudden burst of communal inspiration or warehouse clearance exercise? Either way, this collaboration between Feck and assorted NYC acolytes is sterling stuff, and if there’re a few cringeworthy, first thought/best thought numbers that I’d be happy never to hear again, and a few pleasantly obscurist cover versions to make up the numbers (The Chills, Vic Goddard and, er, Julian Cope), the lion’s share of this set is still strong enough to render it at about 50% as exciting as a new Comet Gain record. Which, needless to say, is plenty exciting.

It’s funny that whilst I still find the music of Crystal Stilts simply intolerable (I heard their new single on the radio last month and nearly hurled the set through the window, before I had a clue who the offending band were), their members do a perfectly creditable job here backing up Mr. Feck, emerging with a sound somewhat like a wussier CG who are worried about waking up the neighbours. Which, needless to say, is plenty fine.

Feck for his part is sticking strongly here to the kind of storm-chasing indie nostalgia and morbid self-examination that has predominated in his work of recent years, but as ever, he can invest power, defiance and roaring self-definition into these questionable preoccupations, knocking at least four or five of these fuckers straight into the can marked ‘greatest hits’.

And as usual, I feel like he must be channelling my sub-conscious mind on “Far Out Isn’t Far Enough” (YES) and the astounding “Ballad of a Vision Pure” (next in a long lineage of perfect, self-mythologisin’ Feck/Gain classics), such do their respective sentiments stir my dusty loins. I wish he’d stop, it’s getting embarrassing. Elsewhere, “All Night Worker” is a storming, organ-led floor-filler, taking a tip from The Downliner’s Sect, expanding it via a quick sweepstakes of night shift employment woes into one of the most swinging, rambunctious cuts I’ve heard this year. Certainly sounds like everybody’s having a great time anyway, neighbours temporarily forgotten. "Ghost Confessions is the best meandering, self-pitying number about wasting one's life and leaving yr best years behind you etc I've heard this year, and "Jesse Lee Kincaid" with a spoken word coda from Hamish Kilgour is pretty damn special. Of course, every Comet Gain-related record needs one pristine jangle-pop classic so accidentally perfect that every indie-pop chancer around will be kicking themselves they didn’t record it first, and “Melanie Down”, exquisitely rendered tale of the “queen of the feedback crowd” awaiting her downfall on “the back streets of Kentish Town”, delivers.

Face it: most of you fuckers could toil for a lifetime and not come up with an example of the form to match that one. Feck knocks it out in-between beers to fill track # 6 on a side-project album when he can’t think of another meandering, self-pitying number about how he’s wasted his life and his best years are behind him. You do the math, then buy all his records and cry.

Mp3> Ballad of a Vision Pure

Labels: best of 2010, Cinema Red and Blue, Comet Gain, LA Vampires, Modern Witch, Purling Hiss, The Girls At Dawn, Zola Jesus

Zola Jesus
CAMP Basement, September ‘10

Earlier this year I went to see Zola Jesus play, just about the point at which the hype was about to boil over and people who weren’t really interested decided they needed to have an opinion, I suppose. I had to get up really early the next morning to catch a plane, nobody wanted to come with me, and I wasn’t drinking. It was a pretty heavy show, but I’m very glad I went.

Befitting the broadband-era culture-tripping escapist aesthetic this music has grown from & thrived in, it was like some worried parent’s idea of a ‘contemporary underground music happening’. Poorly lit, peeling-white-paint concrete basement beneath some kind of East End art gallery; sparse, motionless crowd grimly staring at their feet, wincing at the bass feedback as the sound-man ruthlessly pushes the volume on some mix CD of monged out ‘witch house’ type music. Funny, I’d never really thought about the possibility of listening to that stuff loudly before. It’s always been background volume, computer speaker music to me. I dunno whether this kind of weight improves it or not, but it at least helps this potentially bland, style-over-contenty sound achieve a reassuring level of obnoxiousness, hitting some combo of pummelling, sleepy and intimidating with requisite discomfort.

Presently, two serious-looking dudes stand behind keyboards – big old Yamaha, Casio ones, like every kid in school used to have. That’s fine, but the complete lack of pedals and backline amps unnerves my rockist sensibilities. Is some straight DIed fucking 1989 Christmas present really gonna make the grade here? It feels like I’ve been standing on this hard floor for about, like, eight hours or something, sipping this bottle of tap water, waiting for something to happen. She’s a big famous act now after all, this Zola Jesus, I’m sure she knows how to deliver.

The guy with the keyboard rig on the right is really something. Greasy hair, severe side parting, aura of total aggressive concentration – sort of a conquering nerd in triumph. If I remember right, he’s wearing a tight leather jacket over tight primary-coloured t-shirt… maybe even with a bandana tied ‘round the jacket-arm? (I can’t be sure on that last point – he’s merging in my mind with about a thousand fuzzy thugs from ‘80s movies.) Doesn’t sound like much I know, but the way he wears it constitutes one hell of a look. Icing on the cake though is the glasses – again, I can’t quite describe ‘em properly (wish I’d had a chance to write this fucking stuff down closer to the time – bloody life), but they were… y’know, the perfect glasses for the surroundings, the kind he’d never have found by accident – heavy white moulded plastic, with a continuous line running across the top – like those torch-glasses Orbital used to have, only without the torches, maybe? Standing behind his Casio like he’s preparing to unleash the sound of utter cosmic death (#21, synth-trumpet setting), this guy is modelling his whole scene on a middle-aged man from 1983’s idea of what the future might be like, staring us down as if daring us to even suggest that’s not the normal, sensible way for a bad-ass synth-punk keyboard player to dress circa 2010. Isn’t that great?

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.

I don’t remember what she was wearing – just a baggy white t shirt and tight jeans or something I think. No big entrance, nothing affected or theatrical going on here beyond keyboard-guy’s Escape From New York stylings – just a straight, dead-pan, deafening performance of music.

I do recall thinking her new straggly, bottle blonde new un-hairdo was really cool – great way to instantly wrong-foot all that ‘new saviour of Goth’ claptrap that seems to have stuck to her largely on the basis of a few regrettable press shots from a couple of years ago. Time moves fast between nineteen and twenty-one, especially when you become an almost-pop star in the middle and people in newspapers start calling you ‘the new saviour of Goth’, or so I’d imagine. (Just flicking through videos on Youtube for this post, I found ‘goth-psyche queen’, ‘post-goth icon’ – forfuckssake, I don’t know about you but I certainly never heard any “goth” that sounded much like this…)

I also remember being impressed by the way that, although she’s a very small person, she seems to generate a sense of hugeness around herself. As the music would lead you to suspect, she’s a pretty intense presence really, with a touch of Patti Smith about her maybe – that combination of mad, determined stare and nervous, self-conscious movements, y’know what I mean? Not coolest-woman-in-the-world early ‘70s Patti though, more like Easter-era Patti, when everything was starting to unravel, getting a bit crazed and bombastic as she drove her untouchable rock star mystique further onto the rocks like some doomed lifeboat…

Which is appropriate, cos more than anything in the past year or so, Zola J. sounds like some vengeful ghost rising from a thousand burning copies of “Because The Night”, a song she MUST get around to covering sometime, surely, if only in private, for a laugh. And I keep thinking there’s a lot of Springsteen lurking in what she does too, believe it or not. Hidden deep in the undergrowth somewhere, waiting to leap out and scare us with some butt-rocking power-ballad about a workin’ man searching for meaning on the endless highway or whatnot. I mean, who could possibly be more goth than The Boss? Think about it. [Nods sagely.]

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.

A few times towards the end of the set, maybe just to try and make it a ‘show’ y’know, or to justify some perceived desire for a bit of ‘craziness’, Nika does the long mic-cord thing and ploughs a path through the crowd and back, mid-song. I’d be perfectly fine if she didn’t to be honest, but ok, whatever. Returning from her peregrinations as the last song begins, she’s clutching an empty coke bottle by the neck like a weapon. Uh, ok. That’s cool. But somewhere in the back of my head, I’m reflecting on that scary/contrived look in her eye, thinking, we here in London don’t really know where we stand with this rather singular just-post-teenage girl of evidently immense talent who’s just had notoriety and global kinda-fame thrust upon her on an internet-accelerated timespan and started touring the world playing alarming melodramatic synth pop songs every night and…. there’s only a very short list of reasons why someone would suddenly decide to wave a bottle around like that in public, y’know, and none of them are very reassuring….

The song starts to grind to a halt with a series of hammering, martial fake-drum rolls and ecstatic/agonising howls, and on the final programmed beat, she brings the bottle down SMASH against an unused mic stand – perfect aim, perfect timing! Sound vanishes (no amps, so no feedback), show’s over. No encore. Wow.

Labels: live reviews, videos, Zola Jesus

SINGLES APOCALYPSE: Part # whatever

I’m really sorry about the recent lack of posting. A few weeks of non-stop drinking, carousing and musicing have taken their toll on my regular, boredom-based writing schedule.

Any attempt to keep reviewing new singles in alphabetical order is completely out of the window by now I’m afraid, but here are a couple I wrote before the deluge, and more random grabs from the pile around the hi-fi, and other top notch ‘content’ will hopefully be with you shortly…


LA Vampires & Zola Jesus –
LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus 12”
(Not Not Fun)

Consciously modelled on one of those classic “so-and-so meets so-and-so” dub platters from the ‘70s, what we essentially have here is the sound of two spooky, stoned 21st century rich girls making a kinda temporally disconnected, neon-midnight stab at a dub record.

I don’t mean that to sound dismissive; after long years in which the thoughts and doings of spooky, stoned rich girls in the USA were nowt but a cruel mystery to me, I feel happy and privileged to live in a world where awesome things like this can exist and filter their way into culture so casually.

LA Vampires is ex-Pocahaunted (and seriously, who’d have guessed THEY’D prove such a rich jumping off point for inspired side/successor projects when they were busy making lmtd-to-50 tapes full of garbled guff for Byron Coley to drool on a few years back?); Zola Jesus you already know, I hope.

The former does the stabbing synth-bass riffs, sliced up ‘80s electro rhythm tracks and cosmic horror echo webs here, while the latter gets to hear some of her distinctive vocal melodies and operatic reveries stretched and laced up across the music, left to float alone in distant wells of mega-delay. Songs are present, and they are cool, but structure swiftly fades in favour of, well, y’know… dubbing it up. Imagine if, god… I don’t know; imagine if Scientist had done a score to ‘The Hunger’ or something. Sounds good? Hop in!

LA and Zola’s reinvention of Dawn Penn’s “No No No” is playing right now, and it’s as sweet and terrifying as you’d expect. You don’t love me, yes I know now (creeping up, knife in teeth.)

It’s easy to wax lyrical on a record like this, but let’s put it plainly – these ladies are so fucking talented they’re making GOTH-DUB sound like a brilliant idea. Think on that for a minute, and then pay whatever Rough Trade are asking for a copy of this.

http://www.myspace.com/zolajesus
http://www.last.fm/music/LA+Vampires
http://www.notnotfun.com/now.html

Pens –
You Only Like Me When I Tell You I’m Wrong
(DeStijl)

I haven’t managed to see Pens play as often as I probably shoulda done, given that I live in the same city as them, so whilst it was probably old news by the time I saw them play a Ladyfest do in Goldsmiths cafeteria earlier this year, I was still astonished by the progress they’ve made as a band.

In both sound and appearance, they seem to have undergone an almost total transformation from the Pens who recorded their supremely obnoxious noise-bomb of an LP last year, the one I saw few times way back when, filling shithole venues with their cheap, sickening fuzz and fuck-you amateur stomp. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that band, but Pens Mk.2 are soundin’ real convincin’ too - still not following the rules, still doing what comes naturally, but with greater experience leading away from chaos toward a land of pummelling, bass-heavy rhythm shit and alternate world musicality, inevitably touching upon the same Raincoats-birthed femme-rock trajectory as contemporaries like Trash Kit, Wet Dog, Grass Widow et al. Full of GREAT new material (they old played one or two numbers off the album), their set went down a storm with friends of mine whom I’d imagine woulda spit feathers if confronted by the old Pens. Particularly noteworthy was an absolutely astounding closing song, which conveniently turns up here, entitled “You Only Like Me When I Tell You I’m Wrong”.

Though still comfortably grounded in the home-recorded clatter of yore, this is probably the best composition Pens have put on record to date, as violin-toned keyboard sounds scrape out the riff and exuberant, cymbal heavy drumming hold down the centre against relatively restrained guitar fuzz as the girls harmonise their way through the title-repeating chorus in just the most… brilliant fashion. A great song, plain and simple, and “Love Rules” on the B is no slouch either, mixing a Grass Widow-ish surf guitar line with thrumming bass feedback and a desperately foreboding descending melody line… I know it’s an unspeakable cliche to go around comparing every vaguely idiosyncratic female group to The Raincoats, but the influence of their first album hangs heavy over these tunes in the best possible way – rough-hewn, self-created, furious, awkward fun. Fairytale in the Old Blue Last, anyone?

http://www.myspace.com/penspenspenis
http://destijlrecs.com/

Labels: LA Vampires, Pens, singles reviews, Zola Jesus

THE FIFTY BEST RECORDS OF 2009: Part #2

45. Crocodiles – Summer of Hate (Fat Possum)

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

Mp3>Soft Skull (In My Room)




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

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

Mp3>Freddie





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

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

Mp3>Wallpaper Stripes



42. Mastodon – Crack the Skye (Reprise)

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

Mp3>Quintessence


41. Zola Jesus – The Spoils (Sacred Bones)

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

Mp3>Clay Bodies

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