THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2007:
Part Three

MIKA MIKO – C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. (Kill Rock Stars)

I’m so pissed off that I missed the Mika Miko / No Age show at the Luminaire back in June. I even had a ticket. Damn birthday parties! Anyway, point is, Mika Miko are an all-female punk band from Los Angeles, only two of the thirteen songs they recorded for this debut album hit the two minute mark, and OMG, they absolutely SLAY. “The Slits being Black Flag” is what somebody or other said. The Slits comparison is slightly erroneous as there’s no reggae here, but Mika Miko definitely have that wild, self-sufficient !GIRL-GANG! energy going on, so we’ll let it slide. As to the `Flag comparison, well, yeah, I guess I’ll take it. Mika Miko may work the kind of spidery guitar-lines and stabby white-funk rhythms that seem to come as naturally to modern kids as ‘Louis Louis’ did to the ‘70s punks, but that can’t hide the fact that the vibe here is pure early Californian hardcore, and all the more thrilling for it, recalling a time and place in which the punk bands were still desperate weirdoes, unhindered by generic convention, grabbing influences from all over and hammering them down as fast as they could on the cheapest recording equipment in town. Maybe it’s LA’s status as a giant, soulless suburb that allows it to throw out some rock n’ roll this vital and crazed every now and then: “white, suburban delinquent music”, just like Iggy intended. To understand Mika Miko is to understand mic cables tangled around limbs, incomprehensible vocal takes yelled down what sounds like an international phoneline, Lorna Doom learning to play bass as she went along in The Germs, grazed knees, too many sweets, Robert Quine’s guitar solo on ‘Love Comes In Spurts’, songs that finish before you realise they’d started and drum beats whose sole purpose in life is to go BOUNCE!BOUNCE!BOUNCE!BOUNCE!BOUNCE!

This is decadent 2007 though, the key advantage being that instead of having to make a virtue of misery like the old punks, Mika Miko are content to just sound like they’re having Tons O’ Fun. 2007 also means that instead of toiling in vinyl darkness in the SST mines, Mika Miko can be part of arty partying type cliques, can pick up a bunch of hype from crappy free magazines, can wear stupid hats without fear of ridicule and can make groovy videos like the one below. Most of the time I hate 21st century po-mo hipster-media culture by default, but maybe, just maybe, there are occasions to stand and salute the moments of righteousness it can bring us.



And no, I don’t know what C.Y.S.L.A.B.F stands for. And I don’t know what any of the lyrics on this album are about either, but I suspect they’re probably about being awesome.

Mp3 > Jogging Song (He’s Your Mr. Right)


NO AGE – WEIRDO RIPPERS (FatCat)

I’m still pissed off that I missed that Mika Miko / No Age show at the Luminaire back in June. But at least they have the good grace to be close together in the alphabet, so that they follow each other in my album round-up. Anyway, No Age are ostensibly two guys from LA who play guitar and drums and used to be in a hardcore band, and I did a review of this record by them for Freq back in April. I’m actually quite surprised to see it popping up so prominently on my best-of-year list. Because you see, by any conventionally applicable standard, ‘Weirdo Rippers’ is NOT a great album. It’s patchy and it’s self-indulgent and it’s really badly recorded, and I’d be unlikely to play it to anyone and expect them to be immediately impressed. So what’s the score? Well basically, ‘Weirdo Rippers’ is *exciting*. If you’ll permit me to quote myself again:

“‘No Age do noise, No Age do pop (in a manner of speaking), but only infrequently do the two meet. These meetings prove to be the most interesting bits, and it is the tension between the two approaches that helps make Weirdo Rippers such an attention-grabbing singularity. All things considered, No Age's 'noise' tracks are exceptionally good, betraying a level of forethought and imagination that eludes many. […] Batteries of cheapola guitar effects summon up the kind of melancholic fuzz-scape dreamt of by post-MBV shoegaze disciples, interspersed with warped found sound textures and other intriguing sonic wreckage. […] Chopped and spliced into this nodding-out-on-petrol-fumes extravaganza are examples of the 'other' No Age, playing flailing guitar and drums beat-downs, recorded in classic dictaphone-in-the-rehearsal-room style. Here, No Age wisely reject the post-Lightning Bolt consensus of testosterone-fuelled sensory overload, instead playing up their relative technical inadequacies, thrashing sloppily at some distant horizon, strangulated geek yelping expressing mockery and self-belief in equal measure, eventually rallying around some semblance of a melody and coalescing into outbursts of refreshingly straightforward surf-riffin' guitar pop, imbuing No Age's noise-trash hardcore approach with a cracked strain of humanity and humour […] One of the most exciting thing I've heard from the American underground this year, No Age's positivist approach makes Weirdo Rippers a shot across the bows of the increasingly complacent noise scene, and suggests that, given some studio time and a crate of new toys, these boys are likely to return with something truly special.”

So there you go. “My Life’s Alright Without You” is still my favourite tune from the album, and I think it sufficiently demonstrates everything that’s great about No Age, circumnavigating The Dead C via Weezer over the course of 90 seconds. What’s not to love?

Mp3 > My Life’s Alright Without You


OM – PILGRIMAGE (Southern Lord)

Somehow I’ve managed to miss out on Om’s output over the past few years, so I can’t really comment re: how this record measures up to their previous work, but let me simply say…. Whoa. On ‘Pilgrimage’, Om demonstrate their mastery of the essentials of metal, raising the form to a zen-like plateau wherein heavy music no longer even needs to be loud to achieve heaviocity…. it’s simply spiritually heavy. Quiet music somehow hewn from lead weights, dumbbells and monolithic boulders. And then, after a good, long while, it does get loud, and it’s like, WHOA. Old Testament. Avert your eyes from the majesty of The Riff, lest ye be smote. Or smitten. Or whatever; you get the point. The God whose praises Om sing doesn’t piss about, so it’s a pretty hard point to miss.

I’m not posting an MP3 because this is half an hour of music that is clearly meant to be experienced in one go, preferably whilst laying down in darkness with the bass on the EQ cranked really high, and such is the grace of the transitions between segments that placing one in isolation from the rest would seem kind of sacrilegious.


PANDA BEAR – PERSON PITCH (Paw Tracks)

Well, you knew it was coming. ‘Person Pitch’ seems to have become this year’s default list-topper across the board of indie-media, even achieving the dubious distinction of triumphing in Pitchfork’s 2007 run-down. Unlike the vast majority of previous list-topping buzz records though, ‘Person Pitch’ is also what we here at Stereo Sanctity would consider to be a really, really wonderful album, and as such it is heartening to see that so many people seem to have dug it. For the uninitiated, what Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, has essentially done here is to loop some particularly ecstatic moments from his record collection and other found sound sources, warp them beyond recognition with pitch-shifting, delay and vast, oceanic reverb, and craft them into palaces of dense, hypnotic, dub-pop over which he harmonises with himself in his distinctive high-pitched croon, applying the logic of song and instinctively pulling beautifully formal, cyclical, endlessly comforting melodies out of what in lesser hands could have simply emerged as a big mess.

I’ve always thought of Panda Bear as being the more ‘difficult’ member of the Animal Collective – quite a boast considering that Avey Tare put out a whole album of music played backwards this year – but eventually also the most rewarding. His previous solo record, the initially baffling but ultimately quite moving ‘Young Prayer’, is a perfect case in point. Thankfully, ‘Person Pitch’ is a little more immediate, its ingredients sequenced with such a perfect understanding of what constitutes *good, warm, human-pleasing sound* that it’s hard not to be drawn in to some extent. But nonetheless, full appreciation definitely requires the listener to get into the right mood, particularly with regard to the music’s length and repetition. I daresay many people will NEVER be in the right mood to find a place for fourteen minutes of “Good Girl / Carrots” in their lives, and that’s ok, they shouldn’t waste time tearing their hair out wondering what they’re missing, there’s no big secret. But when you do find yourself in the right mood (I recommend a very long walk, near a river, on a day that is either very hot or very cold), ‘Person Pitch’ is a conduit for pure, drugless psychedelic transformation of an extremely pleasurable kind.

I’ve got this far without pulling out one of the inescapable Beach Boys comparisons that must have had Mr. Lennox launching fungal, technicolored psychic happy-daggers at reviewers throughout the year, but what the hell; let’s get it over with and conclude in lazy journo style by simply saying that ‘Person Pitch’ sounds kinda like what might have happened if, instead of being stuck in a world dominated by Spector and The Beatles, shyster doctors, abusive relatives and cokehead bandmates, Brian Wilson had instead woken up one morning in 1968 to find Terry Riley and Lee Perry standing on his doorstep, prototype samplers under their arms and ready to rock.

Mp3 > Bros (radio edit)


ROBERT WYATT – COMICOPERA (Domino)

Beyond the music he makes, Robert Wyatt has great importance to me simply as a person, and as a cultural presence. The documentary about him I videoed off BBC2 a few years ago has seen many viewings, and each time, I am awed by what a basically amazing bloke Wyatt is. Personally, artistically, politically, philosophically – I just can’t fault the guy at all; almost everything he says seems to resound with wisdom, humility and righteousness. He’s a true hero. That confession out of the way, I’ll admit that on a musical level, he lost me slightly with the vocal jazz miniatures of ‘Cookooland’, but ‘Comicopera’ has me back on side and then some. It’s an absolutely astonishing record, one of his all-time best.

Split into several distinct sections, ‘Comicopera’ unfolds with characteristically off-kilter grandeur, drifting across continents and palettes of sound like a series of musical waking dreams, much in the vein of 1997’s excellent ‘Shleep’, rendering musical and lyrical content effectively inseparable as Wyatt does his utmost to present a full picture of the world as he experiences it circa 2007, moving from the confines of his own home and relationships through the quiet confusion of 21st century British life into the full horror of international political turmoil, before concluding with some reflections on the possibilities for communication and mutual understanding between cultures now in the process of being forced closer together.

‘Comicopera’ is certainly a mighty musical statement befitting a veteran of the prog rock era. Summarised in terms such as those above it sounds like an almost ludicrously earnest, over-reaching, self-righteous undertaking, and in the hands of any other aging British musician it probably would be. But as Wyatt’s fans will already know well, his wit, subtlety, intelligence, musical imagination and the unflagging sense of honesty and humanity with which he approaches his work, not to mention the assistance of his impressive band of international collaborators, makes Robert more than up to the task of emerging with what is easily one of the most beautiful and affecting albums of the year.

Such is the range of subject matter, emotion and musical form covered by ‘Comicopera’ that I could easily stumble through pages of clumsy verbiage trying to get to grips with it all. Far better that you just find forty-five minutes to sit down with a pot of tea and listen to it yourself, and, if further info is required, let me point you in the direction of Thom Jurek’s excellent write-up of the record at All Music Guide, which does the job for me quite nicely.

Mp3 > Stay Tuned


ERIK FRIEDLANDER – BLOCK ICE & PROPANE (Skipstone Records)

This is out of alphabetical order because it’s a late entry; I’ve only gotten around to giving it a good listen this weekend. Erik Friedlander is best known to me for his sterling work providing strings on the last few Mountain Goats records, and here he presents an album of solo cello pieces inspired by memories of epic childhood journeys across the USA. And much like an epic childhood journey, the results are at times rather lugubrious, but also on occasion extremely dramatic, and are eventually guaranteed to prove good, wholesome listening to anyone who enjoys cellos and epic American landscapes and such like. Friedlander is a musician of prodigious inventive skill, and the improvised passages here howl, soar, shriek and moan in the manner of the more adventurous free improv bassists, occasionally sounding like he is attempting to channel a Slayer solo, whilst the more conventional, composed segments are beautifully lyrical, at their best recalling what might have transpired had John Fahey taken up the cello.

Possibly too abstract to appeal to many of the indie rockers who already know Friedlander’s name, yet too staid and sentimental for the majority of avant-jazzers to take an interest, this is the kind of basically bloody good music liable to slip between the cracks of current music scenes, so I thought I’d make space to give it a shout-out.

Mp3 > A Thousand Unpieced Suns


I have also quite enjoyed:


Ectogram – Fluff On A Faraway Hill

Great sideways crab-walking Welsh spacerock; dense, fuzzy, warm-blooded, weird and lovely.

Electric Wizard – Witchcult Today

Jus Osborn’s new four piece Electric Wizard may lack the spark (or whatever the dark, doom metal opposite of a spark is) that led the original line-up to scale the heights of the Dopethrone, but no matter. This is still, in a profound sense, an Electric Wizard album, and there are times in life when nothing else will do. Specifically, times when you’ve just smoked an ounce of weed and watched five Redemption videos in a row.

Expo 70 – Animism

One man’s sub-bass buzzing double LP tribute to the glory days of Ash Ra Tempel, Fripp & Eno, Tangerine Dream et al = a very special sleepy-time for science fiction fans!

PJ Harvey – White Chalk

Relegated from a place in the main list simply because I don’t think the songwriting chops on display here can really sustain the chamber piano / ghostly Victorian waif concept across a whole album, but Polly is still in command of an ancient, gut-level musical power, and the title track and a few other songs when things come together here are really, really stunning.

Ill Ease - All Systems-A-Go-Go

One woman band Elizabeth Sharp hates drum machines. They always stay on time, they're always perfect, she says dismissively. She doesn't like keyboards much either. Too much sucky, not enough fucky, she concludes. Clearly Ms Sharp and I have much to discuss.

Times New Viking – Presents The Paisley Reich

A great, thrashy guitar/keyboard/yelping punk trio with some killer songs, big noise and barrels of energy, sadly marred here by the fact that they seem to have been recorded on a dictaphone in the coat pocket of someone in the rehearsal room across the corridor. Obviously I’m always up for a good live-to-tape lo-fi blast, but y’know – there are limits. Maybe next time they can bring a microphone and a four-track and really kick some ass.

Labels: album reviews, best of 2007, Erik Friedlander, Mika Miko, No Age, Om, Panda Bear, Robert Wyatt

THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2007:
Part Two

HELP SHE CAN’T SWIM – THE DEATH OF NIGHTLIFE (Fantastic Plastic)

I wrote pretty extensively, and not entirely coherently, about this album earlier in the year, and I’m a bit worn out on it to be honest. So let’s just say it’s a strong second album from a really great, furious post-riot grrl punk/pop band, and see what the cut up machine has to say about the rest:

“A bit muddled. Then there's the roll-call: take no prisoners cow to death of an essay, so hold on. Resigned to adulthood riff/rhythm mode. Clearer and smashier than on a free jazz/poetry band, love while you exist, and don’t you forget it. The same rock Liar machine gun style. Help She be a common trait amongst of the confusion; gloriously covering her eyes I saw fingers. That’s all fine and passes here even bigger. Any questions? Bolts covering her eyes.
We know. Shot down the melodies whilst the remaining guitar thrashes like an elastic band about to snap, and dreams. Boring; don't see on my universal teenage freedom trip. Pretending they’re let down primarily by the failure, getting pretty close.
Teenage best fucking shot. That’s why I like music as "rock n' roll"; if pushed, drums and easy melody – enough to give lo-fi warriors, like, up, recalling one running through all. Lost with cats the neuroses, musical maturity or breathe when you're always wearing they give it their best. But "rock n' roll" will to regret, but in charging in, I increasingly consider medicine – The words are taken up by keyboards - and total fabrication is an aesthetic part of good too.”

Any questions indeed.

Mp3 > I Think The Record’s Stopped


HERMAN DUNE – GIANT (Source Inc / EMI)

It's hard to find anything particularly objective or new to say about an album that seems to have soundtracked the whole year, getting spun in every living room, shop, gig, mp3 player or radio I’ve been near, whether I felt like listening or not. For better or worse, 2007 certainly turned out to be the year in which Herman Dune made the well-deserved leap from being long-standing cult heroes to being a major label signed, Broadsheet-approved breakthrough act. At first, I really didn’t like ‘Giant’ at all, for myriad irksome reasons. Obvious singles ‘I Wish That I Could See You Soon’ and ‘1-2-3 Apple Tree’ just seemed too obvious and cloying in their sentiment, their Jonathan Richman-derived charms wearing thin with repeated listens, whilst the rest of the album seemed to mount a slightly contrived attempt at ‘serious’ Cohen/Dylan styled song-writing, ditching the band’s perfect guitar/guitar/drums line-up in favour of an unconvincing world tour through indie-boy takes on brass and ‘ethnic’ percussion, making half the songs on what already seemed an overlong, unfocused record sound like ropey outtakes from ‘Graceland’.

That was back in January and February. Clearly, I was being a big idiot back in January and February. The real root of my displeasure was that, having established a pretty big emotional connection with the hot-off-the-press confessional sentiments of previous Dune albums, I was really not in the right frame of mind to dig ‘Giant’s 'pining-for-a-lover-across-the-ocean' vibe at all.

Well joke’s on me as it turns out, because looking back from the more objective perspective of the end of the year, ‘Giant’ is obviously a fine, fine album. Still possibly the ‘difficult’ entry in the Dune’s catalogue of recorded hits, it’s a little too long and has a couple of weak tracks, but nevertheless, it’s an inspired step forward for a band who had already pretty much perfected what they do, and an album of great emotional depth and open-hearted musical spontaneity. The subtleties of the full band arrangements are a slow-burning joy, and David-Ivar Herman Dune’s continuing transformation of his personal life into timeless, romantic pop is as epic and affecting an undertaking as those helmed by the aforementioned Mr. Richman and Mr. Cohen. Like Dylan at his best, every seemingly tossed off rhyme and guileless singalong chorus is handled with a master’s touch, and if their qualities are perhaps not always immediately apparent, it would take a heart of stone not to be eventually moved by songs such as 'Pure Heart' and 'When The Water Gets Cold'. And some of Andre’s more laidback, whisky-sipping musical travelogues are pretty great too (“Glory Of Old” especially), but ‘Giant’ is David’s show really.

And as to those hit singles... well, I’ve been lucky enough to see the new incarnation of the band play a few times this year, and as their record company continue to push them toward a segment of the music market in which legions of unshaven men write songs about nothing in particular by rote, invoking Beach Boys and Beatles and bulk-blocking studio time in pursuit of dread mid-afternoon festival slot tedium, let’s just say that seeing David up there with a crowd of thousands clapping along, singing “You say you dyed your hair black since you were seventeen / cos it goes well with your eyes so green / well I’m losing my hair and my eyes are blue / and you know how bad I like to be with you!”, and then leaning back to twist the knobs up on his amp for an off-the-cuff guitar solo, just like in the old days, equals… wow, just wow.

Let’s make Herman Dune pop stars in 2008.

Mp3 > When The Water Gets Cold


JESUS LICKS – TERRIBLE BEAUTY (Post Records)

You’ll recall that I wrote a little bit about Jesus Licks in my singles reviews post a few weeks back. What I said about them then still applies, so if you’ll allow me a gratuitous recap;

“The first time I saw [Jesus Licks] play, it struck me that they might have been formed in a remote Welsh valley by the four people in the local area who liked music. As it transpires, they were formed in entirely different circumstances and actually come from proper, big places, like London and so forth, but nonetheless, the feeling is there. I suppose ‘weird folk’ is an appropriate summation of what Jesus Licks do, but it’s a million miles away from the kind of ‘weird folk’ practiced and aspired to by [most of the rather pretentious types involved in such things]. To get a handle on Jesus Licks variety of weird folk, perhaps imagine The Marine Girls taking a holiday to some distant rural locale, and joining forces with their hippie uncles to sit by the riverside and sing odd, quiet songs about highwaymen and sharks and murdering people.”

This is their album, and I really dig it. It features gentle guitar strumming and banjo plucking and minimal percussion and sometimes other things, like violins and melodicas and choirs and echoing noises of uncertain origin, but mainly just high, shaky female voices singing really simple, strange, sinister-yet-comforting songs about stuff. Like Gorkys before them, there’s sometimes a danger of descent into unsavoury quirkiness, but also like Gorkys, they have enough charm and smarts and lovely sounds to win the race, and end up just being good instead. Thirty years from now, end of civilisation permitting, some record geek will be busily ploughing through dusty boxes of unwanted CDs by dodgy Beta Band spin-off groups, and he’ll find a copy of this, and he’ll think “hmm, this looks interesting”, and he’ll play it on his lovingly maintained vintage CD player, and he’ll be like “wow, this is great! What were these guys all about??” And he’ll reissue it on his boutique label, and all the other record geeks will love it too, so why not get in before the rush and buy yourself one now? If you don’t like it, you can sell it for loads of money in 2040.

Mp3 > If I Accidentally Murdered You


JEFFREY LEWIS – 12 CRASS SONGS (Rough Trade)

When I interviewed Jeffrey Lewis for Beard magazine in 2006 and he mentioned he was in the process of recording this album, I thought he was joking. Hearing him play a whole set of Crass covers for the first time at End Of The Road, it sounded like a joke taken too far, and I was not convinced that this was really a good move for anyone concerned. By the time I actually got hold of the album though, things had clicked; I’d seen Jeffrey and his band play an absolutely storming show at the Windmill, and as a bunch of privileged 21st century boho indie kids yelled along with the choruses of ‘I Ain’t Thick’ and ‘Big A, Little a’, the essential righteousness and universality of Crass’s songs, and Jeffrey’s determination to communicate them to an audience beyond aging anarcho-punk lifers hit home hard.

It helps that the album *sounds* so great. This is definitely the most successful and imaginative Lewis record to date in terms of recording and arrangements, from killer acoustic punk/hippie jams on ‘Banned From The Roxy’ and ‘Systematic Death’ to the sprawling, fully realised strings & electronics backing on ‘Where Next Columbus?’ and ‘Demoncrats’. Even if you can’t relate to the agit-prop lyrics and are wary of being lectured to in drowsy NY beatnik monotone for forty minutes, on a musical level this album is a blast, full of charm and energy and invention, and I'd defy anybody who is still uneasy about the concept to emerge from a cursory listen having not enjoyed it. But Crass deserve at least half the credit here for providing the source material, and, as was probably the original intention of the project, their song writing is a revelation. Admittedly, my personal politics tend to veer toward the extreme left already, but still, I’m blown away by the basic righteousness of the lines Crass were lying down here. Although still obviously polemic and somewhat paranoid in their approach, these songs rarely resort to the easy “fuck the system” banalities that I’d always kind of assumed bands like Crass would base their lyrics around. Instead they remain smart and engaging even at their most strident, and their nail-head-hitting ratio is pretty spot on, whilst songs like ‘..Thick’ and ‘..Columbus’ manage to punch home some universal profundity re: individual self-determination and free will vs. societal destiny/responsibility on a level that extends way beyond that of brute political struggle. For all of the ceaseless revolutionary rhetoric, Lewis’s interpretations of these songs make it clear that Crass were intelligent people, that they believed what they believed for a reason, and that they weren’t just pissing around.

As such, it’s interesting yo note that little of the abundant press or blogwrite about this album has really engaged with the politics of the songs. I mean, here’s one of the current generation’s most talented and entertaining songwriters going back to the darkest days of the 1980s to sing to us in no uncertain terms about totalitarian state control, government brainwashing, state-sponsored genocide, the political monopoly of the ‘privileged classes’, systematic police brutality and all the rest of it, and most people seem content to limit their discussion to observations about how ingeniously he bends the songs to his own performance style and emotional range, or to view the whole thing as a post-modern exercise ala The Dirty Projector’s baffling 'reimagining' of Black Flag’s ‘Damaged’..?

Well I don’t have time or space to fully articulate the things which could be said about the reasons behind this album’s existence or why it feels so refreshing and enjoyable, but maybe just pause to consider whether the sidestepping of the politics issue by most of the current musical community maybe says something about why Jeffrey decided it was worth risking his own career and putting in a year’s time, money and effort to bring this album into being.

But whatever. As ’12 Crass Songs’ shoots up a lot more best-of-year lists that any previous Jeff Lewis albums, and antifolk kids around the world sit in dorm rooms trying to work out tabs for ‘Do they Owe Us A Living?’, I think we can probably count this as a roaring success. If I were to pick one album of the year, this would probably be it.

Mp3s >
I Ain’t Thick, It’s Just a Trick
Punk Is Dead

Labels: album reviews, best of 2007, Help She Can't Swim, Herman Dune, Jeffrey Lewis, Jesus Licks

THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2007 : Part 1

Exactly what the title says. In no particular order. Well, in alphabetical order in fact, but no value judgements intended. Ok with that? Good!

No new Mountain Goats or Oneida or Comet Gain or Dead Meadow this year either, so things are pretty wide open to some extent… let’s go!


ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – STRAWBERRY JAM (Domino)

In the past, Animal Collective have always left me enthralled and frustrated in equal measure. That they are one of the most forward thinking (or at least sideways thinking) musical outfits around is undeniable, and their attempts to reconnect the machinery of modern day noise and improv with personal/emotional songcraft and pop structures represents a potentially earth-shattering well of possibility, but I’ve always found myself wishing they could keep their chaotic, introspective tendencies on a tighter leash and focus their talents toward making more deliberate music, songs that hit the listener with a BANG. And that’s exactly what they’ve done on Strawberry Jam. Thanks guys. Finally we can hear the vocals clearly and, as I always suspected, Avey Tare is a brilliant lyricist, howling through the particulars of lust, love and life via a labyrinth of mythic-vs-mundane dream imagery as seven shades of overpowering melodic noise explode all around, the terrestrial origin of the sounds the Collective compress, twist and pulverise into a churning heap of hallucinatory beats, rhythmic patterns and melodies remaining gloriously unguessable throughout. To my mind, ‘Strawberry Jam’ confirms Animal Collective as prime movers in dragging the legacy of genuine psychedelic music-making into the 21st century and, perhaps, one of the greatest weirdo pop bands of our age.

Mp3 > Peacebone


DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON vs. 7 HERTZ (Acuarela)

A writer’s nightmare, David Thomas Broughton is a powerful and unique performer, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, whose genius defies easy verbal explanation. The spontaneity and physicality of his performances would seem to make translating his musical vision to record an equally troublesome task, and so this album wisely takes a slightly different approach. Recorded live over a single afternoon in a church in Leeds, it finds Broughton in a more stately mood than that engendered by his gigs at rock venues and festivals, as, backed by improvisations from avant-classical ensemble 7 Hertz, he expands four of his saddest songs into sprawling, free-flowing testaments to loss, regret and hope. If just about any other songwriter stretched four songs on the theme of SAD over the course of an hour, with gaps to fool with looping pedals, clanging kettles and malfunctioning amplifiers whilst an unrehearsed string quartet sawed away behind him, the result would likely be an insufferable piece of self-indulgence, but as I keep saying, DTB is extraordinary, and as such the results are captivating and beautiful. The contributions of 7 Hertz are excellent in their own right, starting out subtle, scrabbling for ground and eventually sprawling into chaotic collapse. Combined with the sound of DTB’s unmistakable voice, somewhat akin to a North of England Tim Buckley, given full reign to echo through the church rafters, this is the best expression of Broughton’s muse yet committed to tape. I only bought this album about a month ago, but I have listened to it many times and will likely listen to it a lot more in future.

Mp3 > The Weight Of My Love


THE DETROIT COBRAS – TIED & TRUE (Rough Trade)

‘Tied & True’ sees The Detroit Cobras bouncing back from the misstep of 2005s sub-par ‘Baby’, coke ad ubiquity and the bursting of the early ‘00s Detroit hype bubble with their best album since the peerless ‘Life, Love and Leaving’. Now bolstered by the presence of Greg Cartwright (of The Oblivians / Reigning Sound) on second guitar and piano, this album works a welcome and indeed pretty awesome step forward for the band. Instead of merely blasting through more vintage soul / r’n’b cuts in ‘garage rock’ style, they’re taking the time to really compete with the majesty of the music that inspired them, treating the slower soul numbers to exquisite Phil Spector / Memphis soul influenced arrangements, whilst still retaining the core feeling and big sound of a kick-ass rock n’ roll band. Those who think any less of the Cobras due to their status as a covers band are really missing the point; as they say themselves, why the hell should they bother writing yet more crappy rock songs when so many amazing compositions from the ‘50s and ‘60s remain undiscovered by a wider audience? Whether or not we’d be better off tracking down the originals on compilations is a moot point but, taken on it’s own musical merits, ‘Tied & True’ is pretty much perfect. Rachel Nagy is still one of the best vocalists around, matching powerhouse blues fervour with rare subtlety, Mary Restrepo’s guitar sounds EXACTLY the way I want guitars to sound, and with the rest of the band swinging out like wrecking crew pros, what can do but submit to classic songs, blasted out with genuine feeling, sweet production and punk rock energy? ‘Try Love’ and ‘Hurt’s All Gone’ bring on a swoon like the best broken-hearted ‘60s soul, and ‘Nothing But A Heartache’ and ‘What’s Going On?’ could get Kafka downing a double and hitting the dancefloor. Maybe I’m just turning into a pop classicist in my old age, but GODDAMN, this is Good Music, with capital letters.

Mp3 > Try Love


DINOSAUR JR – BEYOND (Pias / Fat Possum)

Arriving around the same time as the regrettable fiasco that was the new Stooges album, It took a while to sink in, but damn, this new Dinosaur Jr effort is WAY better than a comeback album by a band who hate each other reuniting for cash has any right to be. I could never really get on with the last album these three guys made together, 1988’s ‘Bug’, largely because Mascis seemed intent on burying the rhythm section beneath gratuitous guitar overdubs, leading to a record that sounded muddy and distant, lacking the drive that made the band’s earliest material so great. And now, a lifetime later, for the first time since ‘..Livin’ All Over Me’, Dinosaur miraculously sound like a band again. J still gets to play with about a dozen exquisitely fucked up guitar tracks, but Lou’s muscleman bass and Murph’s continuing attempts to create a drum style consisting entirely of fills come through loud and clear too, leading to a real best-of-both-worlds scenario. Some reviewers complained that ‘Beyond’ sounds exactly like generic Dinosaur Jr, and yeah, it does, what of it? Mission accomplished! The formula – ragged Crazy Horse glory with a punk rock rocket up it’s arse – has remained intact, and sounds better than ever. Without geeking out too much, let’s simply say that the production here is superb. It’s like a masterclass in how to make a really GREAT sounding modern rock record. J’s songs are, well, more or less the same as they’ve ever been; he still sounds as yearning and confused and vague as he did when he was a teenager, still content to let his guitar do the bulk of the talking, and it’s a joy to hear him shredding on Lou’s “Back To Your Heart”, which is… a really excellent Lou Barlow song. So basically, against all the odds, this is some of the best Dino ever committed to tape, the kind of record liable to win an immediate, pre-conscious “YES!” vote within the first ten seconds from anyone who still harbours a love for noisy, melodic rock music.

Mp3 > Almost Ready

Labels: album reviews, Animal Collective, best of 2007, David Thomas Broughton, Dinosaur Jr, The Detroit Cobras

SINGLES ROUND-UP 2007

So I don’t buy many singles these days. Certainly not as many as I should. But I do still retain my love for the 7” single, and with the dawn of digital / computer-based music opening the floodgates to a steady stream of cheap or free music and thus allowing my actual purchases of music to become more strategic and object-based, I plan in future to make a deliberate effort to pick as many cool-looking singles as possible, thus hopefully providing a bit of scratch to the heroic independent record labels who still insist on making them in defiance of all commercial rationale. And hopefully discovering some good new bands in the process too, of course.

Before this plan reaches its full fruition though, here’s a round up of a whole year’s worth of singles. The vast majority of these I bought from shops, for money, but a couple were given to me for free, for which thanks.

No Mp3s of course, because these are mostly on vinyl, and, like, who do you think I am? Some rich guy with one oif those…uh… reasonably priced and increasingly common USB turntables..? Ok, maybe I’ll get one in time for next year.

The Belly Buttons – Introducing.. EP (Ken Rock)

All the information I have on this band can be gleaned from their cover art, reproduced for you here. All you need to know about their music is that they cram four songs onto one side of a pink 45 (the other side is blank), and don’t care a great deal for hi-fidelity recording. They favour the sounds of cheap fuzzboxes turned up to maximum, super-fast robotic drum-beats and unintelligible high-pitched shrieking, and clearly eat WAY, WAY too much sugar. If I squint my eyes and stare real hard into the lamp-light, I can almost catch a glimpse of a headspace in which this is clearly the best music ever made, but… oh, actually I think I’ve been playing it at the wrong speed. At 33 it sounds a lot more like recognisable sub-5678s Far East girl garage action, but the recording quality is still abysmal, the record label’s logo is still an unsavoury caricature of a Chinese man for some reason, and whoa, this is the worst pressed vinyl I’ve ever encountered. I know my stylus is no great shakes, but man, it’s skipping all over the fucking place… sorry Belly Buttons, this is just not happening for me right now. Maybe I’m getting old.

Helen Love – Junkshop Discotheque (Elefant)

After 2005’s supreme comeback ‘Debbie Hearts Joey’, here’s… Helen Love’s next single! Obviously it’s by Helen Love, so it’s thus a maximum fun explosion of the highest order, but I don’t think the A-side is one of their best numbers to be honest. It’s one of their homemade happy hardcore hits, ala ‘Jump Up And Down’ from a while back, and perhaps takes Helen’s policy of constant self-recycling to it’s unsatisfactory conclusion, mixing up lyrics from about a dozen previous songs into a mass of compressed glitter-pop glossalia. It’s still good though. On the B, we get a lovely remix of ‘Debbie..’ by somebody called Kid Karate – it’s still a KILLER song, even with bouncy mid-tempo beats replacing the fuzz – and an ace new song in the Helen Love punk mould, ‘Shut Your Mouth’. Nice! This one’s on pink vinyl too.
(..I can’t believe I actually took the time to describe a Helen Love record this late in the game..)
(Helen Love website)

Jesus Licks – Dalek Chorus (Post Records)

One of my favourite musical discoveries of the past year, Jesus Licks never fail to manifest a sense of gentle homemade weirdness and unself-conscious naivety which is a rare and wonderful thing in the current musical climate. The first time I saw them play, it struck me that they might have been formed in a remote Welsh valley by the four people in the local area who liked music. As it transpires, they were formed in entirely different circumstances and actually come from proper, big places, like London and so forth, but nonetheless, the feeling is there. I suppose ‘weird folk’ is an appropriate summation of what Jesus Licks do, but it’s a million miles away from the kind of ‘weird folk’ practiced and aspired to by, say, the contributors to the Phosphene record reviewed below. To get a handle on Jesus Licks variety of weird folk, perhaps imagine The Marine Girls taking a holiday to some distant rural locale, and joining forces with their hippie uncles to sit by the riverside and sing odd, quiet songs about highwaymen and sharks and murdering people. And, in this case, Dr. Who. Taken from their rather marvellous album ‘Terrible Beauty’, ‘Dalek Chorus’ sees vocalist Dominique Golden slowly intoning a lyric written from the point of view of the Dalek hive-mind, addressing their greatest foe, accompanied by the barest minimum of banjo and acoustic guitar. “We made ourselves from debris / one thousand years before / we grew up and evolved / and now you’d like to take it all” she sings, tugging at the heart strings of Tom Baker as he sits there in ‘Genesis Of The Daleks’, agonising over whether or not to let those two wires touch to trigger the explosives. An echoing, psychedelic chorus of beautiful simplicity proceeds to rise and fall and rise again, and it’s easy to imagine poor old Tom forgetting the whole business and drifting off into a happy slumber as the Jesus Licks float by on the breeze, calling his name again and again.
(Jesus Licks website)

Lawrence Wasser – Der Lift / Der Frog (Le Vilain Chien)

Belgium post-punk renegade Lawrence Wasser here turns in two slices of furious no wave dance party skronk that would make James Chance shit himself. Both tunes are instrumental, and the rhythms frantic and fragmented, yet laid down with a mercilessly strict hardcore sensibility, kinda like being coerced onto the dance floor by club-wielding boot boys. Only that makes it sound bad, and this actually really rules, redeemed by a wild, screaming energy that conveys the pure joy of a guy lost to the world, beating down on drums, guitar and keys as hard and precise as is humanly possible in search of big fun.
(Lawrence Wasser website)

The Leatherettes – Johnny Thunders EP (Filthy Little Angels)

Lovers of all things lo-fi and snotty, Filthy Little Angels are one of the only labels who ever bother sending me promos, so it’s about time I gave them some love on this weblog. Not that anybody actually had to pay for this EP, as it came out in June as a free download rather than an actual 7” or CD (still available form here). Shame, as this is precisely the kind of band whose work would come across best on a real cool 45. According to the press release, The Leatherettes are a duo comprising ‘Becca Bomb’ and ‘Johnny Yenn’, who reside in Dundee and share a love of The Cramps, Gun Club, Stooges, Dolls and all the usual suspects. And… well, they sound exactly like you’d expect a couple of Dundee students who give themselves punk rock stage names and call their debut EP ‘Johnny Thunders’ to sound. Shallow, trashy, entirely wrought from watered down 10th generation rock n’ roll clichés… and thus COMPLETELY GREAT, for those of you slow on the uptake. The four songs here showcase some terrific Helen Love style fuzz guitar, some meandering DeeDee basslines, sneering boy/girl vocals sounding like they’re being recorded through an overloaded practice amp and - ah - here’s where The Leatherettes let themselves down; drum machine. Really bad drum machine. The kind that sounds totally unnatural, and renders all the other playing robotic and clipped where it should be chaotic and flailing. Seriously dudes, in the unlikely event that you’re reading; I like your band, but PLEASE get some proper human drums, even if it’s just your mate banging a tom-tom with his fist, it would beat this.
(The Leatherettes myspace)

Phosphene & Friends – See A Sign Defined / Ask No Questions (Pickled Egg)

John Cavanagh, aka Phosphene, has been quietly knocking out music that vaguely fits the remit of ‘folktronica’ since before the term had ever been uttered aloud, and here he teams up with a full compliment of ubiquitous Glasgow types to present a tribute of sorts to sixties folk singer Bridget St. John. The A-side sees Bridget herself singing a Cavanagh composition with accompaniment from Bill Wells and Isobel Campbell, and it’s really rather nice, in a ‘huddling by the fire in a dark Victorian cottage and getting all poetic about ash and dirt and the wild patterns thrown out by the sparks’ sort of way. Featuring both a stately chamber-folk arrangement and an arsenal of malfunctioning space synth uneasiness, yet still giving the impression of there being masses and masses of dark, unconquered space between each sound as St. John’s soft vocal melody hangs in the air alone like a lifeline to drag a lost astronaut back to humanity, it’s… pretty fucking sublime actually, and demanding of repeated listens. Yet another quiet triumph for Pickled Egg Records’ particular aesthetic. Reading that back, I think it’s probably about time I went and had a nap, but no, the other side of the single await, and it is largely given over to the members of Nalle, who take on Bridget St. John’s ‘Ask No Questions’. Things begin promisingly enough, with a full helping of the chaotic mesh of droning stringed things that this band do so well, but the dense layers of sound soon fall away, leaving the trio’s vocals to do the hard work, and with no disrespect to their no doubt venerable and bardic tonsils, it’s a bit bloody tedious. Must these hipster folkie types always intone everything so damn gravely in that over-earnest, faintly accusatory tone of theirs…? This is a nice tune written by a lady in the 1960s; no need to drag it out like it was the bloody last words of John Barleycorn himself, laid down in the year dot. I suspect the folk for whom Folk Music was originally named would have been liable to kick these guys out on their arse, had they started groaning away like this in ye olde alehouse a few centuries ago.

The Pleasure Seekers – What A Way To Die (Norton)

I guess this shouldn’t really be eligible for this column, seeing as how it was recorded in 1965 and even this Norton reissue dates from 2001, but no matter! For whatever reason, Rough Trade got one in stock this year, and I bought it, and that's good enough for me. The Pleasure Seekers were an all-girl rock n’ roll band who played club gigs around Detroit in the mid-‘60s. They featured a very young Suzi Quatro on bass, they cut this lone 45, and wow, they kinda rocked! “What A Way To Die” is a tremendously sleazy rave-up celebrating the joys of alcoholism and cheap sex, and the girls bust through it in super raw fashion, with a great frat party rock n’ roll pulse, tons of energy, twangy lead guitar, pounding Vox organ and gloriously untrained vocalisin', complete with plentiful sandpaper rough “AAaarghs!!” and “Woo!!”s. A flat-out perfect garage single, pretty much. The song, written by producer/svengali dude David Leone, is pure killer and has rightfully inspired sundry cover versions from subsequent garage combos, including a recent take by my new heroines, The Micragirls; “When I start my drinking / my baby throws a fit / so I just blitz him outta my mind / with seventeen bottles of Schlitz… Oh baby come on over / come on over to my side / Well I may not live past twenty one but – WOO! – what a way to die!” Before I hop off to work out the chords for my own cover version though, a quick word on the flip-side. “Never Thought You’d Leave Me”, which is slightly more subtle affair with a melody that oddly recalls the Ronnie Cook-via-The Cramps classic ‘Goo Goo Muck’, and a slightly baroque guitar/organ arrangement. It’s pretty nice, but the a-side is the one I’ve just gotta keep playing again.

Rocket Uppercut – This Beautiful Tragedy (Filthy Little Angels)

Not actually a single, but a full album, thus rendering the stated purpose of this round-up pretty irrelevant, but this is my weblog, and I can do what I like. This is another FLA release that’s been knocking about since about June, and I want to give it a belated mention before I forget, cos I kinda like it. Rocket Uppercut are a two girl / two boy outfit who play high energy, processed cheese punky power-pop, and whatdoyaknow, they’re actually pretty good at it. There’s something about this band that seems very uncool, what with the slightly dubious band/album names, the fact the two fellas in the band really don’t dress the way fellas in a band should, the fact they sound quite fun and prefabricated and unchallenging in a way that indie rock fans are unlikely to really appreciate, even the dodgy fonts on the cover art…. I dunno, whatever, this all makes me want to come out in favour of Rocket Uppercut and say, YES, I really dig what they do! What they do strikes me as essentially a bit of a homogenised, non-angry take on Help She Can’t Swim territory – preppy distorted guitar riffs, shouting, keyboard, hand claps, bouncy beats etc. – with a bit of welcome garage influence creeping in too (they cover The Sonics ‘Cinderella’, and indulge in some distressing Gerry Roslie inspired yelping from time to time). They also remind me a little bit of similarly uncool B52s/Blondie styled Welsh band The Hot Puppies, only more.. simplified and streamlined I guess. Anyway, I think this band would be a blast to see live; I wanna make friends with them and jump around! Thanks for sending me this one Filthy Little Angels, I’m real sorry it took me six months to write about it.
(Rocket Uppercut website)

The Vicious – Obsessive EP (Feral Ward)

A Swedish band (I think), these guys suckered me in as I idly browsed in All Ages Records in Camden with their cover artwork featuring a hot punk rock chick with a Rickenbacker. Imagine my annoyance to discover she’s actually merely the guitarist in a three quarters male band who have cynically stuck her on both the front and back covers in order to cruelly entice us pathetic record-browsing boys. No worries though, because this is a cracking little record, and Sara’s clean-toned downstroke thrashin’ riffs are the best thing about it (think Johnny Ramone playing with no distortion on a really lovely, chiming guitar). And Andre the drummer plays like a demon, and looks like a bit of a dude too, so it’s all good. High energy, late ‘70s style punk rock is the name of the game, and on the basis of the five or so minutes it takes for these four songs to whiz by, we may consider the game WON. The vocals are snotty cartoon punk dude nonsense, but this band’s sound has a real kick to it that would make me want to pogo like crazy should it come on in, say, a crowded, non-pogo-friendly bar situation. Maybe it’s the way that great, clean guitar sound is still tough as hell and burrows straight into yr rock pleasure centres, but at the same time lets you pick out all the other instruments…? I dunno. I like this one anyway.

Labels: Belly Buttons, best of 2007, Helen Love, Jesus Licks, Lawrence Wasser, Phosphene, Rocket Uppercut, singles reviews, The Leatherettes, The Pleasure Seekers, The Vicious