By the time you read this, I will be in an aeroplane, on my way to Tokyo. I was hoping to get the whole of this ‘best of 2013’ count-down in the can by the time I left, but I’m afraid things didn’t quite work out that way, and as such, we’re going to have to delay numbers #5 to #1 until I get back in late January.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but hey, I hope I at least made a pretty good effort for someone who can usually only get it together to post about once a month.

So just talk amongst yourselves until service is resumed, have some terrific new year celebrations, continue with your lives and so forth, and I’ll see you all soon. Sayonara for now!

Labels: best of 2013, lameness

One of those groups who succeed in perfecting their chosen musical idiom so completely, and do so in such gargantuan style, that just about everyone else treading similar ground starts to seem surplus to requirements, I remain incredibly happy to have discovered the music of Bong a couple of years ago.

In fact, I love Bong to such an extent that a twelve month stretch without a new LP from them currently seems like a trying prospect indeed. To fill the aching void until their next magnum opus then, 2013 instead brought forth this live disc, recorded in St Mary’s Old Church, Stoke Newington, in 2011.

As you might expect, the sound captured here bears little trace of the cleaner, more purely psychedelic direction the band were pulling in on last year’s ‘Mana Yood Sushai’, with the necessarily muffled roar of live recorded doom metal and the unmistakable reverb of a big church building combining to make for a rather muddy, undifferentiated roar of a record. If Bong’s recent studio albums have sought to take us to celestial dreamlands or the depth of space, this one drags us right back into the bowels of the earth – a sodden, mud-choked, grave soil rumble, built around a cacophonous sub-bass drone and wah-blasted amplifier skree that recalls Sunn 0))) at their prime.

The opium-den overtones of Benjamin Freeth’s Shahi Baaja (that’s the sitar kinda thing to the likes of us) hang heavy as ever in the air, with additional formless blare from Mike Vest (here abetted by second guitarist Pete Ryde) and introductory incantations from bassist/vocalist Dave Terry meaning that by the time Mike Smith’s drums crash in about a third of the way through each side-long movement, the atmosphere is already treacle-thick and pitch black, and by the time you’re shaking your gory locks to his ball & chain dragging pulse beat, there’s no way out - you’re in for the duration.

Predictable maybe, but random taste tests from this one almost inevitably give me an image of skeletons, bones picked clean, rising from the grave; the earth throwing up its dead; Bruegel’s ‘The Triumph of Death’, and all that. And isn’t the spirit what metal, particularly doom, is all about really? Whoever that harried graphic design assistant was who struck that painting on the front of that old ‘Sabbath best-of, they were on to something. Arise! Arise! Wipe clean the surface, and return to the soil. Good times. When the rain is unceasing and even candle-light begins to seem too bright this winter, I know I’ve got just the record to reach for.

Listen and buy from MIE.

Labels: best of 2013, Bong

On the surface of things, there is much reason for fans of Jennifer & Jessica Clavin’s former band, Mika Miko, to feel rather surprised and disappointed the direction they’ve taken with Bleached.

Coming straight from the raw and acerbic, early ‘80s inclined sorta twitchy punk of their previous outfit, the sudden miraculous conversion to breezy, beach-inclined, hyper-melodic guitar pop seen here could easily seem a pretty cynical move – zeroing on the relative success achieved in that style by geographic peers like Best Coast and Dum Dum Girls, and riding it straight onto…. whatever phrase stands in for “the airwaves” these days as a signifier of quasi-mainstream public acceptance.

It would be a lot easier to write them off however were it not for the fact that ‘Ride Your Heart’ is actually really bloody good – a totally solid album that’s easily one of the best things this sorta ‘LA beach girl guitar-pop’ micro-genre has ever produced. The essence of the band’s punk background is nicely preserved, as drummer Dan Allaire helps lay down a solid, forward-moving backbeat reminiscent of The Wipers, whilst the Clavins’ guitars chop and strum and jangle and chime in extremely pleasing, multi-layered fashion. Melodies remain “aiming for the chart breakthrough” level sugar-coated throughout, but such an approach is handled in best possible fashion, retaining the kind of momentum and sense of purpose previously harnessed by bands like The Nerves and Shivvers back in the skinny-tie era.

And, whilst Bleached’s sing-song choruses and lovelorn, boy-focused lyrics may seem off-puttingly vapid on first approach, after a few listens I started to get a very genuine emotional hit from a lot of these tunes, ‘specially the Fleetwood Mac-ish gravity of songs like ‘Dreaming Without You’ and ‘Outta My Mind’. Basically, I think there’s a lot more depth here than detractors might assume, and certainly enough classic pop muscle to stop the band ever falling into dreary, Best Coast-style solipsism.

To be honest, I’ve really heard very little in the pop-punk kinda sphere that’s struck a chord with me in the past few years, but these guys are definitely hitting all the right bases, and, regardless of their intentions, they’ve taken on convincing ownership of their chosen style and made one hell of a good album.

Check out press blurb and previews via Dead Oceans, or pick up from yr usual places.

Labels: best of 2013, Bleached

So I cannot tell a lie – I like Boards of Canada. Then or now, you could have knocked ‘Music Has The Right…’ and ‘Geogaddi’ for all manner of faddish reasons (I know I did), but you know what? I’m still playing them. And, whether taken as palette-cleansing immersive listening or just background-y accompaniment to tedious laptop grift, they remain singularly elusive and fascinating piles of music. Many, I think, have attempted to follow their breadcrumb trail over the years, but no one else has ever quite managed to hit that particular, paradoxical combination of comforting and sinister in quite the same way, or so scratch their peculiar itch just so.

The less said about interim flop ‘Campfire Headphase’ the better, but now we can now at least forget about that and sing an eerie, phase-shifted child voice halleluiah, for ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ is with us, and… more than anything else, it sounds like a bunch of tracks that fell off the back of the lorry when the master tapes for ‘Geogaddi’ were on their way to the pressing plant, to be honest.

Sure, there’s been some minor stylistic changes, some of them even seeming to reflect the whims of contemporary tastes – in particular, their use of rythym tracks has moved away from any semblance of stoner, break-beat head-nodding, and has assumed a more muted, industrial sort of character, whilst their synth work seems to be drawing more deeply from the currently ubiquitous well of Carpenter-ish ‘80s horror soundtrack chills (perhaps with particular reference to Ennio Morricone’s singularly icy Carpenter pastiche on his music for ‘The Thing’, if we’re gonna push the issue).

By and large though, the feeling here is wonderfully familiar, with those reassuring ‘‘70s airport public service announcement jingle’ vibes are never far away, always ready to warm us up again, like a winter-time dip in a volcanic lake. There is still no one else who can get that particular, faded-photo, decaying synth sound to work quite like this, however hard they try, and, whether re-treading old ground or otherwise, it is fantastic to hear that beautiful methodology applied to a whole new set of compositions here.

Highlights are many and varied, and I have neither the time now inclination to wax lyrical about them all here, but needless to say, if you retain any fondness for the old BoC albums and haven’t picked this one up yet, you should stop umming and ahhing and do so immediately. I know that sometimes saying a group’s new record is “just as good” as their previous ones doesn’t sound like much of a compliment, but in this particular case, I’m sure fans will appreciate how much weight such a statement carries.

Preview and buy via boardsofcanada.com.

Labels: best of 2013, Boards of Canada

So I confess I’m in a bit of quandary when it comes to reviewing this one, because, having already marked it up for that all important number # 9 spot, I realise that I only have it on vinyl, and, since I’m now back at my Mum’s place for Christmas, separated from my record player & records, that makes it difficult to follow what would be my usual course of action in a situation like this – that being to neck a few glasses of wine, throw it on and hammer out a pile of subjective, mystic blather, then subsequently seeing how it reads in the morning.

As it turns out, I’m ok for the wine and the blather, but the all-important ‘listening to the record’ bit is proving a challenge. So, for now, I’ll simply have to rely on my memory (never a good idea, especially when it comes to music like this), and just tell you that this is a new-ish LP by Neil Campbell (former main man of Vibracathedral Orchestra), and that it’s bloody brilliant.

I realise that Campbell has put out something like a million records already under the Astral Social Club name, but for some reason it’s been far too long since I checked in with what he was up to, so a chance purchase of this LP proved a suitably invigorating reintroduction, being as it is perhaps the best thing I’ve heard from him since the days of Vibracathedral. In general, I guess we find him hear operating in similar maximalist territory to Matthew Bower’s Sunroof project, or the brighter bits of the Campbell Kneale / Birchville Cat Motel catalogue, only somehow sounding a lot more joyous and approachable than either, laying out some background loops of mind-crushing primitive night club thump , then wrangling massed layers of out of control electronic noise and frippertronic kosmiche guitaring over the top, creating wonderful, dense, impossible tangles of sound to fascinate and delight the curious. Oh, and there’s a jew’s harp in there too somewhere, I seem to remember.

Basically listening to this, I get the image of a man in a small room, wrestling endlessly with massed tendrils of fizzing electrical cables, all animated by some strange, Akira-like intelligence. But y’know – in a nice way. The record label page for the release (linked below) contains a vast amount of praiseful blather of the kind that I can’t possibly try to compete with without the record at hand, so… I’ll direct you over there for further adventures in the reckless use of audio / verbal metaphor, but needless to say, I like this album a hell of a lot.

You can listen to a six minute ‘sampler’ and weep for the fact you didn’t buy this LP whilst it was available via Trensmat records.

Labels: Astral Social Club, best of 2013

Now here’s something you don’t see very often these days: a really strong, instantly likeable album from a previously unknown band that doesn’t fit into any pre-existing genre framework, or invite immediate comparison to any other artists. Not that I’d go as far as to say that Italian duo Satelliti were daring new pioneers or anything – their style still relies on wildly pulling chunks out of the past 50 years of popular music – but the way they combine their plundered ingredients feels fresh, new, noisy, *cool*. I like it!

Andrea Polato’s muscular, aggressively mixed kit drumming keeps things ostensibly anchored in a rock setting, but Marco Dalle Luche on electronics & keyboards ranges far and wide, from overdriven John Carpenter-via-Detroit Techno riff beatdowns to skittering loop pedal noise, Italio-prog bombast and fragrant psyche-jazz meandering, usually all within the same track. The band claim a strong jazz influence, and whilst this may not seem immediately obvious, it can soon be heard in both surface elements (‘Bitches Brew’ style electric piano tinkling features prominently) and at the roots of their essentially improvisatory technique.

Basically their mode of operation here recalls that of many of the bands we’re now legally obligated to call ‘krautrock’: seeding a stentorian rock groove with chaos, experimentation and unexpected left turns, building in a kind of energised ‘travelogue’ feel that seeks to take us from A to B, where ‘B’ exists only as an as-yet-invisible unknown.

Unlike many other groups employing such methodology though, Satelliti seem happy to relegate any high-falutin’ notions to the back seat, concentrating instead on basic rockin’ out. Most of ‘Transister’ sounds as if it could have been recorded live in front of an audience, with the group keen to kick that audience’s ass in classically macho fashion, as jazzist walkabouts never distract us for long from the central business of avalanching, Bonham/Liebezeit-indebted drum damage and vicious, distorted electro riffs.

At a push, categorisation obsessives could maybe put Satelliti in a box with more burly American experimental rock units such as Trans Am or mid-period Oneida, but I’ve certainly not heard their like for a while, and certainly not heard this kinda thing done in such invigorating, free-wheeling fashion. Expect to hear a lot more from these guys. TOP STUFF, in case they need a sticker for the front of the CD.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, Satelliti

For reasons social, psychological, geographical, but mainly financial, I pretty much gave up buying new singles in 2013. The few I did pick up almost all came my way via gigs, merch stalls, local London labels and that sort of thing.

And happily, this more selective purchasing strategy resulted in the ones I did get almost all being pretty good.

So, the pretty good-est ones I find sitting at the front of my record box come this December, in no particular order except for the fact that City Yelps is unquestionably Number # 1, are:

Labels: best of 2013

A little package of nine home-recorded songs from Humousexual, whose work continues to touch me more than that of any other earnest, lo-fi songwriterly types currently in operation.

I probably can’t say much about why I like the songs here so much that I didn’t already say when I wrote about their Grenzenlos CD a little while back, so I’ll try to keep blather to a minimum here and just try to awkwardly convey my belief that these songs are just… honest, and straight up, and necessary and GOOD, y’know?

These guys are just doing things right, quietly letting us know how they feel with solid tunes, spirited words, simple home-made recording and no contrivance or melodrama or miscellaneous hoo-hah getting in the way. ‘Crisps with Personality’ and ‘Take My Hand in the Summer’ are my favourite ones on it, but most of them are really great.

For all things Humousexual-related, go here.

Labels: best of 2013, Humousexual

When opening track proper ‘My Black Sabbath’ kicks in, The Limiñanas (I still keep wanting to call them Les Limiñanas..) seem set on replicating the formula that made last year’s Crystal Anis such a hit: minimal, tambourine-heavy percussion, an insidiously funky bass-line, languorous Francophone vocals and that weird, banjo-sounding thing (is it like, a zither or something?) - the requisite ingredients are all here for another fine example of their trademark sound, and indeed you’ll likely find yourself pulling your Fedora down over your eyes, traversing the back alleys of Montmartre, within seconds, regardless of where you happen to be listening.

With that reassuringly confident flashback to the last album is out of the way though, the band proceed to follow a somewhat different muse over the space of the next 40-odd minutes, largely ditching the melodic pop element of their sound as they delve even deeper into the world of ‘60s French kitsch to create a more brooding, groove-heavy, early-‘70s-crime-movie-soundtrack type confection, so transparent in its stylistic intent that they might as well have put a picture of Serge Gainsbourg and Alain Delon driving a 2CV past the Eiffel Tower in on the front, with Jean-Luc Godard cranking up the camera somewhere in the background.

You remember those couple of tracks on ‘Crystal Anis’ that featured that Gainbourg-style close-to-the-mic spoken word kinda thing, and the awesome chase scene instrumental ‘Belmondo’? Well that’s the style that prevails this time around, for better or for worse. It’s a lushly recorded business too, with sitar twangin’ away here and there, enough vintage organ to fund a second home in the country and lashing and lashing of that wonderful tremoloed fuzz guitar (praise the lord!). A really sensational recording in fact, if that’s your bag.

As if the band’s influences weren’t clear enough, they spend the entirety of ‘Votre Coté Yéyé M'emmerde’ listing them, managing to sound disconcertingly cool in the process (“et Morricone… l’écoute le fuzz!”). A more leftfield highlight is the English language ‘Cold Was The Ground’, a graveyard crawling gallic blues (not a cover of the similarly titled blues standard, though obviously seeking after similar territory), led by eerie Harry Lime-esque zither (yeah, I’m going to go with zither) and a fantastic, ice cold vocal from singer/drummer Marie. Then there’s the delightful ‘BB’, which unexpectedly backtracks into pure garage territory, sounding like the kind of charming teenage psyche-blunder that could easily have been pulled from some gallic Teenage Shutdown comp. Nice.

Those exceptions aside though, we’re deep into mod-ish crime movie OST territory here, basically, with the ghost of Serge stalking large. So if you like that sort of thing, DIG IN, but if you find it all a bit of a contrived vintage put-on, perhaps best steer clear. I mean, I get where you’re coming from with that I guess, but – sorry, what was that? Excuse me, I’m too busy digging in.

Buy from Trouble In Mind, or give in and check it out on Amazon.

Labels: best of 2013, The Liminanas

It’s a tough gig, the post-reunion comeback album. Seems to function very much like the arid badlands of a music ‘career’. Many have been there; few have come back alive. So, how fare The Oblivians, a group who often made a virtue of sounding like they had no idea what the fuck they were doing even back in their glory-days, riding a wave of belligerent aggression and random, hard-livin’ noise through a series of records so accidentally brilliant that they emerged by default as pretty much the best punk band of the ‘90s…?

Well, to be honest, chances of them managing to recapture that same spirit twenty years down the line seem pretty slim, but thankfully they’ve got a different, none-more-Oblivians ace up their sleeve: namely, the fact that they couldn’t give a fuck about doing that.

So yeah - anyone expecting a disc that sits happily alongside ‘Popular Favorites’ and ‘Soul Food’ will be heading straight for disappointment here. Is it as good as the old stuff..? Well, no, obviously, but the point is, it’s not really trying to be. With two additional decades of music-playin’, business, family, friendship behind them, it would frankly be quite worrying if these guys were still bringing the kind of fuck-everything chaos heard in their early work, and it’s good that they don’t tarnish their dignity by trying to force it.

No, instead this is a cleaner, more easy-going Oblivians by a factor of 10. Recording is done competently by someone who knows how to record stuff, and melody and lyrical good humour predominate. So you’re saying it’s gone all middle-aged..? Fuck no! Mainly it just sounds fun, and good - the sound of three friends going into a room with two guitars and a drum-set and banging out a bunch of tunes, leaving anyone else’s expectations at the door. And sure, the results aren’t perfect – there’re a few duds scattered through, a few misguided attempts to hook up with old formulas – but the basic, instrument-swappin’ set-up and non-professional drumming keeps things grounded nicely, and with almost all the cuts clocking in below the two minute mark, there’s little room for ego or ambition to start doing any damage.

Furthermore, the song-writing is frequently top-notch, meaning that the song-by-song hit rate here remains high, reflecting the strengths of three separate writers who all have their own neat little thing going on. ‘Pinball King’ and ‘Little War Child’ are totally sweet glam stomps that could have come straight from the songbook of someone like King Tuff or Nobunny; ‘Come a Little Closer’ and ‘Loving Cup’ (not a ‘Stones cover) are convincing bits of bluesy swagger that veer toward Greg Cartwright/Oblivian’s work with The Reigning Sound; ‘I’ll Be Gone’ is a reassuringly vitriolic put-down of Pitchfork-ish indie celebrity (“your dreams have nothing to do with mine”), and ‘Woke Up In A Police Car’ is a text book demonstration of Pink Flag-esque punk rock efficiency that will stick in your heads for days. All quite different, all keepers.

The acid test for any reunion album of course is to take a step back and ask yourself how well it would stand up if it was by someone you’d never heard of, rather than a gang of returning heroes. Happy to say, ‘Desperation’ passes with honours: if this was a debut album by some out-of-nowhere garage-punk band, I’d rate it as a solid, characterful and super-fun effort and look forward to hearing what they came up with next. Reunion badlands successfully traversed!

I realise these guys all probably have better things to do than spending the rest of their lives cashing in on their old band name, but Oblivians 2.0 is lookin’ good so far, and I for one would be happy to see ‘em continue to make a go of it.

Listen via Youtube, and pick up from wherever you normally go for In The Red stuff.

Labels: best of 2013, The Oblivians

Hey look everybody, it’s another unexpected genre exercise from The Dirtbombs, following up their supreme Detroit techno effort ‘Party Store’ with this affectionate tribute to the oft-pastiched micro-genre of Archies/1910 Fruitgum Company style American Bubblegum. As I probably said when reviewing ‘Party Store’, I think these kind of projects often bring out the best in Mick Collins, whose bands, though all mighty rock n’ roll units, sometimes tend to flounder on record when operating in “hey, do whatever you like” territory. And I’m happy to report that ‘Ooey Gooey..’ continues to bear that theory out.

The main thing that sets this one apart from ‘Party Store’ and ‘Ultraglide in Black’ is that it relies on original song-writing rather than covers, but thankfully Collins & co. fare extremely well in this regard, conjuring up a pile of effortlessly catchy, triumphantly shallow ditties whose cross-pollination of the bubblegum formula with the DB’s patented fuzz garage stomp produces results that for my money are generally more enjoyable than the oft rather tepid confections offered up by the original bubblegum era.

Certainly, one feels that the purveyors of ‘60s/‘70s bubblegum’s cloyingly pre-pubescent ideal would have gone red of face and weak of knee if faced with the percussion-heavy fuzz-box funk and libidinous innuendo of ‘Sugar On Top’ and ‘Hot Sour Salty Sweet’. Listeners who like their pop-fun to come with a bit of a grown up kick to it should have great time with ‘em though, and the former in particular matches the best bits of ‘Party Store’ in its “perfect world floor-filler” potential. Elsewhere, the Shoes/Badfinger-esque ‘Crazy For You’ gently out-Power-Pops 90% of current contenders in the power-pop sub-division of contemporary garage/punk (love that middle section), and that sentiment that applies double to the dumb-faced happiness bomb of ‘Sunshine Girl’, whilst ‘Girl On The Carousel’ takes a surprisingly successful turn toward lush, Association-ish bubblegum-baroque.

As with most bubblegum type stuff, the inevitable onset of sugar toothache means it would probably be a sign of mental illness if you actually wanted to listen to this LP every day, but when the sun’s shining and you’re feeling UP, UP, UP, it’s the bedroom dancing album of the year for sure, and another jewel in The Dirtbombs’ increasingly shiny back catalogue.

Listen on Youtube, buy from the shops.

Labels: best of 2013, The Dirtbombs

Well, this year’s Man… or Astroman? comeback might have proved a bit of a damp squib (on record at least – I didn’t manage to catch them live), but fans of their particular oeuvre can at least wipe away a tear and console themselves with the knowledge that we’ve still got mobs like Los Pecadores, coming straight out of the land of exotic adventure that is 21st century Leeds with a nigh-on perfect reclamation of M… OAM?’s classic-era formula.

So yes: you will by now have clocked the goofy album title, the Mexican wrestler mask and the comic book aliens that adorn the cover. You probably could have guessed that carefully chosen dialogue samples from ‘Wild, Wild Planet’ and ‘Invasion of the Bee Girls’ are just around the corner, and that the drumming is amazing. You know whether you are in or out.

Personally, I love this kinda stuff, so I’m in like Flynn, and I’m happy to report that by and large Los Pecadores stick to the very punk-est end of Astroman’s stylistic spectrum. Certainly, they’re less nerdy and less sonically inventive than the past masters, and perhaps less melodically imaginative too…. but such deficiencies are more than for by sheer velocity. Maintaining a near hardcore pace throughout, ‘Escape From Uranus’ is a relentless 20-something minute punk-surf ripper than barely slows down long enough to catch a breath, let alone a wave. Guitar tone is wild as gtr, bass and drums clash and swerve with all the swashbuckling prowess this kinda music demands, and I’m happy to crown these guys a worthy replacement to London’s much missed (by me at least) One Fathom Down.

If you were feeling grumpy, you could note that their compositions tend to get a bit dreary when they push into cruise control territory on some of the longer tracks, and that the master volume on my CD copy is set inexplicably low, but the record as a whole is such a rush, you’d have to be bloody picky to take issue at such trifles. Definite gold medallists in the hotly contested British Instro/Surf Album Of The Year category, anyway.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, Los Pecadores

Have I written here before about how much I hate the term ‘gig’, in its current usage? Makes me cringe every time I have to say it. I mean, I’m sure you all know that in its original usage, as coined by the pre-rock n’ roll American hipsters of legend, a ‘gig’ = a job, a thing you do for money, a task you are contracted to perform. It first gained its musical connotation when used by jazz musicians, who were literally describing the job of playing music that they had on that night, or whatever. For it to be regularly used by people by people who are merely *attending* a musical performance, in the year 2013 no less, seems an absurd anachronism. Plus it just sounds stupid.

Unfortunately though, the alternatives are even worse – a ‘show’ seems a cringe-worthy Americanism that fits poorly in the lips of other nations, whilst describing a DIY rock n’ roll type event as a ‘concert’ sounds even more ridiculous, like you’re trying to justify it to your grandma or something (‘oh, uh, yes, I went to a .. concert last night nan… yes, that’s where I got these bruises..’).

So, for the lack of any feasible alternative, gig it will have to be. And to finally get to the point, boy have I witnessed some great ones this year! Seriously, you may not know it from my sour tone and lengthy absences on this blog, but it’s been a great, great year as far as getting out and about and enjoying life and music goes.

Those who attended the Indietracks festival back in July might have witnessed me going absolutely ape-shit in appreciation of Helen Love’s first public appearance in about fifteen years; I guess I forgot until they very moment she/they started playing, what amazing achievements a lot of those songs are, and how much they used to mean to me back when I was growing up – total nostalgia of course, but it was a magnificent occasion.

It would take a heck of a lot to beat that, but I’m afraid if I were writing a numbered list it would still come in at #2, simply because that Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel gig in Brighton a few months earlier was such an incredibly good time. Really one of the best.

Elsewhere, seeing Humousexual play at the end of a few nights myself and my friends organised at the Deptford Birds Nest was a very special moment, and Ethical Debating Society were a revelation too. To fill up to rest of a potential top ten, I also really, really enjoyed… ooh, let’s see now… The Necks at Café Oto, Endless Boogie at Corsica Studios, a FANTATIC gig on a boat somewhere near Vauxhall featuring Brilliant Colors, LaLa Vasquez, Bloomer and Good Throb. Dan Friel, Purling Hiss, King Tuff and French band The Feeling of Love, all playing on separate occasions at the Tufnell Park Dome; King Khan & BBQ Show at Birthdays (shit venue, shit corporate promoter, shit crowd – great band), Frau kicking ass in various support slots, including one with Hard Skin – oh yeah, Hard Skin! Seeing Discharge at the New Cross Inn was an absolute hoot, then there was Fabio Frizzi taking a bunch of soundtracks he knocked out on a cheap synthesizer in the ‘80s and getting a freakin’ 12-piece band to play them at the Union Chapel on Halloween… and how did I forget to mention Shonen Knife playing a greatest hits set at Dingwalls on a fairly magical Sunday night of exhaustion? Yeah, it’s been a great year.

Lots of mediocre and bad stuff was witnessed too of course, and there were lots of really choice events I sadly missed due to social or geographic disjuncture (AMT, Mainliner, Man.. or Astroman?, Sun Ra Arkestra), but never mind, that's the way it goes. Still a great year.

Labels: best of 2013, live reviews

Thoroughly disgruntled punk racket from this Memphis crew, who initially sound a bit like a skinny, more wiry (and indeed Wire-y) take on circa ‘82 Black Flag (think if they lost most of their muscles and replaced all the distortion with small amp treble), but subsequently strike out in a more imaginative direction, attaining a sort of expansive, graveyard crawlin’ feel reminiscent of The Flesh Eaters, tempered with shots of obtuse venom and strangulated telecaster terror that come on like distant echoes of The Dicks’ ‘Kill From The Heart’ LP.

And speaking of distant echoes, there’s a bit of a contemporary, post-Oh Sees type element going on here too, with excessive reverb and barely controlled echo applied to just about everything, working well with some malignantly convoluted riffs and buried female back vocals to give things a pleasantly unearthly horror movie psyche feel at times.

I guess I don’t have much more to say about it right now, beyond dutifully noting that it turns out this is actually a late 2012 release that I didn’t hear until recently, so let’s just conclude by stating that, whilst it’s not really an immediate head-banging blast or anything, a few listens really cement this as one of the best punk records I’ve heard this year. Check it out.

Buy from Goner here.

Labels: best of 2013, Ex-Cult

I suppose you can’t blame an artist when his or her closely guarded style suddenly becomes the ‘in-thing’. With piles upon piles of haunted, isolationist downer dirge increasingly filling the record racks, the past few years have seen James Kirby aka The Caretaker aka V/VM aka Leyland Kirby move from being a marginal, faceless malcontent – purveyor of onimous noise-fogs and evil-minded remixes that used to spook unwitting John Peel listeners when they least expected it - to a position somewhat akin to a ringleader for a whole swathe of underground music practitioners.

From being an entirely anonymous, shadowy presence back in the early ‘00s (I was listening to both V/VM and The Caretaker for years before I realised they were the work of the same person), he’s moved on to become a fairly ubiquitous figure - an easy reference point, with a readymade set of expectations; “Oh yeah, it’s more of that Caretaker sort of stuff”, etc etc.

Like I say, it’s not his fault, but still - I confess that when I first saw the name and cover art of his new venture under the name The Stranger, I couldn’t help feeling that maybe he’d finally jumped the shark and succumbed to self-parody. “Watching Dead Empires In Decay”? You’ve gotta be kidding, right? Ooh, look, faded b&w portrait of a bleak, abandoned tower block… gimme a break. In fact this album’s aesthetic presentation, taken in and of itself, could make a pretty good case for all this dark, industrial electronica in 2013 occupying a similar position to that of post-rock in 2003 – eg, predictable, self-important, shit-boring, and of little use to anyone.

So I went in with low expectations, not feeling much in the mood for a bunch of contrived cyclopean gloom and suspecting that this might be where Kirby and I finally part company. But, of course, actually listening to the thing tossed all those foolish notions out the window straight away. Dash it all, why does he have to make everything he touches so damned good? That’s talent for you I suppose.

Taking a distinctly different approach from either the Alzheimer’s wracked ballroom memories of The Caretaker or the melancholic drones of Leyland Kirby, The Stranger introduces us to an entirely new landscape of musique concrète amplified machine-shop rumble, distant thudding reverberations of earthquakes or collapsing zombie nightclubs, detuned cellos and bassoons howling exhaustedly at the moon, and bright, skittering percussion spelling out warm, non-human rhythm patterns, like raindrops hitting tin shack roofs. Such woolly descriptions and glib comparisons don’t really do these compositions justice, but if you’re looking for a map reference, imagine David Lynch and Alan Splet’s ‘Eraserhead’ soundtrack filtered through the methodology and emotional undertow of Pierre Henry or Steve Reich and the musical language perfected by The Necks and you’ll get some idea of the general tone of this record. There’s some sinisterly cozy Boards of Canada-esque synth drift buried in there somewhere too (well, I mean, of course there is), and each track in turn brings out some welcome new twists and sound sources that ably succeed in fighting off the monotony often inherent in this kind of music, as does the presence of a subliminal melodic sensibility that occasionally emerges fully formed in staggeringly beautiful fashion (particularly on closing track ‘About To Enter a Strange New Period’, which must rank as one of Kirby’s best moments to date).

Easily surpassing the limitations imposed by its increasingly tired aesthetic signifiers, ‘Dead Empires..’ makes for compelling listening. As is so often the case from Mr. Kirby, it’s the kind of record so engrossing and atmospheric it can practically change the temperature in a room when played. The question of precisely WHY you’d want to change the  temperature is a trickier one to get to grips with, but if you’re dead set on languishing in the doldrums of late-capitalist pre-apocalyptic despair (and many contemporary listeners are, it seems), you’d be hard pressed to find a better way to go about it than this.

Listen & buy on bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, The Stranger

My intermittent fandom of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynki has been rather hindered over the years by the fact that their music only really makes sense to me when I’m in the countryside. And sadly, I am rarely in the countryside. Relocate their peculiarly loveable folk-rock rollicking to the world of concrete, deadlines, jobs, rent and clock-watching, and their appeal fades to dust in seconds.

So I guess it makes sense that this solo album of peculiarly loveable piano-rock rollicking from Euros Childs (the first work of his I’ve been driven to check out in some years) continues to concern itself with rural - or at least suburban - concerns, even as his expanded horizons as a song-writer allow him to put a somewhat darker and more tormented spin on the wine-sipping, bohemian idyll of his hero, the late Kevin Ayers.

So basically, ‘Situation Comedy’ is sort of rural, middle class counterpoint to The Kinks’ masterpiece ‘Muswell Hillbillies’- a vague, vignettes-from-life type concept album dealing with the joy, sadness and absurdity of a certain unfairly maligned corner of contemporary British life, complete with a song entitled ‘Second Home Blues’, acres of Viv Stanshall-esque whimsy and a verse about a middle-aged woman who bites into a frozen owl believing it to be a piece of cheese.

Like most actual sit-coms, there is a thread of vast, vicious unhappiness running through these songs that is not always immediately obvious, but lurks always. Even the delightful, grin-from-ear-to-ear goofiness of opening cut ‘Tete A Tete’ has Childs reflecting on the discovery of “corpses, beneath my ice rink”; whether metaphorical or literal, it’s an grim aside to find in the midst of a breezy little love song, pre-empting the more explicit miseries and upsets found later on the LP.

But, crucially, there is an equally strong sense of hope here that overcomes cynicism or class-based anger - a dream of a happiness always just around the corner, of dazzling, sun-blessed landscapes and conjugal bliss worthy of the poets. Like Lou Reed or Ray Davies at their best, Childs is able to realise this dream for us just as gracefully as the ugly reality, never sounding condescending or superior as he outlines the multi-faceted tragedies that befall his protagonists as they strive in vain to “do so much more, than just surviving”.

That this is a beautifully composed, arranged and recorded piece of work goes without saying, but y’know - it really is, and such pleasantness helps us glide through subject matter and musical decisions that would be nigh on intolerable in the hands of artists who don’t have quite so much… well, charm, I suppose. Of course there are self-indulgences here - mis-steps and bits that don’t quite work – but that’s exactly as it should be, and there are fewer than you might expect. So if you’ve ever spent quality time with the work of John Cale, or that of the aforementioned Messrs Ayers and Davies, and if you can overcome your kneejerk dismissal of whimsical, piano-led oom-pah for a few minutes, you will, I’m sure, find much nourishment in this rather superb LP. Just don’t try playing it in the city, for god’s sake.

Buy from the lad himself.

Labels: best of 2013, Euros Childs

So, first off: anyone hoping for a direct sequel to the herculean noise-rock edifice of Mainliner’s rightly revered ‘Mellow Out’ (1996) will be setting themselves up for an instant disappointment with this one. Not that ‘Revelation Space’ is a disappointing record in and of itself – far from it. But enjoyment of it hinges upon the realisation that Mainliner 2013 is a very different beast from Mainliner 199X… and an understanding that the fact it’s credited on the sleeve to “Kawabata Makoto’s Mainliner” is no accident.

Much as I love Kawabata (and I love him lots), I often get a bit frustrated with projects that see him collaborating with players outside his usual Acid Mothers Temple orbit, simply because of the extent to which his 24/7 maniac guitar skree and maximalist production aesthetic tends to completely dominate any given recording, burying the contribution of whoever’s gallantly trying to interact with him beneath a storm of mentalist cosmic goo.

One of the things that makes ‘Mellow Out’ such a classic within its field is the fact that bassist/bellower Nanjo Asahito and drummer Koizumi Hajime were tough enough bastards to compete with Kawabata’s maelstrom, leading to the creation of a more genuine (if admittedly insane) group dynamic. Such is sadly not the case with ‘Revelation Space’, as the replacement of Asahito with Bo Ningen frontman Kawabe Taigen shifts the power balance, allowing Kawabata to dominate completely, his never-ending mega-shred standing way out front in the mix, with bass & drums sounding distant and confused, only occasionally managing to hear each other well enough to lock down the kind of groove a band like this needs to properly raise its sails, whilst Taigen’s rather fey unearthly wailing often sounds more like a guy holding his hands over his ears than a mighty warrior screaming into the galactic void.

If we put expectations aside and accept ‘Revelation Space’ purely as a Kawabata Makoto album though, it’s actually pretty good - the best blast I’ve heard from the guy in an age, in fact. Imagine an AMT album with all of their kitschy psyche trappings, prog meanderings and wibbly-wobbly synths stripped away, zeroing straight-in on the bullseye of feedback-belching, diesel-huffing formless biker-rock delirium; Blue Cheer fed through an alien mincer-ray, magnified through moon-sized compound-eye mega-amps, and all that stuff we know Kawabata can knock out before breakfast. That’s what you get here, pretty much, only spiced up with some sequences of startlingly vicious free-improv playing that really push things beyond the stoner-rock comfort zone. I swear, some bits of this sound like Derek Bailey playing through Bardo Pond’s pedal boards, or Michael Karoli completely losing his shit during a heavily medicated Can session that they all decided they’d rather forget the next morning… and it would be pretty churlish of us freak-rock fans to complain when that sort of grub’s on the table, let’s face it.

Listen & buy via Riot Season’s Bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, Kawabata Makoto, Mainliner

Squeezing in just at the bottom, but definitely worth a nod pending further listening, is this nice little platter than I picked up only a week or two ago. Until recently, I’d largely ignored the doings of US/Canadian garage-rock mainstay King Khan, just because, well… I dunno really. The costumes, the goofy album covers, the general ‘shtick’ of the whole business… these things have a tendency to put me off. Maybe I read an interview with him once where he said some stuff I thought was stupid. I don’t know. I don’t even remember.

Anyway, long story short: apparently this was my own damn loss, because my girlfriend persuaded me to go see what is known as The King Khan & BBQ Show in London earlier this year, and verily, they kicked ass. Great rock n’ roll music (and I say that in hushed tones, etc). This here Shrines ensemble is a somewhat different kettle of fish, however. Far smoother and more well-mannered, it sees our main man backed by slick production, tasteful horns, Philly soul strings and the like, but it’s still very enjoyable, by and large, with some great guitar licks, a solid retro-soul type groove and moderate-to-good original song-writing. There’s a definite flavour of major label ‘60s psych hanging in the air that occasionally puts me in mind of The Animals, Chocolate Watch Band and perhaps one of those post-Forever Changes Love albums where Arthur Lee went off in a more straight-up rock band direction. Meanwhile, some of the mellower numbers in the middle of the record – ‘Darkness’, ‘Pray For Lil’ – are about the lushest re-enactments of ‘60s Southern soul you could hope to hear in these dark days. Highlights for sure.

So: not life-changing or anything, and it does sometimes veer a bit too far toward the kinda shallow ‘60s pop parody direction currently prevalent amongst other popular garage groups that I’ll refrain from naming, but mostly: THUMBS UP. There are some really fine bits of psyche-blues-rock and soul to enjoy here, with some genuine songwriterly feeling behind ‘em too, and listening to it makes me feel good. Definitely the best album you’ll hear in 2013 made by a man who insists on appearing in public in latex underwear and an Egyptian headdress, anyhow.

Stream & buy from Merge.

Labels: best of 2013, King Khan & The Shrines

…and yes, the best records of the year run-down begins imminently. I could waste time harping on about current trends and developments in the music world circa 2013 etc. etc., but instead I thought I’d best dedicate my energies to the central business of ploughing through the records I’ve liked, and whatever I have to say in a wider context will hopefully make itself clear along the way.

But in short: if you’d asked me in June, I would have said that there had been barely any music this year that I actually thought was any good. (I think I have high standards these days, and I’m increasingly quick to dismiss as I get older.) Thankfully though, things have turned around, and by the time I got around to scribbling them all down on a list, turns out there have been LOADS of records this year I’ve enjoyed.

Ok, maybe not exactly a banner year for many of my favourite scenes & genres, and maybe there’s a higher proportion of old geezers as opposed to young up-and-comers on the list than might be wished for, but never mind. Still more good stuff coming down the pipe than I actually have time to listen to, and that’s the main thing.

So: In an effort to make amends for the long stretches of 2013 during which this blog was on life support, I’m gonna take a deep breath and go for a top twenty – one post per day, beginning NOW.

Well, ok, actually beginning tomorrow. Gimme a chance. And maybe there’ll be some gaps. But basically that’s what I’m aiming for.

Usual rules apply: anything released during 2013 on any format that features either more than four tracks or more than 10 minutes of music is eligible; random items from 2012 than I didn’t hear until 2013 will be included at the editor’s discretion.

Labels: best of 2013