An Ocean In Between The Waves

Saturday, 13 August 2016

Psychic Ills - Inner Journey Out (Sacred Bones)

The packaging for Psychic Ills' third album Inner Journey Out - complete with brown paper inner sleeve - is a loving, expensive reproduction of a bootleg LP, of an item predominantly of interest to historians and completists only. If you were feeling unkind you could suggest that the same description would apply to the music within: a painstaking recreation of Spacemen 3, Mazzy Star and This Mortal Coil, acts who themselves had lifted many of their sonic cues from the previous generation - the nocturnal drones of the Velvet Underground, the "it's so very lonely"-ness of the Stones' "2000 Light Years From Home", the cracked, desolate glory of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers; a copy of a copy, to be enjoyed exclusively by the kind of psych festival frequenter who spends weekends standing contentedly through 20 variations on Wooden Shjips.

Personally, I don't have a problem with this - in part, because I'm a sucker for this particular sound, but also because it's what rock'n'roll has always done (when Tres Warren sings about there being "too much monkey business" on "Mixed Up Mind", he's - consciously or not - joining a line which stretches back to Chuck Berry via Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan's delivery on "Subterranean Homesick Blues", Johnny Thunders' "Too Much Junkie Business" and the Jesus & Mary Chain's Munki; when he needed a sleepily seductive female counterpoint for "I Don't Mind", he turned to Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, just like the Mary Chain and Chemical Brothers before him).

Finally, I'm fine with it because it's resulted in an assured, beautiful, classic-sounding Psychic Ills record. The production is superb: Yoed Nir's string arrangements bring a melancholic beauty to "Back To You" and "No Worry", while the gorgeous gospel-style backing vocals of Lady Peachena and Nadine Simmons lift "Another Change", "New Mantra" and "Baby" onto the same higher ground as Spiritualized.

There are very few wig-outs, little of the noise found on previous projects. Organs hum incessantly but quietly beneath strummed acoustic guitars. This is a mellower LP about shutting out the modern world, getting more sleep ("I don't drink Coca-Cola no more" goes "Coca-Cola Blues"), coming up with a new mantra, turning one's focus inwards in an attempt to find some kind of peace. "Only you know where you have been to, only you know what you have been through" reads a quote from the great Dion DiMucci on the gatefold sleeve. "Feel like I'm alone, I've got confusion in my mind", Warren sings towards the end of the album, "but I'm alright".

Monday, 8 August 2016

case/lang/veirs - case/lang/veirs (Anti)

While previously enjoying music by K.D. Lang, Laura Veirs and Neko Case, I'd never felt compelled to buy any of their records. That grouping of names - case/lang/veirs (all lower case, all equal billing) - wasn't on my list of dream collaborations and even when it was announced that the trio were to release an album together it stirred little emotion in me, other than surprise to see Lang's name used in its correct musical context rather than as a punchline below a Stewart Lee article: "K.D. Lang's let himself go".

It's been a most welcome surprise, then, that I have absolutely fallen for this record and that it has rarely left my turntable these past few months. The three voices off-set and compliment one another beautifully, on songs that flit between folk, Americana and classic Laurel Canyon pop. Laura's Veirs' "Song for Judee", a fine example of the later style, is a tribute to the singer-songwriter Judee Sill who cut some splendid records in the early 70s ("you wrote "The Kiss", and it is beautiful", Veirs correctly acknowledges) and perhaps could have gone on to become a Joni Mitchell or Neil Young-level star if it weren't for her health problems and addictions. Instead, Sill died from an overdose at the age of 35, depicted here in heart-wrenching detail ("you never really got a break from the car wrecks and the pain...they found you with a needle in your arm, beloved books strewn 'round at your feet").

Laura Veirs was apparently the driving force behind the project and she has a writing credit on every song here. The result? Possibly the strongest A Side of any LP so far this year, and a B Side - beginning with the magnificent, sweeping "Best Kept Secret" - that isn't far behind. The Lang-led tracks ("Honey and Smoke", "Blue Fires", "Why Do We Fight") are a total revelation, her voice all deep and honeyed and smoked. Neko Case's two cowrites, "Supermoon" and "Down I-5", while occasionally washing over me during play throughs, do add a moodiness, another texture to the record.

I could imagine some dismissing case/lang/veirs as too grown-up, too tasteful, too Uncut-subscribing-dad (if the album had just a little more star-power, it would clean up at next year's Grammys...it still might), but they would be missing out: it really is very, very good indeed.

Whyte Horses - Pop Or Not (CRC)

That Manchester group Whyte Horses are masterminded by Dom Thomas, a "chronologist who scours the planet for obscure and rare vinyl genius" and makes and sells far-out mixes of his far-flung findings, designed to feel like "looking at a sun drenched mountain range through kaleidoscopic glasses", might give you some idea of what to expect from their debut LP. The titles of two instrumental tracks - "The Other Half of the Sky" and "The Dream Before" - provide further clues. When Pop or Not's opening and title track - another instrumental - gives way to a candyfloss-light drift, and singer Julie Margat coos "we are clouds passing by, wandering the sky", you'd be forgiven for snarkily remarking "well, like, OF COURSE you are, duuudes".

This is a midsummer day's dream of a record. "Promise I Do" and "Astrologie Siderale" bring wonderful memories (sugar)rushing back to me of my first year of uni, of falling hurriedly in love with the first Concretes album. Jim Noir's Tower of Love is a colourful pop confection of a similar vintage, and it figures that he pops up here (check the Noirish toy-town piano on "Wedding Song") given that the Horses hail from near his "patch". Indeed, for all the talk of travelling the world in search of Brazilian tropicalia and Turkish psych (it takes many hours of studying Gallic girl-group pop to sound as cool and carefree as Whyte Horses do on "La Couleur Originelle" and "Peach Tree Street"), this is a very Manchester record. Jez Williams of Doves contributes, while it's impossible to liberally use shimmering backwards guitar - as on "She Owns The World" - without evoking the Stone Roses' "Don't Stop".

A decidedly Northern melancholy lurks in amongst the buttercup cups and daffodil teapots too: there's a sense of yearning and sadness in "When I Was A Scout"'s vocal and thrumming analogue synth; confusion and disorientation in "Feels Like Something's Changing"; the second track tellingly isn't called "Little Fluffy Clouds", it's called "The Snowfalls".

Whyte Horses have created something both instant and involving, weightless and heavy. It's pop...and, yet, it's not.

Charles Bradley - Changes (Daptone)

Charles Bradley would be considered a soul great of any era – we should feel mighty blessed that he’s recording and performing in ours. I certainly feel blessed to have witnessed an unforgettable live performance by him in 2013 at Glasgow’s ABC. Illiterate and living in poverty, Bradley was discovered donning a cape, performing as a James Brown impersonator. He’s subsequently made three fantastic R&B LPs for Daptone Records and toured the world. The Charles Bradley Live Experience was sheer joy and pure entertainment, with many tricks borrowed from The Hardest Working Man In Show Business: flailing mike stand, costume changes, synchronized dance routines. A hype man and ridiculously tight soul band brought old-school flavour and backed Bradley. He was the real deal, an irresistible mix of hardened life experience – when he threw his arms open wide and screamed, you believed his joy/longing/heartache/pain – child-like enthusiasm and genuine humility. “I LOOOVE you!” he yelped on more than one occasion, and rather than cynically thinking “I bet you say that to all the crowds”, we collectively blushed and shouted it back at him.

His latest LP Changes is his most varied set, ranging from psychedelic soul (“Change for the World”) to Motown heart-melters (“You Think I Don’t Know But I Know”) to straight-up funk (“Ain’t It A Sin”) to lovely slowies (“Slow Love”). It’s also his most personal album – a tranquil beach and cliff face scene painted by Bradley in 1982 adorns the back cover, along with a dedication to his mother Inez who passed away in 2014. The title track (that rarest of things - a Black Sabbath ballad) was originally inspired by Sabbath’s Bill Ward’s divorce of his first wife; in Bradley’s hands, it becomes a yearning, heartbreaking love letter to his mother: “she was my woman, I loved her so, but it’s too late now, I’ve let her go”. Kitty Empire in the Observer described it as “monumental”, and I can think of no more apt an adjective. (Surely “Changes” should have closed Side A? I always require a breather when it’s finished).

My vinyl edition of the album also comes with a bonus disc of ace instrumental versions which bring into clear focus the exemplary playing (courtesy of members of the Menahan Street Band and Budos Band) and the breadth of the material. The version of “Change for the World”, renamed “Revelations”, is particularly fierce.

Karl Blau - Introducing Karl Blau (Bella Union)

It's both strange and entirely fitting that Karl Blau's first LP on Bella Union be called Introducing Karl Blau: strange as the Washington-based singer already has 10+ releases under the belt of his rhinestone-encrusted Nudie suit; fitting as, thanks to BU's leg-up, this will be the vast majority of listeners' first exposure to him. It's also slightly odd that an album serving as an introduction to a singer/songwriter would consist entirely of covers.

What's not in doubt, however, is the quality of the music here and Blau's melodic gifts as a singer and interpreter of songs. The tracks here are of a 60s and 70s vintage, some familiar ("To Love Somebody", "If I Needed You", The Walker Brothers' "No Regrets"), others new to me (Tom T. Hall's instantly wonderful "That's How I Got Memphis"). Some are performed faithfully, others are taken somewhere entirely new (the majestic, widescreen, 9-minute reading of Link Wray's "Fallin' Rain").

One minor gripe: I must confess to being immune to the charms of "Woman (Sensuous Woman)", Blau earnestly delivering lines made famous by Don Gibson such as "many hearts would break if I don't conquer, this lustful spell you've cast over me" - lines which exist only in syrupy 1970s country songs. It's the one corny misstep on a collection of country-soul gold.

Sunday, 7 August 2016

Live Report: Super Furry Animals - Bandstand, Glasgow (06/08/16)

APPLAUSE
LOUDER
APE SHIT

Gruff Rhys has his (hash)cake and eats it with placards reading such instructions throughout tonight's show - winking at the crowd and demonstrating how charmingly post-modern he is, while also eliciting from us the exact ape-shit responses that he's asking for. Not that we need much encouragement on a relatively dry Saturday night at the tremendous Bandstand when one of the great crowd-pleasing bands is in town. Rhys' harmonica at the start of "Slow Life" beckons bodies to the front of the stage and out of their seats, where they'll remain for the next giddy hour and a half.

The SFA '16 live show isn't wildly different from the last one I saw in 2007: we still get Gruff's Power Ranger helmet and horned keyboard/gadget unit (which looks increasingly beaten-up and sorry for itself); he still chomps and hands out celery during "Receptacle for the Respectable"'s quiet section (a task performed on the studio version by none other than Paul McCartney, in a nod to his carrot-munching on "Vega-Tables" by Rhys' beloved Beach Boys). But it doesn't have to be different - the Super Furries have always recognised the importance of having skewed yet primary-coloured pop songs to capture listeners' imaginations and act as gateways to their eccentric, more experimental LPs, and, over nine albums, these songs have been stockpiled to perfection in their live set. Songs that act almost as terrace chants. Songs about black-magic dogs ("Golden Retriever"), songs that imitate telephones ("Rings Around the World"), songs with gibberish lines like "we ride tornadoes, we eat tomatoes" ("Do or Die"), songs with brattish "la la la la" refrains ("The International Language of Screaming"). Songs that could be dismissed as "lightweight" or "novelty", if they weren't so characterful and infectious.

These instant hits of pop (many of them bonafide pop hits) are countered in the set by longer, slow-growing numbers: "Zoom!" ("I can't get enough of this, kiss me with apocalips"), "Mountain People", a truly gorgeous "Run Christian Run". A vocoder interlude includes the swooning "Juxtapozed With U" and unofficial Euro 16 anthem "Bing Bong", the joyous sound of Os Mutantes playing keepie-uppie with a robot head on Copacabana Beach. One, admittedly lovely, track from their recently reissued Welsh-language album Mwng is the only obvious trip-to-the-bar opportunity.

"The Man Don't Give A Fuck" is the swear-tastic, Steely Dan-sampling closer - parents leaping to cover their young childrens' ears as the Furries gleefully drop tens of life-affirming F-bombs. As Gruff holds the side door open and his bandmates file out, my mate says "I don't see how they're gonna be able to top that". When they return in their now-famous yeti costumes (again - these have seen better days), you realise that they're not even gonna try - they just start up the song again and do more of the same...only in yeti costumes. Gruff raises his final placard (RESIST PHONEY ENCORES) and the crowd goes ape shit one last time.

THE END

Tuesday, 22 December 2015

AOIBTW: 2015 Picks. Albums, Reissues, Tracks and Gigs of the Year

As always, there was so much terrific music to enjoy and get lost in in 2015. Below are lists of the Albums, Reissues and Tracks which have been my favourite, most played records of the last 12 months. No doubt, there are some releases that I have missed or haven’t gave a fair trial, but the ones I’ve chosen point towards a solid, often fantastic year, in my opinion. Indeed, some rules had to be self-imposed to bring my Top Albums down to 30: albums originally released in 2014 were discounted, meaning D’Angelo (vinyl edition was this year, but the album first appeared very late last year) and Gwenno (repressed, having signed for Heavenly) missed out; I can tell that the John Grant and Low LPs are great but don’t feel like I’ve spent sufficient time with them to justify places on the list; though absolutely thrilling in parts, Fuzz’s Fuzz II was a slog over 70 minutes, meaning that, for the first time in years, a Ty Segall-associated record doesn’t appear.

So what did make the cut?

We had wonderful, personal, characterful, immersive records from Julia Holter, Joanna Newsom and Jessica Pratt. All of those adjectives could be used to describe Father John Misty and Ezra Furman too, though their presentation was far more flamboyant and attention-seeking. Twistin' and a-groovin', Leon Bridges brought a contemporary cool to classic R&B which appealed to everyone from Urban Outfitters shoppers to Radio 2 Playlist compilers, scoring him a Top Ten album. Keen to follow in the tradition of songsmiths like Randy Newman, McCartney and Nilsson, Tobius Jesso Jnr turned past disappointments into melodic pop made to last. “Think I’m gonna die in Hollywood” he sang remembering a previous gamble that hadn’t paid off; now one of the industry’s most respected young talents, he ended the year with a writing credit on the Blockbuster Album of 2015, Adele’s 25. It came as a slight surprise to me to find out that Ryley Walker was from Chicago, as many of his touchstones are British: the intricate finger-picking of Bert Jansch, the pastoral jazziness of John Martyn, the sympathetic piano trills of Nick Drake; even Primrose Green’s sleeve seemingly nodded to both Graham Nash’s Songs For Beginners and Van Morrison’s His Band and the Street Choir. Esteemed players from Chicago’s jazz and post-rock scenes provided backing on Walker’s tremendous album, while the rich country-soul of Matthew E White’s Spacebomb band was the perfect accompaniment for Natalie Prass gorgeous, wispy vocals, inadvertently making White’s own Fresh Blood LP look a bit anaemic by comparison.

As well as putting out an ace album under the name Damaged Bug (Cold Hot Plumbs), John Dwyer produced some of his best garage-psych-punk to date on Thee Oh Sees’ Mutilator Defeated at Last, “Web” being a particularly exciting opener. The warm electronic jazz of Floating Points’ Elaenia swirled around and pitter-pattered across the room…left for a while…before returning with an almighty clatter. Espers-frontwoman Meg Baird and Trembling Bells offered two very different takes on folk music, though both burned with passion, mystery and intrigue. Produced by partner Cate Le Bon, H Hawkline’s In the Pink of Condition was a charming, odd-ball collection of pop, glam and psych in the spirit of countrymen Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals. Some took against Ruban Nielson’s move away from cosmic guitar jamming on Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s third album Multi Love, but I really dug it: the funky, skewed pop hooks and smudged textures recalling fellow one-man-bands Shuggie Otis, Cody Chesnutt and Prince. Ought, Lonelady and Viet Cong captured the year’s sense of twitching anxiety and agitation in their own idiosyncratic ways. On Carrie & Lowell, meanwhile, Sufjan Stevens meditated on the death of his mother and made the album of a lifetime: so heart-breaking that you needed to psyche yourself up to listen to it, so beautiful you never wanted to turn it off.

Following a deeply disappointing gig at the SWG3, I went from thinking Deerhunter's Fading Frontier was a delightfully easy-on-the-ear, satisfyingly succinct listen to viewing its nine song, 36 minutes as miserly and mean-spirited (one of the members of the band suggested afterwards that perhaps they had been a bit "too casual" on stage - not the first words that came to my mind in the immediate aftermath!). A few months after the event, having finally calmed down, I realise I was right the first time, and that singles "Snakeskin" and "Breaker" are two of the songs of the year. A very pleasant surprise was how much I loved and played Alabama Shakes’ second LP: with a shift in emphasis from soulful blues-rock to psychedelic soul and stunning, three-dimensional production from Blake Mills, Sound & Color was the sound of a band finding themselves, morphing from retro rockers into – to borrow one of their song titles – future people. Legendary Swedes, Dungen returned on a wave of flutes with my psych-rock album of the year, Allas Sak (translation: “everyone’s thing”), while the highly addictive Sonic Praise by space-rockers Ecstatic Vision was on another astral plane.

One track into a woefully underpopulated set at the Hug & Pint – a furiously thrashy “No Views – and Blank Realm guitarist Luke Walsh was having to replace a broken string. “This happens a lot” said drummer and vocalist Daniel Spencer, part rueful, part proud. Such conviction is probably what compelled the Australian edition of The Guardian to describe them as “the world’s greatest live band”: one who can do it on a cold, damp Monday night in Glasgow. Illegals in Heaven, their most complete LP yet, had the rollicking falling-down-the stairs numbers they're known for (“No Views”, “Costume Drama”), as well as stunning Electric Mainline-era Spiritualized drones (“Cruel Night”) and twinkling ballads (“Dream Date”, “Gold”). The Australian rock scene is ridiculously fertile at the moment, and Dick Diver (stop your snickering – they’re named after an F. Scott Fitzgerald character) have associations with just a few of its biggest names: Total Control, UV Race, Lower Plenty, Boomgates. There were four distinctive songwriting voices on Melbourne, Florida but, to the band’s credit, the tunes all sat together snuggly like a lovingly-made mixtape.

For a group with the gang-mentality and self-belief of Young Fathers, labels and expectations are there to be confounded. “File Under Rock & Pop!” read the sticker on the vinyl sleeve after record shops had placed their previous album Dead in the Urban section. They laughed in the face of the so-called Mercury Curse, returning less than a year after the Mercury Prize-winning Dead with White Men Are Black Men Too: an urgent, energetic genre smash-up, with more than its fair share of hooks. A graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Christopher Duncan composed Architect, an understated, wintery, dream-a-little-dream-pop album. Look at the title and the Rennie Mackintosh-inspired sleeve: this was someone creating a world, an impressive body of work. Even his chosen stage-name – the alluring curves of “C Duncan” – felt elegant by design. Conceived on the Isle Of Jura and displaying a distinct new age flavour, Lease of Life was Errors‘ best album to date. Vocalist Cecilia Stamp added a New Orderish pop sensibility to the likes of “Slow Rotor” and “Dull Care”, while “Through the Knowledge of Those Who Observe Us”, with its beautiful, subtle shifts, may just be my favourite 13 minutes of music released this year.

If 2015 belonged to anyone it was Kendrick Lemar. How do you follow an instant classic like good kid m.A.A.d. city? On To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick looked deeper within himself and further out – past his neighbourhood – to comment on what was happening in his country and the wider world. Angry, poetic, antagonistic, thoughtful, witty, sexy, wise, funny: its 80 minutes were densely packed with different characters and voices. It began with a sample of Boris Gardiner’s “Every Nigger is a Star” and ended with Kendrick interviewing Tupac, seeking advice on success, fame and authenticity; in between, practically every form of black music ever was expertly weaved together. It was a timely album, an important album, a complex at times difficult album, but also a hugely rewarding and enjoyable one – one that has raised the bar for what a long-player can be and do. A collaborator on TPAB, Kamasi Washington released his own project in 2015 and everything about it – the sound, the length, the cast list, the artwork, the vinyl package, the title – was Epic. I’ve only just scratched the surface of this three-hour interstellar soul jazz extravaganza but, with its next-level playing, heavenly massed vocals and genuinely breath-taking production, I know I’ll be delving deeper and getting more out of it for many years to come – something I hope to do with all the records on this list.

Click on each title below to hear a track from the record.

ALBUMS (in alphabetical order)