My Week in Jukebox (w/e 02/10/09)

The Big Pink - Dominos [7]
Natalie Imbruglia - Want [8]
Boys Like Girls ft. Taylor Swift – Two Is Better Than One [3]
Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind [8]
Mariah Carey - I Want to Know What Love Is [3]
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My Week in Jukebox (w/e 25/09/09)

Well, two weeks in one as they were both a little shorter on me than normal.

Miss Li - Dancing All the Way Home [8]
Mini Viva - Left My Heart in Tokyo [7]
Robbie Williams - Bodies [4]
Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man [8]
Los Campesinos! - The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future [8]
"I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate". "To the left side and the right side, either way is a crazy golf course". Yep, still totally quotable as ever. This is straightforwardly emotional (and gorgeous!), though, in a way that they only skirted round on last year's albums, distanced by irony and uncertainty. There's nothing uncertain about the way that the guitars that have been swelling finally crash over the chorus here, a glorious moment of catharsis.
Leona Lewis - Happy [5]
Nneka – Heartbeat (Chase & Status Remix) [8]
Hockey - Song Away [4] (Ok, my mark is a little generous. Not sure what came over me.)
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 11/09/09)

Quite a high scoring week for me, this.

Owl City - Fireflies [2]
Jay Reatard - It Ain't Gonna Save Me [6]
Morandi - Colors [6]
Jesse McCartney ft. T-Pain – Body Language (Remix) [7]
VV Brown - Game Over [8]
Just as full of big, cartoonishly dramatic hooks and metaphors as last time out, and just as energetic and entertaining with it. Probably even better than "Shark in the Water", though, for carving out more of a non-Bedingfield identity of her own too.
Biffy Clyro - That Golden Rule [9]
3OH!3 - Starstrukk [3]
The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition [6]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 04/09/09)

With a bonus two blurbs that I managed in the previous two weeks, while on holiday.

Heartland - Mustache [3]
Bloc Party - One More Chance [7]
Florence + the Machine - Drumming Song [3]
Panic at the Disco - New Perspective [0]
Ellie Goulding - Starry Eyed [7]
Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions - Blanchard [5]
Jade Ewen - My Man [5]
Katie Armiger - Gone [3]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 14/08/09)

Oh well, maybe I'll really like something next week.

Mike - We Are Golden [3]
Christophe Willem - Plus Que Tout [6]
Calvin Harris - Ready for the Weekend [6]
Mos Wanted Mega ft. Janee – Touch My [4]
Girls Can't Catch - Keep Your Head Up [3]
Sugababes - Get Sexy [2]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 07/08/09)

Vitalic - Your Disco Song [6]
Kate Miller-Heidke - The Last Day on Earth [7]
Wild Beats - Hooting and Howling [5]
Paramore - Ignorance [1]
Eva Simons - Silly Boy [5]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 31/07/09)

Gaggle - Crows [5]
Jessica Jarrell - Armageddon [8]
Muse – United States of Eurasia (Collateral Damage) [3]
Matt & Kim - Daylight [3]
Chrisette Michele – Blame It On Me [8]
Gloriana - Wild at Heart [8]
Lily Allen - 22 [6]
It's Not Me, It's You is a frustrating album for its wild extremes of quality, from the divine "The Fear" to the unlistenably dire "Fuck You". As much as that, though, it suffers from too much stuff like "22" - sweet and accomplished pop with some of Allen's better serious lyrics that nonetheless doesn't achieve anything that The Bird and The Bee don't do better.
Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone [4]
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My week in Jukebox (w/e 24/07/09)

Format taken from Alex Ostroff, as I like it. A few bonus ones from the end of last week as this is the first time I've made a post to link to all of my reviews, and I'll put in any of my blurbs that weren't used (only one this time).

Chicane - Poppiholla [0]
Colbie Caillat - Fallin' For You [4]
Kings of Leon - Notion [5]
Back in 2003 I would never have picked Kings of Leon out of a line up of NEW ROCK REVOLUTION bands as the ones who would become pack out arenas. But fair play to them as unlike, say, Jet, they have consistently improved with each record and got more accessible to boot. Here we are four albums in, and they've reached the dizzy heights of adequacy.
Boys Like Girls - Love Drunk [7]
Lady Antebellum - I Run to You [4]
Misstress Barbara ft. Sam Roberts – I’m Running [6]
Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity of Huge [9]
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Fever Ray at Shepherds Bush Empire (16/07/09)

Thanks to Jukebox editor William Swygart I have been nominated for a post on the best music critics aged under 25. Between that linking here and actually having access to a keyboard (seriously, 90% of Jukebox reviews are done from my phone), it seemed the right time to update again.

Handily, I went to a gig yesterday! I am going to lots of gigs at the moment. This is partly due to work circumstances allowing, but also thanks to last.fm taking all the pain out of finding them. It notes who I listen to and informs me when someone I like is going to play in London - so useful. Yesterday it was Fever Ray (whose album I wrote about when it came out).

The support act was a guy who bowed, stood in the dark and played one long and quite boring ambient track, bowed again and left. Normally this would have been quite annoying but I was on my own and feeling antisocial, so an excuse to browse the net more without offending anyone was ok. He was Simon Scott apparently, according to last.fm again.



Fever Ray's set was heavy on literal smoke and mirrors. Plus lasers. Those were the only source of light for most of the set bar a few weak lampshaded lights, and it took several songs to work out which of the mysterious figures on stage was actually Karin Dreijer Andersson. Quite disorientating, especially as they started with an "If I Had a Heart" where she was buried deep in the darkness aurally as well, pitch-shifted even further into the depths than on the album.

Once she let both masks slip, from a plaintive "Seven" on, she was almost too pitch-perfect, the treasonous thought of 'why don't I just listen to the album?' raising its head on occasion. The live percussion saved the day on that front though, forcing the beats into the forefront in a way that they rarely are on record and lending a new urgency and immediacy to the distant. When they synced with the lasers to totally occupy the room, the idea that this was a better way of doing things than watching someone singing made total sense.

Back

A couple of pleasantly surprising returns.

Hope of the States seemed like the most exciting new thing for a long time for a while in 2003 when "Black Dollar Bills" and "Enemies/Friends" hit, taking all the intensity and scale of post-rock and fitting it into something closer resembling immediate pop songs. Things then went wrong in all sorts of ways (although making the mangled bitter howl of "The Red, The White, The Black, The Blue" a top 20 hit was quite something) and debut The Lost Riots stands as a not-quite-there testament to what could have been.

I had just been thinking back and listening to it again in light of Broken Records releasing a excellent debut that captures more of the early Hope of the States appeal than anyone else since, although has a certain extra focus that both makes for a more cohesive album and means they never quite extent to such highs.

And then, coincidentally (?) The Northwestern came to my attention. They are Sam Herlihy and Simon Jones of HotS, along with others including Jonny Winter from fellow defunct widescreen guitar proponents The Open. And "Telephones", apart from being washed in more layers of guitar noise than HotS ever indulged in, is very much a return to the ambition that they did so well.


The second is even more exciting. See, there was this band called Buffseeds, who released my favourite album of 2003. A series of almost spooky collisions between their lyrics and things that happened to me during its preceding run of singles certainly helped burn it into my life, but it was amazing stuff regardless. JJ72 were the inevitable regular comparison, but they were like a JJ72 shorn of bluster and pomposity and able to cut precisely to heartbreak. In Kieran Scragg they had a singer with an astonishing androgynous voice and a way of making familiar sentiments totally believable and vital.

After Buffseeds split up, Kieran went on to form Iko. I seem to remember the name comes from the Japanese for orphan, presumably like another Ico. Fitting for their album I am Zero in 2005 which was a dark, sad record of largely acoustic despair that was almost uncomfortably intimate at times but rewarded perseverance a great deal.

After they struggled to even get that released fully and was followed by a four year gap I had to fear for the worst for any future music from them. Then I listened to Iko for the first time in a while and soon afterwards got a message on last.fm. From Kieran Scragg! An extra exciting moment because it said that they had a free EP to give away on their myspace, the Ctrl Alt Delete EP, and an album to follow.

At this point I would have been happy for any new music from him really, but the EP went way beyond my expectations and is the most fully formed and impressive Iko release to date. The last three tracks largely carry on where they left off before and are no less beautiful for it, but the preceding "This Room Needs a Priest" and "CtrlAltDel" are revelations. The former veers from choral harmony to rattling rock with more of a punch than even the Buffseeds days. The latter sees Kieran's voice cut up and distorted against a loud and chaotic backdrop, glimpses of the delicate song it might have started as just occasionally slipping through the haze, beautifully hopeless. Can't wait to see what else the album has to offer.
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Jukebox extras #3

VV Brown - "Shark in the Water"
Something about the massive, unselfconcious enthusiasm this transmits, along with the number of clashing hooks that are thrown together in the presumption that some will stick, makes me think of Natasha Bedingfield. That and VV's voice sounds a bit like Tashbed's. An unlikely sound for the next big thing, but as long as she stays more "These Words" than "Single" I approve. [7]

Regina Spektor - "Laughing With"
"Fidelity" was one of my favourite discoveries of the old Jukebox era and still makes me smile without fail when it comes up on shuffle. It's actually a bit upsetting then that this is so hopeless, displaying none of the attributes that made that so swooningly charming. Instead it's a one note ramble, musically and lyrically, that doesn't even get across its message clearly and gives away its weak, weak pay-off in the title. Bah. [2]

Lady Gaga - "Lovegame"
Lady Gaga currently has the number 1 and 2 best selling singles of 2009 in the UK. That's Spice Girls levels of chart domination. Since this follows the formula to the extent of reusing the "Just Dance" melody several times, and helpfully flags up its 'disco stick' talking point at the start, middle and end, it's all too easy to see it following suit. Little else to take offence at, all competent as ever, but nothing new is offered to make hearing this everywhere an attractive prospect. [4]
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Doves at Brixton Academy (02/05/09)

Making atmospheric guitar music with a clear familiarity with dance, it makes sense that The Invisible should be supporting Doves. It's slightly lighter and funkier genres that inform them, resulting in a sound that at its best recalls the cruelly overlooked Grand National. The deep bass squelch and happy bounce of "London Girl" in particular gets very warmly welcomed. At times, though, the lack of a commanding voice means less punchy material drifts out without connecting; there's some potential there nonetheless.



Doves themselves don't exactly have the world's greatest live vocalists at their command, though all three take to the mic by the end of the show. Jez is able to carry the likes of "Jetstream" and "Words" off no worse than on record, but Jimi is more variable. Frequently rearing back from the mic with each word as if overpowered by what he was singing, he suits the likes of "Rise" and "Snowden", with their brooding, beyond-words emotions and heavy musical weight, really well but elsewhere sometimes sounded curiously distant. "Caught by the River" resultantly becomes an odd choice of old song to bring out for the end of the main set.

Said set is mainly drawn from the new album Kingdom of Rust and (narrowly my favourite) The Last Broadcast. The best sequence is the pairing of the title tracks of each, both powerfully immediate and played with country jangle to the fore, forging a link between the two that wouldn't wotherwise be apparent. Those aside, a punchy "Black and White Town" and "Pounding" are highlights. My opinion on much of the rest of the new material (slight improvement on the last album, too lumpen to really recapture past glories) sadly doesn't get changed much, but the general reaction to the new stuff suggests plenty are a lot more won over.
The real treats for longstanding fans unsurprisingly come in the encore, beginning with a gorgeous acoustic rendition of B-side "Northenden" that melts away the distance between band and audience and brings to mind those pesky Elbow comparisons for the only time of the night. There's some position-swapping for "Here it Comes" and then the joyous, triumphant finale of "There Goes the Fear" and "Space Face".
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Withdrawn from memory

Doves live review coming soon, but an amusing pre-script(?) to it first. I was going to write about how good it was to finally see a Doves show as I'd never seen them properly before, having only seen them at V2001.

Before the show started at Brixton Academy yesterday, something by The Magic Numbers was being played over the sound system and I had a memory of seeing them as a support act before their first album at the same venue. I worked out that it must have been early 2005, but couldn't think of a show that I'd been to that it could have been.

I've just done some internet research and turned up that it was, yep, Doves that they were supporting. I also found my ticket and saw that that was the one show at Brixton Academy where we ended up with seated tickets without realising. The fact that I'd totally forgotten about it may have as much to do with the huge distance from the stage of the upper balconies there as anything.

Bat for Lashes at Shepherds Bush Empire (19/04/09)

No doubt that the word to leap to in describing School of Seven Bells is shoegaze - their guitarist, long fringe covering his face, even maintains the correct downward facing pose throughout. Their differentiating tricks are light electronic beats and their two singers, weaving between unison and harmony in a manner that my friend very distractingly (but sort of accurately) compared to Abba. All quite enjoyable but the fine definition needed to appreciate for more than a couple of unfamiliar songs doesn’t really work in a large-ish venue.




It occurs at some point during Bat for Lashes' set that Natasha Khan constantly mines a very limited and specific lyrical vocabulary to remarkable effect - not quite on the levels of Brett Anderson in his prime, but not far off. Possibly it’s the realisation that running in the dark/night is central to both “Daniel” and "Pearl's Dream" that tips it over the edge. Two Suns’ repeated twos, hearts, fires, space, stars, moons and darkness clearly and deliberately step the thematic links up a gear, but it’s not like they weren’t there before. Musically she has moved much further from the early days to expansive and dramatic variety of sounds of the new album.

That actually poses a bit of a problem live when it comes to some of the new songs that are heavier on context and studio work – “Peace of Mind” just doesn’t work without its choir. “Travelling Woman” also unsurprisingly flags as the closest thing to filler on Two Suns. Where the songs fall within the scope of the band to deliver, though, they are on top form. “Glass” makes for a monumental opener, between Natasha building from subdued to accessing previously unknown vocal range and its intense rhythmic climax. The amazing, forceful drumming is also foregrounded in “Two Planets”, the most fully realised tying of the record’s themes to music on a similarly cosmic scale.

But although the second album is the better by far, it’s the cherry-picked highlights of Fur and Gold that stand out even more and get the warmest reception, from the galloping statement of purpose “Horse and I” to whimsical “The Wizard”. An excellent bare-bones harpsichord version of “Prescilla” even inspires multiple uncoordinated attempts to clap the rhythm, about which the best to say is that hearts were in the right place.

Of the new songs "Moon and Moon" (which she has been playing live since at least the show three years ago that I linked above!) is the only one to achieve the same charged emotional intimacy as powered Fur and Gold and makes for a beautiful encore. Then she almost wastes all the good work by coming out for a second encore to play current single "Daniel" for a second time. Really unnecessary and a long way from the best she has to offer.

Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

We’ll start off with another unused Singles Jukebox entry, from a while back:

‘Fight Like Apes - Tie Me Up With Jackets
I'm a bit torn on this one. The acceleration from the burbling opening into the blaring technicolour chorus is thrilling, but the singer's voice is a harder sell and by the end the shouting is just a touch too much. Similarly the zany lyrics repeatedly grate through trying far, far too hard but the Simple Kid reference makes me grin and 'we'll play lovely noise' is just about perfect as a dumb chorus statement. I still approve of anyone taking emo-minus-angst as a starting point and at the very least it makes me want to see what else the band can pull off.
[7]’.

Well, I did, and it turns out rather a lot that is much better! I’d like to say that I just hadn’t heard of Fight Like Apes before that, but sadly in fact I had but on the basis of Irishness and having a primate related name I’d somehow merged them together with Humanzi in my mind and therefore not bothered listening. Oh well, better late than never. Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion is actually just about a 2009 album by UK release date at least.

For all that I complained of trying too hard in the lyrics (and the occasional contrived moment does sneak in elsewhere), the album is actually characterised mainly by being blissfully free of self-conciousness that might otherwise have held them back. So they rally their pop sensibilities and day-glo keyboards and head off in noble pursuit of the base and immediate, firmly rooted in Los Campesinos! style indie-pop but continually harder and more direct, and armed with Maykay’s yelp and embittered cursing and whoever it is that also does vocals sounding, to quote another Jukebox contributor, like ‘[a] guy who wanders in from a hardcore band near the end’.

They combine the heady thrills that result from this all out assault that with enough other tricks to ration it over the whole record. “Jake Summers” alternates between gauche and studied cool, its synthetic heartbreak interludes like Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Maps”. “Digifucker" sets itself up as coy and quirky even more convincingly than “Tie Me Up in Jackets” before you realise that it was just a pose to allow the surge into the vein-popping outrage of its chorus (“So did you fuck her??/Did you stick things up her??”) to hit you round the head even harder. They have a thing with plummy voice samples from B-movies too, cutting them up to increasingly amusing and unsettling effect in that song and others.

Best of all is “Do You Karate?”, a whirlwind tour around everything they do best in just over two minutes. Pummelling drums, inventive profanity (‘you’re about as much use as a cuntless whore’) a chorus that collides the two vocalists at full pelt, and an enormous synth hook that lights up the middle of it and serves as another indie reference, following the line ‘he doesn’t even know you like Stars!’ and resembling said band’s “Reunion” turned up to 11.
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Jukebox extra #2

Chrisette Michele - "Epiphany"
Chrisette easily has the confidence and class needed to come out of this kiss-off sounding undeniably in control and on top. Not only that but she also makes the touch uncertainty and doubt present in arriving at that point believable and compelling. She's helped along by a pretty sweet piano hook but most of all I love the breathing as rhythym track, especially when everything else drops out. [8]
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Jukebox extra #1

Stuff that I write about singles that doesn't get used.

Placebo - "Battle for the Sun"
Placebo made a decent stab at continued relevance last time round but this overreaching wannabe epic sounds like an outtake from the second JJ72 album, with the dubious addition of the dominating presence of Brian Molko. It doesn't help that the bits where he repeats the same word five times just sound like he's forgotten what comes next. [3]
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Somewhere else II

To continue responding to my lack of substantial writing by trying to palm you off with other things, I'm also now on Twitter.

Something on the Fight Like Apes album coming soon.
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Somewhere else

I'm not sure how big an overlap there is between interest in the music covered on ifblog and interest in vegetarian food in Japan. If you do fit into both of those though, or in the more unlikely event that you have an obsessive desire to read everything that I write, you'll be interested in the new blog that I am co-author of.
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Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

I've long loved the way that Gruff Rhys and fellow Super Furries completely unselfconciously make the unlikeliest of subjects seem like perfectly natural lyrical concerns. Gruff has outdone himself with first single from their new album "Inaugural Trams" [free mp3 from website], an excited bounce of a song that puts its love in terms of town planning, or possibly vice versa ('We could promenade down the infra-nasal depression/The streets of your hands will never know a recession') and has a repeated call of 'trams!' as its most virulent hook of many. It's difficult to imagine many other bands singing of triumphs like 'we have reduced emissions by seventy-five per cent' with such winning sincerity.

I mention a Gruff song first as it's perhaps not surprisingly the most instant joy of their ninth (!) album, but the key to Dark Days/Light Years' triumph is actually the decision to divide up vocal and songwriting duties among the band. Said division was probably a large part of what made their last two albums a relatively weak patch (i.e. merely really good) but it's now paying dividends big time as everyone hits their stride. Cian Ciaran's sweet and affectionate "Helium Hearts" and Huw Bunford's intricate yacht rock update "White Socks/Flip Flops", its unlikely steals from Moody Blues solo records included, are album highlights. At least I think that's whose they are as with only the digital release so far songwriting credits are unclear.

Anyway, the band has long revelled in stylistic diversity and the different voices present (both figuratively and literally) add yet another dimension to this. There's a range of languages too of course, with the blissful Welsh harmonising of "Lliwiau Llachar" and the just-brief-enough German rap that Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand tears into midway through "Inaugural Trams". The variation all flows together without pause thanks to some particularly neat sequencing. Almost every track wending its way totally logically to an end in a brief snatch of a completely different tune before the following begins from there - a sort of aural palate cleanser mechanism that is very effective.

Perhaps of necessity Dark Days/Light Years is quite a different beast from the major label opuses of Rings Around the World and Phantom Power, with a more pared down and direct sound than previously. Focussing on tighter grooves with a sprinkling of kraut-rock and recalling Guerrilla most of previous albums (the fuzzy, itchy guitars and unhinged vocals of "Crazy Naked Girls" are initially a dead ringer for "Night Vision") suits the current model of the band a lot more than the harmonic pop of Hey Venus! did, although more important is that such an overview no longer really gives a fair reflection of the scope and ambition at work.
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Polly Scattergood - Polly Scattergood

Polly Scattergood's debut shows off a talent for pop with a twist. Or rather, the pop is the twist in deceptively fragile and downcast songs which frequently turn out to have been smuggling expansive choruses all along. "Unforgiving Arms" switches seamlessly from contemplative to embracing with typically deft electronic touches, and the not all that cheery acoustic "Please Don't Touch" suddenly turns to handclapping jaunt in surprisingly effective fashion.

Elsewhere the vacuum packed glide of "Bunny Club" pitches its eerie emotional distance just right, and makes for a strong later section of the album alongside debut "Nitrogen Pink". Just about claiming status as most epic emotional blowout of the album, that one shows off her piercing voice to great effect, frequently just on the verge of cracking but holding the song together. To go for my usual comparisons to artists no one remembers, it's all quite Martin Grech, which is a good thing.

It's not all so excellent - she gets bogged down by a couple of too slow, sparser ballads and these in particular expose a pervading lyrical immaturity, with the naked blub of "Poem Song" and its 'ribbons on my fingers and cuts on my wrist' feeling uncomfotably like emotional voyeurism. Similarly "I Hate the Way" builds excellently from fragile verses through Muse guitar pounding to another big chorus, but then ends with a coda of Polly intoning 'maybe if I skip my dinner make myself pretty and thin and maybe then he'll love me' and it's all rather unnecessary. With that being something that time may hopefully fix, there's definite potential for greater things ahead.
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Ordinary northern blokes

I was going to make a very brief post commenting on a live review of Doves that had said their new album was like Elbow's last one and 'deserves similar success', since I find it amusing when six years ago there were numerous pieces saying much the same with bands reversed. Thing was, I forgot which paper I'd been reading and had to do a search for it.

Turns out it was the Independent but also that they were far from alone.
The Guardian's 'the Cheshire trio who have accumulated so much critical goodwill during their steady but so far unspectacular 11-year career that much of the music press is willing them to follow Elbow into the winners' circle.' just about works at a stretch if we're only caring about awards now.
The Evening Standard's 'Plenty of signs point to them becoming this year’s Elbow — a bunch of ageing, remarkably ordinary northern blokes who find that after such a long time, a huge mass of people realise how terrific they are all at once.' is just plainly lazy rubbish, though.

Comparisons are obvious enough that it would be silly not to expect them to be made but totally missing the point to shoehorn them into a slightly more compelling story is another matter. The real question is whether after four years away Doves can still win back all the fans who put The Last Broadcast and Some Cities to number one when they were the ones getting mainstream coverage and succeeding on their own merits.
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You need more

An update on my predicitions from my previous charts analysis which saw comparatively poor single performances in the singles chart from long established acts as being part of a trend in changing purchase patterns rather than down to individual failures or even general increasing irrelevance.

Despite the Brit Awards appearance and Xenomania declaring it a hit, Pet Shop Boys' "Love Etc." has indeed missed the top 10. Its 14 matches "Home and Dry" rather than setting any new record low and I can't decide if that undermines or strengthens my case. Anyway, next up are Depeche Mode.
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Wolf at the door

Pictured above: the cover to the first of two forthcoming Patrick Wolf albums (the other is The Conqueror). Not entirely clear if this is the Tilda Swinton narrated one, or if that is actually both of them.

Clearly Patrick has long had a vision of his role as a pop star that extends well beyond the content of his music, and his successful careful matching of persona to music was a part of what made Wind in the Wires era shows magical. By the multiple costume changes of the next album it was something to be indulged as often as admired but still worked. Sometimes. Things have gone a little bit further now, perhaps as a result of a taste for the freedom provided by fan-financing as opposed to the major label deal of The Magic Position. First exhibit: that cover above (although it's probably the choice of font which is the biggest weakness). Second: the new (and not safe for work) video "Vulture" with its bondage gear and general dubious art-ness.

Possibly more telling, though, was his bizarre hour long show in the middle of Club NME at Koko last Friday. It was not so much the bare chest, leather trousers and return to bleach-blond hair that were the issue. No, it was the way that a desire to put on a show translated as donning headset microphone and dancing uncoordinatedly. For all the energy he put into it, it basically left him looking a bit lost on stage and detracted massively from the mystique of older songs. The problems were most obvious when he was tethered to the spot by the necessity to play ukelele for "The Libertine" and suddenly was a believable figure again.

Except that after appearing to have finished and left everyone baffled, he finally came out for an encore covered in silver glitter and weilding some kind of sparkly skull, and hit us with the aggressive, stuttering electronic of that new single and its obvious predecessor "Bloodbeat", and we last we really did actually have a cohesive, emphatic spectacle to behold, as intended. So I still hold out some hope, if not of receiving any kind of return on my 'investment' in The Bachelor.
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Back!

Probably my favourite part of the still much-missed Stylus was the Singles Jukebox, in which a large team of writers took on songs from the charts (in some cases the charts of Poland, Serbia, Japan and so on) and mercilessly scored them out of ten.

Well, now there's a new, standalone Jukebox! 'Pop, to two decimal places'! I'm not on the first entry but there may well be some of my work up on it by the time you read this.
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Fever Ray - Fever Ray

It was actually listening to Robyn's The Knife-produced "Who's That Girl" that I realised the key difference between Karin Dreijer Andersson's solo album and those of The Knife. It's the booming, metallic percussion sounds that most mark that song as one of their productions, and they are all but absent from Fever Ray, putting in just a relatively restrained appearance in "Keep the Streets Empty for Me" as the album nears its end.

Some trademarks from the group's fantastic Silent Shout are still around with electronic base, a very similar production and pitchshifted vocals still around, but the overall shift is clear; this is a less immediate album, more subtle in its effect. While Karin's voice is still frequently obscured, distanced, it's never distorted into the terrifying shapes of "One Hit" or "We Share Our Mother's Health". There's still a shivery hopelessness seeping through the day-to-day of "Seven" (is it 'and your toes cold now'?) but it's less explicit, a more typical domesticity foregrounded, not least in the ear-catching line 'We talk about love/We talk about dishwasher tablets'.

The determinedly monochrome sound serves to make Fever Ray a slightly underwhelming listen at first, with even the single and lead-off "If I Had a Heart" never reaching the resolution to its droning tension that you might expect. Yet somehow its completely unified atmosphere and the way that unveils its secrets so slowly, fractured narratives and feelings buried deeply, makes it even more addictive than Silent Shout.

Difficult to pick highlights but "Concrete Walls" is particularly effective in its claustrophobia writ large, its distorted 'I leave the TV on/And the radio' repeating and echoing into a coping mechanism mantra. The brief cracks of light in the aforementioned "Keep the Streets Empty For Me", with Cecilia Nordlund's gorgeous guest vocals and some unlikely panpipes, are all the brighter for feeling so hard-earned by that point. By five or six listens, absorption into the album's world is complete and by the time closer "Coconut" slowly stretches out its clicks and minimalism for seven minutes it feels like it could very happily go on for much longer.
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Chartsengrafs special - the death of the album act single

Back when Chartsengrafs was a regular feature (you never know, it may yet reappear), I celebrated Oasis failing to reach number one with the first single from their new album, and began by noting 'The first single from a new Madonna album will go to number one (unless it's "American Life"). The first single from a new U2 album will go to number one (unless it's "Stay"). And the first single from a new Oasis album will go to number one... unless it's "The Shock of the Lightning"'

I would love to similarly celebrate the second statement there being proved wrong, as U2's laughable "Get on Your Boots" has failed to even make the top ten, but at this point it's clear that there's something else going on. Just like Oasis, their album is still selling bucketloads in the usual fashion despite reviews that maintained grudging respect at best.

A couple more examples of the same pattern of failing single and successful album from long-established acts:
Morrissey went from two number 3 lead singles to "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" recently stalling at 21, but the album was still 3 and not far below the last two for sales.
R.E.M. went from "Leaving New York" at 5 to "Supernatural Superserious" totally missing the top 40 last year. Even later singles from previous albums managed better than that. Yet Accelerate was still a number 1 album, just like its predecessor.
AC/DC came back with a number one album, but no sign of a charting single to support it.

So what's happening? Much of the success of such acts' lead singles was clearly down to large and long-established fanbases, not least because airplay for some of these was poor and publicity tended to be centred around the album even then. There weren't that many fans loyally buying every single though, or they wouldn't have all seen later singles from albums fare less well.

Although the album was undoubtedly the big deal for all of the above, the first single was a special case, a chance to own a song a couple of weeks early with a nice package and a couple of extra songs, for just a few quid. A chance which now looks a great deal less attractive, clearly. All still release CD singles but as finding them in shops becomes more and more difficult and their competition sell increasing numbers of downloads they don't have the power of before.

The single-buying audience has now very much switched to downloads and the previous U2 lead single buying audience has failed to make the switch with them. Either they are just not buying downloads at all (out-of-touch grandad jibes here) or, more likely, no longer seeing as much value in the purchase of a single that they are planning to get on an album anyway when it doesn't come as the same package as before. The fact that by time the single has released the album is likely to have already leaked may also have some impact here. I definitely buy far fewer singles than before although at least as many albums.

Rock acts that would previously have followed the pattern of more successful albums than singles can still overcome this effect. Look at Kings of Leon at number 1 for 4 weeks and Coldplay getting their first ever number 1 (not with the lead single, but that one's difficult to judge as they gave it away for free before selling). In both cases, with the songs continuing to sell despite album releases, it's clear that they got there by being bought by new fans, or at least those who weren't yet sure about buying the album. It takes airplay and exposure and positive reaction to mange that, not just fan loyalty. Which nicely brings us back to U2, who with all that prime time on TV maybe could have made a success of "Get on Your Boots" after all, if only it had actually been good.

There are two good opportunities to test the above trends coming up very soon, with comebacks from Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode. Both have consisently scored top ten albums and top ten lead singles regardless of the positivity of reaction to either. An added boost to PSB from their Brits performance notwithstanding, I expect the album record to hold true but would be surprised if the single one does.

Any thoughts or further examples/counterexamples welcome!
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Three free songs

First up, Blue Roses. I saw them last November supporting Emmy the Great and was very impressed. Singer Laura Groves has had a couple of songs on compilations under her own name but I think this is the first Blue Roses release, a typically lovely number called "Doubtful Comforts" that's available for free from their site.

Blue Roses - Doubtful Comforts [right-click]

Next, My Latest Novel, whose expansive and gorgeous B&S-meets-Arcade Fire debut Wolves was one of my favourite albums of 2006. They are finally back with an album called Deaths and Entrances and The Line of Best Fit has the opening track to download. On first listen it sounds a little more muscular (particular the vocals!) but still shares the features that made the first so appealing.

My Latest Novel - All in All is All [follow link]

Finally, it's likely that everyone has likely made up their mind on Art Brut by this point, and the first song from third album Art Brut vs Satan is unlikely to be changing any positions. Those who enjoy them, though, should continue to do so with "Just Desserts" and lines like 'I went to... the patisserie! They're always very happy to see me!'. Free on RCDLBL.

Art Brut - Just Desserts [follow link]
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Mama, I'm a bargain

Not quite as great a deal from a British point of view as it would have been a year ago, but Saddle Creek are (for the next few hours) offering the new Cursive album, Mama, I'm Swollen, for sale for $1 in mp3 form. That's about 70p. After that it will increase by a dollar per day until the physical release on March 10th.

On first listen it's a much tricksier an more subtle beast than the instant hit of blazing anger and blaring horns that characterised much of 2006's fantastic Happy Hollow and is definitely going to need further listens. Hey, there's already enough there to more than justify parting with $1 though.
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Are we human or are we fighter?

The video blow came on TV earlier and the thing that struck me, apart from it's total ridiculousness, was the realisation that Brandon Flowers isn't the first in recent times to totally mangle English in a successful pop song with a chorus revolving around '[action]-er'!

the type of thing you hear on streets and don't dream of giving money for

Emmy the Great's "First Love" is the free single this week on the UK iTunes store! So if you're still in the habit of downloading single songs and aren't already on to her, here's your chance.

It's also interesting to see the (largely average at best) reviews from those who've downloaded it. When you spend a lot of time reading the writing of or talking to people who have much the same taste as you, or at least who are also deeply into music, there are certain assumed values and ways of thinking that you take for granted. So it's quite instructive to see the reactions to a song you love dearly of a bunch of people who've never heard of it on the basis that it's free. A lot of it is just the people who love to moan every week about how ripped off they are thanks to not instantly loving the free song, but you also get a lack of opposition to "Hallelujuh", some very specific production complaints, multiple comparisons to Dido and stuff like 'She sounds like she's just talking to herself'. Huh, she sort of does at the start, actually.

Discourse 2000

There's a guest post by me over at Sweeping the Nation. It's for their feature where they're assembling a collection of pieces about some of the best albums of the current decade that are not well established as such. Previous entries have included Super Furry Animals and Six By Seven.

I considered but rejected Hello Saferide's second (too recent and already written too much), Buffseeds' The Picture Show (too personal to be likely to convince anyone else) and Girls Aloud's Chemistry (too likely to end up with me sounding like an idiot) before eventually settling on Hate, by The Delgados.

Brits alright

XRRF began their Brit Awards coverage by noting how backdated it was to be still using a blog, rather than Twitter. Thanks to being away from the internet all week I have that beaten and will present my notes taken on actual paper as I was watching it, even longer afterwards than I expected!

As a result you have to take it on faith that my many successful predictions are due to the predictability of the whole thing rather than any cheating.

Johnny Vegas voiceover is not really a good start, and ona first glance at the stage (grass, tent) it might not even be immediately obvious what was supposed to be happening to anyone who didn't read about the Glastonbury theme.

U2 are up first playing their new single, and waste no time in putting up the Union Jack imagery. Don't they get put up for Best International rather than British? Ah, they do an Irish flag too. I think. Or Italian.

You'd think that to celebrate and show off the best of British music we could easily manage better than "Put On Your Boots" Especially once it gets to the 'you don't know...' bit that sounds like inferior Muse. U2 make this all look totally routine and dull for them, and they haven't even put the album out yet.

The spoken bit is even worse, and if I wrote words like that I sure would not want them printed metres high behind me. Speaking of terrible lyrics, they've now switched to sounding like 2008 vintage The Verve. It's got to be all uphill from here, right?

Our host Kylie comes out for a short bit of "Can't Get You Out of My Head". It's weird that someone already so big can still have come to be defined so much by one song. There's some cheap laughs gained by the fatness of one of the dancers dressed in the red, face-visored costumes of the video. That's one of our other hosts, of course. I would definitely not be able to pick Mathew Horne out of a lineup, although I might manage James Corden.

Now Kylie is speaking she sounds very regal, although it's not long before the first autocue slip-up. The first joke is at the expense of Ting Tings for not being too world-renowned, which is a bit awkward. There are much better targets among the shortlists, for a start.

Simon Pegg is on. 'Pop - I know I love it' he says and it will be surprising if anyone manages to sound less convincing tonight. Our first award is best British Female. As they read out the nominees there's a big cheer for M.I.A. but nothing compared to our obvious winner Duffy. Then there's Beth Rowley, who I have only just realised is not the same thing as Beth Orton.

Best British Female - Duffy

Duffy sounds very unsurprised and almost as unimpressed. She knows she'll be back later.

Stage banter has already been reduced to just shouting at Kylie. They try to make jokes based on Lionel Richie song titles before he comes on, but it seems lost on much of the audience. Best International Female next. Santigold is still read out as Santogold for now. Less obvious one, this, apart from that Gabrielle Cilmi will not be winning - Pink?

Best International Female - Katy Perry

Oh. It's been long enough that "Hot and Cold" has been her representation on radio now that its mindlessly enjoyable chorus has taken hold and it's almost possible to forget how completely terrible a thing she is, but it comes back. Her first words get blocked off. Ooh, contraversial. She's sounding almost as ill as she says she is, and not even trying to pretend that she isn't only there because she knew she'd win.

Girls Aloud are the next performance and their staging looks more impressive than U2's right away. The giant feather aided stripper version of 'The Promise" is not quite working though. The impression that they could technically be naked behind those lasts about 3 lines before someone moves it wrong, and the feathers just get in the way for the entire rest of the song. It doesn't matter anyway because they're national treasures now - weird how it's happened a good three years after their best album by far, but there we go. Nicola sings and inevitably gets panned away from just before 'are you watching me baby?', heh.

Oh, we can't go the whole show without Fearne Cotton and her interviewing technique carefully honed on eight year olds, yay. She spends a remarkably long time detailing how the public can vote for an award without ever mentioning which one it is. It's Best British Single.

Interesting and a bit pleasing to see an iPhone advert with last.fm during the break, although the fact that even that is also plugging Kings of Leon is a bit depressing.

Alex James is now not a man of music, but of cheese apparently. And awkward speech rythyms. He's introducing Best British Breakthrough. It's difficult to care about anything apart from Scouting for Girls not winning, here. It will be Duffy though, probably.

Best British Breakthrough - Duffy

'This time last year she was playing a tiny club in Piccadilly' says the voiceover. She also already had a number one single. Try a bit harder, please. Her speech still sounds unimpressed, but she's charming and (a bit) less bland than her music.

Coldplay playing "Viva La Vida" next, and even for the Brits they don't have live strings and just have them miming them on a TV screen, which was funny half a year ago the first time but is not exactly lending a sense of occasion. This is almost as routine as U2 were. Guy Garvey doesn't look impressed. That's Guy Garvey, on ITV!

Haha, they have Jamies Oliver and Cullum presenting the next award. Almost as if they're setting out to make the easiest combined target possible. The public have now narrowed Best British Single down to five songs, and somehow have still included Leona Lewis' fourth best single.

More adverts, with Mastercard's miming sponsor things already repeating themselves. Poor effort. I'm not paying much attention to the ads and briefly think ITV are launching a programme called 'Celebrity Jews'. It's Juice.

Best International Group. Do we even need to bother with a shortlist? It's going to be Kings of Leon.

Best International Group - Kings of Leon

They will beat the exact same set of bands (MGMT, Fleet Foxes etc.) to win the album award too, presumably. We're being told again by the voiceover that the Brits are renowned for outrageous behaviour and surprises. They weren't thinking of Kings of Leon's super boring acceptance speech there.

A dig at Craig David's '6 nominations no Brits for CD!' is somehow still slightly amusing even after all these years, especially with placement next to the Best British Male award. And then you see the shortlist and realise that Ian Brown is up for it. And The Streets. Dizzee and Wiley still not acceptable? James Morrison to win, maybe.

Best British Male - Paul Weller

Oh. This is better than Annie Lennox every year how?

Next performance and unlike Coldplay, Duffy has real strings! And real music! Still boring.

Is Kings of Leon and Take That really that 'unlikely' a 'juxtaposition' as we're told?

Best International Album - Kings of Leon

How pointless. Mind you, British Group usually goes the same way. At least the acceptance speech is unintentionally more interesting as they go on and on in blissful ignorance about how they have to give this to 'England'. Just after having the award presented by notably not English
Joe Calzaghe too. Weren't the name of the awards a clue?

Take That perform next, and their hovering UFO staging and mid-transformation Superman costumes are a lot more impressive than the song. Which is still basically "Nature's Law" by Embrace. At least they look like they might be enjoying themselves.

Next award is Best British Live Act, as voted for by Radio 2 listeners. Taking that into consideration you'd think Coldplay would be a shoe-in and with Elbow as outsiders, but the fact that the vote likely had an internet aspect suggests that Iron Maiden's more dedicated fans might win over.

Best British Live Act - Iron Maiden

There we go. A video acceptance speech but they manage to at least stick something in the memory as they get vapourised by their mascot at the end, which is more than Weller could do.

Speaking of the internet, it's David Hasselhoff to present Best British Group. He (or whoever wrote the speech) is trying way too hard to sound profound. The 'surreal diversity' of British music is mentioned for a shortlist containing Radiohead, Coldplay and Elbow. Take That and Girls Aloud complete by far the best lineup so far. Take That to win?

Best British Group - Elbow

Oh my. A rare moment of joy has to be fucked up though, so the voiceover tells us that 'quality music does finally get recognised, even if it takes ten years', which rankles like anything when there was no reason not to recognise them before, and the awards committee still wouldn't have the balls to recognise them now if no one else had first. Chris Martin looks either happy or very well practised on his reaction shot. 'I can't believe how long it's taken us to get this close to the Hoff' begins Guy Garvey, although the speech doesn't really go anywhere too much from there.

Next performance is Kings of Leon doing "Use Somebody". Ever since the opening of this was used on the adverts for some MTV reality show that's all I can think of when I hear the song, it seems so appropriately vapid somehow. If they'd at least performed "Sex on Fire" I might have something half positive to say.

Hasselhoff is now creeping all over Fearne Cotton. Ewww. She tries to ask Elbow some questions but they are clearly not really listening.

The hosts joking at Craig David's expense a second time is not funny at all and just needlessly mean spirited.

Next award is a predecided one:

Critics' Choice Award - Florence & the Machine

Now, despite really liking Little Boots, Thecocknbullkid and Polly Scattergood, and even Micachu for the space of at least one song, I find myself completely unable to get behind Florence here. Even so, if she's meant to be so exciting why not give her the chance to come on and do a whole song? Someone else who doesn't look like this is just another show on a long list would be great.

Best International Male does not have the most impressive lineup, and must surely go to Kanye?

Best International Male - Kanye West

He's not here, of course. His first line is 'We know Barack is best interracial male'.

We now have a unique and exciting collaboration between The Ting Tings and Estelle! Which amounts to them getting to do a very short bit of "Shut Up and Let Me Go" before she does half of "American Boy" while they desparately try and find things to do in the background and Tempest 2000 is projected on the screens. There's then an excruciatingly awkward transition into "That's Not My Name" where the presence of all three finally makes a litte sense as it takes three competing voices to do the song's finale justice.

I finally realise that one of the reasons that I am beginning to dislike Mathew Horne so is that, especially in his awful blazer, he looks just like Ray Quinn.

Best British Single to be announced next. A "Mercy" win and Duffy clean sweep looks inevitable.

Best British Single - Girls Aloud, "The Promise"

Maybe not! The voiceover actually calls them 'national treasures'. Haha. I knew that they hadn't won anything recently, but didn't realise that this was their first ever Brit! Sarah is justified in shouting 'It's about time!'.

Last of the not already known awards is Best British Album. This surely can't be Elbow too and will be heading to Duffy. The fact that they have Tom Jones presenting makes that all the more obvious.

Best British Album - Duffy, Rockferry

Yep. Really difficult to care too much about this either way. She finally does actually look emotional though - maybe they only told her about the other two? She also doesn't make much sense at all. Voiceover mentions that The Darkness won three awards too at this point, although not that they had the whole finale turned over to them as the most exciting thing to hit music ever.

Only thing left is lifetime achievement to Pet Shop Boys, for which Brandon Flowers gives a surprisingly good speech which suggests that he is actually a fan and did actually read and think about what he was saying even if he didn't write it all.


My notes run out at this point as there was finally something more enjoyable to watch than to snark about. So, take it away Neil and Chris...

Emmy the Great - First Love

I recently had a conversation by email with Ian Mathers about his review of Los Campesinos!’ second album. He comments on how it could never replicate the effect of their debut, thanks to not featuring songs which fans had already grown to love and waited expectedly for. I said again that I love wab, wad even more of the two and that it was interesting that I hadn’t had the same experience at all.

You may guess where this is going, but here’s the thing – I saw Los Campesinos! only once a relatively short time before their debut’s release, and didn’t listen to anything apart from the singles. I’ve only seen Emmy the Great twice, but the first was a year and a half ago and from then on I’ve been devouring the vast quantities of demos, singles and collaborations of hers that have been available.

I’ve had more than twelve months of slowly growing to adore her My Bad EP to the point where it’s odd to think that it’s a mere 5 songs and 13 minutes of acoustic alt-folk. More than twelve months of trying to get any news I can on an album, of groaning at repeated delays, of blind panic when even a month beforehand it still wasn’t on Amazon and I briefly, irrationally, feared that the “Hallelujah” issue had claimed it whole.

She has in fact stuck by “First Love”, even making it the single. That’s only right, because it remains a wonderful song (almost) entirely of her own, a well-spun yarn that totally captures the evocative and not always welcome power of memory and of music.

And so with it we have, at last, First Love the album (that’s not exactly a title to manage down expectations). And here I am at a loss to form an opinion on it in any normal way because it’s all too wrapped up in my expectations. The joy of finally getting to hear recorded versions of “First Love” and “Bad Things Coming, We are Safe”, of the violin led folksy swing of “Dylan” taking full shape, goes beyond just that of the fine songs themselves.

Weirdly the only two songs that I hadn’t already heard at least once are the first two, but they make for just as fine an introduction. “Absentee” builds up an affecting story from fractured phrases, with objects rather than memories that are the focal point – ‘brown laces’, ‘strange pictures’, ‘CDs, carkeys, diaries’. “24” is an even more terrific demonstration of Emmy’s skewed world view and way with words, turning with a hushed grace from watching the titular TV show to aging and death and missed chances.

Then there’s the three tracks from that EP make it on and despite having already seemed fully formed in simple acoustic form they are dressed in new clothes. “The Easter Parade” remains a haunting hymnal for the unfaithful and acquires a charming coda. “City Song” is relatively untouched and ‘They pulled a human from my waist… I would have kept it if I’d stayed’ is certainly an arresting line to close the album on. But “M.I.A.” doesn’t feel the same. The added backing vocals undercut the jarring, stark loneliness that suffused the whole song and instead it only emerges, concentrated, in the final line of the song.

The sheer number of fantastic songs that Emmy had already released also make for inevitable disappointment when favourites don’t make it. No otherworldly “Secret Circus”, no disarming honesty of “Two Steps Forward”. And no “Aiko”, even though it had it all – beauty, loss, romance, Cantonese… perhaps that one at least is for the best, as I can’t imagine the EP version being bettered. I can still listen to that EP compulsively, and now I also have First Love somewhere between ‘really great’ and ‘album of the year contender’ too. Will have to live with it a while longer to decide which, and I’m going to enjoy it a great deal either way.

Post-scripts

...to the last two posts.



First, I'm not sure how I didn't put two and two together sooner, but non-singing half of The Bird and the Bee Greg Kurstin is also a producer of others. Most notably of late, the new Lily Allen album. Which explains why the soft swoosh of "The Fear" is not a million miles away from the band. Possibly also why they're on EMI.



Second and also on a producery theme, Popjustice have a post on Xenomania's new group Mini Viva. Not only is their only release to date called "I Left My Heart in Tokyo", it has a rather fetching sleeve with fake Japanese overlay. And difficult though it is to tell with only remixes available, there does seem to be a hint of Perfume in there.

The Bird and the Bee - Ray Guns are not Just the Future

Given the previous post, it’s an amusing coincidence that the first album of 2009 that I’ve fallen for is one with a single called “Love Letter to Japan” (try to ignore the rubbish video). For a love letter it doesn’t actually say that much lyrically about Japan, beyond the the ‘patience and the peace/cherry blossoms and the candy’, but their musical retro-futurism and a certain sense of reserve do also point to what they might have been able to find to their liking there.

The Bird and the Bee's is a sort of dance-twee-pop sound built on trip-hop like beats, crackly string samples and minimalist instrumental interjections. On top of this you get Inara George’s soft and rather mannered vocals, frequently lent emphasis by being doubled (or tripled) up. At times, Ray Guns sounds about half way between the two models of Goldfrapp, but more often than that it sounds a lot like “They” by Jem. This is a good thing, given that “They” is one of the most mystifyingly great one-offs to have graced the charts recent years.

The comparison is clearest of all on playful album highlight “Polite Dance Song”, where the aforementioned reserve is put to use. Inara’s repeated ‘pardon me’s and ‘apologies, apologies’ multiply and swirl round her as she tries and doesn’t quite succeed in living up to the title. Those repeated apologies actually give even more of a sense of the loss of control and irresistibility of the urge to dance than the sweeping rise of ‘da-da-da-da-da-DA-DA’ that eventually overpowers do.

I’d previously come across The Bird and the Bee through their “Because” being a free single on iTunes. One aspect aside it was quite a good song, but I didn’t really remember that until going back to it now, thanks to that aspect being their failure to correctly distinguish the words ‘prostrate’ and ‘prostate’, a mistake that rendered it unlistenable as soon as spotted. They’ve fortunately avoided dropping any such clangers this time on an album that’s lightweight but very charming from start to finish.

I'd rather be in Tokyo

I had a splendid time in Japan all round. Music related notes:


I didn’t exactly experience the ‘sensory overload’ suggested by guidebooks, possibly because London is not exactly the quietest or most restrained of places. However, the number of speaker-equipped video screens on Tokyo and Osaka corners blaring out clips of the top 10 between adverts certainly made pop music even more inescapable.


I went to a gig in Tokyo, which was as impressively organised and high-tech as so many other things (the small club’s lighting rig could probably outdo Wembley Arena’s). In a bit of a cheat it wasn’t actually a Japanese band but Canada’s Stars, who aren’t bothering with Europe on the current tour.


Although slightly taken aback by how much older they were looking than a couple of years ago, they did a fantastic job of much of Set Yourself on Fire, with an encore running from a stately “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” to the tension and emotional release of “One More Night”. They even brought rather patchier newer material to life, at least for as long as Torquil was energetically rushing around while cooing behind Amy’s “My Favourite Book”. A politely enthusiastic crowd was completely won over, especially after an amusing clarification that “Bitches in Tokyo” was describing the band rather than the locals.


They were supported by a local band in the shape of Ogre, You Asshole who despite the suggestions of their terrible name turned out to be decent post-punk that just didn’t quite have the tunes to rise above pastiche. See also: Base Ball Bear. My experience of indie music was a little disappointing in general, as based on a selection of store listening station clips it tended towards either limited imitation or (more frequently) being too twee even for me.


The listening was mainly done in Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo, which was probably my most impressive record shopping experience ever. The mere fact that it still exists is obviously an edge over our Tower, but six floors that are near enough all music goes beyond the scale of anything we used to have, never mind now that Zavvi is dying and CDs are slowly squeezed out of HMV. That meant a greater selection of Western music than I’m used to. They had a big display for We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed!


The aforementioned listening stations were typically well-designed too, with touchscreen menus that made it easy to find stuff but also to listen to new releases or anything in the top 100 singles/albums (interesting aside – Belle & Sebastian’s BBC Sessions was doing much better than here)


Beyond that there was a feeling of a personal touch, with lots of handwritten recommendations cards (I assume that’s what they were since I couldn’t read beyond the level of ‘M.I.A. something something… erekutoroniku something something’) and intriguing choices of in-store music, all identified on screens around the place as they played, which makes so much sense you wonder why it’s not the case everywhere.


The downside? Everything is ridiculously expensive, and not just because the pound is currently worthless. That’s CDs in Japan in general rather than a fault of Tower – bizarrely, imports tend to cost much less than domestic CDs, which have prices roughly double those here relative to most things. Three times relative to video games, which were sometimes actually cheaper. Despite (because of?) this, even more expensive editions of albums with bonus DVDs seemed to be the norm and I was asked a couple of times if I was sure I just wanted to buy the CD.


Oh and I did find a Japanese album to buy apart from stuff I already knew about (Kana, Anna Tsuchiya, Polysics) in the end. By the means of hearing it while in a Poundland equivalent, I came across Perfume’s GAME. Apparently a previous number one album in Japan, their sugar rush robot-pop is like if Lo-Fi-Fnk had a high budget girlgroup at their disposal – I can’t really think of anything similar and more mainstream here that’s nearly as intoxicatingly sweet as the self-explanatory “Chocolate Disco” (or “チョコレート・ディスコ” - Chokore-to Disuko). Capsule carry the slightly less pop visions of the same producers and are also worth a go – “More More More” for instance.

Away

Just a quick note to say that for once I actually have a good reason to not be posting as I'm going to Japan (followed almost immediately be other less exciting trips). I should be writing again in three weeks or so.

Albums of 2008: #1

Hello Saferide - More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide



It's been a strong year for albums all round and the most difficult year that I can remember to decide what should top this list. There was almost nothing at all between two albums that stand head and shoulders above everything else released in the past few years. I've had a few changes of heart but in the end had to make a personal choice and go for the one that, to invert a quote from #4, told me lots about my life, and which said it in endlessly charming and clever and insightful ways. It’s also a second successive Swedish winner, if anyone is keeping score.

Annika Norlin's 2005 debut Introducing Hello Saferide demonstrated a talent for writing songs laced with self-effacing wit and the telling small details of everyday life, all wrapped in sunny lo-fi indie pop. The wit and talent remains, but musically its follow up was enough of a change of direction for her to feel the need to issue advance warning that the album 'features no hand claps and hardly any acoustic guitars'.

As it turns out, the initially disconcerting move to a fuller sound works wonderfully. If anything it suits Norlin’s slightly husky voice better and while the songs still make songwriting sound the easiest thing in the world they crucially now have the musical heft to back up their emotional weight when required. Take “X Telling Me About the Loss of Something Dear, at Age 16”, a regretful tale of lost virginity that unflinchingly sets out the facts before a single soft ‘I felt sad and I didn’t know why’ brings out the emotions that have been seeping through between the lines. It’s even more powerful for its twanging pedal steel backing, and the way that the enveloping choral ‘ahh’s raise tempo to an almost cruel ‘ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah’, like an aural version of the experience burned into memory. It also, incidentally, now possesses the most amusingly inappropriate video of the year.

Alongside the musical developments, Annika now sounds remarkably self-assured. She still makes no secret of her issues, with “Travelling With HS” ruefully admitting that she prefers spending time with herself than other people, but she sounds like someone who has made peace with them, who is in a position to analyse and make humour from the unhealthier desires rather than give into them.

And so she is in a position to make magic out of the ordinary. Nothing that dramatic as such ever happens in Hello Saferide songs (unless it’s imagined like her non-existent daughter’s multitude of achievements in “Anna”) but, you know, nothing that dramatic really happened in my life this year either, and it doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel extremes of emotion at times.

Nothing gave me the same shiver of recognition as the line “People give me work and money/They depend on me now/If they only knew how thin the ice they walk on is’ from “Parenting Never Ends”, a beautifully vulnerable song about the pains of growing up and the not-so-hidden desire to give it all up and retreat into childhood (or earlier). I might not yet be able to personally relate to “Overall”’s satire of parents worried about the effect the tiniest failure to follow best practice might have on their children, but it rings deliciously true. Then there’s the moment in the Bonnie and Clyde fantasies of the bored “Middle Class” where Annika plots to steal a car before noting ‘I’ll probably feel bad for not taking the train’.

“Arjeplog” boils down love and the trials of domestic life to its essentials ‘The obstacles we build for ourselves, my love/Creating decisions to make, my love/When really it could be this easy/You and me and house and food’ before casting off the worries with a smile as its escapist string-swept chorus takes off beyond mere words. ‘The wind in the trees are like shhhww, shhhww/And the trains that pass by are like chkachk-chkachk’ it goes, and ‘Our feet in the snow are like shp-shp-shp/And the choir in my chest is like oh-oh-ohhh-oh’. Then comes the kicker – ‘And the Stockholm insecurity is like I don’t exist’. It’s one of the most uplifting things I’ve ever heard.

The first signs of how much I was going to love the album actually came practically two years before its release, when I saw her at Eurosonic and noted the high quality of new stuff, especially one about how people are like songs, especially loving how it ingeniously phrased its admiration through the words ‘You’re the only one I’ve met who’s God Only Knows’. That song is now opening standout “I Wonder Who is Like This One” and sounds even better, with a mythic quality in its hushed electric progression that recalls a certain recently popular Jeff Buckley interpretation. There are layers of depth to even its apparently throwaway lines, too – it only recently dawned that not only is ‘Me, I’m like Can’t Get You Out of My Head’/Annoying at first but I’ll make you want to dance’ a funny line, but the whole thing is indeed about someone that she can’t get out of her head!

I sincerely hope that this album will get picked up and released properly in the UK (especially given the current exchange rate for buying from Sweden, ouch) because not only is it massively deserving of a wider audience but there really should be no barrier to it – aside from an occasional local reference and having to look up Sancho Panza to fully get the song of the same name this should be universal stuff. Songwriting this good usually is.

Albums of 2008: #2

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid



It's been decidedly odd this year watching Elbow finally clasped to the hearts of the nation at large as much as to mine. Seeing those familiar, reassuring faces staring out from unfamiliar places in newspapers, hearing their songs in endless sports coverage reels, channel-hopping from "Grounds For Divorce" soundtracking a trailer on C4 to it gracing another on 5. Hearing "Mirrorball" at a work training conference may have been the most surreal. It's been immensely cheering with it though, as rarely has belated success been so thoroughly deserved and, even ignoring their previously amassed wonders, The Seldom Seen Kid was worthy of all kinds of raptures.

Totally uncompromising, their songwriting remained as personal and individualistic as ever. Again they demonstrated that there is never a need to aim for universality in broad generalisations when poetically expressed emotions are far more relatable grounded in specifics, and again they showed no truck with making their songs straightforward and easy to take in any more than they did with being deliberately difficult. The belief came across clearly, as always, that if they got it right the audience should come to them if willing, and now they turned out to be more right than ever.

Starting off with a very Elbow bang then, "Starlings" strung big fanfares around an exposed moment of honesty and love. 'You are the only thing in any room you're ever in' is a breathtaking sentiment and the musical eruption that eventually follows seems only appropriate, but it's all the more poignant for the doubt and false bravado that surrounds it - the next line after all is 'I'm stubborn, selfish and too old'.

The bluesy swagger and thwacking percussion of "Grounds For Divorce" drill home the deadening routine of its hopeless drinking, as vulnerabilities seep through into the chorus and its hole 'down which I cannot help but fall'. "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" stretched yearning and alienation to new skyscraping heights musically and in content. "The Fix" was also a whole new type of genius, Guy Garvey and Richard Hawley hamming it up as two scheming cheats to gleeful results with just a hint of sadness at the fact that they're as likely mere fantasists as anything more sneaking through.

Even "One Day Like This", which I shall again call the best single Embrace never recorded, should take that as a compliment (as long as they don't intend to go there for good) and features some distinct Elbow touches, not least 'kiss me when my lips are thin'.

The Seldom Seen Kid also just sounds amazing. Now self-producing, their painstaking pride in rich and dynamic sound, alongside their belief in album as artform, showed through more than ever to create their most sonically gorgeous record yet. Every little detail given its own space to breathe and make an impact and the end result is an album to shut the world out from and get lost in. You can listen to a song like "Mirrorball" and be totally absorbed by every daintily graceful piano note and soft swell of strings, and by the way that by its end it's as if Garvey is whispering in your ear, before you even get to its considerable emotional content - and that's quite something to tag on as an extra.