Gigomaphone

Thanks to SubPop for releasing a sampler of 14 MP3s. Check them out - some great tracks in there.

Tight as a drum, Microcastle is like a fusion of mid ’90s hazed out dream-pop and well schooled punk and it’s very, very good. That said, albums like Microcastle don’t pop up too often. Reading at first like a playlist of short but punchy and melodic proto-punk cuts, the album expands into more dreamy atmospheres, with the guitars taking a back seat to a swathe of ambient pulsewidth. It then concludes with three or four seriously good tracks, all bound together with miasmic guitar and swirling atmospherics.

Whilst this has been plonked in the ‘dream pop’ basket by some, it is far broader and darker than that and there’s much more of a foothold here. There is an elemental punk ethic going on within the mix but it’s a buffed over sound, more ambient than noise but not mush- not by any stretch.

Deerhunter hail from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I must admit I’d never heard of them before but it would seem I’ve caught them at about the right time as this is by all accounts their tightest and most focussed effort yet. Recommended.

5/5

Lily lying on a big L

I rather liked Lily Allen’s debut album “Alright Still” (2006), finding it a charming mix of faux-cockney palaver, samples and pleasant enough ska-tinged instrumentation. Through it all, it was a very solid and consistent pop album and that was good enough for me. It had a couple of wet patches but because it was all so charismatic, I was happy to forgive her them.

She was, to me (and I suspect a few others too), like a female Mike Skinner AKA The Streets but more pop-tweaked. Nothing wrong with that, if you do it well and yes, she did it pretty well.

This is, I think, an improvement. In fact, I think this is a benchmark pop album, of sorts.

Alright, stop me now, put out your best cynic’s expression and I’ll take off my peaked sappy-pop cap. It’s probably fair to be cynical but really, there are some treasures here, hidden under this polished commercial flummery. Certainly there is a production team here that has done an excellent job of propping her up, underpins and all and certainly shows off all of her best bits. The music’s glisteningly clean and a sonic grab-bag of genres. We have Lily’s expertly tweaked voice lazily talk-singing over all sorts of stuff – 90s ambient-rave, country and western Appalachian folktronica, The Carpenters (glory!), jaunty gypsy campfire jiggery, ska, earnest piano, even stuff that sounds like a bad late 80s Pet Shop Boys B-side. it’s all just one step up from showroom synth demo muzak but it’s still impressive in its own way.

Where ‘Alright Still’ was a touch rough around the edges, this album has been polished and polished until there’s barely a rough nub left. That’s the deal, if you’re prepared to accept it.

What makes the deal more enticing, though are her bloke-obsessed lyrics which are at times repetitious and predictable but at times quite clever and she makes good use of smart-arse rhyming. It’s hard not to be impressed when on one of the last tracks ‘Him’ when referring to God, she says “I don’t imagine he’s ever been suicidal, his favourite band’s Creedence Clearwater Revival” or on the bright and optimistic relationship song ‘ Chinese’, she sings “… you make me beans on toast and a nice cup of TV and we’ll get a Chinese and watch TV”. There’s a lot of domesticity in her lyrics, just like the first album – tales of break-ups, get-togethers, men being bad in bed, a sincere apology to a girlfriend, shopping and the impressively foul mouthed “Fuck You”, directed squarely at a bigot.

All this is is very familiar of course. ‘Alright Still’ was composed of the same sort of stuff but here, it’s all cranked up – the lyrics are better here, they’re more charming, more amusing and well, definitely more smart-arse.

I like this album, for what it is, although I’ve always been a sucker for cheesy-pop. Take off a point if you’re allergic to this sort of stuff but it really is better than most of the dross out there.

Bravo Lily, you foul mouthed biatch.

4/5

Rather than a full review, I thought I’d post a few thoughts about the new Killers album for discussion purposes (KO, can we add a “discussion” or “commentary” category?  Just a thought).  I liked Hot Fuss a lot, and contrary to my expectations, Sam’s Town a LOT.  In fact I’d go so far as to say that Sam’s Town only had one weak track on it.*

My instincts tell me I shouldn’t like this band - self-assured to the point of arrogance (I once saw an interview where Mr Flowers was asked whether fame and fortune were a big change, to which he responded along the lines of “no, I always expected to be a superstar”), popular, and into writing catchy tunes involving synthesized melody lines.  But somehow they make it hang together, and on Sam’s Town they crammed in enough grunge/Queen/glam elements to add another level of musical depth and to legitimize the use of the word “rocks” in association with the album.

So, what to expect from a third album?  Certainly not this:

Are we human, or are we dancer?

Ok, firstly, that’s not a fucking sentence.  Even if it were gramatically correct (which would either require another ’s’ or the creation of a new adjective) it wouldn’t make sense.  Allegedly it is a Hunter S. Thompson reference:

“It’s taken from a quote by [author Hunter S.] Thompson. … ‘We’re raising a generation of dancers,’ and I took it and ran. I guess it bothers people that it’s not grammatically correct, but I think I’m allowed to do whatever I want,” he laughed. “

Hahahahahahoho.  But seriously.  This song makes Hot Fuss sound like a metal album.  I’m pretty sure that if you want to be taken seriously in your first year philosophy class analysis of HST you should do it over something other than the kind of music that tends to be played in discotheques containing only people of one gender or the other (but not both).

Another observation is that the Killers are trying really, really hard to sound like plastic soul era Bowie on this album.  There are saxophones, there are what sound like steel drums at one point, there are little vocal flourishes.  It all sounds a bit self-satisfied and overwrought to my ears.

However, on my limited listening to date, there is hope.  The opener, ‘Losing Touch’, is the Killers doing what they do best, i.e. playing driving, well produced, epic pop-rock.  ‘Neon Tiger’ has some nice drive to it and is one track where the homage to the greats of the 70s seems to work.  ‘Joy Ride’ is also an archetypal Killers track, about deserts, highways, motels and loose women (or something), and seems to follow the line of ‘Midnight Show’ from Hot Fuss and ‘Bones’ from Sam’s Town.  Generally the album seems to increase in quality as it goes on.

I’m still waiting for this album to ‘click’ and grab hold of me.  In the meantime, has anyone else listened to it?

The Killers reflect on how awesome it is to be as great as David Bowie and Hunter S Thompson combined

* Uncle Johnny, which has awesomely stomping guitar but lyrics from what I like to call the Daniel Johns School of Lyric Writing, a school founded after the ultimate display of poetry that was ‘Freak’: “No more maybes/Your babies got rabies/Sitting on a ball/In the middle of the Andes”.  Yes, well done, most of those words sound roughly the same, let’s use them as the basis for a creative musical work.

The S-s-s-s-stones had something of a quandary way back in 1973. How do you possibly follow up Exile on Main St? Kinda like ’so what does Michelangelo do after the Sistine Chapel?’ except the Sistine chapel is like the naff tag on my old flat in Collingwood compared to Exile.

They followed it up alright by making this album which (I will admit with a slight hint of begrudgery) is mildly underwhelming; but (and this is a monumental ‘but’) it does have the honour of also being the last great Stones album (great in a broad sense of the word of course, like “your new fence looks great”).

Some old crusts might tell you Some Girls is their last great album but it’s not, it’s like a disco hangover, other crusts may even say Tattoo You is, but it has like 2 decent songs and a shit 80s cover and some even more cloth-eared crusts may even dare to think Voodoo Lounge is significant, it’s as significant as say, a new Terence Trent D’Arby album.

Forget it, this is it, raw rock n roll, country and blues. What the Stones do best, Mick was already looking like the preening socialite he would later become, Keith was falling deeper into his crack hole, Charlie and Bill were Charlie and Bill and Mick Taylor really again shows why he is one of the more underrated guitarists of the era. Go and listen to A Bigger Bang and skip to ‘Sweet neo-con’ to find out what a joke they are now.

In ‘73 they were losing fans, Led Zep stole the guitar geeks, Pink Floyd had nicked the stoners, The Stooges and The NY Dolls had the disaffected white Kids and Lou Reed and Bowie had pilfered the gay crowd. The Stones were entering the grandaddy realm, becoming something in the ballpark of passe. In reality, they were being crucified by the scene they had created. Before these cats belted out Not Fade Away, rock was four mop-topped wusses that your mum (and her Mum probably) used to boogie down to. The Beatles even got O.B fucking Es from the queen (the irony has not gone unnoticed but Mick was knighted well after the Stones were any good/had any self respect left/made an album entitled Dirty Work).

This is the their valedictory effort before they succumbed to the creative drought of middle age and the naff stigma of stadia. A last minute gift from rock n roll gods that shouldn’t be dismissed with 3 and a half stars like it’s “not too bad” or something (again I will refuse to rate this album despite the new-fangled allure of having quarter stars at my disposal). It ain’t Sticky Fingers sure, but what is? After this album they did ‘It’s only rock n roll’ which is mediocre at best, Mick Taylor left, Mick discovered disco and ahem… reggae (WTF!?!), Bill married a child, then left, Charlie got old, Keith took more drugs and that alcoholic with the dodgy haircut from the Faces came on board.

Oh yeah, the album; Heartbreaker, Silver Train, Winter and Star Star are all top tier Stones, worthy to be listed on (almost) any of their albums while Hide your love displays how good a band must be when despite so obviously being in cruise control, the blatancy of this demeanour lends itself so perfectly to a song. Class! Dylan is about the only other guy who does this as well as them Stones. Angie was also their last single that gave FM radio a fat lip rather than a hand job. Although GHS isn’t laden with depth (it does however have a fair deal more than Raw Power or Transformer but then again depth in rock n roll is pretty overrated anyway), it is so often overlooked and is one hell of an enjoyable listen, if only Mick had overdosed on crystal meth after this……

I hesitate somewhat in preparing this review. Yet another album I want to enthuse about. So much for balance in all things. So shall it be though - I shall just have to scratch around for some mediocre/sub par/Joe Average LPs to review. There are plenty of them about.

But let me return to this one for I have much to say. DJ/Rupture is clearly a talented muso, evidently known for his mix-ups/mash-ups technical turntablism in New York circles. I had never heard of him prior to hearing this but I’m intrigued. This is the ‘mix album’ on a virtuoso scale, full of tracks that sound like they were destined only to ever be played together, which I suppose is the sign of a good mix album. To be fair, I’m not a mad fan of mix albums, besides the previously mentioned ‘Back to Mine’ and ‘Late Night Tales’. Generally prefer my music with 2 second bookends.

Not here though, for this is what it’s all about. The selection is world-wide, with an overall focus on dub-step ragga, traversing Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the UK and the US. There’s even a lovely flourish of avant-chamber music mid way through and the album comes to an eventual rest on the cushion of some unwound, dark ambience that’s still full of echoes from the music prior. It is all bound together in flavour by a dense, simmering stock of multi-layered dub, all very dense and intricate and the mixing is imperceptibly good. It’s mature, intense, clever and textured. All at once. By the end of it all, silence seems a bit lonely.

DJ/Rupture: funny arms.

I’d suggest there’s a lot of re-working and reinvention here, although it’s so hard to be sure, such is the intensity of the mix. I understand a good amount of the music is previously unreleased and some of it was produced especially for the album, which would explain in part why so much of it sounds so compatible.

There’s really no point naming highlights. The whole 23 track shebang is a highlight, a big, clambering, roaring multi-headed dub monster and a mythological one at that. I like it. Can you tell? 

For best effect, this could and should be played late, after everyone’s gone to bed (although don’t play it too loud!) You’ll have lively dreams. Or nightmares.

5/5

This Southampton, UK based band first caught my attention during a trip overseas as their track ‘Long Time Coming’ was on a CD garnered from an Uncut Magazine purchased at Heathrow. With no other musical source at the time, we played the CD constantly and consequently, this track evokes some pretty good memories.

That aside, this is a good enough album on it’s own without relying on nostalgia to bolster an opinion. Cast in the mould of Cocteau Twins, The Sundays and perhaps The La’s, this is summer lit dream pop and even after lots of listens, I still enjoy it.

There are lots of great tracks on this album - it would be hard to pick favourites, as they are all adorned with the same jangly guitar, articulate keyboards and girly falsetto lead vocal and recall an earlier era of British pop music. The album’s title, in it’s own way, is quite evocative and is aptly named.

This is a very solid album, however they appear to be slip-sliding down the greased-up slope of commercialism. Their second album ‘You See Colours (2006)’ is also good but without the glimmering edginess of this one, however their latest- ‘Everything’s The Rush (2008)’ is effectively bollocks, a vamped up commercial sound that betrays the inventiveness of this, their first and I suspect, in the scheme of things, their best.

As a moment in time, reflecting on another moment in time, this is a treat.

4/5