Espers make post-rock FOR ELVES. They don’t know this, presumably, because as is readily apparent from – well, from everything about them, really – they live in the depths of a haunted forest and couldn’t possibly have an idea what post-rock is.

Despite the limitations of living in such an environment, though, Espers have managed to get their mystical pan pipes, carved drums and electric guitars (wait, what?) together to record a third album proper, III.

The distinction from their previous efforts is palpable and yet difficult to precisely pin down. In comparison to the sparse melancholy air of their debut album, Espers, and the claustrophobic grandiosity of its successor, II, Espers’ latest offering seems almost… jaunty. Such an assessment seems mildly absurd of an album whose second track begins with a mournful lament against a heavy bass and drawn-out guitars: “The summer heat disfiguring, the lake beyond the killing ring”. And yet despite this, the overall atmosphere of the album undeniably feels lighter than that of its predecessors. Whilst grandiosity and density are by no means abandoned, songs feel more relaxed, with the band’s folkiness more to the surface. Gone for the most part are the wide spaces found in the first album, and the sinister echoes of the second, to be replaced by gentle harmonised vocals and even that acoustic staple, strumming.

This change is highlighted in a dramatic fashion towards the end of the album. As soon as one hears the opening bars of ‘Colony’, the penultimate track, the shift in mood is immediately apparent. The bass deepens, the drums beat a death waltz, the fiddle become violin, and lead singer Greg Weeks’ voice sounds almost possessed as he intones, “Slumbering under a lumbering sun, blistering bodies resolved into one”.

The haunted menace of ‘Colony’ may well be the best thing Espers have ever created. But its harsh beauty brings into relief the shortcomings of the rest of the album: without this brooding and sinister edge Espers are capable of making perfectly competent psych-folk, but there is little to distinguish them from other purveyors of the same. For the most part, III is pleasant and mildly interesting listening, but in comparison to their earlier work, ultimately pretty unremarkable.

Buy album from Amazon | iTunes

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It’s clear from the title alone that The Shaky Hands’ Let It Die is a record of lament, and of letting go – or learning to. If the title weren’t enough, the lyrics paint a rather obvious picture: “You’re always leaving, your pain remaining/ Here you are, and there’s no explaining” from ‘Don’t Fail Me Now,’ and “You’re all I have, there’s no else’/ Is what you wrote, put it on my shelf/ Where are you now and why couldn’t you wait?/ I wanna look you in the eyes, I wanna set it straight” from ‘Gonna Hold You Tonight.’

If only the music was as remarkable as some of these couplets. The frustrating truth of Let It Die isn’t that the songwriting is bad, it’s just monotonous. The band is best when it decides to move away from its original, tried-and-true sound. The solemn, campfire cut ‘Tonight’ is the best of the collection simply because it’s the only one of its kind. It actually stands out. The bar-room baroque pop of ‘Already Gone’ also lessens the tedious blunt force trauma for the same reason. Likewise, ‘Love Curse’ is the only song here with a groove, its danceable bassline helping to color an otherwise gray tapestry.

Conversely, song pairs like ‘Slip Away’ and the title track or ‘All You Recall’ and ‘Allison And The Ancient Eyes’ can really only be separated by their respective lyrics, which also happens to be the one aspect of this record that’s consistently appealing. For example, Nicholas Delffs ponders in aggravation “How the hell did we all get so lost?” throughout ‘Allison.’ Or how about “You’re so sad and don’t even care/ And this life has been so unfair/ But you’re the one with two black eyes/ Standing back in florescent light” from the ‘Slip’. Without the emotionally honest words, the majority of the album wallows in its own abyss of indie-pop-by-way-of-the-Beatles.

What pisses me off so much is what Let It Die could have been with a little more panache, a little more experimentation, a little more…anything. It’s obvious that the guys in the Shaky Hands are talented musicians and songwriters so it’s infuriating to listen to an album like this. I hope this is just the result of a half-assed attempt at fulfilling a contract instead of a band without ideas. A handful of songs here suggest the latter isn’t the case but the rest strongly argue against. It appears the band has taken the album’s title as a personal motto.

Buy album from Amazon | iTunes

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When the names of the artists involved in the New Moon Soundtrack started to filter out over a month ago, it was obvious that Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor for the film, was trying to attract an entirely new audience than the one that is so feverishly dedicated to Stephanie Meyer’s books. I find it fascinating to think about a 13 year old girl getting introduced to the majesty of Bon Iver, the haunting melodies of Grizzly Bear, or even the utter brilliance of Thom Yorke through their contributions to this soundtrack. However, it’s ultimately a shame that a majority of the songs chosen for the album don’t necessarily reflect these stellar artist’s best work. A lot of these tracks sound like castoffs that didn’t quite make the cut on far superior records, a veritable B-squad of songs from A-list artists, if you will. And while I certainly hope that the 13 year old girl hearing Lykke Li for the first time goes beyond this soundtrack and explores her wonderful debut album, I know that for some young listeners their experimental musical journey will begin and end with this soundtrack, and that would certainly be a shame.

Not that there aren’t flashes of prowess found on New Moon, like the fuzzed-out, retro catchiness of ‘Friends’ by Southhampton’s Band Of Skulls, which shakes the record up a bit after the flat, somber wistfulness of Death Cab For Cutie’s ‘Meet Me On The Equinox.’ Thom Yorke’s much hyped contribution sounds pretty much like I thought it would, exploring the same quivering electronica that was featured on The Eraser. But even a substandard Yorke song soars above most of the other contributions to New Moon. Lykke Li’s ‘Possibility’ eventually becomes a moving song, but just takes far too long to get there, losing my interest along the way. The Killers ‘A White Demon Love Song,’ is a musical mess, seemingly trying to be three or four different songs all at once over the course of it’s three and a half minutes, but never coalescing into anything memorable.

Anya Marina’s ‘Satellite Heart’ is pleasant enough, but the focus is placed squarely on her rather sophomoric lyrics and puerile rhyme schemes, with a spare musical arrangement layered too far underneath her vocals to save the song. The lively histrionics of Muse’s ‘I Belong To You’ is given the New Moon Remix treatment, essentially turning Matt Bellamy’s guitars up a bit and toning down the jaunty piano line that is threaded throughout the song, while also completely doing away with the two minute French-ified coda found on the original. Only die hard fans will find much of a difference between the two versions, and I truly feel for any Muse completest buying this album specifically for their contribution. Bon Iver & St. Vincent team up for the doleful ‘Roslyn,’ which sounded a bit better on paper than it actually does on record, with the song floating along forlornly, but in the end being unable to achieve the emotional impact of either artist’s other work. The same is true of ‘Slow Life,’ by Grizzly Bear (featuring Victoria Legrand), which hints at the grandeur found on the sublime Veckatimest, but never quite reaches those heights.

And that is essentially where New Moon fails most; for while collecting these venerable artists together on a soundtrack sounds like it can’t fail, there ultimately isn’t any real consistency to these contributions, and the album has a disconnected sound to it, like a mix-tape gone off the rails. And while these songs have a built in appeal simply because of the bands that are involved, none of the contributions truly reflect the unique skills of these artists. So, for those of us who have their actual albums, we’ll simply go listen to those instead. But for those that are getting introduced to these talented artists for the first time by this soundtrack, here’s to hoping that they dig a little bit deeper than this and discover the true beauty found in the songs that got all of us interested in the first place.

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It’s been a good five years since we last heard from Austrian experimental trio Radian, purveying processed electronics and avant funk in 2004’s cool as a cucumber Juxtaposition. In the postrock firmament of Vienna, however, they’ve hardly been at rest. Drummer Martin Brandlmayr, keyboardist Stefan Németh, and bassist John Norman have been indefatigable culture workers, tending to solo material, other bands, label business (Németh’s own Mosz Records) and the odd video art project. Brandlmayr, in his work with Autistic Daughters and Polwechsel among others, has solidified a reputation as one the finest, most relentlessly precise percussionists around.

With so much musicianship and production chops at Radian’s disposal, one’s first impression upon hearing the harsh, cut up notes and static that kick off ‘Git Cut Noise’, the bracing overture for new album Chimeric, is that these three gentlemen have made a concerted effort to dirty up the signal path. “Chimeric is not a polished album”, say the liner notes, attributed to all three musicians. “Within our context it is raw, broken,” they write, before adding with considerable understatement, “even dark sometimes.” You don’t say. The epic ‘Feedbackmikro/City Lights’ begins as if in an abandoned factory with indeterminate slime dripping from disused machinery. Brandlmayr’s hypnotic clang pattern propels us deeper into some kind of boiler room where the aura of menace is palpable. Then somebody switches on the machines, and we realise we’ve stepped into a lift. As Radian loudly pull us up the scaffolding, crossbeam-impeded vistas of a nocturnal, quite possibly on-fire metropolis rattle by.

This sort of cinematic drama marks a step away from the clean (if still sometimes abrasive) laptop jazz of Juxtaposition and 2002’s rec.extern, and an even greater distance from the chilly minimalism of their 2000 full-length debut, tg11. Yet even with its heightened sense of narrative, Chimeric lives up to its name, evoking a jumbled composite beast that, as on previous Radian releases, is the product of many hours of editing after the fact. The result can feel randomly put together at times, as chimeras must inevitably be to some extent. As a North By Northwest cropduster buzzes overhead toward the end of the title track, for example, a blast of synth and percussion suddenly rushes underfoot; we’ve just stumbled near the edge of a great chasm. It’s a confounding moment of startling beauty, and not a little fear. As dark and mixed up as Chimeric is, it couldn’t work any other way.

Buy the album on Amazon | iTunes

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In the past twelve months, you’d think someone would have thought to tell Morrissey that there’s been a recession on; instead, he’s gone about releasing five albums – all, to some degree, redundant. His Greatest Hits barely lived up to its generic title – comprised almost exclusively of his recent singles, with ‘Suedehead’ and ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’ thrown in almost as an afterthought, while “re-presentations” of two of his most maligned records, Southpaw Grammar and Maladjusted, hacked at history with varying degrees of artistic success. In amongst all of this, the release of Years of Refusal, an actual studio album, was almost lost; a wildly uneven record, it mixed some of his best new-era material (see: the first two tracks) with much of his worst (er…the rest of it), and even went so far as to recycle the two new tracks from Greatest Hits, both of which were released as singles anyway.

After all that, you’d think he’d take a break from fleecing his devoted fanbase, but alas, here comes an obligatory b-sides compilation; hand-picked by the man himself, the tracks on Swords cover his last three albums (one of which was reissued with a bonus disc of b-sides anyway), during which time his lyrical subtleties were bludgeoned out by increasingly leaden ROCK arrangements. Still, the album does, at times, offer up a compelling alternative history; imagine if Ringleader of the Tormentors had been trailered by the skittering bhangra-flavoured anthemics of ‘Good Looking Man About Town’, rather than a stodgy rocker like ‘You Have Killed Me’. Likewise, if his stately Elvis-style comeback was heralded by the suitably stirring string-laden balladry of ‘The Never-Played Symphonies’ – the charmingly dramatic last-hours confession of a man who regrets letting his lover “slip right through my fingers – no, not literally, but metaphorically”) as opposed to a…er…stodgy rocker like ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’, the last five years could have been very different indeed.

That’s not to say the plodders aren’t out in full force; You Are the Quarry tour warhorse ‘Don’t Make Fun of Daddy’s Voice’ is still as inexplicably popular with its creator as ever, while newer tracks like ‘Children in Pieces’ see Morrissey fumbling with a hook without ever quite holding onto it. It’s just fortunate that these moments are tempered by more considered numbers; the fantastic ‘My Dearest Love’ is a low-key sequel to ‘How Soon Is Now?’, an organ-led minor classic in which SPM attempts to arrange a date “where the grotesquely lonely meet the grotesquely lonely, and they whisper…just very softly.” Meanwhile, in spite of its ham-fisted politics, ‘Shame Is the Name’ is wonderful – a Chrissie Hynde-featuring epic, where ghostly harmonicas clash with sweeping pianos and nouveau-baggy beats. Still, you must please remember that the song has barely been available for six months – having only just emerged on the flip of this year’s ‘I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris’ single – so why he felt the need to feature it on an album now, when it would have made just as much sense on Years of Refusal, is baffling.

Fans will no doubt quibble about the tracklist – hell, the exclusion of ‘First of the Gang’ b-side ‘Mexico’, one of his finest and most heartfelt moments, still makes no sense to me. They will probably also clamour at the bonus live disc – a flat-sounding eight track document from a show in Warsaw earlier this year, half of which is taken from Refusal. Even on these newer numbers, his voice sounds like a shadow of its former self, while the less said about its renditions of 1994’s ‘Why Don’t You Find Out for Yourself’ (arguably the finest song he ever penned) and Smiths classic ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby’, the better.

Still, Swords itself does have its moments, but they’re too few and far between to make this a necessary purchase for all but the most devoted of fans. ‘All You Need Is Me’? Not quite.

Buy album on Amazon | iTunes

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With the New York tag, normally comes visions of black leather jackets and black skinny jeans; trend-setters abandoning guitars for synths in a quest for cool. Sidestepping this assembled throng of scene chasers, Brooklyn based The Silent League have their hearts in an entirely different New York; a musically historic up-state New York: the Catskill Mountains. Spiritual home to The Band and name checked by the likes of Beck and Mercury Rev.

Over the last five years, the collective — lead by Justin Russo, who at the time of the band’s formation was playing keyboards for Mercury Rev — has been periodically forming, releasing records (their second, Of Stars and Other Somebodies, never receiving a release in North America), playing a few shows and then disappearing again. Over the years the band has been made up of a varying cast including members of Interpol, Arcade Fire, Beirut, St. Vincent, Stars Like Fleas and Bishop Allen. In its current incarnation the band has Shannon Fields on board as producer and performer to help create a record of perfectly executed soft-pop gems.

Sonically, But You’ve Always Been The Caretaker (the band’s third long player) sits alongside the likes of Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips; across its 15 tracks its glides effortlessly on with a confident grace, punctuated by a series of shorter musical vignettes (’Egg-shaped’, ‘Sleeper’, ‘But You’ve Always Been The Pilot’, ‘How And Why Our Dads Lost The War’).

A collection of middle-tempo, grand, orchestral numbers make up the bulk of the album, each one drawing in the listener with an of opening of delicate pianos and fragile vocals before a raft of brass, strings, guitars and all manner of synthesizers enter the fold creating blankets of comforting, lush, space-rock. And that’s the musical theme that permeates the record; explicitly on the so-ELO-it-hurts ‘Yours Truly, 2095′ (”Maybe some day I’ll feel her cold embrace / I’ll kiss her interface”), with nods to Ziggy-era Bowie on ‘Here’s A Star’, and on ‘Dayplanner’, which with its pedal steel, squelching synths and saxophone solo, could easily have been lifted from Dark Side Of The Moon.

On penultimate track ‘Final Chapter Meeting’, Jean-Michel Jarre bleeps and pieces dance around a foreboding vocal: “Sounds like plague / seems like everybody’s got something”. The track builds to a four bar repetition, every cycle bringing new elements: a chorus of vocal euphoria, walls of distorted guitar punctuate the bottom, while a group of horns play over and over until they lose control.

To think that The Silent League are an on again/off again collective is beguiling when the output is this accomplished. What they present here is an album of such accomplished majesty and width, unashamedly nodding to its influences that stands shoulder to shoulder with any contemporary comparisons. This is hairs on the back of your neck stuff.

mp3:> The Silent League: ‘There Is A Caretaker In The Woods’

Buy the album from Rough Trade

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Pascal Babare may only be nineteen years of age, but with this record he manages to blow away a lot of the preconceptions that comes with being a young, solo musician. Whilst contemporaries happily strum along to half-stolen melodies at unsigned nights, the young Australian has managed to forge a genre almost completely all of his own making. Sitting elegantly somewhere between shoegaze, new-millennium folk and traditional singer-songwriters, Thunderclap Spring is an inspired work that often borders on genius.

His influences are clearly diverse and spectacular, with the droning hint of My Bloody Valentine or Slow Dive popping up throughout. It’s probably most comparable to some of Conor ‘Bright Eyes’ Oberst’s earlier, slower works in that they are lyrically vivid, managing to accurately mark the world’s light and dark with such beautiful sound. The beauty is that this album doesn’t delve into self-pitying and moaning that much older, more experienced acts often do. It remains precise throughout, looking outward to the world for inspiration before fostering it within.

The obvious album centerpiece, Joy Division written / New Order released ‘Ceremony’, is done with so deft a touch he doesn’t just re-imagine but re-invent the Factory classic. With understated beauty, this version of the song manages to capture the isolation of an artist reaching breaking point. Whereas Ian Curtis was obviously deeply affected by the industrial Manchester that surrounded him, Babare’s upbringing is equally marked upon this record. Raised in southern Australia, there’s definitely a world music aspect involved, with opening track ‘Elise, We are Vikings’ in particular bathing in laid back percussion and intricate, fragile strums.

It’s a record that absolutely refuses to let you pin it down in any way, breezing effortlessly from the swooning harmony of ‘Sea Salt Water’ to the charming, rag-tag folk of ‘Golden Vulture’. What makes this even more remarkable is that the album was all self-recorded – yet it somehow manages to steer away from the all encompassing lo-fi scene, sounding remarkably crisp. This is far from the work of a complete artist, and the album, brilliant as it is, sometimes lacks bite as are sways from song to song. However, as far as debut releases go, this is one of the most encouraging and rewarding of 2009.

mp3:> Pascal Babare: ‘Ceremony’

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Wesley Eisold, the man at the centre of dark synth band Cold Cave isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. In fact, snippets from interviews could easily smack of parody; the Guardian quotes him as saying “I couldn’t understand why people were wearing watches, because they seemed like hourglasses of death, keeping track of how much time was running out.” He also finds it “all so disheartening what we hope to find when we leave our houses” and that being normal is like “being numb to everything.” It’d sound daft—like a sulky goth schoolboy all grown up—if Eisold wasn’t very serious indeed, and a fascinating character.

As well as running Heartworm Press, a small publishing house, Cold Cave is Eisold’s latest project, following on from hardcore groups American Nightmare and Some Girls. It has gone from a one-man band to a quartet and this record—their first release on Matador—is, says Wesley, an attempt to “make a beautiful album to balance all the ugliness I’ve put into the world.”

Still, beauty is relative and it’s not a total about turn; Eisold hasn’t quite repositioned himself as the magical man from Happy Land. Rather, Love Comes Close possesses a robust charm, born from layered, lyrical synth lines and hypnotic beats. It looks back to obvious touchstones such as New Order and Suicide but skirts neatly around the poppier end of synth-pop—the origins of two of the Cold Cave’s members in hardcore/noise outfits (Eisold and Dominick Fernow, of Prurient) remains fairly plain. There’s plenty of controlled distortion fizzing away beneath the smooth surface.

On the opener ‘Cebe and Me’ a female voice leaves what sounds like a drugged-up answering machine message (one she might regret in the morning), over a dense, ticking track. The words here are mostly indiscernible—as on much of the album—but the lyrics probably include lines such as “till the end of the world” and “trust is broken.” Love and death dominates, not least on the excellent title track. It’s upbeat, but with a chorus of “love comes close/but chooses to spare me/death comes close/but ceases to take me.” Delivered in Eisold’s syrupy baritone it could soundtrack a mopey teenager’s bedroom with concerned parents banging on the door. Elsewhere, ‘Life Magazine’ may be the year’s most positive track about suicide, and ‘Youth and Lust’ brings to mind M83’s ‘Graveyard Girl’ recast through a very dark lens.

So, we’ve been here before many times, but does it matter? This album is a rewarding half hour, like a club-friendly flipside to Fever Ray. As nights get longer and winter draws in, it’s worth tracking down; Cold Cave are a lot warmer and more alluring than the name suggests.

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Never heard of The Mississippi Sheiks? Me neither. Turns out they influenced plenty of people you do know though, like Muddy Waters for instance, who would walk ten miles to hear them play. With a love for this sort of thing but no expert knowledge, this release only caught my eye when I noticed that they were the writers of the standard ‘Sitting On Top Of The World’ way back in 1930, and that song had come to my attention when hearing the magnificent Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs play it twice (separately) in the same afternoon at a festival a few years back. Everyone including Dylan, Frank Sinatra, and Jack White has had a go at it since. Over the following five years of the early thirties, the Sheiks (named after the Rudolph Valentino film) cut nearly 100 singles and notably found crossover success with black and white audiences with their country blues string band (guitar and fiddle) sound.

Those were the days of moonshine, good religion, illicit jelly roll, and less flippantly of course, strange fruit, as the three Chatman brothers, who formed the core of the group along with Walter Vinson, were only one generation away from slave workers. Their lyrics are witty, slick, and full of observations of colourful larger than life characters and their ups and downs, whether it’s when dealing with a womanising preacher in ‘He Calls That Religion’, prohibition smuggling in ‘Bootlegger’s Blues’, or dishing double-entendres in ‘It’s Backfiring Now’ – where car trouble is used as a euphemism for erectile dysfunction and/or premature ejaculation as far as I can tell. Or maybe I’ve just been watching too many Carry On re-runs. Good stuff all the same. To get you up to speed with a further factette, Armenter Chatmon also had a notable solo career under the name of Bo Carter.

It was Black Hen Music boss Steve Dawson and his wife who had the idea for a tribute album and found support from a variety of artists who all had enjoyed the work of the Sheiks – including Bruce Cockburn, Bill Frisell, Madeleine Peyroux, even Van Dyke Parks, and The Carolina Chocolate Drops (who are to portray the Sheiks in a forthcoming Denzel Washington film). This album is advertised as being full of interpretations rather than reproductions, but songs are not dragged across genres for the sake of variety. Heartfelt blues (there should be no other kind of course) and country picking are still squarely in focus. Only Peyroux, as you might expect, really makes a stretch to a woozy jazzy rendition that drags slightly, but then she has never done anything for me. A house band supporting the various solo artists yields a consistent feel, and at least two thirds of this release is an absolute joy to anyone who might have savoured 70’s Ry Cooder (’Things About Comin’ My Way’ for example has the exact tasty up-beat slide guitar feel of his cover of ‘Bourgeois Blues’), Michelle Shocked’s Arkansas Traveller, or the Blind Boys Of Alabama. Gravel throated bluesman Bob Brozman deserves a special mention for his exhilarating earthy contribution. This is music often at its most elemental and immediate, frequently with a real sense of connection filtering through from the past. You can’t keep good songs down. Amen brother.

The Mississippi Sheiks Tribute Project on MySpace

If you were to first listen to the oddly-titled album This Is For The White In Your Eyes without knowing that rather than a choir, it was by a Dane called Jannis Makrigiannis and a few chums, you could quite easily think it was sung by some huge group of robe-clad, solemn Scandinavian types. The multitracking on Makrigiannis’ voice, combined with the cavernous, echo-heavy production, gives this record an almost hymnal, religious sanctity. To use a crude and hateful band mashup metaphor, Choir of Young Believers are like ELO meeting Fleet Foxes in a cathedral – this is sometimes stoic, but frequently sweeping music, its guitars pushed into the background, serving mostly as support for gushing, flowing waves of strings and similarly orchestral arrangements.

When This Is For The White In Your Eyes is at its best, it’s verging on phenomenal. It always feels like a bad idea to say that an album’s best tracks are its loudest, most upbeat ones – it’s easy to imagine it being taken as an admission of being a musical neanderthal who can’t appreciate records with gravitas, restraint, and atmosphere. But as much as I like all those things, it’s still the more upbeat songs which impress most here. Their relative concentration on the first half of the record is its chief problem, amplifying the set’s inherent inconsistency.

But those good songs – they’re superb. Five minute album openers always make me raise an eyebrow, but this is one of those which really impresses and excites in preparation for the remainder of the album – “Hollow Talk” is gloriously slow building, introducing us to Makrigiannis’ wonderful, silvery voice until the song’s gripping, drum-dominated climax takes over, leaving our narrator to let out a couple of concluding lines at the end, like an addendum. The album’s other two great moments feel like a pair – the singles that come in the form of “Next Summer” and “Action/Reaction” which follows soon after it. These two rank close to the best songs of their kind this year – they are sweeping and grandiose, and yet infectious – impressive stuff.

That is not to say that the rest of this very distinctive album isn’t enjoyable – whilst the uniform darkness of its mood in the second half drags it down a little, this is still a very strong record imbued with some great production – the drums in particular sound gorgeous, and Makrigiannis’ voice is a thing of beauty. Imperfect, and suffering from a loss of steam in its second half, this is nevertheless a record to recommend quite heartily.

Buy album from Amazon | iTunes

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Daniel Johnston adds another chapter to his already relevant artistic legend with the release of his latest album Is And Always Was. Already a cult icon, Johnston became an unlikely American pop phenomenon in 1981 with the release of Songs of Pain. These unique, lo-fi recordings provided the basis for nearly three decades of tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps and existential torment.

However, the most noticeable thing about Is And Always Was is that the lo-fi production values which made Johnston so accessibly authentic have been stripped away and replaced by the knob-twiddling of musician and producer Jason Falkner, best known for his work with Beck, Air and Paul McCartney.

Daniel Johnston loyalists might find themselves a little taken back by the shine and polish which surrounds Is And Always Was. Fortunately, Johnston’s unstable nature is to such an extent that each filtered, accentuated note still carries his archetypal weight of lament and heartbreak. Tracks such as ‘Tears’ and ‘Without You’ recall the melodic pop brilliance of his earlier work, and would fit comfortably on his highly-regarded seminal album Hi, How Are You.

Coming in at a little under a minute and a half, sixth track on the album ‘Had Lost My Mind’ is so quintessentially Daniel Johnston, it could easily be mistake as a parody or homage to his earlier self. With no shame in mentioning his history of mental health problems, Johnston mumbles in his trademark Texan drawl: “I had lost my mind. I lost my head for a while, was off my rocker, outta line, outta wack”.

Other tracks like ‘Light of Day’ and ‘Freedom’ suggest a newer direction for Johnston. The former he hints at Pink Floyd-esque prog-rock, whilst the later explores tempos faster and more upbeat than any of his previous work.

Daniel Johnston is now 48 years of age. His skinny frame and curly-haired mop have experienced the effects of adolescence and time and been replaced with grey hair and an overweight body. But this is still the same Daniel Johnston the world has grown to know and love: still looking for love, still an unashamed fan of The Beatles, and still plagued by the Devil and his demons.

Is And Always Was is everything we have come to love and expect from Daniel Johnston, yet somehow so much more.

Buy album from Amazon | iTunes

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By 1989, Motley Crüe had slowly built their fanbase to the point where Dr. Feelgood could open at number one on the Billboard chart and, in a way, the album marks the last high point of hair metal, two years after Appetite for Destruction, two years before Nevermind and Vince Neil leaving with the band’s last shot at relevance. Or at least that’s how it looks from 2009. Hair metal, a genre rivaled only by R&B of the 2000’s (with the possible exception of R. Kelly, whose peacocking has a self-awareness about it that makes him more Mick Jagger than Bret Michaels) for replacing the traditional role of genuine emotion in music for self-congratulation while pretending not to, is pop music at its most vapid and narcissistic. It might feel like the moment that the jocks took over rock and roll, the music of rebellion, but listening to it today, it sounds more like music by and for sociopaths.

After mood-setting intro ‘TNT (Terror ‘N Tinseltown)’, the album kicks into gear with ‘Dr. Feelgood.’ The song sets the formula for much of what’s to come: big bluesy riffs scrubbed shiny and shallow, perfunctory faux bluesman posturing from Vince Neil on the verses, anthemic, instantly memorable choruses delivered in Neil’s proto-Axl tenor. Songs like ‘Slice of Your Piece’ (with enough Beatles cribbing to make it simultaneously the bands thoughtless answer to both ‘She’s Heavy’ and ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’), ‘Rattlesnake Shake’ and ‘She Goes Down’ demonstrate the band’s complete and total emotional tone-deafness even as they successfully approximate traditional song structures. On the flipside, the band is tight and the more aggressive and attitudinal the song, the better it works, as with ‘Kickstart My Heart.’

But the songs that stick out on further are the closing power ballads, ‘Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)’ and ‘Time For Change,’ likely the stupidest two song combination in the history of popular music. These are the songs that so many indie artists dream they could write ironically, songs in which the ideas of emotion (‘Don’t Go Away Mad) and social responsibility (‘Time For Change’) stand in for the real things. Even better, the band is unable to conceal the casual, self-centered misanthropy at the center of its aesthetic. Both songs could work as satire and ‘Time For Change’ with its pomp and seemingly infinite refrain of “Change” is best enjoyed as a joke. ‘Don’t Go Away Mad’ is even funnier, but in it’s own way it’s the band’s most honest moment and a neat encapsulation of the album.

This new reissue comes with demos from the Dr. Feelgood sessions and some live tracks from a stop in Russia, but there are no revelations here. The band is such a product of the studio that the demos sound like the album tracks sound like the live versions. Dr. Feelgood stands on it’s own though as the apotheosis of hair metal, an amalgamation of pop melodies, loud guitars and excess that signifies absolutely nothing else.

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They may not have spectacular set-ups or break down much of the wall between audience and performer, but Brakes live are a highly entertaining, energetic experience. Watching Eamon Hamilton, veins in his neck bulging, give it his vocal all while Tom White inelegantly pirouettes around his side of the state bashing out bludgeon riffola at some volume, you get the impression that here is a band foremost keen on having as much fun and putting as much into their craft as we are and want them to.
It’s that almost personal immediacy that makes a live album not tell half the story. Rock Is Dodelijk - ‘dodelijk’ is Dutch for ‘deadly’, although Googling also reveals a French band who’ve done a La Blogotheque Take-Away Show called Roken is Dodelijk – is a curious cut and shut of a live document too, thirteen tracks from a hometown show in Brighton in August 2008 (’Hi How Are You’ is introduced by Eamon as being “about watching The Tenderfoot at the Freebutt”, the Tenderfoot being the jangly alt-country former employers of Brakes’ bassist Marc Beatty) with seven tacked onto the end from a Cologne gig in May. ‘Hey Hey’ and ‘What’s In It For Me?’ are represented twice and only three of the eighteen different songs represented are from this year’s decent if not entirely successful third album Touchdown.

It’s not the most polished set of performances, not least in the Brighton version of ‘Hey Hey’ when Hamilton starts making up lyrics and then gets the crucial lyrics in the chorus wrong, but the Brakes charm is that their rough and readiness makes their fiery sets what they are. They’re a tight band who portray the image that these often short, usually ramshackle songs could fall apart at any moment. The greatest hits-esque tracklisting plays up some often overlooked moments, most notably the Pixies quiet-loud mania of ‘I Can’t Stand To Stand Beside You’, but rest assured the shoutalong favourites that are the reason why they’re often overlooked come out well. The riff of ‘Cease And Desist’ sounds positively monstrous, and if the audience wasn’t mixed so far back you’d be sure to hear them chant along with the mocking ‘Heard About Your Band’ (“…whatever, dude!”) and rock’s most head spinning anti-war song ‘Porcupine Or Pineapple’. Good to have the storming penultimate set regular ‘Huevos Rancheros’ brought out of B-side purgatory, and twice at that, but the addition of the second set means traditional closer ‘Comma Comma Comma Full Stop’, which they’ve tightened up into a full four seconds in length, comes in at track 13. That can’t be right.

While Brakes work well enough on record, it’s the wild eyed intensity, even in the ballads (no ‘No Return’, by the way? Or Camper Van Beethoven covers, come to think of it), that marks them out as such a live draw. While CD/mp3 is no substitute for the real thing, which even got a moshpit going at End Of The Road this year, those without any Brakes in their collection could just as comfortably start here. A super non-stop uber-rocking disco party, just like the man says.

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“And it starts like…”

So begins Johnny Foreigner’s sophomore effort, possibly the most self-aware album of 2009. After spending almost every day of the last eighteen months on some form of tour – heaven knows where they found the time to write, let alone record, the thing. Grace and the Bigger Picture is a rawer beast than Waited Up Til It Was Light, and comes across like the musical equivalent of William Miller’s article on Stillwater in Almost Famous: “a think-piece about a mid-level band grappling with their limitations in the face of the harsh glare of success,” with more references to obscure British towns and “student yew-nee-yuns”. And better tunes.

The fifteen songs here rush by with barely any pause for breath, let alone time for the inevitable game of Spot The Self-Reference; the phrase “Arcs across the city” pops up just eighteen seconds in, while there are two sets of songs-with-sequels. ‘Choose Yr Side and Shut Up!’ kicks the album off with aplomb – riffs that are energetic to the point of ADD, stop/start drums and an obligatory half-time outro that’s nothing short of anthemic. Its counterpoint, ‘I’llchoosemysideandshutup, Alright’ is the record’s first (brief) moment of respite, a delicate Kelly-led descriptor of post-gig fatigue (“We walk out with ears still ringing…and flyers for confetti”), which charges headlong into a stomping cavern of distortion. The break doesn’t last long, though, as the track leads perfectly into the insanely catchy single ‘Criminals’, the closest musical cousin to the band’s debut, which “kicks through the rubble with the ghosts of the Astoria”, casting a withering eye on the borderline non-existent London scene.

The trouble with much of the album, however, is that the songs just don’t seem developed enough; while there’s a lot that harks back to their earlier sound, you have to work much harder for the songs to bury themselves in your head, and many tracks (‘Kingston Called, They Want Their Lost Youth Back’, for one) have titles that are almost longer (and more memorable) than the tracks themselves. After a while, everything tends to bleed into one, both lyrically and musically – a fact not lost on the band, as they layer almost every chorus on the album on top of each other for the albums well-intentioned, if overreaching, grand finale of ‘The Coast Was Always Clear’.

It’s the darker, more experimental moments on the album’s second half that really stick; ‘More Heart, Less Tongue’ (and, later, its spacey instrumental remix ‘More Tongue, Less Heart’) rides on a perpetually-ill-at-ease piano loop, which brilliantly complements the lyric’s account tour-inertia – “So London might as well be Glasgow/Might as well be Tokyo, or any place/We’re almost leaving” – before the fuzz bass kicks in, and you remember who you’re listening to. Likewise, the Dischord Records stylings of ‘Every Cloakroom Ever’ might just be the best thing here – all plucked harmonics and clipped, clicking drums, as well as the album’s most hopeful lyric in the face of toilet venue adversity: “Don’t doubt yr worth.”

On the whole, Grace and the Bigger Picture lives up to neither its title nor its predecessor; whilst the band still possess a savvy way with a tune, the barrage of hooks is undermined by the barrage of in-jokes, making the album seem like a much more private document than it should be. Then again, in spite of its unevenness, as a whole, it hangs together surprisingly well, if somewhat overly self-awarely; this is, after all, a second-album whose secret track ends by congratulating someone – perhaps themselves – on having “made the sequel”. Still, a little more grace and a slightly bigger picture next time around wouldn’t go amiss.

Buy album from Amazon | iTunes

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When you really look at it, Bradford Cox’s career trajectory is scary. The first Deerhunter release, which now feels like at least a decade ago, was only in 2005, and when you consider the fact that that record wasn’t even that good, him being pretty much the king of whatever it is he actually does is damn impressive. Through the course of two further Deerhunter albums and a solo release under the Atlas Sound banner, Cox has pretty much cemented himself as the first name in ambient shoegaze indie noise psych-rock. And it’s not undeserved, given that all those records are fucking great, but still, most artists of his undeniable talent at least still have the common decency to spread their genius out a little.

And so another day, another needlessly good album from Mr Cox. Logos the second Atlas Sound album – which, by the way, is the fourth awesome collection he’s put out in the last two years – and sees Cox working from a different palette than his Deerhunter work, but still within the confines of his trademark sound. Like, if Monet started using wax crayons instead of paints, you’d still tell a Monet from a Dali, yeah? Course you would. The reduced size of just about everything on this album highlights Cox’s strengths as a writer of great pop ambience, first and foremost. Without the myriad of footswitches, the simplistic elements of his music shine out like a massive beacon of awesomeness. Lesser artists would – and have – shy away from making albums like this, because it shows them at their rawest and most vulnerable. If this wasn’t such a success, it’d be a huge failure, and for the majority of songwriters, albums this sparse would only reveal the failings that a full band environment manages to smother.

Oh yeah, and the first single, ‘Walkabout’, features Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear. A coming together of surely two of the most creative people in indie music of the last few years is everything it should be – its being one of my favourite Animal Collective-related songs of the year, in the year Merriweather Post Pavillion came out, is all you really need to know. The album’s other major collaboration is with another champion of the more experimental side of pop music, Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, and it’s another winner – an eight-minute dream that sounds exactly like what Emperor Tomato Ketchup vs Microcastle should sound like.

The popular vote for album highlight could go to either of the above, or midpoint ‘Sheila’, which finds Cox at his most confessional – “when we die we’ll bury ourselves / cos no-one wants to die alone” – but really this is an album that doesn’t need a centre-piece, or a easily mix-taped single. It’s an album that needs to be taken as a whole, certainly it’s more of a coherent record than the previous Atlas Sound effort, it’s mood simply doesn’t lend to being chopped and changed. Suffice to say, it might be my favourite Cox release yet. Now that’s something special.

Buy album on Amazon | iTunes

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‘Dream Catch Me’. You know, there isn’t, necessarily, anything wrong with being almost solely associated with one song. So long as it’s a good one. High art it was not, but Newton Faulkner’s big success story is such a song: infectious and catchy, simple in theme but inclusive and memorable. Add to that the fact that it’s always nice when, chart success-wise, a guy with huge dreadlocks and an acoustic guitar can keep pace with the dance, electropop and R&B stars of this world. For all this, Faulkner doesn’t come off too badly in my mind.

One song does not earn you a lifetime in my good books, though. Faulkner needed to at least put in a respectable effort with this second album (yes, ‘Dream Catch Me was on an album, it was called Hand Built By Robots, now that you mention it). As my introduction gave away, he has just about managed to pull that feat off. Rebuilt By Humans is a decent, but never spectacular album. Listening to it is to absorb a few key truisms. First, the main songs will be book-ended by acoustic guitar instrumental interludes; these will be vaguely pleasant, but also completely forgettable and nothingy. Secondly, the songs themselves will all be pretty and slickly produced acousti-pop confections – much of their appeal stems simply from how impressively efficient they are, with just enough variety in pace, instrumentation, tone and style. Thirdly, the lyrics will be all over the shop. Pick out a random line and it’s likely to be unremarkable, but too many will be out-and-out clangers and one or two approach some kind of insight.

The sum total of all this is that these songs are never high-concept, particularly clever or even memorable, but they all satisfy and entertain while they last, which admittedly is not an easy thing to craft. ‘Badman’, the opening proper song, is the album in microcosm. It’s meant to be a compartmentalised, concise call for escapism, a call to arms to value love over money, over booze, over anything. Its words are too often empty platitudes, its music never that inspiring, but it’s good enough fun.

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I’m a sucker for shoegaze, no matter how basic, it can be I never fail to be impressed by it, or like it arbitrarily. There’s an element of wizardry, and wonder to it that causes me to lose my normally rational, and discerning tastes and fall into a pile, sighing “ooo, nice sounds!”. On his first album Maps, aka James Chapman, proved he could make those nice sounds, while managing to at least moderately deviate from the rudimentary shoegaze template. It was druggy, ethereal and dream like; all words usually associated with the description of good shoe-gaze.

On Turning the Mind, Chapman seems to have decided to take a slightly different direction. Taking more influence from the dance floor, effects laden guitars have been replaced by synthesisers, and there’s a brief cameo for clubland-esque shouting. During the opening song and title track, ‘Turning the Mind’, the future seems bright for James. Synthesisers swirl over a basic drum machine beat, while James’s voice lightly floats over the top. Single, and dancey statement ‘I Dream Of Crystal’ is a strong enough demonstration of Maps’s new direction. Lyrics about drugs and stuff, a big drum sound and a strong synthesiser line combine to make a perfectly acceptable song. Then for the next 7 or so songs Turning the Mind becomes boring and average. There’s the odd good idea, but Turning the Mind on the whole lacks the kind of inspiration that good music of it’s type requires. It does very little special or different to the norm, and when it tries to it fails. ‘Love will Come’ with its shouts of “Ko-ko-ko” is genuinely a bad song, and it’s disappointing to see stuff of it’s low, uninspiring quality contained within an occasionally good album.

There’s a brief resurgence of good material towards the end of the album, ‘Chameleon’ and ‘Die Happy, Die Smiling’ preventing the album from being genuinely bad. Despite James Chapmans ideas occasionally coming off and succeeding, the soggy middle of Turning the Mind is testament to the fact that Maps’s new direction is not working as well as their first.

Buy the album from Amazon | iTunes

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Thank God for the Pretty Things is a strange title for a CD. And my extensive research (hello, Wikipedia), has revealed that The Pretty Things are in fact a band, who apparently won the ‘Heroes’ award at this year’s Mojos. But let’s face it, that probably has nothing to do with why Boo Hewerdine called his album that. He’s probably just thinking of flowers and his wife and kids and genuinely pretty things, not an ageing English rock and roll band.

Boo’s first CD was released way back in 1992, but you could hardly describe his recorded output as prolific, as Thank God… is his only seventh release. However, a bit more of extensive research (his actual website this time, not Wikipedia) reveals that he’s written/co-written songs for more than 50 other musicians – some dubiously famous like Marti Pellow, others less well-known (won’t mention who I consider to be ‘less well known’, for fear of upsetting their fan).

So what about his own stuff, and this album? As a gentle accompaniment, it does the job well. There’s a fair amount of variety across eleven tracks, and plenty of ‘guests’ to augment Boo’s excellent acoustic guitar, which of course is a major feature in all of his work.

The opening track ‘Geography’ sets the tone for the album, charting being away from home and loved ones, which is a loose theme for the entire album.

The theme continues in track two – ‘Muddy Waters’ which is another insight into life on the road, which given Boo’s profession, and apparently preference of live performance over the recording studio, is something very familiar to Mr Hewerdine.

‘Sleeping Lions’ slips into waltz time, and has a mellow feel with some gentle strings and soft percussions, plus backing vocals by Heidi Talbot. Last time I saw Boo perform live, he and Heidi were adding their rich talents to the Drever, McCusker, Woomble trio. Since on that occasion, Boo’s contribution was mainly instrumental, it’s nice to get re-acquainted with his excellent vocal talents.

‘Rays’ has a soft jazz feel about it, and contains a pretty great one-liner “I went to bed sober and woke up drunk”, plus some nice trumpet blowing by a Mr Gustaf Ljanggen.

Boo’s hardcore folk following have no doubt been eagerly awaiting this album it’s most certainly a pleasant listen. But folk’s a bit of a clique-y business, and unlike other contemporary folk acts like Lau (and all their various incarnations) for those skirting around the edge, it does little to really entice new listeners in.

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Can’t quite make my mind up on the name, but upon hearing their last release Ends Of June back in 2007 it was highly obvious that here was a special collection of musicians who made up Low Low Low La La La Love Love Love, crafting something quite beautiful. Admittedly, I had completely forgot I had Ends Of June, then seeing that they had something new coming out, I revisited the last one, and the wonder remains.

Feels, Feathers is more of the same sunshine folk, and the song writing is as magical as ever. ‘Blackbird 1′ is dreamy, childlike, and, like most of Low Lows songs, completely disarming, it caresses with it’s harmonies, but does bulk it up with electric guitars which I feel nicely break the sway of the record.

The magic of the vocal harmonies between the group, led by Kelly Dysons soothed vocals, comfort you. They create a fun, yet intimate world that you want to sing along with. It is music with huge heart and a shiny step. Playful, poetic, fun and sad at the same time. There aren’t many Brit bands around like this, so it is very refreshing to know and hear a band who can exist amongst some of the new folk greats of America such as Sufjan, Six Organs, Elliott Smith…

Recorded in Yorkshires Peak District the record exudes warmth. Take the sailing, inviting, shimmy of ‘Where Ya Goin’. The xylophone melodies add extra colour and mood to an already magic land. It is very much folk pop rather than adhering to the psychedelic leanings of most modern folk. There is more in common with the late, great Elliott Smith in terms of song writing, as his craft was perfect acoustic pop, so is Low Lows clearly a very fine collection of emotional and fragile folk pop. Flower In The Mind is a perfect example of the fragility of their song writing. Burnt guitar solo, emotional lyrics pointing at sadness , it is quite lovely.

The only criticism is that it can be bland at times, like on’ Document 15′ and ‘Air’. The bedroom DIY ethic and sound of the band can suffer from being too bare, maybe some of the songs lack of something memorable which obviously makes it forgettable. But there is no denying that this record has plenty of good songs such as ‘Clear The Throat’ and ‘Idiot Symphonies’  that make this album very much worth the effort.

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I’ve always felt a bit sorry for poor Alela Diane. A supremely talented individual, she’s had the extreme misfortune to emerge from the mountains of California at the same time as hipster-beloved harpist Joanna Newsom – and from the moment Joanna started her unwieldy squeaking on 2004’s The Milk-Eyed Mender, there seemed no hope of Alela’s altogether more temperate brand of folk music, holding the attention of the public for more than a few, passing seconds.

But now Ms. Newsom seems to be on an extended hiatus, and in her absence Alela’s been slowly garnering the attention she deserves (Pitchfork, having ignored her debut, awarded her sophomore album a highly respectable 8.0), and she’s been dutifully doing the festival rounds – playing End of The Road, Latitude and Primavera – and touring with folk heavyweights such as Iron & Wine and Blitzen Trapper.

So for an artist essentially at the peak of her game, is a duet EP such a good idea? Both duets and EP’s have been horrifically done in the past – both seem to be an excuse to dress up substandard material for the sake of a release – and when you add in the fact that Alela’s duet partner is old friend Alina Hardin, you’d be forgiven for wondering just how much work went on in the studio. And when you toss in the fact that three out of the six tracks are covers, Alela Diane fans must be quaking in their fringed boots.

Thankfully, this EP is far from the disaster its circumstances predict – it’s a thing of pastoral, austere beauty, and has the rare gift of recalling the past without cheapening it – Alela’s brand of nostalgias is effortless, almost instinctive, as though the voices of ancient troubadours trickle in with her own.

The EP kicks off (Although ‘kicks off’ seems to be too aggressive a phrase for this EP – it more gently wafts out of your speakers) with ‘Amidst The Movement’, and here we see Alina Hardin earn her album co-credit with ease – although both singers are stunning on their own, their sum is greater than their parts; their voices entwine spellbindingly, and Alina’s high, floating mewl gives Alela’s sonorousness a welcome lightness.

Elsewhere, the results are equally as stunning – ‘Crying Wolf’, with it’s gently-undulating guitar line, bell-like vocals, and chaste, Christina Rossetti-inspired romanticism, is simply the purest piece of music I’ve heard for quite some time, and ‘Matty Groves’ shows that Alela can carry off lengthy, Ys-style narratives with ease- but to be honest, comparing Joanna Newsom and Alela Diane is almost completely void – yes, they are cut from the same cloth, but while Joanna’s weightily ambitions spirals towards the treetops, Alela’s bucolic, mud-streaked blues are far happier residing peacefully on the forest floor.

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Alela is giving away a track lifted from the EP called ‘On The Bowling Green’. You can get it from here.

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The opening to Pomegranates second album beseeches you (well, everybody) to ‘come outside’; it’s a whimsical gang-vocal led reverb drenched introduction to an album that makes you want to stop whatever inevitably mundane, serious thing it is you’re doing and follow the indie-pop pied pipers on their conceptual flight of fancy.

It’s the little touches that do it. The almost bossa nova opening of ‘Svaatzi Uutsi’, that transports you instantly to a Hawaiian beach to better enjoy the subsequent shoegaze. The strikingly passionate vocals screaming out “I’m so tired of living in the city and never being able to see the stars at night/and yes I know we are so far apart we’re still looking together at the same night sky” at the close of ‘This Land Used To Be My Land But Now I Hate This Land’. The lofty atmospherics and sudden steel string bridge of ‘Coriander’. The baseline is an album that is consistently inviting and evocative with brief but frequent moments of inspiration.

The concept of the album is that of a young boy leaving home to embark on his travels before crossing paths with a group of time travellers and their spaceship ‘Coriander’! Pomegranates manage to pull it all off with a sense of innocence on the verge of maturity. It’s a sense evoked in large part by the unique timbre of Joey Cook and Issac Karns juxtaposed vocals; one tender, high, almost elegiac, the other sombre and deep.

Pomegranates evoke their wanderlust and fixation with a sense of belonging through dreamy pop, and for the most part they succeed brilliantly in implicating you in their quest.

There are however moments when Pomegranates lose their way. For all the brilliant moments of lilting pop things occasionally border on the saccharine and plodding as in ‘384 BC’. Unfortunately the fact that everything is constantly awash in a sea of reverb robs some of the riffs and musical ideas of their clarity, exacerbated by the fact the final third of the album seems underdeveloped in comparison.

Even so these Cincinatti boys then have produced an album of uplifting, bright melodies, sullied only rarely by a reliance on downtempo simplicity. Everybody, Come Outside is a ray of sun piercing the winter clouds rolling in, certain tracks definitely deserved of being called beautiful. It may, however, be hard to hear past the overarching sound if you’re not too keen on your indie pop tinged with twee. Either way, Pomegranates are much more super fruit than bland smoothie.

mp3:> Pomegranates: ‘Everybody, Come Outside!’

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Elbow’s powers-that-be have decided that, for whatever reason, it’s time for a reissue. Asleep in the Back was Elbow’s debut, not-so-way-back in 2001. It’s been repackaged in a ‘deluxe’ edition (and who can resist anything with the word ‘deluxe’ on it?), with a CD of that winning cash-cow buzz word ‘bonus’, and a DVD featuring, well, a lot of odds and ends.

So… let’s break this down…

Disc One – Asleep in the Back

Easily on a par with The Seldom Seen Kid, Asleep in the Back is an utterly astonishing debut album. Granted, the band had been together nearly a decade before they made it, but it was undoubtedly worth the wait.

It features some of the bands live highlights – ‘Powder Blue’, ‘Red’, ‘Don’t Mix Your Drinks’, the incredible, tender, grandiose cacophony that is ‘Newborn’, and recent set-closer, the heart-warming ‘Scattered Black and Whites’.

There’s also the odd forgotten gem it’s nice to get reacquainted with, such as ‘Any Day Now’ and ‘Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)’ which features the lush textures of multi-layered Garvey vocals.

The rough around the edges outtakes are a timely reminder that Asleep in the Back captures Elbow at the flush of the band’s youth. A bit scruffy, and lacking the polished production of their later work, (ironically their own polished production), but rather endearing all the same.

For those that only clambered aboard the Elbow train after The Seldom Seen Kid, Asleep in the Back will bookend their burgeoning Elbow discography nicely. Those that were on board from day one will still feel a little smug that they were there from the start.

Disc Two – Bonus Tracks

What’s that black and white blob coming on the horizon? Oh, here’s that cash-cow.  Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the term ‘bonus’ imply something extra, additional, a cheeky bit on the side? Now according to my calculations, there are two ‘bonus’ tracks on CD 2 – that is, tracks that aren’t on Asleep in the Back. There’s the grungey, scuzzy, tumbling free-for all of ‘Theme From Munroe Kelly’, and ‘George Lassoes The Moon’.

The rest of the ‘bonus’ tracks are all taken from Asleep in the Back, and are either from a Steve Lamacq session or an NME Astoria gig. Fair enough – anyone who’s caught Elbow live will know they truly excel, but when ‘Red’ and ‘Don’t Mix Your Drinks’ roll around for the second time, it does become a little tiring. The six tracks from the Astoria show are the highlight, particularly the threatening, anticipating, hot-under-the-collar rendition of ‘Bitten by the Tailfly’. But it’s all a bit to bitty to really get involved with – as soon as you’re getting into the swing of the Astoria show and enjoying Guy’s banter, it’s replaced with an (albeit pretty special) session version on ‘Newborn’. Personally, I rather would’ve had a whole live gig on this CD rather than what seems like bits and pieces cobbled together in attempt to create some kind of snap-shot of Elbow circa 2001.

Disc Three – Asleep in the Back Movie

Moo. It’s back. The DVD contains all the videos for Asleep in the Back. If you haven’t got time to sit through them all (and quite frankly the first five are worth avoiding anyway) then go straight for the title track, where the band are transformed into puppets topped with their heads, in a rather beautifully made old-school silent film about Guy being stung by a wasp.

Another hilarious Guy moment sees him attempting to ad-lib when technical problems halt a show in Glasgow – it would seem his on-stage banter has progressed in leaps and bounds since then, as the best he can come up with is discussing his favourite gadget and ‘Hello Glasgow’. Still, if he ever gives up music he’s a shoe-in for a role in an awkward docu-comedy.

As for the rest of the ‘movie’, well there’s a Jukebox which means you can load up the album in any order you fancy and play it (how handy, I hear you cry) and the tracks off Disc Two again, just incase you need to play them on your DVD player instead.

So sadly this deluxe edition is all a bit of a waste of time. I’m assuming that it has more to do with Polydor and Universal than the band, but after the rather beautiful box-set of The Seldom Seen Kid recorded at Abbey Road, this is certainly a let down. Luckily the, strength of this album means that it doesn’t need a load of extra padding to go with it – this is one for the die-hards and uninitiated only.

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A squall of strings, a pounding of drums, and a thoroughly doom laden riff. Ah such sweet pleasures and only seconds have passed since pressing play on the latest offering from Russian Circles. Rumbling toms and urgent bass lines take it from here as ‘Fathom’ opens up, exposing itself as a post-metal hybrid possessing the sharpest of teeth, the deepest of depressions and the strongest of arms. To suggest that the opening track is a confusing beast would be to do it a disservice. Gentle those string parts may be, but as they go forth spreading happiness and cheer they are followed closely by a rippling beast intent on stomping on toys, ripping up flowers and just possibly defecating on a few doorsteps. Clocking in at under five minutes, it’s a brief introduction (in Russian Circles terms at least) but when there’s a horde of ideas stomping across the perfectly realised instrumental landscape any longer would cause severe bewilderment.

This, then, is Russian Circles third offering. Their first foray into post-rock/post metal, Enter, tickled a fair few fancies being as it was, an unrelenting slab of all things post. They let a fair few down with Station, preferring a more straight-up post-rock take on things and perhaps ignoring the beast within a little too much.

Geneva goes some way to setting things straight by taking the best elements from their first two releases, and happily cramming them together to come up with something that sounds a great deal more complete.

The title track is a more straight forward rocker, similar in tone to fellow Chicagoans Pelican’s tempestuous post-metal. A rolling thrash riff propels it towards a crashing climax where upon the band allow things to ebb away. Drums and bass trade insults kick lumps out of each other, and slowly another simmering building process begins. Russian Circles don’t use the quiet-loud-quiet format like other bands; instead they adopt something more akin to build-destroy-build-annihilate. There are subtleties of course, but where you’d expect to find a soothing melody, more often than not there is something more visceral boiling away ready to explode.

That said, there are moments of tranquillity to be found on Geneva. ‘Melee’ is a lot more considered and brooding than the title might suggest. With the addition of cello and violin from Alison Chelsey and Susan Voelz there are moments of an orchestral beauty that fill out the emotional range of the band perfectly. Naturally it careers head long into more aggressive territory, but the sonic palette available to the band has widened, and with it, they have become more effective at provoking a range of responses in the listener.

‘Hexed All’ slows the pace considerably. A guitar line that somehow seems autumnal in the way it drops from Mike Sullivan’s fingers provides a base for the strings to work their magic once again. This is Russian Circles at their most contemplative, and as close as they get to sounding like contempories such as Mono on this album.

‘Maiko’ returns us to a world full of sweet guitar licks and wonderfully crafted drum patterns. At times it takes in the elements of garage rock, and the exuberance of the hair metal bands of the 80s, but always remembers that riffs are meant for pounding. Which ‘Maiko’ does constantly…relentlessly.

When ‘The Mountains Came to Muhammed’ takes us into epic territory once again. Utilising radio broadcasts buried deep in the mix they conjure up comparisons to Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor but keep things very much in the Russian Circles mould.

They close with the truly stunning ‘Philos’, which appeared on a split with These Arms Are Snakes some time ago. This is a reworked expanded version however, and with the addition of strings and piano, is a much more rounded proposition. Far and away the most beautiful and stirring thing on the album, this monumental epic suggests that Russian Circles have now found the perfect balance between bombast and meditation.

Geneva is the sound of a band finding their feet once again and proving the doubters wrong. If they continue to build from here, rather than destroy in their usual manner, then whatever Russian Circles end up doing next is going to be phenomenal.

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Unfashionable I may be, but I think Natalie Imbruglia’s pretty underrated. Her pop credentials may not appeal to everyone, but I personally furnish her with a lot of kudos for having transferred from a soap opera to music far more successfully than most who have travelled the same path. Successfully in the sense that she’s produced some genuinely great music, as opposed to merely accumulating massive sales. Nat’s debut Left of the Middle was a bit of a  mini-watershed, a quality pop rock album which resolutely refused to be crap, which many might have predicted.

Since then Imbruglia’s been far from overwhelmingly productive, her albums all being four years apart. Come to Life is her fourth, arriving rather later than her singles collection, Glorious, which itself emerged two years ago now. This new set of ten songs is largely in the vein of her 2005 album Counting Down the Days, which continued her transition from the sometimes surprisingly aggressive songs of the debut. Whilst I’d (unrealistically) hoped for a return of sorts to that hard sound of songs like ‘Don’t You Think’, the soft but varied and interesting sound of these tracks is still very satisfying.

One of the biggest successes of Come to Life is the way it’s been tracklisted. Deftly avoiding the perennial mistake of frontloading all the upbeat songs, the album instead comes across as thoroughly rounded. What the early part of the album does have is two songs in a row – ‘Lukas’ and ‘Fun’ – which were written by Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Martin’s improving songwriting, displayed on his band’s recent career-best work, suits Imbruglia very well indeed and whilst you can well imagine Coldplay performing these songs, Imbruglia’s efforts are great.

Instrumentally it’s a pretty lush sound that’s being displayed here – there’s a particularly tasteful string section on ‘Twenty’ and ‘WYUT’ has a odd but gorgeous mixture of guitar and synthesizer sounds which really makes you sit up and pay attention. Single “Want” and “Cameo” use machined beats and twinkling synths, which are a tad outside of Imbruglia’s comfort zone but she still gives a good account of herself. Overall, Come to Life is exactly the kind of glossy faux-serious music a lot of people turn their noses up at, but it’s damn good fun and is as good as any pure, commercial pop record I’ve consumed this year.

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So, a split album! This is a new one on me. To my shame I don’t own any split records at all, no, not even an EP, and so it seems like a bit of an oddity to me. This particular record is a union between British band Lebatol and Italian counterparts Planet Brain. The two bands sound like a good match for one another here, both peddling what is frequently gloopy, ethereal rock. There isn’t a big split of national sounds on here – in fact at times, the match of the two bands is so good you’ll sometimes have to check which one you’re listening to if you shuffle the songs.

In fact, the closeness of the resemblance between these two bands is perhaps a little too major for their own good – if they’d had a bit more space between them, their tracks might have played off one another that bit more successfully, whereas sometimes Split doesn’t really feel like a split album at all. Nevertheless, these are good songs, albeit never quite outstanding. Probably the strongest tracks are put in by Planet Brain, who occupy the first half. “Jupiter Completes Its Orbit” and the “The Fog Inbetween” in particular are among the best on offer here. It’s the Italian band’s songs which tender to be the longer and more ambitious ones, even if their song “Mirror 7″ doesn’t show them at their best.

On the Lebatol side of things,  proceedings are a bit more angular and a bit less spacey, with shoutier vocals. The main weirdness here is the thoroughly odd track titles, from the bizarre “Kids of Today – Cabbage Attaching” to the following “Peek a Boo Youfucksyou”. The songs don’t match up to the interest of their titles however, as Lebatol largely put out pretty uninspiring rock cuts on their side of the record, failing to carry the increasingly impressive momentum that the Italians had built up across their five tracks.

Right down to its lovely cover, Split is designed as a completely 50/50 arrangement between these two bands.  But in the quality stakes, the tracklisting is dominated by Planet Brain. The clincher is that despite this disparity in quality, neither band presents enough of an argument to make Split as a whole a particularly appealing purchase.

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