Album Review: Impersonator – Majical Cloudz

I first heard of Majical Cloudz’s ‘Impersonator’ when it showed up at #8 on Pitchfork’s Best Albums of 2013 list, and it became my favourite album to listen to over the New Year holidays and into the first days of 2014. I found it held my attention in a way that most records did not, and while I’ve struggled to express why, I think AllMusic has captured it when they say the songs exist in a ‘state of suspended animation’. Indeed, other reviewers seem to have had far more profound thoughts and been much better listeners of this album (particularly the lyrics) than I (the cokemachineglow review is especially insightful) that I wonder what I can add to them. So why say anything at all? Well, because I like the tunes, and wanted to point out on the internet that I like them …

Actually, another way of putting why I like the songs on this album is that they work for me in the same way that the songs of Joy Division and the Velvet Underground work. And while you might be wondering why someone is making yet another comparison of a band to Joy Division and the VU, particularly one that really doesn’t sound all that much like them, what I mean is that those are also records that are put together in a relatively simple way, and hook the listener in through having its own special atmosphere. In that sense, it seems more like a throwback to an earlier era than most modern, more complex-sounding (though not necessarily more complex) records, and may mean that it has a better chance of lasting than some more heralded releases.

Favourite tunes: the first three tracks of ‘Impersonator’, ‘This Is Magic’ and ‘Childhood’s End’ essentially set the tone of the record – direct, downbeat, and with a haunting beauty, particularly ‘Childhood’s End’, with its tale of a father shot down (bad listener that I am, I only realised this when a review pointed it out to me). My favourite two tracks come later in the album though. ‘Silver Rings’ has the largest sound of anything on the record, and is pretty much the only time singer Devon Welsh hits the really high notes, which might be why it suckers me in. It is like a version of every ‘80s power ballad heard on the radio driving home late at night done perfectly right. My other favourite is ‘Bugs Don’t Buzz’, which has a beautiful chord progression (F, Am, C, F apparently), and the most heartbreaking lyric on the album – ‘The cheesiest songs all end with a smile/This won’t end with a smile, my love’ – dooming the lovers in the song from the beginning, even though subsequent lines seem to try and backtrack on that sentiment. (It also has one of the weirdest lyrics – ‘We’ll be just like the roaches …’) Every track is listenable though, which is what all the strongest albums should be like.

P.S. Majical Cloudz were also the subject of one of my more circulated tweets – I pointed out that the ‘z’ in the name annoyed me, but strangely enough I didn’t mind the ‘j’.

The Wooden Finger Five: January 2014 - The Ten Best Semi-Classic Albums Ever (Part One)

For some time, I’ve thought of doing an epic, multi-part series of blog posts talking about my favourite 100 albums ever. However, there have been a few things that have stopped me:

1)      That sounds like a lot of work.

2)      At the rate at which I’m listening to new albums post-Spotify, the list might be changing even as I’m writing it.

3)      And Spotify reminds me how many albums I haven’t listened to, and makes me despair about writing a definitive ‘best 100 albums’ list

4)      Who needs even more words written about ‘Revolver’ or ‘The Stone Roses’ or ‘OK Computer’ or even ‘Marquee Moon’ anyway?

So what I’ve decided to do is write a post (well, two posts) about what I think are the 10 best ‘semi-classic’ albums ever.  These are albums that would definitely make my ‘best 100 albums’ list. However, while all of them have generally been well-rated (though a few have come in for heavy doses of criticism as well) they are not albums that typically make articles about the 100 best albums, or 200 best albums, or 500 best albums, or whatever. This is evidenced by them being ranked down at around number 1000 or lower over at the BestEverAlbums site, which is a site that has ranked albums based on over 12,000 different greatest albums lists. And really, if I was to write a best 100 albums list, these are the albums that I’d most want to talk about anyway.

10. MOSELEY SHOALS – OCEAN COLOUR SCENE (1996)

Best Ever Albums Rank: 1143

If critics liked getting stuck into Oasis for their derivate, retro sound, then they had an absolute field day with Ocean Colour Scene, who did not have the millions of record sales to back them up. The Scenesters’ best known album though, ‘Moseley Shoals’, is an absolute delight, being a grab-bag of catchy, bluesy late-‘60s inspired rock. Opening track ‘The Riverboat Song’ makes little sense, but with its bloody, Led-Zep filching riff (and lyric of ‘why does the river run red’) it could almost function as the soundtrack to a slightly watered-down version of ‘Apocalypse Now’. Next track ‘The Day We Caught The Train’ takes the quality up even a notch further, with a lovely variation of the ‘oh oh la la’ chorus, and an even more singable outro of ‘when you find that things are going wild don’t you need days like these?’ It is the most explicitly nostalgic track, but all the tunes that follow will bring back memories of trips along the ocean road with young girls and boys armed with guitars. The fact that Ocean Colour Scene was not the best and brightest of the Britpop groups should not make you overlook this album.

Best tracks: The Day We Caught The Train, The Circle, Policemen and Pirates, The Riverboat Song, One For The Road.

9. ALL HOUR CYMBALS – YEASAYER (2007)

Best Ever Albums Rank: 2827

Yeasayer may have hailed from Brooklyn (naturally), but their sound on their first album ‘All Hour Cymbals’ was like world music from another planet. Personally, I imagine alien eggs hatching underneath a great red sun on opening track ‘Sunrise’, and rockets departing a waterlogged canyon on the futuristically-named ‘2080’ (when we’ll ‘surely be dead’). There is a sad tinge to it all, however Yeasayer underlay their weird, gaunt sounds with enough boisterous rhythms to keep it from becoming too depressive. Further, any feeling of the album being too ‘hippy dippy’ is blown away by the harsh penultimate track, ‘Wait for the Wintertime’, which effectively burns down the pine trees of the landscape they have created and chars the soil. Yeasayer would change their sound slightly for subsequent albums, but it is the quasi-tribal style on ‘All Hour Cymbals’ that remains their most interesting to date.       

Best tracks: 2080, Sunrise, Wait For The Summer, Wait for the Wintertime, Forgiveness.

8. PRETENDERS II – PRETENDERS (1981)

Best Ever Albums Rank: 3598

I’ve already written a review of this album on this site, which you can read here (which in turn was a ‘reprint’ of a review I’d posted on the Guardian music website).

Best tracks: Message of Love, Day After Day, Jealous Dogs, Bad Boys Get Spanked.

7. HONEY’S DEAD – THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN (1992)

Best Ever Albums Rank: 4494

The Jesus and Mary Chain are generally thought of as a mid-80s band, but they carried on into the early 1990s, and continued to inspire rock bands that followed them – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in particular almost owe their entire career to this album. Some see their fourth LP, ‘Honey’s Dead’, as marking a departure from their most acclaimed album, the Beach Boys/Velvet Underground melding debut ‘Psychocandy’, but it is not really – that departure came earlier, and the noise and feedback from ‘Psychocandy’ is still very much present here, even if it is not quite as blistering. ‘Teenage Lust’ turns that feedback dirty (‘little skinny girl, she’s doing it for the first time’), while ‘Far Out’ spreads it onto the widescreen, and ‘Sundown’ uses it to paint the biggest, darkest sunset on the horizon you can imagine. ‘Psychocandy’ may be The Jesus and Mary Chain album of choice for those who wished they could be in dark, dingy UK underground indie clubs in the ‘80s, but ‘Honey’s Dead’ is the Reid brothers album you can play for every other situation, once you return back to the natural light.

 

Best tracks: Teenage Lust, Sugar Ray, Far Out, Almost Gold, Sundown, Reverence.

6. SIREN – ROXY MUSIC (1975)

Best Ever Albums Rank: 2942

Lead-off track ‘Love Is The Drug’ gave Roxy Music their biggest hit to that point, but fortunately its MOR-ness (the car noise at the start aside) does not signal that the band had lost their adventurousness. Each of Roxy Music’s first five albums – the last three sans Brian Eno – has solid claims to being their best. ‘Siren’ though is the most pleasantly consistent of the bunch, with the band at full force throughout once ‘Love Is The Drug’ has crept off. ‘Sentimental Fool’ shows that, beneath the stylish suits, Bryan Ferry’s lyrics and voice could carry some real emotional clout: ‘I’ve seen what love can do,’ Ferry sighs, ‘And I don’t regret it.’ ‘She Sells’ is the greatest Roxy Music track of all – a hyped-up, jingling joint that two-thirds of the way through slows down suddenly but seamlessly into Ferry’s repeated wail of ‘Oh why/she sells/I need’.  ‘Whirlwind’ and ‘Both Ends Burning’ give the band their shots at rocking out without Eno’s abstractions, while the two final tracks – the exquisite ‘Nightingale’ and the afterparty comedown of ‘Just Another High’ – provide a fitting end to Roxy Music’s classic era.

Best tracks: She Sells, Nightingale, Just Another High, Sentimental Fool.

(Next instalment will appear either next month, or whenever I need a WFF slot to fill.)

Album Review: Melody’s Echo Chamber – Melody’s Echo Chamber

French singer Melody Prochet uses her supposed ‘echo chamber’ to full effect on her debut album. Typically, her tracks begin with about 0:05 or 0:10 of relative quietude and bottom-of-the-scale frequencies, before the synthesisers appear and the plus-10kHz frequencies light up with red. ‘Endless Shore’, at track number six, is the definitive MEC track in this regard, with a fairly consistent block of red-level intensity at the 10-15kHz mark, while the highest frequencies primarily remain only in blue. The pattern is more or less repeated on another stand-out track ‘Some Time Alone, Alone’, which proceeds along with a similarly shoegaze-like spectrography.

'Endless Shore':

 

'Some Time Alone, Alone':

Other tracks dial down the energy a touch: single ‘I Follow You’ has a milder, bluer, and more stable profile than the two tracks mentioned above. Seventh track ‘Quand Vas Tu Rentrer’ though stands out in contrast to a lot of the album (its lyrics are in French, for one thing). It stays mostly in the sub-5 kHz range, particularly at the start of the track which has only a few, repeated notes and the faint strands of Melody’s distorted voice. The track then builds up gradually, and only starts to move well up the scale when the drums enter in around halfway through.

'I Follow You':

‘Quand Vas Tu Rentrer’:

 

However, the greatest activity at the upper frequencies comes on two of the later tracks – ‘IsThatWhatYouSaid’ and unexpectedly, the closer ‘Be Proud Of Your Kids’. Both are essentially instrumentals: ‘IsThatWhatYouSaid’ is purely one, and its barrage of loud, spinning noises keep it nested in the double-digit kHz range.  Meanwhile, the sound of ‘Be Proud Of Your Kids’ is more intense than it may first seem given that its most memorable component is a young girl speaking shrilly in French. In reality though, that actually forms a minor part of the overall file, which combines a cluster of instruments with Melody’s largely indecipherable but sufficiently vociferous lyrics.    

‘IsThatWhatYouSaid’:

 
‘Be Proud Of Your Kids’:
 

All in all, ‘Melody’s Echo Chamber’ is a debut that doesn’t flitter around in the lower ranges, but continuously reaches for the 22kHz border. Some audiophiles might prefer that there was a bit more variance in how the tracks progress, but those who like their spectrograms splashed in red with a splatter of white will surely not be disappointed.

Album Review: Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

Another album review which I've posted over at 'The Guardian' music website.

An excellent, if uneven, album from Coldplay, “Viva La Vida” contains some of the best (and “weirdest”) tracks that the band has ever recorded. The title track may have initially thrown listeners with its strange subject matter – a king brought low and about to be beheaded by revolutionaries?! - but it sold bucketloads. “Violet Hill”, though a love song, isn’t much more conventional, and coming after “Viva La Vida” it sounds like U2 having wandered onto a pre-Napoleonic battlefield in the French countryside. Track no. 3 “Lost!” is the best track of the lot, stomping along at an almost martial pace before Will Champion’s wonderful haunting backing vocals lift it to a whole other level at the end. And then there’s the gorgeous, racing “Lovers In Japan”, which will forever remind me of standing with my wife watching the band at Rod Laver Arena as images flashed across the screen and yellow confetti fell from the roof. Alas, though some of the album’s interludes are brave they are somewhat distracting, but “Viva La Vida” still stands as a triumph for Chris Martin and his ambitions to charm the world.

Album Review: Grizzly Bear - 'Shields'

It has been a notable couple of months for albums from Brooklyn – Yeasayer’s ‘Fragrant Hours’ and Dirty Projector’s ‘Swing Lo Magellan’ among them – but the shining jewel among them has got to be Grizzly Bear’s ‘Shields’. It doesn’t have the standout songs of its predecessor ‘Veckitamest’ (e.g. ‘Two Weeks’, ‘While You Wait For The Others’). However, it’s possibly a more solid album, both in consistency and tone; personally I was less enamoured with the more insubstantial tracks on their last album such as ‘Dory’. ‘A Simple Answer’ and ‘Gun-Shy’ might be the closest the album has to ‘hits’; the former, with its assertive piano chords, has probably the band’s most infectious chorus to date (yes, even more so than ‘Two Weeks’), while the latter drifts along dreamily with its overlapping vocals. By contrast, opener ‘Sleeping Ute’ and ‘Yet Again’ are driven along by a strong, expansive guitar sound that even if it doesn’t quite rock, it at least sharply lets you know it’s around. Penultimate track ‘Half Gate’ starts off by setting up its cabin and axe next to the Fleet Foxes, before erupting in a pounding, cavernous chorus that’s the closest the band has come to sounding like its namesake yet. Finally, Grizzly Bear try their hand at the epic closing track on ‘Sun In Your Eyes’, which is stretched out further than an Arctic sunrise. With ‘Shields’, Grizzly Bear have shown they can produce more than a very pleasant background suite, and this substantial follow-up should put them into the indie big leagues.    

Album Review: Pretenders – Pretenders II (1981)

I've posted this album review over at the Guardian's website, but I thought I'd post it here as well.

Accepted critical opinion says that ‘Pretenders II’ is not in the same class as its predecessor, lacking that album’s freshness and originality. Accepted critical opinion is wrong. By the time their second Long Play turned up, the Pretenders were a much tighter band (at least in terms of their sound) and able to rock ’n’ roll as readily as anyone, as implied by the band shot on the back of the album sleeve. ‘Message Of Love’ is the standout track, with James Honeyman-Scott’s punchy guitar counterpointing Chrissie Hynde’s undulating vocals, but all the other songs shine in their own way. ‘Day After Day’ is almost as perfect a piece of pop, as both band and its Ohio-born singer take off with the soaring chorus lines of ‘Way up in the sky/ Over the city and Lake Erie’. Other, rougher tracks such as ‘The Adultress’, ‘Bad Boys Get Spanked’, ‘Jealous Dogs’ and ‘Louie Louie’ come on like a more accessible form of punk, potent in force yet leaving enough space for Chrissie’s confessions, double entendres, and wry musings (‘I’m convenient and I make good tea’). Balancing these out though are the slower, quieter tunes, including a cover of Ray Davies’ ‘I Go To Sleep’, ‘Birds Of Paradise’, and ‘The English Roses’, which preface some of the Pretenders’ later work, only with more compelling musicianship. And unlike the ubiquitous ‘Brass In Pocket’ on the first album, which felt strangely out of place amongst its lesser-known companion tracks, this album’s hit single ‘Talk Of The Town’ fits seamlessly into the mix. Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon (who was fired for drug abuse) died not long after the release of this album and the Pretenders became decidedly less interesting; we’ll never know if, had they lived, ‘Pretenders II’ would have turned out to be their final burst of creativeness or a step on the road to even greater things. Over thirty years on though, it still sounds like the type of album any band going around today would be proud of.

Album Cover Review: Lana Del Rey – Born To Die [Deluxe Edition] (2012)

With the proliferation of images and clips of New York-born songstress Lana Del Rey over the web, the cover of her debut album, ‘Born To Die’ stands as one of the most highly anticipated album covers of the year. With that in mind, the cover itself seems a bit understated. Our artist merely stands looking front-on at the camera, in a way that is somewhat reminiscent of Andrew WK’s classic album cover to ‘I Get Wet’ (minus the blood on the face), her spaghetti-strap dress having been traded for a demure blouse. The expression on her face, depending on how you want to interpret it (and probably depending on what you think of her music) is either weary, defiant, vacant or inviting trouble, possibly all at once. In the background is a nondescript wooden barrier, possibly from some back or front yard somewhere in Hollywood, though perhaps it’s just the blue sky, excerpts from old movies, Lana’s ‘Hollywood’ t-shirt in previous press photos, and that whole ‘gangster Nancy Sinatra’ thing that has imprinted that idea in the brain.

But when you open up to the centre gatefold … hello! It’s the pout and head tilt that launched millions of YouTube clicks. Paragraphs could (and have) been written about those overflowing lips; in this case they are daring you in to listen to her smoulder, tease, and roll her eyes at you. We’re still no clearer as to what that nondescript wooden barrier is. Maybe behind it is a spa and champagne, and a party to rival those in ‘Boogie Nights’ or ‘Anchorman’. Maybe there isn’t, and it’s just the two of you. These are the ambiguities that modelling contracts are made of.



Tucked away in the back flap of the packaging is a thin, pink case with a disc inside. Give it a spin – it has the great torch song for the millennium ‘Video Games’, as well as a semi-anthemic title track, and a nice track called ‘National Anthem’ which is about as close to the ‘gangster Nancy Sinatra’ concept that she’s managed to this point. As for the rest, well, sometimes it’s best not to look behind those nondescript barriers.

Album Review – Cut Copy: ‘Zonoscope’

What is the difference between OK and addictive? When Cut Copy’s second album, ‘In Ghost Colours’ was released, it seemed like the perfect soundtrack to Melbourne city nightlife (or indeed, any Western city’s nightlife) – swooning vocals, open guitar, pulsating synths - with every track flowing seamlessly into the next and demanding your attention. Most of the same elements are present on their new album, ‘Zonoscope’, and yet it feels much more like scenery than its predecessor. It should work … for example, the 15-minute closer ‘Sun God’ has the potential to be an epic Mancurian-like final track for the ages, with its insistent beat and looping chorus of ‘Are you gonna give me your love/Love will treat you’, and then its winding down for a patient breather before heading into the final flurry. But maybe that’s the problem – it’s all a little bit too much in the head, and built around what should work rather than what does. On ‘In Ghost Colours’, even though a lot of work and craftsmanship undoubtedly went into the music, it also felt like it had been bursting to get out ever since Dan Whitford bought his first Casio. ‘Zonoscope’, in contrast, feels too drawn out, which is not to say that there are not some good tracks on here – ‘Alisa’, ‘Take Me Over’, ‘Pharaohs and Pyramids’ and ‘Blink And You’ll Miss A Revolution’ in particular. But it’s never a good sign when listening to a band’s new album makes you long for their last one. Never mind Cut Copy – I’ll still see you when you tour.

Image copyright Modular

Sounds Like Chicken: ...Like A Cannonball To The Ocean Floor

The title and cover of Sounds Like Chicken’s one and only full-length recording brings to mind an album filled to the brim with blood and cutlasses, loot and scurvy. In fact, beyond the titles and a few tracks, the pirate theme turns out to be more of a jumping-off point than a full-blown concept, which works better. A seven-piece ska band from Melbourne, SLC did a decent job of capturing the energy of their live shows on this release. ‘Walk Ye The Plank’ kicks things off right, a lurching beast of a tune punctuated by a barking chorus of ‘Hey! Ho!’, which, even though it’s been used dozens of times, doesn’t seem tired here. From there, the album stumbles a little - ‘The Battle of Stentorian’ aspires to be epic, but isn’t entirely convincing. But then ‘Global Domination’ saunters in with its tight rhythms, rumbling vocals and loud guitar, and the SLC banner again flies high. ‘A battle cry from the rebel elite’ may sound like something of an oxymoron, but its sentiment is perfect for a bunch of rowdy young males. ‘Entrails’ takes aim at B-grade actors and watchers of current affairs programs, both of which, in terms of being objects of denigration, are only slightly harder targets than Michael Jackson. ‘Scourge of the Black Spot’, an intentionally shanty-like tune, is one of several tracks that revolves around dodgy in-jokes, in this case the mythical Captain Borange (guess what that rhymes with). Nevertheless, these bits of nonsense do add a bit of colour and range to the album: a good example is the hapless student asking for ‘Piano Lessons’, which leads into the building groove and eventual outburst of ‘The Awakening Pt 2’. The instrumental ‘The Payoff’ initially seems like a breather amidst all the blood and butchery, but turns out to be the best track of the lot. It combines a chilled-out rhythm with a ripping saxophone solo, moving beyond the borders of ska into the realms of reggae and jazz. ‘Spilt Beers and Drunken Tears’ rolls in like the fag-end of a drunken night that’s devolved into crap but which you still wouldn’t trade away. The slightly rough, unbroken chorus is a highlight. ‘The Ballad of William Stout’ is another slice of gibberish, while the closer, ‘Take A Bullet To The Grave’, ends the album on a suitably furious note. Like the rotting skull on its cover, ‘Like A Cannonball…’ almost seems like the id set loose, but it’s generally reined in before the throat’s bled dry. All in all, it’s a fun package – as goofy as the band’s moniker, and as sharp as the knife of the filthiest brigand.