On Modest Mouse’s best album, The Lonesome Crowded West, Isaac Brock’s gasoline-drenched and sun-scorched characters are the definitive musical representations of North American malaise and creeping dread as the 20th century marches inexorably to its conclusion; Y2K and beyond. God knows what awaits the next century (or, as Brock suggests, he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care).
In Brock’s nightmarish visions – or are they premonitions? – everything has come all at once for tumbleweed towns where nothing happens. The malls are the soon-to-be ghost towns. (“Well aren’t you feeling really dirty/ Sittting in your car with nothing/ Waiting to bleed on the big streets/ That bleed out on the highways and/ Off to the other cities built to store and sell”) The searing heat has made the horizon go all blurry, the hot tarmac oscillating and melting into cloudless skies. People are stranded in the middle of the desert – out of gas, car and road. Black smoke spews from sizzling bonnets.
In this way, The Lonesome Crowded West plays out along much the same aural and stylistic lines as the great film There Will Be Blood. That movie has been called “a biblical parable about America’s failure to square religion and greed”. But a decade before Daniel Plainview drank your milkshake, Isaac Brock, Eric Judy and Jeremiah Green were providing the same blood gulch rumination on an American Life of squalor and quiet depression. In themselves, the songs are densely instrumental but ramshackle. If you wanted to package it, you could probably call it post-grunge or some shit like that. The everyday-ness of every track only lends to a strange, cathartic feeling somewhere between despair, dread, hope and resigned nonchalance.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOEYT0wZFNg&w=560&h=315]
Album opener Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine is a gargantuan, behemoth, monstrous, epic. As with many good album openers, it bottles the (oily, fried) essence of what is to come – equal parts frantic, angry and heartbreaking. Its closest relative chronicles the life and times of Cowboy Dan, the drunk and apoplectic heathen who impotently fires his rifle at God for causing his liver to fail. “I didn’t move to the city, the city moved to me,” Cowboy Dan mourns at the sight of the gentrification of his god forsaken swamp. (“…And I want out desperately”). It’s a full blown mental breakdown put to record, and it is breathtaking. (“Every time you think you’re walking you’re just moving the ground. Every time you think you’re talking you’re just moving your mouth.”) Just as the earth falls away beneath the track, Brock starts barking about how he can’t get his engine to turn over, and wiry, frayed guitars spiral the song into oblivion.
The more I listened to this album, the clearer it became to me that it is Brock’s personal paean to the life he left behind as his band became more renowned. The Lonesome Crowded West is angry at the world, but its protagonists are hopelessly directionless in their anger. I saw an article earlier in the week about how sad, crushing music is more likely to be enjoyed by people who are more empathetic. Sounds like a lot of bollocks to me, but what makes this thing a classic is that Brock so deftly narrates the experiences of the victims of 20th century society warts-and-all. It’s a view not-oft explored by songwriters, and Brock’s agile and thoughtful take on poverty and sheer idiocy alone sets him apart from his peers. Take Doin’ the Cockroach for example, which takes the perspective of uneducated but untrusting white trash: “I was in heaven/ I was in hell/ Believe in neither/ But fear them as well/ This one’s a doctor/ This one’s a lawyer/ This one’s a cash fiend/ taking your money!”
That theme is expanded on in Trailer Trash. Apparently about Brock’s impoverished upbringing, is arguably the most devastating song on the album and maybe the band’s entire back catalogue. Up this point, Modest Mouse had been making good albums with a few standout tracks. Trailer Trash, a relatively simple (dare I say, pop) song built around standard chords. But it is, without a shadow of exaggeration, fucking transcendental. After the grandiosity of songs like Teeth, Cowboy Dan and Doin’ the Cockroach, Trailer Trash is the moment where the band foreshadowed the kind of bittersweet, memory-burning single that they’ve built the rest of their career on.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y0yNS9-OvQ&w=560&h=315]
Because Modest Mouse have made a lot of music. Some of it (I’m thinking The Moon & Antarctica) might even be ‘as good’ as this album. But, because it addresses so little and so much at the same time, The Lonesome Crowded West is unmatched. Sure, it ultimately captured a microcosm of bleak, barren, pre-millenium USA. But as much as it is microcosmic, it’s also cosmic; a succinct a summary of nihilism and sheer, dumb hope in coexistence. As will become clear in the coming months in the presidential election, religious uncertainty is heading to an abrupt crossroads in the malcontent of middle and lower America. (Note this uncomfortably prescient pearler on Bankrupt on Selling: “I’ll go to college and I’ll learn some big words/ And I’ll talk real loud, god damn right I’ll be heard”) In that way, there is a case to say that this is much more than a study of demography but a warning of an impending, cataclysmic endgame as foreign culture encroaches the domain of the uneducated and afraid.
You get the Brock is feeling that he’s still kinda smug that this, his greatest lyrical achievement at least, hasn’t been uncovered by the masses like his band’s later albums have been. Take the album closer Styrofoam Boots: a folky jaunt that serves almost as a piss-take. He’s ruminated on this existential epiphany; he’s sure that God doesn’t exist; and he probably never did pass high school, and he’s just drinking away the part of the day that he can’t sleep away. But hey, still, “it’s all nice on ice, all right”. He’s still just a hick cracking open cold ones in a trailer park with his hick friends. Maybe – probably – those people are more enlightened than any of us. Because after all; God takes care of himself, and you of you.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G33AcZzZ0pM&w=560&h=315]
“Won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?”
Different Class turned 20 about a month ago. I often reflect on Britpop’s halcyon days, circa 1995, as a golden era of my cherished memories as a music fan. Even though it isn’t a memory of mine at all. I wasn’t even two years old when Roll With It was battling it out with Country House for the prized Number One spot. But neither Oasis (after their inevitable reconciliation and Glastonbury headline slot) nor even Blur (despite their admittedly excellent 2015 return) will ever be what Pulp were.
Different Class was the band’s critical and commercial peak. It is a very good album in the musical sense: the pop songwriting is tasteful and memorable, and the production (particularly in the couple of reissues since released) is crisp and clear. But in a broader sense, it is much more than very good: for many, including myself, Different Class belongs in the pantheon of music that transcends the sum of its parts.
Like OK Computer represented the schizo-paranoia of the new millennium, and To Pimp a Butterfly will come to represent the artistic realisation of the Black Lives Matter movement, Different Class now embodies something far less glamorous: middle-class, suburban life. The only life I’ve ever known.
“I want to sleep with common people like you.
Well what else could I do? I said… I’ll see what I can do.”
Common People is the one you’ve heard. There is little argument against it being one of the best songs of all time, frankly, so I’m not going to launch into a diatribe. But it’s worth noting the song’s myth is still evolving even now. The couplet above is particularly imprinted in my memory. Cocker, listening to his Greek muse assure him that she wants to be poor like everyone else, does the musical equivalent of ‘breaking the fourth wall’. And of course it would be revealed the Greek girl who had a ‘thirst for knowledge’ and ‘studied sculpture at St. Martin’s College’ happened to be the wife of the ill-fated former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. With Cocker, so it goes.
Humour is often at the crux of a good Pulp song, as it is with Common People. But the finance minister’s wife isn’t the only real character, and Cocker is a master of the art of distilling the ‘bitter’ from the ‘sweet’. Disco 2000, on which Cocker literally boogies as he recounts the story of his first love, introduces us to Deborah (whose name never suited her). The song, all power-chord synths and bustling dancefloor rhythms, is magnificent in its own right. But the song is now tinged with sadness; its subject, a mental health worker named Deborah Bone, passed away at the end of last year.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftEyTRNTKN0]
Jarvis Cocker wrote Disco 2000 about Deborah Bone, who sadly passed away last year.
“You see you should take me seriously; very seriously indeed.
Cause I’ve been sleeping with your wife for the past sixteen weeks,
smoking your cigarettes, drinking your brandy,
messing up the bed that you chose together.
And in all that time I just wanted you to come home unexpectedly one afternoon,
and catch us at it in the front room.
I can’t help it, I was dragged up
my favourite parks are carparks
grass is something you smoke
birds are something you shag
take your year in Provence
and stick it up your ass.”
The half-spoken I Spy is the purist’s honorary favourite. It sees Cocker at his most demented and vengeful. Given the overtly truthful nature of the songs on Different Class, the song is disarming in its willingness to lay bare all of Cocker’s darkest insecurities, and leads us down the all too familiar self-obsessed mythologising we are prone to: “The crowd gasp at Cocker’s masterful control of the bicycle, skilfully avoiding the dog turd outside the corner shop/ Imagining a blue plaque, above the place I first ever touched a girl’s chest”.
On a later album, Jarvis Cocker would profess that he isn’t Jesus, though he has the same initials. Converts to the church of Different Class would tend to argue otherwise. For here, Cocker’s everyman presents himself as a sort of middle-class messiah. He is louche; risqué; often downright seedy. On I Spy he is hateful, but like Walter White after him, we are helpless to avert our eyes.
“Check your lucky numbers,
That much money could drag you under, oh
What’s the point in being rich
if you can’t think what to do with it
‘Cos you’re so bleeding thick?”
The album’s conception was curious, because Cocker wrote most of it after Common People exploded. He was dizzy with the prospect that he’d finally made it. Now was his chance to disseminate his bigger ideas. And that sentiment above, from Mis-Shapes, basks in Cocker’s pubescent superiority complex. Sure, they can beat us up because they’re stronger, but we’re smarter, so we’ll have our day, one day. It’s unapologetically petulant, but it’s also a proper rallying cry for all the ‘misfits’. Cocker himself foresaw it on the albums other big hit, Sorted for E’s and Wizz: it would rightly be shouted by 20,000 people standing in a field in Hampshire.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul3yxZJIiQs]
“How the hell did you get here: semi-naked in somebody else’s room?
I’d give my whole life just to see you standing there/ Only in your underwear”
Cocker is scarcely able to conceal his excited gasps as he yelps the phrase on Underwear. The more vividly perverse lyrics border on bad taste, but the point of the album is that Cocker transcends his position as merely a mouthpiece for the masses; on Different Class, he embodies the guilty, ugly, jealous thoughts of modern suburban life. And if you haven’t thought something like that about a special someone, you’re probably lying.
An earlier song, Pencil Skirt, examines possibly the same sexual encounter. “I’ll be around when he’s not in town/ I’ll show you how you’re doing it wrong/ I really love it when they tell you to stop / Oh it’s turning me on!” By this time Cocker has established himself as a wretch and a scoundrel of the highest order. The problem is, Cocker is probably you, semi-naked in somebody else’s room you didn’t really want to be in.
“I wrote the song two hours before we met.
I didn’t know your name or what you looked like yet.
Oh I could have stayed at home and gone to bed.
I could have gone to see a film instead.
You might have changed your mind and seen your friends.
Life could have been very different but then,
something changed.”
But for all the unfiltered insights into Cocker’s loathsome suburbia, here you will find a gold mine of equally, gloriously romantic sentiments. On album highlight Something Changed. Cocker boils down all the giddy heights of falling in love with someone into a simple analysis of a single moment. Perhaps we all have an unattainable, faraway Greek goddess to spend our days thinking about, but on Something Changed, all that cinematic bullshit is at its most real. If I was to get married, I would want this song to play during the first dance.
Perhaps the comparison I made at the start of this review was misguided. Different Class doesn’t have the intellectual credibility of Radiohead’s best effort, and it certainly lacks the moral credibility of Kendrick’s opus. But what I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that the ostensibly singular Cocker is also the most relatable character I’ve heard on a record.
Different Class is the creeping guilt after a grimy one night stand. It’s the hopes and fears of a generation going nowhere in particular. Most importantly, it’s timeless. Lately, to my horror, I’ve been spending a lot of time questioning if I’m a good person or not. Different Class is just another story of another life. An unflinching, unapologetic study into those tiny, ephemeral moments in time that make us who we are.
Like Cocker, we are all (mostly) fuck-ups, making it up as we go. Different Class, with all its rueful goodbyes and winking hellos, is the not-so-delicate reminder we’re all fucking up together.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIaehhYLVZA]
Arthur Ashin’s music is hard to put in a box. Under his Autre Ne Veut moniker, the New York native releases warped, histrionic interpretations of electro-pop R&B that can be at once devastating and life-affirming. His self-produced new album, The Age of Transparency refines the formula that garnered widespread critical acclaim on 2013’s Anxiety, mixing elements of jazz and choral music to send listeners through the full spectrum of emotion in 45 minutes. In August, we previewed the stunningly creepy video for lead single World War pt. 2 and today we were lucky enough to talk to the man himself.
Congratulations on the album! It’s streaming on NPR as of yesterday – how are you feeling about the early reaction?
The good part about early reactions is that they tend to be positive, you know, because people who want to like the record go and listen first so anything that comes to me on Twitter or Facebook is pretty positive. So that’s good!
It’s probably fair to say Anxiety was your breakout with the Pitchfork endorsement and all the ‘best of’ lists… Did the increased audience affect how you made the album this time around?
Probably to a degree. It’s hard to not think about one’s place in the world, for sure… but I did do my best to make the album I wanted to make. I probably shouldn’t have been given the access to a gospel choir and live jazz band and what not (laughs)… I should have just been forced to sit in my apartment and bang out another electronic record! But I’m really proud of it. I think going through the process of making, working and touring Anxiety made me realise how important it is to me to create work that feels super honest and articulates the ideas I want to get across.
You described making Anxiety as ‘cathartic’ for you – did The Age of Transparency represent the same kind of feeling?
Well (this time) was a more protracted process. Anxiety took about two months after the songs were written. I went in the studio for a month and a half and did the arrangements, mix and production stuff for about two weeks and that was that, like one winter. This record took over a year and a half to make so… also this time I worked more independently; there was nobody sitting around for the bulk of it. For about a year I was alone and so the catharsis was not quite as immediate.
I had to do a lot of really nitty-gritty work which is not exactly cathartic… maybe relaxing at a level on – a good day editing live drums perfectly… but it was hours and hours and hours.
You’ve said Anxiety tapped into your memories and life in the few years preceding that album – did you tap into your experiences in the same way on Transparency?
The themes (on Transparency) are a little more universal. The characters of ‘me’ and ‘you’ are less direct and I kind of played around with who the narrator and protagonist was. Throughout Transparency I’m singing from the perspective of like… I’m singing basically as a theoretical internet avatar that’s brainwashing ‘me’… who is the ‘you’. There’s more of that kind of stuff on this record; goofy literary terms… like Never Wanted is a kind of love story in Keynesian terms where Time and Love and Space are all capitalised and in my mind they’re these grandiose platonic figures… rather than being specific individuals.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_7-zOBqrDo&w=560&h=315]
I want to talk about your video for Panic Room which has you performing a cappella and failing to impress the judges. Could you imagine going on American Idol? Do you think Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell would like you?
Probably not – that was part of the idea. Early on when American Idol came out before my career I thought ‘maybe I should try the American Idol thing and get to Hollywood… that would be a good jump start to make the music thing happen’.
I think that was in the back of my mind and I stumbled across a video of a failed audition on Swedish Idol – I don’t know how it ended up on Youtube or whatever but… I don’t understand Swedish so I was guessing what the implications were… The woman goes in and starts singing her heart out and you know, she was pretty good! Not like maybe the greatest singer of all time but solid, you know? And she’s singing her heart out and at one point a judge interrupts her at this big moment in the song. (The Panic Room video) kind of paraphrases that… and in the process she and the judges look like they’re cheering up and kind of feeling it and I dunno… it was such an impactful video and I wanted to communicate how I felt. For me to tweet that video… people wouldn’t have paid attention but if I mix it into a music video people might get into it more.
On that note I’ve read you’re not all that keen on the act of performing in front of a bunch of people or even taking interviews – is that how the idea to perform the song a cappella in the video came about? This theme of transparency?
Definitely yeah. The bit that I’m not keen on… my background has more to do with spending time with music journalists. I have a massive amount of respect for what is asked of a music journalist. It’s more that I’m not super up on being the focus of attention. Which is funny because my entire project screams ‘look at me!’ It’s probably some subconscious desire to be stared at and appreciated in a very public way – otherwise I wouldn’t continue to do it.
But yeah it is a personal struggle. I just feel like it’s difficult as a musician to challenge yourself emotionally because the industry is designed to coddle you in these very particular ways – you know, your creative ideas or some dumb shit you’ve come up with is like shitting gold and any other idea around it pertaining to your career is stymied – in a way that’s the label interface with artists… where you’re kind of allowed to behave like a dumb genius or whatever so I think pushing myself to perform in that way is my avenue to grow personally… by pushing myself into situations I’m not comfortable with and can become a stronger better person without being coddled.
I saw you at Laneway in 2014 and I was surprised how aggressive you were as a performer… I didn’t expect you to be that out there. What do you try and evoke from your audience on stage?
I think it’s more selfish than that honestly. It’s like the great release for me. I think it’s an approach through which I tend to overcome my pretty serious stage fright! If I don’t kind of turn on ‘animal mode’ it’s hard for me to lose myself all the way… it’s like Nicki Minaj’s ‘growl mode’. My friends are like, ‘Nicki is a great rapper but she keeps doing that weird theatrical growl thing’. My feeling about that is that it’s easier for her to do that because it allows her to be one step removed from herself in a way. It’s also probably a cultural function in that my early shows were just me and my microphone performing in a Brooklyn basement. The way I think of live performance is… how do you as a vocalist match the intensity of someone cranking up their mixer super loud?
I want to ask about the new album’s tracklisting particularly the transition from the song Over Now – a very viscerally sad ballad – into Get Out, which literally starts with this incredibly uplifting gospel choir – what is the thinking behind that?
I think in a way Over Now is the last song on the record. And it feels like a downer. I try to create a ride for the listener – a ride they didn’t have as much control over as they might have wanted – so it felt like Get Out had to bring it all home – the way it’s super uplifting but it closes out with this almost funereal gospel vocalists. The record is an attempt to express the full range of human emotion in a 45-minute period. It’s also a good bookend to the first track On and On (Reprise) – like a more palpable version of that.
I’m sure you wouldn’t disagree a lot of your music definitely is pretty sultry and makes for good sex jams. How does it make you feel to think people are having a good time to your music somewhere right now?
Yeah it’s funny you know, I don’t ever think about that (laughs).
Maybe you should.
Yeah maybe I should sit around and think about it. That’s what I’ll do tonight. I don’t know if you saw Amelie? You know when she’s imagining how many people are orgasming at any single moment in time in Paris? That’ll be my closing image of this interview. People orgasming to my music. Like super narcissistic and dark (laughs).
You came to our shores with Laneway Festival last year. Before you came you said you were told to expect some kind of ‘weird hipster circus’. What was your experience of Australia like?
Laneway was absolutely a hipster circus. I had the best time and I’m pretty road-shy so that’s a true compliment. It was run so well and I never felt harried or stressed about anything. It’s my perfect idea of how a touring cycle should run and if the Laneway organisers are listening I would love to come back.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaLK3XJfVjk&w=560&h=315]
You can get your physical mits on The Age of Transparency on October 2 through Downtown Records.
Five years before I began listening to Sigur Rós, I read somewhere about a doctor who installed cochlear implants on children and adults, allowing them to hear for the first time in their life. After he had made his surgery room entirely silent, he would switch the device on for the first time. He would press play on a song from a strange band. “If I were deaf, this would be the perfect introduction to sound for me,” he reasoned. Some of the words are in Icelandic, some Hopelandic (a language made up by Jónsi Birgisson). The song was Svefn-g-englar by Sigur Rós, from their second album Ágætis Byrjun. It was released in 1999.
Four years after I began listening to Sigur Rós, I am unable to sleep. The next day I will gather up the courage to ask the girl who would be my first girlfriend out on a date. Being an awkward, clingy 17-year-old, I am petrified at the possibility of rejection. I’m on the verge of canning the whole dumb idea. Ágætis Byrjun’s title track fans around my bedroom. I am hypnotised. Ágætis Byrjun, in Icelandic, means ‘A Good Beginning’. Under that sincere, untroubled xylophone, we are living a dream, briefly. On Olsen Olsen, Jònsi’s beatific mantra drenches us over that gorgeous, understated, winding guitar, and we are fine for a while. The marching band fades.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEpbnHO-ZGU]
Eight years after I began listening to Sigur Rós, the heartstopping climax of Hjartað hamast is consumed by a distorted wave of feedback somewhere over the English Channel on a flight from Bristol to Amsterdam. This album makes the world around me feel like something else entirely. Viðrar vel til loftárása’s plaintive piano flickers into view to soundtrack a most breathtaking sunset. Its title translates: ‘Good Weather for an Airstrike’. Avalon, a barely-there drone/ambient piece, makes me laugh and cry at once. I couldn’t say why. This album feels alien to me, but it feels like it has been there from the start. There is not a worry in my mind. I am alone, and this is a happiest memory.
Nine years after I began listening to Sigur Rós, I am really fucking cold, standing awkwardly outside your house. The cab that will take me home should arrive soon. Starálfur plays through my headphones. Scarcely have I felt so perfect and so hideously ugly as this. It sounds like the first day of spring. It’s a song for a sunny day; it reminds me of when the light reflects off a river. Wistful strings enmesh with a playful trumpet fanfare and I still see you there, smiling. I ask the cabbie how his night’s been. Ný batterí sounds like destruction. Probably more apt for how I feel. Jónsi Birgisson plays his guitar with a violin bow, summoning a beautiful maelstrom, equally ethereal and demonic. Georg Hólm’s bass guitar throbs like a heart murmur. Ágúst Ævar Gunnarsson’s cymbals clatter and crash like the oncoming apocalypse. I didn’t want it to end, but it had to. I pay the driver more than I should and clamber into bed. I am enveloped by Svefn-g-englar’s droning wall of guitar.
If I ever lose my hearing, I’ll hear Ágætis Byrjun.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtemrZ7-pj0]
The blissful electro power-pop of Chvrches‘ debut, The Bones of What You Believe, was one of the more ubiquitous sounds of 2013 and last year. Just over a month ago we reported they’d finished recording their follow-up, so now it’s proper exciting to see them back on the radar with the first taste of their newly announced album, Every Open Eye.
Leave A Trace, the first single from the album, finds vocalist Lauren Mayberry caustically ripping into some bloke who clearly didn’t treat her very well: “You talk far too much for someone so unkind…” It’s one of the more direct messages the Glaswegian three-piece has put to record: a ‘middle finger mic drop’, as Mayberry puts it.
The band promises a more stripped back feel to a lot of their new album, but atop a typically effervescent synth romp, it all remains pretty maximalist. Light-and-shade is one of the many basic things these charming Scots have done so well, and Leave A Trace serves a very enticing appetiser for what’s to come.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRxFsMD4UM]
Here’s the tracklist for Every Open Eye, due out September 25 via Liberator Music/Goodbye Records:
1. Never Ending Circles
2. Leave A Trace
3. Keep You On My Side
4. Make Them Gold
5. Clearest Blue
6. High Enough To Carry You Over
7. Empty Threat
8. Down Side Of Me
9. Playing Dead
10. Bury It
11. Afterglow
More often than not, extended play (EP) releases are a letdown for me. They can often equate, like a lot of internet mixtapes coming out in hip-hop at the moment, to hastily assembled afterthoughts to the stuff an artist actually worked on. The natural result of that is that an EP’s acid test is whether the songs would stand up on the artist’s last album – or maybe, on their next. Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There was one of my favourite albums of 2014, and now 12 months later she’s released an EP called I Don’t Want To Let You Down.
As far I was concerned, it was probably going to be little more than an unnecessary addition to Are We There, which saw Van Etten master her voice as an instrument, as well as a story teller. Your Love is Killing Me really sounded like she was being killed, such was the chorus’ low ferocity. And her vocals on the album’s best track, Every Time the Sun Comes Up, permeated a sense of stoic resignation – as if she was grimacing as she confessed she could never do anything right.
The EP’s title track kicks off where Van Etten left us. When I saw Van Etten live a few months ago, she said she came up with the song watching the film ‘Overboard’ starring Goldie Hawn. But the refrain is about the only similarity the track bears with the Goldie Hawn rom-com, and Van Etten. The personal, conversational feel of all Van Etten does is not-oft heard. I Don’t Want to Let You Down is basically just her throwing her deepest fears out in the open for literally thousands of people to hear. It’s painful, confronting, but ultimately refreshing.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9-_zXnFGOs]
On Are We There, she sang about being broken by a lover, but here, on I Always Fall Apart, a different thought betrays here: “You know I always fall apart/It’s not my fault/It’s just my flaw/It’s who I am.” The real masterstroke of the song comes in retrospect. The last line, “…Where have you been?” is the same as the first one. Despite the admissions that come in the middle of the song, she explicitly falls back into her old flaws. It’s a genius piece of lyricism from a songwriter in top form.
There’s no noticeable change of tack in instrumentation or direction on the EP, but that doesn’t stop every song bringing something new to Van Etten’s back catalogue. The dark, dramatic Pay My Debts turns hypnotically on the chorus’ hook, while the piano-driven Just Like Blood is gorgeous in its restraint.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIi0rxMVpY]
The final track, Tell Me, was recorded live last year at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre Del Liceu. The single guitar intro is reminiscent of another Are We There standout, Tarifa, in which Van Etten remembered feeling trapped by a suffocating ex-lover. The similarity is fitting, then, as the song is an extension of Tarifa’s themes. Van Etten sounds her most defiant when she declares, “Sometimes, I don’t think about you…” Again, it’s painful, because every song I’ve ever heard from her takes pleasure in dwelling on feelings of lovesickness and regret.
But then, aren’t we the same as her, to gain pleasure from listening to this kind of depressing, wonderful music?
So does this EP succeed in my acid test? Are We There cemented Van Etten’s place in the pantheon of modern-day songwriters, and all five songs here are just as good –some even better – as her most recent album. Whether this is an epilogue to that chapter, a continuation or a dissolve into a new one, I Don’t Want to Let You Down is the five-song, 22-minute jewel in the crown Van Etten has earned.
I Don’t Want to Let You Down is out June 9 on Jagjaguwar.
Ruban Nielson, the band leader of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, spent most of last year in a polyamorous relationship with his wife and an 18-year-old woman. Multi-Love, the band’s third LP, is billed as a concept album about that.
“It’s not that this song’s about her/ All songs are about her…”
And with that throwaway on the title track, Nielson is pretty much done with the ‘concept’. It’s as expository as the album gets. Multi-Love is no Carrie and Lowell-esque meditation about one family, or even a To Pimp a Butterfly examination of an overarching issue. Nielson’s professions come shrouded and camouflaged in broader themes and innuendos, just as voice and melody here is camouflaged by UMO’s jungle of sound.
Listening to this band has always been a hazy, psychedelic affair. Its output has been full of hazy elongations and compressions of strange pop, purpose-built for your weed-smoking afternoon sessions. Multi- Love sees a shift to being more accessible without sacrificing the quirks and essence of what made UMO good in the first place. Strip away all that haze and I’d back Nielson to stack up with most pop songwriters. And this isn’t a new thing; take Ffunny Ffrends, the gargantuan romp of catchiness that put UMO in the spotlight, or So Good at Being in Trouble; nothing but an absolute jam off 2013’s II.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/189137400″]
Now, have a look at this acoustic version of Stage or Screen, done for The Line of Best Fit, in the back of a London cab. The song is barely more than a snippet; an idea. But that hook – “act up, but never for stage or screen!” – is just irresistibly pure, and the ease of delivery in the cab ride shows how well Nielson’s ideas hold up without the myriad effects and wobbles the studio version gives it. The same could be said of his voice; listen to any of Nielson’s live performances, and you’ll find his high register is smooth and easy-listening, not a million miles from any decent soul act of yesteryear. On record, though, he delights in mangling and hiding that voice with all manner of distortion, effects, or simply just relegating it down somewhere lower in the mix.
As you or I can imagine, being in love with two people and having a happy relationship with them, which is then ripped apart by circumstances beyond your control, would be a harrowing experience. Nielson’s voice oozes through some kind of warped stereo, lamenting, “Multi-love checked in to my heart and trashed it like a hotel room…” It’s the first line on the album, and for another band, would set the tone for a downbeat, sombre trudge through Nielson’s deepest hopes and fears.
It’s never that simple for UMO, though. Rather, Multi-Love represents something more akin to a gleeful dig through a dusty old crate of your old records. On each track, scattergun emotions and fragments of memories whizz in and out of focus. Necessary Evil certainly sounds like something from an old crate of records. It shuffles along a retro-tinged groove. The hook, which consists of the two-word title and a woozy horn riff played by Nielson’s father, is one of the most infuriatingly catchy things you are likely to hear this year or any other.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/196826455″]
Can’t Keep Checking My Phone finds Nielson crooning over an irrepressibly funky disco beat, but still finds him torn between pining for his absent loved one, while also wanting to spend time with the one he has close to him. On this track, like many others on Multi-Love, Nielson is a man in limbo; reflected in the kaleidoscopic effect you get as the track list progresses. The biggest curveball of the lot is actually the most subdued track here: Extreme Wealth and Casual Cruelty. Every other song has one big, noticeable hook at the forefront, but Extreme Wealth ambles along at an almost melancholic pace. Nielson mumbles (again, deliberately) but gives one of the more explicit allusions to his remarkable private life. “If we were just strangers/ then we’d fall in love again…”
It’s a comforting, and strikingly idealist, perspective of an artist playing out his innermost confusion. We all have the confusion in some form. But Nielson’s insight into his third dimension of love is something to admire; a thing of beauty that never gets too caught up in a moment to enjoy itself.
Multi-Love is out now on Jagjaguwar.
A few years ago we were at a gig watching Kristian Matsson (aka The Tallest Man on Earth) (but he’s actually pretty short). It was probably just after he released There’s No Leaving Now in 2012. That album had just the first few hints Matsson was branching out from his spare, plucked folk into songs more worthy of a backing band. So that’s what we expected; maybe a drummer or a pianist to go with Matsson’s guitar. He remained alone through the whole set. It was really intimate. Probably too intimate, we realised about halfway through, when he started sobbing during Where Do My Bluebirds Fly. He swore under his breath, passively antagonised crew and audience, and gave sad (but mostly incoherent) intros for every song. The quality of the music was not left wanting for Matsson’s disconsolation, though. At times, it was breathtaking. But when the gig finished, we couldn’t help feel odd about enjoying the music. He was just so sad, and clearly not over whoever or whatever his sad songs were about. He looked lonely. And he was awfully far away from his home in Sweden.
He’s still far away from home on his third full-length LP, Dark Bird is Home. Immediately, Dark Bird shows a much more sober Matsson to the one we saw that night. The opening Fields of Our Home begins with his familiar strums, before crystallising as a cathartic, almost electronic-tinged mantra. It all sounds very clear-eyed and almost calming from a man who has typically tried to prod our rawest emotions over his career so far.
No doubt, the difference on Dark Bird for new and existing Tallest Man on Earth fans will be the notable expansion of Matsson’s instrumentation. Despite this, though, it still gravitates around his voice. Matsson’s growth as a vocalist, from 2008’s Shallow Grave EP to now, is startling. But then, it would be: a musician of his calibre would never be satisfied with constant cries of Dylan-aping. On Dark Bird, his voice is full and warm; virtually no trace of ‘sand and glue’. Listen out on Sagres for when Matsson cooes “ooooh, come on!” in a pitch so high it’s scarcely believable that it’s the same guy singing. The Dylan influence is heavily touted whenever any music critic gets their ears around Matsson’s stuff, but often here you can pick up the influence of another of Matsson’s idols – Paul Simon. He covered Graceland at that sad gig, so it shouldn’t be as much of a surprise as it is to hear the shuffling Darkness of the Dream’s rapturous backing choir coming off so much like that album.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/191824854″]
Don’t get me wrong; though. This is a sad album, it really is. Don’t expect any Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes type shit here. But with all the cascading, echo-y landscapes Matsson’s words now occupy, it sounds less like the desolate, hopeless loneliness we experienced three years ago. Dark Bird is more like that feeling you get when you’ve got so many troubles and worries and doubts, but for a moment of clarity you let them wash over you; you remember something happy and you realise: sometimes the blues’ just a passin’ bird. The first single, Sagres, is the album’s lyrical and thematic centrepiece. Written in the Portuguese coastal town of the same name, Sagres shimmers and glistens like Mediterranean springtime, but Matsson still struggles to pull himself from his midwinter woes. “And this sadness, I suppose/ is going to hold me to the ground/ where I’m forced to find the still/ in a place where you won’t be around“. This juxtaposition of happy music and downbeat lyrics is probably Matsson’s most noticeable evolution. Seventeen and Timothy are similarly widescreen, and simultaneously pastoral, warm, and melancholic, like I imagine Elbow covering The War on Drugs would sound.
The eponymous closing track might be, as a listener, the most rewarding thing Matsson’s ever done. “I fall in love but keep on falling/ I held you for life/ But letting go rope in hand/There’s just leaving now…” It’s an obvious, resigned nod back to how Matsson felt on his last album. You couldn’t say he’s ‘over’ what was causing him grief, but he accepts it. Fittingly, then, drums unexpectedly thud into focus, and he assures us, “No this is not the end and no final tears that we need to show/ I thought that this would last for a million years, but now I need to go.” Then he sighs, ‘oh, fuck!’ before bursting into the orchestral, most fully realised sunburst of the new-age Tallest Man on Earth. Like most things Dylan wrote, it’s not a particularly complicated song in its structure, but the effect and the rush it gives makes it stack up with the great man’s best.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/199110534″]
I’m looking forward to seeing The Tallest Man on Earth again. Judging by these songs, he won’t be alone. He’ll have backing vocalists, violinists, bassists and some pretty loud drums and whatever else. Matsson’s a travelling man, in both profession and music. Dark Bird is Home nods first to the dark Northern skies back home, before picking up its kit and moving to the next town to make dumbstruck mugs like me feel emotions.
What has become increasingly, delightfully, apparent in recent years is how hell-bent Damon Albarn is on exploring new styles and staying relevant. Not a Madonna-style, suck-the-youth-out-of-Drake quest for relevance, but a genuine interest in noticeably changing sound every album. Why Albarn’s metamorphosis act has been so compelling is because we’ve yet to see him release one dud. Since Blur’s acrimonious split, he’s soundtracked the Chinese stage show Monkey: Journey to the West, done the supergroup thing with The Good, the Bad & The Queen and created an entire Gorillaz album on his iPad, to name a few.
Albarn’s first so-called solo album, last year’s Everyday Robots, was a thing of funereal beauty; all catatonic sub-bass and minor-key electro melancholy. It perfected the style he produced with aplomb on the late Bobby Womack’s The Bravest Man in the Universe. It was miles apart from the exuberant, sonically challenging stuff Blur had been producing in their last few albums. Then, all of a sudden, there was the new Blur album announcement. So, it was a very special, nostalgic kind of frisson brought on by the screeching feedback slinks into the dual-tracked vocals of Albarn and Graham Coxon on Go Out, Blur’s ‘official’ comeback single. Go Out was brash, buzz-y and fun, and if you listened carefully enough you could almost picture Albarn’s cheeky grin: you didn’t think I’d gone soft in my middle age, did you?
And so it was: The Magic Whip could not be further from Albarn and Sons, Everyday Robots take two. Go Out, along with I Broadcast and the opener Lonesome Street, stand up familiarly and very well with 13 and Leisure-era Blur respectively. That’s not to say this is bereft of Robots-esque stylings; My Terracotta Heart and New World Towers share the identical kind of wistfully pretty melodies and stark instrumental backing. You can add to that list the curious, but stunning, There Are Too Many Of Us. The Sydney siege-inspired showstopper is basically just a build around a staccato progression with Dave Rowntree’s military snare rhythm. Like many of the best tracks here, there’s something intangible about what makes it work. Albarn ruminates about being “dislocated by terror on the loop elsewhere/ flashing lights advocate it on big screens everywhere”. Seeping through this track, along with the slinky, foreboding Pyongyang, are more overtly political messages than Blur has done before. Ghost Ship sets up and goes with it on a gorgeous, laid back groove. Thought I Was A Spaceman somehow succeeds in sounding lovely despite its almost bizarre structure and sound effects. Blur in 2015 presents itself as a very different beast: a stuffed-full smorgasbord of ideas pent up, really, since Graham Coxon left the band. Seldom do these ‘a bit of everything’ albums work as well as this.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1ks7PTzng]
The Magic Whip is, then, a victory lap. And that would in normal circumstances have very negative connotations: complacency, arrogance, boredom. This is not The Magic Whip. The Magic Whip is able to bask in a misty-eyed, sentimental glory purely because it isn’t that. Sure, it’s a celebration that four guys managed to bring twelve tracks together without killing each other. And true, it is a defiant middle finger to those who thought they’d bottled it because it took them six years after their much-heralded, behemoth reunion at Hyde Park to come up with this. It’s a crowd pleaser in its manic Blur-genre hopping, but sacrifices none of its songwriting in doing so. This is remarkable in itself, given the album was essentially pieced together by Coxon via the random recordings the band had compiled since reuniting.
At the bottom of it all, Damon Albarn is so successful at changing his sound and focus because he is one of our generation’s preeminent songwriters. So it shouldn’t really be a surprise, now they’re ostensibly friends again, that The Magic Whip brings some of the band’s best ever ideas to the table; and (thankfully) the critical consensus is that this is too good to be Blur’s dying breath. For the neutrals, this might be little more than a collection of pleasant, pretty and interesting songs. It mightn’t approach the likes of Sufjan or Kendrick in the echelons of 2015’s most important releases.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shja1fzmPhU]
On the last track of Blur’s might-have-been final album, 2003’s Think Tank, Albarn snarled, “why am I here? Because I’ve got no fucking choice…” You would have been forgiven for thinking that Think Tank was the end. Aside from Albarn’s endless thirst for new projects, Graham Coxon was churning out quality solo albums, too. Dave Rowntree has stood for the British Labour party in two elections: And Alex James has, err, got his own range of cheeses. So for the many Blur fans who loved a band whose members couldn’t stand to be around each other, The Magic Whip is a vindication; a reward for loyalty. It’s the sound of a band of one generation seamlessly entering the next: looking forward, back and coming out sounding like 2015.
As with every great Blur album, there is a great big singalong. On Ong Ong, among the la-la-las, Albarn gives us his simple, great wish: “I wanna be with you!” Whether he’s referring to his family, Blur itself, or his fans – probably all three– what is clear is something that wasn’t clear in the sonic maelstrom of Think Tank: we wanna be with Blur, too.
Blur will headline the sold out 2015 Splendour in the Grass at North Byron Parklands in July. The Magic Whip is out now on Parlophone.
We’ve finally hit December, so it’s time to start doing all of our annual countdowns, best of’s and more! Here are 50 of our favourite songs from 2014, curated and ranked by the wonderful Brisbane-born, Madrid-based Sam!
50. Shabazz Palaces – Ishmael One of the most creative hip hop groups around at their dreamy, echo-y and idiosyncratic best.
49. Chet Faker – Cigarettes & Loneliness Whisper it quietly, but I found Built On Glass a bit hit-and-miss. But this was Chet at his most poignant; a brilliantly constructed centrepiece.
48. Mark Ronson (featuring Bruno Mars) – Uptown Funk The fact I like this song so very much despite the presence of the insufferable Bruno Mars alone merits it a place on this list.
47. Run the Jewels (Featuring Zack De La Rocha) – Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck) It was RTJ’s year – the incendiary duo’s militant 2014 record was superb, and it was great to hear De La Rocha’s voice again on this absolute banger.
46. Swans – Oxygen 2014 dropped a few surprises. One of them was definitely not Michael Gira, rock’s most badass old man, churning out another gruelling, behemoth album. Oxygen tries to starve you of the stuff. Gira at his most exhilarating.
45. How to Dress Well – Face Again Brilliantly dark; the contrast between Tom Krell’s gospel singer pipes and the foreboding synths and percussion is A+.
44. Iceage – The Lord’s Favourite Safe to say no one really saw this kind of sound coming from the Danish grunge mongers, but hey, now it’s here, long may it stay.
43. Shamir – I Know It’s a Good Thing A pumping, old-school dance build rounds off an already excellent song by one of the year’s most exciting finds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK_FQvODxg0
42. Kendrick Lamar – i Really just on the back of that SNL performance, if I’m honest. That was some art-type shit, man. Watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53VgBm5aEJU
41. Timber Timbre – Hot Dreams Smoky, sexy swamp rock with stupendous sax solo… and the opening line: “I want to dance with a black woman”.
40. Parquet Courts – Instant Disassembly Sounding utterly exhausted has never sounded better.
39. Perfect Pussy – Interference Fits Lyrics like a punch in the face delivered by a band cut loose.
38. Wild Beasts – Palace For a group so previously obsessed with vulgar imagery, Wild Beasts have never sounded so warm and welcoming as on the closing track to the outstanding Present Tense.
37. GoGo Penguin – Hopopono Say what you like about the Mercury Prize, but if it introduces me to songs like this, I don’t have a problem with it.
36. La Roux – Let Me Down Gently Everyone’s favourite ginger sounding typically heartbroken and defiant at once. Add some aah-aahs and a Drive like synth and you’re on a winner.
35. Viet Cong – Continental Shelf One of 2014’s most exciting revelations. Swirling maelstrom dissipates into a beautifully melodic chorus from previous members of the dearly missed Women.
34. Nils Frahm – Says Pitchfork put it quite well when they said the ending to this song feels like a rude interruption. Electronica to get lost in.
33. Cloud Nothings – Psychic Trauma Absolutely hurtling. Dylan Baldi and co. just get better. Also a sucker for his punk voice from about 1:17.
32. Interpol – Tidal Wave Along with All the Rage Back Home, probably the best thing Interpol have done since Turn On the Bright Lights. Tight, driving, imperious, and oh-so-epic – all that we love about this band.
31. Tobias Jesso Jr. – True Love Like the best of solo John Lennon. Enough said.
30. Beyoncé – XO Ok, I missed the boat on the Drunk In Love hype, but the xx-style brooding production, soaring chorus and Bey’s croaky, sexy deeper range always made XO appeal more.
29. Owl John – A Good Reason to Grow Old Fans of Frightened Rabbit will understand the appeal of this one – Scott Hutchinson grinds at least one of these out every album- a build and a sentiment that makes the hair behind your neck stand up.
28. Vic Mensa – Down On My Luck F**k that, get down.
27. Ariel Pink – Black Ballerina A suitably seedy single from 2014’s musical villain. But boy, that groove and hook could keep me up for days.
26. St. Vincent – Digital Witness Annie Clark probably is an alien, and probably does want all of your mind. But my god, are we lucky to have her.
25. Alvvays– Archie Marry Me Wonderfully infectious, nostalgic pop rock from another bright new 2014 discovery.
24. Posse – Shut Up All slouched over and self deprecating, “Shut Up” is the perfect ode to just sitting in the background and watching this happen.
23. Elbow – Fly Boy Blue/Lunette The first act is a nice, sombre reflection of a drunk in an airport. But what makes it is the breakdown into the second act around 3:09. Like Ralph Wiggum’s before, you can almost hear Guy Garvey’s heart breaking.
22. Ratking – Canal Wiki has a wicked flow, that’s for truths.
21. Alt-J – Warm Foothills Those interchanging vocal harmonies blew me away. The gentle, understated highlight on their sophomore, which was, if you ask me, easily better than An Awesome Wave.
20. The Smith Street Band – Calgary Girls The constantly relatable Wil Wagner sings from the gut, and that’s where Calgary Girls hits you. Plus the xylophone and sweet guitar is strangely, but beautifully Springsteen-esque.
19. James Vincent McMorrow – Gold McMorrow’s voice is flawless as ever on this shimmering high point of the excellent Post Tropical.
18. Todd Terje (featuring Bryan Ferry) – Johnny and Mary A testament to ageing gracefully – Ferry sounds just old and weary enough to give Terje’s left-field cover an ethereal quality.
17. The Antlers – Refuge Subtlety, instead of despair, is now The Antlers’ biggest strength. Listen for example, for the horns only kicking in in the second chorus, and then disappearing just as quickly, leaving you wanting just that bit more.
16. The War on Drugs – Red Eyes Without doubt one of the few songs that actually deserves the title of “the best song Bruce Springsteen never wrote”. Fun, rollicking and passionate.
15. Hundred Waters – Murmurs Ever so slightly off-kilter. Meticulously constructed, yes, but it shouldn’t make sense. Perhaps that’s its magic. “I wish you could see what I see,” whispers Nicole Miglis. So it goes.
14. Sia – Chandelier It’s apt I can’t remember the last mainstream pop song I heard that equals this, considering Sia spent half her career writing songs for others.
13. Caribou – Our Love The title track was the jewel in the crown of Caribou’s astonishing 2014 release.
12. FKA Twigs – Two Weeks The great announcement that Twigs was not one you wanted to mess with, and proved avant-pop still has a place at the top of the charts. Mouth open.
11. Father John Misty – Bored in the USA A thoroughly brutal taking apart of modern American lifestyle and psychology, made all the more destructive by the nonchalant and knowing way Father John Misty delivers his sermon, complete with laugh track. Save me white Jesus…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIFrG_6fySg
10. Total Control – Flesh War One of the year’s great single moments is how the mysterious Melbournites burst unexpectedly from a Joy-Division-esque romp into the bright, outward-looking chorus. Superb.
9. clipping. (featuring Cocc Pistol Cree) – Work Work Inventive beat, deadpan delivery and an earth-shuddering bass buzz. Massive tune.
8. Ought – Habit The mood – the habit – is wonderfully crafted. Took about six months to remove this one from permanent residence in my brain.
7. Rustie (ft. Danny Brown) – Attak Why haven’t we seen these two together earlier? Brown is in blistering form- his lightspeed flow matches so well with Rustie’s hyperactive production.
6. Perfume Genius – Queen Mike Hadreas’ gay panic song does an incredible job of capturing what I imagine gay panic would be like. A song for our times.
5. Future Islands – Seasons From the first time I heard this, complete with its Born Slippy intro, I knew it’d be huge. But I didn’t think it would be meme-worthy huge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ee4bfu_t3c
4. Adult Jazz – Spook Artsy to the point of knowing it, but the best cut of Adult Jazz’s excellent Gist Is is a multi-part, multi-layered and multi-genre odyssey better than what any indie band has churned out to be “experimental”. Given its 10 minute length, I dread to think how much time I’ve spent listening to it.
3. Sharon Van Etten – Every Time the Sun Comes Up The bittersweet sign-off to her devastating album. It’s devastating, too, but it’s too good not to make you smile.
2. Sun Kil Moon – Carissa Mark Kozelek was 2014’s other great musical villain – but really, how can he be? His uncle and cousin Carissa were killed by aerosol cans blowing up in the trash (in separate incidents), and he just wants to give and get some hugs. And he’s got some questions he’d like to get answered.
1. Flying Lotus (ft. Kendrick Lamar) – Never Catch Me Gets the nod for a simple reason- it reminded me just how thrilling it can be to hear the unexpected. This is two pioneers at work. Lamar’s rapping – his words, ideas and construction – is unmatched at this point. When coupled with FlyLo’s virtuoso willingness to mash genres, it’s little wonder how fresh and exciting it sounds.