Reviews – Albums
April 2007
Beatmag’s rundown of the best to throw your hard-earned money at.
Beatmag Album(s) of the Issue
1. The Aliens
Astronomy For Dogs (Pet Rock/EMI)
Cosmic overload time. Forget the Beta Band connection (drummer Robin Jones and keyboard-player John Maclean), as that just muddies the water. A more relevant fact is songwriter Gordon Anderson’s decade-long spell fighting mental illness which definitely seeps into the wide-eyed psychedelia of The Aliens’ fantastic debut album. West Coast US folk rock is their starting point but then they set it loose amongst deranged electronics worthy of The Orb in their prime. Whether it’s the simplistic euphoric mania of ‘Robot Man’ and ‘Happy Song’ or the broken-hearted country blues of ‘She Don’t Love Me No More’, or indeed any stages of the 1960s LSD mayhem in between, the songs are impeccable and the harmonies spine-tingling. The Aliens have pulled a glowing fluorescent rabbit out of their magic hat and if their songs had eyes, they’d have pupils the size of dinner-plates.
1. LCD Sound System
Sound Of Silver (DFA/EMI)
Having two artists equal at the No.1 position is a con, isn’t it, which is why Beatmag has never done it before. What else could we do this time, though? I hear the dance-punks yell, “LCD not LSD, you bloody hippies.” Fair enough. The second long-player from James Murphy’s mob leaves their patchy debut standing in the dust. Lyrically it has much to say, from the knock-out chorus of ‘North American Scum’ to the almost tenderly bitter ‘New York I Love You’, and the production throughout is some of DFA’s best. The great thing is the way it perfectly balances electronic dynamics, equivalent to Berlin’s hippest, with gnarly riffs that are ready to pogo. It’ll be on plenty of end-of-year lists – it has the London trendy factor in spades – but it also has the pace and attitude to go a lot further than that.
3. How To Cure Dyslexia
The Tempo Of Bicycles And Boats (Dyslexic Music)
Once on Trevor Jackon’s uniquely tasty but now defunct Output label, Londoner David Miller’s band surprise all comers with this sedately oddball debut. It was recorded in a public gallery space in London with the general public wandering in and out of the production process, but it’s far from a pubby singalong. Most of it is made up of drifting acoustic songs smeared with calming electronics, narrative numbers and thoughtful meanderings sung in a whimsically laidback fashion. There are a couple of gentle instrumentals that sound like mid-‘70s Pink Floyd stoned at a village fair but most of it pootles by unlike anything contemporary, wistful yet engaging. It’s a very English cult classic in the making.
4. Fulborne Teversham
Count Herbert III (Pickled Egg)
Jazz insanity – usually that would imply something unlistenably cacophonic and pretentious. Actually, ‘Count Herbert III’ is a tad pretentious but it’s also very intriguing. One would have thought drummer Seb Roachford had enough opportunity for unhinged experimentation with his groups Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear, but it appears he needs Fulborne Teversham to really fall off the ladder. Coming on like electro-punks who have discovered prog-rock and bebop jazz at the same time, they make a unique and occasionally tuneful noise. One moment they’re drifting around mellow ecclesiastical organ, the next singer Alice Grant is wailing, “I’m amazing,” and the next it sounds as if John Zorn is fighting it out with X Ray Spex. Those who desire unexpected musical adventure would do well to check this out.
5. Malcolm Middleton
A Brighter Beat (Full Time Hobby)
As on his work with Arab Strap, Middleton uses a tuneful indie template to provide a backdrop for his alternately stroppy and tender songs. This time though, for his second solo album, and first since Arab Strap split, the sound is a little more polished. Assisted by mates from Glasgow’s musical milieu, members of Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian, etc, his dry lyrics about love and the trials of mundane everyday life are given an extra poignancy by his moody Scottish brogue. Like Pete Shelley, during his ‘80s sojourn from the Buzzcocks, Middleton has taken a pithy street-wise stab at pop existentialism.
6. Au Revoir Simone
The Bird Of Music (Moshi Moshi)
Au Revoir Simone are an all girl chamber pop group from Brooklyn. Their sweet vocals sit over a plinky synthesized backing that has more in common with Iceland’s Mum or maybe Sweden’s The Knife than any New York electroclash outfit. The trio are not as delicate as the former or as gothically elusive as the latter but there’s still a fragility to their sound. The song ‘A Violent Yet Flammable World’ is an absolute beauty, similar to Big Hard Excellent Fish’s long lost classic ‘The Imperfect List’, but very much its own creature. Au Revoir Simone, all backs to the camera on the cover shot, are shyly enigmatic but their crystal candy midnight music may catch on.
7. !!!
Myth Takes (Warp)
The unpredictable New York eight-piece temper the edginess of their debut but up the funk factor. The lyrics may be abstruse and pretentious but who cares when there’s a swampy groove running through the whole album, licked with flecks of caustic guitar. Somewhere between The Rapure and the sadly now defunct Out Hud, !!! have a dirty hypnotic sound that, as has been observed before, recalls the lo-fi industrial funk that Manchester bands made their own in 1981 and, with more commercial success, in 1989. The lead single, ‘Must Be The Moon’, with its throwaway nightclub lewdness, is a particularly irresistible hunk of alt.disco frolicking.
8. Juggaknots
Use Your Confusion (Matic/Amalgam Digital)
This is from the end of last year but it’s time it was shouted about a bit louder. 2006 was a pretty poor year for Hip Hop albums, all in all. There were notable exceptions from Mr Lif, Ghostface and Clipse but the real diamond comes in the shape of New York’s Juggaknots with ‘Use Your Confusion’, a wet dream for anyone sick of Casio beats, flimsy, jewel-encrusted lyrics and bullshit beefs to boast sales quotas. Carefully chosen guests such as Sadat X, Slick Rick, Wordsworth and Nine (remember him?) all drop memorable gems on an album that serve as a reminder that wherever Hip Hop gets made, it always sounds best when it comes from the Bronx. Immediate highlights include the chunky ‘Leon Phelps’, ‘Liar, Liar’ (“lying isn’t right but in tight situations it’s polite to do, like when it’s your wife and you…”) and the posse cut ‘Crazy 8’s’, but in truth there are no weak links here. All rise and say thank you for an album laced with humour, style and longevity that’s pretty much an essential for connoisseurs of the good shit. (Review by Blackbelt Jonez)
9. Julian Fane
Our New Quarters (Planet Mu)
Fane’s last album, 2004’s ‘Special Forces’, was an underground classic, combining vast walls of synthesized sounds with a classical orchestral sensibility. It was an opulent ambitious project. This time Fane ups the ante and builds vocal songs into his sumptuous sound. Reminiscent, at times, of Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine and M83, sometimes all three at once, he succeeds admirably. His songs are built on clattering electronic percussion but it’s his vast choral sensibility that impresses.
10. Amon Tobin
Foley Room (Ninja Tune)
Amon Tobin has been around since Ninja Tune’s mid-‘90s trip hop glory days. Wouldn’t it be great if the monolithic wanna-be-chic hulk of the London media could wake up to Ninja Tune’s creative renaissance over the past couple of years. It hasn’t seeped through their journalistic rhinoceros hide yet, and they find it so hard to rehabilitate mid-level success stories without some dumbly obvious signifier. Ninja Tune simply isn’t the tiresome boho jazz-beats label it became for a while, especially with their Counter Records ‘proper’ band sideline. Tobin was as guilty as any with his niche interest alt.drum & bass explorations but his latest album is a revitalization. Darkly haunted avant-beat experimentation is where he’s at, but all executed in an eminently filmic fashion. His time creating sounds for the ‘Splinter Cell 3’ game has obviously done him good and his latest percussive armada is well worth a dip.
REISSUES
Bobbie Gentry
The Best Of Bobbie Gentry: The Capitol Years (Zonophone/EMI)
Bobbie Gentry appeared out of nowhere in the late ‘60s as an LA-based country artist. Her narrative songs are gentle but full of meanings and possible interpretations, especially her most famous number, ‘Ode To Billie Joe’. Over two CDs her career, which ceased suddenly at the end of the ‘70s when she retired, is cherry-picked for numbers that have a wholesome all-American ring about their imagery but often contain a kernel of something much harder and more thoughtful. A timeless songwriter.
Femi Kuti
The Definitive Collection (Wrasse)
Femi Kuti took the Afro-funk of his father Fela who died a decade ago, and gave it a sheen of modern pop funk. The second CD is made up of smooth deep housey remixes from the likes of Faze Action, Joe Clausell and Kerry Chandler which fans will take or leave depending whether they were Masters At Work fans back in the ‘90s. The first, however, is a tight collection of songs that, with exceptions like the blatant sex song ‘Beng Beng Beng’, are imbued with social concern as much as the raw huff’n’puff of bass’n’brass action.
Compilations
Fred Deakin Presents The Triptych
Family
Wow! Lemon Jelly’s Fred Deakin is a man unafraid of journeying to the far corners of his record collection and back regardless of musical styles. Over three CDs he blasts away genre-centric cobwebs in a manner seldom seen since Coldcut’s ‘Journeys By DJ’ many moons ago. St Etienne-into-Jesus & Mary Chain-into-Bernard Cribbins, XTC-into-Das EFX-into-Living Colour-into-Dudley Moore-into-Theo Parrish, Kurtis Blow-into-Bananarama-into-Ege Bam Yasi… and we could go on and on in this vein as it’s a festival of equally unlikely blends and flavours.
BPC Camping Compilation 03
Bpitch Control
Ellen Allien’s Bpitch Control imprint remains a delightfully unpredictable entity. The quality is variable and sometimes they come up with unlistenable duds, but what’s admirable is the way they’re willing to have a crack at all sorts of quirky ideas without, apparently, worrying too much. Their latest collection is not one of their most offbeat but still spends its time mashing Germanic minimalist electro and techno into new pop song formats. The results are a mixed bag but Allien’s glooping underwater mix of Safety Scissors ‘Where Is Germany And How Do I Get There’ and Jahoozi’s Berliner-grime ‘BLN’ are good starting points…
Albums for review should be sent to…
Thomas H Green, Beatmag, PO Box 4653, Worthing BN11 9FG
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