Reviews - Albums

Beatmag’s run-down of the best to throw your hard-earned money at.

Albums for review should be sent to...

Thomas H Green, Beatmag, PO Box 4653, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 9FG, UK

Sound 6

Beatmag Album of the Month

1: The Pipettes

We Are The Pipettes (Memphis Industries)

The Pipettes, with their polka dot dresses and Phil Spector retro chic, should be a novelty act but easily sidestep such glib categorizations. Their album is a riotous collection than fizzes by at high speed, firing off enough broadsides amongst the crunchy harmonies to keep any accusations of sugariness at bay. The opening title track, with its lo-fi production, buzzsaw guitars and gutsily confident girl power lyric, recalls We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It, that long lost self-manufactured rebel girl band of twenty years ago, but from then on the indie-punk Shangri-Las template is a-go-go. Gwenno, Rose and Becki, with tight accompaniment from the The Cassettes and snappy production by Blue States’s Andy Dragazis and Go Team!’s Gary Parton, rip through a set that’s alive with school disco put-downs for those unfortunate enough to cross swords with them. A singles act they may be, but all fourteen tracks on board ‘We Are The Pipettes’ are potential singles.

2. Amy Millan
Honey From The Tombs (Arts & Crafts)

Alt.country’s hip factor means that new young artists tend to embrace indie-influenced country rock over traditional country’s widescreen sentiment and cowboy honkytonk blues. This is a shame as country’s narrative tradition is magnificent, albeit often maudlin, and painting on a grand canvas should be encouraged. Happily Amy Milan, of the successful Toronto indie outfit Stars, takes Johnny Cash’s final American Recordings albums as her starting point and, acoustic guitar in hand, dives into a whisky bottle for this collection of late night trad Nashville flavour. There’s a smidgeon of Velvet Underground in there too but, primarily, ‘Honey From The Tombs’ will whisk you off to lovelorn closing time at a lonely juke joint in West Texas.

3. Viva Voce
Get Yr Blood Sucked Out (Full Time Hobby)

Following the slow-burning success of ‘The Heat Can Melt Your Brain’ which resulted, last year, in the re-release of their debut album ‘Lovers, Lead The Way’, Portland, Oregon, husband-wife outfit Viva Voce return with a fierce new album. Well, it’s avowedly fierce half the time, going for mantric stoner rock of a Dinosaur Junior meets Can variety, then suddenly sweet passages of gentle balladry and Floydian floatiness appear. The song that, perhaps, best sums it up is ‘We Do Not Fuck Around’ which contrasts a clean sweet love song with a riveting punky chorus. Never leaving melody too far behind, however tough the guitars chime, the prosaically named Kevin and Anita Robinson deserve to enter the indie guitar band A-league, booting shite like Snow Patrol into touch once and for all.

4. The Mules
Save Your Face (Organ Grinder)

A refreshing band from Oxford that, while stating they initially took The Band as a direct inspiration, come up with something edgy and contemporary. The album hammers through fifteen songs in under forty minutes, riding stop-start rhythms and choppy guitar that deliberately avoids the easy and comfortable. In amongst it are some strangely abject lyrics and bawdy music hall piano. Anyone whose favourite music is the Meat Puppets, Stump and the more wilful White Stripes material will find they have a new favourite group. Ones to watch…

5. Lambchop
Damaged (City Slang)

A truly melancholy number from Kurt Wagner. We always knew he was capable of early Leonard Cohen-style depths of misery but he’s never delivered such a concentrated dose. Stripping back the music to grandly produced Spartan acoustic his incredible voice is left to deliver semi-mumbled downhearted ponderings. Lyrically way ahead of the pack, Wagner peppers the whole thing with poignancy and loss. Although one sometimes doesn’t know what he’s on about, an essential sadness permeates as well, bizarrely, as oddball humour in some of his mundane observations. Everyone needs an album of this sort upon occasion.

6. Various
The World Is Gone (XL)

Why did no-one think of it before? Calling yourself ‘Various’ is the ultimate in avant-garde obtuseness. One can already envisage the conversations in record shops – “No, no, not various artists – Various!” Actually, Beatmag group memory seems to recall a Fat Cat artist called ‘Various’ some years ago. Maybe this is the same person or people. It certainly has Fat Cat’s requisite enigma (who are Various?) and desire to challenge accepted norms. After a series of very Vice/Dazed & Confused-friendly singles with notable cover art and leftfield electronic songwriting, the album combines Massive Attack’s dub and soul manoeuvring with a gloomy electro industrialism. The results are not immediate but they’re certainly worth bearing with.

REISSUES

Heaven 17
‘Penthouse And Pavement’, ‘The Luxury Gap, ‘How Men Are’ (EMI)

When Ian Craig Marsh and Martin Ware took the decision to leave Phil Oakey with just a band name, it must have looked as if Oakey were dead in the water while they would ride high. They, after all, had founded the Human League; they were the Sheffield synth wizards who had written all the music. Posterity, though, better recollects Oakey’s Human League whose kitchen sink drama ‘Don’t You Want Me’ ruled 1981, the year Marsh & Ware with new frontman Glenn Gregory, must have thought was Heaven 17’s for the taking. And so it was that every electro-pop revival pays tribute at the League’s door while Heaven 17 never quite make the A-list. This is a shame because the latter trio mustered a heap of cracking songs of their own. Riding the unlikely middle-ground between anti-Thatcherite disco and electro soul ballads, the first two of these three albums, from 1981 and 1983, showcase a sharp band on the cutting edge (now replete with 12” versions). From ‘Let’s All Make  Bomb’ to ‘Come Live With Me’, one has the sense of rediscovering forgotten classics. Just don’t dwell too long on the distinctly average ‘How Men Are’ or the cosy glow quickly fades.

COMPILATIONS

‘Feel The Spirit’
(Optimum Sounds)

Subtitled ‘Other Worldly Folk Music Gems And Psychedelics’ this collection compiled by Global Communications’ Mark Pritchard is the result of much second hand shop deep digging. Perfectly timed for the current fascination for all things folky-yet-alternative, these gently strummed numbers range from the acid-fried acoustic equivalent of drone-rock to whispy hippies-round-the-campfire stuff. Even Sergio Mendes & Brazil 66 are on board but, while it doesn’t take itself too seriously, there’s plenty to tempt the novice to further investigation…