Tag: Music

Mercury Prize: Bat for Lashes – Two Suns

22nd July 2009 / / 2 Comments

Video: ‘Pearl’s Dream’

Bat for Lashes is Brighton’s Natasha Khan, whose first album was nominated for the Mercury Prize back in 2007 (but didn’t win). I’ve often meant to give her music a proper listen; this marks the first time I have heard one of her albums in full. And… Khan has a beautiful voice that suits her style of music perfectly; Two Suns is epic, diverse, mysterious, full of texture – all these are things that I like in music. Yet the maddening question that kept niggling me as I listened to the album was: why am I not enjoying this more?

Well, the song on Two Suns that I keep returning to is the lead single, ’Daniel’. It’s an absolutely fantastic song that sounds as though it came from the playlist of a high-school disco in the Land of Faerie – and knowing that it’s about the Karate Kid reduces its power not one bit. But it also sticks out like a sore thumb for me, because even after several listens to the album, it’s the only song on there that really stays in my mind properly.

Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t mean to say that the rest of Two Suns is forgettable, or leaves no impression – on the contrary, the album as a whole leaves a very strong (and favourable) impression. But the music I love best gets into my mind and stays there, comes back to the surface every now and then to be hummed or sung along  to. Two Suns is great while I’m listening to it, but most of it doesn’t stick afterwards.

I am impressed with the diversity of the album; it covers a lot more bases than I expected it would. There are many great moments: the way that ‘Glass’ builds from a simple a cappella vocal to a thudding crescendo; and the soulful call-and-response of ‘Peace of Mind’, to name just two… I like Two Suns very much, but I don’t love it. And I very nearly loved it, which is what frustrates me all the more.

Video: ‘Sleep Alone’ – live

Read my other Mercury Prize 2009 posts here.

Mercury Prize 2009 shortlist

21st July 2009 / / 8 Comments

The Mercury Prize is upon us once again and, since I had such fun blogging the shortlist last year, I’m going to do it all again this year. The shortlist has been announced today; so, without further ado, here it is:

Bat for Lashes – Two Suns
Florence and the Machine – Lungs
Friendly Fires – Friendly Fires
Glasvegas – Glasvegas
The Horrors – Primary Colours
The Invisble – The Invisible
Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
La Roux – La Roux
Led Bib – Sensible Shoes
Lisa Hannigan – Sea Sew
Speech Debelle – Speech Therapy
Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Twice Born Men

Now, that is an interesting list, not least because I don’t even know what half of it sounds like; actually, I’ve listened to precisely none of these albums all the way through.

Still, some initial observations:

There’s a distinct lack of any really big names, certainly more so than last year.

Historically, the Mercury shortlists (and winners) have been dominated by male acts; this year  the shortlist is almost  a fifty-fifty split between male and female, and the favourites to win are all female.

As for the nominees themselves: there have been quite a few hotly-tipped female acts to emerge this year; they’re represented here by La Roux and Florence and the Machine. I’ve yet to hear anything by either of them which is as good as Little Boots, but time will tell.

Of all the established ‘indie’ bands who released albums in the past year, I would not have anticipated that Kasabian would be the one to make it on to the shortlist, but that’s all part of the fun of the Mercury.

Friendly Fires and Glasvegas are both new ‘indie’ bands: I’ve heard a couple of songs by the former, which I quite liked; I know I’ve listened to the latter, but can’t remember what they’re like.

Bat for Lashes is the only one of this year’s shortlist to have been nominated previously. I’ve meant to listen to her album properly, and now I will get around to it — likewise Lisa Hannigan’s album.

The Horrors are on their second album; I’ve heard of them, but don’t know what they sound like.

The rest, I’d never even heard of until today. I gather that Speech Debelle is a female rapper, and Led Bib are a jazz act. I’m going to let the sound of The Invisible and Sweet Billy Pilgrim be a surprise.

Normally, I would not get into the game of ‘X should have nominated instead of Y’, because I don’t know the nominated albums and am in no position to judge things like that (yet). But there is one album I’ve heard this year that I thought could match up to The Seldom Seem Kid, and that’s Doves’ Kingdom of Rust (I meant to blog about it before now, and still plan to at some point). It’s a shame not to see that album in contention for the Mercury; but maybe there’s an album on the shortlist which is as good. I’m looking forward to finding out.

The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Duckworth Lewis Method

17th July 2009 / / 3 Comments

Audio: ‘The Nightwatchman’

One of my favourite musicians is Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy. It’s been a while since he last released any new material, but it seems we can expect a couple of albums from him this year: a new Divine Comedy record later, and first this — a concept album about cricket, made with his friend Thomas Walsh (of a band called Pugwash, whom I know nothing about, but will have to look up, if the present album is anything to go by).

Of course, the concern with any album of this nature is that it’s going to be a novelty, or only of interest to fans of the subject matter. Well, there’s no danger of that with The Duckworth Lewis Method. Which is not to say that the album pays lip-service to being about cricket (some, though by no means all, of the songs go into minute detail about the sport), or that it lacks a sense of humour (it certainly doesn’t) — just that it was a made by a pair whose ears fro a good tune are clearly as great as their love of cricket.

What of the actual songs, then? They’re (perhaps surprisingly) quite a diverse bunch. There’s the terribly civilised ‘Gentlemen and Players’, about the Victorian game; and the tongue-twisting ‘Jiggery Pokery’, about Shane Warne in the 1993 Ashes. There’s ‘The Age of Revolution’, a funky number celebrating the spread of cricket around the world; and the gentle ballad ‘Flatten the Hay’, where Walsh recalls playing cricket in his childhood.

All in all, The Duckworth Lewis Method is a lovely set of songs that deserves a listen, whether you’re into cricket or not.

Video: ‘The Age of Revolution’ (live)

Little Boots – Hands

22nd June 2009 / / 1 Comment

Video: ‘New in Town’

For the last few years, the BBC website has run the ‘Sound of…’ poll, in which a bunch of music industry bods are asked to vote on who they think will be the new acts to watch in the coming year. Topping the Sound of 2009 poll was an electro-pop artist from Blackpool named Victoria Hesketh, aka Little Boots, who got a record deal after leaving her old band and posting videos on YouTube of her playing songs at home.

It’s not hard to see why Hesketh came first in the poll. Hands begins with the single ‘New in Town’ which is, to be frank, an absolute corker of  a song. A stuttering opening gives way to an intrguingly odd melody, which then explodes into a mighty chorus that promptly takes up residence in the mind and refuses to leave (I’m still humming it now). One of the best songs of the year so far, no doubt.

And that’s not the only great song on here. There’s the weird clattering of ‘Meddle’, the skewed disco of ‘Remedy, the drum-led march of ‘Ghost’… There’s also something notable about Hesketh’s lyrics: not so much particular turns of phrase, but she pulls off the neat trick of building entire songs around single metaphors (all the mathematical language on the aptly-titled ‘Mathematics’, for example, or the driving-themed ‘No Brakes’) without it seeming strained.  This doesn’t quite work on ‘Click’, which tries to pack too much in; but I’d say that’s the only sub-par song on the album.

More than this, Hesketh is a good singer (although the spoken interlude on one track was a bad idea), and she’s amde an electronic album of heart with its own distnctive feel. If good pop music can be defined as music that stays in your head and is welcome there (well, that’s how I’m going to define it here); then Hands is an album of good pop music, and Little Boots deserves to be a star.

Video: ‘Meddle’ (live)

Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years

10th May 2009 / / 1 Comment

darkdays

If anything I wrote about on this blog were ever likely to make me lose all sense of detachment, a new Super Furry Animals album would be it. After all, they are my favourite band — I don’t think any act recording today can match them in terms of breadth and consistency; and I’d recommend that anyone reading this who is not familiar with their music gets acquainted as soon as possible.

And there is a lot of music to get acquainted with. Dark Days/Light Years is SFA’s ninth studio album and, as usual, it’s very different from the last one. Their previous album, 2007’s Hey Venus!, was short, sharp, and concise; this, in contrast, is the longest yet — but it’s a wonderfuly expanisve hour of music. Each song is different, so the only way to do the album justice is to take it one track at a time…

1. ‘Crazy Naked Girls’

Every SFA album starts differently, and Dark Days/Light Years continues that tradition. Whereas the opening track of Hey Venus! was over in 45 seconds, ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ doesn’t even get underway until after almost a minute of studio chatter, and then continues for another five meandering minutes that I just cannot get into. Gruff Rhys sings the verses in an oddly breathless, high-pitched fashion that I don’t think really works, before guitarist Huw Bunford comes in for the chorus, and the whole thing goes on too long.

2. ‘Mt.’ [link to audio]

Grumbling over: the rest of the album is fine. With ‘Mt.’, keyboardist Cian Ciaran takes lead vocals on a fast song for the first time; he should do so more often, because this is fantastic. A song that might seem at first to be too restricitive and repetitive in structure for its own good turns out to have a real swinging groove and momentum.

3. ‘Moped Eyes’

Another song with a groove, though one of a rather different sort, ‘Moped Eyes’ gives the album its title (‘Dark days seem light years away’) and simmers along nicely for four minutes; and you may well find yourself, as I did, nodding along to the beat.

4. ‘Inaugural Trams’ [link to audio]

This is the kind of SFA song that, if you try to describe it, sounds ridiculous. Here goes… A song about town planning (chorus: ‘It’s the first day of the integrated transport hub’), that sounds like the theme to a cartoon, and has guest rapping by Nick McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand — in German. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

5. ‘Inconvenience’

A straight-ahead (for SFA) rock song that almost defies you not to sing along with the chorus. Which is exactly what I ended up doing.

6. ‘Cardiff in the Sun’ [link to audio]

Now this is an example of why I think Super Furry Animals are such an extraordinary band, because their music ranges so widely. SFA go almost ambient with chiming guitars, treated vocals, and trademark ‘sha-la-las’. It’s compelling for all its eight minutes, and sounds completely otherworldly.

7. ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’

Rather more serious than its title might suggest, this is another electronic song, though more aggressive tham the previous track. Gruff’s vocals are perhaps even more distorted, making them so distant the effect is almost hypnotic.

8. ‘Helium Hearts’

The closest thing on Dark Days/Light Years to a ballad, this song poses the question: with all these body parts that do such useful things, what is the chin for? The answer, we learn after three minutes, is that it helps you smile. Lovely stuff.

9. ‘White Socks/Flip Flops’

Apparently, the title refers to ‘the type of footwear one needs to write a good novel’ (never having tried to write one, I must reserve judgement on whether that is so). Vocals by  Huw Bunford, and I think this is his best song to date; again, it has a nice ‘groove’ to it (can’t you tell I’m not very well-versed in describing music?).

10. ‘Where Do You Wanna Go?’

The shortest song on the album, at two-and-a-half minutes, and also the most straightforward. A great showcase for the Beach Boys-style harmonies that SFA do so well.

11. ‘Lliwiau Llachar’

Here’s a neat trick: this song uses the same melody as the previous one, only this time the lyrics are in Welsh. But it’s not the same song (the title translates as ‘Intensely Bright Colours’), and the structure is different enough that it doesn’t feel like a carbon copy of the last song, which is an even neater trick. Incidentally, this is the first Welsh-language song to appear on an SFA album in nine years.

12. ‘Pric’

And here’s another one (I leave the translation of the title to your imagination). Actually, this is almost an instrumental, apart from brief vocal sections. A suitably chaotic way to end the album, ‘Pric’ is a stew of guitars, whistling and who-knows-what-else that goes on for six minutes, then spends another four slowing to a halt. Rather over-indulgent, yes; but, after all that’s gone before, I’ll let them off.

So, that’s another reliably dazzling SFA album. Ah, why can’t all music be as good as this?

Paris Motel – In the Salpêtrière

21st February 2009 / / 0 Comments

Paris Motel is the band/ensemble of singer and multi-instrumentalist Amy May. They sound like… well, imagine Kirsty MacColl fronting The Divine Comedyand you start to get an idea. But I don’t want to take that comparison too far, because that would undermine the distinctiveness of May’s own vision.

To explain the title and idea of the album, I’ll quote directly from a blog post by Amy May:

The Salpetriere is a hospital in Paris where they used to keep ‘undesirable’ women in the 18th and 19th century – madwomen, prostitutes, epileptics, paupers and unmarried mothers ended up there. I’m using the idea of the hospital as a metaphor for the collection of songs about extraordinary, interesting women (who may or may not have been mad, depending on your point of view).

Now, I already knew about this theme before I started listening to the album; but what often happens with me and story-based songs is that I don’t pick up all the details of the stories — and that’s what mostly happened here, too. Fortunately, that’s not disastrous, because there is still much to love about In the Salpêtrière: the music itself is lush, and Amy May’s vocal style is great, ‘classical’ but leavened with just enough of a London twang.

Singling out individual tracks seems almost unnecessary when the whole album is so impressive, but let’s have a go. ‘After Wanda’ starts out quite stately, and builds to a wonderful climax. ‘Three Steps’ is an epic sea shanty; and ‘Stockholm: The Art of Forgetting’ deftly combines a jauntier rhythm with a choral interlude. But the whole album is glorious, and highly recommended.

Antony and the Johnsons – The Crying Light

20th February 2009 / / 0 Comments

Antony Hegarty undoubtedly has one of the most extraordinary voices of any singer of his generation; and he has the ability to write songs that do that voice justice — and one song in particular, the magnificent ‘Hope There’s Someone’. Hegarty’s problem in the past has been consistency: ‘Hope There’s Someone’ overshadowed everything else on the second Antony and the Johnsons album, 2005’s I am a Bird Now, with only a couple of songs towards the end approaching it.

Now, four years later, comes The Crying Light. I don’t think any of its ten songs quite matches ‘Hope There’s Someone’ — but I do think the result is a better, more satisfying album than I am a Bird Now. The songs (as a whole) are stronger, and the music more varied — the texture is more orchestral this time around, and ‘Kiss My Name’ is heading towards jaunty (musically if not lyrically).

But it’s Hegarty’s voice that dominates, and when he gives it free rein to soar, that’s when the album is at its best — see, for example, the title track. The lyrics of ‘Another World’ may read simplistically (‘I’m gonna miss the sea, gonna miss the snow’), but when sung by Hegarty, they can still get under the skin. And the album has several big, orchestral epics, like ‘Everglade’.

Although The Crying Light hangs together as an album, musically and lyrically — themes and images of nature proliferate — I don’t know whether I’d want to listen to it all in one go again, at least not for a while. It seems the kind of music best heard piece by piece — and I’m pretty sure that there’s even more to appreciate in it than I’ve already found.

Franz Ferdinand – Tonight

5th February 2009 / / 1 Comment

In a way, it felt strange to realise that this was the first time I had actually listened to a Franz Ferdinand album all the way through. But then again, after I’d listened to Tonight (the band’s third album, and first in four years), perhaps it’s not so strange; because it seems to me that Franz are much more of a singles band, or an individual songs band. I t hink the twelve tracks on Tonight would sound better in isolation than they did hearing them all together.

Franz Ferdinand have their own distinctive sound, which is essentially dancey guitar music with some unusual left turns. ‘Ulysses‘, the album opener and lead single is the same, but different: it has more of a groove, it sounds a bit… earthier, a cousin of ‘The Dark of the Matinee‘ that’s been around the block a few times and maybe dragged through a couple of hedges. Nothing in the next few songs matches it for impact; but, as I said, I suspect that may be because it’s first, and because I didn’t hear the others individually. (I ought to test that sometime.)

The real departures from what I’m used to hearing Franz sound like don’t come until the very end. First of all is ‘Lucid Dreams’: whilst all the other tracks don’t even reach four minutes, this one lasts for nearly eight — the reason for which is a four-minute techno bit stuck on the end. This is not necessarily the best way to make a long song, and it does seem rather superfluous.

The album’s closing track, ‘Katherine Kiss Me’, is acoustic, which I’m unused to hearing from Franz Ferdinand; but better — my favourite song on the album, in fact — is the song immediately before it, ‘Dream Again’. It’s slow, echoing, strange, and shows more of the range Franz Ferdinand capable of. Entertaining though Tonight is, I’d have liked to see more of that range on display.

A Camp – Colonia

5th February 2009 / / 0 Comments

A Camp is, of course, the solo project (though now more of a band) of Nina Persson from The Cardigans, a band I’ve never really listened to. Sure, I know two or three of the hits, but that’s all. So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Colonia… but it’s great. Mainly an album of ballads, deftly constructed, but most of all, beautifully sung by Persson.

But what I really like about the album is the darkness of the lyrics compared to the sweetness of the music. Take ‘Love Has Left the Room‘, a soaring, romantic-sounding song about breaking up. Or the opener ‘The Crowning‘, in which “we’re gonna party like it’s 1699” at “the crowning of” someone’s “useless, ruthless head”.

In short, Colonia is the sort of album you have to go back and listen to again, if only to check that Persson just sang what you thought she did — but it’s far from the only reason when the songs are so good.

White Lies – To Lose My Life

1st February 2009 / / 1 Comment

An album that begins with a track called ‘Death’ might not sound like the most cheery of listening — except that the track in question is no maudlin dirge, but an exhilarating rush of a song. When the title track goes, ‘Let’s grow old together, and die at the same time,’ it may sound cartoonish. And yet… and yet, there’s something about these guys.

White Lies are a trio from London who have been hailed as one of the current Next Big Things by the British music press. The ten tracks on their album are built of broadly similar components: big, expansive music; Harry McVeigh’s soaring vocals — and the lyrics? Well, the line ‘Everything has got to be love or death’ from the first song sums up the main concerns. And I like the results a lot.

Sure, White Lies are another guitar band with something of  an ’80s electro influence. Granted, there isn’t as much variety of style and tone in To Lose My Life as one would ideally like to see. Okay, maybe nothing else on the album is quite as instantly memorable as ‘Death’ (though a couple of tracks come close). But what is on the album is done so well. Any one of these songs will fill the room, as it were, which is not something I find with many albums.

Listening to To Lose My Life makes me want to hear this music live, because that seems to be the environment in which it best belongs. But the recorded version will do just fine for the time being.

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