Introducing ... Graysons

I know nothing about mysterious Austin-based post-punkers Graysons – other than the fact that the band hails from Detroit and is currently based in Austin (clearly, thanks Bandcamp). I wish I knew more, but it probably doesn’t matter too much – the important bit is they sound great and their debut full-length release, I, is currently up on Bandcamp as a name-your-price digital download (link below). The album itself ticks all the right boxes for me, sitting at the darker end of the post-punk spectrum, veering occasionally towards shoegaze. Nine tracks, clocking in at just over half an hour, the highlights include ‘Til The End’, ‘Illuminate’, and ‘Through The Ether’. Grab a copy:

 

Album Review: The Orb - Abolition of The Royal Familia - The Guillotine Mixes (2021)

Sometimes a remix project can wind up being a little too clever for its own good. And sometimes an album in its original naked warts-n-all form is best left that way. 

That’s exactly how I feel about The Orb’s 2020 album, Abolition of The Royal Familia. The remix follow-up, the Guillotine Mixes version, which was released earlier this year, adds very little of value, save perhaps for David Harrow’s sublime edit of album opener ‘Daze’. 

I can understand the attraction though. On one hand it was an album screaming out for a reboot, given that the original tended to slip beneath the radar of all but the most dedicated of Orb fans. On the other hand, the album was already close to perfect, and the remix edition just feels like 90-odd minutes of unnecessary lacklustre fluff. I can see the intent. It’s just that the execution doesn’t really match the ambition.

 Harrow adds plenty to ‘Daze’, for sure, converting it from a relatively sunny lightweight disco mix into a brooding, pulsing EDM creeper. Harrow also touches up ‘House of Narcotics’ (simply called ‘Narcotics’ on the Guillotine version). 

The roll call of producers is certainly impressive enough on paper; KLF conspirators Moody Boyz remix ‘Queen of Hearts’, former Orb associate Andy Falconer takes on ‘Slave Til U Die’, Youth reconfigures ‘Shape Shifting Pt.1’, and the much-travelled Kris Needs contributes to ‘Weekend’. I was very surprised that renowned dub merchant Gaudi removed so many of the dub elements from ‘Ital Orb’, thus stripping it of all the special qualities that made it one of the original album’s best tracks. 

I guess my biggest problem with it, is that after the initial promise of Harrow’s opening track, the whole thing just tends to wash over me. Nothing really grabs me. I drift off into a trance-like state, and for all of the spit and polish applied, these remixes veer irreversibly into the realm of ambient background noise. It’s all very pleasant but unlike the original work, there is nothing really challenging or thought provoking about these works. 

It might be that I’m being too picky, but I consumed the 2020 version of Abolition of The Royal Familia during peak-lockdown, early in the year, just as Covid-19 was taking hold of our planet, and it felt like a fairly weighty faux-apocalyptic piece of work. I enjoyed that facet of it. It was an album for and of the moment itself. Something that captured the sense of angst and foreboding we were living through at the time. These Guillotine mixes evoke little more than ambivalence and a resigned nonchalance.

A release for fans and completists only.

Album Review: The Chills - Scatterbrain (2021)

A few months back, when the Guardian published a list of the ten “best” Chills songs to celebrate the arrival of the band’s new album, Scatterbrain, all of the songs featured on the list were released between 1981 and 1990. And although that list did tend to capture the essence of the band’s best work, anyone unfamiliar with The Chills might be left wondering if that’s all there is, or was, to The Chills ... a band consigned to the 80s with little worth celebrating over the past 30-odd years? Fans of band are likely to see things a bit differently.

 For the record, ‘House with a Hundred Rooms’ topped the list, ahead of more obvious bangers like ‘I Love My Leather Jacket’ and ‘Pink Frost’, but there was no room for ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’ or a multitude of other post-1990 gems. Fair enough, lists are merely lists after all, and that was the Guardian’s view. 

Scatterbrain is the band’s seventh studio album, the first since 2018’s well-received Snow Bound, and it finds the band’s songwriter and key protagonist Martin Phillipps in a contemplative and reflective mood. Which is perhaps understandable … anyone who has viewed the excellent recent music-documentary, ‘The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps’, will have been given a good insight into Phillipps’ rather tumultuous personal journey over the years. 

On Scatterbrain we find Phillipps offering up a few more thoughts about where that journey has taken him, bringing us up to date with where things are at, a little further along the path, in 2021. With a refreshing honesty and maturity. In that same warm familiar clever way he always has. As a man now confronting his own fragility, his own mortality, and that of those around him. 

But while death is one of the most immediately evident themes on Scatterbrain, not least on tunes like ‘Destiny’ and ‘Caught In My Eye’, there’s also plenty of positivity to be found, and an affirmation that life is full of twists and turns. Delivered with certain pragmatism and an acceptance that all of our journeys are constantly evolving. 

‘Safe and Sound’ is one of the best low-key takes on offer, a very Dunedin take, even, where Phillipps ponders the simple pleasures of being tucked up “safe and sound” at home on the sofa in front of a crackling fire on a cold winter’s night … “let’s stay at home, we won’t go out tonight” … 

Musically it is everything you’d expect from The Chills. Subtle hooks, catchy choruses that tend to creep up on you, and clever use of instruments that wouldn’t always be the most obvious choice for a lesser composer of classic pop tunes. 

The album isn’t without its flaws, or without the odd cringe(y) moment. And it’s probably not the sort of work that will grab you instantly upon first listen, but Scatterbrain goes well beyond any expectation I had of Phillipps and The Chills in 2021, and it’s another worthy addition to the musical legacy of one of Aotearoa’s best and most durable artists.