Albums of 2013

So here we are in 2014 already. And a lot of 2013’s baggage has naturally enough, by default and design, managed to transport itself into the New Year. Not least is the small issue of this blog’s perennial failure to come up with its ten “albums of the year” before the metaphorical bells rounded things off so succinctly a few days back …

In past years I’ve done a series of album-by-album posts to highlight the albums I played (and enjoyed) most of all over the previous 12 months, but for 2013 I thought I’d cut to the chase and just list the ten “albums of 2013” in one post … partly because I’m in lazy-sod-holiday mode, but mostly because a few of them have already been reviewed here previously. These albums aren’t necessarily the best of the year, just the best as heard in my house, or in my headspace across 2013. The only prerequisite for inclusion is that I still had my mitts on a copy – in any format – at year’s end:

10. Elvis Costello and The Roots – Wise Up Ghost

Wise Up Ghost wins the prize for most unlikely transatlantic collaboration of the year. But then again, unlikely collaborations have always been one of Costello’s favourite things, and thanks to the huge talent and versatility of The Roots, the quality control factor on this one was always going to be set extremely high. The Roots might just about be the best thing ever to happen to Hip hop, certainly the group rates as the genre’s most authentic live act, and for all that Costello’s words and musings – quite often referencing work from his distant past throughout the album – are crucial to Wise Up Ghost’s success, the music of The Roots is something really quite special. A little bit post-punk, a little bit jazz, a whole lot of Hip hop (though Costello – mercifully – doesn’t rap), and never anything less than 100% funky. Best tracks: ‘Walk Us Uptown’, ‘Tripwire’, and ‘Viceroy’s Row’.

 9. Fat Freddy’s Drop – Blackbird

Speaking of bad rap (or not speaking of it) … these guys get a lot of it from local music scribes (or perhaps that’s “a bad wrap”?) and I’m genuinely at a loss as to fully understanding why that is. When I listen to this hard working local collective all I hear is “home”, a place to be; Wellington, a beach on the Kapiti Coast, or anywhere else specific to Nu Zild. Our accent, our landscape, our multicultural people … and if that’s a little bit too laidback or (apparently) derivative for some, then so be it. It works for me. If they can be knocked for a lack of (perceived) progression style-wise, it’s merely because the band is now very much at ease with who they are and the music they’re making. I happen to think that’s a very good thing. Blackbird was one of just a handful of CD’s I purchased during 2013 (downloading continued as my format of convenience and choice) and my edition came with the eight-track bonus disc. So I thought it was a pretty good score and I played it often. Best tracks: ‘Clean The House’, ‘Silver and Gold’, and ‘Barney Miller’ from the mixed bag bonus disc.

 

8. Foals – Holy Fire

When I reviewed Holy Fire earlier in the year I hadn’t expected it to wind up as one of my albums of the year, but I found myself continually returning to it, and it grew and grew and grew … originally reviewed here.

7. Lord Echo – Curiosities

Multi-instrumentalist Mike Fabulous is one very special talent. Fabulous has been, for a long time, one of the main protagonists behind the international success of Wellington reggae/dub outfit, the Black Seeds. A couple of years back he released his first solo effort under the Lord Echo moniker, and this follow-up, Curiosities, builds on that work to showcase what might prove to be a musical coming of age. Curiosities is a 42-minute ten-track no-filler extravaganza of funk, disco, jazz, and pure unadulterated pop ... plus a few other things besides. So there’s a wide scope of styles on the album and I think that, more than anything else, is what makes it such a persuasive listen. The album made a belated run for this list after I picked up my copy of Curiosities on CD very late in the year, but regular listening through December provided its own reward, and its own reason for being here. Best tracks: ‘Digital Haircut’, ‘Molten Lava’, and the sublime closer ‘Arabesque’.

 

6. The Analogue Fakir – Worlds We Know

A good cyber-friend of everythingsgonegreen, Muhammad Hamzah, a Sufi Muslim based in Manchester by way of Bradford, wears many hats. One of them is the one he dons as Celt Islam, and I’ve blogged about his work a few times already. Less well known is the work he does as The Analogue Fakir, but when he sent me a link for his 2013 release, Worlds We Know, I was completely blown away by the sheer depth and quality on offer. As with Celt Islam’s music, I simply can’t believe that more people aren’t embracing this worldly fusion of Eastern and Western vibes. Where Celt Islam’s stuff tends to be a more dub or dubstep-orientated hybrid of styles, Worlds We Know struck me as being every bit as state-of-the-art, but more indebted to electronic forms like EDM, and it works as a slightly freaky hard-edged variation on global electropop. But there’s so much more to it than any label I can tag it with – it isn’t really “pop” for a start, it’s far too dark in places, and almost post-apocalyptic in parts. A great, challenging, if largely overlooked album. Find out for yourself by downloading at the link below. Best tracks: ‘The Forms’, ‘Moments In Time’, and ‘Annihilation in Allah’.

http://earthcityrecordz1.bandcamp.com/album/worlds-we-know

 

5. The National – Trouble Will Find Me

And by the month of May, “trouble” had most definitely found me. By crook, rather than hook, back in a corner … again. This album was one of my favourites from the first half of the year and while it may not have been as dark and dramatic as High Violet, or as compelling as a couple of the band’s earlier albums, it was still a bunch of beautifully crafted tunes. And that man’s gentle baritone corners me every damn time. Originally reviewed here.

4. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories

Naturally. I’m a disco nut. I’m a history nut. I’m a Nile Rodgers fan from way back. I love some of that early Giorgio Moroder stuff. Combine all of those old school ingredients … stir to boil, and then add a liberal sprinkling of fairy dust in the form of new digital technology and you’ve got an instant everythingsgonegreen favourite. Random Access Memories plays out like some kind of skewed potted history of disco, and it was originally reviewed here.

3. GRiZ – Rebel Era

Rebel Era by GRiZ easily qualifies as my freebie download of the year. A brilliant concoction of old style blues and dubstep, Rebel Era was another one of those safe “go-to” albums on those rare occasions I was stuck for something to listen to. With heavy use of samples and a funk heart at its electro-dubby core, some might consider this throwaway fare, but for a while back there, GRiZ was the biz (sorry – Ed) in my world, and this “solo” album is every bit as good as the work he did with fellow dubstephead Gramatik (released as Grizmatik). Originally (sort of) reviewed here.

2. Public Service Broadcasting – Inform - Educate - Entertain

An almost flawless blend of sepia-tinged nostalgia and modern rock as we know it. But not as we know it. So different from anything else on offer. A journey into another world, another time, another place. Samples and soundbites abound. Originally reviewed here.

1. Darkside – Psychic

It seems appropriate – given that the vast majority of my music listening is via headphones – that my 'Fones album of the year and the blog’s overall album of the year is Darkside’s Psychic. I could – and did, more than once – completely lose myself in this album. Immerse myself in it. Use it to shut out everything else around me. Not always an easy listen, Psychic is an absorbing mix of production FX, vocal distortions, and ambient soundscaping, but it also leans heavily towards classic rock, with more than a few old fashioned blues signature moments buried deep within its sonic mash. It’s such a hybrid of musical styles and production techniques it’s (thankfully) impossible to damn it with one singular/solitary genre label. Hell, the first couple of minutes on the 11-minute opening opus amount to little more than a pulse, and it’s a full five minutes in before we get anything resembling a meaningful beat. So it requires patience, and the impression is that the album was designed to be listened to as a whole, not as individual pieces within that whole. But oh how that patience is rewarded. Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington also collaborated as Daftside, and hopefully we’ll hear more from this duo. Best tracks: ‘Heart’, ‘Paper Trails’, and ‘Freak, Go Home’.

Honourable mentions: Atoms For Peace – Amok, Panda Dub – Psychotic Symphony, Primal Scream – More Light, DU3normal – Flow Frequency, and London Grammar – If You Wait.

Reissue of the year – I can’t decide between The Breeders’ (Last Splash deluxe) LSXX, or the Tears For Fears reissue of The Hurting. So I choose both. Two reissues of the year – my blog, my rules!

Compilation of the year – I can’t say I downloaded or purchased too many compilation releases during 2013 (an unusual development for me) but this sampler release from the aptly titled Earth City Recordz label – reviewed here – opened up a whole new world of sound possibilities for me.

New Zealand album of the year – obviously Lord Echo (see above), closely pushed by Fat Freddy’s Drop, and two other Wellington-based-band releases: Black City Lights with Another Life, and the relatively low profile Bikini Roulette’s otherwise gripping Erotik Fiction. For all that Lorde’s Pure Heroine “made the grade” internationally and wasn’t too bad at all for a debut release, I can’t hand-on-heart say it rates as highly as many other blog and mainstream media year-end lists tend to suggest. I make no excuses for the very obvious Wellington bias in my picks, I really should have expanded my “local” music horizons a little further than I did, and I know I missed far too much good stuff through the year, something I hope to rectify (again!) in 2014.

So that’s that. Obligatory annual list completed.

Comment below if you agree or disagree (fat chance – Ed) … or maybe you just want to call me naughty names again … I’m clearly not all that fussy.

 

Album Review: Public Service Broadcasting - Inform - Educate - Entertain (2013)

I picked up a copy of Inform - Educate - Entertain, the debut album from the London-based duo Public Service Broadcasting, after my old friend Porky had reviewed and recommended the album over at Porky Prime Cuts earlier in the year.

Last year’s ‘The War Room’ EP had already introduced me to the possibilities of what might happen when you combine a firm indie rock aesthetic with a keen sense of history and access to a massive archive of BBC radio samples, but there was an unfulfilling brevity about that World War-themed EP.

 

However, the full-length album has enabled PSB to expand its horizons a little, and that ultimately makes for a far more rewarding (if more intense) listening experience.

Inform - Educate - Entertain is a retro-futurist journey through several generations worth of radio samples, presenting soundbites to act as markers which identify and document just how far it is we’ve actually come.

And back in the day, when the world was still black and white, those radio announcements, emergency broadcasts, and news features – formal or otherwise – usually meant a thing or two. Something that’s relatively easy to forget in these ultra-connected, heavily-networked, supposedly far more enlightened times.

Inform - Educate - Entertain essentially does exactly what it says on the tin (or in its title). The album works as a reminder that life wasn’t always as easy as we have it today. A reminder of just how hard our forefathers had to work to become informed, and of the limited choices they had in terms of how that news was consumed. And as a chance to appreciate just how much our world has changed … not only in the UK but also across the globe – although the themes presented are generally specific to Britain, back when it was still prefixed by the word “great”.

‘Spitfire’ is the only track from the EP to be carried forward to the album proper and it remains a fascinating insight into the general mindset of the pre, mid, and post-war British public. Other highlights include ‘Signal 30’, ‘Night Mail’, ‘Lit Up’, and ‘Everest’ (clip below) …

 

 

 

 

... and here’s a track from the ‘The War Room’ EP of 2012:

 

 

 

Album Review: Chvrches – The Bones of What You Believe (2013)

It’s one thing to ride a wave of positive publicity and become the latest indie-band-flavour of the month … it’s quite something else to produce an album that outlives the initial hype.

That was a task faced by Scottish band Chvrches (said as “churches” … go figure) earlier this year, when for a few short months there, it seemed as though the band’s name was splashed across just about every music website I dared to visit, not to mention some of the more mainstream sections of the music press.  

 

The Bones of What You Believe duly arrived mid-year, and it’s fair to say it did so as one of the more talked about first-up albums of the year. I’m not sure it quite matches the level of hype it’s attracted, and I’m really not so sure I understand what all the fuss is about.

But evidently it’s just me who doesn’t quite get it … in terms of “critical acclaim”, the album certainly appears to have lived up to the lengthy drum-roll afforded it … and it’s also made a major impact commercially; going top 10 in the UK, topping the US independent album charts, and hitting number 12 on Billboard.

Not a bad return for a young band that only played its first gig in July of 2012.

And it’s not bad as an album either, it’s just not all *that* special. And hardly the album-of-the-year contender it’s been touted as in some quarters.

The Bones of What You Believe is essentially 48 minutes of solid synthpop; decent tunes gleaming brightly against a backdrop of highly polished pop production. There’s plenty of drama to be had and it also offers some great pop hooks. All pretty good things.

But what taints the listening experience for me – and I write this as a fan of the genre, and as an often irrational sucker for bands working out of Glasgow – are the parts where Lauren Mayberry sings, which unfortunately, actually covers the bulk of the album.

Mayberry’s voice is pleasant enough, sure, but across the course of an entire album it starts to feel a little tiresome – too lightweight, a bit too saccharine, and it steers the music far too far towards the throwaway teenpop/bubblegum end of the pop spectrum.

The album reminds me a lot of The Naked And Famous debut effort of a few years back, and while this is a decent enough first up album as it stands, I really don’t see Chvrches as a band with any long-term credibility beyond the realm of pure chart pop.

The band may have produced a “critical” hit fresh up, as yet another one of those next-big-thing type debutantes, but the true test of the band’s resilience comes next time out. When the next album arrives … after people have had this one in their collections long enough to get a handle on whether or not they really need to go back for seconds.

Download: ‘The Mother We Share’, ‘Lies’ (clip below), ‘Night Sky’ and ‘Lungs’ …

 

Album Review: Cut Copy – Free Your Mind (2013)

When I reviewed Cut Copy’s last album and included it on my Albums of 2011 list, I made the point that Cut Copy was seemingly immune to any backlash from critics and fans alike for its blatant um, copyist approach to synthpop and wider electronic forms.

Zonoscope was the Melbourne band’s third New Order-aping album in succession, and Cut Copy’s appeal was starting to wear a little thin. I mean, I liked Zonoscope enough to include it as one of my most played albums of that year, sure, but there were a number of small things about the band’s music that had started to become a little annoying. Nobody else, it seemed, had noticed, and Cut Copy continued to attract very positive reviews.

 

Fast forward to November 2013, and the release of album number four, Free Your Mind ... well, it looks like things may have taken a slight turn for the worse, and even the formerly supportive Pitchfork site was a bit underwhelmed by the band’s latest offering, giving it – at best – a mediocre review. Ditto, The Guardian’s music pages, which gave the album a positively drab two stars (out of five).

I downloaded the new album regardless. I enjoyed the band’s first two albums so much (and clearly rated Zonoscope at the time), I wanted to give the Aussie electro-poppers the benefit of any doubt. I really shouldn’t have bothered.

The good news is that Cut Copy has actually moved on slightly from its default retro mid-Eighties synthpop starting point. The bad news is the band only made it as far as 1988 or 1989, and Free Your Mind is little more than a badly pieced together homage to flowery second wave “summer of love” bands like Primal Scream and Stone Roses.

Now, there’s not much wrong with either of those bands – or indeed, that period – but Cut Copy is starting to come across as an A-grade imposter, and the music on Free Your Mind is barely a pale imitation of the best music from that era. In the hands of Cut Copy, what once was universally known and loved as “baggy”, now resembles something similarly shapeless ... something saggy, even.

And who wants to relive that whole trippy dippy hippy thing a third time anyway?

And so we’re left with a bunch of try-hard tunes, with lazy and clichéd lyrics, and removed from its New Order context, I now realise it was singer Dan Whitford's weedy vocal that annoyed me all along on Zonoscope ... something I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on previously.

Too derivative, too cheesy, and with bugger all originality poking through the psychedelic haze, I think it’s safe to say Cut Copy and I are now officially over.

Highlights: not much ... maybe this, at a stretch:

 

 

 

Album Review: Tears For Fears - The Hurting Deluxe (1983/2013)

I’m not going to lie to you. I can’t give you any sort of objective review for an album like The Hurting. Anything I offer for the newly released deluxe version of the album can probably be set aside and discarded as little more than the ramblings of a middle aged fanboy. Read on at your peril ...

I’ve owned a few different copies of this album in the years since it was first released – at least a couple on cassette, plus a couple on CD … and maybe even a copy on vinyl before either of those formats. But I was still excited about picking up the 30th anniversary deluxe edition on double disc a few weeks back. A personal affirmation, of sorts, that The Hurting remains a stick-on everythingsgonegreen Desert Island Disc.

 

Back in 1983, the music of Tears For Fears was serious business. Even a year or so before ‘Shout’ made it an even more serious business by taking the band beyond the loving embrace of an intimate few and out into the arms of a wider global populace. Long before the large scale success of the band’s second album, Songs From The Big Chair, took Tears For Fears to the very brink of what might (or might not) have been momentary world domination.

No, it was serious business even before it was big business because of the grim themes explored by Roland Orzabal, Curt Smith, Ian Stanley, and Manny Elias on The Hurting. Orzabal and Smith had studied the work of American psychologist Arthur Janov, whose ideas around “Primal Therapy” – a treatment which deals with unresolved childhood pain – inform much of the album’s content.

To some extent it’s a concept work, an album about childhood, an album about isolation, loss, and abandonment. The album deals with these themes relentlessly. It’s a dark, intense, brooding, heart-on-sleeve masterwork … and very serious business.

Yet, on a personal level it was, and is, a little bit more than that. More than the mere fact that it was “emo” well before emo was so much as a twinkle in the beady eye of the Great God of Teenage Angst.

For me, The Hurting is more about the backdrop it provided for just about anything and everything I did in late 1983, through early 1984. As a soundtrack to my first time “playing house”, as a teenager consumed by the first flush of what I thought was true love. Even today, I can’t listen to the album without that context gently poking me in the ribs.

I can recall a ‘Pale Shelter’ lyric sheet being meticulously removed from the inner pages of a Smash Hits magazine before being pinned to the wall directly above the “marital bed” … sure, I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was deadly serious business.

 

So The Hurting is all of that and more. It’s also probably one of the best debut albums of its decade, and one of synthpop’s alltime finest. It’s immaculately presented, with Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum co-producing. I suppose some of the production does sound a bit dated in a 2013 context, but you know, I’m too close to this album to offer any genuinely accurate assessment there – distance being the mother of all objectivity. Or something.

The deluxe package comes in a couple of different formats – I purchased the two-disc set as opposed to the more comprehensive three-disc plus DVD Deluxe release, but it still represents the album in expanded form. On CD 1 we get the original album; ten tracks clocking in at just under 42 minutes. On CD 2 we get single versions, b-sides, and demos.

And just how many different versions of ‘Pale Shelter’ or ‘Change’ do we need? … there’s four of each included among the 26 tracks found on the double disc edition. More than enough. Not to mention a gut-wrenching five full versions of ‘Suffer The Children’ (where’s the humanity?! – Ed) …

 

But there’s some interesting mixes on the bonus disc, 12-inch versions etc, plus the first shaft of Big Chair light with an early take on ‘We Are Broken’. There’s the odd track on the original album I can no longer really listen to with any amount of enthusiasm (‘The Hurting’, ‘Change’) but the vast majority of it is still pure pop perfection – ‘Mad World’ (ignore the pretenders and imitators), ‘Pale Shelter’, ‘Memories Fade’, and ‘Watch Me Bleed’, all being personal highlights.

The “super deluxe” package offers further material in the form of a third disc of BBC and Peel Sessions, plus some live stuff, and a DVD of the band performing live at the Hammersmith Odeon in December 1983. So far as deluxe releases go, this one is a pretty good one.

Album Review: Earth City Recordz - FuTuRe SoUnD Of ThE UnDeRGrOuNd VoL 3 (2013)

Manchester-based recording label Earth City Recordz has just released the third compilation in its Future Sound of the Underground series (of label samplers). I picked up a download a few weeks back and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it ever since.

The main guy behind Earth City Recordz is Muhammad Hamzah. I’ve been following him via social media for a while now and it’s unlikely there’s a harder working artist-producer-DJ-social and/or political commentator out there. His output as an artist working under the Celt Islam and The Analogue Fakir monikers, both live and in the studio, is prolific, and he’s relentless at supporting the work of other artists, getting it out there, in whatever form, wherever, and whenever he can.

 

As label samplers go, FuTuRe SoUnD Of ThE UnDeRGrOuNd VoL 3 is a very generous listen at 23 tracks over the course of more than 130 minutes, it showcases a wide range of artists, and features a genuine hybrid of styles. And just like Celt Islam’s best work, there’s a borderless feel about much of this compilation, as you’d tend to expect from such an ethnically diverse mash of nationalities coming together in the name of dub.

Yet to call it dub and stick such a singular label on it fails to give the compilation, or the label, the credit it deserves. Yes, dub, or transnational dub, does appeal as an ideal catch-all, but there’s also large portions of electro, some EDM-indebted stuff, some drum’nbass, dubstep, plus super-sized chunks of that thing we call “world music”.

The highlights are spread fairly evenly across the 23 tracks, the best of which are: MasterMind XS - ‘Far From Here’, Celt Islam - ‘Beyond’, Samia Farah - ‘Al Shams’, Mosienko Project - ‘Kings Valley Dub’, Vel Curve - ‘Tribal Dub’, Oenky & Tompafly - ‘Solitude In Darkness’, 4bstr4ck3r - ‘Mental Stabber’, Demon Dubz - ‘Don’t Stop’, and The Analogue Fakir closes the album with ‘Retro Box’.

Earth City Recordz on Bandcamp

Earth City Recordz on Soundcloud

Earth City Recordz on Facebook

And here’s Celt Islam:

 

Album Review: Pet Shop Boys - Electric (2013)

There is something distinctly magical about the earliest Pet Shop Boys work. The first couple of singles were perfectly formed slices of pure in-the-moment pop. I loved that early stuff, but I wouldn’t necessarily have called myself a fan for the longer haul. The novelty collaboration with Dusty Springfield (and other indulgences) left me a bit cold, and the PSB and I parted ways some years back.

Hugely self conscious and excessively camp, the duo’s music dropped right off my radar until a few years back when I heard a cover of the Madness hit ‘My Girl’, and a pretty cool PSB original called ‘Love etc’. It felt like some of the magic had returned, and I vowed back then to check out parts of the vast back catalogue … had I been a fan, I might have got around to it. Had I been a real fan, I wouldn’t have needed to.

Fast forward to 2013, and Pet Shop Boys are back with a new album, Electric. More in hope than expectation I downloaded a copy as soon as it came out – it seemed like the logical thing to do at the time, and as good a place to start/return as any.

The first couple of times I listened to Electric it sounded vibrant and essential, and early reviewers were calling it a return to form. Several months on, my familiarity with it has led to a form of contempt, and it definitely feels like a case of diminishing returns each time it gets an airing.

The first half of the album has enough going for it to be more than palatable, with some clever songwriting (main themes: politics, art, culture) and the now obligatory PSB morsels of humour in the lyrics – particularly on ‘Love Is A Bourgeois Construct’ … though whether that humour is intentional or not is probably debatable.

The real gem arrives four tracks in; ‘Fluorescent’ is possibly the best thing Neil Tennent and Chris Lowe have done since ‘Love Comes Quickly’ all those years ago. It’s an intense Fade-To-Grey-esque thing of true beauty, and it captures all that has ever been good about these guys in one short splurge. I’d go so far as to say ‘Fluorescent’ is one of my tracks of year ... it’s certainly the standout on Electric (insert your own flare or beacon joke here).

From there, the second half of the album starts to fall away quite badly:

‘Shouting In The Evening’ cultivates lightweight dubstep textures that merely succeed in leaving the impression Neil Tennant is trying too hard.

At worst, ‘Thursday’ sounds a bit like an actual PSB parody and it features a naff rap cameo from UK producer Example. At best, it’s difficult to listen to with anything resembling a straight face.

The closer, ‘Vocal’, does have its moments, but it winds up being swamped by slightly dated techno cheese.

Tennant’s voice remains as youthful as ever (he turns 60 next year). That boyish charm first heard on ‘West End Girls’ is still there, and it’s one of the keys to the duo’s long-term success, but there’s also times on Electric when I’m acutely aware that this is an album made by two men on the wrong side of 50 … and I’m not so sure that’s such a good thing.

I guess I’ve always found PSB perfectly fine in small doses, but a little more challenging over the longer form. Perhaps that’s why they’re such stalwarts of mainstream radio ... as past masters of the perfect three-to-four minute pop song?

When they’re good, they’re very good. When they’re not, the music feels like one big campy excursion into the void.

So Electric is a bit of a mixed bag, flashes of brilliance amid long periods of same old same old ... I’ve given it a fair old workout over the past few months but I’m pretty much at the point now where I doubt I’ll ever listen to it again.

 

 

 

Free Stuff: GRiZ - Rebel Era (2013)

I’m sucker for free stuff. I’m also an obsessive music hoarder. Combine the two and naturally enough I’m continually on the lookout for free music – whether it comes in the form of single mp3 files for download (see Soundcloud, Bandcamp, various other) or giveaway albums such as sampler CDs. It’s fair to say I download and listen to a lot of crap “free” music before discarding a fair portion of it.

Every once in a while though I stumble across a genuine keeper, something so worthwhile I sit here scratching my head wondering how it’s possible that such great music wound up being a giveaway. One recent example is this album from a guy called GRiZ, a 20-something music producer from Detroit ... it’s called Rebel Era, and it’s an impressive electro/dubstep/blues hybrid that blows me away each time I listen to it.

I don’t know much else about GRiZ, other than the fact that he’s also done some work with like-minded producer Gramatik under the Grizmatik moniker.

Griz, incidentally, is also a slang word used for high quality weed (something from the everythingsgonegreen Bumper Book of Completely Irrelevant Facts right there).

So anyway, if you like electro-geared dubstep with an old fashioned bluesy tinge, you might just like this free download of Rebel Era. It’s relatively hot off the press, released just a few weeks back.

Get the download here: GRiZ – Rebel Era

And here’s a link to the GRiZ Soundcloud page: GRiZ on Soundcloud

Album Review: Foals – Holy Fire (2013)

Holy Fire is the third album from Oxford oufit Foals, and it continues a fine run which has seen the band expand its repertoire with each new outing. Three albums in, it’s been steady improvement every step of the way, with each new release raising the bar ever that bit higher.

But where the previous two full-length efforts gave us a fairly straightforward take on formulaic guitar-based indie rock, Holy Fire deviates a little into hitherto uncharted territory for Foals, and this album sees the band sticking a toe into the murky waters of psychedelic funk. It feels a bit like a dance album, or at the very least a conscious move away from the identikit Foals sound of past work.

 

The album opens with one of its highlights, the brooding near instrumental ‘Prelude’, which steadily builds in tempo and intensity before peaking and then fading amid a crescendo of chiming guitars and crashing percussion. The electro-funky feel of the opener acts as a statement of intent as much as it does a lip-smacking curtain raiser.

That much is immediately confirmed with ‘Inhaler’, a dirty bluesy stomper that recalls the vibrancy of prime era Rolling Stones and crosses it with the swaggering rhythms of the only slightly more contemporary likes of the Charlatans and Stone Roses. I swear I hear vocalist Yannis Philippakis channelling the not-yet-ghost of Jagger at various points across the album, but it’s never more evident than on ‘Inhaler’. Philippakis is not blessed with the best range known to mankind but he does make the absolute most of what he’s got.

The opening rush continues on the energetic funk of ‘My Number’ before Holy Fire then settles down to find a rather more sedate but equally seductive groove … less ebb, more flow. ‘Late Night’ works as a fitting centrepiece before the album tapers off a little over the second half of its 50-minute duration with a couple of tracks requiring some work before they really take you anywhere rewarding.

The production of Alan Moulder and Flood is pristine and Holy Fire sees Foals employing a much wider range of weaponry than ever before, with synthesisers and drum machines very much to the fore this time around. Guitars still play a leading role, but there’s less riffing and more rhythm. Ultimately, I get the sense that Holy Fire is as much about celebrating retro chic as it is about a band finally finding its mojo.

I picked up a download copy of Holy Fire much earlier in the year – it was released as long ago as February – and I guess the real proof of the pudding is the very fact that it’s been a virtual fixture on rote pretty much ever since. I like this one. I like it a lot.

Here’s ‘Inhaler’ …

 

 

 

 

Album Review: Bikini Roulette – Erotik Fiction (2013)

Throwing open the marble doors of the everythingsgonegreen mansion to Tony Murdoch for a guest post:

This is a very casual review of an anything but casual debut release CD by Wellington band Bikini Roulette. To be totally honest with you it has arrived without a lot of fanfare or hype, but let me tell you good people, this album is a uniquely original addition to New Zealand's varied and widespread musical landscape.

 

Erotik Fiction kick-starts your heart with the adrenaline pumping and lyrically jumping ‘She Cut Me Loose' ... "married to a wet dream" /"smoking wreck of a playboy pet looking for dirty fun"... all wrapped around a well funky bottom end which moves nicely into 'Play Dead', in which singer Matthew Pender's "right down at the bottom, the recipe for trust" vocals play tag with guitarist Adrian Win's slippery as a snake-arse cowboy guitar licks.



Upcoming gig: Bikini Roulette + Lady Parts

Phew, I need to take a breath and I kinda do on Pender's semi-biographical musings in 'Making Plans For Yesterday' ... "you're already older than your childhood heroes were when they'd done their best work" ... and things skip along nicely with 'Chasing Diamonds Down A Sewer' ... "when I'm down I get needy, when I'm up I just get greedy".

Then we arrive at (for me anyway) one of the albums absolute highlights; 'Confessions Of You (Mini Bar Blues)' sees Pender's falsetto Prince-like delivery beautifully underplayed with an arrangement to die for - sumptuous and understated keyboards link up with a similarly tasty rhythm section - yep, this tune has “hit single” stamped all over it.

 

Saxophonist Chris Petrie really cuts loose on 'Close Ain't Close Enough' which has the eager punters itching towards that dance floor - if you dance first, I'll follow...

Now if this was an old fashioned LP it's time to change sides, but it's not so we won't. So onwards with 'Voodoo Suitcase' - man the stakes are rising - this is a whole lotta fun with Win's disco dirty sounding guitar leading to an absolute stampede towards that dance floor - god damn that rhythm section is super sized - yep, we're in a happy place!

The engine room - skin man Ben Chapman and bassist Anthony Lander - cook up a proverbial storm on 'Second-hand Soul'.

 

Normal transmission (ie funked up 'n' fully fried rock'n'roll) on 'Like No Other Man' followed by another tasty falsetto vocal delivery from Pender on the well impressive and harmony laced 'A Girl Like That' - another track with radio play written all over it.

The album’s closing track - by the way, there's no room on the dance floor now - 'When Eve Got Bored Of Apples' rounds off this adventure with Bikini Roulette quite nicely - gosh, my heels have worn down...

Well, I'm picking Erotik Fiction to be the must-have NZ CD for this fast approaching Kiwi summer. Oh, and forecasters are predicting a hot one which I'm guessing will soon be the adjective of choice for everyone to describe this slice of aural dynamite.

(Thanks Tony! ... am I the only one who knows that you’re not actually kidding about those heels? ... I just want to add that the album is also available on the band’s Bandcamp page - link below)

 

Grab a copy of Erotik Fiction from the Bikini Roulette Bandcamp here

 

Bikini Roulette on Facebook

 

 

 

Album Review: Neon Neon – Praxis Makes Perfect (2013)

Neon Neon is an infrequent collaboration between onetime Super Furry Animal, Gruff Rhys, and renowned Hip hop producer, Bryan Hollon (aka Boom Bip). It’s taken me a while to get around to reviewing this one, but the duo’s second and most recent album, Praxis Makes Perfect, was released earlier this year, and it’s a follow-up to 2008’s critically acclaimed Stainless Style.

Stainless Style was a concept album loosely based around the life of maverick stainless steel car maker John DeLorean, and its seemingly effortless Eighties synthpop sheen provided a perfect musical backdrop for the biographical account of an extraordinary life that both peaked and crashed during that very decade.

 

Praxis Makes Perfect continues the concept of dedicating an entire album to the life of a leftfield individual – in this case we get an album structured around the life of Italian political activist and publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.

Given that Feltrinelli himself died in 1972 – suicide, an explosive one – I was initially wary that Neon Neon might discard the style and production used to such good effect on the debut, and instead give us something even more retro as the accompanying soundtrack.

I needn’t have been concerned, it turns out that Praxis Makes Perfect is every bit as faithful to the shiny synthpop style that worked so well five years ago, despite any apparent lack of surface synergy the genre might have with a man whose own public profile peaked in the Fifties and Sixties.

But Rhys and Hollon do this stuff so well it immediately feels both fully formed as a musical work, and pretty well realised as a concept piece. Praxis Makes Perfect is not without its moments of cheese, and there are perhaps issues with the notion that any sort of biograph-concept album can be squeezed into a timespan of less than 32 minutes (10 tracks), but however else you cut it, the album still stands as a fine collection of well written pop tunes.

There’s a lost-in-the-Eighties boyish energy about this pair, a wry humour to be found in some of their lyrics, and while Praxis Makes Perfect may not have yet reached the critical heights of its predecessor, Neon Neon deliver another good one second time out.

Download: ‘The Jaguar’ (clip below), ‘Mid Century Modern Nightmare’.

 

 

 

 

Album Review: Lorde - Pure Heroine (2013)

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”  - Oscar Wilde

Whatever your take on 16-year-old Kiwi “pop sensation” Lorde, there’s no denying she’s everywhere at the moment. She's on top of the Billboard charts, on the radio, on television, and featuring in just about every other form of the news media – whether that be in the print/hard copy form, or merely popping up at hourly intervals in the much-harder-to-ignore cyberspace. Social media in particular has gone into overdrive, with Lorde being subjected to bitter tirades from crestfallen Miley Cyrus fans, and later getting into hot water for her own remarks on Taylor Swift's role modelling ... etc etc. Suddenly everything she does is big news. There was even a bizarre spat (of sorts) between a couple of high profile local bloggers about the wider relevance of Lorde's music, something that ties in nicely with the above well worn quote.

I’m quite sure it’ll pass and the current levels of both hype and controversy will die down sooner rather than later. It will all come back to the music in the end, but the way things are panning out, 2013 is definitely shaping up as The Year of Our Lorde. I use the word “our” in the same way some others might summon the royal “we”, and I do so because she’s local, and here in New Zealand, Lorde is a pretty big deal right now.

And so with all of this going on, curiosity naturally got the better of me and I couldn’t resist picking up a copy of her album, Pure Heroine, as soon as it was released last week. I could say that I did so only on behalf of my 15-year-old daughter, but that would be a glaring fib. She’ll merely be an indirect – albeit happy – beneficiary of her old man’s rabid music consumerism.

 

For all that grizzled middle-aged blokes are not Lorde’s target market, my first impression of the album is that it’s much better than I anticipated. There’s some great tunes, some quality songwriting, and Joel Little’s production certainly allows the music to breathe in a way that showcases an unexpected level of maturity. Little also enjoys co-writing credits on the majority of material on the album. There’s no question Lorde does teenage pop way better than most – these songs are very catchy, even if their durability has yet to be put to any sort of longevity test.

If I have a moan, it’s that over the course of a whole album Lorde’s voice starts to grate. It’s fine in short bursts, it even has a certain gravitas about it for one so young, but across the near 40 minutes it takes to traverse Pure Heroine, the vocal did start to become a little tiresome in parts.

I’m also very wary about embracing the notion that going number one on iTunes and Billboard (with ‘Royals’), is somehow a barometer of what’s good and what isn’t. It’s certainly an achievement, no question, but all it really means is that she’s incredibly on-the-button right now and ‘Royals’ is a catchy little tune with a great hook. It doesn’t necessarily mark it as “quality”, and it doesn’t in any way whatsoever guarantee a long and successful career in the ultra fickle world of pop music.

But good luck to Lorde regardless. This is a pretty impressive start, and what a weary old cynic like me thinks is hardly important in the wider scheme of things. This is all about the moment, the now, and Lorde's living it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Album Review: Editors – The Weight of Your Love (2013)

We’ve seen it so many times before. An up and coming young “indie” band starts to outgrow its modest roots, it starts to sell its “product” in quantities it previously could only have ever dreamed about, and it starts getting invites to all the big festivals. Where does it go from here? And how does it avoid those pesky allegations of having “sold out”?

Welcome to a dilemma currently being faced by Birmingham (UK) band Editors, one that has been faced by countless other bands that reach the same career crossroads – the most notable recent high profile example being a band such as The Killers, a band not all that dissimilar to Editors in style. It is a crossroads that many bands – or any half decent band with wider aspirations – reach around album number three, or in the case of Editors, we’re up to studio album number four.

 

Mainstream popularity, or what might otherwise be called crossover success, usually comes with a hidden cost; the permanent loss of many of those who supported the band during its earliest days – all of the hipsters too cool to like a band once it achieves a certain level of mainstream success. And usually it comes with an accusation ... “oh they used to be good, I used to like them, but then they sold out”.

Ah well, even after a band has lost a section of its original core support, there’s the small matter of all that cash rolling in by way of consolation ... and it seems rather more than mere coincidence that the more sales Editors achieve, the harsher the critical reception it faces. So far, for the band’s latest, The Weight of Your Love, that reception has been a mixed bag.



Main-staging: Editors at Reading

One of the things to immediately strike me upon first listen to The Weight of Your Love was just how stadium ready it was. These guys are not only ready for all of the big festivals, they’re desperate to headline. The album is packed full of potential live anthems, and the band’s music no longer feels restrained, intimate, or even modest. In fact, the sound is big, bloated, and actually, just quietly, more than a little pompous and full of itself.

 

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some lovely music on the album, particularly the stuff that references Editors of old, that post-Bunnymen, not-quite-Joy Division stuff. But the majority of material just doesn’t gel with me. It all feels a little bit forced, a little too earnest and eager to please. Big on chorus and orchestration, nothing like the more stripped back darker music that first attracted me to the band. It’s better than some of the cack spewed forth in recent years by contemporaries such as Interpol and, um, The Killers, but it’s generally not all that appealing either.

That The Weight of Your Love contains an unusual (for Editors) proliferation of songs dedicated to matters of the heart suggests the band ultimately decided to try to appeal a wider mass, rather than a select fussy few. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to top the bill and make the sort of music that festival goers love, so long as you realise that not everyone is going to thank you for it.

Highlights: ‘A Ton of Love’, ‘Formaldehyde’, and what is the clear stand-out for me, ‘The Phone Book’ (see clip).