EPs and other oddities ...

My regular reader (Hi Mum!) will know I use this blog as a way of recording my thoughts on all manner of new release albums, with album reviews - both current and “classic” - accounting for a fair portion of everythingsgonegreen content. But I don’t often get around to covering off my many EP or shorter format purchases. Of which there have been quite a few over the past 18 months or so. 

Across 2020 I did manage to record some thoughts on EP releases from Dub Empire (here), Féroces (here), and International Bad Boys Inc. (here), but there were a good number of other worthy EP additions which failed to get a mention on the blog at the time, despite my best intentions. To put that right, this blogpost will be all about some of those new-ish release EPs. That often ignored and mostly unloved stray waif of a format … the hard to nail down “mini album”. The not-quite single and the not-quite album. Usually anything from four to seven tracks in length, and usually less than 30 minutes in duration at its most generous.

I’ll start with 48 Hours at Neon Palms by The C33s, which was released as far back as 2018. The C33s were new to me when a friend sent through a link to the Manchester band’s terrific 2020 single, ‘Harpurhey Hostility’. Which prompted me to work my way back through the band’s discography - all singles, no album yet - until I found the debut EP, which consists of four surf-pop-styled post-punk tracks of the highest calibre. I now have a copy of everything the noisy three-piece have released (to date) and I can hardly wait for a full-length outing. Maybe this year? 

I’ve reviewed three relatively recent Pet Shop Boys albums on the blog, and if you’ve read those reviews, you’ll know how much I struggle with PSB. What I like, I really love. What I don’t like, I dislike intensely. With a passion, even. I just can’t seem to get a handle on my feelings about the prolific duo’s work. So, I was very surprised how much I enjoyed their well-below-the-radar 2020 EP, My Beautiful Laundrette, which I suppose is more formally recognised as a “soundtrack album”. A very belated soundtrack album recorded specifically for a - planned, possibly postponed - 2020 stage production of the Hanif Kureishi-penned 1985 cult classic (film) of the same name. The majority of its seven tracks are instrumentals, but all capture the vibe and atmosphere of the original film perfectly. I can well imagine a couple of these tracks being quite big hits had they been conceived or recorded and included in the film at the time. It takes a special sort of talent to recreate the mood of working class, multicultural, homophobic, peak-Thatcher London, some 35 years after the fact, but Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe play a blinder on My Beautiful Laundrette. If you’ve seen the film, track titles like ‘Omar’s Theme’, ‘Angelic Thug’, and ‘Johnny’s Darkside’ will resonate. If you haven’t seen the film … where the hell have you been?

Minuit Machine’s album Infrarouge was one of the very best things I heard back in 2019, so it was a no brainer for me to pick up a copy of the duo’s EP/single Don’t Run From The Fire when it was released in late 2020. Four tracks, all stunning state-of-the-art dark melodramatic synthpop at its finest. If anything, the release had a harder edge to it than much of the material found on Infrarouge, with an almost industrial feel to the still very danceable title track. I’m fast becoming a big fan of the Synth Religion label/platform it was released on, and I’ve also recently picked up a copy of the duo’s Basic Needs EP of 2021 … although at just three tracks that one might be considered more of a “single”.

I suspect Scottish band Snow Patrol is deeply unfashionable these days. That wasn’t always the case. I loved the breakthrough hit ‘Run’ all those years ago, and of course, the band’s biggest hit, ‘Chasing Cars’, was a global monster which propelled the band well beyond its original “indie pop” niche and into the mainstream stratosphere. 2020 saw Snow Patrol return with a new EP called The Fireside Sessions. Written and recorded during lockdown, it was a fairly unique little beastie in that it was made in collaboration with fans of the band. Five songs written and constructed during a series of streams on Instagram Live called The Saturday Songwriters. How very 2020. More to the point, it’s actually pretty good, with ‘On The Edge Of All This’ in particular becoming a firm favourite of mine during the second half of the year. All proceeds from the sale of the EP went to an anti-poverty charity, so kudos to Snow Patrol for that.

French melodica ace and committed Augustus Pablo disciple Art-X has received plenty of coverage on everythingsgonegreen previously. He’s been quite prolific with output over the past half dozen years or so - just check out this link to his Bandcamp page (here) for proof of that. 2020 saw yet another album release, Tales of Melodia, and while I picked up a copy of that release later in the year and enjoyed it, I was far more impressed with his earlier Polarity EP collaboration alongside The Roots Addict. Six melodica-drenched gems with a deep rootsy dub vibe, I played it loud, and I played it often.

Right at the start of 2021, or perhaps even in late December 2020, the hugely underrated Death Cab for Cutie released The Georgia EP – a five song collection of covers of tunes originally released by artists from Georgia (the US state, not the country). TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’ (yes, really, and it’s a great version even if you’re not a fan of the original), R.E.M.’s ‘Fall On Me’, and Cat Power’s ‘Metal Heart’ being the pick of a fairly decent bunch. The Cat Power cover is close to brilliant, which is as much due to the song itself as Death Cab’s treatment of it. I’m uncertain of the specifics or the precise charity involved, but I’m fairly sure this was another release which saw sale proceeds donated to a cause – in this case, I think, a pro-US Democratic Party-political cause … don’t make me research it, my eyes are already glazing over.

Last, but not least, by dint of it being the most recent EP addition to my collection, we have a mysterious self-titled debut EP from Lisbon-based darkwave devotee Floating Ashes (aka João Pinheiro). And it arrived - via Bandcamp name-your-price (here) - as a fully formed, quite dazzling piece of work, full of pulsating rhythms and glistening synths. With a requisite sense of darkness right at its core. The EP is quite short, at just three tracks across 15 minutes, but since it ticks so many of the musical boxes I hold near and dear, I’ve been giving it a real thrashing over the past month. I really don’t know much about the artist, but if this is what we can expect on future releases, it’ll be more than enough to keep me listening.

 

So that’s a wrap of all of the shorter-form releases I’ve picked up across the past 18 months. A fairly eclectic batch of music, admittedly, incorporating a number of different genres, so not all of it will appeal, but I reckon you could pick up the job lot for a combined outlay of around $50 and not regret any of it.

2020: Close, But No Cigar

I realise I’m a bit late to be casting a beady eye all the way back to 2020, but given the retro-centric nature of everythingsgonegreen, any blogpost covering work from this century might very well be considered an unexpected bonus. Being timely, current, and relevant has never really been this blog’s thing. If you’re here, you probably already know that.

I’ve already looked at my ten “most played” or favourite new album purchases of 2020 (here), but I also want to share a few thoughts on those that made the “close, but no cigar” list … albums I picked up, enjoyed, but for whatever reason didn’t quite make the final “albums of 2020” list.

I’ll start with a couple of homegrown efforts that could easily have made the cut for that list alongside the four local albums that did. Two albums that sat well beyond the mainstream Kiwi pop saturation point that gave us commercial behemoths like Six60, Benee, and L.A.B. as key local industry flagbearers in 2020. As so often, the best local stuff tended to fly well beneath the radar of fans of the aforementioned. Which is a shame … and probably not really a shame at all.

Darren Watson’s Getting Sober For the End of the World came very close to making the cut, but it just came down to the fact that I drew the line at a strict ten. I completely get why a few of the more learned local scribes were quite happy to label the album as his best ever, and it was yet another top-notch effort from the country’s foremost exponent of the blues and roots music.

Tauranga-Auckland pop-rock outfit The Leers returned in 2020 with an (album-length) EP called The Only Way Out Is In, which was recorded in Los Angeles in late 2019, before being given legs ahead of this year’s summer festival circuit. It revealed a softer, more chart-friendly (and crucially, festival-ready) sound, and I was pretty hooked on it for a few weeks late on in the year.

 Elsewhere, Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways got a lot of love, and the old fella keeps coming up with new ways to remain relevant. I’ve always been a little bit hot and cold on Dylan; I absolutely love a handful of Dylan albums, but given that he’s released dozens upon dozens of albums across a 60-year timeframe, loving a “handful” probably doesn’t equate to fully paid-up fandom. Rough and Rowdy Ways was chock full of Dylan signature moments, but mostly it appealed for the way its seemingly effortless stream-of-consciousness narrative kept finding raw nerves to twist and tweak.

Only slightly younger than Bob, the ever reliable and always relatable Paul Weller came up with yet another top set in the form of On Sunset. Weller is a living legend, there’s no two ways about it, and On Sunset contained little slices of all of the many styles that Weller has thrown at us across the past four decades (and more). Rock, soul, pastoral folk, plus rhythm and blues. A genuine hybrid. Weller shows no sign of slowing down whatsoever.

I’m a big alt-80s nut. That goes without saying. Yet I somehow managed to miss everything that Dutch darkwave/goth merchants Clan of Xymox released during what might be called their peak years. I put that right last year when I picked up a copy of the 2020 album Spider On The Wall, which turned out to be a revelation, and the album got a lot of my ear-time during the year. I’ll have a dig back through the band’s extensive back catalogue to see what else I’ve missed.

Kruder and Dorfmeister’s 1995 was one of my rare CD purchases during the year. Brand new, yet somewhat ancient in that it was a collection of tunes that only ever previously saw the light of day on an (unreleased/pre-release) white label some 25 years ago. Discarded and only recently rediscovered by a duo not exactly renowned for being especially prolific since their mid-to-late 90s heyday. Whilst it doesn’t in any way scale the heights of K&D’s best stuff like Sessions (1998) - not much does, after all - I reckon there’s enough on 1995 to satisfy fans, with snippets of that trademark plush/warm production aesthetic they’ll all be very familiar with. It just seemed so appropriate that I got this one on CD, via mail order.

 When I compiled the blog’s albums of 2019 list, I bemoaned the fact that Angel Olsen’s All Mirrors was a relatively late arrival on my radar and I perhaps hadn’t given it enough attention. Oddly enough, I got that chance in 2020 when a heavily reconfigured version was released under the guise of Whole New Mess. Effectively a stripped-back variation on tracks originally found on All Mirrors, I downloaded a copy of Whole New Mess and it once again sat there in my “must listen to” folder for far too long before I got to it. But I heard enough to know it was exceptional, and I’ll be returning to Olsen again soon. I think.

As ever, Polish dub artist Radikal Guru released his latest album, Beyond The Borders, near the end of the year. He’s got form for this sort of thing - by my reckoning this is the fourth time he’s released stuff right on the cusp of the calendar change. That hasn’t stopped three of those albums featuring on my year-end “best of” lists in the past. Not this time though. I picked up Beyond The Borders far too late to give it sufficient digestion time so it missed the cut. I may (or may not) give it a full review in the coming weeks. I’m a big fan of his stuff and I’ve listened to Beyond The Borders a fair bit already in 2021.

The Heaven and Earth Association album 4849:1 was perhaps the most pleasant surprise of 2020. In a year full of too many unpleasant surprises. I wrote a little bit about it here.

There were only a handful more album purchases, none of them especially memorable, and all reviewed on the blog; Moby’s All Visible Objects, Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush, and Pet Shop Boys’ Hotspot.

But wait … we’re not out of the 2020 woods quite just yet. I’ve got a bunch of compilations and reissues, plus a bumper set of EPs, that I haven’t ticked off yet.

Album Review: Pet Shop Boys - Hotspot (2020)

Ah, here we go again. Pet Shop Boys. Back with a new album to kick off a new year. The duo’s first for four years and their fourteenth overall. And naturally, Hotspot is the fourteenth successive Pet Shop Boys album with a one word title. Some things never change.

But then, if it’s change you’re after, you’d be best advised to avoid these guys. Pet Shop Boys don’t really do change. Which is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because they’re really very clever. Very witty. Very socially aware. Very politically aware. Very right on (man). And they make brilliant pop music. They love a party.

It’s a curse because they’re really very cheesy. Very camp. Very dated. Very much stuck in the same old groove. And they make awful pop music. I’d never play Pet Shop Boys at my party.

I have a love/hate relationship with Pet Shop Boys. Clearly. Always have, probably always will. Some things never change.

It’s always the same. Hotspot is the same. The same as all of the others. If you make it past the first listen and all the way through the second, the chances are they’ll keep you. It’s the hooks. They write great hooks. Designed to keep you.

I love them for that. I hate them for that.

Hotspot is the latest Pet Shop Boys album. It’s brilliant and it’s awful.

Highlights: ‘Happy People’, ‘I Don’t Wanna’, ‘Monkey Business’, ‘Burning the Heather’ ...

Lowlights: ‘Happy People’, ‘I Don’t Wanna’, ‘Monkey Business’, ‘Burning the Heather’, etc.

Album Review: Pet Shop Boys - Super (2016)

Damn you, Pet Shop Boys. With your superficial gloss and flash bombastic hooks. And damn my insomnia. With the annoying "and they called us the pop kids" refrain/chorus (from PSB's latest cheesy single) repeating itself mercilessly over and over in my head all throughout the night.

Where’s the humanity?

'The Pop Kids' is the first offering from Super, album number 13 from the Pet Shop Boys. Super also happens to be the duo's 13th consecutive studio album with a one-word title. As things stand, a couple of listens in - and I'm not sure I can bear another - it really doesn't appeal as being particularly super. Quite the opposite.

I know I'm not supposed to take this stuff too seriously. It's shameless pop and PSB haven't been relevant on any "serious" level for at least a quarter of a century. If they ever were at all. I'm not even really sure why I picked this one up. Seduced perhaps by the ever-so-slight return to form that was 2013's Electric, which at least contained the wonderful 'Fluorescent'. There's nothing quite so mitigating here, despite Stuart Price again being on production duties.

All the usual themes abound - nights out (not least on the aforementioned 'The Pop Kids'), relationships, reflections on a distant youth etc. But mostly this becomes an exercise in self-parody, and where you could once rely on PSB to throw up a requisite quota of clever irony or amusing lyrics, even that is no longer guaranteed. It's perhaps telling that the best thing on Super is the track which contains the least number of words or lyrics (and/or therefore vocals), a retro club banger called 'Inner Sanctum' - and even that's a gigantic slab of cheddar.

Sample lyric, on 'Burn':

… "all the stars are flashing high above the sea, and the party is on fire around you and me, we're gonna burn this disco down before the morning comes (repeat three times) .... it feels so good (repeat four times)" ...

Really? Yawn. All hooks aside, I'm not convinced it does actually feel all that good anymore … and did the world really need yet another song about burning down the disco? (cliché much?)

If Electric was indeed the return to form it was touted to be at the time, then it was surely only a temporary condition, and Super has the duo slipping back into a form of auto-pilot, back to type, with irrelevant lightweight fluff very much the order of the day.

In my review for Electric I wrote about my own deteriorating relationship with the duo’s music over the years, concluding that I was a very conditional and still only occasional “fan”, but Super takes things to a new low, and this time out I fear our differences have finally become irreconcilable.

 

Here's 'Inner Sanctum' ...
 

 

 

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.