Winner of the Choice Music Prize for the best Irish album of 2008, for Ritual. Well deserved, although the bookies should have been giving shorter odds than 6/1. See my Best of 2008: Year End November - featuring 'Phil Lynott'.
Richie Egan, aka Jape, also being the bass player for this fantastic Irish instrumental rock band. This is the double cd version of their first two albums, Thirtysixsongs (2001) and Cut Your Heart Off From Your Head (2002); a new release with new artwork (the above picture is the old version) is now on sale from Road Records for €9.99. If you liked Boxes, you'll probably like this (most of the songs are considerably heavier versions of the track above), and vice versa.
This is a conglomeration of different things, but mainly yet another post on this truly great Irish album. For me, Coping Mechanisms is Ireland's Spiderland, though in general it sounds quite different. This week is Slowcore Week on Drowned in Sound, as highlighted on do you compute. Watching the video on his blog of Codeine's 'Loss Leader' from the excellent The White Birch album, the particular way in which Steve Immerwahr sings "water" (and, I think, "watch her" as well) reminded me of that same word in Si Schroeder's 'Duck!' ("water/off a duck's back").
So, a flimsy enough connection. Si Schroeder doesn't really play slowcore (but then neither does David Grubbs, quite, anymore) or even shoegaze, both genres largely fixed in time as early-to-mid 1990s and probably deserving the prefix post- in their current configurations. Coping Mechanisms is an album of, at first, exceeding quietness and then consequently layered and shimmering loudness, all threaded together with a rich diversity of sounds - most of them electronic of some kind. Post-rock is the obvious but relatively uninformative classification for this beautiful, atmospheric - yet substantial - album.
Diverse electro sounds make their way through current indie rockers, post-rockers and shoegazers. Best example is Asobi Seksu's new album Hush which blends shoegaze, pop and electro to a hardcore punk back-beat (somewhat softened) to impressive effect. The latest Fight Like Apes b-side 'Telephone the Real Ham Jackson' spends some time in a tasty electro-shoegaze jam after its thick, bassy and synthy pop experimentation. King of the latter, Dan Deacon's upcoming album Bromst is a dense, familiar affair (read a first impression here and an unlikely negative review here) underpinned by modern big-band percussion. With lunchtime like a mid-summer's evening here in north-western Europe, spring has arrived with a shoegazing, electrifying soundtrack.
and three of Ireland's best post-rock type acts, Jape, The Jimmy Cake and Si Schroeder, are playing a benefit + celebration gig for the aforementioned Road Records:
'Tie Me Up With Jackets' is the first fresh song from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion to be released as a single, excepting 'Something Global' which was released as an EP before the album... to show people what they sounded like with producer John Goodmanson. While I still don't think any of the songs quite surpass those of the original EPs, 'Tie Me Up With Jackets' was a definite grower from the full-length. I like the sweet guitar (bass) intro, with its carefully placed synthy squawks, and the agreeably daft/weird/poignant(/scary) lyrics -
"Same goes for you, I like my meatballs in a dish
and I like other people too
as the saying goes, I'm pretty nift
but I'd love to see you in the nude with overcoats tied around your head
and Japanese children in your bed"
From its quiet, low twee-dark beginnings, the song shifts several gears into the "lovely noise" chorus, which was what grabbed my attention listening to the album at first. And the "cha cha cha" part is crucial in a live setting too.
The video outdoes the song, really, however, with its arty conception of Fight Like Apes, the cartoon pop band, and the band of technicolour sonic experimentation. Combining synched-up ink blots with rotoscope-like overpainting of film footage (a brief flash of the underlying image at about 0:25) along with the gratuitous, clichéd shots of an Irish-band-on-a-windswept-beach (North Strand/Dollymount?) it's an impressive work for the Irish scene. Just like Fight Like Apes themselves, then.
The b-side, 'Telephone the Real Ham Jackson' - possibly their most inpenetrably bizarre title yet - is at once a bit of an oddity and a natural progression from the style of the a-side. Starting off again with some great bass, it then develops into a weird, chanting Indian-like melody and briefly a Suicide lo-fi moment, before kicking back in with the stomping, poppy bass rhythm and ultimately tailing off into shoegazey-electronic noise.
Today I listened to this and the leak of Bromst for the first time, and the two - b-side and sophomore album - seem to go well together. At just over six minutes it's unusual for a Fight Like Apes song, and probably too much of a digression to get much play live, but it's in a similar vein to 'Lumpy Dough' which I found similarly engrossing on hearing it first. Maybe not as immediate or as catchy as the rest of their work, but certainly an interesting direction for them to go in as a powerful - more in artistic than commercial terms yet - pop band.
(if anyone wants a mediafire file of these rips, just ask I guess)
"built a nest from shards of Enter Shikari, Test Icicles and Le Tigre and then thrashed the shiny fuck out of it" Engaging metaphor, but Test Icicles? Enter Shikari? Two/three bands I vaguely remember hearing about, and not in a positive way, in 2007? (2006?)
"Dananananaykroyd gone new wave" Ditto. I dunno, Dananananaykroyd sounds pretty new wave in the first place to me. Like Kajagoogoo.
"comic-book geek-joy of early Ash" Okay, I like that one. Bonus points for mentioning an Irish band.
"FLA are the anti-emo..." If you say so, Emily Mackay (How ironic.)
"...a funny, clever slap of fun. Turn the other cheek, eh?" Quoting scripture is always a good conclusion.
Actually, apart from those quotes, the review's not too bad - if a little vacuous. The album itself is awesome, of course.
The new Dan Deacon album, Bromst (out March 24th on Carpark), one release I'm very much looking forward to this year, has been revealed to have this rather beautifully - and unconventionally - autumnal cover art. Given that Dan Deacon is part of a multimedia art collective, I guess it's no surprise that it looks good (see the cover to the previous album, Spiderman of the Rings, here). While speaking of the new album's "promise of a thematic and aesthetic shift", Stereogum sums it up rather nicely:
"The Bromst stuff offered hip-hop glints with scratched vocal-samples in the mix and deeper, more deliberate dance beats than Spiderman, while retaining some of the album's quirk and whimsy at its core. This album cover is very true to that."
It also reminds me of the secret Skins episode, but that's probably just me. And no, that's not a bad thing.
UPDATE (via Thrill Pier): A track - the last - from the album is now streaming on Pitchfork. It's very, very good. Key phrase from their description: "Deacon somehow manages to keep the densely packed midrange just this side of a headache"; but read (and listen) to the whole thing, it's great. I think it sounds oddly and momentarily quite like U2 at around the 5-minute mark, but apart from that it's a really interesting denser, slightly darker reprise of the Spiderman of the Rings sound.*
What is curious, though, is that I can't think of anything from 2008 that made a major impact on me - or appeared to have impacted on the wider critical consciousness - in the same way that Spiderman of the Rings (and to a lesser degree, Battles' Mirrored) did. I'm not one of those people who say 'this year was disappointing in music' because, well, it wasn't, and I don't see how you couldn't find some stimulating art somewhere in the world - but at the same time I don't recall meeting anything as interesting-sounding as Dan Deacon in 2008.
Potential candidates? Vampire Weekend or Fucked Up, to take two oddly connected groups: both interesting and accessible sounds, and although I react to the hype(/backlash) surrounding each band quite differently, I still don't see either as revolutionarily novel. I'm talking popular non-mainstream albums here, aka 'indie' - the stuff that gets picked up by Pitchfork and other, worthier publications, and not obscure post-hardcore/screamo/regional artists that actually made my Best of 2008 list ahead of, or nearby, the aforementioned Vampire Weekend.
Also, 'ahead' of Spiderman of the Rings in 2007 I placed Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and Dinosaur Jr.'s Crumble, not because I though either were particularly challenging and new-sounding, but just because I liked them so much. However, I still rate Dan Deacon as an artist who opened my ears and eyes that year to fantastically good music, as well as joyously action-packed live show. Perhaps it is too much to expect that every year, but why not be ambitious about living in a global network of music enjoyment and discussion?
Of course, I already have a few areas of interest in retrospectively exploring the 'new' music of 2008 via some of the Best of 2008 lists spread across the internet, particularly those featured in this earlier post. Fennesz's Black Sea, as noted in josephlovesit's Best of 2008: Pop Art list and in several other locations, seems an interesting, intriguing, out-of-my-usual-listening-orbit choice, but then again that's probably why I haven't actually listened to any of it yet. Dan Deacon also originally appeared to lie at a similar distance from my usual listening habits, but crucially it had - in 'Crystal Cat' at least - a certain punky aesthetic and accessibility.
On that last basis, I'd nominate So Cow's very accessible, very - if tangentially - punk rock, and very interesting album I'm Siding With My Captors - plus a great live show, even if only as a supporting act - as my Dan Deacon of 2008. Especially as Karl of Those Geese Were Stupified has written a brilliant review of it for the latest instalment of his year-end list (#7 of 10-7). A more novel or worthy album to fill the 2008-shaped mental gap in Dan Deacon-like indie music excitement, I can't think of.
* Now, I just need a translation for "8-bit euphoria" into the frantic, ska-happy sound of the So Cow album.
Shortly before Channel 6's Nightshift - Ireland's only halfway decent music video show on TV - got shut down by its evil corporate bosses in TV3, I saw for the first time ever the video for Sack's 'Laughter Lines', aka the song that Morrissey said "should be No. 1 forever". Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to see it again anytime soon, because it's not on YouTube - proving a) that good music television is not made completely redundant by the internet (it's not on Muzu.tv either, or (laugh) MTV Music) that b) most things by Sack, one of Ireland's best modern bands, are really hard to find.
So here is Sack's set from (Irish public broadcaster) RTE's Other Voices series in 2006, partially as a two fingers up to TV3 and an illustration of where the license fee actually goes (as opposed to Green Party, government minister for communications, Eamon Ryan's less than fantastic performance in explaining the virtues of public broadcasting against Vincent Browne's disingenuous block-headedness) and also because it's a very good live performance. In fact, it's probably my favourite performance of the several Other Voices series, even ahead of Fight Like Apes.
Self-described as "Frank Sinatra fronting the Pixies", Sack actually fits that description quite well. Crooning vocals revolving around a subtle electro-poppy, shoegaze-y indie sound and, yes, a certain Morrissey/Smiths quality. I wasn't very familiar with the band before seeing their Other Voices performance. 'Sugar Free' starts it off slow and gentle, not even touching the keyboard until three minutes in, and then only to accentuate the gradual curve of the song. 'Tag', by contrast, opens even quieter, yet stronger, with Martin McCann's vocal hook "I've spent this evening, watching you leaving", and from thereon in the song soars ever more upwards. Sack presents a certain sort of combined sonic and visual scenery in their carefully crafted pop. In the background, there is the beautiful musical textures created by the band; and in the foreground, the dramatic gestures of the frontman in his snazzy Suggs-style Fred Perry shirt.
At the time, I was only just getting into keyboards and pop music in general as valid means of artistic expression, something that also went along with discovering Bob Mould's post-Husker Du band Sugar and their first album Copper Blue. It may be an odd association, but it's not one without parallels. Both Mould and McCann are active as DJs in the gay club scene - and both are balding, stocky 30- to 40-something year old men - but what really interests me is the music here and the use of keyboard melodies in guitar-based indie or 'alt-rock' music. There's something about Sack that replicates the expressiveness of Sugar or later Husker Du, when they hit something sweetly poppy yet still obviously alternative.
In the second part, 'Latter Day Saints' is an upbeat, driving, melodic song with a groovy, slightly jazzy - in the showtune kind of way - chorus, "I'm trying hard to be a latter-day saint". The longer, more melancholy 'Pressures of Modern Life' combines instrumental atmosphere - vibrato guitar and keyboard blips and bloops - with the same kind of gentle melody and shoegaze-y drive: "suicide in a college town (ooh-ooh-oooh)". It's an almost defiantly pop sort of song, in its ending lines followed by the last, sugary riffs - "they got him, those demons/they repossessed his soul".
Failing the Rorschach Test: The Best Albums of 2008: from #30 to #21; #20; #19 ("and then eventually to #1). Example - "Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life: There was a lot of good hardcore music released this year. This wasn't even in my top ten." Plenty of hardcore/punk/screamo/post-rock/crescendo-core...
Best Combined Post-Mcluskyite Inclusions in a List:
Gimme Tinnitus - Top 51 Downloadables of 2008 including Future of the Left, 'Adeadmanalwayssmellsgood' - "Award: Best awesomeness of the year" and Shooting At Unarmed Men, 'Boredom Is The Feeling That Everything Is A Waste Of Time' - "Award: Best song that took for fucking ever to be released in the states of the year".
Best/Most Inappropriate Description of Ham Sandwich - Carry The Meek:
Egoeccentric, Evil Bob's Best of 2008: "6. ...Ham Sandwich's first album mixes perfectly the female vocals of surprise preggers Niamh Farrell and fucking mentaller Podge McNamee to make some great pop-rock tunes. Great stuff all round."
(and thus) The Two Best Albums Of The Year That Almost Nobody's Heard (Yet):
This is the latest release from the Alan Vega 70th Birthday Limited Edition EP Series from BLAST First (petite), the same as Bruce Springsteen's cover of 'Dream Baby Dream'. This one won't get as much attention - that post of mine got picked up by Metafilter - but if anything, Lydia Lunch, from the original No-Wave movement, is best placed to cover probably Suicide's most aggressive song:
"Lydia Lunch.
Known to Rev & Vega as the Baby Faced Killer who they so kindly chaperoned through that lost downtown night world crucible from where both their futuristic, and highly influential, black arts would be born.
Artistic Kings & Queens from the dumpster side of town.
Lydia gets all wet and dirty with thought of what young Frankie Teardrop might do to her, over a twisted frug of an electronic beat-nicked soundscape by David Knight."
Yeah, if you read that last part - best not play this in the streets, it might frighten the horses. The transition from male to female vocals - equally unconventional in the original and cover, and both intensely carnal in their own ways - and the more 21st-century sounding backing track makes this a really good updated version of 'Frankie Teardrop'.
Of course, the original is pretty untouchable, and the 'Frankie Teardrop, the Detective vs. The Space Alien' extended demo version which, while interesting enough in itself, is still a far cry echoey scream from the finished version we all know and fear:
"...We're all Frankies
We're all lying in hell"
The cover image is very real: an X-ray from a knife attack in November 2007 on a 16-year old boy in London (he survived) that was released to the press by the Metropolitan Police.
7. Cold War Kids - 'Every Valley Is Not A Lake' - 3:34
8. The Gaslight Anthem - 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' - 3:34
9. Chequerboard - 'Toy Winds' - 3:53
10. So Cow - 'Shackleton' - 3:54
11. Foals - 'Olympic Airways' - 4:19
12. Envy - 'Conclusion of Existence' - 5:08
13. Fight Like Apes - 'Snore Bore Whore' - 5:20
Welcome to the doppelganger of Zeitgeist II - part two, the lower half of Hardcore for Nerd's top dozen (plus one) albums of 2008. These are the - at least -'very good' records; yet, although perhaps not reaching the excellence of the top six, they have many of their own moments of the sublime.
I've created a different coloured cassette in part because says-it doesn't have a 'side 2', but also because there's a sort of yin-yang division between the two mixes. Pt. 1 was the (comparatively) hard-rocking, propulsive and at times dissonantly erupting side; Pt. 2 is groovier and more expansive, though, at times, equally sonically dissolute - and on this basis, it has the festive subtitle 'Jingle Bells and Snow Drifts'.
Pt. 1 was almost exclusively guitar rock; Pt. 2 (excepting, mostly, the jazzy rhythms of Cold War Kids or the Springsteen-esque pop of The Gaslight Anthem) shades towards electronic sounds. Given those admittedly not completely sharp contrasts, there is also another important element of the yin-yang separation: the containment within each part of its opposite - the little oppositely-coloured dots in the tradtional ying-yang symbol. So, while on the one hand the first mix had the ambient sounds bleeding into Grails 'Natural Man', on the other this mix features the explosive, dissonant guitar freakout of So Cow's 'Shackleton'.
1. Cold War Kids, 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' from Loyalty to Loyalty
(Category: Alt-Americana (Jazz-Blues subcategory) Album of the Year - Runners Up, The Black Keys - Attack and Release)
"every sermon is not the gospel, babe,
let me put it another way, every valley is not a lake"
From Robbers and Cowards to Loyalty to Loyalty there is a huge improvement, but also a strong strain of familiarity. Cold War Kids have made a better album with better songs all round, but their sound - piano-laden hooks, trilling guitar, bluesy rhythms and disjointed construction - is still the same. Particularly, if you wanted singer Nathan Willett to dial down his wassailing, you'll be disappointed. For me, it's an essential part of the band: that edge of sonic anarchy and extra touch of expressiveness. In part, he's a guy channelling female blues singers, or channelling Jeff Buckley channelling female blues singers (and no, he's nowhere near as melodious... but it works better this, the dissonnant, way). 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' isn't the strongest example of that factor, but insofar as it does display the vocal experimentations of Loyalty to Loyalty, it blends well with the expressionist lyrics and jangly blues-pop to make a very fine song.
2. The Gaslight Anthem, 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' from The '59 Sound
(Category: Alt-Americana (Springsteen subcategory) Record of the Year - Runners Up, Bruce Springsteen - 'Dream Baby Dream', The Constantines - Kensington Heights)
"It took me a spin or two to get used to the pop-punk polish and relentlessly anthemic nature of The '59 Sound, but I kept returning because the songs are so catchy—like Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. as recorded by The Bouncing Souls"
I've been following Noel Murray's 'Popless' column over at the AV Club throughout 2008, and at times intrigued, inspired, baffled and amused by his alphabetical trawl through modern popular music. Plus, of course, finding wonderfully apt descriptions of artists I myself know quite well - of which this is one. The song he chose, incidentally, was 'Miles Davis and the Cool' which I used for the Year End November selection. In the end of the column, furthermore, it seems that other albums that Noel Murray was listening to this year included Human Bell and Future of the Left. A man of taste.
'The Patient Ferris Wheel' perhaps shows up the Bouncing Souls, Jerseyite punk-pop influence even more. If the Gaslight Anthem have their limitations, then the only really pertinent one is that The '59 Sound is a surrogate for the successor to 2006's The Gold Record by the Bouncing Souls, or Anchors Aweigh (more refined in its Springsteen-ism) or even (anthemic pop-punk masterpiece) How I Spent My Summer Vacation. For the moment, however, there's
"standing in the Jersey rain
thinking about what an old man said
maybe I should call me an ambulance
I've never felt so strange
standing in the pounding rain..."
3. Chequerboard, 'Toy Winds' from Penny Black
(Category: Electronic Album of the Year - Runners Up, Rarely Seen Above Ground - Organic Sampler, Matmos - Supreme Balloon)
It's been a pleasure to come back to this album again after marking it up for consideration in April. Even better, it seems to be cropping up quite frequently in comment submissions for Nialler9's Irish Albums and Songs Poll 2008. The winner two years ago was Si Schroeder's Coping Mechanisms, which I've discussed on this blog before, and of which there are certain echoes in Penny Black. 'Toy Winds' is the concluding track, which showcases perfectly the two elements of Chequerboard's sound: classical guitar lilts and glitchy electronic beats. Atmospheric music made extraordinarily visual (the creator, John Lambert, is a professional graphic artist as well) with the stunning artwork, and the conflictingly nostalgic sense of wistful Victoriana put to dubstep, in a loose sense, and meticulously crafted electronic sounds in general.
4. So Cow, 'Shackleton' from I'm Siding With My Captors
(Category: Irish Release of the Year Pt. 2 - Runners Up, Bats - Cruel Sea Scientist, Halves - Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy, Heathers - Here, Not There)
It's a bit disappointing, now, to hear So Cow backed with a drum machine - after seeing the current rhythm section in action, live - but it works, or is at least excused, here in I'm Siding With My Captors' mini-epic love song 'Shackleton' and its journey from minimum to max. It has its own "personification, exposition and tragic irony" all within its opening three, or even two, minutes: as the songwriter-within-a-song drafts his masterpiece, only to strip it all back down again, to the beat of a tinny drum machine and what sounds like a miniature organ; and haaving "paid the cellist for his time", all that's left is a heartful plea "one day I'll write the song that you require, and until then lalala [guitar noise]". Repeat, and close. Beautiful.
5. Foals, 'Olympic Airways' from Antidotes
(Category: Indie Album of the Year pt. 2 - Runners Up, Crystal Castles who were on Skins too)
A further stretch of finely crafted indie electronica, Foals 'Olympic Airways' is among at least a handful of other brilliantly constructed songs from Antidotes, the album that immediately separated Foals from being just another angular post-punk band, that happened to be on Skins playing one of their (now) duller tracks, 'Hummer', and showed them to be something altogether more interesting. After all, Radiohead's 'Nude' was used as almost the entire basis for the second season trailer of Skins - which was, televisually, also very interesting - but no-one goes around calling them 'Skinscore'. The breathy tension, the ably created mood of experimentation, and the obvious catchiness, make this track out to be what Q and not U's Power could have been had it taken another, equally valid direction. There's a certain post-rockiness to the sparse guitar lines, and the slightly over-predictable crescendo, but overall they are superficial elements to the underlying stylistic substance - nebulous, but affecting -of the track.
6. Envy, 'Conclusion of Existence' from Envy/Jesu (Split EP)
(Category: Electronic Release of the Year Pt. 2)
Like Noel Murray's brief summation of The Gaslight Anthem above, this rather lengthier discussion of the Envy/Jesu split on sputnikmusic reflects a lot of my own thoughts on this record (I only have it in mp3 form at the moment, because it has only been released in Japan for most of the year, but I have the white vinyl on order). I'm far more of an Envy fan than a Jesu, but I like some of the work from the latter (more so than from Envy's other split partners this year, Thursday) and combination makes even more sense when one considers the direction Envy has been heading ever since A Dead Sinking Story. The most Jesu-like, electronic track, 'Conclusion of Existence' is barely screamo in any sense, but it's still very strongly Envy. Glitchy electronic beats, again, take up half the song before exploding (at 2:44) into unexpected strings and, in general, the sort of chaotic beauty, though now somewhat more restrained and subtler, that made Envy so surprising in the first place.
7. Fight Like Apes, 'Snore Bore Whore' from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion
(Category: Irish Album of the Year Mostly Re-recorded So It Doesn't Count (As Much) But Still Really, Really Good)
And finally, the album I couldn't leave out of the mixtape, and which really is in its on way one of the best of the year - the Fight Like Apes full-length debut, and the album closer 'Snore Bore Whore' (originally, of course, the closer to the 'Do You Karate?'/David Carradine Is a Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch EP). One half hushed melody synth ditty, one half total wall-of-sound shoegaze synth epic; one complete miracle of a song. Do, if you're a convert, watch the ecclesiastical performance from Other Voices (recorded partly in St James' church, Dingle, Co. Kerry; it's also the original composition - as it does, technically, sound better on the album) below:
These are the two 7" single releases featuring the re-recorded tracks from Fight Like Apes first EP, How Am I Supposed To Kill You When You Have All The Guns?, released along with the debut album, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion. To be honest, the re-recorded versions (produced by John Goodmanson, who claims to "make records sound good by default") are pretty faithful to the originals, although maybe that's because I'm well used to them by now. The originals, particularly 'Lend Me Your Face', were what got me into the band in the first place, via the radio.
On the flip sides are unreleased instrumental track, 'Corey Pop' and the recorded version of their live stalwart, and Mclusky cover, 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues'. The first b-side is actually very good, in a catchy synth ditty kind of way. I'm pretty sure I remember it being played during one of their sets towards the end of last year or earlier this year, and it possibly feeds into the structure of some of the new songs on the album.
'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues' I have, of course, a completely biased attitude towards. I was a Mclusky fan before I was a Fight Like Apes fan, and I'm still a fan of both, plus Future of the Left and Shooting at Unarmed Men (album of the year!). Honestly, I think it's more than equal to the original (which has always been, and will continue to be, utterly awesome). Unfortunately some folks over at the Future of the Left message boards are very unhappy with the cover - and also with the fact that the band were touring with the Ting Tings. I mean, they're not the most profound indie group ever (the Ting Tings, that is, not Fight Like Apes.... they're way deep in a superficial, b-movie kind of way) but there are plenty worse to be listening to so, sheesh, way to be elitist. The criticism of 'no bass' is pretty stupid, too.
Anyway, I'm quite excited to see Future of the Left upstairs at Whelans on November 14th. They're flogging a live album on the tour, and their live show was pretty impressive the last time round, even if I'm not a fan of all the parts of their music.
The title comes indirectly from a line in the Ramones song 'Chinese Rock', "all my best things are in hock" from End of the Century.
This mixtape comes from a selection of songs that have grabbed my attention in the last while, some on albums and in contexts where you'd expect a pop hook, and some that are more unexpected. The first two are from records (and artists) that are new to the blog, the latest releases from Fucked Up and Mogwai. The next two tracks from Grails and Envy have been mentioned, in some detail, before; and the particular records have both been superseded, though not necessarily surpassed, by newer releases. The final song - an obvious choice from an Irish perspective - has been knocking around for quite a few months now, with an EP/single and an album release behind it, plus a lot of local alternative radio play.
It took a couple of specific recommendations and a few weeks of procrastination before I went and checked out Fucked Up's latest album. I'm not too familiar with the band - who played Dublin a few weeks ago without my attendance - but I've always been vaguely aware of their experimental punk/hardcore aims. The Chemistry of Common Life is a good punk albums with plenty interesting flourishes, and although the singer's voice keeps reminding me of the Dropkick Murphys and other traditional hardcore bands that I stopped listening to years ago, it does seem like quality stuff. 'No Epiphany' is the track featured on the A.V. Club review (Grade: A), and the choice is clear to me as it was one of the songs in particular that caught my attention while walking around with this album. A stretching, soaring guitar hook and female backing vocals that extend quite naturally from a relatively orthodox melodic hardcore song, 'No Epiphany' is accessible and evocative. Experimental maybe, but there is a Bad Religion song of almost the same name, and essentially the same subject matter, that is just as good to listen to...
The new Mogwai album was introduced with this song as a taster, and as a non-Mogwai fan it was enough to get me interested or even excited about its release. Well, I have nothing in particular against the band, but an experimentation with their early work - yes, Young Team - left me cold. 'The Sun Smells Too Loud', on the other hand, is fascinating. It's a pop hook for the rest of the album that isn't in fact too similar to it, but it stands up on its own as well. There's that understated riff that lulls it way through all the song, and a constellation of other melodies and rhythms occuring alongside it. This is instrumental post-rock as it should be - exciting.
I've been banging on about this song for a while, and for that I make no apologies. 'Take Refuge' is Grails at their monumental, subtly crafted best. Every moment of this song swings, and its progression through climb-up, crescendo, climb-down, "Enrico Morriconi-esque" interlude, and reprise is a beautiful arc of musical composition. At its centre is a trademark Eastern/surf-rock riff, shaped and layered to perfection - though the Grails trademark has never been particulary static. The latest album (expect another post on it soon) Doomsdayer's Holiday continues with the surf-rock style, bearing down on it with even more spaghetti Easternness, but with a tighter and more focused sound overall than that of Burning Off Impurities.
Envy's split with Jesu is probably the more interesting piece of work of the two that they have produced this year, not least because the songs they have paired with Jesu have been particularly diverse. 'Life Caught In The Rain' is the poppiest song the band have ever written, but it's mostly an accent that the band applies to the ordinary post-rock structure of their songs. The unlikely hook comes from a guitar riff inserted in the space of the scream-your-head-off crescendo, but instead of deadening the song it gives it a new sense of energy and emphasises the melodic vibrancy of Envy's sound. Nothing I've heard this year, on their split with Jesu or with Thursday (the jury's still out on the whole idea of that one...), is going to fully satisfy the traditionalists amongst the Envy fans, but they're all still great songs.
"Hooks are for wimps/and choruses are for gays"
'Something Global' ("/...something real") is the rocking lead single from the Fight Like Apes debut album, and it really had to be included here for its apt subject matter, and because it's rather obviously meant to be a catchy pop song - of sorts. At one stage I had the full post-modern irony of the lyrics and the song structure all worked out but I've forgotten it now, so all I'll say is that it makes for a good encore.
Bruce Springsteen, 'Dream Baby Dream' - cover recorded live for the Devils and Dust solo tour, 2005, and originally released on Suicide - Suicide, 1980. (Long file, give it time to load)
Dream Baby Dream 10" (art/cover photograph - 'Stars' by Edward Mapplethorpe, 1994)
Nebraska LP (second-hand copy)
"To mark Alan Vega's 70th birthday, blastfirstpetite is releasing monthly limited-edition 10-inch vinyl singles featuring versions of Suicide songs, starting this month with Bruce Springsteen's cover of Dream Baby Dream.
Snapshot:
Who are Suicide? Marty Rev and Alan Vega - two Jewish New Yorkers who founded the band after they met in 1971. Vega says: "We were angry and we wanted to wake people up"
Why are they important? Suicide had a punk-style attitude and violent edge to their music that predated the Sex Pistols by several years. They invented synthesiser rock, paving the way for a host of '80s and '90s electro-pop bands
Who have they influenced? Who haven't they influenced? Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, New Order and Pet Shop Boys would all probably never have existed without Suicide. U2, REM, Radiohead, and even Bruce Springsteen claim them as heroes...
...Vega and Rev became part of a music New York scene densely populated with Jews, including Joey Ramone, Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group, Richard Hell of the Voidoids and Chris Stein of Blondie.
Vega even jokingly refers to the legendary club CBGBs where all those bands played as "one big synagogue".
As Suicide, they created a new type of electronic rock'n'roll - they were a sci-fi Sex Pistols, before the Pistols existed. The problem was, nobody knew what to make of them or their guitar-, bass- and drums-free line-up. In fact, they were the prototype synth-duo, the model for Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys and the rest, with the lugubrious keyboardist and gregarious frontman.
"If we were the future, it was a future that nobody wanted," admits Rev, who was once approached by the Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren to form a boy-girl outfit with Blondie's Debbie Harry. "There was nothing about us that was familiar."
Rev is as thoughtful as Suicide's music is visceral. Of his religious beliefs, he says: "I can't box myself into any one system of practice or ritualised thought for very long." And he describes his upbringing as "social-oriented humanitarianism; non-religious bordering on agnostic". He admits, however, that he later "studied in-depth ancient Hebrew texts for a period of years". He concedes that he "can't imagine living in a world where there isn't a God". He admires non-believers but cannot quite make that leap himself. "Having that sense of awe about the universe, which is what religion is to me, I wonder how they can live without that.
It's like love - it doesn't have to be real or true, but to live without it... It's hard enough to get up in the morning as it is."
Vega is similarly ambivalent. He alludes to the "miraculous" nature of his career with Suicide and fateful meeting with Rev, begging the question - does he believe in a higher power?
"I distrust the name ‘God' but, yes, I do believe in a higher power," he says. He adds that he shares the rationalist stance of Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish philosopher and "pantheist theologian". "God is in all of us," he says, before deciding: "There is an immense power. There has to be."
After years of changing his back-story, telling journalists his mother was Catholic, he is finally proud of his roots. "I made that up to fuel the myth, because really, my whole life has been a myth," he says. Now he can come clean. "It's funny, but I'll never stop feeling Jewish, no matter how much I might talk my way out of it.
I'm very proud to be part of this tradition. It's brought me a lot of knowledge."
He is equally proud of Suicide and flattered by the attention of musician-fans - artists as varied as Springsteen, Nick Cave, Primal Scream and Julian Cope are lined up to release cover versions of Suicide classics every month from now until 2010. Even Amy Winehouse is apparently keen to get involved.
"There's an authenticity to our music," he considers. "It's country 'n' eastern music, or New York City blues. I sometimes call it ‘Two Jews' Blues'. Really, though, we're our own category. People always say: ‘You're too much in the future.' And I tell them: ‘No, you're too much in the past.'"
Blast first (petite) is a contemporary reincarnation of Blast First, a sublabel of Mute Records founded in 1985 by Paul Smith, which released records by Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Suicide and many more. The name came from the journal of the Vorticist modern art movement, BLAST, published in 1914 for the first of only two issues, but containing the Vorticist manifesto and considered a seminal text of 20th century Modernism.
The Alan Vega 70th Birthday Limited Edition EP series continues monthly (and when the vinyl sells out, as the Springsteen is supposed to have, you can buy it as a download from the site) with a whole bunch of different artists - amongst others, The Horrors and 'Shadazz' this month, Lydia Lunch and 'Frankie Teardrop' in November, Sunn0)))/Pansonic with 'Che' in January, and Grinderman, Liars, Spiritualised and Gavin Friday listed for later, as yet unnamed, versions.
If you haven't heard Suicide before, you're seriously missing out. It's been years since I first heard the first self-titled album from 1977, and then the more recent works including 2002's American Supreme (previous post on it here) and 1992's Why Be Blue?, but I have found few bands as novel and engaging. Suicide's second album, also self-titled, was released a couple of years after the first and doesn't sound a huge lot different, though it's not just a straight repetition either. To be honest, I don't like it as much as either the first self-titled or American Supreme, although it has got some undeniably great pop songs on it, of which 'Dream Baby Dream' is just one.
Their minimalism and their subversion of pop music (though of course from Suicide's point of view, it was the rest of the world which - before and after punk - had degraded the core of rock and roll, not them) don't quite seem like the qualities which would have attracted Bruce Springsteen, the Boss of extragavant, if soulful, rock and roll. However, they did, and he is obviously still their one of their biggest, and best-known, fans. (In a similar fashion, Joan Jett is a big fan of Lungfish.)
This fandom is most evident on Springsteen's most stripped-back, bleakest album, Nebraska. It was recorded as, and eventually released from, a four-track cassete tape demo - after finding that studio recordings with the E Street Band failed to capture the eerie, sharply emotional sound of the solo demo recordings. While the whole album is consequently minimalist by comparison with his other works (excepting other stripped-down, folk-influenced albums The Ghost of Tom Joad and the recent Devils and Dust), 'State Trooper' forms a particular homage to the sound of Suicide. In a previous post on this album, I wrote:
"I've seen this album described, half-jokingly, as Springsteen's emo record. If you've already heard Nebraska, you might just understand that. Emo like Moss Icon at their most repetitively circular and dirge-like, perhaps, or Hoover in one of their most pyschologically anguished ultra-quiet build-ups. You see, Bruce brings a lot of emotion to this recording, but it's not the heart-on-sleeve, slightly melancholy exuberance of Born to Run - instead, it's a catalogue of despair and brooding, incipient sadness. Often, it's not merely 'eerily' quiet, it's goddamn scarily quiet.
In fact, there's a different niche of punk that this album takes its influence: Suicide. Springsteen was a big fan of the no-wave New York minimalist duo, and presumably still is, since they continue to put out some very good stuff. Not only is their a sonic affinity audible in the sparse, empty arrangement of the album as whole, but one song - 'State Trooper' - is a direct homage to classic '77 Suicide. The same hollowed-out motorycle-engine beats, the same tense vocal delivery. It's not quite as terrifying as 'Frankie Teardrop', but it comes close."
Nebraska - as with most if not all Springsteen - is pure Americana, but all the more so for its unorthodox references to Suicide's style of proto-, electro- and post-punk. It's real American-dream-gone-wrong stuff, expressed in the language and features of that great society, and - just as Suicide took the idea of rock and roll and reconstructed it in a new, simultaneously harsh and beautiful mechanical medium - Nebraska survives on the pre-existence of its folk paradigm, mediated through Springsteen's then rapidly establishing style.
'Atlantic City', although also one of my favourites from the album, is included above mostly just to show what is probably only the most rocking song on the album, and so as an indication of just how suppressed the energy is on Nebraska. In fact, the opening title track is heartbreaking, evoking the coldness and gloom of the cover picture and the 'badlands' of the northern Midwest (though typically the other two tracks here revert to talking about Jersey). 'Johnny 99' and 'Highway Patrolman', like 'State Trooper', swing between inert sadness and active tension; and while 'Open All Night' injects some anomalous energy with the use of an electric rather than acoustic guitar, 'Used Cars', 'My Fathers House' and 'Mansion on the Hill' are all steeped in melancholy. Album closer 'Reason to Believe' at least offers somewhat of a rousing conclusion:
"at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe"
The wisdom of dead Germans
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First as tragedy, then as farce? There's nothing to be found in Victorian
ideologies.
Are there self-identified "farces" I should view that meet the criter...
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Hey! I entered a tee shirt for submission at Threadless.
If you like it, please take a moment and click the above image to go vote.
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If it wins...
Murder By Death/O'Death Split 7"
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"Murder By Death are releasing the first of 7 records in a 7" series where
they trade covering songs with other bands they know. The second 7" will
featu...
