The (very) Best of 2008 Pt. 1

Hardcore For Nerds: The Best of 2008 Mixtape, Part 1

Total: 29.9 mins

(Download)

1. Shooting at Unarmed Men - '------------' ('Peristalsis') - 3:38

2. Ham Sandwich - 'click... click... BOOM!!!' - 3:21

3. ...Who Calls So Loud - 'What I Learned in the C.O.U.M.' - 9:38

4. Vampire Weekend - 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' - 4:03

5. Grails - 'The Natural Man' - 4:41

6. Human Bell - 'Ephaphatha (Be Opened)' - 4:40

Hello and welcome to the successor to Hardcore for Nerd's first end of year mix, Zeitgeist: The Mixtape (2007). These are the top six records from the provisional best of 2008 list in the last post. Each one is assigned to a category, some of which categories repeat themselves here or in the other half of the top 12, and some of which are slightly frivolous.

'Runners Up' for each category are included to give some depth to the list, and because it is rather early and I'm working from a provisional end cut, I've included a few extra releases I just discovered from Zen and the Art of Face Punching's new 'Stuff To Get Into' which lays out several excellent punk/hardcore records that had passed me by.

I've discussed all of these records at length in previous posts, so rather than repeating myself as to the descriptions, explanations, exhortations and justifications relating to the albums as a whole I will stick to the particular track at hand. (None of which, by the way, have been repeated from previous mixes) This carefully selected mix, which comes in at just under thirty minutes in length and thus one half of a cassette tape, has - if I do say so myself - a very good flow and sense of coherence, despite its variety of sounds and styles. So do enjoy the second part of the Zeitgeist series, from Hardcore for Nerds...

1. Shooting at Unarmed Men, 'Peristalsis' from Triptych.

(Category: Album of the Year Pt. 1; Contemporary Punk Rock Album of the Year - Runners Up, Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life, Failures - s/t, and (if you're in the US) Future of the Left - Curses)

"Your Dear John letter/had grammatical errors/

and failed to mention that you're a cunt

Your Dear John letter/had grammatical errors/

and your spelling was atrocious"

And so begins the third and final disc of Triptych. A heavy, raging song lyrically resonant of Mclusky ('Gareth Brown Says' from Mclusky Do Dallas - "all your friends are cunts/your mother is a ball point pen thief" - though the swearing is mostly a cultural British thing, and not evidence [necessarily] that all Welshmen are misogynists) but still several steps removed musically. As with the rest of the album, it's avant-garde, ironic hardcore; a faster, punker version of Young Widows. And the closing couplet to the song? "It's called peristalsis/ ...fuck off!"

2. Ham Sandwich, 'click... click... BOOM!!!' from Carry the Meek.

(Category: Album of the Year Pt. 2; Irish Album of the Year Pt. 1 - Runners Up, Fight Like Apes - Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion, Jape - Ritual)

It's difficult to follow up the preceding fury without it being something less harsh, but here's the track with the hardest edge from Carry the Meek, anyway. The review in the end-of-year roundup of State wrote of the album, which came in at 24 of 50, that it arrived as fully-formed singles collection. All the songs are stand-out tracks, which is a prime reason for why I think this album is so good. 'click... click.. BOOM!!!' combines in stereo sound deep bass, crushing distortion and a lighter melody, female and male vocals, into a great dynamic pop song. Three justified guitars and great songwriting make for punk-pop, pop-rock, whatever, with real weight.

3. ...Who Calls So Loud, 'What I Learned in C.O.U.M.' from ...Who Calls So Loud.

(Category: 'Real' Screamo Record of the Year - Runners Up, Sinaloa - Oceans and Islands, Loma Prieta - Last City, Suis La Lune - Heir, La Quiete - s/t 7")

A nine-and-a-half minute long screamo song? Yep, that's what defines one of the greatest releases of the year. The true sound of screamo - blurred with some very pedantic and unnecessary descriptions, but having very recognisable and salient features - has been around, and evolving at a reasonable pace, for at least a decade at this stage. Building on the epic mode of preceding band Funeral Diner, ...Who Calls So Loud's debut album is a roller-coaster ride of barely-restrained emotion and technical proficiency, of which 'What I Learned in the C.O.U.M.' is the effective apex, as well as possibly the greatest excesss. As noted just above, there are numerous good screamo releases this year, from across the US and Europe, but this is still my definite favourite. Previously I've oscillated between the US vein of hardcore and 'Euro screamo', searching for the right balance between emotion, melody, speed and technical skill. This year, I think I've found it.

4. Vampire Weekend, 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' from Vampire Weekend.

(Category: Indie Album of the Year Pt. 1 - Runners Up, whatever else the cool kids are listening to these days - s/t)

And how to segue between screamo and Vampire Weekend? It's a difficult task, and one I've already attempted; but in this case, I chose a particularly appropriate, somewhat atypical track from everyone's favourite over-hyped indie debut. Seguing from the closing ambient streetsounds of ...Who Calls So Loud', it's the opening, solo rhythm of Vampire Weekend's last song on their album. 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' has a softer, looser feel to it than the other tracks, almost as if it's been produced differently from the rest of the album (it hasn't, as far as I know). Lyrically and compositionally, it is in reality just as archly indie - itself a perfectly acceptable quality - as the rest of Vampire Weekend, but to me it gives a certain warm feeling of, say, a Clash record. If you've seen singer Ezra Koenig's very competent appearance as guest vocalist for Fucked Up, you'll know there is an extra dimension to this band. But even the more obvious ones are more than remarkable enough.

5. Grails, 'The Natural Man' from Doomsdayer's Holiday.

(Category: Post-Rock/[un]Conventional Style Album of the Year - Runners Up, Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling, God Is An Astronaut - s/t, The Jimmy Cake - Spectre and Crown)

For this band I have, as in the case of the previous mix, eschewed the typically heavier, more forthright songs from the album, such as 'Reincarnation Blues' and 'Predestination Blues', despite the fact that, on the surface, they are probably closer to the album's intended 'sound' overall. And right from the start, 'Doomsdayer's Holiday' makes it clear that Grails are in take-no-prisoners post-rock mode; ramping it up exponentially from equivalent rockers like 'Silk Rd.' from 2007's Burning Off Impurities. Likewise, I saw an Irish commenter named Void describe the album as "giving post-rock a much-need Gothic metal kick up the arse" which strikes me as an excellent description for Doomsdayer's Holiday. Still, it is in the spaces between noises that I have learned to enjoy Grails - a sort of Zen-like self-abnegation, anticipating the heaviest of riffs in the most minimal of sounds, and finally creating the 'post' somewhat apart from the 'rock', while also merging them together in an extraordinary level of cultural complexity. There's no spoon, either.

6. Human Bell, 'Ephaphatha (Be Opened)' from Human Bell.

(Category: Post-Rock/Post-Hardcore Variation Album of the Year - Runners Up, Zomes - s/t, Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness, Young Widows - Old Wounds)

With this album I've taken the opposite approach to Grails, and selected the shortest, brashest track from Human Bell's exquisitely crafted LP of minimalist, instrumental post-rock, a coming together of Andy Heumann (Arboretuem) and Nathan Bell (Lungfish). 'Hanging from the Rafters', from the original mix in April, is probably more representative of the full record. Here, the rhythmic composition of guitars, which defines the whole album, is here swathed in simultaneously ethereal and abrasive trumpet sounds. For fans of the Boom or Abilene - you'll like this.

The Wire: Season 5 - tonight!

"Omar Little is the gay stick-up man who robs drug dealers for a living on The Wire..." (The Guardian Guide, July 19-25)

Monday 28th July, TG4 10.30 p.m.

It's finally here on terrestrial TV, the fifth and final series of the superb US crime drama. TG4 is the Irish language national broadcast channel, who showed the previous four series at various times in the graveyard schedule. There's nothing Irish about the Wire (except for Aiden Gillen - Carcetti - and a few other things to be mentioned below) and it's not subtitled into Irish (though that might help... sometimes). In fact, TG4 do a good line in quality US television - Cold Case, Without A Trace, a weekly Western, and a while ago now, the equally cult (and fantastic) show Carnivale.

Obviously this season of The Wire has been on HBO already in the States, and it started in the UK on cable channel FX last week, hence the Guardian TV guide. So I've had to wait a little while, which meant I wasn't able to follow the coverage in the AV Club or elsewhere. Not to fear, because the Irish Times music writer and Phantom FM DJ, Jim Carroll, is devoting a thread on his blog every week to The Wire. Best part is the Tyler Durden-esque rules he's laying down:

"The first rule of On The Record on The Wire? "Casual viewers? Fuck the casual viewers".

The second rule of On The Record on The Wire? If you’re not a fan, don’t read it.

The third rule of On The Record on The Wire? Sheeeeeee-it, you have to ask? Clay Davis for Taoiseach, of course."

So I'll be following that, as well as the AV Club TV Club, the excellent, literate Wire blog Heaven and Here, and josephlovesit on Geek Down. The Wire is nothing short of the cultural apotheosis of modern television.

But other than its incipient awesomeness, what reasons do I have for mentioning The Wire on this particular music blog?

1. Tom Waits, 'Way Down In The Hole'. This is the theme for The Wire, performed by different artists every season (including Waits himself on the second season). It's covered by Steve Earle for this season.

2. Baltimore, MD. Whence not only The Wire comes, but also (it's a big city, obviously) a wide variety of alternative music including Dan Deacon's Wham City collective, Matmos and, of course, the superb post-hardcore group Lungfish. Not just Lungfish but the various associated bands such as Asa Osborne and Daniel Higgs's Pupils, Nathan Bell's Human Bell, and the punk preincarnation of Lungfish, Reptile House.

3. Baltimore, Co. Cork. Yeah, the original Baltimore is a small town in west County Cork, on the south coast of Ireland. It's pronounced slightly differently - 'Bal-timore' rather than 'Ball-timore', and I don't think anyone's ever called it 'B-more'. I can't find anything about crime statistics, but it was sacked by Algerian pirates in 1631.

4. Did I mention it's awesome?

Récherche Du Tunes Perdu (c'est-a-dire, Airs Trouvés)

Hello, and welcome back. First of all, that title isn’t meant to signify much. I’ve never read Proust (yet) so it’s just a bilingual pun with pretentions above its station. This is just a few notes on what I’ve been listening to these past few weeks.

Hopefully Hardcore for Nerds’s readership hasn’t atrophied too much in the past three weeks, and that likewise this post will be of interest at least to some.

Having taken with my only a ‘small’ mp3 player – one gigabyte, practically the smallest amount of music memory you can buy now, thank you Moore’s Law – my holiday listening consisted of a) the last three Envy albums plus their two more recent EPs, b) a broad selection of Hoover/Crownhate Ruin listening and c) all the really good new albums I’ve bought – or near enough – this year. I collected most of the latter at the end of the fourth month of the year, and I hope to do a reprise of that list at the end of next month. In addition, I brought a few books to read to have something to do while listening to music...

- Carry The Meek by Ham Sandwich is still going strong as my favourite album of the year, and I’m not exactly sure why. Obviously, it sounds really really good, stays fresh every time I listen to it, and is connected to some very good live memories. Yet I can’t help feeling troubled by issues of parochialism, originality and simplicity; three things which are in fact strengths of the band for me. Kells in Meath isn’t my parish, certainly, but they’re in the orbit of Dublin and it still seems odd to prefer this to anything else I’ve heard from the US or UK, especially when that’s where I get 90% of my music from. I can’t even claim them, at least straightforwardly, as great innovators or even treaders of any particular obscure branch of rock – they’re just an oddly named indie band somewhere between the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Smashing Pumpkins, and a little bit outside of either. There’s a good deal of complexity there that might be easy to miss in their songs, but for the most part Carry The Meek is the simplicity of the true punk-pop record.

- coming in a very close second is Triptych by Shooting at Unarmed Men, the follow-on band of Jon Chapple from the always-good-to-be-mentioned band, Mclusky. I was impressed by this album from the start, but thinking about in a more structured way for my post about it here helped me appreciate it on a whole other level, as a conceptual masterpiece of post-punk, hardcore and noise-rock that frankly puts Future of the Left, thrilling as they are, in the shade. Furthering this perception was a second – or third, I forget – reading of Nicholas Rombes’s Ramones essay for the 33 1/3rd series of music books. Rombes, an associate professor of English, opens the book with the statement “Ramones is either the last great modern record, or the first great postmodern one”. Not least for its atavistic qualities in returning to stripped-back hardcore punk, Triptych - essentially a series of vignettes in disparate but connected genres – resonates a lot with this description. Compared to Ramones, it really is just another one in a long line of great postmodern records.

One thing especially that struck me was Rombes’s claim that the first four tracks of Ramones - ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, ‘Beat On The Brat’, ‘Judy Is A Punk’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ – “capture the full range of the Ramones’ sound and stand as a sort of mini-album within the album” or a “self-contained mini-album” (pages 84 and 90, respectively). The premise of Triptych is of course three discs of four tracks each, and in total 13 songs, very close to Ramones total of 14.

- I don’t have very much to say about it here, but the self-titled album by Human Bell (Andy Heumann of Arboreteum and Nathan Bell of Lungfish - formerly and amongst other groups, that is) still ranks extremely highly for my year so far. It’s an incredible instrumental mix of post-rock and blues, not overlong on bombast but heavy, very heavy on texture. I’m surprised how little I’ve heard of it, even if Road Records did – and very accurately so – pimp it up as ‘if slint were more influenced by early blues music meets a bit of the explosive post rock of mogwai'.

- a new entrant to my 2008 canon is Vampire Weekend’s also self-titled debut. I took this album with me and played it more times than anything else other than Carry The Meek. Like that, it’s tremendously easy to listen to – it’s called indie rock, look it up – and if my feelings aren’t quite as strong for it in comparison, the album still has some fantastic and unique qualities . It’s not so much in the much-touted African influences although they are there and to good effect. Just as they have been done before, as the BBC Culture Show illustrated pretty neatly last night in a segment on Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, when they showed these two videos in immediate succession (although admittedly only a brief clip of the latter):

Talking Heads - 'Once In A Lifetime'

Vampire Weekend - A-Punk

What is different about Vampire Weekend, though, is the whole mix of sounds on the album; African singing and drumming, likewise indie guitar sounds, orchestral touches - faux-baroque string sections - and a real old-sounding pop style (I originally thought 60s, my friend says 80s, and I reckon music is in a constant 20-year cycle of rebirth). They also sound bizarrely English - part of the pop archaism, I suppose - right down to having lyrics about tea; "English Breakfast is like Darjeeling". Whereas as another indie band actually from England (Oxxxford to be precise), Foals, are trying really hard to sound like they're the ones from Brooklyn.

- Antidotes, by Foals is an album I didn't bring with me, but that's not out of any boredom with it. Quite the opposite, I'm fairly confident it will hold up for the year. It really was an album with a surprising amount of depth to it, considering how far it moved from the sound indicated by the early and popular singles. Anyone who judges bands on the basis of their haircuts or the TV shows their fans watch is a real chump, but my gut feeling is that Antidotes is far beyond, say, Crystal Castles. At the moment, it feels good to swop around the LPs of Vampire Weekend and Antidotes with No Kill Beep Beep and Different Damage by Q and not U, and I don't care if anyone calls me an indie hipster for my troubles.

- other albums I didn't listen to quite as much but still enjoy were the Black Keys, Attack & Release - some of the production magic is wearing off, but it's still a good one for the band - Sinaloa, Oceans and Islands - I'm really getting into this one now, apologies to any hardcore (in the genre sense) fans who thought I was oddly lukewarm before. Instrumental Irish albums Penny Black and Spectre and Crown are likewise still going strong, the latter particularly I'm starting to enjoy more fully now. Plus the two excellent Irish EPs, Bats Cruel Sea Scientist and Halves Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy; one with a heavy math-rock kind of sound, the other with a totally opposite ethereal post-rock, EITS-and-Sigur Ros style, both very accomplished and well worth a listen. And that's all the new stuff I've bought and really absorbed so far.

- Naturally, a few other recent or not-so-recent releases need a mention. I was conscious of not having Have A Nice Life's Deathconsciousness double album along with me, which has collected a lot of praise from both Geek Down and Last Train To Cool. Shoegaze-y post-hardcore, it's very hard to explain and I've been meaning to buy the proper release for a while now. Also, I just downloaded Patti Smith's The Coral Sea from eMusic yesterday. Kevin Shields plays guitar on the whole of it, quite mesmerising. Anyone else heard it yet, or for that matter the new Grails (Take Refuge In Clean Living)?

- And finally if briefly, onto things more emo-ish. The WFMU live recordings of Hoover and Lincoln are fascinating listens; the Hoover session is very lengthy, about three-quarters of an hour with songs from both Lurid Traversal and the then as yet unreleased EP tracks; the Lincoln a good deal shorter, under twenty minutes but showing some real fire in some of their songs. I think I'll sit down and work out the tracklistings (assuming no-one has done so already?) and make a full post on them. In the meantime you can of course find the Two-Headed Coin split from the two bands here.

The Fugazi Peel Session from 1988 which I just found before I left is also excellent, with more experimental version of tracks from the 13 Songs album, especially a screamingly good closing version of 'Glueman'. I haven't always been a great fan of live or demo recordings, but the above examples, plus Zen and the Art of Face Punching's timely resurfacing of the Clikatat Ikatowi demo release and the August 29, 30 1995 live recording (you can find the latter in the comments there), have certainly made me more interested.

(Holiday Playlist) Jolies Vacances

[CROWNHATE RUIN BEAT DROP CANCELLED - 30/07]

Holiday playlist:

Envy, A Dead Sinking Story, Insomniac Doze and Abyssal

The Crownhate Ruin, Until The Eagle Grins, Intermediate, Elementary and A Primer.

Hoover, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 and Live on WFMU 04/13/94, (thanks to LcDP)

Fugazi, Peel Session November 11, 1988 (via The AV Club/Aquarium Drunkard)

Fight Like Apes, 'Jake Summers' b/w 'Battlestations'

Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend

Bats, Cruel Sea Scientist EP

Halves, Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy EP

Everything from Year End April (except Antidotes - no space)

and Dinosaur Jr., 'Been There All The Time' and 'I Got Lost' 7"s

Summer reading:

Charles Bukowski, Ham On Rye

Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

Don DeLillo, Falling Man

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (La Nausée)

33&1/3rd, Ramones and Grace (re-reading)

miscellaneous other non-fiction (including Classics of Buddhism & Zen: The Collected Translations of Thomas Cleary - Volume Four and Heinrich Boll, Journal Irlandais Zen Classics: Formative Texts in the History of Buddhism, edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, and The Great Arab Conquests by Hugh Kennedy)

Best of 2008: Year End April

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This might seem a little odd, but at least one other person has done it so far, and at the end of March no less (commonality: Foals, Antidotes). I had the idea about a week ago, when I realised that I bought exactly five new albums that I could say, with a high degree of likelihood, would end up on Best of 2008 list. So those are the first five releases pictured above, roughly in order of preference. The next two and, later, three are a slightly more complicated story.

But first, to the mixtape:

01 - 14:25

1. Ham Sandwich, 'St. Christopher'

2. Human Bell, 'Hanging from the Rafters'

02 - 09:04

3. Foals, 'Balloons'

4. The Black Keys, 'Lies'

5. Shooting at Unarmed Men, 'This Song Comes With a Picture'

03 - 07:43

6. Chequerboard, 'Penny Black'

7. Sinaloa, 'Tread, Not Trudge'

04 - 08:31

The Jimmy Cake, 'Red Tony' (long-form version only)

Year End April, 7 tracks

Year End April (YEA 01-04), 3 tracks + bonus

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Artist/Album/Track title:

Ham Sandwich/Carry the Meek/St. Christopher

From listening to their singles on the radio and from seeing this band live in February, I would already have a very high opinion of Ham Sandwich. But this album is really, really good and I would have surprisingly little hesitation in saying this will probably still be my #1 record by the end of the year. It's solid to the point of being flawless, with hardly the one song of filler and keeping up its energy throughout.

'St. Christopher' is the opening track, with a little piano melody leading into the rhythmic post-punk/pop-punk/whatever sound of the group. Just as any of the other songs on the album, the combination and trading off of the male/female vocals work very well. And from there it goes, keeping its beautiful melody and trading up its dynamics until the end of the song explodes into a repeated chorus.

This whole album is very loud, and pace Bob Dylan's comments on modern sound recordings, I haven't enjoyed the production of an album so much since I first heard American Steel's Jagged Thoughts. If it's done with the right degree of sensitivity, good production can make an album into something shimmering and wonderful.

Original post: Ham Sandwich - Live at Whelan's, 23/02/08

Human Bell/Human Bell/Hanging from the Rafters

This is one hell of a post-rock record. I bought the Human Bell LP basically because it was on recommendation at Road Records (where I've bought more than half of this list), and specifically because the description and pedigree caught my eye. A collobaration between Andy Heumann and Nathan Bell, the latter a former member of Lungfish, this is seven instrument guitar songs of a variety of different styles. The 'more bluesy kind of Slint' part from the Road blurb caught my eye, and really this is a bit like Lungfish covering Chulahoma-style Black Keys.

This track, the opener to side B of the LP, is the longest on the album at over nine minutes, although most of the other songs average out at about five or six. It has a short intro before the main rhythm of the song kicks in, and then it's all hypnotic guitar blues, scuzzed-out background and snappy drumbeats. Like Lungfish, there is something hugely hypnotic about this band's sound; and like the Black Keys, there is something heart-jerking and colourful about its expression.

The important point to make is the variety of the songs on this album: as I say, there are seven of varying lengths, centred on instrumental guitars but also bringing in Nathan Bell on trumpet at times; and exploring different aspects of the post-rock sound from Slint or the For Carnation to Mogwai. I said previously:

"Human Bell experiments with a variety of grooves, and a variety of minimalist approaches to music. If the combination of richness and minimalism isn't a glaring paradox, then that's what it means to toll the human bell:"

Original post: Human Bell - Human Bell

Foals/Antidotes/Balloons

Apparently 'Skinscore' (Skinxc?) is now a word - at first I thought this was a slightly redundant phrase describing, I don't know, Oi or something else with actual skinheads in it, but then I realised it meant bands associated with the (excellent) TV show Skins. Since at the moment it basically only consists of Foals and Crystal Castles, it's not the most solid of genres with regards to quality: but despite its pejorative origins, it does throw up some music of considerable interest. This same place where I found that term was a Drowned in Sound article trying to trace Foals back to all the other math-rock bands, everything apparently from Slint to Q and not U.

This is taking the view of Foals as a breakthough math-rock band comparable to the success last year of Battles - which, in fact, Foals do quite resemble on their full album. 'Balloons' is one of the two singles, the other being 'Cassius', to make the cut for that album. Jerky, angular guitars, with frenetic pacing and the colour of a jazz saxophone, make this out still as an excitingly oblique take on what I - and many of the readers here - would find more familiar from listening to Q and not U. (This week a new limited-edition 7" from Irish band Hooray for Humans came out, by the way; so expect something on the blog about that soon, assuming that I am able to pick it up)

The whole album, however, is largely just as energetic as these two singles and encompasses a wide range of interesting sounds and styles. It may not be the single most complex thing to be released this year, but there is plenty to engage and challenge the listener, with post-punk stylings and repetitions and more than a touch of electronics. Particularly if it ages well, this album is assured a high placing in an end-of-year top 10.

Original post: Foals, 'Cassius' video + vinyl rip

The Black Keys/Attack and Release/Lies

This album completely crept up on me, sending me into a flurry of illegal downloading and then trips to HMV to fork out over-the-odds money for an admittedly rather nice gatefold. The 'Strange Times' single makes for a pretty good encapsulation of their 'new' sound, which isn't so much new as their trademark blues rejigged and enhanced by the inspired production of Danger Mouse. But considering my disinterest in their last two full-lengths, I was going to need more than a catchy single for convincing.

'Lies' was the second song up on the band's Myspace page, and basically is there to represent the bands softer, balladic side. I read on a message board a conversation between some guy who had his own advance copy and was itching to share the news with everyone of how good Attack & Release was. He mentioned that there was one really good slow-ish song, and someone else asked 'is it Lengths good?' (that being a pretty awesome slow, countrified number from Rubber Factory); he said 'it's better than The Lengths', and the reply went to the effect that that was a physical and scientific possibility. Well, it ain't, 'cos this song is very possibly better.

So, long story short, the spacious and semi-exotic sounds of Danger Mouse as added to the Black Keys' rejuvenated groove have made this song, along with all the others on their new album, into fantastically novel blues-rockers. Attack & Release has totally reaffirmed my belief in the Black Keys as important, progressive and sonically powerful artists. As well as an album that's immediate to your ears, it's also paradoxically something that you can get lost in the sound of.

Original post: The Black Keys - Attack & Release, Chulahoma

Shooting at Unarmed Men/Triptych/This Song Comes With a Picture

Jon Chapple, the bassist and singer from Mclusky, moved to Australia with his new band in the last few years. Having previously released the rather good album Yes, Tinnitus! and a few singles, this was something to look forward to when it got a European release, which it did on March 31st this year. Although, as I explained in my review of the gig, I find the Future of the Left an impressive band I still prefer this side of the post-Mclusky tree.

Triptych is, as the name suggests, a triple-disc album. Spread over those three discs are twelve (well, actually thirteen when you include a 'hidden track' at the end) songs, but don't worry, they aren't anything near 15 minutes long each. In fact, the first disc - from which this song is taken from - clocks in at a little over nine minutes in length. Overall it seems as if Shooting at Unarmed Men had just too much material to fit on one CD, and instead of going for the too-ordinary double album, decided things come better in threes.

Which is what they do, because Triptych works rather well. It's difficult to explain if you're not familiar with Mclusky, but the Jon Chapple 'part' of their sound was in a large part the broad, expansive post-hardcore foil to Andy Falkous's scatterfire punk; lots of complex, epic bass rhythms carefully wrapped up in three-minute punk songs. Which isn't exactly what's in this track, 'This Song Comes With a Picture', but is part of the whole tapestry of the album. Triptych lines up bursts of lo-fi, rock'n'roll sounds which almost hark back to 70s punk (and a shade more on the British side of it, as well) with more extensive strips of hardcore and post-. Altogether, it's an interesting listening experience and one which brings together the catchiness of their earlier work.

Original post: Shooting at Unarmed Men, 'Girls Music' (Promo Single)

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So they are the five albums which originally came to mind; I think, if five equally good albums come up every four months in the rest of the year, that should leave them with on average a 2/3 chance of being in the top 10 (my probability maths is a little rusty, but basically 10 over 15). The middle three I all bought on LP, so - having got my first record player in January - they make an important introduction into the world of modern music on old formats for me. Top is the only one I've caught live, although I could have gone to see (3) if I didn't mind the Skins-core fans, and (4) I saw a couple of years before the current album.

In addition to those five, are a couple extra that I've been getting into this year. Chequerboard's Penny Black is a bit of a dark horse, not because of any lack in quality, but because it's a bit 'out-there' in terms of the music I listen to (it's been played on Lyric FM - only by John Kelly though, naturally). Classical Spanish guitar over glitchy electronica, if you liked the Si Schroeder track from the 21st Century Bites mix, you should really like this too; but if you didn't, then probably not. Chequerboard is all one man, John Lambert - musician, producer and full-time graphic artist. The album is a beauty to behold, as you can see from this example of the artwork below (from The Indie Hour):

I bought his earlier album, Gothica, recently and the CD booklet was entirely taken up with a comic book short story (graphic novella?). Penny Black has a kind of Victoriana theme going on, and it's probably just my imagination but the music does seem somehow reminiscent of late-19th century Ireland.

The second extra track, from Sinaloa's new album, is more of a white horse for this list - as genuinely really good modern screamo record. I first got into Sinaloa from their 2006 Ampere/Sinaloa split and which I still think is probably their best work, but their full lengths are excellent too. They don't just play modern technical hardcore, but also have a strong vibe of the original Moss Icon/Indian Summer sounds. A certain person commented on Zen and the Art of Face Punching that they thought Sinaloa was the blandest of the new emo bands (and subsequently what sort of punishment they would deserve for saying that). But I can see at least in part where they are coming from; Sinaloa's sound is quite repetitive and that dreaded word, same-y - even after listening to them quite often and quite closely. The thing is, their style is just so purely and powerfully emotional that it just doesn't matter. I guess it's a bit like saying that all blues songs are bland, if you didn't appreciate the emotion in them.

Oceans of Islands is an album I'm pretty sure I want to get on LP, and if I order it from Purepainsugar in Europe like I'll have to, I should be able to get the latest repress of Indian Summer discography along with it. Woo!

Finally, the fourth 'bonus' track in the long-form download is from an album which has made a big splash in the Irish indie scene when it was released in the middle of last month. (I hadn't got it at the time of first making up the mixtape, which is why it's only on the long form version, and to tell the truth I haven't listened the full way through yet). The last Jimmy Cake album was released when I was about fifteen, so they haven't been a group that I've been aware of apart from very generally, but their long-awaited new album Spectre and Crown sounds very very good.

The Jimmy Cake are a sort of post-rock musical collective, who've been rotating members over the last five years. Lots of instruments, and a lot of different sounds, but all very good. You can read all about their album launch show here and here. This opening track sounds a bit like Ham Sandwich strung out on opiates and as performed by GY!BE (although the Godspeed comparison isn't allowed, because it's both too easy and too inaccurate). Jazzy, layered, and rather beautiful.

The album artwork, too, is extremely aesthetically pleasing. It was commissioned from a Japanese artist, Atsushi Kaga, who is based in Dublin. The whole CD case is this beautifully smooth black, with the iconic image on the front and tracklistings written elsewhere in a calligraphic, wispy font which is almost unreadable. The spine (the green bit in the picture) is a detachable peace of card which, along with all the information in Japanese (I have a copy of the Ramones' Leave Home with the same thing) has the tracklisting in a normal font and the barcode, usefully located away from the main artwork. Really, for the best album artwork of the year, it's between Chequerboard and The Jimmy Cake at the moment.

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Human Bell - Human Bell

The Wire?

I won't be able to see Season 5 of that show, on TV at least, until the summer; but in the meantime, here's something else seriously good out of Baltimore: Human Bell is a two piece instrumental guitar group compromised of David Heumann of Arboreteum and Nathan Bell of Lungfish. The album was Road Records' Album of the Month for February, and their description was enticing to say the least:

"human bell is a new collaboration between dave heuman from arbouretum and nathan bell from lungfish. the album was recorded by paul oldham and mixed by john mcentire. the album features seven very very beautiful guitar driven blues like instrumentals with little touches of meandering post rock thrown in for good measure. imagine if slint were more influenced by early blues music meets a bit of the explosive post rock of mogwai. heuman has the most beautiful laid back style of guitar picking perfectly suiting the almost dirty three like brushed drum style. fans of the works of dave pajo and his papa m project will simply adore this one. february 2008"

I think the "imagine if slint were more influenced by early blues music" part caught my attention the most. The comparisons to be made with this record aren't really endless, but they are numerous and most importantly, they are all pretty sharp (at least in my estimation). Spiderland-style Slint, The For Carnation, Chulahoma-era Black Keys, post-rock of the Mogwai variety and unsuprisingly, Lungfish...

Human Bell, the group's first full-length after the release of a CDR EP in 2006, may not (yet) be an absolute masterpiece, but it certainly skirts greatness. The way the album works is fascinating, switching between genres in each instrumental passage, covering the wide spread of sounds described above and avoiding slipping too much into repetition. That said, there is a continuity throughout the record, and a consistency that makes these duetting guitar players identifiable and recognizable. The description from Thrill Jockey Records helps (kind of) to make this combination clear:

"The Aramaic language had an expression – Ephphatha, to be opened, as a portal. That ability to be open, to listen completely and communicate purely is at the heart of Human Bell. David Heumann and Nathan Bell’s gorgeous guitar duets form instrumental canvas painted in the warm colored hues of folk and rock music, and simultaneously a blank canvas for the listeners themselves to paint. Their songs are delicately crafted with an immaculate clarity, expressiveness, and most of all, openness.

....David Heumann and Nathan Bell’s work together began as each of the Baltimore natives had been working individually on instrumental pieces for banjo and guitar. For both, the experience of collaborating on the creation of instrumental music is a liberating process. The open pastoral structures allow their natural musical tendencies to shine. Nathan Bell’s songwriting, as his work with Lungfish, tends to be linear, as moving along a path through a progression of passages, while Heumann’s, as with his work in Arbouretum, is more cyclical. The intersection of those two approaches and the mutual understanding that brings them together is the essence of Human Bell."

I'd hesitate in general to use the phrase 'dynamic interplay', but it is essentially what Human Bell is. (If it wasn't, they would be static separation - yeah!) Obviously Nathan Bell absorbed the hypnotically repetive bass sound from his stint in Lungfish - or he had it in the first place - while Dave Heumann, whose other work I haven't heard, clearly complements his guitar style.

However, if you look at the insert reproduced below, you can see that the instrumentation is not entirely kept to basics: Bell brings out a trumpet on the semi-eponymous 'Ephaphatha (Be Opened)' which sounds closer to Han Shan than it does to Abilene or the Boom, and which Pitchfork misguidedly calls 'ghastly'. All the way through, Human Bell experiments with a variety of grooves, and a variety of minimalist approaches to music. If the combination of richness and minimalism isn't a glaring paradox, then that's what it means to toll the human bell:

(album cover)

(Inset: click to see large)

The LP of Human Bell comes, very positively, with a free download code. If you want to hear the album, you can hear a selection of the songs on their Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/humanbell); or you can stream, individually, all the tracks (both of this album and of the EP) on the Thrill Jockey site (http://www.thrilljockey.com/catalog/index.html?id=102276).

All in all, heartily recommended.