Leaping from the decaying violence of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to the melancholy lace-sewn harmonies of Why?'s new record Eskimo Snow, I'm looking for something that burns my nerves through touch. I'm looking for something so inherent to my nature that I can wrap my yo-yo moods up between them like a cats cradle of dangerous bile and sugary sweetness. I want emotions stretched to breaking point so that when they spring back, they've contorted into unrecognisable feelings. I want my moods stroked then plunged into hitherto unknown states - I want to feel angry, sad, scared and joyous all in delicious ambiguity. I want to find relaxation in discordance and discomfort in perfect harmony. I want lyrics to shear my head of uncomplex thoughts and indulge my love of language, wordplay and intonation.
I don't think this is too much to ask either.
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
In No Particular Order: Albums of 2009 - as of 23rd March 2009
Mastodon - Crack the Skye: phenomenal is a word used far too often, but is more than appropriate for this seven track, fifty plus minute epic piece of progressive metal music
Propagandhi - Supporting Caste: lyrical genius and intense, emotional playing within pop-punk boundaries, it's a record which should have the power for social change, and will at least become a landmark in their already righteous history
Mono - Hymn to the Immportal Wind: embracing classical movements within standard post-rock cliches, Mono continue to craft luminescent soundscapes of beauty and bitterness
Micahcu and the Shapes - Jewellery: a DIY masterpiece, pop music started at Year Zero with homemade instrument and a sense of adventure that rivals any album made in a long time
The Thermals - Now We Can See: it's a Thermals record! Nuff said.
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion: natural beauty as danced and interpreted by tropical electricity
Others bubbling under:
Hatcham Social - You Dig The Tunnel, I'll Hide The Soil
Asobi Seksu - Hush
Women - Women
Propagandhi - Supporting Caste: lyrical genius and intense, emotional playing within pop-punk boundaries, it's a record which should have the power for social change, and will at least become a landmark in their already righteous history
Mono - Hymn to the Immportal Wind: embracing classical movements within standard post-rock cliches, Mono continue to craft luminescent soundscapes of beauty and bitterness
Micahcu and the Shapes - Jewellery: a DIY masterpiece, pop music started at Year Zero with homemade instrument and a sense of adventure that rivals any album made in a long time
The Thermals - Now We Can See: it's a Thermals record! Nuff said.
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion: natural beauty as danced and interpreted by tropical electricity
Others bubbling under:
Hatcham Social - You Dig The Tunnel, I'll Hide The Soil
Asobi Seksu - Hush
Women - Women
Thursday, 19 February 2009
What I Mean When I Say You're Really Bad
I've spent the last few months (okay perhaps the last hour or so) thinking about what I'm doing (okay, so this occupies almost every waking though between thinking about food and thinking about sex). What am I doing? Well, I tend to write about music in all it's variant forms: I criticise music, whether entire records or single songs. I conduct and transcribe interviews and write features based around the answers musicians give to questions I ask. I research and write industry press releases on amp endorsees and on new microphone equipment. I listen to lots of albums and go to lots of gigs. I occasionally get paid to do this.
It's occured to me that more and more, I'm fighting for something. I'm fighting for the things that are important to me - the notion of music as communication and expression - to be heard over what is important to other people - the notion of music as a way of making money and, consequently, a living. Now, I certainly feel that artists (for that is indeed what musicians are) should be paid for their work. I think what they create is worth paying to listen to, to indulge in, to experience. I don't however, feel that it can ever be considered a career choice. I may well have written silly things about bands "making it", but I never truly believed in this notion. Rather I've bought into what people want to hear, to make them listen to more important things.
But I guess I shouldn't lie to them anymore. Look. If you want to make a career out of music, can I suggest you stop and do something else. It's ridiculous. This goes for anyone thinking they can become an A & R scout or a music journalist too. I will say as much to the O2 class I'll be taking on March 5th. Why? Because I don't believe you've thought it through. There's no money here.
I adore music. I think it's incredible. It's a form of communcation which predates language. I find it astonishing that "dead" languages are allowed to die out. The knowledge contained within the literature and in the heads of the speakers of these tongues are being lost as a result. So, if music was to be eternally streamlined into manufactured rubbish, or severed into commerical pieces, it'd be pretty depressing. Of course you could say that most people haven't got anything worth saying. I believe everyone has something to say, and it enriches the human experience for them to say it. THe fact that we have so many ways of expressing things is one of the main reason I adore writing: I can take humour, sarcasm, irony, foreign expressions, classic phrases, quotes, similies, analogies, and countless other linguistic tricks (rhyming!) and splurge them onto a page to communicate whatever I want. It's art in itself.
What am I trying to achieve? I guess, like anyone, I'm trying to work out who I am, why I'm here and try and have fun while I'm doing this. These questions aren't necessary to answer - in fact they're futile - but it's part of the human condition and therefore I'll willingly explore how I feel and my place in the world. Music plays a big part in this - it's not just sounds to me. It's an emotional cavern that reveals catacombs so deep, they may well inhabit the entire universe.
My way of exploring is listening, retaining, talking to the artists and working out my own way of presenting their music, art and ideas. I think our own interpretations of others' efforts are as important as making our own. Hell most art is derivative of others' ideas. What we find worth in makes us who we are.
I know this sounds like pretentiousness to a lot of people - but that's your perception and it's incorrect. Not once have I pretended to be anything but myself. Self-indulgent maybe, not pretentious. Look it up. It's such an overused word.
So why do I do what I do? You know what....I don't know. I just do it. It's exciting and sometimes it's boring. Sometimes it seems worthy and sometimes it doesn't. I know I can't make a living this way, but I do. I have so many other ambitions, yet it seems amazing to me that I've managed to write things I'm proud of and learnt so much along the way. Believe me, the industry may well be collapsing, but I'm finding it fascinating. I feel sorry for good people who are losing jobs. That's terrible, especially as it's these people who have done the tiny amounts of good in this business.
But then, look at Ian MacKaye. He survived. He became a major influence and stood up for what he believed in and still does. He's changed the world in his own tiny little way. So, why can't we think this way? Why can't we, instead of thinking "this is my career" think, "this is what I do". There's a difference between a job and who you are. If you can combine the two yet keep them separate, then kudos.
So, whether anyone notices or not, I tend to have a pretty strong message in my features - it may be an anti-industry thing, it might be an encouraging positive message to new bands....I always try to have a point beyond what the "story" is. The story is never the band talking to a journalist. The story is the one I'm telling and using the band as the centrepiece. Sometimes it comes across as sensationalism, which is a shame. A lot of the time it hits the mark.
My point is this: write music to express who you are. Don't write it for other people or to sell to other people. Other people won't buy it usually anyway, so you'll have to give it away free and if you're doing that you'd better make sure you want others to hear it. It's a privilege for someone to listen to you - they don't owe you a living. By the same token, neither do you owe them anything if they buy stuff (though it's nice when you're thanked). If I criticse you, either positively or negatively, it's because I'm interested enough in your efforts to do one or the other. This is a great thing. If I completely pan something, I will still try and eke out something worth learning from it. If you choose not to read or listen, then that's great! You're simply doing something you want to do and not expecting others to like it: the purest form of expression.
I want to fight for more important things. I do already, in my own little way. Music is a great place to start though, agreed?
It's occured to me that more and more, I'm fighting for something. I'm fighting for the things that are important to me - the notion of music as communication and expression - to be heard over what is important to other people - the notion of music as a way of making money and, consequently, a living. Now, I certainly feel that artists (for that is indeed what musicians are) should be paid for their work. I think what they create is worth paying to listen to, to indulge in, to experience. I don't however, feel that it can ever be considered a career choice. I may well have written silly things about bands "making it", but I never truly believed in this notion. Rather I've bought into what people want to hear, to make them listen to more important things.
But I guess I shouldn't lie to them anymore. Look. If you want to make a career out of music, can I suggest you stop and do something else. It's ridiculous. This goes for anyone thinking they can become an A & R scout or a music journalist too. I will say as much to the O2 class I'll be taking on March 5th. Why? Because I don't believe you've thought it through. There's no money here.
I adore music. I think it's incredible. It's a form of communcation which predates language. I find it astonishing that "dead" languages are allowed to die out. The knowledge contained within the literature and in the heads of the speakers of these tongues are being lost as a result. So, if music was to be eternally streamlined into manufactured rubbish, or severed into commerical pieces, it'd be pretty depressing. Of course you could say that most people haven't got anything worth saying. I believe everyone has something to say, and it enriches the human experience for them to say it. THe fact that we have so many ways of expressing things is one of the main reason I adore writing: I can take humour, sarcasm, irony, foreign expressions, classic phrases, quotes, similies, analogies, and countless other linguistic tricks (rhyming!) and splurge them onto a page to communicate whatever I want. It's art in itself.
What am I trying to achieve? I guess, like anyone, I'm trying to work out who I am, why I'm here and try and have fun while I'm doing this. These questions aren't necessary to answer - in fact they're futile - but it's part of the human condition and therefore I'll willingly explore how I feel and my place in the world. Music plays a big part in this - it's not just sounds to me. It's an emotional cavern that reveals catacombs so deep, they may well inhabit the entire universe.
My way of exploring is listening, retaining, talking to the artists and working out my own way of presenting their music, art and ideas. I think our own interpretations of others' efforts are as important as making our own. Hell most art is derivative of others' ideas. What we find worth in makes us who we are.
I know this sounds like pretentiousness to a lot of people - but that's your perception and it's incorrect. Not once have I pretended to be anything but myself. Self-indulgent maybe, not pretentious. Look it up. It's such an overused word.
So why do I do what I do? You know what....I don't know. I just do it. It's exciting and sometimes it's boring. Sometimes it seems worthy and sometimes it doesn't. I know I can't make a living this way, but I do. I have so many other ambitions, yet it seems amazing to me that I've managed to write things I'm proud of and learnt so much along the way. Believe me, the industry may well be collapsing, but I'm finding it fascinating. I feel sorry for good people who are losing jobs. That's terrible, especially as it's these people who have done the tiny amounts of good in this business.
But then, look at Ian MacKaye. He survived. He became a major influence and stood up for what he believed in and still does. He's changed the world in his own tiny little way. So, why can't we think this way? Why can't we, instead of thinking "this is my career" think, "this is what I do". There's a difference between a job and who you are. If you can combine the two yet keep them separate, then kudos.
So, whether anyone notices or not, I tend to have a pretty strong message in my features - it may be an anti-industry thing, it might be an encouraging positive message to new bands....I always try to have a point beyond what the "story" is. The story is never the band talking to a journalist. The story is the one I'm telling and using the band as the centrepiece. Sometimes it comes across as sensationalism, which is a shame. A lot of the time it hits the mark.
My point is this: write music to express who you are. Don't write it for other people or to sell to other people. Other people won't buy it usually anyway, so you'll have to give it away free and if you're doing that you'd better make sure you want others to hear it. It's a privilege for someone to listen to you - they don't owe you a living. By the same token, neither do you owe them anything if they buy stuff (though it's nice when you're thanked). If I criticse you, either positively or negatively, it's because I'm interested enough in your efforts to do one or the other. This is a great thing. If I completely pan something, I will still try and eke out something worth learning from it. If you choose not to read or listen, then that's great! You're simply doing something you want to do and not expecting others to like it: the purest form of expression.
I want to fight for more important things. I do already, in my own little way. Music is a great place to start though, agreed?
Monday, 16 February 2009
Following on from my, as yet, incomplete Radiohead defense, I'm gonna follow it up with another relatively huge band that, perhaps, a lot of people think I shouldn't like.
There's something undeniably magnetic about The Smashing Pumpkins music. They basically took the prog and stadium rock of the 70s and early Eighties and tooled it up for the nineties. How does it work?
1) Billy Corgan's guitar work
Huge riffs, often multi-tracked almost to oblivion, solos whose role it seems to be to jettison into space at the earliest opportunity, effects used to reverberate around your head, his arranging of those mystical and bludgeoning guitar lines, feedback, harmonies, fuzz upon unending fuzz.....even on Adore (the anti-rock record) there's some beautiful guitar work underlying the drum machines and synthery.
2) Billy Corgan's voice
A Marmite voice for sure - it's could be borderline terrible but it's uniqueness and utter conviction made The Smashing Pumpkins sound like no one else. It somehow suited the utter chaos going on around it, to the point where it sticks out more on Zeitgeist (arguably their heaviest record) even with the guitars sounding like war machines.
3) Prolific
This can be a horrendous thing 1) quality control and 2) difficult to know where to start and continue
Basically, I thing the Pumpkins are a band that started off pretty mediocre really - Gish isn't great apart from the first four songs and Tristessa - before leaping to greatness almost instantly. Suddenly, after Siamese Dream, we had a B-sides, rarities and outtakes collection, a follow-up album that was 2 discs long, a box set of EPs etc., a 16 track single album and then a proposed double album with three EPs of off cuts. Just take a look at the digital rarities collection - how many songs? What's more, there's hardly a dud among them. Which is, frankly, terrifying. Even now, after the alright come back album Zeitgeist, we have had a great little acoustic EP American Gothic, two new singles (G.L.O.W. and FOL - what's with the initials?) backed with Superchrist and Gossamer, and promises of more releases along those lines.
4) Album quality
GISH
As I said earlier, pretty average but half of the album is actually brilliant. I Am One and Siva are defining moments in the Pumpkins canon, with riffs and solos and "reset" ideas all punctuating them. Rhinocerous is a great example of the future for Billy's longer songwriting (this actually being one of the best actually). Tristessa is a great pop rock song and Bury does its job. For a debut, 5 classic songs is damn fine.
SIAMESE DREAM
In scope and ability this record is outstanding. Beginning with the drawn out drumming and open stringed riffing of alt rock pioneering Cherub Rock, it's almost Corgan saying: "This is how we sound, and Cherub Rock is our genre". The guitars are charged with shuttle thrusters, sounding thicker, heavier and bolder than any guitar sound ever has. With the Drop D ascending riff of Quiet, it sounds like some threatening death rock album. Come Today though, melody leaps to the forefront - an ice cream truck tune being filtered through metal histrionics - and all bets are off. Soma's gentile-multi layering of reverb and guitars before almighty explosions show Billy's imagination rocketing away. Album highlight, Mayonaise, is penned by both Corgan and Iha and showcases alternate tunings and dynamics at the core of what they do. Silverfuck is a real overstep, proving to be drawn out and pompous but giving a threat rather than a real warning shot. It's still got something which is jucily metallic. Followed by Sweet Sweet's lullaby before the luxiorous Luna, the record is a massive triumph. That's without mentioning the album's acoustic centrepiece Disarm, one of the most simple and elegant songs in their catalogue.
Pisces Iscariot
Released between their breakthrough masterpiece and their commerical goliath peering round the corner, this covers B-sides, outtakes etc. and really shows how prolific Billy is - and how consistent he can be. It openes with the beautiful and aptly named Soothe. When Billy's voice breaks, with the proximity of the mic, it sounds honest and cutting. Billy's phaser effect gets a major work out on a lot of these songs, twisting, revolving and spiralling around his solos, mutating them as you listen. It even gives a showcase for James Iha's first solo songwriting effort for SP: Blew Away. It's sweet, but inconsequential, a lot like the man's solo album. Pissant is a real angry, fast number, very different to what's come before, but an indicator of what was to come. Perhaps my fave is Hello Kitty Kat, a real distorted mess of a song that echoes a heavier Mayonaise. You can practically hear the speakers imploding in protest at the destroyed mix. Though quality depletes towards the end of this collection, Corgan's solo cover of Landlisde is lovely. Basically this could've been the band's third record and people would still love it, but they may not have been half the band they become.
Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness
Disc 1
Jaw droppingly long, yet instilled with quality beyond it's number of tracks (28). Beginning with a piano intro and synthesised strings, it bursts into Tonight Tonight (the first Pumpkins song I actually properly listened to, as I wasn't into their heavier stuff like Bullet With Butterfly Wings at the time). This dramatic, orchestral sweep is so far and away from the distorted guitar symphonies of yore that it seems nonsense to expect anything but a huge break away from Siamese Dream.
Stirring as it is, though, it gets torn apart by the following two tracks. Jellybelly sounds so fiercely distorted, it might as well be on fire. It's actually insane. There's an excruciating build up two thirds in which more than proves Billy wasn't done with abusing guitars and studios by a long shot. The staccato harmonic riff of Zero follows, showing a direct, vicious, stabbing arrangement that uses far less multi-tracking and far more emotion. The solo is sheer pitch shifting, ring modulating, octaving genius. Here Is No Why, relatively calm, is one of the greatest Pumpkins songs in it's clever melodic nuances and percussive chord playng. And that solo too. Minor US hit Bullet With Butterfly Wings follows, and, with the video, really brings to the fore the gothic chic that would become the SP's central theme for the rest of their career. Dark, metallic, lyrically devilish - it's their trademark track in the eyes of many. It's arguably also the first real screaming we get from Billy. To Forgive sticks out after so much heaviness, yet still resonates as an important transitional track almost halfway through the first disc. Barely played guitars shiver underneath Billy's laments. Hints of electronica slip out here too. An Ode To No One seems incongruous after such ugly beauty. It's a proper brutal sleaze metal thrash out. Love is another contrast, a fuzzy minimal trudge through static and Billy's nasal whine. It's extremely effective, like having a shower in guilt and shame. At about 2:44 is one of the album's many sweet spots. The insane filtered solo is haunting. Cupid De Locke feels like a bubble bath and a sleep on a cloud after Love's grime. Then Galapogos returns to Soma territory, with gentle arpeggios washing you upon a beach. Though slow to start, it eventually turns into a shifting, granular sifting sound. It's arrrangement is clever and affecting. Muzzle, though pretty standard rock, is so triumphant, it stands out as one of their best songs and shows that even when Billy strips it all back to its roots, his common thread is a sense of melody. By this time your sweating from the effort of listening, knowing there's still thirty tracks to go. Porcelina Of the Vast Oceans gives you a prolonged two minute intro, though one adorned with peaks and troughs after the injection of adrenaline from Muzzle. It then alternately drifts and jolts you across it's nine plus minutes. It was the perfect set opener for their Zeitgeist tour in 2008. In some wasy it's the perfect SP track. THe final disc ends with the whispering James Iha ballad, Take Me Down, which is actually beautiful.
Disc 2
It ricochets you into life with the noisy, pick scraping thirty seconds intro to Where Boys Fear To Tread. A discordant, sludgey opener, it's a real antithesis to the last third of the first disc (albeit with added doo-wop backing vocals). That's even before the most violent track, Bodies, comes screaming out of the (hell) gates with it's drop D octaving and full-bloodied screaming from Corgan. It's incredible. Thirty-Three, the weakest single from the album, still sounds lovely in context although it's the awkward acoustic atmospherics of In The Arms of Sleep that overrides it, meaning Thirty-Three is stranded between two album highlights. Then the best single from the album, 1979, is next; Billy's New Order tribute. A wonderful song that should be remembered as an all time classic. Following this is one of the two most fucked up mixes on the album, Tales of a Scorched Earth (X.Y.U. is the other). It sounds stupidly lo-fi and ridiculous in the album, and basically destroys the flow of the second disc. It's a fair enough rock out, with Corgan's most throat-burning vocal performance. But fighting through mic distortion you couldn't tell anyway. Luckily the gorgeous, wobbly layers of Thru The Eyes of Ruby and the simple acoustic picking of Stumbeline peel away those nasty memories. X.Y.U.s blistering rock ends the distorted section of the album, being throwaway and pointless, yet still feeding us the requisite distortion quoitant for an SP album. The last five tracks are strangely quaint and seem pretty poor, though they all suit the theme of the album, but they're almost embarassing efforts after such a trawl through Billy's imagination. It could be argued these stripped back melodic songs are a worthy rest period for the listener, but they're more likely to be skipped completely. By Starlight is the best of them. Strangely Lily (My One and Only) was dug out for the 2008 tour, which made sense live, but it's really not a creative high. It ends, appropriately, with all four voices of the band - finally united - on Farewell and Goodnight, on a sweet lullaby for the weary listener.
Overall, it's an incredible achievement which no other band of the era come close to matching.
ADORE
Having realised he could write songs without electric guitars, distortion, riffs and evne a drummer (there's more to this obviously, but it's funnier to just leave it at that), Adore became something altogether more intriguing. From the opener To Shiela's gentle beginnings, it's strange to be greeted by the throbbing synth bass of Ava Adore, somehow heavier than some of the guitar tracks from Mellon Collie ever managed. It's one of the cleverist modern singles in decades and continues to wow with it's minimal depth. Here the album explodes into a sinister, murderous, lamenting epic, feeling deeper and longer than Mellon Collie as the mood perpetuates the entire album, rather than hopping genres like the double-disc of yore did.
The electronic Daphne Descends is like shivering death, Once Upon A Time is a tear-jerking ode to Billy's dead mother, Tear is like being pulled from death's grip into bleakness, Crestfallen is a devastating musical journey of loss. After all this shadowy blackness, Appels and Oranjes is a glorious, unrepetant dance number that revels in it's contrary nature. It's excellent. Pug returns to Ava Adore's earlier rock ideas, while still forgoing obvious multi-tracked riffs. The last handful of tracks seem patchy but are well sequenced. We have The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete's country-esque story, Annie-Dog's cracked voice and piano lull, Shame's severe atmospherics before the heavy synth crescendo of Behold! The Night Mare (another track resurrected successfully for the 2008 tour). The final two tracks, For Martha and Blank page, are two brilliant, underrated songs in their canon (as is Night Mare). 17 is merely obliuque piano feedback - a strange, disconnected end to, what is probably the best SP album, while being chronically underloved by critics and general public. It's such an all pervading work, it may aswell be their masterpiece.
MACHINA/The Machines of God
Which is why, when the uber-distorted bass and guitar of opener The Everlasting Gaze kicks in, every fan the world over celebrated. It's a fantastic reminder that SP are incredibly adept at crafting songs that work in stadiums and living rooms. The right blend of riff and atrmospherics thunders through this collection. However, it's the first time you feel the flaws really hold back the artistry on display. Raindrops and Sunshowers sounds like a tip of the hat to Adore so as not to show they've forgotten their best period....but it brings and overly Eighties feel to an album that needed to sound alien. Stand Inside Your Love is a cracking single, all jangling intro riffs and bellowing, lava stream chorus. I of the Mourning, through lyrically dire, is one of the most effective songs on the album, it's distant, haunted echoes retaining that Eighties feel, while still sounding like SP. The countermelodies featured in The Sacred and the Profane are the best thing about the song, while Try Try Try was an inexplicably popular single. It's a relentlessly dismal song that somehow resonates with fans. Certainly it plays a part in the album, but it's not a song I choose to listen to very often. By Heavy Metal Machine, it seems clear that this album is hitting buttons, but not to the same extent or to the same effect. It's a fuzzed up monster, but really feels quite novelty (apart from the chorus, which is wonderful). THings get forgettable fro here on in. Though there are peaks (the utter weirdness of The Imploding Voice, the melodic pop high of Wound, the delightful fast gentle-punk of closer Age of Innocence) and clear trudges through boredom (the ten minute Glass and the Ghost CHildren, the overwrought electronics of The Crying Tree of Mercury and Blue Skies Bring Tears). There are some memorable moments but overall it's a massive drop in quality.
MACHINA II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music
The second half of the proposed double LP starts, bewilderingly, with a real balls to the wall punk number, Glass. Then comes the industrial thrash of Cash Car Star, a live favourite. Dross continues this sleazy rock intro, seemingly in keeping with the loose "rock star" concept behind the MACHINA set. It's still vastly different to the mammoth polished Eighties sheen that dogs Machines of God. Real Love, a track rescued from the download-only ghetto by the Greatest Hits set, stands out as the blistering, fizzy epic single (that never was). With a lot in common with Stand.. it's infinitely sweeter and less bombastic. Go is a dismissable diversion, while Let Me Give The World To You is the almost cynically targeted commercial single (that never was...again). Acoustic baked, half-hearted verse melody, it's not great. Infact the next few tracks are just fodder until the almost unlistenable White Spyder - not because it's bad but because of the vinyl-to-mp3 transition everything sounds drowned out by the heaviness of it. It's in fact one of the best chugging rock songs they've ever produced. There's still four tracks after this. They're as bad as the last part of Machines of God. Pretty dire as far as records go, though there are definite stand outs in their catalogue not to be missed in the first third.
ZEITGEIST
Comprising only of Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain, this record could well be their heaviest. It's drenched in droning open strings, harmony voices and noisy guitar playing, easily matching the hardest moments on MACHINA/The Machines of God. Initial impressions were pretty poor. The songs sounded cliched and messy, but reassessment sees it's probably more consistent than either of the MACHINA dual set.
The primary problem is the weakness of the lead vocals, somehow not as powerful in the face of these walls of guitars and Jimmy's drumming. Perhaps this is why the harmonies are all over the place. THe other problem is the prolonged jamming found on United States (an unfortunate live set staple) and the drawn out death of Pomp and Circumstances and For God and Country. These tracks hark back to Silverfuck, Ghost and the Glass Children and the other worst excesses of Billy's guitar work outs. It may be these indulgences that make That's The Way (My Love Is), Tarantula, Bring The Light, (C'Mon) Let's Go and Bleed The Orchid sound comparatively brilliant. Overall it's quite a drab album, with little light and shade but still hangs together better than MACHINA's overlong work. On this evidence, however, there's no debating the reasons for their rejection of the album format from now on.
Overall, The Smashing Pumpkins are a band everyone loves to hate and Zeitgeist was seen as a massive failiure, to the delight of those who see Corgan as a massive egotistical rock dinosaur. Nevertheless, his earlier work cannopt be ignored.
Steve Albini reckoned SP were "made of and for the mainstream". This is probably entirely true - Billy's lullaby melodies are pretty pop - but it's the uneasy pairing of interstellar-bound guitars, arena rock pomp and elegant melodic ideas that make them what they are. Mainstream they became, but only in a climate where grunge became a household name could they have even began a career in music. If there is a modern equivalent - a baffling success that is, nevertheless, deserved - it's Muse. It'll be interesting to see what happens now they've hit their peak.
There's something undeniably magnetic about The Smashing Pumpkins music. They basically took the prog and stadium rock of the 70s and early Eighties and tooled it up for the nineties. How does it work?
1) Billy Corgan's guitar work
Huge riffs, often multi-tracked almost to oblivion, solos whose role it seems to be to jettison into space at the earliest opportunity, effects used to reverberate around your head, his arranging of those mystical and bludgeoning guitar lines, feedback, harmonies, fuzz upon unending fuzz.....even on Adore (the anti-rock record) there's some beautiful guitar work underlying the drum machines and synthery.
2) Billy Corgan's voice
A Marmite voice for sure - it's could be borderline terrible but it's uniqueness and utter conviction made The Smashing Pumpkins sound like no one else. It somehow suited the utter chaos going on around it, to the point where it sticks out more on Zeitgeist (arguably their heaviest record) even with the guitars sounding like war machines.
3) Prolific
This can be a horrendous thing 1) quality control and 2) difficult to know where to start and continue
Basically, I thing the Pumpkins are a band that started off pretty mediocre really - Gish isn't great apart from the first four songs and Tristessa - before leaping to greatness almost instantly. Suddenly, after Siamese Dream, we had a B-sides, rarities and outtakes collection, a follow-up album that was 2 discs long, a box set of EPs etc., a 16 track single album and then a proposed double album with three EPs of off cuts. Just take a look at the digital rarities collection - how many songs? What's more, there's hardly a dud among them. Which is, frankly, terrifying. Even now, after the alright come back album Zeitgeist, we have had a great little acoustic EP American Gothic, two new singles (G.L.O.W. and FOL - what's with the initials?) backed with Superchrist and Gossamer, and promises of more releases along those lines.
4) Album quality
GISH
As I said earlier, pretty average but half of the album is actually brilliant. I Am One and Siva are defining moments in the Pumpkins canon, with riffs and solos and "reset" ideas all punctuating them. Rhinocerous is a great example of the future for Billy's longer songwriting (this actually being one of the best actually). Tristessa is a great pop rock song and Bury does its job. For a debut, 5 classic songs is damn fine.
SIAMESE DREAM
In scope and ability this record is outstanding. Beginning with the drawn out drumming and open stringed riffing of alt rock pioneering Cherub Rock, it's almost Corgan saying: "This is how we sound, and Cherub Rock is our genre". The guitars are charged with shuttle thrusters, sounding thicker, heavier and bolder than any guitar sound ever has. With the Drop D ascending riff of Quiet, it sounds like some threatening death rock album. Come Today though, melody leaps to the forefront - an ice cream truck tune being filtered through metal histrionics - and all bets are off. Soma's gentile-multi layering of reverb and guitars before almighty explosions show Billy's imagination rocketing away. Album highlight, Mayonaise, is penned by both Corgan and Iha and showcases alternate tunings and dynamics at the core of what they do. Silverfuck is a real overstep, proving to be drawn out and pompous but giving a threat rather than a real warning shot. It's still got something which is jucily metallic. Followed by Sweet Sweet's lullaby before the luxiorous Luna, the record is a massive triumph. That's without mentioning the album's acoustic centrepiece Disarm, one of the most simple and elegant songs in their catalogue.
Pisces Iscariot
Released between their breakthrough masterpiece and their commerical goliath peering round the corner, this covers B-sides, outtakes etc. and really shows how prolific Billy is - and how consistent he can be. It openes with the beautiful and aptly named Soothe. When Billy's voice breaks, with the proximity of the mic, it sounds honest and cutting. Billy's phaser effect gets a major work out on a lot of these songs, twisting, revolving and spiralling around his solos, mutating them as you listen. It even gives a showcase for James Iha's first solo songwriting effort for SP: Blew Away. It's sweet, but inconsequential, a lot like the man's solo album. Pissant is a real angry, fast number, very different to what's come before, but an indicator of what was to come. Perhaps my fave is Hello Kitty Kat, a real distorted mess of a song that echoes a heavier Mayonaise. You can practically hear the speakers imploding in protest at the destroyed mix. Though quality depletes towards the end of this collection, Corgan's solo cover of Landlisde is lovely. Basically this could've been the band's third record and people would still love it, but they may not have been half the band they become.
Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness
Disc 1
Jaw droppingly long, yet instilled with quality beyond it's number of tracks (28). Beginning with a piano intro and synthesised strings, it bursts into Tonight Tonight (the first Pumpkins song I actually properly listened to, as I wasn't into their heavier stuff like Bullet With Butterfly Wings at the time). This dramatic, orchestral sweep is so far and away from the distorted guitar symphonies of yore that it seems nonsense to expect anything but a huge break away from Siamese Dream.
Stirring as it is, though, it gets torn apart by the following two tracks. Jellybelly sounds so fiercely distorted, it might as well be on fire. It's actually insane. There's an excruciating build up two thirds in which more than proves Billy wasn't done with abusing guitars and studios by a long shot. The staccato harmonic riff of Zero follows, showing a direct, vicious, stabbing arrangement that uses far less multi-tracking and far more emotion. The solo is sheer pitch shifting, ring modulating, octaving genius. Here Is No Why, relatively calm, is one of the greatest Pumpkins songs in it's clever melodic nuances and percussive chord playng. And that solo too. Minor US hit Bullet With Butterfly Wings follows, and, with the video, really brings to the fore the gothic chic that would become the SP's central theme for the rest of their career. Dark, metallic, lyrically devilish - it's their trademark track in the eyes of many. It's arguably also the first real screaming we get from Billy. To Forgive sticks out after so much heaviness, yet still resonates as an important transitional track almost halfway through the first disc. Barely played guitars shiver underneath Billy's laments. Hints of electronica slip out here too. An Ode To No One seems incongruous after such ugly beauty. It's a proper brutal sleaze metal thrash out. Love is another contrast, a fuzzy minimal trudge through static and Billy's nasal whine. It's extremely effective, like having a shower in guilt and shame. At about 2:44 is one of the album's many sweet spots. The insane filtered solo is haunting. Cupid De Locke feels like a bubble bath and a sleep on a cloud after Love's grime. Then Galapogos returns to Soma territory, with gentle arpeggios washing you upon a beach. Though slow to start, it eventually turns into a shifting, granular sifting sound. It's arrrangement is clever and affecting. Muzzle, though pretty standard rock, is so triumphant, it stands out as one of their best songs and shows that even when Billy strips it all back to its roots, his common thread is a sense of melody. By this time your sweating from the effort of listening, knowing there's still thirty tracks to go. Porcelina Of the Vast Oceans gives you a prolonged two minute intro, though one adorned with peaks and troughs after the injection of adrenaline from Muzzle. It then alternately drifts and jolts you across it's nine plus minutes. It was the perfect set opener for their Zeitgeist tour in 2008. In some wasy it's the perfect SP track. THe final disc ends with the whispering James Iha ballad, Take Me Down, which is actually beautiful.
Disc 2
It ricochets you into life with the noisy, pick scraping thirty seconds intro to Where Boys Fear To Tread. A discordant, sludgey opener, it's a real antithesis to the last third of the first disc (albeit with added doo-wop backing vocals). That's even before the most violent track, Bodies, comes screaming out of the (hell) gates with it's drop D octaving and full-bloodied screaming from Corgan. It's incredible. Thirty-Three, the weakest single from the album, still sounds lovely in context although it's the awkward acoustic atmospherics of In The Arms of Sleep that overrides it, meaning Thirty-Three is stranded between two album highlights. Then the best single from the album, 1979, is next; Billy's New Order tribute. A wonderful song that should be remembered as an all time classic. Following this is one of the two most fucked up mixes on the album, Tales of a Scorched Earth (X.Y.U. is the other). It sounds stupidly lo-fi and ridiculous in the album, and basically destroys the flow of the second disc. It's a fair enough rock out, with Corgan's most throat-burning vocal performance. But fighting through mic distortion you couldn't tell anyway. Luckily the gorgeous, wobbly layers of Thru The Eyes of Ruby and the simple acoustic picking of Stumbeline peel away those nasty memories. X.Y.U.s blistering rock ends the distorted section of the album, being throwaway and pointless, yet still feeding us the requisite distortion quoitant for an SP album. The last five tracks are strangely quaint and seem pretty poor, though they all suit the theme of the album, but they're almost embarassing efforts after such a trawl through Billy's imagination. It could be argued these stripped back melodic songs are a worthy rest period for the listener, but they're more likely to be skipped completely. By Starlight is the best of them. Strangely Lily (My One and Only) was dug out for the 2008 tour, which made sense live, but it's really not a creative high. It ends, appropriately, with all four voices of the band - finally united - on Farewell and Goodnight, on a sweet lullaby for the weary listener.
Overall, it's an incredible achievement which no other band of the era come close to matching.
ADORE
Having realised he could write songs without electric guitars, distortion, riffs and evne a drummer (there's more to this obviously, but it's funnier to just leave it at that), Adore became something altogether more intriguing. From the opener To Shiela's gentle beginnings, it's strange to be greeted by the throbbing synth bass of Ava Adore, somehow heavier than some of the guitar tracks from Mellon Collie ever managed. It's one of the cleverist modern singles in decades and continues to wow with it's minimal depth. Here the album explodes into a sinister, murderous, lamenting epic, feeling deeper and longer than Mellon Collie as the mood perpetuates the entire album, rather than hopping genres like the double-disc of yore did.
The electronic Daphne Descends is like shivering death, Once Upon A Time is a tear-jerking ode to Billy's dead mother, Tear is like being pulled from death's grip into bleakness, Crestfallen is a devastating musical journey of loss. After all this shadowy blackness, Appels and Oranjes is a glorious, unrepetant dance number that revels in it's contrary nature. It's excellent. Pug returns to Ava Adore's earlier rock ideas, while still forgoing obvious multi-tracked riffs. The last handful of tracks seem patchy but are well sequenced. We have The Tale of Dusty and Pistol Pete's country-esque story, Annie-Dog's cracked voice and piano lull, Shame's severe atmospherics before the heavy synth crescendo of Behold! The Night Mare (another track resurrected successfully for the 2008 tour). The final two tracks, For Martha and Blank page, are two brilliant, underrated songs in their canon (as is Night Mare). 17 is merely obliuque piano feedback - a strange, disconnected end to, what is probably the best SP album, while being chronically underloved by critics and general public. It's such an all pervading work, it may aswell be their masterpiece.
MACHINA/The Machines of God
Which is why, when the uber-distorted bass and guitar of opener The Everlasting Gaze kicks in, every fan the world over celebrated. It's a fantastic reminder that SP are incredibly adept at crafting songs that work in stadiums and living rooms. The right blend of riff and atrmospherics thunders through this collection. However, it's the first time you feel the flaws really hold back the artistry on display. Raindrops and Sunshowers sounds like a tip of the hat to Adore so as not to show they've forgotten their best period....but it brings and overly Eighties feel to an album that needed to sound alien. Stand Inside Your Love is a cracking single, all jangling intro riffs and bellowing, lava stream chorus. I of the Mourning, through lyrically dire, is one of the most effective songs on the album, it's distant, haunted echoes retaining that Eighties feel, while still sounding like SP. The countermelodies featured in The Sacred and the Profane are the best thing about the song, while Try Try Try was an inexplicably popular single. It's a relentlessly dismal song that somehow resonates with fans. Certainly it plays a part in the album, but it's not a song I choose to listen to very often. By Heavy Metal Machine, it seems clear that this album is hitting buttons, but not to the same extent or to the same effect. It's a fuzzed up monster, but really feels quite novelty (apart from the chorus, which is wonderful). THings get forgettable fro here on in. Though there are peaks (the utter weirdness of The Imploding Voice, the melodic pop high of Wound, the delightful fast gentle-punk of closer Age of Innocence) and clear trudges through boredom (the ten minute Glass and the Ghost CHildren, the overwrought electronics of The Crying Tree of Mercury and Blue Skies Bring Tears). There are some memorable moments but overall it's a massive drop in quality.
MACHINA II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music
The second half of the proposed double LP starts, bewilderingly, with a real balls to the wall punk number, Glass. Then comes the industrial thrash of Cash Car Star, a live favourite. Dross continues this sleazy rock intro, seemingly in keeping with the loose "rock star" concept behind the MACHINA set. It's still vastly different to the mammoth polished Eighties sheen that dogs Machines of God. Real Love, a track rescued from the download-only ghetto by the Greatest Hits set, stands out as the blistering, fizzy epic single (that never was). With a lot in common with Stand.. it's infinitely sweeter and less bombastic. Go is a dismissable diversion, while Let Me Give The World To You is the almost cynically targeted commercial single (that never was...again). Acoustic baked, half-hearted verse melody, it's not great. Infact the next few tracks are just fodder until the almost unlistenable White Spyder - not because it's bad but because of the vinyl-to-mp3 transition everything sounds drowned out by the heaviness of it. It's in fact one of the best chugging rock songs they've ever produced. There's still four tracks after this. They're as bad as the last part of Machines of God. Pretty dire as far as records go, though there are definite stand outs in their catalogue not to be missed in the first third.
ZEITGEIST
Comprising only of Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain, this record could well be their heaviest. It's drenched in droning open strings, harmony voices and noisy guitar playing, easily matching the hardest moments on MACHINA/The Machines of God. Initial impressions were pretty poor. The songs sounded cliched and messy, but reassessment sees it's probably more consistent than either of the MACHINA dual set.
The primary problem is the weakness of the lead vocals, somehow not as powerful in the face of these walls of guitars and Jimmy's drumming. Perhaps this is why the harmonies are all over the place. THe other problem is the prolonged jamming found on United States (an unfortunate live set staple) and the drawn out death of Pomp and Circumstances and For God and Country. These tracks hark back to Silverfuck, Ghost and the Glass Children and the other worst excesses of Billy's guitar work outs. It may be these indulgences that make That's The Way (My Love Is), Tarantula, Bring The Light, (C'Mon) Let's Go and Bleed The Orchid sound comparatively brilliant. Overall it's quite a drab album, with little light and shade but still hangs together better than MACHINA's overlong work. On this evidence, however, there's no debating the reasons for their rejection of the album format from now on.
Overall, The Smashing Pumpkins are a band everyone loves to hate and Zeitgeist was seen as a massive failiure, to the delight of those who see Corgan as a massive egotistical rock dinosaur. Nevertheless, his earlier work cannopt be ignored.
Steve Albini reckoned SP were "made of and for the mainstream". This is probably entirely true - Billy's lullaby melodies are pretty pop - but it's the uneasy pairing of interstellar-bound guitars, arena rock pomp and elegant melodic ideas that make them what they are. Mainstream they became, but only in a climate where grunge became a household name could they have even began a career in music. If there is a modern equivalent - a baffling success that is, nevertheless, deserved - it's Muse. It'll be interesting to see what happens now they've hit their peak.
Friday, 6 February 2009
Band of the last seven days - Radiohead
It had to come sooner or later. They don't need any introduction though I may need to explain why I find Radiohead to be perhaps the one band that seem to encompass almost everything I love about music.
How they got to be so popular is beyond me. I never ever expected them to be the behemoth they are now, dividing people into fans and people who don't understand them (this is a joke, obviously). In fact, I despised them once upon a time. A youngster, having heard perhaps one or two of their songs, I remember looking at that hateful artwork on the cover of The Bends, recently released and innocuous, and proclaiming that that was one album that I would NEVER buy.
Since then I've bought it twice; the second time was to replace the scracthed, worn out CD copy I had bought previously. I will buy it a third time on vinyl as it belongs in my record collection of favourite albums of all time.
But why so much love for this rather forlorn - some may say depressing, boring - band? Let's count the ways shall we?
1) Johnny Greenwood's guitar work
At the time I actually started to appreciated The Bends on a cassette copy my friend insisted I listen to, there was one thing that stood out amongst all the high points. It wasn't Thom Yorke's voice - it was always about Johnny Greenwood's (and t, to give credit where it's due, Ed O Brien's) pioneering guitar explosions. Seemingly spliced from blues and rock with an extreme amount of futuristic filters and ideas, his strange lead parts and interesting textural use of a tremelo pedal on tracks like Planet Telex and Bones made me sit up and get very excited indeed. Not only was his playing extraordinary but so was watching him play: long hair obscuring his face, he thrust his strumming arm directly downwards, as if trying to break the strings from pure force. He wore some kind of arm guard so as not to brutalise his flesh. It was an incredible thing to watch. Pretty quickly, my favourite guitar part of all time was that impossible high, pitch-shifted note that rings out and fluctuates in tone for about 5 seconds in Just.
2) Their music is uplifting
Buh? Are we talking about Radiohead? The guys who make "music to slit your wrists to"? Well, yeah. Their descent into despair somehow electrifies me, making me smile and want to celebrate life. Certain stirring moments like the falsetto backing vocals coming in during the second verse of There There, or the climax of Let Down and even the band's self-confessed bleakest song, Street Spirit (Fade Out), when Thom Yorke bursts into the closing coda of "Immerse your soul in love" is both chilling and warming. Their intensive structures, the brilliant musicianship and, most of all, the overall atmosphere of Radiohead's material does nothing but motivate me and make me want to shout from the rooftops and sing all day.
3) Innovation
Sure, even when they were making pretty standard rock songs on Pablo Honey and The Bends, they weren't shockingly original or anything. Nevertheless the ideas, riffs and vocal lines always had something unique about them. Their layering of certain guitar ideas, the directions the songs would take and Yorke's way os seamlessly flowing over it with his sublime vocal range all constituted something different.
By the time OK Computer started messing with the formula a little, Kid A seemed inevitable. The album that turned people off because of it's inaccessibility or got people interested after that boring rock rubbish was a brave and interesting move. Kid A is undoubtedly a brilliant work, which was actually still pretty standard as far as structures went. Amnesiac seemed, in comparison, like offcuts thrown onto a record. Hail To The Thief merged the two styles perfectly while In Rainbows is actually the perfect Radiohead record. Throughout they're messing with ideas, trying to stay away from the bombastic arena rock that makes U2 and Coldplay so tedious. Though often thrown together, it's clear that Radiohead have very little to do with what those bands seem to be about. If anything they ahve more in common with Muse, except Muse are, again, very predictable in a prog-rock for the 00s kind of way.
4) They are NOT flawless
This is important. I am not a rabid, love-everything fan. They've done some attrocious music in their time. I think you can get a better persepective on a band from their mistakes or bad points. In this case Pop Is Dead (terrible, although still enjoyable to listen to), We Suck Young Blood (tedious and griping), How Do You? (similar to Pop Is Dead but less emabarassing), Pull/Pulk (a bit pointless? sounds like machinary running in the back of your mind), Treefingers (nice but ultimately redundant), Exit Music (good, but goes on a bit)....there are other things. However, there are so many high points in their catalogue which makes these throwaway songs seem like studio larks.
5) Albums are most definitely albums
Everything from artwork, presentation to the flow of the tracks. The general exception is Amnesiac, which I've never really felt works as an entire record and a recent listen has confirmed this.
6) Consistency
Each album, with each of their flaws, has an incredible amount of brilliantly written songs on them. Here's what confuses me - the kind of bravery and esoteric ideas, within their own songwriting framework - does not lend itself to commerciality. I mean, why do people like this band on such a scale? I know why I like them, it's all explained above, but their commercial aspect has always and will always buffle me.
How they got to be so popular is beyond me. I never ever expected them to be the behemoth they are now, dividing people into fans and people who don't understand them (this is a joke, obviously). In fact, I despised them once upon a time. A youngster, having heard perhaps one or two of their songs, I remember looking at that hateful artwork on the cover of The Bends, recently released and innocuous, and proclaiming that that was one album that I would NEVER buy.
Since then I've bought it twice; the second time was to replace the scracthed, worn out CD copy I had bought previously. I will buy it a third time on vinyl as it belongs in my record collection of favourite albums of all time.
But why so much love for this rather forlorn - some may say depressing, boring - band? Let's count the ways shall we?
1) Johnny Greenwood's guitar work
At the time I actually started to appreciated The Bends on a cassette copy my friend insisted I listen to, there was one thing that stood out amongst all the high points. It wasn't Thom Yorke's voice - it was always about Johnny Greenwood's (and t, to give credit where it's due, Ed O Brien's) pioneering guitar explosions. Seemingly spliced from blues and rock with an extreme amount of futuristic filters and ideas, his strange lead parts and interesting textural use of a tremelo pedal on tracks like Planet Telex and Bones made me sit up and get very excited indeed. Not only was his playing extraordinary but so was watching him play: long hair obscuring his face, he thrust his strumming arm directly downwards, as if trying to break the strings from pure force. He wore some kind of arm guard so as not to brutalise his flesh. It was an incredible thing to watch. Pretty quickly, my favourite guitar part of all time was that impossible high, pitch-shifted note that rings out and fluctuates in tone for about 5 seconds in Just.
2) Their music is uplifting
Buh? Are we talking about Radiohead? The guys who make "music to slit your wrists to"? Well, yeah. Their descent into despair somehow electrifies me, making me smile and want to celebrate life. Certain stirring moments like the falsetto backing vocals coming in during the second verse of There There, or the climax of Let Down and even the band's self-confessed bleakest song, Street Spirit (Fade Out), when Thom Yorke bursts into the closing coda of "Immerse your soul in love" is both chilling and warming. Their intensive structures, the brilliant musicianship and, most of all, the overall atmosphere of Radiohead's material does nothing but motivate me and make me want to shout from the rooftops and sing all day.
3) Innovation
Sure, even when they were making pretty standard rock songs on Pablo Honey and The Bends, they weren't shockingly original or anything. Nevertheless the ideas, riffs and vocal lines always had something unique about them. Their layering of certain guitar ideas, the directions the songs would take and Yorke's way os seamlessly flowing over it with his sublime vocal range all constituted something different.
By the time OK Computer started messing with the formula a little, Kid A seemed inevitable. The album that turned people off because of it's inaccessibility or got people interested after that boring rock rubbish was a brave and interesting move. Kid A is undoubtedly a brilliant work, which was actually still pretty standard as far as structures went. Amnesiac seemed, in comparison, like offcuts thrown onto a record. Hail To The Thief merged the two styles perfectly while In Rainbows is actually the perfect Radiohead record. Throughout they're messing with ideas, trying to stay away from the bombastic arena rock that makes U2 and Coldplay so tedious. Though often thrown together, it's clear that Radiohead have very little to do with what those bands seem to be about. If anything they ahve more in common with Muse, except Muse are, again, very predictable in a prog-rock for the 00s kind of way.
4) They are NOT flawless
This is important. I am not a rabid, love-everything fan. They've done some attrocious music in their time. I think you can get a better persepective on a band from their mistakes or bad points. In this case Pop Is Dead (terrible, although still enjoyable to listen to), We Suck Young Blood (tedious and griping), How Do You? (similar to Pop Is Dead but less emabarassing), Pull/Pulk (a bit pointless? sounds like machinary running in the back of your mind), Treefingers (nice but ultimately redundant), Exit Music (good, but goes on a bit)....there are other things. However, there are so many high points in their catalogue which makes these throwaway songs seem like studio larks.
5) Albums are most definitely albums
Everything from artwork, presentation to the flow of the tracks. The general exception is Amnesiac, which I've never really felt works as an entire record and a recent listen has confirmed this.
6) Consistency
Each album, with each of their flaws, has an incredible amount of brilliantly written songs on them. Here's what confuses me - the kind of bravery and esoteric ideas, within their own songwriting framework - does not lend itself to commerciality. I mean, why do people like this band on such a scale? I know why I like them, it's all explained above, but their commercial aspect has always and will always buffle me.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Band(s) of the Day(s) 29/30/31
Hi. No bus escapades recently, but rather being busy and rediscovering an uncontrollable passion for music. This has been helped by the following bands.
Kit Richardson
Courtesy of the lovely Ellie Coden from Fierce Panda, Cool For Cats is a regular night last Tuesday of every month, named after her very own offshoot label. She usually collects together a diverse and pretty good set of bands. Tuesday just gone she excelled herself with two incredible acts.
First up was Kit Richardson. I know very little about her, apart from she must like Jeremy Warmsley because I met her at his stint at the Lock Tavern last Sunday. This is uninteresting but her music is the antithesis of uninteresting. I've not been as exhilirated by an artist as I was by her performance that night. Announcing that she was "really fucking scared" one song in, she promptly chose not to show an ounce of fear. Diving into her high register, experimental delivery - backed by her own keys, a wonderful cello player, bassist and drummer - her songs weave, duck and dive like Regina Spektor's most tuneful moments while easily forging her own path. Clearly inspired by excellent musicianship, her songs never lose sight of the power and emotional potential from choosing a weaving path rather than a direct route.
www.myspace.com/kitrichardsonmusic
Violet Violet
Headliners this Tuesday, Violet Violet take riot grrl, have fun with it, turn it on it's head and make music that is unbelivably clever within its self-regulated punk template. The three ladies all use their vocal talents - sometimes to astonishing effect. One example is the clever "echo" effect they used during one song, or the indescribable backing vocals that seemed to 'dip' during a different one. They have plenty of completely brilliant songs that seem to run circles around contrived and pre-packaged "girl" music. Shudder. Anyway, so impressed I even let them keep my pen.
www.myspace.com/violetviolet1
Propagandhi
An update to my ealier post because, frankly, I hate rules and I don't play by them very often if I can get away with it. Here I can. So, for those who weren't listening first time (that's everyone because no one reads this thing), Propagandhi are back.
Why is this important? Well, try and comprehend this: Supporting Caste, their fifth full-length studio album, both excites and scares the shit out of me. It practically moved me to tears today...and it's a punk album. I ADORE the fact that the artwork has a graphic drawing depicting the band cooking and eating the remains of 'post-vegetarians'. Several times throughout the lyric sheet they make (semi) jokes about wanting to eat such people. The song Human(e) Meat starts with someone screaming as their limbs are sawed off. The lyrics are a frightening, detailed pastiche of, one imagines, the same reasons people use for eating animals but, in this case, for eating "fermenting-festishist" and chef Sandor Katz. It's incredible. I'm afraid to post lyrics word for word for the song Night Matters, about the separation of families and friends due to war through the eyes of refugees and survivors. I want to, because it's very moving. Again, try and imagine shedding a tear to punk rock.
Of course there's a great deal of humour in the record, as there has been in every record they've done. I must reiterate too: BUY Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes. Hell, it may even change your mind about a few things.
Anyway, expect a huge update about Propagandhi's return again when I feel I can publish lyrics etc. I adore this band. In the meantime, go to their website and read all they ask you to. It's all very interesting and may well inspire you to do more...
Kit Richardson
Courtesy of the lovely Ellie Coden from Fierce Panda, Cool For Cats is a regular night last Tuesday of every month, named after her very own offshoot label. She usually collects together a diverse and pretty good set of bands. Tuesday just gone she excelled herself with two incredible acts.
First up was Kit Richardson. I know very little about her, apart from she must like Jeremy Warmsley because I met her at his stint at the Lock Tavern last Sunday. This is uninteresting but her music is the antithesis of uninteresting. I've not been as exhilirated by an artist as I was by her performance that night. Announcing that she was "really fucking scared" one song in, she promptly chose not to show an ounce of fear. Diving into her high register, experimental delivery - backed by her own keys, a wonderful cello player, bassist and drummer - her songs weave, duck and dive like Regina Spektor's most tuneful moments while easily forging her own path. Clearly inspired by excellent musicianship, her songs never lose sight of the power and emotional potential from choosing a weaving path rather than a direct route.
www.myspace.com/kitrichardsonmusic
Violet Violet
Headliners this Tuesday, Violet Violet take riot grrl, have fun with it, turn it on it's head and make music that is unbelivably clever within its self-regulated punk template. The three ladies all use their vocal talents - sometimes to astonishing effect. One example is the clever "echo" effect they used during one song, or the indescribable backing vocals that seemed to 'dip' during a different one. They have plenty of completely brilliant songs that seem to run circles around contrived and pre-packaged "girl" music. Shudder. Anyway, so impressed I even let them keep my pen.
www.myspace.com/violetviolet1
Propagandhi
An update to my ealier post because, frankly, I hate rules and I don't play by them very often if I can get away with it. Here I can. So, for those who weren't listening first time (that's everyone because no one reads this thing), Propagandhi are back.
Why is this important? Well, try and comprehend this: Supporting Caste, their fifth full-length studio album, both excites and scares the shit out of me. It practically moved me to tears today...and it's a punk album. I ADORE the fact that the artwork has a graphic drawing depicting the band cooking and eating the remains of 'post-vegetarians'. Several times throughout the lyric sheet they make (semi) jokes about wanting to eat such people. The song Human(e) Meat starts with someone screaming as their limbs are sawed off. The lyrics are a frightening, detailed pastiche of, one imagines, the same reasons people use for eating animals but, in this case, for eating "fermenting-festishist" and chef Sandor Katz. It's incredible. I'm afraid to post lyrics word for word for the song Night Matters, about the separation of families and friends due to war through the eyes of refugees and survivors. I want to, because it's very moving. Again, try and imagine shedding a tear to punk rock.
Of course there's a great deal of humour in the record, as there has been in every record they've done. I must reiterate too: BUY Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes. Hell, it may even change your mind about a few things.
Anyway, expect a huge update about Propagandhi's return again when I feel I can publish lyrics etc. I adore this band. In the meantime, go to their website and read all they ask you to. It's all very interesting and may well inspire you to do more...
Monday, 26 January 2009
Band(s) of the Day(s) 26/27/28
Hello. I missed my stop on the bus last night by falling asleep. I've never done this before in my life, and therefore think my life has turned a corner. Anyway, as this gives you an indication of how tired I am, please forgive these late'uns.
Death From Above1979
With one album proper of devastating dance thrash, this drums and bass duo were playing at being the pop Lightning Bolt, or perhaps just playing dancable pop songs with the most basic of all rock music requirements - a rhythm section. Either way, their music is fantastic bundles of noisy riff-strangulated anthems. The thing that makes this band stand out though, is their dedication to making you move. The fact that a remix album was released keeping a lot of the original elements from the songs intact makes you realise how cleverly constructed each track was. But forget that...its the pure passion and energy flowing from these songs. They burnt out quickly (though you can find one in MSTRKRFT and one in Sebastian Grainger and the Mountains), and left us with an indelible mark via their kerosene-fuelled love songs.
Pull Out (with excellent and colourful description of the songs lyrical content)
Liars
Having made two of my favourite albums of the 00s, Liars are a law unto themselves. Starting with the funk-punk demolition of They Threw Us In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, they then progressed/regressed to a screeching, stuttering concept album about witches called They Were Wrong So We Drowned, followed by another concept album about two fictional characters called Drum and Mt. Heart Attack which revelled in percussion, drums, rhythms and foregoed melody and finally made a self titled record in which, vocalist Angus admitted, "we actually tried to write songs this time". All of these records are essential - Drum's Not Dead is an incredible, atmospheric achievement which has little to do with virtuosity and a lot to do with texture, emotion and ambition. Be prepared for a wild ride is all.
Mr Your On Fire Mr
Broken Witch
Let's Not Wrestle Mt Heart Attack
Plaster Casts Of Everything
Mixtape:
Spotify link: http://open.spotify.com/user/artbaretta/playlist/0Blk6RWzubgNXgc4vBcVxJ
1) There's Always Room On The Broom (from They Were Wrong So We Drowned)
2) Let's Not Wrestle Mt Heart Attack (from Drum's Not Dead)
3) Freak Out (from Liars)
4) It Fit When I Was A Kid (from Drum's Not Dead)
5) Broken Witch (from They Were Wrong So We Drowned)
6) Drum and the Uncomfortable Can (from Drum's Not Dead)
7) Cycle Time (from Liars)
8) Be Quiet Mt Heart Attack (from Drum's Not Dead)
9) Protection (from Liars)
10) The Other Side of Mt Heart Attack (from Drum's Not Dead)
At the Drive-In
Are you crazy? This band was always going to be here somewhere. Why? Because despite some guy on a messageboard a few years ago arguing with me that this band just ripped off Drive Like Jehu and therefore I shouldn't like them as much as I do, this band just tore my head off when I finally listened to Relationship Of Command. It was also my first real experience of Q being so severely wrong that I think the magazine should be exterminated. They are never ever right. Anyway.
At the Drive-In combined all sorts of guitar sounds, threateningly violent tones, Cedric's intense, Daryl Palumbo-type delivery and the incredible live show...something I never got to see. Nevertheless, both their breakthrough album and In/Casino/Out are fantastic rock records and were far more focused and exciting than their creators now give credit. Shame.
Arcarsenal (yes, this is incredible - respect for walking off early too, a protest at the moshing/slam dancing that ended up killing a young music fan that day at Limp Bizkit's set)
Pattern Against User (purely for the dedication to the Fall and the anti-crowd surfing shout AND for how shambolic they could be melody wise)
One Armed Scissor (absolutely thrilling, yet an indication that things were about to fall apart)
Rolodex Propaganda (probably one of the best live performances ever)
Mixtape:
Spotify link: http://open.spotify.com/user/artbaretta/playlist/0Nxb9JzsFTF0bNYutBU00z
1) Cosmonaut (from Relationship of Command)
2) Pickpocket (from In/Casino/Out)
3) Fahrenheit (from El Gran Orgo)
4) Sleepwalk Capsules (from Relationship of Command)
5) Napoleon Solo (from In/Casino/Out)
6) Picket Fence Cartel (from El Gran Orgo)
7) Extracurricular (from At the Drive-In/Sunshine split 7")
8) Catacombs (from Relationship of Command)
9) Transatlantic Foe (from In/Casino/Out)
10) Invalid Letter Dept. (from Relationship of Command)
Death From Above1979
With one album proper of devastating dance thrash, this drums and bass duo were playing at being the pop Lightning Bolt, or perhaps just playing dancable pop songs with the most basic of all rock music requirements - a rhythm section. Either way, their music is fantastic bundles of noisy riff-strangulated anthems. The thing that makes this band stand out though, is their dedication to making you move. The fact that a remix album was released keeping a lot of the original elements from the songs intact makes you realise how cleverly constructed each track was. But forget that...its the pure passion and energy flowing from these songs. They burnt out quickly (though you can find one in MSTRKRFT and one in Sebastian Grainger and the Mountains), and left us with an indelible mark via their kerosene-fuelled love songs.
Pull Out (with excellent and colourful description of the songs lyrical content)
Liars
Having made two of my favourite albums of the 00s, Liars are a law unto themselves. Starting with the funk-punk demolition of They Threw Us In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, they then progressed/regressed to a screeching, stuttering concept album about witches called They Were Wrong So We Drowned, followed by another concept album about two fictional characters called Drum and Mt. Heart Attack which revelled in percussion, drums, rhythms and foregoed melody and finally made a self titled record in which, vocalist Angus admitted, "we actually tried to write songs this time". All of these records are essential - Drum's Not Dead is an incredible, atmospheric achievement which has little to do with virtuosity and a lot to do with texture, emotion and ambition. Be prepared for a wild ride is all.
Mr Your On Fire Mr
Broken Witch
Let's Not Wrestle Mt Heart Attack
Plaster Casts Of Everything
Mixtape:
Spotify link: http://open.spotify.com/user/artbaretta/playlist/0Blk6RWzubgNXgc4vBcVxJ
1) There's Always Room On The Broom (from They Were Wrong So We Drowned)
2) Let's Not Wrestle Mt Heart Attack (from Drum's Not Dead)
3) Freak Out (from Liars)
4) It Fit When I Was A Kid (from Drum's Not Dead)
5) Broken Witch (from They Were Wrong So We Drowned)
6) Drum and the Uncomfortable Can (from Drum's Not Dead)
7) Cycle Time (from Liars)
8) Be Quiet Mt Heart Attack (from Drum's Not Dead)
9) Protection (from Liars)
10) The Other Side of Mt Heart Attack (from Drum's Not Dead)
At the Drive-In
Are you crazy? This band was always going to be here somewhere. Why? Because despite some guy on a messageboard a few years ago arguing with me that this band just ripped off Drive Like Jehu and therefore I shouldn't like them as much as I do, this band just tore my head off when I finally listened to Relationship Of Command. It was also my first real experience of Q being so severely wrong that I think the magazine should be exterminated. They are never ever right. Anyway.
At the Drive-In combined all sorts of guitar sounds, threateningly violent tones, Cedric's intense, Daryl Palumbo-type delivery and the incredible live show...something I never got to see. Nevertheless, both their breakthrough album and In/Casino/Out are fantastic rock records and were far more focused and exciting than their creators now give credit. Shame.
Arcarsenal (yes, this is incredible - respect for walking off early too, a protest at the moshing/slam dancing that ended up killing a young music fan that day at Limp Bizkit's set)
Pattern Against User (purely for the dedication to the Fall and the anti-crowd surfing shout AND for how shambolic they could be melody wise)
One Armed Scissor (absolutely thrilling, yet an indication that things were about to fall apart)
Rolodex Propaganda (probably one of the best live performances ever)
Mixtape:
Spotify link: http://open.spotify.com/user/artbaretta/playlist/0Nxb9JzsFTF0bNYutBU00z
1) Cosmonaut (from Relationship of Command)
2) Pickpocket (from In/Casino/Out)
3) Fahrenheit (from El Gran Orgo)
4) Sleepwalk Capsules (from Relationship of Command)
5) Napoleon Solo (from In/Casino/Out)
6) Picket Fence Cartel (from El Gran Orgo)
7) Extracurricular (from At the Drive-In/Sunshine split 7")
8) Catacombs (from Relationship of Command)
9) Transatlantic Foe (from In/Casino/Out)
10) Invalid Letter Dept. (from Relationship of Command)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
