September 2017 Review

I listened to no less than 14 albums from October, it was one of those months where I read the release list and was all "yep, yep, yep ...yep" and kept on loading my Spotify up with music. As is often the case with these bumper months, there were a few albums I put in The Rest that maybe should have gone in the ranked section - Danny Watts, Death From Above and Four Tet just missed out, and would have been dead certs for the top list on a weaker month. I was toying with a top 7 but... Nah. One to definitely avoid this time round is Prophets Of Rage. It's not like I was expecting anything special, but Rage Against The Machine with the dudes from Public Enemy and Cypress Hill waters down the political message from revolutionary encitement to Rock The Vote. Bring back Zach De La Rocha! 


The Rest:

Tori Amos - Native Invader - B

Death From Above 1979 - Outrage! Is Now - B

Four Tet - New Energy - C

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Luciferian Towers - B

Mogwai - Every Country's Sun - C

Prophets Of Rage - Prophets Of Rage - C

Danny Watts - Black Boy Meets World - B

Zola Jesus - Okovi - C

The Best:

01: The Horrors - V - A

The Horrors are one of those bands that have been indie darlings for years, but have never quite broke the mainstream. Their last few albums have been critically acclaimed, but they've only troubled the top 40 of the UK singles chart once. It seems that the public at large hasn't quite warmed to the Essex quintet yet. I've never really been that bothered about their sound, but V hit me with some force, and I can't get enough of it.

It's hard to give the genre on this record a name, but it has a pleasing mixture of alternative rock, shoegaze and New-Wave psychedelia that weaves in and out of many different moods and emotions. Mountainous guitar walls tower across the landscape on V, guiding the bigger drops and tying up the loose ends of the calm sections. Enormous shuddering melodies clatter through the speakers, and single notes arc across the sky for miles. Huge tunes like Machine, Press Enter To Exit and World Below uplift the experience to euphoric heights, while low drifting tripped-out pieces like Gathering, Ghost, (which contains an utterly incredible explosion of glittering electronica around the halfway mark) and Weighed Down balance V out to a masterful level.

The boys save the best until last, though. The closing track Something To Remember Me By is an epic 6.40 of soaring vocals, reverb everywhere, and about 4 million guitar channels. The sound is truly monumental, an instant classic that fills out every cavity of your skull with bright, shining optimism. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from the peak of the late 80's post-Punk/Indie wave, but without being a throwback. Lead singer Faris Badwan's voice is beautifully suited to this song, dominating the soundscape for one final push for glory. As the final chords fade out, it doesn't feel like you've been listening for almost an hour. V is a shoe-in for top 20 of 2017.

02: LCD Soundsystem - American Dream - A

Is this a comeback record? In terms of years between albums it would be hard to justify - LCD Soundsystem's previous release was but 7 years ago,  the critically acclaimed This Is Happening. The band's hiatus (according to Wikipedia) lasted merely 3 years, meaning this album took a few years of "active" time to produce. So while it may not be a "long-awaited" comeback, it is still an artistic statement of intent, a signal to the world from James Murphy that he's back on the scene. And what's more, he's back on form, because American Dream is a very good album indeed.

While Blank Screen, the dreary outro track that takes up a fifth of the album's running time is a damp squib, the rest of the record gleans with brilliance, shining with the urbane sophistication that LCD Soundsystem have made their calling card. They are the thinking man's Electronica, a modern, spikier Talking Heads, and with Murphy's spoken-word monologue singing over the top of a lush orchestral vista of instruments, American Dream is another jewel in the already glittering crown of LCD Soundsystem's discography. 

There are many highlights on this record, but far and away the best tune on this is the irrepressible single Tonite, a pulsating fixture in the midst of the album's runtime, with all instruments going balls-to-the-wall for a cacophonous backdrop to Murphy's utterly vital vocal poetry. He is the eye of this particular storm, and his measured observational righteousness is hypnotic. You find yourself lost in the melee of sounds, and just as you think it's getting too much - It's done, and the next song starts. So it goes for the rest of American Dream, an album which will deservedly sit at the higher end of critic's best of lists, and that you will be hearing a lot of at any halfway decent Christmas parties you might find yourself attending this year.

03: Kamasi Washington - Harmony Of Difference - B

04: Masta Killa - Loyalty Is Royalty - B

Wu-Tang solo albums are a more regular occurrence than named storms, and for fans of the 18-legged New York Hip-hop dynasty, they sprinkle over any given year with comfortable islands of sonic familiarity. The quality is sometimes questionable, (Method Man's Meth Lab from 2015 was awful) and most of the releases post-90's have been viewed with a caveat emptor frame of mind. Recently though, the general quality has picked up, and with a new Wu-Tang album on the horizon, Masta Killa has put out his first new record since 2012's Selling My Soul.

Loyalty Is Royalty is an expansive collection of tunes. Masta Killa is known for being one of the least ostentatious of the Clan, and on the whole, his straightforward style is backed with some simple beats. Trouble, Therapy, Noodles Pt. 1 and OGs Told Me, all these songs are straight-up boom-bap ditties, and form the main sound palate of Loyalty Is Royalty. Masta only goes in to full commercial mode on Flex With Me, a latter album track that breaks up the darker pieces with a sweet Rhianna-esque female vocal, which adds a bit of depth. Loyalty Is Royalty is a balanced and varied record, and worth a listen even if you're not a Wu-disciple.

05: Wolf Alice - Visions Of A Life - B

06: Foo Fighters - Concrete And Gold - B

From Dave Grohl's awkward early 20's as drummer for Nirvana, through his rebirth as a neo-Grunge paragon in the wake of Cobain's death, to his current iteration as the Hey Guys Lets All Have A Beer And Groove Out To Some Gnarly Tunes Super Cool Rock Dad, the Foo Fighters have charted the highs and lows of the crown prince of American rock for almost 25 years now. Concrete And Gold is their latest iteration. The album is full of surprise innovations, intro track T-shirt starts the album like a rock opera, and single The Sky Is A Neighbourhood is one of the least single-y songs they've ever put out.

It's the last 4 tunes that really drive home the smorgasbord narrative. The acoustic-driven Happy Ever After, Sunday Rain, a mid-tempo whiskey-n-beer grinder, The Line, with the full-throated optimistic sound they've made their trademark, and finally Concrete And Gold, with it's sludgy, drawn out chords to close. It's entertaining stuff, and makes for one of the most interesting sections of music the band have ever put out.

Being The Biggest Goddamn Rock Band In The World comes with an enormous weight of expectation, and it would be easy for the Foos to play a safe hand every 3 years from now until the end of time, churning out some average rock fodder and getting perfunctory seal claps from the alternative music press. They'd still earn millions a year, they'd still tour the world and they'd still get Best Hard Rock Performance at the Grammy's. So the fact that they are still deigning to experiment in this mid-career era of theirs is a good sign that they still love what they do, and that they care about their fans. This doesn't even touch their 90's material, but that's OK. A thoroughly pleasant album.

April 2016 Review

I listened to a lot of music this month. I'd anticipated some of the albums on this list for ages. Some lived up to the hype, others didn't. I was pleasantly surprised by my top 2 albums, as they came out of nowhere. I listened to them on a whim/the recommendation of others just to fill up space, but they turned out to be my favourite picks for April. It's always great when that happens.

There were several albums that let me down this month. The Rest is littered with records that I wanted to slap a well-deserved high rating on that turned out to be average. But this is why I try to listen without prejudice, because you never know which one is gonna be the dud, and which one is gonna be the bases-loaded home run. As always, the #1 album is a belter. I hope you agree.


The Rest:


Autolux - Pussy's Dead - B

Rock/Electronic


Brian Eno - The Ship - B

Ambient/Spoken Word


Explosions In The Sky - The Wilderness - C

Post-Rock


The Heavy - Hurt & The Merciless - C

Indie/Garage Rock/Funk Rock


J-Dilla - The Diary - C

Hip-hop


The Last Shadow Puppets - Everything You've Come To Expect - C

Alternative Pop/Indie

The Last Shadow Puppets are part of a wave of culture that rehashes older styles, be it through art, music or film. The music they make is an attempt to capture the vintage quality that classic 60's pop records had. My issue with this is that it's dated. It's been done before. Will people want to hear this sort of music from contemporary artists in a decade, or will times have moved on? I strongly suspect the latter.

Everything You've Come To Expect is an apt title, as the boys cover no new ground with this 2nd record. The debut album was good as a standalone project, keeping the hordes at bay while the 3rd Arctic Monkeys album was in development, and simultaneously giving Turner an alternative songwriting outlet. It was good as a snapshot, but now it seems that The Last Shadow Puppets are very much A Proper Band, and we may have many future instances of a new Arctic Monkeys album being pushed back for a year to make room for this project.

It's like a Tarantino film. Great fun the first few watches, and it looks cool and all the characters are saying cool things and doing cool things and wearing cool clothes but then you wearily realise it's the same aesthetic every time. Art for art's sake.


PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project - B

Soft Rock/Acoustic/Alternative Rock

I really wanted to love this one. When you're a critically acclaimed artist, when 2 of your albums have won the Mercury Prize and when you're known as a shape-shifting experimenter, there is a weight of expectation that comes with each release. Sometimes you meet that expectation, other times you don't.

The Hope... is a bold enough statement as it is; far too little music in this day and age is politically or socially aware. Harvey attempts commentary on most of this album but it's rather laboured and doesn't come out saying much at all. The musical content is dreary and often when a song finished I found myself saying "what was the point in that one?"

One good tune on this is Chain Of Keys, a classic slice of Harvey's gothic/country/effortlessly cool vibe, with minimal instrumentation and percussion that manages to bring a lot to the table. I think that this was the feel Harvey was gunning for on the entirety of The Hope... but it didn't work out. Let England Shake still hangs over this record; 5 years older and a much more accomplished effort.  


Royce Da 5'9" - Layers - C

Hip-hop


The Best:


01: Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye - A

Experimental Pop

There's a wonderful scene right now for several bands that defy categorisation through their creativity and experimentation with multiple genres. A few months ago I lumped praise on The 1975's latest release for being innovative and eclectic. Yeasayer's Amen & Goodbye is more of the same.

Amen & Goodbye is a thoroughly delightful journey through many different sounds and eras. There is syncopated percussion, a Baroque-era harpsichord interlude and floor filler basslines throughout the whole scope of the record, pulling you up and down without getting lost in the clouds or jamming out sections for too long. The whole thing is concise and snappy.

Yeasayer have big anthems in them, making regular waypoints throughout Amen & Goodbye - Silly Me, I Am Chemistry, Dead Sea Scrolls and Cold Night all gleam with the quirky catchiness the band are famed for. Amen & Goodbye is mature, intellectual and just a little bit emotionally vulnerable. Yeasayer have been going for a decade now, and show no signs of dropping their quality levels. What a great little record this is.

02: Melt Yourself Down - Last Evenings On Earth - A

Jazz/World

This came straight out of leftfield, I listened to Last Evenings On Earth mainly because one of the band members of Melt Yourself Down happens to release his solo material through the label I work for. It was well worth the punt. This is blissful Jazzy madness.

Last Evenings... plays effortlessly between several different Jazz themes, the band thrashing through sections of tribal drum thumping and whacked-out screaming, maintaining a bizarre and wonderful intensity throughout the whole album. The energy levels hit the ceiling instantly and don't come down until the final note, pulsing and irradiating like a pagan festival echoing through the countryside on a bright summer's day.

What pushes it over the top for me though is the sheer catchiness of it all. The band pour melodies and signature vocal lines into every composition, and this lifts Last Evenings... above the quality of "Just another Jazz album." For a scene that is saturated, that has been hashed and re-hashed, this is refreshing and brings a new element to the fore. It enables the songs to run around your head for days. Melt Yourself Down are having a blinding party, and it's going on all night.

03: Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid - A

Alternative Hip-hop

Aesop Rock has cultivated his style to perfection over the years, drilling out intelligent lines over precise beats, proving his verbosity and spinning off 6 syllable word rhymes to infinity. Some critics say that Aesop does this merely to show off, but what comes across in his music is a real sense of self-introspection. The Impossible Kid is the latest record to bear his signature sound.

Good Hip-hop can be homespun and accessible, it doesn't have to be opulent to be worthy. Aesop talks through heavy subject matter, but is just as suited to lighter songs about ordering ice cream, ("Cherry? No. Whip? Yes") and loveable quirky nerdiness ("My first name is a random set of numbers and letters and other alphanumerics that changes hourly forever") that fills out the experience without cheapening the serious side.

Tunes like Rings, Lotta Years and Blood Sandwich are grand and eloquent, they are well written dynamic songs that push The Impossible Kid up a notch. The beats are self-produced, not an issue as such, but it does have a samey feel towards the back of the album. Some of the tracks are superfluous; Aesop kinda runs out of ideas after the 9 or 10 best tracks on this record. Nevertheless, The Impossible Kid is a solid, vital, cerebral Hip-hop album, and shows the gold you get when you scratch even the tiniest bit below the surface of the genre.

04: Mogwai - Atomic - B

Post-Rock/Ambient

05: Deftones - Gore - B

Post-Metal/Hard Rock

I'm happy with the albums from April. There's tons of variety in my top 5. I have a feeling they'll still be around the upper tier when I compile my year-end best of. May's albums are already giving me plenty of food for thought. I'm looking forward to writing about the Radiohead album, for sure. See you in a month!