For how much longer will The Cribs have to suffer in the Brit indie c-list while lesser bands who've most likely copped a few moves off them in the past surpass them commercially? My guess is forever because there's just something about The Cribs that suggests they're forever doomed to be the bridesmaids.
Take latest single, 'Moving Pictures'; an eminently lovable shouty, mid-tempo love song, the like of which Ricky Wilson would give his collection of fashionable scarves to write, it's simultaneously great and destined for the bargain bins by the end of August. Why? Well, can you imagine Gary Jarman's pained, impassioned howl gracing a Vodafone commercial? Sure they might get to soundtrack the odd goal montage once the footy season starts, but they'll always edit out the vocals.
You see, The Cribs actually give a shit about their music and that rarely sells. The Cribs then; too good to be famous.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2896&band=751
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Album: GoodBooks - Control (Columbia)
Control is a pretty apposite title for GoodBooks' debut album as they spend most of their time making sure every little aspect of their music is in place. They assemble each song seemingly from the ground up, hanging sonic trinkets on each guitar line and rhythmic pulse. A bell here, a whistle there, but sometimes the intricacy gets in the way of GoodBooks just cutting loose and letting their highly-developed sense for melody take over.
When Control is good, it's very, very good. 'The Curse Of Saul' takes a rinky-dink toy piano house refrain, rips the bassline from Giorgio Moroder's 'Sooner Or Later' and some great white-funk guitar and knocks it out of the park. Also, 'Walk With Me' has a bombastic ambition that is at odds with the increasingly parochial British indie scene.
Elsewhere though, on the torpid 'Good Life Salesman' they're borderline embarrassing. A song that Athlete would pass on for being a bit too wet, it kicks off a mid-album sag that they struggle to recover from. Also, on the otherwise sweet, heartfelt 'Violent Man Lovesong', the self-conscious trickery and need to come off like a British Postal Service just flattens what could have been a beautiful ballad.
If they stop hiding behind their urges to show everyone just how offbeat they are and let the songs speak for themselves they could be a special little pop band. For now though, just the promise of better to come is enough.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2904&band=1482
When Control is good, it's very, very good. 'The Curse Of Saul' takes a rinky-dink toy piano house refrain, rips the bassline from Giorgio Moroder's 'Sooner Or Later' and some great white-funk guitar and knocks it out of the park. Also, 'Walk With Me' has a bombastic ambition that is at odds with the increasingly parochial British indie scene.
Elsewhere though, on the torpid 'Good Life Salesman' they're borderline embarrassing. A song that Athlete would pass on for being a bit too wet, it kicks off a mid-album sag that they struggle to recover from. Also, on the otherwise sweet, heartfelt 'Violent Man Lovesong', the self-conscious trickery and need to come off like a British Postal Service just flattens what could have been a beautiful ballad.
If they stop hiding behind their urges to show everyone just how offbeat they are and let the songs speak for themselves they could be a special little pop band. For now though, just the promise of better to come is enough.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2904&band=1482
Album: Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Anti-)
One of the biggest underground bands in America, Spoon, mystifyingly, have yet to make much of an impression over here. Mystifying because Spoon are one of the more Anglophilic American bands of recent times and they're also pretty great.
Spoon's sixth album follows the critically-acclaimed, yet fan-dividing Gimme Fiction, their most distinctly hi-fi release to date. Although that album had its share of highlights, it also had some sag, so it's heartening that they've returned to the fat-free feel of Girls Can Tell and Kill The Moonlight. Always a production nut's wet dream, Spoon up the ante here with some seriously intricate arrangements that make Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga one of the most rewarding listens of 2007 thus far, despite its 36 minute running time.
The paranoid strut of 'Don't Make Me A Target' is a classic Spoon opener, both instantly fortifying and sonically arresting. As always, it makes great use of space and depth to create an edifying surround-sound effect. Elsewhere, 'The Ghost Of You Lingers' is propelled by a Phillip Glass-like piano line that acts as melody and rhythm while Britt Daniel's voice floats spectrally above and 'My Little Japanese Cigarette Case' is all Pixies menace and malevolence, only less unhinged, more gentrified and more disturbing.
'You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb' and 'Finer Feelings' are two of the best songs that Spoon have ever recorded. The former a brassy, Brill Building stomp with added weirdness, while the latter, with its circular melody and pleasingly ill-fitting Mikey Dread sample, manages to be both supremely catchy and maddeningly slippery. In the end, it's difficult to pick highlights from an album this strong. For once, the Americans are way ahead of the curve and it's us that have some catching up to do.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2831&band=1819
Spoon's sixth album follows the critically-acclaimed, yet fan-dividing Gimme Fiction, their most distinctly hi-fi release to date. Although that album had its share of highlights, it also had some sag, so it's heartening that they've returned to the fat-free feel of Girls Can Tell and Kill The Moonlight. Always a production nut's wet dream, Spoon up the ante here with some seriously intricate arrangements that make Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga one of the most rewarding listens of 2007 thus far, despite its 36 minute running time.
The paranoid strut of 'Don't Make Me A Target' is a classic Spoon opener, both instantly fortifying and sonically arresting. As always, it makes great use of space and depth to create an edifying surround-sound effect. Elsewhere, 'The Ghost Of You Lingers' is propelled by a Phillip Glass-like piano line that acts as melody and rhythm while Britt Daniel's voice floats spectrally above and 'My Little Japanese Cigarette Case' is all Pixies menace and malevolence, only less unhinged, more gentrified and more disturbing.
'You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb' and 'Finer Feelings' are two of the best songs that Spoon have ever recorded. The former a brassy, Brill Building stomp with added weirdness, while the latter, with its circular melody and pleasingly ill-fitting Mikey Dread sample, manages to be both supremely catchy and maddeningly slippery. In the end, it's difficult to pick highlights from an album this strong. For once, the Americans are way ahead of the curve and it's us that have some catching up to do.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2831&band=1819
Album: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation Deluxe Edition (Universal)
Arguably the greatest album to come out of the American alt-rock/college rock/indie/whatever scene of the 1980s (forget You're Living All Over Me, Document and Zen Arcade, although Surfer Rosa runs it close), it initially surprised me and I'm sure a lot of other people when word got out it was due for a remastering and expanding. I mean, how do you improve on perfection, right? My copy of Daydream Nation on CD still sounds pretty great, so what could you do to it to trick us fans into trading our old for new?
Well, this reissue takes the "let's just make it louder and add some live stuff" approach, and you know what? It achieves the impossible; Sonic Youth and Universal have made the already great even better. The new re-fit succeeds in making this peerless record that little bit greater. The original's expansive-yet-raw production isn't sacrificed on the altar of the shiny and new and the bonus disc of live cuts of each album track is completely essential in documenting one of America's most fascinating bands at a time when they were really on top of their game.
Also, it's just a timely excuse to revisit the album and see if it is still better than everything that came before and since. Well, of course it is. Daydream Nation still acts as a distillation of every great rock movement that pre-dated it while lighting the way for all the bands that followed their lead (Nirvana… um, that's about it). Sonic Youth have never made an album as good as this since, but then again, neither has anyone else. Dense, immediate, limitlessly rewarding, you really don't have any excuse for not owning this anymore. Then again, you didn't have one before either.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2798&band=187
Well, this reissue takes the "let's just make it louder and add some live stuff" approach, and you know what? It achieves the impossible; Sonic Youth and Universal have made the already great even better. The new re-fit succeeds in making this peerless record that little bit greater. The original's expansive-yet-raw production isn't sacrificed on the altar of the shiny and new and the bonus disc of live cuts of each album track is completely essential in documenting one of America's most fascinating bands at a time when they were really on top of their game.
Also, it's just a timely excuse to revisit the album and see if it is still better than everything that came before and since. Well, of course it is. Daydream Nation still acts as a distillation of every great rock movement that pre-dated it while lighting the way for all the bands that followed their lead (Nirvana… um, that's about it). Sonic Youth have never made an album as good as this since, but then again, neither has anyone else. Dense, immediate, limitlessly rewarding, you really don't have any excuse for not owning this anymore. Then again, you didn't have one before either.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2798&band=187
Album: Prins Thomas - Cosmo Galactic Prism (Eskimo)
Ever since 2 Many DJs belched forth the dizzying As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, DJ mixes seem to have become more and more eclectic. That's not to say that the Dewaele brothers were the first to blend disparate elements into a cohesive whole, but since the Soulwax boys brought the magpie effect closer to the mainstream, DJs haven't thought twice about mixing together rock, hip-hop, techno, house, disco, prog, whatever, in the name of the all-encompassing party mix.
You can now add Prins Thomas to that list, but rather than following the herd, Thomas appears to be operating in a field of one. One listen to Cosmo Galactic Prism will make you reassess everything you know about the art of a good DJ mix. Thomas takes logical leaps that really shouldn't work, but his touch is so light-fingered that everything flows together so naturally as to make you reach for the superlatives with every transition.
Who else would kick off a two-disc mix with something as deliciously odd as Joe Meek's 'I Hear A New World'? The munchkin voices and spacey slo-mo bossa backing herald the fact that this is going to be a mix, the like of which you'll have never heard before. Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, Thomas takes in the kraut-disco of Holger Czukay's 'Cool In The Pool', the sub-bass-heavy deep house of Soylent Green's 'Camera Obscura', Bob James' skewed jazz-funker 'Moonbop' and his own queasy, lolloping edit of The Honeymoon Killers' 'Decollage' and moulds them all in his own inimitable style. Where other mixes from lesser DJs tend to bore after an hour, Thomas holds your attention for double that and then some.
It's a trip, for sure, and one that you'll happily spend with your jaw adjacent to the floor. Totally, unequivocally essential.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2784&band=492
You can now add Prins Thomas to that list, but rather than following the herd, Thomas appears to be operating in a field of one. One listen to Cosmo Galactic Prism will make you reassess everything you know about the art of a good DJ mix. Thomas takes logical leaps that really shouldn't work, but his touch is so light-fingered that everything flows together so naturally as to make you reach for the superlatives with every transition.
Who else would kick off a two-disc mix with something as deliciously odd as Joe Meek's 'I Hear A New World'? The munchkin voices and spacey slo-mo bossa backing herald the fact that this is going to be a mix, the like of which you'll have never heard before. Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, Thomas takes in the kraut-disco of Holger Czukay's 'Cool In The Pool', the sub-bass-heavy deep house of Soylent Green's 'Camera Obscura', Bob James' skewed jazz-funker 'Moonbop' and his own queasy, lolloping edit of The Honeymoon Killers' 'Decollage' and moulds them all in his own inimitable style. Where other mixes from lesser DJs tend to bore after an hour, Thomas holds your attention for double that and then some.
It's a trip, for sure, and one that you'll happily spend with your jaw adjacent to the floor. Totally, unequivocally essential.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2784&band=492
Album: Night Of The Brain - Wear This World Out (Station 55)
When Super_Collider went their separate ways, who would have guessed at the different career paths both Jamie Lidell and Cristian Vogel would take. Whilst Lidell always fancied himself as a closet funkateer, no-one could have foreseen Vogel's abandonment of body music entirely with his Night Of The Brain project.
Quite what possessed Vogel to form a bog-standard, faintly experimental art-rock band is unclear, but it's obvious that this is a style that doesn't exactly fit him like the proverbial glove. It's hard to see any traces of the man who released all those fine techno records on Tresor and NovaMute here, even if there is a fair dollop of incongruous electronics invading the Sonic Youth-esque squall. In fact, he's made recent references to abandoning the "banal and stagnant" techno scene altogether. If he thinks that this kind of music is the way forward then he's sorely mistaken.
Not that rock 'n' roll is dead or anything, far from it, but this is indistinguishable from any amount of alt-rock bands unafraid to dip an occasional toe into the dance music sphere. The lyrics are witless, melodies forgettable and any points of interest that arise out of the liberal use of programmed beats are undersold by the general hackery of everything else going on. 'Connecting Changes' in particular is a good idea ruined by laughable epithets like "Like when my dog died. Woof! A picture of him chasing his tail up the old tree" (?!).
You could call this a missed opportunity if you're feeling generous, but it's an avenue that Vogel really shouldn't have bothered venturing down in the first place. Brain-dead and almost completely devoid of any redeeming features, something tells me that Wear This World Out won't have quite the impact that Lidell's Multiply has.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2747&band=1785
Quite what possessed Vogel to form a bog-standard, faintly experimental art-rock band is unclear, but it's obvious that this is a style that doesn't exactly fit him like the proverbial glove. It's hard to see any traces of the man who released all those fine techno records on Tresor and NovaMute here, even if there is a fair dollop of incongruous electronics invading the Sonic Youth-esque squall. In fact, he's made recent references to abandoning the "banal and stagnant" techno scene altogether. If he thinks that this kind of music is the way forward then he's sorely mistaken.
Not that rock 'n' roll is dead or anything, far from it, but this is indistinguishable from any amount of alt-rock bands unafraid to dip an occasional toe into the dance music sphere. The lyrics are witless, melodies forgettable and any points of interest that arise out of the liberal use of programmed beats are undersold by the general hackery of everything else going on. 'Connecting Changes' in particular is a good idea ruined by laughable epithets like "Like when my dog died. Woof! A picture of him chasing his tail up the old tree" (?!).
You could call this a missed opportunity if you're feeling generous, but it's an avenue that Vogel really shouldn't have bothered venturing down in the first place. Brain-dead and almost completely devoid of any redeeming features, something tells me that Wear This World Out won't have quite the impact that Lidell's Multiply has.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2747&band=1785
Album: Ratatat - Remixes Volume II (Self-released)
Sometimes a listening experience cannot be extricated from the possible cultural impact of the record, however infinitesimal it may be. Occasionally, it's near-impossible to be completely objective when faced with certain glaring outside influences that don't allow you to review an album purely on its own musical terms. Ratatat's Remixes Volume II is one of those records. Try as I might to say in 300 words how each of Evan Mast and Mike Stroud's re-imaginings of contemporary rap tunes compiled here have the ability to rock a party from twenty paces, there's just something about this album that doesn't sit right with me.
Not to be unfair to Ratatat, as there's an obvious love, respect and knowledge of their source material here which shines through. It's the blog coverage bestowed upon this and its predecessor that plain stinks of the crass co-opting of black culture by the white middle class that Sacha Baron Cohen tried to censure in his Ali G days. The 'Wigga' effect, if you will.
I'm self-aware enough to realise that this review smacks of white liberal guilt, but let's have it right; none of the people lauding this record on the internet are going to go out and buy a UGK or Z-Ro album, are they? If this was released on Swishahouse (suspend disbelief and bear with me), sounding exactly as it does, only with Ratatat's name taken off and replaced with that of Michael '5000' Watts, it would have been marginalised by all areas of the press other than the hip-hop mags. I guess that, in short, I'm trying to say I'm a big enough fan of hip-hop to appreciate these tracks in their original states. I don't need hipster bloggers to validate their worth for me, via the conduit of a vaguely prurient hype-stream.
For the music though…
3/5
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2734&band=1583
Not to be unfair to Ratatat, as there's an obvious love, respect and knowledge of their source material here which shines through. It's the blog coverage bestowed upon this and its predecessor that plain stinks of the crass co-opting of black culture by the white middle class that Sacha Baron Cohen tried to censure in his Ali G days. The 'Wigga' effect, if you will.
I'm self-aware enough to realise that this review smacks of white liberal guilt, but let's have it right; none of the people lauding this record on the internet are going to go out and buy a UGK or Z-Ro album, are they? If this was released on Swishahouse (suspend disbelief and bear with me), sounding exactly as it does, only with Ratatat's name taken off and replaced with that of Michael '5000' Watts, it would have been marginalised by all areas of the press other than the hip-hop mags. I guess that, in short, I'm trying to say I'm a big enough fan of hip-hop to appreciate these tracks in their original states. I don't need hipster bloggers to validate their worth for me, via the conduit of a vaguely prurient hype-stream.
For the music though…
3/5
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2734&band=1583
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