Entry 34: Album Review: Delphic / Collections

You can’t buy Delphic’s new album in HMV. This is pretty bad news for people who still buy music (all seven of them), since there is nowhere else on the high street that sells current music. It’s time to seek out the independent record shops folks. Still enough about the imminent apocalypse and on to Delphic’s sophomore effort, Collections. Collections is a fairly apt title for this album. There isn’t a great deal of consistency, and the album hops about all over the place like Louis Walsh with a firecracker up his jacksie. Still this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is just very, very different from the band’s better known debut. In fact Collections is surprisingly akin to Keane’s Perfect Symmetry, a comparison that I imagine most indie fans won’t be too happy about.

I believe that an album cover can always tell you a lot about an album, and the box art of Delphic’s two albums displays their difference. Debut Acolyte is all stark black and grey, reflecting a one-note if satisfyingly solid album, whereas Collections looks like someone vomited sunny delight through a stencil, reflecting a more diverse, if perhaps less consistent effort. Although one thing I must say is that Acolyte wasn’t as emphatically brilliant as the press are content to now say it was. It was still a very, very good album, but it was not without it’s more forgettable moments.  As you may remember, Delphic appeared on the indie scene to an uproar of hype, a hype that was swiftly withdrawn when the Manchester trio actually released their album, leaving it to relative anonymity.  It was like Delphic were stood at a third-storey window, with the music consuming public beneath them, encircling a golden and jewel-encrusted trampoline, eager to receive their first piece of work.  Delphic were happy to oblige and just as they pushed Acolyte into freefall, the gawping indie-punters wandered off in search of something else, leaving Acolyte to tumble gracelessly to ground.  And yet now the critics talk about that album like it was god’s gift to electronica.

At a glance it would seem things have gone very, very wrong on Collections. The Guradian have two reviews for the album, one awards a sympathetic three stars, the other awards just the one.  The NME did all they can, and piled on the condescension. The critics are hardly blown away with this one. Furthermore the music video for single Baiya is quite terribly misconceived. The video sees the three band members fighting over a girl. I’m not even kidding. Who told them this would fit their sound, at all? Are we supposed to overlook the fact that Delphic are three of the weediest blokes in the UK. I doubt any one of them could run for a full three minutes without collapsing with a stitch, and as for abducting a pretty brunette, it’s fairly obvious she could put any one of them in a headlock and noogie them into teary submission.  The video culminates in a stop-motion kung-fu fight that makes the video for Sexy And I Know It look like the work of Roman Polanski.  So even before we hear the album itself the wheels are flying off it like the buttons on SuBo's night gown.  

Still when you finally have a sit down with Collections, you might wonder why the pre-release material had you questioning Delphic’s intentions.  Opener Of The Young has an emphatic chorus and some fairly solid synth and guitar hook-up that echoes of NY outfit Yeasayer.  The bands South American influences come to the fore on Baiya, which is probably the best thing on the album. It’s a single that, miles away from its terrible visual component, pulses with a hint of salsa and bachata; in fact the other-worldly narrative gives it the air of folk, in parts sounding like Barbatuques’ latin folk anthem, Baianá.  It still has plenty of Delphic’s signature neo-80s sound, ehocing of Talk Talk and Tears For Fears, and holding an extended gaze with Muse’s RnB Depeche Mode trip, Undisclosed Desires.  Here we see experimentation that works. Now see some that doesn’t. Changes sees the Manchurians embrace a sort of faux rap that is as unexpected as it is unwanted. Delphic were hardly ever a risqué band, even if they did have a certain edge; but no one ever wanted them to give rap a go. Front man Richard Boardman is hardly P Diddy and he should probably remember that. Still contact with quality is re-established with Freedom Found, which soars above the crap with a lovely chorus and some spot-on keyboards.  The backbone of the set, Atlas is an impressive piece of work that embraces a bit of blues-y guitar-work as well as some of dubstep’s more bearable wub’s.  

 

Here we see the big, big difference between Delphic’s two albums; personality. Collections is far more personal set, it feels like an album that the band really enjoyed making, and that flair comes across in the material itself. Tears Before Bedtime is a particularly nice touch; with a simple, echoing piano component, and some quiet strings, that soundtrack a series of crackly voicemail recordings. It doesn’t last long, but it is a deft, soft song, one that would have been impossible on the colourless clang of Acolyte. This cruises into the infectiously optimistic The Sun Also Rises which sees the bands RnB tendencies mingle with a soft pop melody, ending with a driving, uplifting guitar line.  Passion Pit and MGMT echo on Memeo  and Don’t Let The Dreamers Take You Away, although of the two, only the latter effort leaves a lasting impact. The album ends on a right clanger though, as Exotic sees the band drag us back to some Ocean-esque rap, as if to say ‘Come on guys we can really do rap!’. But they can’t, It just quite simply does not work; there’s a reason The Horrors never embraced the work of Tupac.  

So Collections shouldn’t be burned at the stake as so many music publications would have you believe; more galling than that is that most of the reviews criticising the album hardly extend beyond a single paragraph. It’s this sort of half-hearted disregard that can be a real put down for fresh, young bands, like Delphic.  Is this album as good as Acolyte? No, I would say it probably is not. Sadly lacking is the guitar-interplay that made that album such a zinger; no one moment on Collections can match the unbounded euphoria that springs from the guitar breakdown in Doubt. The guitar-work added a real grit, and it was their inclusion that gave Counterpoint and Submission their anthemic status. Collections is classed as a Dance & DJ album and that makes you sceptical from the outset; Delphic are not a bloody DJ act. This is not a flawless album, and Delphic have yet to make the album that will truly jettison them into the stratosphere. But this is a light, breezy album, one that you need in times like this, when the nature of the music business as we know it is in jeopardy.  It helps to be reminded of the many very great talents active in the country. Similarly this is not the album that people wanted Delphic to make. But this is a very young band, one that is clearly enjoying travelling the world and soaking in different sounds and textures. Considering most lads their age are doing exactly as they please, with little clear direction, I don’t really see why we should expect any different of Delphic. Collections is hardly a classic, and it's an album not without its flaws. What it is, is a lavishly produced, gratifyingly artistic album, an album that will hopefully one day appear on the high street once more.

Entry 33: 10 Sensational Debut Albums

They say you've been writing your debut your whole life. It's one of those sayings that doesn't make a great deal of sense. If that were true then the first three tracks on your album would be devoted to bogeys, putting woodlice in matchboxes, and how girl's cant throw; which, strangely enough, is exactly how Justin Bieber chose to open his debut album, My World. Though you won't find that album here. This is a list of particularly impressive debut albums. And yes, some of the entries are questionable, you'll have to bear with me. What's life without whimsy?

10. Lady Gaga- The Fame

 

Ahh, Lady Gaga. 2008 was a wonderful time for Ms Gaga, before the gays fully colonised her and shoved a fuck-off big Pride flag through her bonce, before she retired from the process of making good pop music and dedicated herself to ceaseless pretension and shitty perfume.  You perhaps detect a hint of bitterness here. You try hearing three different mixes of Born This Way in one Monday night, see how you feel.

Still let’s try and forget all that.  There had been a dearth of bankable pop superstars, apparently, and thus Lady Gaga stepped forth, having presumably spent the first half of the noughties locked in a trunk in a disused bondage shop, breaking up the monotony by murdering the occasional passer-by and cutting off their willy to selotape to the specific wall of willies she spent 1999-2007 assembling. Just see her stage shows; it’s the only explanation. Of course I was supposed to be forgetting the fact that since her first album Ms Gaga has massively fallen out of my repute and is now regarded as only slightly more tolerable than a javelin through the taint. Still hush my mouth when we get to the music on this first album, since opener Just Dance is one of the most infectious pop songs written in the past ten years. Compared to some of Gaga’s other stuff its refreshingly simple;  it’s about going on a bender and trying to not think about the inevitable hangover, which as far as simplicity goes it a little above a song about an exemplary shelving job in a garden shed.  

Similar class is found in the excellent Paparazzi, which is brilliant in its convoluted finger click twitch beats and sweetly mournful main chorus. Paparazzi is also by far the most tolerable song about fame, on The Fame, since it brings to the fore the creepy culture of celebrity status and the feckless invasions of privacy that pop stars must endure (the poor things), which is a smart move, one worthy of praise. It is also the only song that doesn’t go on and on about being ‘famous’ or ‘No.1’ or topping this or that playlist or being rich, which is instantly nauseating and is hardly what we need since every pop artist going seems intent on telling us how much better their lives are than ours. On a similar negative ebb, the most distinctive single from the album, Poker Face, is also the cheapest and most disposable, with an incredibly stupid chorus consisting mostly of ‘ma-ma-ma-mah’ and ‘p-p-p—poker face ‘; with Gaga sounding like an eight year old with a stutter trying to get the Penguin bar catchphrase right.  Although that song is worth a punt for the hilarious music video that sees Lady Gaga trying to force her own fart bubbles out of a glossy unitard.

                                                     

                                                        Beans and rice were a bad choice.

There is still plenty to like on this album. The colossally stupid Eh Eh, presumably named after the noise an angry manatee makes when you prod it with a stick, is indecently loveable, with an upbeat Depeche Mode synth line and a successfully hands-off vocal approach from Gaga herself. On a different bent Beautiful, Dirty, Rich is the most conceptually and musically impressive song on the album, with a brash hip hop drumbeat and even some guitars (anyone remember them?).  Then there is the unexpected ZZ-top-esque romp of Summerboy, complete with undeniable chorus and hand-clap backbeat.

The Fame is pop encapsulated; fun, if shallow. No one is going to listen to this whilst writing the long awaited sequel to War and Peace (War and Peace II: Electric Boogaloo). But it is undeniably fun and you can’t really fault Gaga’s pop credentials.  Oh wait, actually, you can. This is glossing over the fact that Gaga’s vocal attributes teeter on the slider between ‘nasally’ and ‘hungry ant-eater’. Her voice on Just Dance borders on a self-parody (‘Jeust Dee-yunce’) and then there’s the creepy ‘hup’ iterations in the terrible LoveGame, which is the sort of noise you only ever make whilst forming a Nazi salute and facing Berlin. The Fame has undeniable workmanship behind it, and for those that still doubt Lady Gaga’s musical credentials, I advice those people to see how well she can play the piano.  

Unfortunately after the release of The Fame Gaga was lead away from solid song writing and towards wearing an incessant supply of silly outfits and conducting tacky PR gimmicks, constituting what anyone with half a brain cell would view as being attention-seeking to the point of nausea, but what most seem to view as ‘being fabulous’ or some such shite. The Fame marks the last time Gaga devoted 70% of her time to music and a mere 30% to flailing her arms around and saying ‘look at me’; a split that was promptly reversed sometime around 2010. You may notice that for a ‘sensational debut’ I am being unusually harsh, but understand this; The Fame was actually quite brilliant, it’s just that that achievement is inseparable from the sprawling mass of Lady Gaga‘s other endeavours, all of which irritate me beyond belief. I feel a bit like that square-headed android bloke out of Alien, gazing at the repulsive, slimy face-humper under a microscope.

                                      I may not like Lady Gaga, but I do at least ‘admire its purity’.

Pick of the Set: Paparazzi

9. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club- B.R.M.C 

 

2001 needed one thing, and one thing alone; Hard rock. Pop music was big business, even as Britpop was beginning to do us all a favour and slowly die. There was some flair on the contemporary rock front; Stereophonics were making waves and R.E.M.’s  Reveal was a hit. Radiohead were on the way down, and Muse on the way up, but neither of those trajectories had yet found their apex. Rock fans were craving grit, and grit is exactly what they got when little-known yanks Black Rebel Motorcycle Club released their debut, B.R.M.C.

It is an album that feels almost impossibly British; it certainly has a let’s-get-on-with-it temperament, and it echoes of bands like T-rex and The Verve. But this is a deceptively simple album, one that, beyond its black-and-white box art, comprises a surprising range of rock’s heritage and influences. Few statements of intent have been as naked as Love Burns, a gradual track that heralds a very new band with the fantastic chorus ‘Now she’s gone/ And love burns inside me’.Comprising psychedelic guitar and a thin, nasally vocal style, embittered and angsty, it is a stylish song that crackles with longing. Similar tones echo in the lovelorn Red Eyes & Tears, a rock song propelled by the spirit of Ian Brown and some filthy guitar work.

Any sense of restraint goes flying out the window with the explosive drums on Whatever Happened To My Rock & Roll, which charges forward like the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse on a Motorhead infused road-trip. ‘I gave my soul to a new religion/ Whatever happened to you?’ cries frontman Peter Hayes; a sentiment we can all appreciate in this age of shite-pop.  The songs hum to a fuzzy, stoner-rock simplicity, where repetition is used to create rhythm; not too unlike the shoegazer movement.  The band operates best when they are thrashing out jam-rock guitar lines, and their attempts to slow it down transcend into dirges; see the almost punishingly mundane Head Up High.  

 However that’s not to say there isn’t variety on the album; indeed the band succeed in meshing together different musical textures.  Rifles and As Sure As The Sun are slowed down tracks with gratifyingly intricate bass lines; bringing to mind the more obscure crannies of 70’s hippie rock. The final track, Salvation winds things down rather well since it is the only track on the album to be openly optimistic; it’s like the band spent the whole album kicking about their basement and being royally pissed off and then they all got rigorous hand jobs or something and burst into fits of jubilation in the final track. Well, maybe that’s a little colourful. The standout by far is Spread Your Love, where a crunching bass line of almost brutal funkability thunders through a fantastic balls-to-the-wall chorus. Although I must say you’d think a song titled Spread Your Love would be a call to arms for sociopaths everywhere to go out and cross-pollinate the populace with as many STI’s as possible; and after actually hearing the song, I am no less convinced this is actually what the song is about.

Still, few albums have clanged with as much welly as this set of tracks. Sometimes you just don't want gimmicks, although if you do want gimmicks, then speak to Ms Gaga afterwards please. This is an album about music, one uncoloured, some would say uninspired. But when all you are truly craving is some swaggering rock brutality, bereft of little pop music nicities, look no further. B.R.M.C is a collection of moody, adolescent songs that trace a path right to the core of hard rock greatness.

Pick of the Set: Spread Your Love

8.  Frankmusik- Complete Me

 

There is no middle ground on the electro pop scene. Its either cold or it’s hot. It can be stylish, it can be wacky. It can be heavily submerged in the 1980’s or it may dabble in experimentalism. But regardless, it’s rarely ever just okay; it’s either god or its bad. This everything or nothing nature was made abundantly clear when Vincent Frank released his debut album Complete Me, under his pseudonym Frankmusik. If you have a glance at some of the reviews it received when it was released in the summer of 2009, you see quite how stark the polarisation of opinion was with the critics. Some of them were almost comically offensive; the NME is waspish at the best of times but they dove on poor Vincent like a trendy pack of dingos, giving him a ground-breaking 1/10. Similarly publications like The Guardian and The Independent were very positive about the album. It just shows how fickle pop music can be these days.

Still, away from the critics and to the album itself. This is a sensational debut. You guessed that already. I maintain that an album can be very good and still bristle with problems. This is just such an album. This album is pure cheese, or rather, it’s a culmination of every silly noise ever recorded and put onto a single, damning CD. Still things start off very well indeed, with the electro fizzle of In Step, a song that sounds a bit like the noise you get when you roll a can of coke down the garage and open it in your mother’s face. It’s a bittersweet little ditty about the transient and unforgiving nature of adolescence, which I quite like since so many cultural outlets seem intent on displaying teenage life as a time of glamour and impropriety, when in actuality it’s a time to whinge and have a really bad haircut. It’s a song laced with regret and pity, as Frank muses of his unnamed protagonist “Never took a scene check/ Never were a reject/ Always looking perfect/ Now you aren’t so in step.” It’s an idea common to most of us. Every school had that kid who made the transition from radiant little cherub to perfectly acceptable young adult, skipping the hellish transient period; the kind of smarmy, good looking prick who fitted in easier than a lube’d up Duplo block in a possum’s back passage. This song is about that guy but a few years on, when he’s reached the age of 23 and so is officially not cool anymore. It is demonstrative of what is at the core of Frankmusik’s debut; narratives that are comfortingly familiar with a daft electro-pop gloss.  

In Step does hinge on the synth-line overkill but Frank manages to rein it in just enough to stop it feeling excessive. This quality continues into Better of As Two, which is a lovably catchy and silly pop song with one of the stupidest introductions ever; it’s basically just someone saying ‘dum diddy dum’ into a vocoder whilst shoving a golf tee into the disk drive of a Sega MegaDrive. Still the piano component gives the song a much needed grounding. The chorus is sheer bliss, and while the word ‘uplifting’ is banded around to describe pop songs the same way ‘horrific’ is used to describe convicted triple-rapists, it is surely impossible to not feel a bit giddy in this songs presence. This quality is also present on the other stand-out, Confusion Girl. It’s probably the most conventionally lovely track on the album, sounding a bit like Elton John after he worked on a double-album with Ben Folds. It’s highly simplistic, lyrically speaking, and Christ it’s hardly groundbreaking stuff either.  The song is about breaking up with a girlfriend and being quite sad about it.

 Still, if Confusion Girl is predictable but loveable, like a border collie at a dog show, then When Your Around is unpredictable and utterly contemptible. It’s a re-working of the Stranglers classic Golden Brown, although to say that it ‘works’ would be a fatal misnomer. I mean for the love of God did no one, I mean no one at Island Records not realise that it’s You’re and not Your? I appreciate pop music seems to be taking some pretty massive liberties with the English language these days, but something is very wrong when just in typing the song name, spell-check has valiantly tried to rectify the grammar approximately seven times. When Frank was printing out this track list the poor Microsoft paperclip must have been rocking in the foetal position with blood oozing from his ears. But it is flawed on so many levels beyond that; it finally goes past electro-camp and becomes irritating, like the buzz of an insect put through a set of krautrock keyboards. It is the difference between a lollipop and a lollipop with brown sugar and syrup poured all over it. This is carried on to the terrible, achingly un-cool tripe of Time Will Tell, where Frank crosses the musical frontier of rhyming ‘said’ and ‘dead’, put to some idiotic samples and obnoxious 90s rap beats, like a Coolio & The Gang B-side. Furthermore Frank’s voice, while often effective, can land him in trouble. It is a case so common to first albums, of Frank not really sure what to do with it. Sometimes his croon is touchingly original, but other times his lispy whinging is just incredibly off-putting; see Your Boy, a plodding ballad where he for some reason puts ‘so’ and ‘sorry’ and ‘path’ in the same sentence. Just imagine.

Still, as I said, a very good album may still have fairly prominent issues; indeed, sometimes this can add to greatness. There is no denying the unhinged, 8-bit majesty of 3 Little Words, complete with a short electric guitar solo that tracks the trajectory of a balloon with the knot untied.  It is rather punishingly short, but it serves as a reminder of the sort of feats that Frank is capable of. It isn’t all ‘daft’ and ‘zany’ either; some of it is genuinely quite lovely. Vacant Heart is a clumsy but ultimately sweet track, juxtaposing moving out of a house with the end of a relationship; and the minimalist keyboards and Frank’s echoing voice adds to a feeling of emptiness. It is a theme that carries on with equal success in Done Done. There’s some spacey keyboard’s and forlorn MIDI strings at play, and they tie together to a similar vocal echo, with a surprisingly simple chorus and gratifyingly chunky bass line. 

It isn’t just the off-kilter pop track that can have meaning for Frank though, he can fare a straight up ballad with equal success. The title track is just such an example. It’s certainly the best written song on the album, and presents a lonely instance of original vocal flair on this album, combined with some stripped down piano work. This is also prevalent on album closer, Run Away From Trouble. It’s half weirdo electro-babble, helped along by an intricate bass and drum component, and half a straight up piano solo; which reminds us that behind the silliness and sparkle there is also a maturing songwriter, one who knows a thing or two about bad luck and heartache as well.  Before he went away to America and everything turned to utter shite, Frankmusik had this rather lovely album; this is a strong, distinct debut, one that is occasionally gaudy, often embarrassingly daft. More than anything, it is a debut album that trips over itself trying to please you. And that is a quality that I like very much.

Pick of the Set: Better Off As Two

7.  Scissor Sisters- Scissor Sisters

 

I am fully aware that this list is starting to resemble Tom Daley’s warm-down playlist; I’ll get to the blokey stuff later I swear. When this NY five-piece tore pop music asunder in 2004 with an immaculately produced album, full of high-brow instrumentation, it certainly made a lasting impression. This is a rare thing indeed; a band who put making good music first and being into gay rights second; a set up that is more usually the other way around.  Opener Laura kicks things off with an irresistible piano stomp that sounds like Billy Joel in a cabaret club, off his head on poppers. There is more than an echo of the likes of Gilbert O’Sullivan, and even Stevie Wonder, and such grandeur is continued into the likeable Take Your Mama Out, which sounds like it should be played over a Disney movie montage. It’s a brilliant slice of glam rock that sees a repressed young man trying to come out to his mam; a solution that Scissor Sisters decide is best resolved by taking said disapproving mother  out for a mad one on the Scene, which is a characteristically colourful and tongue-in-cheek solution to a very real and very tangible struggle. It is undeniable that the first three songs on the album are by far the best; a holy triumvirate that sees the band take a sodding Pink Flloyd classic and discofy it; their rendition of Comfortably Numb is quite emphatically brilliant.

This album positively honks of the 1970s; and that combination of new age electro Romanticism with that grittier, retro sound, is one that is at once musically impressive and personally relatable. Few albums have been as consistently great, and while it is true the first three tracks are superior, that only serves as a guide to the quality on show here.  Lovers in the Bakseat, a seedy and blatant track, makes you cringe and grin in equal measure. Tits on the Radio is a successful stab at Bowie rock, circa Gene Genie.  Then there is the raunchy Filthy/Gorgeous, which has one of the most brilliant and instantly recognisable choruses in modern pop.

Quality is not something this band is short on; indeed, this debut is one of the most self-aware, and musically fertile albums to be released in the last decade. There are some problems; the incessant camp can make it a bit one-tone, and main singer Jake Shears clings to the upper octaves the way a bonobo monkey clings to a ripe banana; most the time it is soulful and effective but sometimes it begins to resemble the buzz of a nearby mosquito, as in Better Luck. That said it is by fair one of the most distinct and successful debuts in recent memory. Scissor Sisters know plenty of pop music’s heritage, but they never stare at it for too long to become boring or derivative. This is a disco-pop gem that stands the test of time.

Pick of the Set: Comfortably Numb

6. Air- Moon Safari

 

We now know that French two-piece Air are obsessed with space, and the moon, and stars, and all that, to the point of tedium. But back when their debut, Moon Safari came out, we didn’t know this, and so it was quite charming. It’s like you’re friend who you just met, who’s a huge AC/DC fan, which is cool, but then after a few months you realise he sings Hells Bells to himself every morning and carves images of Bon Scott into his collar bone every other Thursday.  And you don’t really want to be his friend any more. This is beside the point though, since Air still produce some of the loveliest music around, and no less so than on Moon Safari.

La Femme D’Argent starts things off with more style than was necessary; it’s possibly the slickest thing ever put through a production desk.  Beginning with falling rain, no time is wasted as the track moves into a jazz percussion with some other-worldly keyboards, and an impossibly slick bass line. It’s an irresistible slab of cocktail-lounge groove. There are that many things going on in most of these songs that it proves almost impossible to untangle and identify any one of them.  Similarly tracking down the various influences on any given track is equally difficult. There’s more than a touch of Bowie, and the influence of Jean Michel Jarre is ever present. But inspirations here go further than that; straight out of old French films, tacky 60’s easy listening and europop. All I Need may even have a touch of trip about it, while New Star In The Sky is gratifyingly folky. The cheesy keyboards do perhaps get a bit much by the end of the album though. Similarly some of the tracks haven’t aged well, and indeed I doubt they sounded that great in 1998 either. See Sexy Boy, a piece of electro trash that makes you feel seedy just for listening to it.

It’s not all hard work though, as this high-brow description might imply. In fact Moon Safari’s greatest strength may lie in it’s accessibility; Kelly Watch The Stars and You Make It Easy are simple, lovely pop, devoid of pretence.  That’s not to say Safari isn’t a smart album; it most certainly is. The sheer craft Their single greatest work is still Alone in Kyoto, the gleaming peak of their Zen, breezy pop sound. But Moon Safari is the best thing to ever happen to French pop music. 

Pick of the Set: La Femme D'Argent

5. Steely Dan- Can't Buy A Thrill

 

Moving on, a band named after a mechanical phallus. Steely Dan is one of those bands that garner instant respect just by dropping their name. Made famous through the 70s, their blend of RnB, jazz, pop, rock, and funk is as intoxicating as the hedonistic lifestyle they constantly reference; ca-razy cats that they are.  Steely Dan are known for their high-brow instrumentation and intense studio sessions, and are generally regarded as a ‘musician’s band’; something I would not know much about frankly.  Something I do know however is that Can’t Buy a Thrill is an intricate, occasionally eccentric, classic rock masterpiece. I say rock, although this is by far the closest thing that this lot come to pop. Do It Again is probably the choice cut, a gorgeous, smoky track with an electrifying sitar solo, sounding like Son of a Preacher Man with a razor-sharp edge.  Do It Again is one of the greatest tracks of the early 70s, but it is a piece of class that is far from alone.

Dirty Work comes to life when its keyboard infused chorus comes into play, and piano hooks abound in the indecently pretty Kings and Change of the Guard.  The greatest thing about Steely Dan is that you are never really sure if they are being genuine or just fooling you about. Take the seminal Reelin’ In The Years, which aside from sound tracking idiotic BT Infinity adverts, sees a lovely instrumentation and upbeat choruses mask what is, at its core, a pointed attack at an aloof snob; a hate song for all intents and purposes. Do it Again is similarly the tragic tale of a powerless loser that is disguised in the glittery dress and trendy haircut of immaculate funk instrumentation. Still you would be wrong for thinking Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are wasting your time by committing whatever passed as Trollin’ in 1972. You would be right in thinking that both their names are Yiddish to the point of hilarity. But that’s beside the point.

While their more complicated, jazz-fused adult radio excursions in later years, are what gave them their gold standard, this first effort can still stand proud among some of their best work.  It may be radio-pop but it’s the very, very best of radio pop, and this set of tracks, aside from the leaden-footed Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me), are masterfully produced and arranged. Narrative strands in these songs almost seethe with lyrical ambivalence, but that just adds to the overall effect of maturity, and to the bands characteristic anti-hero credentials.  One of the very best bands of the 70s, and one that sounds as fresh now as it did then. Well, I presume so anyway. It’s hard to gauge context when in the early seventies I was still a good twenty years away from conception. Regardless it’s a fantastic album and one that can hopefully win some points back after awarding Lady Gaga a place in these hallowed halls.

Pick of the Set: Do It Again

4. Goldfrapp- Felt Mountain

 

If you fed the spirit of Charlotte Bronté through a harpsichord, it would probably sound a bit like Golfrapp’s Felt Mountain.  The thing that really strikes you is that while half of this album could be fifty years old, the other half sounds like it was produced some fifty years in the future. It is a bizarre, disquieting set of tracks, but an infinitely satisfying one. Lovely Head opens proceedings with some seriously strange synth lines, coupled with some far-off mountain top whistling and a spy-film back beat, it sounds like a Dalek enjoying a country walk whilst whistling an off-key rendition of Telephone. This pseudo-strangeness prevails throughout the set, through the obtusely named Paper Bag and reaching a sort of peak in Human, which is pure Disney-villain monologue put to sinister strings and a jaunty beat that, between synth throbs, echoes of a Samba shuffle. Imagine Ursula dancing the famous Merengue, scallop shells in hand. 

There’s a definite raunchy edge to Felt Mountain; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  Lines like "No time to fuck/ But you like the rush?" carry a brilliant punch to them, but at other times it’s just a bit much. Sometimes you think main lady Alison Goldfrapp just needs to simmer for a bit, maybe listen to some Enya or take a cold shower. Still the pick of the lot, Utopia, hums with an undeniable buzz of synths and a thick, robotic bass line; it’s really a fantastic track. This is not Goldfrapp’s finest work; for me that honour must lie with the folky loveliness of Seventh Tree.   

  

Felt Mountain is truly a fantastic album because it finds that sweet spot between art pop and glam rock, a nishe that was blown wide open with the bombastic, if rather gangly Black Cherry. Still, Goldfrapp are and were one of the greatest pop acts in the country, and this is an intriguing debut; one that has more than stood the test of time. It sounds just as weird now as it did at the turn of the century.

Pick of the Set: Utopia

3. The Music- The Music

 

There is just something about 2002; every song that came out that year sounds almost unbelievably dated, and even The Music’s brilliant, hard rock debut does not quite escape that paradigm unscathed.  But that does not quite diminish this raw, heavy, and occasionally po-faced debut album, one that is shamefully absent from the greater musical conscience. This is an album that combines experimental rock, heavy guitar work, Ashworth swagger, and techno grit. Maybe it isn’t such a surprise that it’s not a family favourite then; it’s hardly Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

The Dance starts the show with a huge wall of noise, as a deep, sonic wail of guitar meshes into an up and down bass line straight out of Mission Impossible. The strings are met half way by a thundering drum component and some crackly electro burbles. Since it’s a song best suited to midnight drug marathons and angry fornication, you’d think you might get a tea break in track two. You’d be wrong though. The brilliantly named Take The Long Road And Walk It,  is less a song and more noise to trash the shit out of a hotel room too; there’s shuddering, contorted guitar riffing, techno drum beats and a bass that’s thicker than rice pudding reinforced with hardening concrete.  In these two songs you get the definitive understanding of The Music; Led-Zep with dance floor beats. It’s an intriguing formulation. Things get even better in the dreamy, pass-the-pipe brilliance of Human, where you feel the presence of The Verve’s chicka-chicka-wow guitar sitting alongside far-of vocal harmonies, and a trip-hop drumbeat. It’s another experiment in sonic production that proves deeply successful.

However I stand by what I opened with. Float is best forgotten, descending from noise-rock to just, noise. Similarly Disco, despite its raw guitar effects, falls flat , flat on its stupid, ugly face. But these blemishes are easily forgotten when you have the crunch of The Truth Is No Words, or the contrived sing-along in The People, which features probably the most absurd and successful guitar contribution on the whole album. Then there is the slow buildup of Turn Out The Light, and the closing piece, Too High, starting off with a simple guitar setup that soon develops into a triumphant, now-or-never rock and roll anthem, through some soulful lyrics and bluesy guitar plucking.

Human, Getaway, Disco, Float, it’s all rather monosyllabic on this album and that extends to other aspects too; the lyrics feel clipped, and there seems a certain lack of connection and direction. But this is still a blisteringly entertaining album, with plenty of attitude and Yorkshire twang to give the Leeds lads some real character of their own.  I really wish I could’ve been in Leeds when this came out.  The Music were one of the best bands around, and after this foray they dabbled in alt-rock and electonica, before calling it quits in 2011. I was at one of their very last gigs, on their farewell tour The Last Dance; hands down one of the greatest gigs I have ever been to. It’s tragic that they are gone, and more tragic that so few people seem to have registered them at all. But this is one of the very finest debuts of the noughties. An infectious marriage of jam-rock, Trainspotting electronic sensibilities, and vocal flair.

Pick of the set: Human

2. DJ Shadow- Endtroducing...

 

I like video games. A particularly good one is Splinter Cell: Conviction. In it, at approximately half way through, series protagonist Sam Fisher finds out some fairly pivotal information. He’s not best pleased by this, and proceeds to trash the shit out of an office whilst words like ‘trust’ and ‘death’ swarm about the walls like Carol Vorderman’s been on some really bad acid. A rather distinctive track can be heard in the background, which sounds sort of like The Omen soundtrack and the sound of a thousand church-bells falling to ground at once. Upon inquiring from whence that song had came, I discovered the world of DJ Shadow.

I’ve come to habitually suspect anyone who has DJ in front of their name; since in the past the only successful ‘DJ’s’ had been such culturists as DJ Sammy and DJ Punjabi. But any fears were blown away when I finally laid hands on a copy of Shadow’s venerated debut album, Endtroducing.  It is, for want of a better term, a unique album. It isn’t geared at being a pop smash, it isn’t about hooks and licks. It is heavily spiritual; since the album is itself a re-mash of literally hundreds of old, forgotten records. Nearly all of the materials came from a single record shop. Here DJ Shadow, Josh Davis to his friends, spent night after night in the basement, where far away from the order of the sales floor, LPs were strewn everywhere, in huge piles, the cardboard gaining mildew and with dust covering everything. It was in this pit of musical abandonment that DJ Shadow crafted an album very much aware of where it’s coming from. As Shadow said himself, during an interview for the documentary Scratch;

“...you're looking through all these records and it's sort of like a big pile of broken dreams...Whether you want to admit it or not, 10 years down the line you'll be in here. So keep that in mind when you start thinking like, 'I'm invincible and I'm the world's best,'...”

So straight away, you know what kind of a clanking, other-worldly sort of album Endtroducing is going to be. The distinctive heavy drum-beats are ever present, but they are just part of a huge sound. See the aforementioned industrial clang of the awkwardly titled Building Steam With A Grain of Salt.  There is the weird sci-fi synth pops and lovely saxophone work on Changeling, and the melodic, deep-funk bass line, and baby-making trumpet component on What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4) .Stem is probably the strangest thing on an album of strange songs. It starts with some ethereal guitar from Love Suite by Nirvana, though not that Nirvana; apparently, there was British name of the same band. That alone tells you everything you need to know about DJ Shadow. This moves into some severe drum beats and a short section of a stand up routine, followed by some mournful brass; it is the twitchy, brilliant centre piece of the album. Organ Donor, with it’s weird aura, trembles with potential; one that is realise, on the deluxe re-release, in the extended mix. Twisted, almost inspid keyboard throbs twitch and convulse about the back of your skull, whilst a driving backbeat invokes the spirit of the very grittiest that hip-hop can be; Organ Donor is fantastic. But this show of class is not alone. While Building Steam is probably the most arresting, most rowdy thing on the album, probably the most interesting is Midnight in a Perfect World. Midnight is sort of representative of what this album is all about; it is a quiet, and disquieting, but ultimately lovely song, one that sounds quite unlike anything that was around in 1996, and even today, it sounds like the sound of tomorrow.

This is music for the night, and not a night spent with friends in a night club, but a night spent in solitude; perhaps working, perhaps just thinking. The music is so deeply, even uncomfortably personal, you feel almost like the sound of it is surrounding you, until you stand, alone, isolated from the world around you.
But it is not a bad sort of loneliness, it is a time to reconnect with an emotion that music is so rare to invoke; introversion. This is music that was conceived in the lonely dead of night, in a dusty basement, by flickering bulb light. As a listener, the feelings of introversion and ablution are palpable. For me it is an incredibly meaningful album, it sound-tracked some of the strangest times of my life. But it is a set of songs that will have a different meaning for every individual listener. There isn’t really any praise I could give this album that would be high enough. There are some who would probably not get it; it is certainly introverted and some people like a bit more sparkle and pop for their money. But this is one of the most unique, most distinguished and, strangely touching albums you could ever hope to lose yourself in.

Pick of the Set: Midnight In A Perfect World

1. Mute Math- Mute Math

 

Sometimes an album comes along that sounds totally, utterly unique.  Taking inspiration from some of the greatest bands of the past twenty years, that is something to be admired. But introducing just as much material that is totally fresh, that is a true achievement, and one that American boys Mutemath achieved in some style. Released in the States in 2006, and the UK the following year, the New Orleans troupe crafted one of the most spirited first attempts in recent memory. Although I suppose memory isn’t the best analogy, since I am yet to meet more than two people who have ever heard of the album in any capacity. Still popularity does not equal quality, as anyone at Island Records will probably tell you. Eponymous debut Mutemath is a successful marriage of art and heart.  

Collapse starts the show with a gradual military drum snare, leading into some distant vocals and floaty keyboard lines, before dropping the listener back to earth with the driving guitar lines of Typical, sounding like Blur with greater crunch. Frantic cymbal-clashes and a thick, slow bassline tie into the soulful, clear voice of front man Paul Meany, who sounds like the love-child of Bono and Sting, conceived whilst making prolonged eye-contact with Peter Gabriel. Typical is a real flash of class but it is one that is sustained into Chaos, a twitchy, frantic track that sounds like a Radiohead track being spun by DJ Shadow. Drummer Darren King plays on a relatively small and simple drum kit, far from the sprawling obscenities of many modern bands, and he drums with a rubber headpiece on that looks like an upside down codpiece,  that somehow helps him keep beat.  King’s hip-hop beats are some of the most furious and unique ever put to record, which may sound strange since drumming is rarely an area that particularly stands out, but his style is so fresh and distinct it really is worthy of attention.  What really impresses is the approach the band takes not just to music but to narrative technique. Take the contrived centrepiece of the album, Noticed. It proves a good demonstration of the band’s expertise in both areas.

Lyrically it is a love song, a song about powerful emotion and illimitable longing, hardly new ground for avant-garde art-pop. And yet it comes across so new and inventive; for a start Meany avoids using the L-word even once, which may sound strange but it gives the song a far more mature and understated tone that fits the band perfectly. Meany grabs the meaning but ditches the jaded trappings of dopey love pop, cracking out brilliant encapsulations of feeling with lines like “You are reaching/ Something that is beating/ I can’t believe I never noticed/ My heart before.” Not since the likes of Jeff Buckley have songs about love been captured in such impressive, personal formulations that cannot be understood on first listen; that must be unravelled over time, to great satisfaction.  Similarly the guitar work is absolutely astounding. Taking a few leaves out of The Edge’s guide to incredible guitar lines and writing the rest of the book himself, guitarist Todd Gummerman (hilarious surname aside) begins with a stuttering, atmospheric plucking that builds through an instrumental breakdown in the final minute of the song, building up into a huge, welling sound.  King’s signature math rock back-beats offset Gummerman’s raw power, giving the song a frantic, brilliant energy. Noticed is one of the strangest and most breathtaking tracks conceived in the last decade. But it is just one pick from an album full of sheer inventive zest; a collection of experiments that prove resounding, triumphant victories.

Take Picture, a song that treads similar water to Noticed and similarly echoes of U2 tracks like One.  Again what Mutemath really excel at is combining all their experimental weirdness with narratives that are overly familiar; Picture sees Paul Meany sat holding a photograph of his former beau and blubbing  a bit, probably something  a lot of people can relate to. It’s a tired setup brought to life through the quirky, highly mature storytelling technique employed by Meany; ‘It’s all we’re left that’s of any worth/ And it’s so much more than a thousand words/ Now in this frame is our only way we can endure’. It’s a song that I personally find tremendously touching, one that again enjoys a frantic hip-hop beat to prevent it having any chance of becoming a dirge, as well as some brilliantly devastating synthesisers towards the end of the song that sound rather like the groans of a dying animal. In a good way. You might think the prevalence of hip-hop would make these songs off-kilter, but somehow it really doesn’t; I reckon it probably needs to be heard to be believed.

This is a collection of emphatically well produced, expertly put together, and stunningly original songs. There are countless flashes of brilliance; the lovely, soft, symphonic guitar solo in Stall Out, the jive inspired riffs in Plan B, the adult-contemporary lament of You Are Mine, or the frustration at an uncaring world, in Break The Same. There are few records that have impressed and entertained me to such an extent as this set of songs, and I really cannot think of any other way of saying how great this band are. Imagine Tom Hanks, flying towards you with the wings of an angel, proffering forth a plate of chocolate topped cheesecake and a small fork to eat it with. It’s actually better than that.

Pick of the Set: Noticed