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January 2010 - Week 4

SPOON
Transference
Released 25/01/10; Anti

The William Eggleston cover photo of a disconnected young man looking away from a partially pictured and faceless woman, along with the psychological inferences of its title, more than hint that with their latest release Spoon have finally found a topic worthy of Britt Daniels song writing skills.


Up until now Spoon have apparently had no real purpose propelling them forward other than the quest to produce great sounding music and while this may seem to some as a churlish complaint to make of a musician such tendencies have often had the effect of producing songs which are aurally superior empty vessels; great music has rarely been purely about the sound in and of its self. However 'Transference' sees the group find the extra dimension they have previously lacked and finally promotes the group to the top rank.


As with 1970's Dylan, it is a break up album that lifts the artistic haziness and provides the sharp, clear sting from which a creative vision can come forth. The album is riddled with so much confusion, pain, bitterness and recrimination, with the humiliation of rejection, the nostalga for something crucial and lost forever and most of all the awful doubt, perhaps even manifesting itself as a certainty, that 'it' may never be experienced again; it is an album about the death of love.

So, fittingly, while previous Spoon albums have typically opened with a finely cut gem of pop perfection, 'Transference' sets the desolate scene with a barely-of-this-world dirge in the shape of 'Before Destruction', an icy look back at the world collapsing. 'Is Love Forever?' sounds more like the Spoon of old but only at surface level and the song soon fractures into shards as Daniels casts himself in the doubting Thomas role. 'Is love forever?' he asks 'Have I even felt it ever?'

The album, which could never be accused of being front loaded like so many these days, builds through the unhinged David Bowie style 'Written In Reverse' - a song which could easily have featured on the latters 'Low' - to the albums extraordinary centre piece 'I Saw The Light' which ebbs and flows, starts and stops, rises and falls like the tormenting emotional oscillations of a recently jettisoned lover. The numb nostalgic look back at a lost relationship which is 'Out Go The Lights' will most likely make even the most hardened heart blanch at the pathos of it all. The album ends with the transcendental funk of 'Nobody Gets Me But You' but as in real life there is no real emotional closure, it almost seems that after all the suffering, all the pained internalized scrutiny, that some unpalatable truth cannot be accepted.

Superbly well played and produced, 'Transference' carries an emotional resonance rarely found in an age which perpetrates the idea that nothing really matters much beyond the experience of the immediate instant. Some things are affecting enough that they warrant the instigation of soul searching down to the core of our very being. It's what makes us human. Now Spoon's music is human also.

VOGELENZANGRANK: 7.45

Sample track - Spoon - 'Is Love Forever?'

January 2010 - Week 3

SCOUT NIBLETT
THE CALCINATION OF SCOUT NIBLETT
Released 18/01/10; Drag City

It's worth remembering The Beatles recorded their entire canon on eight tracks or less. In fact most of their material, including such marvels as 'Strawberry Fields Forever', were recorded on four or even two track recorders.

The reason for mentioning this is that it is proof that inventive minds will always far transcend any technological limitations put in their way and that the 'ease' of modern recording techniques usually equates to there use for no real artistic purpose. All too often modern music is no more than a software showpiece, the actual song drowned in dozens of the needless layers which digital recording makes possible.

Producer Steve Albini, who produces Scout Niblett's sixth album and who once had the message 'The future belongs to the analog loyalists' printed on the back of one of his LPs, is a man whom has often been outspoken against modern recording techniques. Each album he produces amounts to exemplar as to how things should be done and here on 'The Calcination of Scout Niblett' he allows the songs remarkable space to breath, the whole sound of the album is stripped down with the emphasis on the natural sound of the instruments which are allowed to remain intact, free of post production meddling.

Albini's stance against the digitization of music is heartening, the faith he has in purity of sound over razzmatazz to affect the listener is admirable and his firm ideas have helped produce many classic albums from Nirvana to Nina Nastasia but as Albini would surely agree the major reason on which the success of an album pivots is that of the artist; so what of Scout Niblett herself?

Niblett's songs seem to be influenced most of all by P. J. Harvey and 'Bleach' era Nirvana. And while the guitars have the signature sludgey tone of grunge there is nothing here you could reasonable describe as a rocker, each track is interspersed with long silences, often lacking any percussion like a sort of post-slacker delta blues of guitar and voice only. The impenetrable lyrics are sung in almost a folk style. However, with each of the eleven 'songs' seemingly bleeding into each other, it can make for an unrelenting and downbeat experience which carries on for almost an hour. Taken in bite sized chunks some of this album is palatable but the pursuit of Niblett's singularly glum vision can make 'The Calcination of Scout Niblett' a bit of a chore - unless you want to learn how analog recording should sound.

VOGELENZANGRANK: 6.55

Sample track - Scout Niblett - 'Duke of Anxiety'

January 2010 - Week 2

ADAM GREEN
MINOR LOVE
Release 11/01/2010; Rough Trade

It's easy to understand why even the most hard nosed and derisive of individuals prostrate themselves at the feet of the cultural paladin that is New York City. In the epic cycle of popular music New York looms titanic, its place in rock myth as awe inspiring as the architectural totems which tower over Manhattan Island.

From the glamorous 1950's bop joints thronged with the well heeled stars of stage and screen to potentially dangerous trips through the Bowery to take in musical illiterates at CBGB's, NYC has catered cool so consistantly for so long it has ceased to be faddish, its pop art accomplishments have become traditions as enshrined in historical meaning as the Doric columns which line the the more august buildings of Old New York.

Hence on Minor Love we witness Adam Green luxuriating in the established New York cultural dynamic. In particular Lou Reed's sound and image is so completely subject to homage it can only be a ritualized passing of the baton - the extension of a New York tradition. As would be expected then Green combines American blues and European folk music with a stripped back artistic minimalism and obtuse but seemingly self confessional lyrics to give an overall effect similar to the 'Coney Island Baby' era Reed with a little of Leonhard Cohen's New York period thrown in for good measure.

Of course Adam Green is no Lou Reed, if Lou Reed's stated aim was to 'write the Great American Novel to music' then Green's sometimes cringe worthy lyrics ('when I took off my winter clothes, I looked like 40 or 50 crows') certainly aren't up to standard but most likely this is not the point. Minor Love is about preserving a form that has been chopped up and bastardised down the decades by three generations of fresh faced hopefuls, it is a restoration job rather than a creative exercise. In preserving the form Green does a reasonable good job, 'Breaking Locks' sounds authentic with the sound pared back, guitar barely audible, wheezy soul organ filling the silences and vocals very much at the front of the mix. The best song is the woozy 'Bathing Bird' which hints at the warm and welcoming basking glow of pharmaceutical effect but when juxtaposed with its lyric shows a darker side. 'Stadium Soul' is a relaxed jangle briefly augmented by a 1970's FM guitar solo.

Much of the rest of the album is by-the-numbers Reed at his most soporific provided you exclude the tinny lo-fi rocker 'Oh Shucks' but even this has a droopy air to it. In the end evaluation of Minor Love stems on sharing the enthusiasms of the artist but at least Green shows some genuine deference, perhaps even piety, before his cultural and musical sources.

VOGELENZANGRANK: 6.71

Sample Track - Adam Green - 'Breaking Locks'

January 2010 - Week 1

LAWRENCE ARABIA
CHANT DARLING
Release 04/01/2010; Bella Union

One suspects Lawrence Arabia, or James Milne as his mother knows him, would consider the late 1970's microtonal noise experiments of Glenn Branca and Wharton Tiers to be 'new' and 'fangled'.

Milne is of the 'classic' school; a disciple of the period between 1965 and 1970 after which the dissolution of The Beatles ushered in the musical equivalent of Alaric and his mates - new people, lesser people overthrowing a great and established order through sheer force of aggression. He probably blames The Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience as fifth columnists.

Yet as admirable as it is to know of and seek inspiration from an increasingly distant cultural past there is something of a problem with the modern classic songwriter. Brian Wilson and John Lennon were experimental, massively so, whereas those who adopt a 40 year old template are not in anyway innovative. That is not to say that innovation and excitement go hand in hand but to so slavishly attach oneself to the music of the past seems to indicate a weltanschauung which shows lassitude for the essential youthfulness, the essential of-the-moment, that permeates all great popular music.

'Chant Darling' may lack the vital spark of great music but it is by no means a bad album, in fact less demanding ears may actually extract some enjoyment from it. The influence of Nilsson, The Beatles and The Beach Boys hang heavy over many of the songs here. Opening track 'Look Like A Fool' is a nice piece of All Things Must Pass style lawn music elevated further by a spidery guitar solo. 'The Undesirables' is pure White Album era Lennon, owing more than a little to 'Julia' and 'Dear Prudence' and is shot through with the requisite melancholy. 'Apple Pie Bed' aims for The Beatles but skews off target and ends up sounding more like Electric Light Orchestra while 'Eye A' could be something off Sgt. Pepper's if the Fab Four had belonged to the prozac generation rather than the LSD equivalent.

James Milne knows the classic 60's songwriters well enough to approximate their craft which results in an LP that is no great hardship on the ears but whether any genuinely unbridled outburst of excitement will be stirred by these songs remains open to question.

VOGELENZANGRANK: 7.10

Sample track - Lawrence Arabia - 'I've smoked too much'