What with the Grammy nominations due to be released in a few hours, I thought it customary to get my two cents in before the announcement in an effort to get my word out on a few of the finer examples of new music to come our way over the past year, rather than get into the typically blog-centric spirit of things with lengthy Top 50 charts and such. Alas, there will be no live telecast or glamorous awards ceremony at the end of the year in which these awards will be bestowed upon their oblivious recipients, but I’ve always had a thing about the pat-on-the-back pageantry since I was a young boy who used to stay up late and watch the Oscars live early on the last Monday morning of February, and until I marry wealthy enough to make such things a reality, the web will have to do for such inconsequential piffle. But enough already, may I present to you the nominees for the Vessalis Music Awards 2011:
And there you have it; R&B superstar-in-waiting The Weeknd leads the haul with six nominations (not including the production nomination for both of his albums for Doc McKinney and Illangelo), with multiple nods also going to baroque troubadour Anna Calvi, pioneering alt-electro goddess Björk, Kanye West’s new best friend Bon Iver, misunderstood cuddly lothario Drake, R&B/dance upstart Katy B, swoonsome pop duo The Sounds Of Arrows, gothic retro-pop outfit Cat’s Eyes and hip hop music’s very own Eeyore Ghostpoet.
Winners, as well as a breakdown of the awards already announced, will be announced before the year is out. Until then… xxxo.
The end is in sight, my dears!! And in preparation for a busy month ahead, have put together one last quarterly playlist to share with you all. Excuse the bluntness with which I proceed, but I promised myself I’d just get straight to it this time. But don’t worry, there’s more from me to come in December. Until then though…
Starting off the soundtrack to the winter months absolutely fittingly is the inimitable Kate Bush with a cut from her tenth studio album 50 Words For Snow, an LP that has every right to become the go-to alternative Yuletide album for those who aren’t so easily subsumed by the crudely commercial holiday cheer of your typically superficial Christmas. Playing more like an audio compendium of wintry fables, each of them concerning the awe-striking majesty and destructiveness of one of nature’s most powerful forces whilst marrying these with magically bittersweet affairs of the human heart, one of the most startlingly emotional examples is this hauntingly spectral duet with Elton John that sees himself and Bush as star-crossed lovers traversing the world and time itself only to fall in love and lose one another again. It’s stirringly beautiful stuff that not only brings out John’s most powerful vocal performance in years, but single-handedly wipes away all doubt that Bush may have left when she came out with the Director’s Cut collection earlier this year.
Easing us back in from the cold now is some slow-burning folk-rock from Leslie Feist, she of the international breakthrough via iPod Nano advert back in 2007. As evidenced by this emotional piece through, gone is the cutesy guitar pop that warranted a still-charming appearance on Sesame Street and in its place is a more muscular, angular norm, her new album Metals featuring work from established cohorts Gonzales and Mocky as well as newfound compatriot Valgier Sigurðsson. Though many have welcomed the rustic, rough-hewn “chaos” that pervades the album’s earlier moments, like that of lead single “How Come You Never Go There“, it’s in the album’s quieter pieces where Feist’s lyrical authority and songwriting talents genuinely shine bright. Not to mention that crystal clear voice of hers, which hasn’t sounded so rapt and true with emotion as it does on this particular track, negotiating the spare opening of snare and bass before the track ascends into a plaintive clash of guitars and strings only to travel back down to its humble sonic origins with typically assured grace.
3) “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra
Whilst the rest of the world fell in love with Adele‘s gracious-yet-sad (and very possibly questionably-sane) paean to lost love in her over-played wrought-fest “Someone Like You“, Australia’s biggest unlikely hit of the year was a tale of heartache encased in vitriol and bitterness that saw its protagonist confusedly yelling at the object of his frustrated affections with the kind of toxic pallor that is as immediately relatable as it is affronting. Responsible for this icepick of a lovesong is Wally “Gotye” De Backer, an Australian-Belgian alt-pop musician who’s been coasting breakout success for a good few years now (you may know his last hit “Learnalilgivinanlovin” from its prominent use in movies starring Drew Barrymore), but with this breakout second single from parent album Making Mirrors, he appears to have finally scored, and richly deserved it is too. A natural successor to Peter Gabriel‘s brand of pop that manages to cross folk, rock and soul together into an intoxicating whole (well, when he used to be good anyway), Gotye’s success appeared to catch everyone in Australia by surprise; let’s hope that 2012 has him branch out of his homeland with similar results.
***CAN’T FIND A LINK WITH AUDIO FOR THIS SONG, SO PLEASE JUST TRUST ME ON IT***
Continuing the present theme about the nature of love and its adverse affects on humanity is a cut from perhaps the most polarizing release by a single popstar so far this year in Björk’s Biophilia, though if an album from this particular chanteuse were to elicit anything less than such a reaction, it would roundly be considered by all to be something of a failure. Though much has been made of the LP’s sonic construction as well as its interactive multimedia applications that allow the more adventurous listeners to isolate, manipulate or explode specific elements from each of its ten songs via touch-screen technology on their iPhones/iPads (which also happens to serve as confirmation that even boundary-pushing artists can’t seem to innovate without Apple‘s influence), there’s still more than enough of Björk’s proven mettle as a songwriter of intellectual and emotional velocity for the more Luddite-hearted fan to console themselves with. “Virus” is one of the album’s particular highlights; evoking love’s indefatigable thrall on the human heart by comparing it to a rogue germ’s attack on the human nervous system, it’s a knowingly quixotic metaphor rendered lovingly, bravely and typically true of its maverick progenitor.
Lana Del Rey has been something of an enigma for the music press to categorize since her video for “Video Games” infiltrated the blogosphere with a truly bombastic response of adulation. There are those that flocked to see her on her first European tour last month (which completely sold out… on the back of a mere two songs) and heralded her as 2012’a Princess Of Pop In Waiting, and there are those who have claimed to cracked through her label’s elaborate efforts to package her as an indie starlet in the “brokedown Hollywood” vein, seeing nothing more than a prettily-singing shill out to gain instant notoriety and plumbing extremely cynical depths to do so. Well, after seeing her live in London, I can confirm a few things; she may not yet be the Princess that those who caved in to the hype thought she’d be, but she’s still a mighty fine vocalist with an arresting ear and delivery for heartbroken love ballads, and given the right songs, there’s no stopping her. Plus, “Video Games” is definitely the best song of the year, so the haters can just shut the fuck up.
So how awesome is Zola Jesus? Well, if the above video hasn’t confirmed anything for you yet, how’s about comparing her work to that of what Lady Gaga, Florence + The Machine and The Knife would sound like after being thrown into a sonic blender, and you’re about a third of the way there. After courting “Next Big Thing” notices last year for her well received Stridulum EP and album, as well as taking in a handful of well-received festival appearances and support slots with Ms The Knife herself, Fever Ray, Nika Roza Danilova’s solo project retreated back to the studio almost immediately to craft her third LP. Despite not catching fire quite as brightly as the tastemakers predicted last year, Conatus is a more strident, confident album from the 22-year-old(!!) singer-songwriter, reinstating the industrial goth-pop that beguiled everyone last time whilst exhibiting a more mature clarity and authority, effortlessly balancing light and dark to create an at-times marvelous listen that doesn’t alienate either the hardcore or the passing listeners of her sublime vein of electro balladry. Admit it, the song above is truly awesome, right?
One newbie who stands one hell of a chance to inherit Zola’s crown of Songwriter Whom Blogs Will Be Forever In Love With Until Someone Newer Comes Along for 2011 is Trevor Powers, whose debut LP The Year Of Hibernation has managed to catch the wind and spread its audio spoils like wildfire amongst music blogs all over the world (two of his keener champions being Pitchfork and Disco Naivete). And I could be snarky about how vociferous the praise surrounding this young lad (another 22-year-old!) has been if it weren’t for the fact that he has managed to craft an album that is as dense and melancholy as it is bright and hopeful, as much prone to chirpy whistles and effusive guitar lines as it is to laboured moans and discontented malaise. One of the album’s most sterling examples is this track; a song that starts as mournful as they come before ascending a crescendo of gorgeous lo-fi-ness with such beatific simplicity that it warmly blind-sides you with its newfound sense of worldly loveliness, the homemade production (it was recorded in his garage) imbuing the song with an almost alarming intimacy.
Coming to noted prominence last year with his fifth solo album (in three years) Returnal, one-man-band Daniel Lopatin’s music is credited by many as representing a significant contribution to the ambient drone sub-genre of electronica. His second album to see release this year (the other a collaboration with Tigercity’s Joel Ford, Channel Pressure), Replica‘s ominously soothing symphonies can best be described as the lost soundtrack created for an existentialist urban anime sci-fi noir helmed by Stanley Kubrick, what with the sounds emanating from each of these pieces being so otherworldly, cold, arresting and yet oddly calming and bewitching at the same time. It takes a while to get used to, but the second half of the album in particular is something bewilderingly fascinating, not least this transcendent finale. Admittedly, it is one of the more purely clandestine and easily accessible songs of the collection (reminiscent of a drugged-up, neon-lit version of “1/2” from Brian Eno‘sAmbient 1: Music For Airports), but no less spellbinding for it.
Despite the commercial success of his debut album Thank Me Later last year (propagated probably more by the revolving door of collaborations on other artists songs such as Kanye West, Nicki Minaj and especially Rihanna than any work on his solo endeavour), Aubrey Graham has gone on record saying that his premier LP of self-effacing rhymes concerning newfound fame and complicated booty business wasn’t one that he was entirely happy with. However, on sophomore effort Take Care, Drake not only fulfils the promise made on his 2009 mixtape So Far Gone but goes so far as to deliver one of the most breathtakingly sincere, gorgeous and soulful hip hop albums of the past few years. Much hoo-ha was made in the press on the announcement of Jamie xx and The Weeknd‘s contributions to the album (and both turn in fine work too, particular the former on the title track that samples his work from the Gil Scott-Heron project We’re New Here), but this is Drake’s show. His mixture of the candid and the tender has never been bettered as it has here, a woozily atmospheric VIP-room ballad that goes beyond sexy into something mournful and profoundly moving.
And just before you can try to judge me for being a soporific sod music-wise, busting raucously out of leftfield we have British producer Thomas Bell’s title track from his second album, Watch Me Dance. Hailing from the Yorkshire city of Sheffield, Bell’s DJ moniker was bestowed upon him by his fellow local disc-spinners with regards to the prodigious upstart’s youth, manning the decks at clubs and glam parties by the time was just 16-years-old. Since then, not only did he hook up with BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac to form one of the cuter couples in dance music, but he has also forged an impressive oeuvre as a producer for some of the UK’s most successful urban dance acts, some of whom return the favour on his sophomore LP to form a valuable cadre of collaborators from which Bell is inspired to craft some of the best feelgood dance music you’ll hear this year. One such co-conspirator is the one and only Rodney Smith, featured here in fine fetter amidst a rabble-rousing chorus of guitars and whoops that provides an saucily warm invitation to the rest of the album’s head-noddingly fine mix of hip hop, R&B and dancehall.
And now we follow through with something a little grimier and dirtier, courtesy of the German DJ duo who continue to defy easy genre-pigeonholing more than ever with their third LP, Monkeytown. After a justly-celebrated collaboration with one my last playlist’s featured guests, electronic solo artist Apparat, yielded one of the finest dances of 2009, Messrs Bornsert and Szary have been hard at work on album three, which shares the name of their own fledgling label as well as constitutes as the outfit’s most variedly head-turning collection of dance tunes they’ve yet released, mixing in typically tweaked-out IDM, minimal techno and urban dancehall whilst taking in vocals turns from returning collaborators Apparat and Thom Yorke (an early champion of the duo who has stayed remarkably loyal since) as well as perfs from urban artists such as Busdriver and Miss Platnum. One of the better cuts though is this lyric-less, surging rush of synths complemented by possibly the finest flurry of beat signatures that 2011 has seen fit to listen to; though some of the album sees the talented beatsmiths have a little more irreverant fun, it’s heartening to hear them hit straight through with something galvanizingly awesome when they put their demented heads together.
And the third successive track from a DJ outfit on this list actually comes from a trio (am I channeling Feist with this sequencing??), them being Los Angeles-based party-starters The Glitch Mob, whom after enjoying an incredible 2010 that saw the release of their rather-amazing debut album Drink The Sea have been hard at work slaying crowds on tour as well as working diligently on new material for the follow-up album. Releasing a clutch of new songs earlier this year on their We Can Make The World Stop EP, the most well-received of the troika of tunes was this title track, which as you can surely attest, is just as good as the better moments from the debut LP. We await the second album with baited breath, lads…
And as we hit the home-stretch, there’s still a little more time to dance around, courtesy of electro-rock-punk husband-and-wife duo Handsome Furs and this cut from their third studio album, Sound Kapitol. Written entirely on keyboards both to necessitate tour-bound songwriting sessions that in turn allowed a more instantaneous sense of inspiration from the world around them as well as pushing their prior guitar-driven sound into something a little more vital and eclectic (no worries though, as their customarily crunchy riffs can still be found in generous supply throughout the LP), Kapitol sees the band embrace electronic music far more than they have done previously, but still retains the fierce energy of their previous work, making for engaging results for those willing to take the plunge. “Repatriated” is one the album’s more emotional moments, stopping and starting with its shuddering bears whilst the synths soar overhead and singer Dan Boeckner’s dulcet intonations keep the whole shebang in order.
And despite my miserable protestations, even I couldn’t end this 2011 series on such a downer, so to cap it all off we have this gorgeous epic ballad from The Sound Of Arrows, a duo from Sweden who specialize in wondrous, wide-eyed synth-pop that is so unabashedly bursting with ethereal goodness that even when the children’s choirs come crashing in key moments, you can’t help but grin ear to ear as if you’re the Cheshire Cat’s extremely giddy younger sibling. An enchanting cross between Pet Shop Boys and M83, thematically Arrow’s debut album Voyage has a lot in common with the latter group’s latest album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, in its sublime journey through its progenitors’ beauteous soundscapes, but steadfastly attaches itself to the dreamy delights of Europop to enhance its nostalgic loveliness rather than hide behind more indie-credible electro leanings. For the record, the M83 album is still fantastic (and is responsible for one of the year’s best singles) but Voyage is an album that manages to explore the same territory with less filler and a more direct emotional appeal. And you can dance to it a lot easier than the other, it ought to be said…
And there you have it! My 2011, is officially over… Or is it!?!? Check back in a couple of days when the End Of Year madness really begins!
Alas, the summer is officially over. And in spite of my wanting to spend it in as foul a mood as possible, it actually turned into something rather wonderful. Amongst the most purely amazing was Björk herself singing “Jóga” directly at me when I went to see her with my good friend Omissi0n at one of her sold-out shows in Manchester as part of a two-week residency to promote her new album Biophilia (of which I’m sure I’ll be writing about in my next installment). Amongst the most slap-the-forehead horrible was that no matter how often I bleached my hair, I came to realize that I’ll never look as cute as Simon Pegg did in Spaced, never mind Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element. Then there was the horrid realization upon tearing up my living room carpet of just how much my dog had marked his territory since we first welcomed him into our family four years ago… you’d think after searing my nasal passages with the stench of hair-burning peroxide for six months I’d be used to such trenchant ammonia-based smells, but no.
However, the most sublimely bittersweet was bearing witness to my mother’s reaction on the day that the world lost Amy Winehouse. Instantly upon hearing of Winehouse’s passing, my mother ended up calling everyone that she knew, imparting the news to all who would listen with the kind of wounded reverance one would normally reserve for close friends and dear family. Such was the power of Winehouse’s music, she was able to inspire such resolute feeling and heartbroken loyalty in a random person whom she would never even meet. So, despite the tragedy of her death, I can’t help but be heartened by such emotional spontaneity, however minute or inconsequential it may seem to the world at large. I’m sure Winehouse herself would be honoured (or perhaps more likely a little embarrassed) that her songs have provided such a sterling example of the power of music and that it could still herald such a poignant outburst of emotion. Much better than that shockingly bad tribute to her at the MTV Video Music Awards by freakish manchild Bruno Mars, anyway.
Also, I can’t go on without honouring the passing of both Gil Scott-Heron and DJ Mehdi also. So sad.
But in any event, the summer did well to throw some more good new music our way too, of which I have dutifully compiled my third year-quarterly playlist of the best of the best. So here goes:
By way of some sonic verisimilitude after his latest side-project Cat’s Eyes closed things up rather ominously on my last playlist, first up we have Faris Badwan returning to the fray with a cut from The Horrors’ latest opus, Skying, an album that pretty much confirms the young five-piece band as one of the UK’s most genuinely accomplished acts of their generation. Tipping their unruly-haired heads further towards the warm 80’s-sponsored psychedelia of previous effort Primary Coloursand away from the bilious garage-punk rabble of their debut LP Strange House, Skying in its best moments delivers the kind of timeless sweetness that pervaded the best alternative rock and electronic pop music from twenty years ago. One such example is this lead single, a five minute slice of epicness that trades on benevolent euphoria, the percussion loping genially along as the reversed guitars sing in the background, making way for those strikingly lovely synths that do well to transport you back into your teenage self, redolent with frustrated wonder and anticipation. Few bands can take you back to those feelings with such authenticity, so the fact that this appears to be the only way The Horrors can create music is something to be applauded.
Now a little late arriving to this lovely young girl’s party I may be, but I can still count myself as one of the rightly-riled music fans who can’t understand why someone responsible for bright pop music as delightful as that found on Anita Blay’s debut album has gone unnoticed by most listeners. A most disarming mix of sweetness and tartness wherein a sly wit pervades throughout, Blay’s album is a joyous throwback to 90’s indie urban pop, holding court herself with an assured voice that eschews typical octave-vaulting for something more approachable and endearing. It helps that she has a catchy ear for melody too, as evidenced on this track with its adorable synths bouncing around the tight harmonies on the chorus, featuring Blay imploring the object of her frustrated desire to “work it out” with such effortless guile as to make the listener question said subject’s apparent absentmindedness. Adulthood is the rare debut album that doesn’t rely on eye-rolling “look-at-me” moments that smack of desperation and obnoxiousness to get its heroine’s personality across; instead it is a beyond-charming portrait of a self-effacingly confident young woman that the rest of the world could do with getting to know a bit better than it currently does.
Sharing some of the same songwriters and production staff as Blay’s album is Cinderella’s Eyes, the solo debut from Miss Roberts also fuses an arch indie wit and irresistible girliness together to create one of the best pop albums of the year. Known rather unfairly by most as the miserable-looking one from Girls Aloud, many of the band’s smarter fans earmarked Nicola as the pop behemoth’s true solo star-in-waiting, and though comparing her premier disc to those of bandmates Cheryl Cole and Nadine Coyle is doing her fabulous work here a disservice, it’s the best way to highlight just how natural a pop star she is. Whereas Cole’s music felt more like an afterthought to her celebrity profile and Coyle’s album fell flat due to it’s prominent whiff of desperation, Roberts’ LP is an enjoyably-cohesive little pop trifle that despite the multitude of know-alls behind the scenes doesn’t feel like it could possibly be carried by anyone else. Sugary sweet and at times rather silly, but still in possession of enough self-mocking awareness, intuition and heart to make it all deliciously easy to swallow, it’s an album you wish you could listen to as an eight-year-0ld girl just to get the absolute utmost pleasure out of it. And this anthem in particular is a succinct summation of all its charms.
***CAN’T FIND A VIDEO LINK FOR THIS SONG, SO PLEASE JUST TRUST ME ON IT***
Some homemade Scandinavian alternative pop now from Swedish musicians Maria Lindén and Fredrik Balck, of whom little is still known but for the encouraging buzz emanating around their debut album, Hearts. It’s the kind of delicate wide-eyed thing that would do well to soundtrack nestling inside on a cold winter’s night with a loved one just before sunrise, abounding with expansive sonic vistas of reverb-drenched guitars, ethereal vocals and soul-searching synths. Though the public at large doesn’t know very much about the shoegaze duo yet, what with their not having even performed their pieces live for press or public (though there are videos of “bedroom sessions” on Youtube and a blurb on the website big enough to describe Lindén as “a shit-kicker in high fidelity” whilst acknowledging the group’s musical debts to the likes of My Bloody Valentine), rest assured that their sounds should be reverberating around the hippest of after-parties for the rest of the year. This track in particular showcases the duo’s command of sonic textures and arrangements, building with plenty of curiously ominous luminescence until finally rewarding the listener with a tremulous wave of audio sublimity.
More eye-moistening electronica now, courtesy of German noisenik Sascha Ring, fresh from his stint in the excellent Moderat project with dance-duo Modeselektor. The Devil’s Walk (named so after a poem written by nineteenth-century English Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley) is his fifth album, his first to be released by English label Mute Records and quite the emotional sojourn into bubbly electro, orchestral flourishes and tear-stained balladry it is, lead single “Song Of Los” already inspiring one the best and certainly most heartbreaking accompanying videos of the year so far. However, despite even a stirring collaboration with Soap&Skin‘s Anja Plaschg surfacing pretty early on the album (and by the way, where’s your second album, Miss?), it is with this track that the breadth of Ring’s musicality is truly revealed, at once achingly intimate and incredibly grand, offering more moments of almost-painful quietness and sweeping beauty within a single piece than most albums this year can claim to have done in their entire duration.
And just in time before everyone gets a little too emotional to carry on (we’re only a third of the way through here, people!), let’s hand it over to the US’ latest alternative music star, Ernest Greene, a young man who has been fanning generous plaudits from bloggers the world over for the past two years via his well-received EP’s consisting of what has been coined by whatever hipster got there first as “chillwave”. Signing with the label Sub Pop last year, 2011 saw the drop of his debut album, Within And Without, upon whom its progenitor was bestowed with even more critical garlands for its intoxicating mix of ambient chilled-out electronica, hip hop beats and trance-style signatures, with Greene’s vocals flowing over the top to provide yet another layer of soporific sultriness to the proceedings. The LP itself is probably the single most successful amalgamation of disparate genres that has created a universally-friendly whole that the world has heard this year, feeling as much at home on mainstream radio as it would in the clubs or at the hazy after-party. The best example of Greene’s work at its most mellifluously mesmerizing has to be this track; caution, it may actually make you feel a little happy inside again.
Continuing the theme of electronic one-man projects, we now have Alan Palomo and his plucky electro-bandmates with they’re sophomore LP, Era Extraña, arriving two years after their debut Psychic Chasms found favour with electro-fans the world over with its characteristic blend of arty chillwave synthpop. For his second sonic tome, Palomo holed himself up in Helsinki for four weeks, prompting a severe case of cabin fever that was punctuated by the intermittent stalking of a hobo. Not that such personal tolls on the man found their way on to his second album though, with the majority of it being as upbeat and resonant as any electro-geek would like their music to be, very much in the vein of the punchy ambience offered by Washed Out’s track earlier, but with more of a heavy lean towards 80’s electro and cacophonous arcade samples (the latter best exemplified by the closer “Arcade Blues (Single)“). However, the standout from the album that made it on to my playlist is this slice of electro-dance, complete with mantra-style intonations and vocal layering alongside some rather appreciable toe-tapping beats.
One artist whose modus operandi seems to offer no end of sonic delights for his faithful listeners is that of Axel Willner, the Swedish DJ/musician who can take a single particular moment from a popular song and through his superlative brand of hypnotizing loops turn it into something head-noddingly epic (one of his better examples being this cut from his debut LP From Here We Go Sublime that doesn’t reveal its origins until the very end, prompting one of the most laugh-out-loud moments in dance music for recent years). Granted, since his universally-acclaimed first album Willner’s compositions have been getting longer and more intimidating, something that the more passing dancehead won’t necessarily be down with. Having said that, once you’re caught within Willner’s thrall of sequenced looping, even the tracks that last as long as eleven minutes still fly past, be they extended moments of chilled-out euphoria (like this one) or shape-throwing efforts of dancey propulsion. Looping Is A State Of Mind; and you’ll be lucky to find yourself enjoying the kind of pulses racing their way through Willner’s.
9) “Fragile Hope” by Balam Acab
Does anyone still remember when bloggers and musos were getting excited about that new sub-genre of electronic dance music, “witch house”? Last year, when it was gathering up some steam for its heady mix of chopped ‘n’ screwed hip hop beats, ambient industrial shoegaze and disembodied vocals, one of the artists people were getting more excited by was 20 year-old Alec Koone. After coming out with the well received Birds EP late last year, Koone released his debut LP Wander/Wonder and though the initial critical reaction may have been cooler in accordance with the hype dying down around the whole witch-house movement, there’s no denying that there’s still plenty of head-turningly wonderful stuff to be found. What’s somewhat gratefully missing from this full-length effort though is the harsher side of this so-called genre, Koone leaving behind the grimier side of the dusted beats and processed vocals for something a lot more soothing and wistful. It might not strictly adhere to the witch-house aesthetic, but alongside the more ambient works of his peers such as How To Dress Well (a fellow labelmate with white-hot imprint Tri Angle) and Baths, it’s still pretty fucking gorgeous; just listen to this track and you’ll see.
One feels that 2011 is the year when R&B and hip hop music began to take a dramatically exciting new direction. The debut artists creating genuine heat these days seem to be informed by a disillusioned stance against the world, informed as much by the elegiac soundscapes of ambient dream-pop and reverb-soaked post rock as they are the typical genre tropes of booties, bitches, money, drugs and thuggery. Without doubt the most impressive of these new prognosticators is The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye, the 21 year-old musician who is only on his second mixtape but quite rightly has the Internet waiting with baited breath on his next move. His debut House Of Balloons is the best-reviewed full-length release this year and his second effort, Thursday, is every bit as beautifully dystopian, emotionally haggard and sensuously sinister as its predecessor, perhaps even more so. Standout track “The Zone” also happens to feature fellow Canadian wordsmith Drake, who not only delivers one of his more eloquently powerful verses ever, but also excitingly helps to cement Tesfaye’s reputation as someone the music world is willing to take very seriously by his appearance here. And we’ve still got one more album to come from him before the year’s out…
After enjoying a steady head of hype since their eponymous debut of lo-fi soulful grooves in 2007, this five-piece electro-pop band from Sweden received some breakthrough recognition last year when they featured twice on one of 2010’s biggest releases, virtual-pop juggernauts Gorillaz’s expansively-realized Plastic Beach (on which their collaboration “Empire Ants” repped as one of that album’s hidden treasures). Since then, not before stopping off for a couple of guest spots on both Dave Sitek‘s one-man-dance-project Maximum Balloon and London-based producer SBTRKT‘s debut from earlier this year, they’ve finally released their third album proper, Ritual Union, which sees the group embrace an even more minimalist sound than previously, marrying nu-soul R&B with the hypnotic beats and bass dominating the loftier echelons of the post-dubstep movement. This track in particular bears the finer virtues of the group’s new direction, consisting of little more than a rustling beat shuddering away as Yukimi Nagano’s vocals moan plaintively under Autotuned duress and an ominous synth continuously swoops throughout it all before delicately submitting itself into a jazzy percussion breakdown.
Though it’s seemingly hip to belittle the UK’s Mercury Prize every year as much for the omissions as it is for the nominees and eventual winner (though it was rather nice that despite most people having their favourites, everyone who was bothered enough to keep track was happy for PJ Harvey‘s win this year), it must be said that they do well to throw the spotlight on certain acts whom the general music-buying public would otherwise ignore. 28 year-old Obaro Ejimiwe is one such musician whose debut album, Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam, near-silently crept into the world in February this year and, despite several adulatory notices, was due to be largely forgotten until it received a nomination. Granted, this didn’t necessarily translate into amazing unit shifts or anything but at least it granted some valuable media time to one of the most warmly observant, poignant and humbly impressive albums of 2011, Ejimiwe being very much a rapper of the introverted variety á la Roots Manuva. This track is the finale to the LP, as much a critique of the songwriting process as it is of the more vacuous poetry flowing through others MC rhymes these days, of which no one can accuse Ejimiwe of being so.
13) “Dreams” by CunninLynguists featuring Tunji and B.J. The Chicago Kid
And the introspective hip hop continues, this time from across the Atlantic by rap collective CunninLynguists and their fifth album, Oneirology, taking its name from the scientific study of dreams. Despite making music for over a decade and all the while receiving plenty of worthy notices from publications like The Source and The Onion A.V. Club, you’d be forgiven for not knowing who this hardworking trio of Kentucky-based MCs are, which only makes the at-times amazing work on this album all the more powerful. Entirely produced by founding member KNO (and on it’s own, the production serves as a marvelous showcase for the man’s talents as a beatsmith), it’s an album that finds its progenitors and its guests navigating through the nightmares of everyday life, simply living and getting by, occasionally dreaming ahead and striving to attain something better, but never once losing their integrity and nobly resisting to glamourize the violence often portrayed. Such honourable and intelligent conviction is on ample display in the above track, if you fancy a listen.
And before finishing up, we’ll have just a couple of verses from Brandon McCartney, a young rapper from California who was able to collect a few death threats from homophobic hip hop enthusiasts and budding MCs when he declared that his latest album was to be titled I’m Gay (I’m Happy), even dedicating it to his fans in the LGBT community (and just for the record, he’s what The Lonely Island would call “no homo”). However, whilst Lil B does in part earn a spot on this playlist for his devil-may-care showmanship and heartening bonhomie (as well as some personal brownie points for being the first rapper to remind me of a Fry & Laurie sketch), it would only take away from album that is in of itself a strikingly personal tome of a young man trying to deal with the world and everything that it throws at him, his rhymes refreshingly shot through with surging passages of hope and optimism despite crippling moments of doubt. I had to include this track above all others though, if only for marrying Obama’s victorious election speech (given more power for sadly seeming so long ago already) with Joe Hisaishi’s enchanting score for Hayao Miyazaki’s epic Spirited Away in a stroke of emotive genius.
And just when you thought this playlist couldn’t get any more queer, eh? Well, considering this song actually comes from a brand new musical from the creators of South Park and Avenue Q, you can rest assured that it’s place on this list is thoroughly justified. The big winner at this year’s Tony awards (the American version of the Oliviers… what do you mean you’ve never heard of them??), Messrs Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez’s satirical play concerns Mormon missionaries preaching the good word in the grim, war-torn environs of Uganda, taking potshots at the hypocrisy of organized religion and those who preach purely out of selfishness, whilst also appreciating the restorative power faith can have in peoples lives. The score itself is a mighty fine collection of pastiches from previous Broadway hots (specifically those adapted from Disney films), but they all happen to be shot through with incredibly dark, subversive humour, not least in this number wherein the missionaries thwart their own personal demons of domestic violence, cancer and homosexual desires with their artificially-programmed optimism. Hopefully all of this jet-black farce will remain intact for its inevitable West End run, but how well it’ll play outside of America will be interesting to see.
And there you have it my patient friends! Hope you enjoyed reading that one and I’ll see you back in November for part four. Until then… xxxo
And here we are, halfway through the year 2011. I honestly hope it’s been better for you than it has for me, but then I spend most of my days being needlessly miserable and drowning out the continuous mess of the world with any great new music I can get my ears to listen to (plus much drinking and partying, it must be said), so that shouldn’t be too difficult. But rather than bore you with such regaling, let’s get down to business and have a listen to some of the best music to have been released over the past three months, eh?
Kicking things off is the lovely Nanna Øland Fabricius, a singer-songwriter from Denmark who had previously trained as a ballet dancer only to have it torn away from her as a result of a nasty spinal injury. Turning her hand to pop music, she received enough local acclaim for her 2008 debut Fauna for Epic Records to sign her up and help her release her eponymous sophomore effort, which just so happens to contain some of the most head-turningly gorgeous pop you’re likely to hear this year. One highlight from the LP is this contender for Best Opening Track For An Album Of The Year, riffing on Fabricius’ dance background not just through the beautiful orchestral backing and her lyrics that evoke an obsessive scrutiny of her subject (is she singing about an unrequited love, a rival or herself?), but mostly on her vocal, so nimble and graceful as it pirouettes past the drum-machines whilst still retaining a wrenching yearning for something she feels is so out of reach, the irony being, with this song at least, she can lay claim to having achieved what her song’s ultimately about.
Let it be known right now that Mrs Ellis-Bextor really is the present generation’s unsung disco queen. Despite being a natural successor to Kylie Minogue‘s niche of blissful, charismatic, swathed-in-poppers dance-pop, our dear Sophie has had a tough time getting her fourth album out into the world, thanks mainly to clangers perpetrated by her prior record label that have ultimately seen her release the frankly fabulous Make A Scene independently. To be honest, “Not Giving Up On Love” would have been on this list if it hadn’t have been ignored by everyone (including myself) on its initial release last year, but “Starlight” is another just-as-sterling example of Sophie’s star-power, a wistful disco-ballad about love that cements its superiority through Ellis-Bextor’s adorable plummy-mummy cadence , not least when she offers one of the best lyrics of the year: “‘Cause tonight/We’ve found Heaven in the dark”… I’m pretty certain she’s not singing about drunkenly staggering through Soho trying to find G-A-Y, and even if she is, it’s because she loves us gays that much! The Eurovision campaign starts here!
But don’t worry, it’s not all gay-friendly music around this place, I do have time for somewhat deranged dance music too. The first example being this pummeling piece of arm-throwing decadence from a Danish triumvirate who have coasted cult success with their previous releases but now, on the back of new mini-album Knee Deep, released under über-cool electro-label Kompakt, they seem to be poised to take no prisoners with regards to anyone caught under their meditative wares of dance-rock. Coasting on danceability for the previous few years from their self-released works, “Checkers” is a prime example where they let rip with utter confidence, but not before illustrating some intoxicating teasing courtesy of some of the finer slow-burn builds 2011 has yet heard.
This was the band that threatened to sue Florence + Her Machine and won before it went to court. If that doesn’t make you love this band, then how about the fact that they’ve composed the best club-friendly indie-electronica album you are likely to hear for the rest of this year (it’s called Eye Contact, and it is fucking amazing!)? Describing it would be futile, so you’d just do well to listen to it for yourself. If you’re still not convinced, then there’s something wrong with you… and I would apologize on your behalf, but that would just be patronizing in the extreme.
There are those who dislike Burial, if you can believe it, for the fact that he doesn’t deviate enough from his signature sound of dusty jungle beats and ambient distortion punctuated by otherworldly sampled vocals. Still, you can’t really take those critics seriously if the likes of Four Tet and Thom Yorke are knocking on your door for a collaboration, and though those sessions brought a couple of mightyfine tunes on their own, Burial’s own Street Halo EP is where the future of electronic music can be found. The best of the recent tunes is this one, which has already got his last.fm fans excited enough in order to prepare for a state of seemingly eternal rapture (I mean “ejaculating forever”? Really??)
6) “House Of Balloons/Glass Table Girls” by The Weeknd
And if he collaborated with this singer-songwriter, they could very much take over the whole of the music-geek blogosphere with their thematically-familiar wares of alienation and loneliness filtered through with their post-modern perspective on urban decadence. If Wikipedia’s to be believed, this particular R&B crooner isn’t even legally allowed to enter the kind of establishments that his premier mixtape, House Of Balloons, describes in such dark worldly beauty, but that doesn’t stop him from composing some of the most sublime prog-rock R&B that the world needs to hear right now. There’s a reason why the likes of Drake and Jamie xx are collaborating with him, and this title track is a prime example of the luridly epic scope that this young man’s music has to offer, especially with regards to his impressive vocal skills.
One of the breakout stars from the dubstep scene that exploded last year was Miss Kathleen Brien, a 22-year-old London native who raised a few impressed eyebrows when her debut single, “Katy On A Mission“, sauntered into the UK Single Chart’s Top 5 last year. Fast forward eight months later and her debut album On A Mission fulfills that single’s promise tenfold, Katy emerging as a star blessed with a mercurial likeability that is amiable and easy-going enough to sate mainstream radio listeners but still possesses a gritty enough edge so as not to sell herself out and betray her musical background. The album has plenty of wonderful moments to savour (not least one heralding the long-awaited return of one Ms. Dynamite), but as a succinct summation of the witty intelligence to be found on this R&B/Dance/Pop crossover, as well as having a video keenly demonstrating Katy’s immense charm, “Easy Please Me” is the one that finds a spot on my playlist (and for the last time, no she doesn’t sing “Africans”…)
And yet there’s even more lovely urban dance music to celebrate on this blog entry; I blame the hot weather we’ve been having, because this South London producer’s debut album in particular sports a mix of club-friendly sweatiness married with moments of chilled contemplation that provides the perfect soundtrack to strolling through the city during a hot summer. Having gained attention via some well-received remixes for the likes of M.I.A. and Little Dragon (who happen to feature on lead-off single “Wildfire“), as well as his somewhat-secretive nature in performing whilst wearing a formidable tribal mask, Aaron Jerome’s LP has confounded a few listeners with its subtle production smarts that don’t crash around your ears on first listen and immediately demand you throw some shapes, which is an assured curveball from a premier disc from an electronic dance artist. Still, you can’t argue with sounds that send out as good a vibes as these, one highlight being this particular tune that may have the cutest bassline of 2011.
I can’t help but be moved every time I listen to this particular song from TVOTR’s fourth studio album, Nine Types Of Light. Not just because of its innate awesomeness, it being a sublime mix of funk, rock and soul that has been an assured characteristic of the band’s output since they first started ten years ago; but also because the band’s bass player Gerard Smith passed away due to lung cancer this year. I’m not normally moved by this kind of stuff to the extent that I write about it (I mean, people die; it’s sad, but that’s a given) but the fact that a member of my Favourite Band In The World died on my birthday isn’t something I can’t not think about.
In keeping with the Let’s Just Have A Big Cry motif that my playlist seems to have inexplicably taken a drastic turn towards in the space of one song, here’s one of the more beautiful tear-stained moments from Justin Vernon’s eponymous follow-up to 2008’s For Emma, Forever Ago, which could very well turn into the biggest album of the year, given the reaction from both critics and fans. Arriving after landing the most head-scratchingly curious guest spot on last year’s hugest event record (mind you, pretty much everyone else in the world ended up on that album, didn’t they?), Bon Iver‘s return is delicate, emotional and rich with ornate beauty, the kind of wonderful album that will get played relentlessly by BBC Radio but will still retain enough gorgeousness to survive continuous airplay for the next year or so.
And following Iver on this list we have another folk outfit from America who made a big splash in 2008 after quietly selling over a million copies of their eponymous debut LP. Their sophomore effort Helplessness Blues boasts the typical features of a band taking a bigger-budgeted and more confident stride into the world after carving their own niche of wintry acousticisms, the arrangements being just that little bit more robust to sound more accessible to the passing listener whilst keeping their fans sated with plentiful examples of the beautiful harmonies that made everyone swoon in the first place. Closing track “Grown Ocean” is one such moment where Foxes are at their typically wistful best but also delivering something more emotionally accessible to the previous album’s heartbreak, opening with an agreeable rumble that would have had no place on their previous album before giving way to a lovely flourish of woodwinds as frontman Robin Pecknold intones a dream-based narrative wherein he seems to experience a transcendent epiphany of the world’s beauty. Some times, letting the light in will make everything alright.
Of course, the ebullient light of the Foxes’ latest work can’t stay around for long round these parts, and to begin the crash back down to earthy reality, we have the debut album from Laurel Sprengelmeyer, a self-learned multi-instrumentalist who has finally gotten round to releasing her debut album The Golden Record after spending years performing alongside the likes of Atlas Sound and Handsome Furs. Named after the 1977 Voyager 1 Space Shuttle‘s audio-visual disc that cataloged various sounds and images from Earth intended to be viewed by any other sort of intelligence the universe may yet behold beyond our own, Sprengelmeyer’s premier disc is a strange beast boasting a head-turning mix of alt-indie electronica and soft moments of folk-tinged melancholy. An example where this particular one-two punch works best is when the almost-illegally pretty “The Heron And The Fox” is followed by this track, wherein Sprengelmeyer’s layered vocals extol reassuring resolve to an unnamed comrade in her apocalyptic plight as the guitars and drums grow ever-larger and finally consume them. It’s sublime stuff and worthy very much of your time.
Having already established their reputation as one of the leading purveyors of emotionally-harrowing indie-rock with their well-received third album Hospice in 2009 (on which frontman Peter Silberman is still more-than-reluctant to be drawn into the events that provided the LP’s inspiration), it makes sense to follow Little Scream with a cut from The Antlers’ latest disc, Burst Apart, eerily so considering that she is supporting these guys on their current US tour. And though Burst isn’t nearly so much on the emotional offensive as Hospice was, it still has its fair share of downer-inducing wares, the most clear-cut of which is this piece that closes the album with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer making violent contact with a sheet of sugar glass, featuring Silberman wailing after his antagonist who is very much keen to put their relationship out of its misery, punctuated by a belligerently bluesy guitar riff whilst organs moan reservedly in the background. Still, with a title as tasteless and baiting as that, you’re not expecting a barrel of laughs really, are you? (And don’t worry, I’m certain they didn’t have to put any animal down to make this song!)
World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation. The name alone just screams pretentiousness, and the Manchester collective have been courting plenty of hype and controversy thanks ironically enough to their cagey affections for both the music press and major record labels keen to snap them up after courting substantial cult success in the native town, eventually opting to self-release their debut album Go Tell Fire To The Mountain and thereby cementing their reputation as British Indie Rock’s Next Big Genuinely Exciting Thing. And lo and behold, be damned if the album itself exhibits enough surprisingly moving barminess to warrant such attention, combining post-rock, punk and world music to create a unique texture that doesn’t sound like anything else around these days, particularly via the yell-along regularly-incomprehensible vocals that give the songs an urgency as dramatic, coarse but ultimately as uplifting as being trapped in the thrall of a joyous chant in the stands of a football ground. Galvanizing stuff, the best of which the band has to offer being found on the above track.
15) “Sooner Or Later” by Cat’s Eyes
***CAN’T FIND A VIDEO LINK FOR THIS SONG, SO PLEASE JUST TRUST ME ON IT***
And we finish up on some ultra-hip fuzzy indie-pop courtesy of The Horrors’ Faris Badwan and classically-trained singer and composer Rachel Zeffira, whose shared fascination with girl group pop from the 1960s, especially works produced by the legendary Phil Spector, have yielded a curiously special little album, composed and produced whilst Badwan’s bandmates built their own studio to record their highly anticipated third album. Endorsed by the Vatican after performing an impromptu concert for various of its cardinals via Zeffira’s classical connections, the results have yielded some of the sweetest and lovely sounds to have been released this year, amongst some of the most doom-laden and forboding, a prime example of the latter being this Badwan-led mood piece wherein his dread-filled moans are punctuated by sinister electronics and a horrifically ominous horn section that appears to be playing live from the underworld. It might not be characteristic of some of the more indelible charming moments that the album has to offer, but it’s the song I can’t seem to stop playing most from this rather wonderful collection Badwan and Zeffira have wrought so wonderfully.
But I shan’t end this blog entry on such a sour note, but rather ask that you follow this link, wherein you will find a free download of Will Wiesenfeld‘s latest EP under his Geotic band name, Bless The Self. It constitutes of fourteen minutes of the most beautiful music you will listen to all year, it’s that pretty.
Now, enough of this blog malarkey. Until next time, take care!! 😉 xxxo
*Note* This is being published for posterity and continuity purposes only and is actually a blog I had written at the beginning of April this year on Blogspot. I wasn’t too keen on the layout there so that has since been deleted. This particular entry can still be found on my last.fm profile in the online journal though. So if you’ve already read this, apologies. If not, have a gander and a listen!
And on with the show…
It wasn’t until recently that I’d realized quite how much I have often emotionally invested in making playlists in my iTunes library. Be they to commemorate a special occasion, honor a friendship or foolhardedly assuage passages of time dictated by particular moods of mine (those never last as long as a first playthrough though), I still take far too much care in comprising CD-shaped compilations and, as a result, treasure them just that little bit too much. This is made immediately apparent by a few stringent disclaimers I always give myself whilst making said mini music-fests:
1) As hinted previously, the duration must never exceed seventy-nine minutes and fifty seconds so as to be able to fit on a playable CD;
2) The music featured needs to pleasingly tread the line between the mainstream and the obscure, specifically when being made for another person;
3) No genre should ever be considered taboo;
4) All songs must be at least five-star-rated.
Please excuse the obsessive-compulsive-geekery on display here but I’m trying to make a point about how my pitiful brain works, though if you’re not offended by such meaninglessly indulgent and strict strata (you are reading a blog after all!), I commend you and shall continue… Though the nature of my seemingly endless playlist-mongering may be founded on unreliable conceits that always seem to end in disappointment, it is my philosophy that where life in all of its ravaged beauty can frequently fail you, great music never will. Sure, I’ve deleted playlists before when the motives behind their progeny have failed to yield anything healthy enough for my reminiscence to hold on to and will definitely continue to do so (this whole iTunes/selective memory metaphor was kick-started by my absconding two specific playlists for people I’d previously considered a lot better than I ultimately should have done… and yes I am still drinking), but as signifiers that shed light on how I see the rest of the world, nothing translates it all better for me than some of my favorite songs pooled together to extol their collective wisdom. So, amidst the music released thus far in 2011, what have I found ultimately exciting and sublime enough to help lay my neuroses bare for the entire Internet to see?
To kick off a playlist good and proper, you can’t really go wrong with a song that so positively welcomes the end of days that at its most epic moment collapses on itself only to be brought back to life for one last surging sonic mêlée. Co-produced by pop bigwigs Dr. Luke and Max Martin, co-writer Ke$ha’s earworm-style influence is clearly felt on this one, and the lyrics evoke nothing more than that of a truly awesome party, but Britney’s worldly-yet-still-sweet little-robotgirl voice proves a much more appealing fit than her current rival’s, the track escalating with enough club-friendly intensity to provide her with one of the most euphoric moments in her career so far. It must also be said that its parent album, Femme Fatale, is something of a triumph too, consisting of sophisticated dance-pop cuts that slightly lack the fascinating brokedown-American-princess edge of her critical breakthrough Blackout, but still registers with enough wit, filth and massive tunes to herald the title of Best Adult Pop Album Of The Year So Far.
Quite a few of his fans didn’t quite know what to make of Mr Fiasco’s third album Lasers once it was finally released after what the rapper has described as an extremely painful birthing process, the result being an album that takes great pains to coat Lupe’s socially conscious rhymes in a mainstream sheen to appease both his peers and his commercially-incented label. However, despite his ambivalence towards the work, it still offers quite a few wonderful moments when it hits, one such instance being this ravey floorfiller that features Fiasco and an always-welcome Sway eloquently delivering victorious verses about breaking away from negativity and hardship whilst Turner, fresh from his similarly-driving guest spot on Tinie Tempah‘s “Written In The Stars“, delivers a soaring chorus that is purpose built to get any crowd to raise its hands in the air.
And the hip hop/rave flavour continues with this entry from one of US rap’s most promising newcomers, earning itself a place in my heart if only for superlatively sampling one of the best dance tunes from last year. However, Forte’ doesn’t just earn cool points for honoring a hidden dance treasure, but also because the young man enhances it by delivering as impassioned and impressive a diatribe as the title of the song intimates, calling to question rap’s more money-motivated playas for succumbing to the game whilst still acknowledging its allure and promises of a better life. Take note, as this exciting new artist is showcased rather awesomely throughout his recent mixtape Eyes Of Veritas, so much so that I’ll even forgive him for clumsily using an apostrophe to accent his moniker.
A somewhat dramatic left-hand turn into electro-pop orchestral grandeur now to off-set the gritty urbanities of the last two tracks, but then I did make my excuses earlier about this playlist possibly veering off into different directions, and once the orchestra bruisingly saunters over the opening synth pulses of this seven-minute marvel, you won’t be quibbling with such foibles at all. Taken from Messrs Tennant and Lowe’s score for Javier de Frutos’ recent ballet production of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Most Incredible Thing, it is bold, beautiful, joyously camp and even cheekily throws in a typically blithe passage sung by Tennant halfway through to truly disarm the fans. Despite the fact that the rest of the score doesn’t feature any other vocals whatsoever, it is a perfect summation of everything Tennant and Lowe achieve with this assignment, providing proof (not that it was needed at all) that PSB’s arrangements are just as galvanizing and swoonsome as their melodies and lyrics. Note: the above video is not the actual track but a ten minute sampler from the entire score, you lucky things!
Uplifting revisionist indie-electro now from these Australian wunderkinds, whose third album Zonoscope has seen them enjoy some of the best reviews of their career so far and one only needs to listen to this opening track on the LP to hear why. With frontman Dan Whitford’s vocals delivering lines that alternate between excitable hope and inevitable dismay to the object of his affections as the percolation of beats and keyboards travel through an epically joyous crescendo, it’s like the classily raucous us-against-the-world power ballad that New Order didn’t get around to writing. And I really don’t care how facile it is of me to compare it to anything Order, it’s only because I need to stress emphatically just how lovely this song is.
Having previously flirted with a dancier-sound on the last Gossip album and finally taking the plunge with some style with Simian Mobile Disco on their Temporary Pleasure LP, The Girl Whose Parents Eat Squirrels has gone and given us all a taste of what’s to come from her upcoming debut solo album with her eponymous EP, the highlight being this gorgeously sensuous late-night/morning-after flirtathon. Aided with shimmering synths and buoyant bass provided by new best mates SMD, Ditto coos tremulously with such effervescent bliss tempered with craven lust that she makes a somewhat tremendous case that her metamorphosis from rowdy indie poster girl to sexy disco glamourpuss might turn into one of 2011’s most awesome moments. On this evidence, the album should be pretty indispensible stuff.
When The Strokes announced their fourth album was to be released nearly ten years after making the world fall in love with indie rock again via their debut album Is This It, you could practically feel the collective breaths of excited fans emanating from the press release as they first glanced upon it. And despite taking more than four years to regroup, Angles amply showcases that the five-piece still have enough robust synergy to crank out punk pop beauties better than pretty much any other outfit nurtured as Next Big Things since their breakthrough. “Happiness” is a textbook example of the band playing to their strengths, the song at first timeless enough in its melody and arrangement to almost make you affectionately feel like you’ve heard it before, only to ascend into the kind of breakdown of virtuoso rabble that the lads make their duty to sound so effortless and fresh, the fraught spectrum of intense infatuation that it charts made positively overwhelming. Welcome back, guys…
I’m going to be extremely lazy and link my friend Babs’ article here with regards to this highlight from the Brighton group’s third album Rolling Blackouts, as she hits pretty much everything that’s absolutely brilliant about this song square on its head. My two cents: a charmingly bright and brash interlude that counters harmonicas and horn sections straight from ye olde American frontier with boundlessly effusive and intense drum signatures, resulting in unabashedly pure joy in audio form.
9) “The Fairlight Pendant” by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
***(still) CAN’T FIND VIDEO LINK FOR THIS ONE. YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO TAKE MY WORD ON ITS AWESOMENESS, THANKS!***
Taking their cue from orchestral suites as well as their formidable lineage as one of the US’s most well-regarded cult art-rock outfits, Trail Of Dead stripped back their usual intensive recording strategies from previous albums to hammer out this still-epic piece of alt-rock in less than two weeks. This specific piece is the finale of Tao Of The Dead’s first part, which is then followed by a final track actually comprising of five separate scores that bleed into each other over the course of sixteen amazing minutes. I couldn’t bring myself to include that in this playlist because of its length but this mini-gauntlet is still its own enthrallingly intimidating beast, following the band’s classical brief in its conjuring a sublime hard-rock symphony, the key to its success being its surging changes in tempo.
Sensual, theatrical and sinfully swathing herself in the kind of devilish guitars that could only soundtrack the most classic entrances of the most iconic of Hollywood sex bombs, what is there not to like about Anna Calvi? Rightfully earning herself a high-end spot on the BBC Sound Of 2011, Calvi’s particular blend of baroque indie often proves irresistible on her eponymous debut, not least on this stunning closer that bristles with menace and longing as she sings after a lost love to whom she’s still emotionally bound. And though Calvi’s beyond-sexy vocals effortlessly inspire all of this sultriness on their own, it’s those frankly amazing guitar riffs that steal the show on this and throughout her immensely promising premier disc.
Almost logically, Li follows Calvi on this particular playlist, what with their both happening to be almost-offensively talented young indie femmes capable of producing gorgeous lovelorn odes with an ear for arresting theatrical panache. Li’s sound though is arguably more wide-reaching in its scope, her second album Wounded Rhymes combining indie rock and grassroots soul with a subtle electronic influence, whilst the raspy thinness of her voice is able to summon up more character and empathy than most other singers her age courting greater success right now. And of course there are the lyrics; singing earnestly for carnal intimacy from her lover, she encapsulates the empty loneliness that forces people into confusing physical with emotional intercourse. It’s essentially a sympathetic torch song on behalf of affection-starved whores everywhere… You know who you are and be glad that at least one person in this world feels it with you.
Fewer bands have embraced the digital age quite as tenaciously as the UK’s Best Band have done, especially with regards to the twists in their distribution of their music, boldly issuing a pay-what-you-like deal on In Rainbows back in 2007 months before its physical release and, with The King Of Limbs, digitally releasing the album a day earlier than the proposed release date, which had only been announced a few days beforehand, simply because “the album was ready”. Such charming directness and endearment towards their fans aside though, it would all be for naught if Radiohead didn’t deliver such beautiful music, and though Limbs is certainly not their best album, it still has moments of greatness, not least this blissful electronic meander that closes the LP. Absent of any kind of fraught drama and coasting by with soothing ambience, with Yorke’s dreamy vocals redolent of the ethereal euphoria felt after finally lifting the entire world off of his shoulders, by the end it has blind-sided you with just how subtly lovely it is.
Since courting plenty of white hot buzz late last year, with the release of James Blake its progenitor has become one of the more ubiquitous poster boys for a new music movement that trades in neurosis-smothered chamber soul-pop filtered through minimal electronics and processed vocals (see last year’s debut from the similarly impressive How To Dress Well for another such hero). And though plenty have balked in bemusement at the stripped-down sounds Blake has wrought on his debut LP, there can be little doubt about the man’s talent in composition and production, catching the listener’s breath just as much with the silent airs that punctuate his songs as he does with the homemade atmospherics plied by his bass and beats, successfully drawing your attention to every nuance to be heard. “Limit” is one of the more accessible tracks from the album (Blake’s vocals are less treated by effects here than on any other song for starters), but no less beguiling for being so, summoning more drama in a couple of piano chords than most other break-up ballads can do in their entirety these days.
14) “Space Is Only Noise If You Can See” by Nicolas Jaar
And the chin-stroking, electro-minimalist luvviness continues with the youngest artist to feature on this playlist and the title track from his debut, Space Is Only Noise. All of twenty-years old, Jaar’s reputation as one of the more exciting electronic pop music composers via a flurry of well-received remixes was given a shot in the arm with this LP, courting similarities to Blake for his lo-fi wares and seeming lack of any sort of BPM in his music whatsoever. One listen though reveals that Jaar’s work is much more fanciful and less serious in its tone, utilizing found noises, dialogue samples and often absurd lyrics written with more of an ear for syntax and rhythm than actual content, resulting in a more pleasantly enjoyable experience that is almost goofy in its charming playfulness. All of this is brought to bear on this track in particular, enhanced by a funky bass synth that sets the mood perfectly for amusedly-detached ambience, by the end assuring us that Jaar’s talent is one to watch with some attentiveness.
And to close the set we have yet another electronic music producer in Andy Butler and his dance music project that first caused a stir back in 2008 with their eponymous debut album that happened to contain one of the best disco tunes ever. The follow-up Blue Songs is a more ruminative and soulful affair, finally coming to a head with this stunning closer that finds solace from the horrors of the world in music itself. Though it is a resonant song all on its own lyrically and sung with a wary wistfulness that is utterly compelling, the genius of this is in Butler’s production, incorporating distorted sirens and crashes that vividly portray the horrific world outside, whilst the piano and a particularly moving guitar line front their own offensive in creating the song’s protective shield. Tellingly though, the song itself finishes before the noises do, making it that much more powerful in its acknowledgement of our world’s own destructiveness; as state-of-the-world anthems go, this is an eloquently hopeful one that doesn’t lie to its listeners. The world is shit and will still be shit long after we go, but we can create our own sanctuary if we try hard enough…
So what have I learned about myself via this veritable smorgasbord of sonic fracas? Well, for those who’ve skipped to the end, here’s the abridged version:
“…wit, filth and massive tunes…
breaking away from negativity…
impassioned and impressive…
bold, beautiful, joyously camp…
excitable hope and inevitable dismay…
effervescent bliss tempered with craven lust…
fraught spectrum of intense infatuation…
charmingly bright and brash…
enthrallingly intimidating beast…
bristles with menace and longing…
on behalf of affection-starved whores everywhere…
blissful electronic meander…
neurosis-smothered chamber soul-pop…
almost goofy in its charming playfulness…
the world is shit and will still be shit…”
Can’t really argue with that with regards to how these past three months have felt for me really. Well, that’s enough indulgence for quite a while now. Bye bye… I’ll try to be a little perkier next time, don’t worry! 😉 xxxo
And for those who actually read all that again, thanks… My heart sings for you!
dibdersbooth 