Mekons - Ancient & Modern: 1911-2011 / Magazine - No Thyself / Chris Difford - Cashmere If You Can

Blasts from the past. There was a time, not so long ago, when artists who had reached their zenith went one of three ways: maintain some stature as a “stadium act” – Stones, Springsteen, U2, R.E.M. (R.I.P.) etc, disband and return to the 9-to-5 or regurgitate their 15 minutes of fame on the chicken-in-a-basket or (if they were lucky) package-tour circuits. It was a rare occurrence when anyone continued to plough on, diminishing audience or not, creating new works as a career choice. Possibly due to the many ways in which music is disseminated & consumed these days there seem to be more examples than ever of musicians continuing to write & tour or bands reforming with new material. In different ways the three examples here, all veterans from the late 70s “New Wave” era, demonstrate the wisdom and/or pitfalls of such a path. To be fair, none of them has - as yet - achieved the renewed popularity of, say, Blondie, but all are to be admired for their tenacity.

(The) Mekons – definitive article lost since their transformation from spiky punky Leeds underlings into alt.country transatlantic “nearly theres” – emerged in 1977 to regale the world with their mixture of agitprop and relationship woes. Never the most technically gifted of bands, they nevertheless produced an early body of work which many of us loved – not least David Bowie, who selected their wonderful second single Where Were You? as one of his Desert Island Discs. I have fond memories of seeing them at a May Day Festival in Digbeth Civic Hall sharing a bill with The Au Pairs and MP Tony Benn. I admit that after their underwhelming debut album The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen (if you don’t know don’t bother asking!) I lost interest in the band, occasionally aware of their continued existence but never really inclined to put in the effort to listen to them. In 2004 I happened to catch them on a rare TV appearance playing one of their early songs – Work All Week – with a new & rather fetching arrangement. It turned out that they had revisited vast swathes of their catalogue to produce the album Punk Rock; I promptly ran out to buy it (well, sort of) and it was, indeed, a pleasant mixture of nostalgia & reinvention.

When I heard that their latest effort was entitled Ancient & Modern: 1911-2011 my interest was piqued. Could this herald a really innovative approach to a century of music from a band that has existed for over a third of that period? Would they create something compelling which mixed together their own varied background with other musical and lyrical styles? What the hell was it going to sound like?

Ancient & Modern: 1911-2011 is not an easy listen. Rather than experiment with either musical frameworks or lyrical constructs to convey 100 years of “something” the set has a fairly singular tone throughout. The underlying concept seems to be drawing comparisons between modern-day and a century ago, but it lacks focus (e.g. PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake had a similar notion but succeeded more by concentrating on “war throughout the ages”). Afar & Forlorn is indicative of this set, with John Langford delivering a ditty of loneliness & isolation over a guitar/drum/accordion/fiddle arrangement:

The title track is probably the standout. Over its 7 minutes (in olden days that would have constituted a whole EP for these guys!) it takes a great big melting-pot and throws in folk, Bowiesque vocals, Sally Timms reciting a solemn soliloquy, shades of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and a Welsh male-voice choir to produce something that does manage to straddle the Ancient and Modern (“nostalgia as a sepia glow”).

There are some clever lyrical touches here - Calling all Demons gives us “the head of John the Baptist sitting on a tea tray”, Warm Summer Sun seems to be a homage to The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society with “firelight and toast after I come home from playing cricket” before darkening to “corpses, skeleton trees… unimaginable hell in front of my eyes” – but the overall tone is a little too earnest and, if I’m honest, borders on hectoring. Even if the world is going to hell in a handcart and our economic infrastructure is on the edge of oblivion, there was a time when this band would have approached such doom & gloom with a degree of wit or lampooning (as on early career highlight 32 Weeks: “It takes 32 weeks of your life to get a car… it takes one week of your life to buy a mattress… it takes two hours of your life to buy whiskey… get a job, get a car, get a bed, get drunk” etc.).

Faring rather better are Mancunian mavericks Magazine with No Thyself (groan). This is the first new material from Howard Devoto’s collective in over 30 years and, while not quite reaching the heights of The Correct Use Of Soap, it’s not bad at all. Original guitarist John McGeoch, later of Siouxsie & the Banshees and so intrinsic to Magazine’s sound, died in 2004. Bassist Barry Adamson, who was involved when the band reformed to tour in 2009, is also absent having resigned to, it seems, direct his first movie, but otherwise the core of their classic line-up remains.

New members notwithstanding this is recognisably a Magazine album with all of the elements that one would expect in place: the one that sounds a bit like The Light Pours Out Of Me (The Burden Of A Song) – check; the funkier one that owes a debt to Sly & the Family Stone (Blisterpack Blues) – check. It’s not all just a replay of their heritage though. Physics opens, for the first 5 seconds, with what sounds uncannily like the theme from old ATV soap Crossroads before settling into a Lou Reed-type muse on the big questions in life (“My mind goes back to the earliest times when I learned how to use a sticking plaster”), while there are definite nods elsewhere to Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and New Order in the arrangements.

Dave Formula’s keyboards dominate this set – perhaps too much at times – and he seems to be tinkling just about every type of “black & whites” and displaying dexterity in just about every style imaginable. While this occasionally overshadows some impressive work from new guitarist Noko, the general strength of the band’s new material does manage to create that slightly dark & unsettling mood which accompanied their best work.

On the rocky Holy Dotage Devoto sings “In my dotage, more mortal than ever”; if this means that age has not dented his rather lascivious view of life then the (frankly filthy!) Other Thematic Material provides proof positive. Elsewhere his perspective remains obscure at best; Hello Mister Curtis (“Hello mister Cobain”) could be either homage or critique – or both - but I guess that’s just Howard’s Way (sorry, I couldn’t resist that one): 

I suspect that this album will grow the more it is listened to – there’s a lot of subtlety on display here – and it certainly suggests that Magazine still have something worth saying. My buddy Clatter, a Devoto devotee of 35 years’ standing, will surely love this.

For me the best of the bunch comes from erstwhile Squeeze stalwart Chris Difford, who follows up 2008’s impressive (if at times a tad mawkish) The Last Temptation Of Chris with Cashmere If You Can (groan again). Difford released these tracks one at a time over the last few months via his own Saturday Morning Music Club website and has now collected them into a single package – and a jolly enjoyable collection it is too.

As befits a man in his 50s Chris spends a lot of time looking back; the majority of the songs are written in the first person and are clearly personal. I can’t remember ever hearing a song which is as brutally honest & self-critical as Back in the Day. It doesn’t shirk from acknowledging the writer’s gross failings in life (“The day I mugged an old lady was the day that ruined my life… The day I punched you in Harrods was a day that I won’t forget”). Difford isn’t trying to justify or excuse these events in any way – he’s clearly documenting them, perhaps in a cautionary manner, and the more that these songs reveal about him the more I get the impression that, should he ever choose to write an autobiography, it would redefine “warts & all” and would be an essential read.

1975 is a glorious glam-rock stomp in an Alvin Stardust style (with a brief “coo coo ca choo” thrown in to underline its lineage) and fairly races along through the decades recalling more of Difford’s problems with amazing alacrity - “I know how hard it hit me and how it changed my life, I threw away a family, a fortune and a wife” – but again there’s no sense of self-pity here and, indeed, he clearly has an awareness of ultimately how lucky he’s been (“Sounds like I’m complaining but I’m happy to be here”):

In case you’re getting the impression that this is all a depressing look at (his) life’s failings, it’s not! Plenty of other ground is covered. Like I Did has a Kinks (yes, them again) melody à la Come Dancing and gives an honest view on parenting - “He’s getting stoned.. he’s playing bass.. he lays in bed.. how can I complain?”- summarised as “It’s funny how your kids turn into you”. The excellent Goldfish details a tug-of-love custody battle for the titular creature. Chris shares the vocals here with Scouse songstress Kathryn Williams and the result has more than a hint of The Beautiful South, both lyrically and musically.

There’s a nagging sense that this sounds like a man who is documenting his past as a final act: Wrecked comments “What a wonderful journey it’s been” while Upgrade me has the plea “I want to be assured that when I leave this world I will not be ignored”. I hope this is not the case; Chris Difford is at the peak of his writing ability and I trust he continues to produce songs of this quality for some time yet.


Ancient & Modern: 1911-2011 is available now on Sin Records. No Thyself is released on 24^th October on Wire-Sound. Cashmere If You Can is available now from SMMC Media.

Half Man Half Biscuit – 90 Bisodol (Crimond)

In one of the most amazing about-turns in recent pop music history Birkenhead satirists Half Man Half Biscuit have abandoned their traditional parochial approach to cross the Atlantic in order to work with Kanye West & Armand Van Helden on a triple-disc prog-rock concept album examining the post-crash breakdown of law & order in the Western World from a dialectic perspective.

As if.

For many of us the arrival of a new Biscuit platter is a BIG THING. I still haven’t worked out whether I got up before my son last Sunday morning as both of us raced to download their latest effort 24 hours before its physical release. This is the band’s 12^th album in a 26 year (!!) career and if you’ve heard any of the previous 11 then you will have a pretty good idea of what it sounds like. HMHB are the epitome of an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” band but with an acute sense of self-awareness, most memorably displayed on CSI:Ambleside’s Lord Hereford’s Knob - great title - when they sang “All of our songs sound the same” before following this up with lines from two of their earlier efforts. In assessing any new HMHB release the key question is, I think, “How witty/clever are the songs this time out?” and the answer here is “Very”.

There’s the usual assortment of seemingly random cultural reference points, including: Gok Wan, Swarfega, Ross Kemp, Dignitas, Dick Turpin, Betterware, Jim Beglin, Watership Down, Johnny Cash (“I shot a man in Tesco just to watch him die”), an oil painting by Mercy Rimell entitled “The Raging Ostler”, Kathleen Ferrier, Oranjeboom, the Duke of Westminster, Tories at Cornbury, a Ben Sayers 4-iron, Cadfael, Tommy Walsh’s Eco House, Iceland stores and, in the surreal Descent of the Stiperstones, “The actress  Lynette McMorrough who used to play Glenda in Crossroads”, who proceeds to explain how she is reliving her previous soap-star life by assembling a collection of dolls resembling her TV family.  A particular favourite is when Left Lyrics in the Practice Room drops in a very brief refrain of “Whoah Black Sabbath, bam-a-lam, whoah Black Sabbath, bam-a-lam”.

Main man Nigel Blackwell has always had a black side to his sense of humour but a lot of the content on 90 Bisodol (Crimond) is even darker than usual - the body-count on this record is remarkably high! Excavating Rita is about… well, try to work it out - it’s a companion piece to Jimmy Cross’s I Want my Baby Back - and has a melody (yes, really!) which is very mid-period Beatles. The Coroner’s Footnote is a delightful little ditty, borrowing most of the tune of Black Velvet Band, which concerns a lovelorn fool’s attempt to commit suicide by throwing himself under the train on which his former sweetheart is leaving; this culminates in as great a couplet as I’ve heard about the selfishness of such an act: “Well he thought of a love unrequited and he thought of a life full of pain, it's a pity he didn't spare a thought for the poor bastard driving the train.” Highlight RSVP, another in Nigel’s catalogue of lost-love songs, is built around a lilting waltz-time Irish air and details the pain of the narrator finding himself catering at the wedding of his ex. Just in case you haven’t worked out what’s going on the last third of the song drops in a brief snatch of Here Comes the Bride which cleverly merges into Chopin’s Funeral March to suggest exactly where this particular yarn is heading!

It’s not all death & despair though - there’s still plenty of room for Nigel’s pedantic attitude. Fun Day in the Park reels off a list of inviting propositions from a poster (“Punch and Judy, Shetland ponies, hot dogs, beat the goalie, soft play area with free bananas, Iguana Andy and his iguanas” etc.) – very much in the manner of, again, the (other) Fab Four’s Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite – culminating in “…and much much more. For further enquiries ring this number. I rang it and asked about the much much more. I was greeted with awkward silence. They had lied to me! They had lied to me on their posters!”

The centrepiece (masterpiece?) is probably Rock And Roll is Full of Bad Wools – a 5 minute Blackwell stream of consciousness rant in the manner of CSI’s National Shite Day – which regales us with the tale of a pop star’s appearance on (presumably) Sky’s Soccer AM alongside Heston Blumenthal. All is going so well – when asked about his favourite footy teams he replies “England, Chelsea, Accy Stanley and all the band love watching Barca” before Blackwell describes an unfolding nightmare:
“But then, disastrously, they ask him casually ’You come from Leigh-on-Sea, do you ever get to Roots Hall?’ Which to him means f*** all. Can only look askance and cast a sideways glance. Could use some help with this but Heston's gone for a piss. Needs something to deflect, enter Ruddock left. ‘More doughnuts!’ shout the crew, high art shall not ensue.”

Interest in this avenue exhausted, Nigel then takes the song off to the pub, where he “… went along to what I thought was ‘Curry Night’… it transpired that Curry Night were there to play Crowded House & David Gray” and delivers one of the subtlest put-downs on the album: “They take requests – ‘play one the drummer knows'’”.

90 Bisodol (Crimond) is not going to convert many (any?) non-believers but for HMHB acolytes this is bliss.

90 Bisodol (Crimond) is available now from Probe Plus.

St. Vincent - Strange Mercy; Tori Amos - Night of the Hunters.

 

Well…. after a somewhat storming first six months of 2011, with at least half a dozen good new albums (including one bona fide classic in PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake), it’s been a very quiet last few weeks in Knob Towers. As the blissful summer sojourn draws to a close though – I think we did have a summer, allegedly – and the nights start drawing in, the last quarter of the year has a number of promising upcoming releases. First out of the traps comes this pair, both from American female singer-songwriters who share an interest in the more, shall we say, esoteric corners of pop music.

St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, is a 28 year old Texan – 29 this month, according to Wikipedia - invariably described as “elfin” (got that out of the way early!). Strange Mercy is her third album, following 2007’s strong Marry Me and 2009’s even more impressive Actor. Annie has retained her eclectic array of song structures & musical palettes but this collection has a far heavier “electric” sound and is rather less baroque than its predecessors.

Opening track Chloe in the Afternoon kicks things off with phased synthesisers - somewhat reminiscent of Strawberry Fields Forever - quickly joined by loud crunching fuzz guitar - somewhat reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix - over which she informs us that “You're all legs, I'm all nerves”, leaving very little doubt about the song’s subject matter. The strange rhythms and phrasing which she has used so effectively in the past are in place (great chorus) and this is an impressive start to proceedings. Following this is Cruel - very 80s synth pop and very catchy.

Round and round we go, hopping through styles, much invention at every turn but never losing the sense that this is a cohesive set: Surgeon is a woozy little ditty which inhabits similar lyrical territory to Chloe… (“I spent the summer on my back “) and builds to an almost RnB/Jazz climax; Northern Lights is probably closest in tone to her earlier work (it wouldn’t feel out of place on Actor) and has a lovely rolling quality; Champagne Year is a beautiful second cousin twice-removed of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

Cheerleader is about as far away from what one would normally expect from such a title as I think it’s possible to be and would probably scare Britney Spears sh*itl*ss. Opening with strummed electric guitar and no percussion, it quickly becomes apparent that this is not going to be a paean to that most extolled of supposed aspirations for young American girls (“I've had good times with some bad guys; I've told whole lies with a half smile”) and bursts wide open for the pained, lumbering chorus (“But I-I-I-I-I don’t want to be your cheerleader no more”). A cracker.

Strange Mercy is, indeed, slightly strange - but quite compelling too.

Talking of strange, Tori Amos is also back with new album Night of the Hunters. For us those of us in the “like Tori” camp (to use a well-worn but appropriate cliché, she is the most Marmite of artists) a lot of her appeal is her singularity - you never really know what to expect. In 2005 my daughter and I went to see her on tour for album The Beekeeper, one of her more approachable and tuneful sets of late; she didn’t play a single track from it.

The fact that Night of the Hunters is being released on the classical Deutsche Grammophon label gives an indication of her current direction. Taking an almost contrary approach to St. Vincent it’s very baroque - wall-to-wall piano, strings and woodwind with not an electric instrument in sight. Tori has described it as “a 21st century song cycle inspired by classical music themes spanning over 400 years"; her stated brief was to “pay tribute” and “take inspiration” from original compositions by renowned composers (Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Schubert etc.) to create a new, independent work.

There is a linear linking concept here – involving an abandoned modern-day Irish woman confronted by mythical creatures, transported back through the centuries to a previous life and confronting all manner of forces on the “path to enlightenment” - but it takes a lot of work to try to figure out exactly what she’s singing about most of the time (this is not necessarily a bad thing). The tone of the whole set is reserved and quite melancholy – don’t come here looking for another Cornflake Girl or Professional Widow - although opener Shattering Sea is driven by pounding staccato piano to set the scene with a vivid description of the protagonist’s relationship breakdown (“That is not my blood on the bedroom floor; that is not the glass that I threw before”).

Highlights? Your Ghost is a far more typical Tori ballad than most of the other fare on display, along the lines of Winter, and tells of encountering a spirit dissimilar to the narrator (“He'll play a Beatles tune; me, more a Bach fugue. Is this such a great divide?”) but with whom she feels affinity - “Please leave me your ghost, I will keep him from harm”. Job’s Coffin has probably the most moving vocal performance here with a strong female perspective – “There exists a power of old who wanted Earth to be controlled, but she and she alone is her own” – and the woodwind accompaniment in particular really works. Nautical Twilight is a reasonable preview of the whole album - a tune that sounds vaguely familiar (Mendelssohn?) but with nice lyrical touches (“Greed and his twin, tyranny”).

Tori Amos - Nautical Twilight

Footnote to the above video: Am I the only one reminded of “Not the Nine O’Clock News” when watching it? Deliberate, surely?

This is undoubtedly a major talent at work and it makes for a relaxing, if not exactly “easy”, listen but, for me, Night of the Hunters is generally one to admire rather than love.

Strange Mercy is available now on 4AD. Night of the Hunters is released September 20^th on Deutsche Grammophon.

Bon Iver – Bon Iver

 

A much-told yarn: Justin Vernon, veteran of indie bands Mount Vernon and DeYarmond Edison (nope, me neither) retreated to his father’s remote log cabin in northern Wisconsin for the winter of 2007 following a relationship breakdown and a severe bout on mononucleosis (glandular fever in English). During this prolonged sojourn he wrote and recorded a set of personal cathartic songs, playing & overdubbing all instruments, with the intention of using them as a set of demos for later projects. Encouraged by friends to release the album in its raw state, the resulting For Emma, Forever Ago appeared in early 2008 and received near universal praise and a place near the top of most critics’ “album of the year” lists.

The influence of For Emma… has been surprisingly widespread for such an understated record: Flume has been covered by Peter Gabriel and used as a backdrop to the extended end-sequence of a recent episode of House (as, previously, had Re:Stacks); Skinny Love has just enjoyed a run in the UK charts via a cover by the 15 year-old Birdy; Creature Fear and The Wolves (Act I and II) have also been featured on various American TV soundtracks. It’s probably only a matter of time before somebody blows away the X-Factor panel with an audition version of the wonderful title track.

Since this debut the only other releases under the Bon Iver moniker have been the track Brackett, WI on the 2009 AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night and the same year’s Blood Bank 4-track EP (again a solo effort, but with a much fuller “band sound” and a slightly less intense - read “cold” – feel). Justin has been busy elsewhere though, most notably on Kanye West’s bizarre (but strangely compelling) My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010; West’s Lost in The World was originally built around a sample from Blood Bank’s Woods, he invited Vernon to join him for the sessions and they ended up co-writing & recording further track Monster.

This time around Bon Iver (the act) returns as a fully-fledged 4-piece band and Bon Iver (the album) is a much more lushly-produced effort - rather than a remote log cabin and basic recording equipment, Vernon has been able to make use of his own customised studio, housed in a converted former Wisconsin veterinary clinic (!). Each of the song titles refers to a place, real or imaginary, and this was one reason why, when sent a review copy over a month ago, I originally thought the album title was Bon Iver, Bon Iver as in “New York, New York” (I still think that this would have been a better name than the unimaginative eponymous one selected).

The new collection is rather more eclectic and varied than its predecessor. This is both a bad and a good thing: it loses some of the singular identity and consistent tone of the previous effort, but it does showcase a wider variety of style and influence. The overriding mood remains firmly rooted in the melancholy though – don’t come looking here if you’re expecting a sudden adrenaline rock rush.

Perth is a strong opener. The Vernon falsetto is intact, the fuller, more electric sound enhances, rather than swamps, the slightly sombre feeling (“I’m tearing up across your face - move dust through the light to find your name”), there are angelic-sounding backing vocals and it features some engaging military drumming which recalls the ending of the aforementioned Creature Fear. Then comes Minnesota, WI, a somewhat stranger beast. It’s almost prog-rock in both its arrangement/time-signature and its lyrics (I mean: “armour let it through, borne the arboretic truth you kept posing” – come on!); with Justin’s pitching dropped a good octave, the vocals on the verses sound remarkably like Camel’s Andrew Latimer.

Elsewhere the smorgasbord of style comes thick & fast: Towers delivers string-plucked Americana à la alt-country fellow-beardies Fleet Foxes; Hinnom, TX is all dreamy phased echoes not a million miles from 10cc’s I’m Not in Love; Wash builds slowly, without ever reaching a crescendo, from a repeated 2-note piano line, taking its time to layer on subtle strings which underpin the album's most plaintive vocal.

The acoustic guitar returns to drive Halocene, perhaps the song closest in feel to Bon Iver's previous output - the "I could see for miles, miles, miles" refrain is particularly effective. Michicant is not too dissimilar to Halocene, gentle, acoustic, multi-tracked vocals over a vaguely fairground rhythm, punctuated with some short sharp (typewriter?) bells.

Calgary, the single, has been available for some time and there seems to be a general consensus that it “sounds like Coldplay”. Although it’s easy to see where this comparison comes from, the more I listen to it the more I think that it’s actually closer to The National playing over the rhythm section of The Police’s Every Breath You Take (I realise that this makes it sound a bit of a hodgepodge but, trust me, it’s a corker):

 

Lisbon OH (rather than the Portuguese capital) is a short & simple instrumental interlude - sustained chords from what sounds like the Bontempi organ I got for my 11th birthday punctuated with a few bleeps, leading into the closing Beth / Rest ,which probably sails closest of all of these songs to the disposable - a big production number with ringing synthesiser backing which could be lightweight Bruce Springsteen (or even Hornsby, actually!).

Bon Iver has/have (must sort out whether it’s singular or plural) managed to pull off some clever tricks with this album: it’s absolutely a recognisable Bon Iver record without sounding too much like its predecessor and, although it consists of a wide range of styles & influences, it still manages to come over as a cohesive set. I suspect that a number of people who loved the emotion and simplicity of For Emma… may be disappointed with this far grander sound & production, but I also suspect that an even larger new audience may be drawn to the undoubted commercial appeal & invention displayed here.         

Bon Iver is available now on 4AD (UK), Jagjaguwar (USA) in all formats.

Arctic Monkeys – Suck It and See

Alex Turner took his cat to the vet to get it neutered. The vet asked him “Is it a tom?” “No” replied Alex, “it’s here int’ box.”

I really like this band. They have achieved huge popularity – deservedly so - with their rhythmic stylings & acerbic wordplay. As less & less “alternative music” seems to be prevalent in the upper echelons of Pop Music’s Rich Tapestry these days they probably inhabit, in the UK at least, the role of “indie band that people who don’t like indie music like”. Hitting the ground running in 2006 with the amazing Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, they followed it up a year later with the equally (in some ways even more) impressive Favourite Worst Nightmare.

2009’s Humbug was a watershed for the band (what is it about third albums?). Abandoning the UK to cross the pond to record it, they enlisted Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme as co-producer. The result was somewhat deeper, slower, rockier; while not a disaster (and critically acclaimed, in some quarters more than their preceding efforts), to me something was missing. There were still great tunes - Cornerstone in particular - and the lyrics remained as sharp as ever but it seemed slightly less… well… charming, I think.

Expectations for the new platter to be “poppier”, as promised in interviews, were dampened somewhat by the pre-release of 2 tracks which both sit in the heavier end of their canon. Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair is squarely Humbug territory; over a guitar plucking a Peter Gunn riff Alex delivers a string of bad advice (“break a mirror, roll the dice, run with scissors through a chip-pan fire-fight”) before the song bursts into a heavy rock workout – not bad, but neither classic. The other pre-release track, Brick by Brick, doesn’t really sound like Arctic Monkeys at all. With drummer Matt Helders on lead vocals it’s musically early 70s and lyrically simple (“I wanna build you up… I wanna break you down… I wanna steal your soul… I wanna rock n roll” – you get the idea). There’s a slower mid-section which recalls Black Sabbath circa Masters of Reality (the best bit) but my initial reaction was underwhelmed.

However, I think that the little tinkers were toying with us! Suck It and See turns out to be, on the whole, joyous and upbeat. The band has, undoubtedly, matured – and the better aspects of Humbug which demonstrated their growth are still evident – but this album is a doggone great collection of pop songs; in fact, both of the aforementioned tracks grow in stature in the context of the album.

It opens with the cracking She’s Thunderstorms. The title might seem like a back-reference to the last album’s slightly lugubrious Crying Lightening but the delivery couldn’t be further away: poppy, boppy, with great images (“the heat starts growing horns”) and acknowledging the universal truth that there’s no quicker way of delivering a great melody than borrowing a little bit of the Theme from Fireball XL5 for your verses. If anything second track Black Treacle is even better – all “belly-button piercings” where “the sky looks sticky, more like black treacle than tar”– and tops out with a great guitar-led middle 8 and Alex feeling like “the Sundance Kid behind a synthesiser”.

The crown jewel in this collection, though, is probably the title track. It’s a ridiculously catchy love song -“you’re rarer than a can of dandelion & burdock and those other girls are just postmix lemonade” - with a couple of excellent chiming guitar solos, a chorus with a soupçon of Good Vibrations that you’ll be humming for hours and bound-to-be-endlessly-quoted lyrics (“that’s not a skirt, girl, that’s a sawn-off shotgun – and I can only hope you’ve got it aimed at me”). Actually, for all of the wit, metaphors and similes sprinkled across this album it’s notable that Turner also recognises the times when the simplest phrase works best: “you have got that face that just says “baby, I was made to break your heart”.” In olden days this would have been called a sure-fire hit; Suck It and See will be ringing exuberantly around the festival arenas this summer.

There’s plenty of other fetching pop to be found too. Closing track That’s Where You’re Wrong rounds things off with a jangly epic flourish, building its layers over a 2-chord tune. The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala, meanwhile, is a bittersweet tale of failed romance driven brilliantly by the rhythm section - on top form throughout - with a 60s-style “sha-la-la-la” chorus culminating in Alex’s exasperation: “What you waiting for? To sing another f***ing sha-la-la-la?” 

The pre-released tracks are not the only heavier ones on show here. All My Own Stunts is a mid-tempo rocker which features the returning Josh Homme on backing vocals (apparently!) and recounts “watching cowboy films on gloomy afternoons” before cajoling “put on your dancing shoes and show me what to do” (cowboys, along with stormy weather, are recurring motifs for Alex). Library Pictures is the shortest, sharpest, fastest track; closest in spirit to their debut, it’s driven by excellent rolling frenetic drumming.

Piledriver Waltz - another highlight - was included, nary a few weeks ago, on Alex’s solo soundtrack for the movie Submarine (previously reviewed). It’s been given a little touch of paint here & there but doesn’t differ vastly from the original version, remaining musically and lyrically complex with shifts in the time signature and allusions to “breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel" where "your waitress was miserable and so was your food". It also offers somewhat better advice than Don't Sit Down… with “if you’re going to try and walk on water make sure you wear your comfortable shoes”.

Sequenced either side of Piledriver Waltz are a pair of tracks which also match the tone of Submarine. Reckless Serenade is mellow, leading off with a Pixiesesque bass-line before a circular guitar riff underpins another song of devotion. Love is a Laserquest is a further ballad, this one reminiscing about lost love with conviction that Alex will still be longing even if/when he’s turned into some latter-day Val Doonican (“when I'm pipe and slippers and rocking chair singing dreadful songs about something”).

The production is far crisper and cleaner than Humbug (James Ford is back in the reins solo this time), the album is fairly short (40 minutes) but that works in its favour and it’s well worth a listen – go on, suck it and see.

Suck it and See is released in the UK on June 6^th (USA June 7^th) on Domino Records.

Kate Bush – Director’s Cut

Any new album from National Treasure (©) Kate Bush is still rare enough to be considered an event. It’s been 6 years since she delivered the admirable Aerial and that was only the 8^th album in a 33 year career and came a full 12 years after her 7^th, 1993’s The Red Shoes (wow - what a lot of numbers!). With typical singularity (and as the title of this set alludes) we’re not actually getting new material this time around though; Director’s Cut consists of 11 songs culled from the aforementioned Red Shoes and its immediate predecessor, 1989’s The Sensual World, which Kate has decided to rework. All of the vocal & drum tracks are brand new (a wise choice with the latter as the Linn drums of the period have not aged too well), lyrics & arrangements have been tinkered with and 3 tracks have been completely rearranged & rerecorded.

It’s a fun, if pointless, game trying to figure out why Kate has decided on this course of action right now. Is it possibly a case of writer’s block? Unlikely, I think – she’s not under any pressure to release anything these days and there’s plenty of invention on display here. It seems that the copyright of the original recordings has reverted to her recently, but it also seems unlikely that this is the primary motive as: (a) her own label, Fish People, is still distributed by EMI and (b) she is so venerated, and her output so sparse, that it’s hard to imagine that she would have been prevented from releasing such a project if she had wanted to previously.

Perhaps the opener Flower of the Mountain could be an indication. This is a new, renamed version of the title track from Sensual World, a song originally built upon text taken from the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses but amended to Kate’s own lyrics when Joyce’s estate refused permission to use the extract. Apparently she was unhappy at her efforts (“Well, I’m not James Joyce am I?”), approached the estate again when coming to work on this project, was granted permission this time around and has restored the song to its original concept. Although the end result is a beautiful, swooning arrangement, I think she’s actually sold her own abilities short here: the original Sensual World managed to crystallise the mood of Ulysses succinctly in much the same way as the amazing Wuthering Heights did over 3 decades ago.

Aside from the above restoration I found most of the real interest here in the songs that were completely reworked. One of these is This Woman’s Work, possibly her most loved ballad of all and used so poignantly in NSPCC adverts. It was a brave decision to redefine this particular track and what is presented here is, in many ways, stunning: it’s been slowed, stretched, bent, darkened and stripped down, leaving an eerie echo long after it finishes.

Immediately following is Moments of Pleasure, also in a completely new version. If anything, the transformation here is even more startling. The original Red Shoes version always sounded, to me, like somebody getting their holiday photos back from Happy Snaps and smiling at pleasant recent memories. The new version brings to mind the same person finding those same photos buried in a box in the loft 18 years later and gazing at them in a much more melancholy light. If This Woman’s Work now sounds sonically close to Tori Amos then the new Moments of Pleasure is slap-bang in Tom Waits territory!

There are other highlights here, the changes being more subtle but the overall effect still positive. The Song of Solomon – already one of Red Shoes’ strongest songs– has been given a slightly deeper vocal, is sequenced straight after the opener and extends the early erotic tone of the album well (as does Lily, in which Kate really lets rip!). The Red Shoes (the track) has had a minor but very effective remix – it retains the Gaelic jig elements of the original but these have been pushed down in the mix (think of the guitars on early Joy Division) and this has made the song feel more intense, manic and closer in spirit to the Powell/Pressburger movie.

Deeper Understanding is one cut which, perhaps, could have benefited from a tad more modification. While the opening has a somewhat prescient prophetic air (“As the people here grow colder, I turn to my computer and spend my evenings with it like a friend”) the later sections now seem positively quaint , both lyrically (“I pick up the phone and go ‘execute’”) and musically (the burbling of a PC modem PSTN dial-up)... but it's still a lovely song:

With Never Be Mine, Top of the City & And So is Love it’s definitely a case of “spot the difference” from their original incarnations, but this triumvirate hang together well in the context of the album; Rubberband Girl, however, does attain a new veneer. This is the third completely new recording and, while it’s still quite a throwaway song (intentionally, I'm sure) it now chugs along like a 60s rhythm & blues pub-band (a very good one) with some tasty harmonica that Dr. Feelgood would have been proud of.

This is an interesting experiment and, if rumours are anything to go by, works as a warm-up for forthcoming new material along with (deep breath) possibly the chance to see Kate live for the first time since 1979!

Director’s Cut is available in just about every format just about everywhere just about now. If you have cash to splash I’d recommend the 3xCD pack, which contains a (really well) remixed Red Shoes and the original (sublime) Sensual World.

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

“If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning, I'd hammer in the evening, all over this land” – for those of us of a certain age this song brings back memories of Ed “Stewpot” Stewart’s Junior Choice and Peter, Paul & Mary’s happy-clappy interpretation; the younger generation are probably more familiar with Changing Rooms’ Handy Andy’s novelty version (gulp). In fact, the song was written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays in the late 1940s in support of the emerging post-war progressive movement, which was focused heavily on labour rights – something of a rallying call in austere times. On the title track of hirsute Seattle folkies (©) Fleet Foxes’ new album Robin Pecknold sings “If I had an orchard I'd work till I'm raw; if I had an orchard I'd work till I'm sore - and you would wait tables and soon run the store”. It may not be as rousing but it’s certainly indicative of the mood that informs the band’s sophomore effort: while not overtly “political”, this set is often more focussed on the day-to-day than their previous effort was.

Helplessness Blues (the track) is an excellent centrepiece: opening quietly with acoustic guitar & voice, Pecknold informs us that, although he was taught to believe that he “…was somehow unique - like a snowflake” he would now “rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me”. The sound opens out and the voices start to layer as he continues to set out a manifesto which accepts the need to be part of a meaningful movement while maintaining individuality: “I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you; or bow down and be grateful and say ‘sure, take all that you see’ to the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me”.
The lyrics could, I suppose, be interpreted as rather more precious & egocentric and refer instead to being in a suddenly-successful band with all of the “pressures” that entails, but I’d prefer to think that it’s a commentary on the Western World’s current economic status. The “orchard” refrain at the end seems to reinforce this opinion.

There has also been a slight shift in the band’s musical template for this album; it feels like the second-hand vinyl shops in their locale have run out of the American 1960s folk & psychedelia referenced so enthusiastically on their previous releases, forcing the band to look across the Atlantic and absorb some of the English and Irish folk-rock of the 1970s instead. The Plains/Bitter Dancer resembles a somewhat sinister Morris Dance overlaid with a faintly eastern canon of voices before the second section delivers an almost medieval melody. The Shrine/An Argument is an even more convoluted medley: it opens with a Christy Moore feel and refers brightly to “apples in the summer” before shifting down-tempo to a fairground waltz-time which suddenly sees the world rather more pessimistically (“in the morning, waking up to terrible sunlight”). The mood-swing isn’t complete there, oh no sirree… the pace drops once more to become almost funereal, and then a “freeform jazzy” (?) squawking sax takes centre-stage; it’s certainly experimental, but I have to admit this last section made me think of Pigbag tuning up.

It’s not, by any means, all wild deviation from their established template though. With its swooping air and Beach Boys harmonies, opening track Montezuma is not a million miles away from the Sun Giant EP’s Mykonos (actually it’s 6,896 miles, pedants), Battery Kinzie is all bass drum & hammered piano  - a close cousin to the previous album’s White Winter Hymnal highlight - and Someone You'd Admire is fairly straightforward and wouldn’t sound out of place on the latest R.E.M. album. Sim Sala Bim  - a magician’s incantation à la “abracadabra”- is also firmly in the band’s established mystical hunting ground both lyrically & musically (the outro is a great frenetic guitar riff that brings Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Marrakesh Express to mind).

Lorelai is probably the most personal song on the album. It has a much fuller sound - layers of voices and tambourines over another waltz beat - and while it initially sounds as if we’re in for a bleak few minutes (“So, guess I got old - I was like trash on the sidewalk”) it’s actually plaintive and yearning (“I was old news to you then”). There’s a lovely drop to a minor key for the middle 8 and it closes with footsteps echoing into the distance. A real highlight.

There are moments when I found myself disengaging from the album, it has to be said: the finger-clicking Bedouin Dress has a Gaelic violin-driven feel (and features the album’s first mention of mythical Irish island Innisfree – it crops up in The Shrine/An Argument too) but it does meander a bit; The Cascades is a short guitar-led instrumental, similar to those that Nick Drake occasionally dropped into the middle of his albums… not unpleasant but neither particularly memorable.

Blue-Spotted Tail is all plucked acoustic guitar (again!) with a very simple melody – pleasant but a little slight. Grown Ocean, however, brings proceedings to a close on a rather more exciting up-tempo note.

This is not really for everyone; one of my friends, following an enthusiastic recommendation of their eponymous debut, lambasted me a couple of weeks later for making him "listen to a load of hippy sh**”. There’s probably nothing here likely to change his mind but it is a thoughtful, interesting and melodic collection.

And I’ve made it through a full Fleet Foxes review without once mentioning Grizzly Adams… damn, just blew it!

Helplessness Blues is released in all formats on May 2nd (UK), May 3rd (US).