Filed under: album, review | Tags: charlotte richardson andrews, rykarda parasol
Rykarda Parasol
For Blood & Wine ••••
Self-released
Rykarda Parasol is a self-professed purveyor of ‘rock noir’, a relatively young genre that can trace its creeping roots back to the more established sounds of Americana, Goth and even cabaret. Nick Cave and The Velvet Underground are cited as some of its progenitors, an allusion previously nodded to in Parasol’s 2005 mini album Here She Comes, with current contemporaries including the mighty Elysian Fields. Though her parentage is European – she’s half Polish, half Swedish – the dark eyed, blonde haired artist spent some formative years in Texas, the landscape of which served as her muse for 2006’s debut full-length, Our Hearts First Meet, and continues to shape her material with a countrified drawl and twang in this expertly crafted follow-up.
Thea Gilmore
Strange Communion •••
Fruitcake / Fullfill
Is absolutely nothing sacred? As each year passes it feels increasingly as though there is nobody out there who is totally immune from making a Christmas album. But while we inwardly quake at the thought of what mind-blowing aberrations 2010 might bring (Björk’s Baubles? Deck The Halls With PJ Harvey?), we must first digest this year’s two most unpredictable entries, which just happen to lend themselves to obvious comparison. Having long been touted as a British female Dylan, it’s a particularly wry twist of fate that Thea Gilmore releases her version of a festive album within a few weeks of her songwriting icon’s first seasonal foray, Christmas In The Heart. But while the majority of Dylan’s attempt comes across as a somewhat gauche and overly sentimental throwback to a bygone era, much of Gilmore’s sounds a lot like, well, pretty much anything from her last two albums.
El Perro Del Mar
Love Is Not Pop •••½
The Control Group
Love is not pop, Sarah Assbring proclaims, and neither is this, the most recent offering from her alter ego El Perro Del Mar. Listen to it though and you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise; the album is replete with sharp hooks, bittersweet melodies, memorable choruses and soaring key changes. However, such traditional pop tropes are threaded through a web of complex, despondent songs to create a thematically sorrowful album that touches on the uncomfortable issues of loneliness, relationship trauma and the inability to form meaningful bonds. Love is clearly some distance away from easy-breezy singalongs to Assbring, and her voice betrays such a genuinely troubled and dejected nature that the ensemble is lent an authenticity lacking in many of her contemporaries.
Clare & The Reasons
Arrow ••••
Frog Stand Records
Few cities in the world can call themselves home to such an eclectic mix of musical styles as New York, a place which produces excellent artists from what seems like an unseen factory encompassing all its myriad districts. It would not be unfair or totally inaccurate to say that much of the musical output of the city has a cynical edge though, from the spiky art punk of Patti Smith to the cavernous, sepulchral Interpol, with a multitude of stops along the way. Even jazz-pop pioneers Steely Dan were the kings of dark, twisted tales disguised by immaculate grooves. It therefore often comes as a shock to see the other side of the coin – a record which dispenses with the world-weary New Yorker’s perspective in favour of fully embracing the possibilities inherent in the city that never sleeps. It is even more surprising when New York-based artists pluck their influences instead from the West Coast, as seems to be the case with Arrow, the second album from Brooklyn residents Clare & The Reasons.
Rickie Lee Jones
Balm In Gilead ••••
Fantasy
An American original, Rickie Lee Jones has quietly amassed a catalogue of serious class over the course of her thirty-year career. Whether she’s experimenting with song structure or playing it straight, Chicago-born Jones always seems to bring something unique and interesting to the table, exploring various styles from jazz and pop to gospel and R&B. Balm In Gilead, her eleventh studio album, is no different. As warm and soulful as its title would suggest, it slowly reveals itself to be an album of quiet grace and power.
Skunk Anansie
Smashes & Trashes ••••
One Little Indian
Best-of collections are tricky things to get right. These days they all too often appear barely three albums into an act’s career as a painfully transparent excuse for a Christmas cash-in. Skunk Anansie may be guilty of releasing Smashes & Trashes in the run up to the festive season, and of only having three albums to draw from, but circumstance dictates that this collection is in a very different category to most of its competitors. Nearly a decade has elapsed since the politically motivated skank-rock four-piece were last on our radar, a silence punctuated only by a pair of decent but safe solo albums from their once-iconic frontwoman Skin, so this collection carries more weight, aiming to remind us quite how large their presence once was.
Having sold over five million albums worldwide, notched up over 10 hit singles and headlined several major festivals, the band’s disappearance from the spotlight following the release of their third album, 1999’s Post Orgasmic Chill, went surprisingly unheralded. While no one expected The Samaritans to set up a hotline especially to cope with the mass hysteria sweeping the nation at such a disaster, the lack of any sense of mourning for such unlikely superstars seemed undeserved. Being the black sheep of the UK music scene’s then-obsession with all things Britpop certainly helped put the band on the map in the mid ’90s, but later perhaps made them come across as cocky, a band that was easier to admire than to love. And if they were happy to leave their career in the last decade, then apparently so were the public and industry.
Espers
III ••••
Wichita
It has been three years since this gloomy drone-folk ensemble released their masterpiece, Espers II. Since then, many of its members have released various experimental solo works, such as Helena Espvall’s Anahita, an avant-garde exploration of ritualistic songmanship and freeform folk, and Meg Baird’s more accessible folksy debut Dear Companion. Now the Philadelphia-based sextet are offering their third full-length record entitled – surprise, surprise – III. But while the title was easy to guess, the content makes for a decidedly refreshing change.
The Tiny
Gravity & Grace ••••½
The Tiny Music
We bipeds are frequently given to falling down flights of stairs and knocking into balusters, finding ourselves at the bottom with a muddled perspective and a throbbing head. But with their third album Gravity & Grace, The Tiny navigate the art of locomotion in a startlingly balanced manner. Cellist Leo Svensson and bassist Johann Barthling rise and descend the steps of instrumental range, while Ellekari Larsson sings in a voice that sounds tickled by a feather. The lyrics are pronounced in that sterling, silvery way that doesn’t come easily to native English speakers – Larsson, a wispy Swede, allows each word a space shot through with sonorous vocals and the precociousness of someone fingering a foreign language. Eleven songs, all a tad enchanted and fluid, fall upon the listener’s ears like autumn rain as Larsson’s voice vibrates lightly, creating ripples of sound.
Filed under: album, review | Tags: katherine rodgers, the dutchess and the duke
The Dutchess & The Duke
Sunset/Sunrise •••½
Hardly Art
Seattle-based folk duo The Dutchess & The Duke first came to light last year with their overwhelmingly well-received debut She’s The Dutchess & He’s The Duke. Their particular brand of raucous, gritty folk-rock swagger caused music critics to giddily spew accolades – including a highly respectable 8.1 from famously harsh music behemoth Pitchfork – and resulted in a tour with folk giants Fleet Foxes. On their second album, however, their whiskey soaked blues are swapped for something altogether more sobering. Sunset/Sunrise was apparently influenced by newlywed Duke Jesse Lortz’s acclimatisation to domesticity, but if you’re expecting a twee, simpering, ’50s-style album revelling in the joys of domestic bliss, prepare to look elsewhere. A deep sense of loneliness and regret infuses Sunset/Sunrise, giving it the weighty air of an exercise in how the greatest expression of love can sometimes leave you lonelier than before. Or, put simply: trouble in paradise.
Mi & L’au
Good Morning Jokers •••
Borne! / Acuarela
Imagine a stranger without a name entering a city in an unknown country during the night. Autumn is everywhere around; the fallen leaves smell wet and the wind is soft but threatening to get stronger and sharper. Packed in a thick coat, our stranger walks through streets illuminated by cold artificial light; the few people around are passing by silently and the city seems to be sleeping in a frozen dream. Hoping to see something familiar, the stranger enters a dimly lit bar. On a stage at the back of the room, sparks of soft light fall on a beautiful blonde woman whispering sweet words into a mic as an inconspicuous man picks away gently at an acoustic guitar beside her. They look so far away from this bar in their minds, somewhere in their own world, and the tones arising from them are just an echo of that odd faraway space. Both have closed eyes, standing silent and smart, synchronised by something unseen but heard in every second of their songs. The stranger sits down in the corner beneath a fug of smoke, and as nothing is changing and stays static, they dive deeper and deeper into the sofa and finally fall asleep. Like everyone else around them.
