Filed under: album, mp3, review | Tags: 2009, christopher monk, get back guinozzi, music
Get Back Guinozzi!
Carpet Madness •••
FatCat
Carpet Madness – the debut full-length from French duo Get Back Guinozzi! – includes a cover of the Junior Murvin reggae classic ‘Police & Thieves’, famously interpreted by The Clash, who doubtlessly saw parallels between the anarchic situation described in the lyrics and the societal unrest of late-’70s Britain. Get Back Guinozzi!’s approach strips away any such seriousness, restyling the song as brisk, summery indie-pop that makes the appearance of the coppers’ “guns and ammunition” seem like a cause for celebration. It’s an odd thing to do, but it’s by far the sanest moment on Carpet Madness.
Filed under: album, review | Tags: 2009, christopher monk, music, neko case, visqueen
Visqueen
Message To Garcia •••½
Local 638
Message To Garcia – the third album from Seattle trio Visqueen – is billed as “a rock and roll epitaph to frontwoman Rachel Flotard’s father”. Continuing through the accompanying press release, we discover that ‘A Message To Garcia’ is an 1899 essay by American philosopher Elbert Hubbard celebrating the bravery of a soldier who accomplished a mission with an ascetic degree discipline. Flotard’s dad compelled his daughter to read Hubbard’s essay as he lay on his deathbed, hoping its message would inspire her to continue performing and songwriting in the face of immense stress and, later, a deep period of grief. But the essay also represents the no-nonsense approach exhibited by Visqueen. Much like the protagonist of ‘A Message To Garcia’, their music doesn’t ask any questions of the listener; it simply gets on with the task in hand.
Filed under: album, review | Tags: 2009, charlotte richardson andrews, christopher monk, james m johnston, laura tsaggaris, music, reverie sound revue, simon christopher, simone white, susan tedeschi
Reverie Sound Revue
Reverie Sound Revue •••½
Boompa
The career path of Reverie Sound Revue doesn’t speak of a band intent on world domination. They released a self-titled EP in 2003 and then promptly split up. But six years later, here they are again, releasing an album which is, confusingly, also self-titled. Their latest Wikipedia entry states, somewhat tersely, that the band “have no plans to play live”. Oh well. The music of Reverie Sound Revue is in keeping with their skittish image. Lisa Lobsinger (who, like most Canadians, is an occasional member of Broken Social Scene) coos serenely over undulating, vaguely Krautrock-y basslines, twinkly, unobtrusive guitar arpeggios and the occasional vibraphone. Imagine School Of Seven Bells with the noisier shoegaze influences shorn off.
Filed under: album, mp3, review | Tags: 2009, bowerbirds, christopher monk, music
Bowerbirds
Upper Air ••½
Dead Oceans
The accordionist and co-vocalist for North Carolina’s Bowerbirds boasts a truly amazing stage name: Beth Tacular. This by itself suggests that her band might possess a trashy, pop culture-obsessed aesthetic, or, at the very least, some semblance of a sense of humour. Sadly, both these things are absent from Bowerbirds’ second album, Upper Air. A more serious and resolutely tasteful album is unlikely to be released this year. Each track is centred around a slowly strummed acoustic guitar, embellished but never overwhelmed by complementary instrumentation: a waft of accordion here, a parp of organ there. At least they are consistent.
Filed under: album, review, video | Tags: 2009, christopher monk, music, we rock like girl's don't
We Rock Like Girls Don’t
How Did It Get To This ••
Distort
It’s always seemed a little unfair to use a band’s name to evaluate their music. That’s because a band’s choice of title is arbitrary at best, facetious at worst. Despite this, music writers (this one included) insist on using the name of the artist at hand for some sort of comedic pay-off in the review’s summarising sentence. But Glasgow-based duo We Rock Like Girls Don’t have such a declamatory name that they are, frankly, asking for it. This band rocks, they tell us. This therefore begs the question: do they really?
The answer: We Rock Like Girls Don’t don’t rock, because they do rock. Or rather, they “ROCK” – in big capital letters, with inverted commas around them. And because they are so eager to draw attention to their music’s rockiness, its impact is minimal. It’s a bit like watching a horror movie with the caption “THIS IS REALLY SCARY ISN’T IT?” positioned on the screen throughout.
Filed under: album, mp3, review | Tags: 2009, christopher monk, eric's trip, julie doiron, music
Julie Doiron
I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day ••½
Jagjaguwar
In 2007, Guardian columnist and professional grump Charlie Brooker discussed the trend of ‘tweetronising’ television commercials. “You can spot a tweetronising commercial a mile off ,” he wrote. “It’ll have a modern folk music backing track, a cast of non-threatening urban hippy replicants, and a drowsy hello-birds-hello-sky overall attitude that makes you want to chase it down an alleyway and kick it until the police arrive.” But we can be tweetronised by media other than television. If you dare to read the horribly facetious blurb on the label of an Innocent smoothie, for example, you’ll be given a potentially toxic dose of tweetronisation.
Filed under: EP, album, review | Tags: 2009, anja mccloskey, ann scott, black francis, charlotte richardson andrews, christopher monk, daniel clatworthy, debora cohen, grand duchy, katherine stanton, lovers love haters, music, oh atoms, sahara hotnights, the organ, the pixies, the priscillas, violet clark
Some more minis for you…
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Grand Duchy
Petits Fours •••½
Cooking Vinyl
Grand Duchy encompasses Pixies frontman Black Francis and his wife Violet Clark. Their debut album Petits Fours is the result of a passionate episode of loved-up arguments in the studio. This is a curious project, as it has, perhaps by accident, combined opposites. Violet pretty much loves the ’80s, which is obvious in her melodic singing approach and poppy backing vocals, not to forget the synth (‘Seeing Stars’). Black Francis, on the other hand, has done much in his career to break away from this musical era. Thus, the two creative minds don’t marry quite so comfortably, creating a somewhat tense and twisted array of melodic outputs that jump genres like there are none. It mostly works, as on the poppy, obvious highlight ‘Fort Wayne’, but songs like ‘Erminside’ lack a clear direction.
Filed under: album, mp3, review, video | Tags: 2009, christopher monk, jessica lea mayfield, music
Jessica Lea Mayfield
With Blasphemy So Heartfelt ••
Munich
During the chorus of ‘For Today’, the second track on With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, Jessica Lea Mayfield wearily dismisses a former lover – “I could care less about you,” she sings. It’s a curious phrase: hailing from Ohio, Mayfield favours the American construction, which seems entirely illogical. The phrase is supposed to convey utter indifference, but if she could care less about the subject, then surely she cares about them, even if only a little bit? The British version of the phrase, in which it’s clear the speaker couldn’t care less, has always made more sense to me. If all this seems like a bit of a pointless tangent, it’s actually by far the most interesting issue raised by With Blasphemy So Heartfelt. It is a dreary, dreary record.
Filed under: album, review | Tags: 2009, asobi seksu, christopher monk, music
Asobi Seksu
Hush •••
One Little Indian
Rightly-esteemed DJ Steve Lamacq recently predicted that 2009 will be the year of the shoegazing revival. Those with memory span of longer than 6 months (and without the ability to block out utterly pointless journalistic predictions) will recall that precisely the same prophecy has been made at numerous points over the past few years. Remember the short-lived ‘nu-shu’ craze of 2007? And what were last year’s hugely successful My Blood Valentine reunion shows if not a validation of shoegaze’s continuing appeal? Despite their very vocal resistance of the genre tag, Asobi Sesku were pushed to the forefront of the ‘nu-shu’ crowd, so you might expect their third album Hush to shuffle further away from . It doesn’t. If anything, the arrival of Hush may be used as further evidence of an imminent revival of all things footwear-fixated. Many of shoegaze’s signature moves are alive and well here – vocals low in the mix, hazy textures and sudden surges of guitar distortion.
Filed under: album, review, video | Tags: 2009, christopher monk, lily allen, music
Lily Allen
It’s Not Me, It’s You •••
Parlophone
As part of their brilliant ‘Song Wars’ series on BBC 6 Music, Adam and Joe produced ‘My Bum Is Not Quite Perfect & My Boyfriend’s Rubbish Too’, a spot-on parody of a Kate Nash song. It included the exquisitely Nash-esque line, “I sit on my bed, eat some cheese on toast and think about how crap you are”. Lily Allen’s penchant for the parochial is similarly easy to mock. Along with Nash and The Streets’ Mike Skinner, Allen has been credited/blamed with British pop’s growing preoccupation with the unifying details of everyday life.
Allen’s second album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, is a slightly more worldly affair than its predecessor, 2006’s Alright, Still. The closest we get to a cheese-on-toast moment is ‘Chinese’, whose chorus is a veritable litany of mediocrity: “You make me beans on toast and a nice cup of tea / then we’ll get a Chinese and watch TV”. It’s clearly an attempt to evoke the comforting domesticity that’s the antithesis of her tabloid image. Nevertheless, listeners in thrall to the escapist possibilities of music may feel an overwhelming urge to listen to some Nick Cave straight afterwards.
