Polinski - Labyrinths

By Ben Dufton

Polinski is Paul Wolinski of 65daysofstatic fame’s solo project and Labyrinths is his debut album.

Wow.  That was my first impression – the sentiment that passed through my head at various points throughout my first listen.  When it finished, I simply pressed play again. And again.

’1985-quest’ rather neatly sets the scene, with its classic synthesiser sounds bringing to mind film scores from those early years.  If it were not for the crispness of the beats, it could easily be mistaken as having been the theme from a late ’70s/early ’80s sci-fi/horror movie.

Barring a few snatches of partially buried (sonically speaking) robot voices, Labyrinths is a solely instrumental affair.  Devised on Wolinski’s laptop during breaks inherent in his “day-job” (read: in gaps between and on tour with 65dos), Labyrinths soundtracks some of the best science fiction/super hero scenes so far never made – which is how I spent that second and many subsequent listenings – visualising said scenes as a way of describing the music.  Because, as you may be gathering, Polinski’s Labyrinths sounds like, is paced as such and just feels like it was made to be a soundtrack.

‘Tangents’ sees our hero being made aware of the latent talents they possess, the explosions of potential bursting through with stabs of static which grow ever more controlled as the journey continues. The situation is at its bleakest (it’s the midway point of the film) – the objective has been lost, and the hero is being harassed in such a way that it looks like this is one tale that doesn’t have a happy ending.  Then ‘Like Fireflies’ kicks in – the hero runs, steeling their determination and realising that, against all odds, everything is not lost.

‘awaltzoflight’ is the theme to the hero’s epic, selfless endgame.  They fall, seemingly having failed in their liberation of the subjugated masses, only to rise up in one mighty, piano-looped final act of defiance.  There is tension, there is drama, there is a sense of loss as the closing chords remind you that the world is now a better place for the efforts that have gone before.  This works for the film in my head and for the feeling that listening to this album leaves me with.

Scroobius Pip - Distraction Pieces

By Ben Dufton

“You a mousetrap; I see free cheese and a fucking challenge”

I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t with this review. Track five on Scroobius Pip’s second solo album is called ‘Death Of The Journalist’ and it offers Pip’s opinion on modern news reporting. Including music journalism.

Ah.

If you’ve heard any Pip before, then you’ll have an idea of his views of the establishment. Well. Here goes.

‘Introdiction’ opens up the album, and does what it says in the opening verse (the video was posted as a taster of this album at the beginning of August). And in the press release. Now, I’ve never claimed my words were in any way gifted, so I’ll block quote; “It sets the tone and mood with levels of darkness, irreverence and straight forwardness”. Well said Mr Pip, it certainly does.

‘Let ‘Em Come’ features surely the greatest use of a harmonica ever, initially holding the rhythm section at bay before the bass and drums spill over into the chorus, where Pip calls out the bad times with no fear. Shit happens, be better than it is the message I’m taking from this track. Oh, and it features Sage Francis. Win.

‘Try Dying’ has an old school feel to the beat and I’m already looking forward to the inevitable crowd participation at the end of the track when played live. ‘Death Of A Journalist’ then…I do agree with the words – there are far too many lazy opinions on the internet – but the Zane Lowe produced beat feels a little clumsy to me, with big ’80s drums and a cut and paste hook.

‘Soldier Boy (Kill Them)’ is, in my opinion, Scroobius Pip’s most overtly political track, querying the rationale behind the decisions of those that control the armed forces – “If we’re stopping tyrants, why the fuck ain’t we in North Korea?”  B. Dolan steps in to offer an American perspective on the subject. Meanwhile, ‘The Struggle’ sounds like Goldfrapp’s  ‘Ooh La La’, which sounds like Norman Greenbaum’s ‘Spirit In The Sky’, but a bit messed up with a devil voice and steel guitar.

Next comes my personal album highlight, ‘Broken Promise’. “Is a lie really a lie, if you mean it at the time?”  Everyone has been there, everyone will be there again. Not everyone can put it so simply, yet eloquently. Basically, we’re all good and all evil, as “life conspires to make liars of good men”. Musically, the single chiming note throughout (first guitar, then synth in the second half of the track) forms the heartbeat of the track. Unsettled in feeling, it carries Pip’s unsettling admissions wonderfully. Finally, album closer ‘Feel It’ is a Kate Bush cover – Pip recites the words as guest vocalist Natasha Fox sings over the top. It kind of feels like a bonus track, tacked on at the end.

Distraction Pieces has a darker, edgier feel than Scroobius Pip’s work with Dan le Sac, I think mainly due to the use of more traditionally rock instruments and collaborators (Travis Barker provides the beats for ‘Introdiction’, whilst Danny Lohner of Nine Inch Nails and Steve Mason handle production duties for a couple of tracks). Lyrically, it’s Scroobius Pip at his best.  He has his feelings and opinions on various matters and puts them across in an intelligent, thought provoking manner.

9 May, 2011

The early comers line up at the barrier whilst the rest mill at the bar.  The first beer has already been spilt.  It’s going to be a good night. The second room at the Bristol branch of O2′s venues is a strange one – it’s long and it’s thin with a rather deep stage.  You can just about see the drum kit at the back!

Fight Like Apes (Photo by Darra Munnis)

Support band I’ll Fight With Fire come on stage, all youthful vim and vigour, launching into a big rock riff.  When the vocals kick in it is like the year is 2003 all over again – Emilie Layla Lovaine and Jet Luckhurst duelling in a manner reminiscent of Taking Back Sunday and sounding a bit like Paramore, down to the guttaral shouts and “Woos!” They’re pretty good, performing with aplomb, even if Emilie’s vocal is a little lost in the mix.  Even a broken bass strap doesn’t derail the show.  

Whilst waiting for Fight Like Apes, the room fills up a bit, but it is nowhere near full (although it being Monday night may have something to do with it). When they do appear, FLA do so quietly, looking a little sullen as they start the show with a really rather restrained ‘Do You Karate?’; until, of course, MayKay disappears behind her hair and comes alive.  The shackles come off and the crowd starts bouncing to ‘Hoo Ha Henry’. 

Keyboard player Pockets then makes his first interaction with the crowd, as he deadpans “Hello Jeff”; Jeff being a bit of a gig going celebrity in Bristol (he just always seems to be there!), this gets a cheer. The band launch through ‘Tie Me Up With Jackets’ and ‘Lend Me Your Face’ and MayKay prowls the barrier, before Pockets comes out front with two metal poles which he and MayKay proceed to bang together as an introduction to ‘Digifucker’ as the crowd claps along.  Next up is a curve ball in the form of Salt And Pepa’s ‘Push It’.  MayKay shakes like she’s having a fit.  It’s ace.  As is ‘Something Global’, to which the crowd pleads with the band to “give me my hook”. 

When ‘Jake Summers’ is brought up, the crowd goes mad and MayKay once again takes to the barrier, this time however climbing over it to come play with those assembled at the front, getting everyone to sit on the floor with her for the second verse.  This is a nice moment, confounding the regularly felt “them and us” in a very simple gesture.  When she returns to the stage, she tells her band mates (and everyone else) that some guy just tried to kiss her, decrying him sarcastically “really romantic” (sample lyric from Jake Summers – “Hey! You! You’re takin’ up space, and you’re a fucking disappointment to the human race”)

They finish with ‘Snore Bore Whore’, before reappearing for MayKay and Pockets to sing ‘Waking Up With Robocop’ to/at each other from opposite sides of the stage and close with ‘Battlestations’.  They get there on the second attempt of the intro, in high humour, looking far from sullen as they leave the stage. 

This was the third time I’ve seen the band live, and they have certainly chilled out from their previous antics (a sentiment echoed by Steve Lamacq when talking about the band on 6 Music after he saw them on the London leg of their tour).  Though, as Mr Lamacq agreed (maybe not in the exact words), they are still mental and a hell of a lot of fun.

Drive By Truckers return to the shelves of our local record stores with something between (according to the all encompassing internet) their ninth and twelfth album (band co-founder Patterson Hood counts it as their eleventh, by the way).  Recorded separately during the same sessions as predecessor The Big To Do, Go-Go Boots dives into the “waters of country/soul and that mystical intersection between to two dominate poles of our shared musical heritage”, again according to Hood.

Drive By Truckers - Go-Go Boots

Upon first listening, the country element is obviously there – ‘Assholes’ is alt. country by numbers, down to the modern vernacular complemented by slide guitars that make you picture the sawdust strewn floor of a corrugated iron built bar on the side of a desert highway as you stare at the bottom of your empty glass.  ‘The Weakest Man’ laments having to get away from a woman before being consumed by her ways. As for the soul, it seems Eddie Hinton covers ‘Everybody Needs Love’ and ‘Where’s Eddie?’ cover this base.

The characters Drive By Truckers are oft known for creating are present and correct – there’s the murderous Reverend of ‘Go-Go Boots’ and ‘The Fireplace Poker’, trying to get rid of his wife through some un-godly means to make some room for his mistress (the two songs are effectively parts one and two of the same story – think Miss Marple in Mississippi, but with a better ending).  ‘Used To Be A Cop’ tells the tale of, well, a former cop who couldn’t quite hack the lifestyle he chose.

‘The Thanksgiving Filter’ relays the everyman feeling you get during the holidays, of however much you love your family there is such thing as too much time with them, by noticing all the familial quirks of  “My Aunt’s praising Palin and my niece loves Obama / My uncle came to dinner wearing his pajamas” and the fact that “Papa’s building something and has since history / But what he’s building is still a mystery / It’s big and it’s twisting and shaped convoluted / It don’t have a function but you better salute it”.

Go-Go Boots is a clever album, full of dark and dirt as well as light and laughter.  Every listen brings to attention a new line that will radically alter whatever initial thoughts you had about the corresponding song.  It’s good, old-fashioned country storytelling to good, old-fashioned country music.

This is a review of The Get Up Kids new album There Are Rules.  I promise.  Just bear with me a minute while I set the scene.

The Get Up Kids - There Are Rules

Emo is such a dirty word these days. Caught up in the hubris of alternative youth culture, emo has become a catchment term for anything remotely emotional in tone (as opposed to the currently dominant materialism of mainstream urban music) and has even been blamed in some sections of the media for everything from anti social behaviour to depression and self-harm.

Contrast this to when The Get Up Kids first came from Kansas to a wider audience – Deep Elm Records were educating us as to what emo, in it’s various styles and sub-genres, could be with their Emo Diaries series; the major labels had picked up the scent of a thriving scene cultivated in part by such bands as Mineral, Braid and Rites Of Spring and gave us the likes of Rival Schools and Jimmy Eat World.

These contemporaries have followed various paths – Jimmy Eat World stayed with us, staying true to their sound with (in my opinion) mixed results. Deep Elm, as a label, adapted and continue to evolve their roster of bands and Rival Schools, much like The Get Up Kids, disbanded, got back together to reminisce and then decided to go back to the studio together.

And here is the fruit of The Get Up Kids’ reformed loins.

Opener ‘Tithe’ begins with heavily echoed words and a spacey sense of foreboding before crashing headlong into the music – it’s kind of like when a band marches out from backstage to some sound collage, take a last swig from the rider can they brought out with them before picking up their instruments and pummelling you with noise.  Pummelling is definitely the adjective I would use for ‘Tithe’, the drums beating you about the head while the riffs work the body and the fuzzed up vocals shout you down with some vitriol – “You’ve got the dirty bones / And I’ve got nothing to wash them with / But after we sing this song / I’ve got so little left”.  Is this an early admittance of not necessarily being back to stay?  Who can say?

But hold on a second, what was that about “fuzzed up vocals”? That’s not The Get Up Kids? The following track ‘Regent’s Court’ confirms it, bringing to mind The Strokes at their most urgent, whilst later on “Better Lie” invoked in my mind Cold War Kids. In between these indie tinged numbers are some quite spooky synth led numbers. The refrain of “It’s all over” from ‘Rally Round The Fool’ sounds genuinely pained and, yes, emotional. ‘Shatter Your Lungs’ is a few shades lighter in tone with an elastic bass line and some ’70s sci-fi synthesiser sounds both carrying the tune and providing special effects. ‘Automatic’ and ‘When It Dies’ both jump ten years into the future, allegorically screaming “’80s!” at the listener.

There Are Rules shows that The Get Up Kids have chosen not to re-hash past glories, but that they have something more to bring to the table; the table being a much changed musical landscape to the one they left back in 2004. More than anything, they’ve all gotten older and maybe a little angrier. There are no obvious songs about girls as there would have been back in their heyday and there is a dark, edgy overtone to the album, which makes for an unsettling listen – like walking around an unfamiliar city at midnight, you never know what is around the next corner. And it is kind of exciting.

Stars - The Five Ghosts

“Dead hearts are everywhere…It’s hard to know they’re out there” – so states the opening track on Stars’ latest album, The Five Ghosts. These vaguely disconcerting lines help to set the tone of the new collection by the Canadian outfit – melancholic (as always), but also lost and a little hopeless. The recurring theme of ghosts throughout (the album title being the most obvious, but also in individual song titles such as ‘I Died So I Could Haunt You’ and, lyrically, examples such as “the kids that I once knew” from ‘Dead Hearts’), suggests a sense of loss to the feeling of being lost.

The Five Ghosts begins much as you would expect a Stars album to – hazy synths washing over the almost conversational boy/girl vocal interplay of Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan. Second track ‘Wasted Daylight’ brings in the beats, picking up the pace of proceedings to that of a gentle jog. This, however, is where it stays.

And herein lies my gripe with the album – it is very one paced and really quite formulaic. There is nothing as obviously gripping as ‘Take Me To The Riot’ or eerily haunting as ‘Personal’ from In Our Bedroom After The War. Granted, the baroque flourishes from single ‘We Don’t Want Your Body’ raise this ode to unrequited lust (“You sold me some cheap ecstasy / So you could have some sex with me / I don’t want your body / I don’t want your body”) a touch above, and the yearning torch song ‘Changes’ does offer a pleasant change of pace, complete with a wonderfully poignant, contradictory chorus (“Changes, I’ve never been good with change / I hate it when it all stays the same”). I think we have all felt Millan’s frustration as voiced here.

Millan’s vocals seem predominant across the album, Campbell taking a back seat on lead off single ‘Fixed’ amongst others.  In fact, in some of these other places, Campbell’s voice merges a little too well with the shimmering electronic washes with the end result being that a lot of the album kind of just floats past.

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

Canada’s Broken Social Scene return with their fourth album after a five-year hiatus (founder members Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning’s solo albums not withstanding of course). Often an introduction to many for artists such as Feist, Stars and Metric, this Broken Social Scene line up (i.e. the core members for this album – there are still guest spots dotted around) is a much smaller affair than previously heard.

Drew, Canning, Charles Spearin, Andrew Whiteman, Justin Peroff, Lisa Lobsinger and Sam Goldberg make up the core band, with veteran producer John McEntire (best known for his work with Tortoise and The Sea And Cake) handling the duties his title would suggest.

Forgiveness Rock Record takes off in some style – opener ‘World Sick’ and ‘Texico Bitches’ are trademark Broken Social Scene whilst ‘Chase Scene’ is the soundtrack to a heist scene in an unmade 80’s movie. ‘Art House Director’ proclaims that the titular director’s “…Starlet is a harlet / She will not leave her trailer” – an ode to difficult young stars, garnished by some brilliantly punchy brass.

Things go dream-country on ‘Highway Slipper Jam’, replete with both finger-picking and whistling.  Other dreamy moments are provided by ‘Sweetest Kill’ – “I thought you were the sweetest kill / Did I even know? / And all the time we thought we did / Was it just for show?” – and closer ‘Me And My Hand’, which was written during downtime, when band members would head into the studio’s second, smaller room while John McEntire worked in the main room.

Instrumental ‘Meet Me In The Basement’ perhaps encapsulates what is so loved about Broken Social Scene – it sounds like a group of friends jamming together (yes, in a basement), having fun making music. Forgiveness Rock Record is a complete record.  It has the blissed out moments, it has the tunes to set crowds dancing at their live shows and, above all, the heart that so many fans, old and new, will fall in love with.

The Morning Benders - Big Echo

California’s The Morning Benders have returned with their second album Big Echo.  After the critical acclaim given to previous album Talking Through Tin Cans, The Morning Benders have signed to Rough Trade Records and garnered an extensive and honourable roll call of tour mates, including Death Cab For Cutie, MGMT, Yeasayer, Yo La Tengo and Grizzly Bear – whose Chris Taylor co-produced the album.

The record player static intro to the album’s opener ‘Excuses’ gives a hint of things to come, the aforementioned track invoking spirits of the softer side of ‘50s rock and roll. ‘Promises’ initially brings us more up to date, bringing to mind The Shins and, possibly tellingly, Grizzly Bear, with a bold guitar line and dancing pianos.

The dreamy soundscape of ‘Pleasure Sighs’ contains singer Chris Chu’s musings on, at a guess, a failed relationship – “…Here I am again / Trying to relearn how to breathe / And how easy it sinks / Feeling slips away from me…”. ‘Hand Me Downs’ picks up the pace a bit, but ends up meandering down some blind alleys before turning back and going the way it knows.

‘All Day Daylight’ finds Chu and company getting a little peeved at having matters taken out of their hands – “Then you put me on this vacation / So it’s really not the town / It’s winter halfway across the world / Somewhere its bright daylight … I lived in the background / I sleep behind the scenes / I had someone take all my calls / And watched them outplay me”. Meanwhile, the introduction to finale ‘Sleeping In’ brings to mind Fleet Foxes in its reverb laden harmony before the voices separate out a la The Beach Boys

Overall, Big Echo just didn’t captivate me, instead sending me off to my record collection to find albums by the bands that seem to have influenced them.  The album is pleasant and sunny enough to be a backdrop to many a barbeque over the (promised long hot) summer, but perhaps not gripping enough to be an enduring one.

Parenthetical Girls - Privilege, pt. 1 EP

A favourite of a certain Gareth Campesinos!, this is the first part of what promises to be an exciting endeavour – a series of five self contained, self released EP’s to release, in the words of singer Zac Pennington, “short, appetising bursts of anima”.  And appetising it certainly does sound.

Opener ‘Evelyn McHale’s jangling intro drum rolls into a distinctive, sumptuous croon, Pennington reminding his subject of “When you got crippled by that car / When we was martyred monthly / And scarred by the way that we are / We nearly broke your mothers heart”.  A morbid set of words indeed, juxtaposed against a rather more upbeat tune adorned with the aforementioned jangling and swooping swirls of sound.

‘Someone Else’s Muse’ starts with church style organs before launching lovingly into a further memoir of what once was, both good and bad (“We both said things that we’d come to regret”).  Dropping in with a mid section of clattering drums at one moment before turning in a second break of piano and hi hat tapping.  “It was all that I could muster / Just to kiss you”.  You can feel the emotion dripping from the vocals throughout.

The start of ‘On Death And Endearments’ oddly reminds me of The Corrs, in the breathy female boo-ba’s that mark the introduction of another tale of loss, remarking this time that he is “Shit at goodbyes”, later hoping that “History / She will surely forgive me” over wistful electronica.

There is something funereal about the EP’s closing track ‘Found Drama I’, with the return of the organ the angelic chorals and the single death rattle rat-a-tat ending.

The overall sound is one of a ramshackle loveliness, of both longing for something and of being totally at peace without it, all the while remembering…well, again I shall turn to Pennington to sum up his bands work - “…one of the album’s major themes is the beauty inherent in heroic, unequivocal failure”.

This may be a theme perhaps, but not a result.  Not at all.  The Privilege is all mine.

Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head

2002.  The year that Eminem cleaned out his closet, The Streets pushed things forward, Lostprophets’ fakesoundofprogress got a shiny new production job, every other new band was The something and I started college, passed my driving test and went to my first ever festivals.

Ahh, Glastonbury.  My first ever festival.  It was the year of the Super Fence and of Elvis roaming said fence.  Coldplay were daringly installed as headliners armed only with Parachutes and the yet to be released A Rush Of Blood To The Head (they pulled it off).  The big draws for me, however, were the bands at the forefront of the NME’s New Rock Revival (in hindsight, this was a disturbing sign of things to come with regard to the NME’s shameless scene hopping).  The New Rock Revival, coined on the back of what The Strokes had started the previous year, championed the likes of The Cooper Temple Clause, who released the beast that it See This Through And Leave, battering and bruising all comers with the likes of ‘Who Needs Enemies’, ‘Film Maker’ and ‘Panzer Attack’.  The Vines were crazy.  Packing the barely contained lunacy of ‘Highly Evolved’ and ‘Outtathaway’, they also had in their canon the ability to evoke a feeling of isolated melancholy with ‘Autumn Shade.  Their take on OutKast’s ‘Ms Jackson’ at the festival was one of my highlights.

The band that preceded The Vines was Rival Schools.  I had heard the singles ‘Used For Glue’ and ‘Good Things’ on the wireless and went to check them out…United By Fate was the one album I went to buy as soon as I got home – I didn’t even baulk at the £14.49 price sticker.  I still listen to it regularly to this day.  They were THAT good.

At the end of August, I decided to go to Reading.  The day before the gates opened.  I got a ticket legally and all.  Seems strange given that the festivals these days sell out in a couple of days…anyway, I digress.

The aforementioned Strokes were the main reason I jumped the train but the rest of the line up wasn’t too shabby either.  The Hives were briefly everyone’s favourite new band, but it was the cementing of some reputations that were the most memorable points of my festival.

Muse played the second slot on the back of 2001′s Origin Of Symmetry and amongst the rain and lightening played a set that I remember every time the band are mentioned – ‘Unintended’ was both mesmerising and menacing and ‘Plug In Baby’ just took the proverbial roof off.

You almost felt sorry for the band that would have to try and follow – except that band was Foo Fighters.  Reinvigorated by his spell behind the drum kit with Queens Of The Stone Age, Dave Grohl and company released the album that propelled them to the mainstream.  Hyped by the release of lead off single ‘All My Life’, One By One was a bit of a monster – they even had a guest spot by Bryan May and appeared on CD:UK with ‘Times Like These’.

Feeder made a welcome return with Comfort In Sound after the trauma suffered earlier in the year.

Other notable musical bits and pieces from 2002 for me included Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf (for me it’s THE QOTSA line up), The Coral‘s super-extended version of ‘Dreaming Of You’ at Glasto, driving in my “boat” blaring The Transplants debut and Colin MacIntyre (a.k.a Mull Historical Society) forward rolling across the stage in excitement.

One last note – 2002 saw the release of an album called Up The Bracket by a cheeky young band called The Libertines… whatever happened to them?

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