Future Islands - On The Water

By Joseph Rowan

Of all the excellent aural delights that can be found through annoyingly consistent Chicago-based record label Thrill Jockey, Future Islands are one of my personal favourite discoveries, just behind the criminally unknown Trans Am. On The Water, their third full length album, trades the raw and insistent feel of last year’s delightful In Evening Air for a sound that’s much more introspective and morose. It very much channels the sound of British synth pop bands from the early-80s: in particular OMD and New Order come to mind, and both are an especially apt comparison given that Future Islands adopt a very similar synths plus bass guitar set-up.

The new sound also works wonders for the band’s most distinctive feature – the gruff, throaty vocals of frontman Samuel T. Herring. His voice surely has to be at least somewhat divisive , but it really works against the more elegiac, often slow-burning backing. In fact, surprising album highlight, the drum-free, mournful ‘Tybee Island’ almost sounds like a sea shanty, which I promise is much, much better than it sounds and fits Herring’s surprisingly warm, if gravelly tones.

Lyrically, the themes are much the same on In Evening Air: regret and lost-love abound, as shown perfectly on recent single ‘Before the Bridge’ as Herring emotionally sings “For to forget a love is to regret/ and what is love is regret/ and what isn’t love is a test” in a song brimming with heartfelt lyrical remorse. It and ‘Give us the Wind’ are the definite stand-outs in terms of intensity of feeling, which is not a common commodity in much electronic music.

Musically, the band have found a groove and they largely stick to it. The songs are more low-key than one might expect – if anything closer ‘Grease’ is perhaps a bit too slight, and one might prefer the album to end on a stronger note – but generally they suit tracks that slowly build and create atmosphere through gentle evolution. There is a pleasing amount of musical variety too – William Cashion’s punchy bass tone always adds a solid, human presence to the proceedings and the excellent keyboard work is augmented by marimba and even accordion on a few tracks.

Even better  is the band’s slight genre stretching, in particular their forays into various avenues of ambient music. The opening of ‘Before the Bridge’ is not dissimilar to the the work of The Field and both the gorgeous first half of ‘Close to None’ and curious experiment ‘Open’ recall Another Green World era Brian Eno. ‘Where I Found You’ is a strange beast as well; it could almost pass as a Christmas song and indeed bears a slight resemblance to ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, but again manages to pull this off much better than that description would suggest.

Maintaining a recognisable sound while pushing at its boundaries, both musically and vocally, is no easy task and for this reason alone Future Islands should be respected. But to find a synth pop band with this much intensity and beauty is an even harder task, and this is what makes On The Water a really remarkable record.

Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

Sunset Rubdown were one of those bands that I thought hadn’t yet made an album that truly lived up to their potential. I liked, but not loved, both 2006′s Shut Up I Am Dreaming and 2007′s Random Spirit Lover, but would never count them amongst my favourite bands. Perhaps annoyingly talented front man Spencer Krug was spreading himself too thin through his involvement with Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, and others, I dunno. But once I had heard ‘The Mending Of The Gown’ off Random Spirit Lover, possibly one of my favourite tracks released this decade, I knew Sunset Rubdown could do great things. And, true to my suspicions, in Dragonslayer Krug has not only delivered the best album of the band’s career to date, but indeed what is likely to be one of the great indie-rock releases of the year.

Everything about this album feels bigger, more sure of itself, more ambitious. Even the name is big and bold, and the right side of the rather precarious awesome/ridiculous line. The tracks average out to about six minutes long each and are filled with so much rich instrumentation, so many pure ideas that your first listen will probably be a bit of a blur, albeit a pretty impressive one. Dragonslayer probably isn’t going to immediately grab you and become Your Favourite New Album of the year. At least, not right away. But it will worm itself into your subconscious.

Take, for instance, ‘Idiot Heart’ the lead single off the album. The first few times I listened to it, I accepted it as a nice sounding, if somewhat intriguing, bit of indie loveliness. But now I realise how wonderfully constructed it is; how wonderfully the opening wah-guitar segues into the ringing lead keyboard part, and how it ends in an enormous rush of an ending, in keeping with the epic scope of the record. And although it does tend to pile the instruments on – especially Krug’s magnificent keyboard parts, which are spot on throughout, and Camilla Wynne Ingr’s often sublime backing vocals (the “add up” refrain in ‘You Go On Ahead…’ is beautiful in its simplicity), it never feels overwhelming like similarly constructed albums can do.

Part of this is the multitudinous moods of the album. Opener ‘Silver Moons’ has a tinge of sorrowful regret reminiscent of standout cut from the debut album, ‘Stadiums and Shrines II’. Similarly, one can detect a hint of mournfulness, or at least some kind of heartache, in Krug as he sings about just wanting to “follow you awhile” in the aforementioned ‘You Go On Ahead’, which through it’s subtitle and lyrical themes, appears to be the sequel to Random Spirit Lover’s ‘Trumpet, Trumpet! Toot! Toot’. Even more surprising is ‘Nightingale/December Song’, which has an almost medieval feel to it, or at least the kind of music can imagine an epic poem being recited over, fitting for Krug’s rather grandiose deliver, which occasionally strays close to nasal irritation but mostly stays on the side of heartfelt sincerity.

But when the album does let itself fully go, as in the squalling, feedback-laden, scattery percussion brilliance of ‘Black Swan’, as it alternates between oppressive broodiness and joyous rock excess, the effect is nothing less than astonishing. Naturally, this noisy highpoint is followed by the jauntier, more upbeat, calypso-tinged ‘Paper Lace’, just to keep us on our toes. Though the mood of the album is forever shifting with Krug’s impressive storytelling, from uplifting to thoughtful via everything in between, the constant experimentation and breadth of vision is a comforting constant that prevents the album from feeling disjointed.

Of course, the album is not completely perfect. The charms of ‘Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh!’ are buried even deeper than the rest of the album. It may be a grower but it’s certainly the least immediate track on the album. Likewise, ‘Dragon’s Lair’, despite its epic run time, is an oddly subdued end to the album that one expects to end with an enormous bang. Nevertheless, if ever an album was needed to restore one’s faith in the lyrical and musical power of North American alternative rock, then Dragonslayer is the best album I’ve heard in a very long time to do just that. Seriously, if this record isn’t seriously troubling the end-of-year lists in December then something has gone very wrong in the indie-rock community.

Joe's Garage

Frank Zappa is one of those artists whose output is so large as to be almost completely daunting. In my case I was lucky to have been handed Joe’s Garage by a friend and told to listen to it (and not just because I have the same name as the titular protagonist). Having now listened to a great deal more of his music, I now know that the album, as well as being an excellent listen in its own right, is a pretty good Zappa album to start with. Although no album can be truly representative, Joe’s Garage does showcase many of the things that made Frank Zappa such an inspiring and interesting character and musician.

Always extremely prolific, the two volumes of Joe’s Garage (Act I and double album Acts II & III) were released only two months apart in 1979, the year Zappa’s contract with Warner Brothers expired, and thus he was free to release as much music as he liked (Joe’s Garage accounted for three out of the seven LPs worth of material released in that year alone).

The album takes the form of a rock opera, dealing with a world in which music has been made illegal. The Central Scrutinizer, the mysterious law enforcer of this world and the album’s narrator (whose job it is to enforce all laws that haven’t been passed yet), presents a cautionary tale concerning Joe, an aspiring musician whose tragic life seems to be a direct result of this law. This is the basic plot, but along the way many interesting and absurd characters and ideas are introduced, so much so that the album sort of ends up as a comedy musical version of a Philip K. Dick novel – and I mean that in the best possible way.

A serious problem one can have when writing about Zappa is that it’s easy to misrepresent him as a ridiculous sexist, who made a lot of silly sex-obsessed songs and, taken on a surface level, Joe’s Garage certainly seems to fit this interpretation. One may point to the run of ‘Catholic Girls’, ‘Crew Slut’ and ‘Fembot In A Wet T-Shirt’ as evidence of the misogyny and ‘Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?’ as an example of the scatology.

But a side of Zappa that’s not explored often enough for my liking is his wickedly scornful satirical side, and the deeply critical eye he cast over current events. I suppose the best example of this is seen in the liner notes. Here Zappa states that, although the idea of The Central Scrutinizer seems silly, there are many countries in the world where music is severely restricted or, in the case of Iran, completely illegal. One can also read the whole album as a commentary on how laws are passed, and what function they serve. Plus, on top of that, there’s a hilarious piss-take of Scientology (‘A Token of My Extreme’), some reflections on human sexuality and a damning criticism of music writing, in the shape of ‘The Packard Goose’ (this coming from the man who likened it to “dancing about architecture” – sorry Frank). Even ‘Crew Slut’ seems to be a morality tale on the dangers of being a groupie, and how bands mistreat them.

So we’ve established it’s not all sex jokes and venereal disease. What of the music? Like all good rock operas Joe’s Garage works just as well as a collection of songs without the need for a detailed reading of the lyric sheet (which, incidentally, does provide some insight into the more intricate details of the plot). Musically, the album is a pretty intoxicating mix of funk, soft rock and soul that typifies Zappa’s more “song-based” output of the 1970s. If that sounds like a terrible mix, you’ve obviously not heard how meticulously crafted Zappa songs can be: the first CD flies past whilst barely putting a note wrong, keeping the intensity constant even during the slower numbers. If that also sounds musically safe then fear not: there are more than a few ridiculous time signatures and extensive use is made of a technique Zappa invented called Xenochrony, whereby an instrumental part from an existing song is added to a completely different song, to create a curious interplay between the two. In other words almost all of the guitar solos on Joe’s Garage are lifted from previous Zappa recordings and plonked in with no regard for key, tempo etc. It’s done well enough to not sound really obvious unless you listen for it, but it makes for an interesting, and musically adventurous, effect.

The second CD is not as instantly listenable as the first, but it does have some wonderful Xenochronic sections, where shifting, liquid guitar solos stretch on indefinitely, drawing the listener into a hypnotic state similar to the one Joe finds himself in by this stage in the story. It also contains ‘Watermelon In Easter Hay’, one the most poignant, beautiful guitar solos Zappa ever committed to tape. If nothing else, the album is worth it for this outstanding piece of playing that really showcases how great a guitarist the man really was. As one of the most interesting, eccentric and brilliant musicians of the 20th Century Frank Zappa really is one of those people one always means to get in to (I know I was). But don’t feel too daunted by his enormous output: give Joe’s Garage a listen, and then we’ll discuss where to go next…

Ungdomskulen

There are a number of superficial factors one could mediate on when discussing the wonderful Ungdomskulen, possibly the best band to ever come out of Norway.

Firstly there’s the unwieldy, yet mysterious name (literally “youth school” in their native tongue). Secondly there’s their slightly unusual look: singer/guitarist Kristian Stockhaus combined enormous sideburns with tight green jeans when I last saw them and bassist Frode Kvinge Flatland sports a fetching quasi-Fu Manchu moustache. But discussing this any further would be getting away from the excellent music that they make. Imagine, if you will, the inaccurately-described ‘math rock’ of Foals, but stripped of all its joyless posing and made much more complex and interesting. Combine it with the progressive energy of King Crimson or Rush, the hard-hitting crunch of Fugazi and be sure to add in lots of body-shaking new wave goodness.

But presenting Ungdomskulen as a simple mix of other bands is to do them a disservice, for the beautiful noise they make, treading the line between chaos and control, is anything but a derivative mix. The drums are focused yet explosive when they need to be, Øyvind Solheim busting out impressive cowbell rolls when he needs to: check out the marvellous, aptly-named ‘Modern Drummer’ for evidence of this. The guitar can be smooth, spiky, enormous, or anything inbetween. Live Flatland played a baritone guitar, an unusual choice of instrument, which made the interplay between him and Stockhaus all the more dynamic and interesting. And as good as they really are on record, live is definitely the place to best experience them. When the band is having more fun than the audience, you know they’re doing something right.

However, until then you’ll have to make do with the records. Their second full length Bisexual came out this year, and is destined to become your favourite record of the year by a band that no-one else has heard of. Seriously, listen to the slippery, immediately catchy opening to ‘I Dunno’ and tell me I’m wrong. Then go and listen to the marvellously epic, punchy ‘Ordinary Son’ off their first album and tell me Ungdomskulen won’t dominate your listening for a week at least. It’s about time Norway had something better to represent its music scene than Black Metal or this year’s overrated Eurovision entry and, luckily, Ungdomskulen are just that. Listen now, or miss out.

ATP

Friday, May 8

Ah, ATP, the coolest and most indie of all festivals. You can shower, there’s a kitchen, it’s on the beach, there’s even a video arcade. There’s also nothing quite like watching an experimental noise band play in the entertainment hall of a Butlin’s.

Anyway, after a relatively pleasant train journey down to the South-West coast I am well and truly ready to see some bands. Unfortunately I miss Grouper due to the absurdly early time she was on (before people were officially allowed into their chalets, no less) so the first band of the weekend turns out to be Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Owen Ashworth’s trademark lof-fi, downtempo electronica turns out to be a suitably relaxed start to the festival, and his songs greatly benefit from having a full band perform them in the second half of his set.

Afterwards we immediately rush off to see Jeffrey Lewis, amusingly clad in a Devo energy dome, at the Pavilion stage. Alas the limited atmosphere of the main stage doesn’t serve his songs terribly well, and the sound is muddy and unclear. However, the version of ‘Arrow’ we hear is suitably impressive, and I’m told the second half of his set improves greatly. We don’t get to see it, though, as we are watching HEALTH put in an even more stupendously insane performance than when I saw them the night before, thus rendering the previous gig pointless in terms of clash-avoiding, not that I’m complaining.

I then, with much regret, elect to miss M83 for what turns out to be the strangest performace of the weekend – the solo show of Mr. Andrew W.K. What begins as a sort of motivational lecture-cum-group seminar quickly turns into an outrageously fun mass-kareoke session as AWK invites a group of oddballs from his record label onto the stage with him, including Bad Brilliance, a man with a giant balloon for a head. David Tibet, of legendary British experimental group Current 93, even comes on stage wearing corpsepaint to shout along to ‘Party Hard’. Only at ATP…

Up next is Devo, who deliver the finest performance of all of Friday, and one of the best performances of the whole weekend. The band sound as vital and as downright weird as ever, despite their increasing years. They even still have their sense of humour, as demonstrated by the pre-concert film they show which explains acceptable attire to wear at a Devo gig, and the strange appearance of Booji Boy (their mascot) during their encore. Excellently, we get a hits-heavy set: there’s a stretch in the middle where they play ‘Girl U Want’, ‘Whip It’, ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Jock Homo’ and ‘Uncontrollable Urge’, and I almost die from happiness. They close with ‘Beautiful World’, and is certainly is one when Devo are in it.

After that I somehow lose the entirety of my chalet and thus wander around aimlessly for a while, sadly missing Pink Mountaintops in the process. Luckily I happen to bump into two of my friends and we go and check out the surprisingly brilliant rhymes of Antipop Consortium. There’s then just enough time to run back to the chalet and have a drink or two before we run back to catch the last act of the night, the hypnoticly wondrous Fuck Buttons. I was promised that the new material was good and I was not disappointed. ‘Bright Tomorrow’ is predictably brilliant but the new stuff is hip-shakingly, mesmerisingly awesome. I don’t think I stopped dancing for the whole of their set. Finally we dance some more to Edan’s DJ Set, which won my undiluted approval for its inclusion of ESG’s ‘Moody’, Pigbag’s ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag’ and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s ‘Firecracker’. Thankfully, the sweet embrace of sleep follows shortly thereafter.

Saturday, May 9

The music starts earlier on Saturday, although our party decides five minutes into Nico Muhly‘s 2pm slot that his compositions are a little bit too much for our sore heads, as interesting as they are. Thus the first proper band of the day are Lords, who are an entertaining, unabashed rock band. They are a wonderfully fun, rifftacular (you’ll find the word in any good rocktionary) start to what was to prove to be the day of serious ROCKING.

Unfortunately, I miss the first half of Retribution Gospel Choir‘s set due to buying merch and dealing with a miniature crisis at home, but the 20 minutes or so that I see are very impressive. The side project of Alan Sparhawk from Low, they tend towards the more rocking, edgy stuff of his main band, and that’s fine by me. Towards the end some dick in the crowd makes a reference to the guitar-throwing incident at last year’s End Of The Road festival but luckily Sparhawk doesn’t hear it, or chooses to ignore it, and it doesn’t spoil what was a very promising set.

After catching the relaxing, if unremarkable, beginning of Cave Singers, I go to check out Qui, the side project of David Yow from The Jesus Lizard. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn with his more famous band but I was most impressed with their dissonant, stripped-down charms. Yow put in a somewhat subdued performance, but he was most likely saving himself for the madness that was the two Jesus Lizard performances.

Next up were one of the bands I was most looking forward to seeing over the weekend – Young Marble Giants, performing their classic (and only) album, Colossal Youth. Some have expressed disappointment with their performance, but I think one needs to be familiar with the material already. Admittedly it’s slighty surreal to see the music being performed live: on record it almost sounds as if it spontaneously came into being, but the band do a good job at recreating its warm, late-night sounds. Unfortunately a technical problem  with their keyboard means we don’t get ‘Final Day’. Boo.

The first 15 minutes or so of Grizzly Bear‘s set that I see is not enough to convince me what all the fuss is about, although they throw ‘Knife’ out very early, which was nice of them. Upstairs Harvey Milk take about 5 seconds to prove that they were the right choice in this particular clash. Beautifully, crushingly heavy, yet intriguingly complex and well at home with the a variety of differenbt styles, they are a true highlight of the weekend. I even bought their excellent latest album the next day, partly out of a sense of obligation.

Back on the main stage Beirut proves equally as good, if not better, than Georgia’s finest. Although his set is a little front-heavy (‘Nantes’, ‘Elephant Gun’, ‘Postcards From Italy’ and ‘Scenic World’ are all played in the first half-hour) Mr. Condon plays with a maturity far beyond his years and ‘My Night With The Prostitute From Marseilles’ is fantastically, achingly beautiful.

Though I had been advised to go and see Sleepy Sun, I turned out to be too transfixed by the magnificent synth-rock of Errors, who come across like an insane collaboration between Foals and Holy Fuck, to be bothered to leave. Chalk that one up as a surprise success of the weekend, as apparently their live show has improved immensely in the past few years.

About half an hour later, in the same venue Marnie Stern brings her guitar-tapping virtuoso skills to the stage. Frenetic, good humoured, and featuring possibly the most attractive woman I, and most other people, saw that weekend in the shape of her bassist (it’s all about the bassist), she was definitely worth missing the first Jesus Lizard performance for. Plus we got to hear a story about how she rejected John Cusack at age 17, told during a technical problem at the end of the set.

The last band of the evening are stoner-metal legends Sleep, who perform their titantic opus Holy Mountain in its entirety. Jesus, and I thought Harvey Milk were loud. Sleep are quite simply the heaviest thing I have ever witnessed in my life – their riffs are crushingly heavy and completely enveloping, with tracks such as ‘Dragonaut’ and the 15-odd minutes of ‘Dopesmoker’ they played sounding absolutely enormous. It’s also the most intense moshpit I’ve ever been in: an hour and a half of being thrown around by massive guys in Goatsnake and Sunn O))) T-shirts leaves me exhausted and sweaty to the point of near delerium. Band of the weekend, no question.

Sunday, May 10

Much to our relief, Sunday has a slightly gentler start. Out of curiosity I decide to pay a visit to the Lydia Lunch-curated spoken word stage to check out the woman herself. Surprisingly, she proves to be more interesting and less crazy than I was fearing, as she recites some dark, twisted beat poetry/story combo from her latest book. But by God, does she ever swear a lot.

The first band of the final day, though, are Shearwater, who blow pretty much everyone away with their gentle, heartfelt songs. Okay, so maybe I was a little tipsy at the time, and maybe I spent some of the set talking to the bassist from Parts & Labor, but I was definitely awed by Jonathon Meiburg’s angelic voice and wonderfully crafted songs.

Deciding against catching the last half of Grails, the next band I see are the brillantly funny Future Of The Left, who provide the quote of the weekend in describing ATP as an “alternative festival of beards and flannel shirts”, before throwing sweets into the crowd and making fun of a guy in a Skins-esque multicoloured hoodie for about five minutes. Oh, and the songs are pretty good too.

Annoyingly another difficult clash means that we have to dash upstairs for !!!, whose singer displays the best moves of the weekend. The new material sounds really promising, and when the band lock into a groove they are unstoppable, and almost absurdly funky.

Parts & Labor; aside from having an incredibly nice, and fantastically beardy, bassist, deliver a pretty epic set back on the main stage, as they work to overcome the sound problems that the pavilion can bring. Thanks to another scheduling nightmare, though, I have to duck out early (but thankfull after their best song, ‘Nowhere’s Nigh’) so I can see Killing Joke. As irritating as it was to miss the second half of P&L the ‘Joke are on fine form starting with an impressive salvo of ‘Requiem’, ‘Wardance’, ‘Change’ and ‘Primitive’, all taken from the classic first album. The band sound absolutely immense, with Jaz Coleman maniacally stalking the stage, and guitarist Geordie Walker drinking out of a bottle of red wine between songs (rock n’ roll). Other early tracks ‘Madness’ and ‘Pssyche’ are equally impressive. a brilliant set all around from another aged post-punk band who still have plenty to give.

Spiritualized are next and, though they have their moments, including the 15 minute wig-out at the end, they could’ve been a lot more exciting and many, including myself, felt that they sounded a lot better during their soundcheck earlier. Thankfully, The Mae Shi offer much more in the way of fun, delivering what was certainly one of the most energetic, and insane, performances of the weekend. ‘Run To Your Grave’ is almost lifechanging in its intensity, and I doubt it leaves a single unsmiling face in the audience.

At last, I get to see The Jesus Lizard. And whilst David Yow doesn’t end up shirtless and in the crowd quite as quickly as he apparently did in Satirday’s show, we do get a full complement of his stagedriving as the band build up to an explosive finale. TJL could certainly teach something to bands half their age, and are another definite highlight.

I catch another half-hour of Sleep (the band) but elect to end the weekend dancing with a load of indie kids to Mike Diver’s DJ Set, in which I scream myself hoarse to ‘Debaser’ and other indie classics. As I stumble back to my chalet, the sound of Grandaddy’s ‘A.M. 180′ still ringing in my ears, it strikes me again that there really is no festival quite like ATP.

Health

May 7th 2009

OK, so maybe the main reason I’m here is so I can avoid the clash between HEALTH and Jeffrey Lewis at ATP tomorrow. But having said that, I really want to see how HEALTH’s twisted, otherwordly tribal noise translates to a live setting, especially as I’ve been informed that the band are much more intense live than on record.

The initial blast of noise, which eventually turns into the frenetic, pounding intro of opener ‘Crimewave’, certainly seems to justify this opinion. From then on the band are mesmerising in their sheer energy, complemented by the amazing force of the music, which is mostly crushingly dense, but at times more claustrophic, insistent, even paranoid. The latter category mostly belongs to the new songs played tonight, taken from the forthcoming second album Get Color. Brilliant first single ‘Die Slow’ and the other new numbers seem to take the warped sonic onslaught of the first album, and turn it into something more dancey and hypnotic, although still just as wonderfully weird.

But all material played tonight is equally compelling. It’s truly fascinating to watch the band wrench such ungodly, unusual noises out of their instruments, aided by their rows of effects pedals and the frantic, borderline insane, drumming. The venue adds greatly to the experience, with the industrial warehouse feel of the Corsica Studios seeming the perfet locale for the band’s perverse rhythms, which are often shrouded in smoke, blinding lights, or strobes.

But really the evening is all about the music and one gets the feeling HEALTH could start a twisted, discordant, sweaty dance party at a zoo, or perhaps a children’s birthday party, such is their intensity. Cheekily ending the set with the 30-second maelstrom that is ‘Girl Attorney’ is the perfect end to an exhilarating, if crazy, evening. Jeffrey Lewis has a lot to live up to.

Thee Oh Sees - Help

John Dwyer, the main creative force behind Thee Oh Sees, and the innumerable variations of their name, has been in quite a few bands, of which the most noteworthy are probably Coachwhips, Pink And Brown and The Hospitals. Thee Oh Sees/The Ohsees/OCS originally started as a way for Dwyer to release his home recordings they’ve slowly evolved into a proper band and, by all accounts, his most serious, straight-forward work and the main focus of his energies at present.

Like the aformentioned Coachwhips Thee Oh Sees draw heavily on ’60s psych and garage rock influences, along the lines of the Nuggets box set, but they also lean towards the poppier end of that decade at times: ‘Meat Step Lively’ and ‘A Flag In The Court’ in particular bring to mind The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Zombies et al. On their facebook page it says, and I quote, “We don’t sound like The B-52′s, stop saying that!”, and while Dwyer’s clipped vocals occasionally remind one of Fred Schneider, it’s safe to say Thee Oh Sees are definitely more indebted to bands like The 13th Floor Elevators than anyone else.

Reading that one might be inclined to think that Help sounds a bit generic, that it wears its influences a bit too brazenly on its sleeves. And you’d be right… sort of. Certainly when listened to all the way through the album can start to sound a bit samey in places – by the time of the mid-order tracks ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Go Meet The Seed’ you may start to wonder if all the songs need to have the lead vocals need to be drenched in reverb, whether the backing vocals have to sound so similar (both the aformentioned tracks feature fairly banal “ba ba ba”s, courtesy of Brigid Dawson), whether the fuzzy guitar tone couldn’t perhaps be varied just a little bit more.

However, when not taken as a whole, Help really is quite an enjoyable listen. Storming opener ‘Enemy Destruct’ proves why the production is as reverb-heavy and lo-fi as it is, as it’s gnawing, droney riff sounds absolutely great. The immensely distorted, slightly out-of-tune guitar and the thrashy solo buried in the mix give it a really dirty, immediate feel and thus make it a standout opening track. It also demonstrates that the album hits its very best moments when, instead of going for straightforward ’60s garage pop tributes, it takes things for a darker turn, the comedown after the high. ‘Can You See?’ takes the vocal line from Can’s ‘Mushroom’ and wraps it around a menacing chord sequence, with the backing vocals floating ominously in the background, while ‘Destroyed Fortress Reappears’ is a powerhouse of twisted riffs and urgent vocals. Some of the less generic lighter offerings do help to provide a balance, though: ‘Ruby Go Home’ and ‘Soda St. #1′ are both energetic, bouncy numbers that are probably the nearest things to dancey tracks on here, even though both are treated to the trademark fuzzy production.

The debate about how far bands can borrow from their influences has raged for some time, and is never one that is likely to be settled. Clearly Thee Oh Sees are on the side of the argument that states that borrowing from the classics is no great problem – Garage Rock as a genre isn’t known for it’s rigorous forward-thinking, after all. But that doesn’t mean that a band can’t show glimpses of originality, when needed, and, most importantly, be damned good fun whilst also rocking hard.  A decidedly flawed, mixed bag album, but the good pretty decisively outweighs the bad.

Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

Pink Mountaintops are the kind of band that you can pretty much guess what they sound like before hearing even a note. Apart from the fact that they’re the side project of Stephen McBean of Black Mountain (who clearly doesn’t let a good thing pass when it comes to band names) the contributors on Outside Love, the band’s third effort, have played with a veritable cornucopia of North American underground bands: A Silver Mt. Zion, The Organ, Destroyer, Sunn o))), Whiskeytown, to name just a few.

Thus when the excellently Hendrix-referencing, fuzzed-out bliss of ‘Axis: Thrones of Love’ starts the album, it seems that the other Canadian indie collective haven’t delivered much in the way of surprises. That is by no means a bad thing, since the druggy, wall-of-sound production and the sweet female vocals creating a suitably atmospheric opener, with only the recurring lyric “how deep is your love?” slightly spoiling matters, by creating an unwelcome mental image of The Bee Gees.

If the whole album had been one stoner-folk dirge, things may well have got a bit old somewhat quickly. Luckily McBean et al have a wide enough range of influences (as their related projects suggest), to create a nicely well rounded record that straddles the Americana of My Morning Jacket and the more psychedelic rock offerings of Dead Meadow, whilst exploring all the places inbetween. As with the previously alluded to Broken Social Scene, a wide variety of instrumentation is on display here: strings, lapsteel and even spaghetti western-esque whistling (on the title track) all add to the very American, blue-collar feel of the album. One can’t help but think of rough mountain men in flannel shirts driving pickup trucks, but it’s good, honest, unpretentious music and somewhat expected given the personnel involved.

What is maybe surprising, though, is how upbeat and positive much of the album is. The folkier ‘Holiday’, which features both a cheerful harmonica and a fiddle, starts with the line “everyone I love deserves a holiday’, and the delightfully-named ‘The Gayest of Sunbeams’ shows the band can be carefree whilst still rocking. The record’s most uplifting moment, though, is the gospel-tinged epic ‘And I Thank You’, on which McBean displays a rich burr reminiscent of Bill Callahan aka Smog, and which builds into a truly uplifting celebration of… something or other. Possibly God, it’s difficult to tell. The point is that there are some truly gorgeous, even happy moments here, and the album is all the richer for them.

There are a few slightly duff moments, though. In particular some of the slower, more sparse tracks don’t seem as well executed and the title track is, bizarrely, the dullest song on the whole album. But in general this is a fresh, vibrant sounding record that, like a lot of side-projects, give a band a chance to experiment with different ideas and sounds. It’s also nice to know that not everyone who takes their influences from the 60s and 70s are unimaginitive Led Zep rehashers. Outside Love is unlikely to make my albums of the year list but it makes for a surprisingly fun listening experience.

Mr Oizo - Pourriture EP

Okay, let’s get the obvious point out of the way first. Yes, this is the same Mr Oizo who made ‘Flat Beat’, 1999′s premier meme which gave the world Flat Eric, possibly the best yellow puppet since Sooty. I’m not ashamed to say that I absolutely loved the song at the time, and it was one of the first singles I ever bought. What’s truly surprisingly, therefore, is how good Mr Oizo’s recent output sounds, especially when so many other things I enjoyed in my youth have turned out to be pretty shit in retrospect.

Pourriture bills itself as an EP, but really feels more like something between a single and a sampler for the latest album, last year’s Lambs Anger: the title track is from the album, three other album tracks appear as remixes, and there are two short tracks of pointless filler noise.

Generally, it’s all good stuff, though. To get another obvious point out of the way, it’s clear that Quentin Dupieux (for that is his name) owes a fairly substantial debt to fellow French-house artists Daft Punk and Justice – you can hear the influence of the latter’s ‘Waters of Nazareth’ in the twisted lead rhythm of the title track, although the operatic vocal sample is a nice, original touch. Of the other proper songs on the EP there’s the menacing, spoken-word  ‘Lars Von Sen’, of which perhaps more could’ve been made, ‘Steroids’, on which fellow Parisian Uffie‘s vocals add their usual filthy charm, and what is perhaps the best track here, the straight-ahead dancey goodness of ‘Erreur Jean’.

The stuff on Pourriture isn’t life-changing or revolutionary in any way, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my 13 year-old self‘s musical taste wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Plus you could quite easily get your groove on to it, and that’s certainly no bad thing.

volcano! - so many lemons

volcano! are definitely a band that lie towards the more avant-garde end of the rock spectrum. However ‘So Many Lemons’ is strangely beguiling in a very strange way, with its slippery guitar line, busy drumming and fuzzy bass synth all creating a most pleasing cacophony.

Also, you can’t help but love a song that features the lyric “I just wanna sucker punch a guy in the face!” as one of it’s first lines, delivered in Aaron With‘s trademark anxious yelp, which bring to mind a slightly more deranged Dirty Projectors.

It’s possibly the most imemdiately appealing thing they’ve done, and a great step forward for interesting rock music. The other tracks on the single are similarly great, especially the world-music sounding ‘Slow Jam’ and the album version of ‘So Many Lemons’ which is hilariously only six seconds longer. I’d not paid too much attention to volcano! before, but this is genuinely exciting, interesting stuff.