MV + EE - Space Homestead

By Kenny McMurtrie

Oof! Rather like when you miss a downward step and have cause to make an involuntary noise upon reconnecting with terra firma, so un-met expectations can also force an audible reaction. Having very much enjoyed 2009’s Drone Trailer from these guys I was therefore left on the couch making something approaching said noise right from the off with this new release, Space Homestead (MV + EE‘s 32nd album since 2001 apparently).

Whilst the sound in general was what I’d expected, things just seem to lack the general warmth and sensitivity of the earlier releases. Track 1 is merely a short instrumental named after 1960s British horror actress Barbara Steele for some reason and from there on things just drift along in the normal trippy fashion with languid guitar parts, gentle drums and echoing, phased vocals. All nice enough and totally inoffensive but as a result unexciting and hard to sell to anyone not already into the likes of Beechwood Sparks, New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Bongwater or anything in between.

The nine songs in the package fail to push any emotional buttons (a near constant feature of Drone Trailer) although the extended guitar solo of track seven, ‘Too Far To See’, lifts that song head and shoulders above the rest by achieving the feat of managing to sound like some Grateful Dead outtake – clear as a bell descending into distortion as you picture the sun rising over Death Valley. All too short though at only four minutes. I’ve got my fingers crossed that album 33 finds them back much more on form.

Smoke Fairies - Blood Speaks

By Kenny McMurtrie

A solid and weightier release from the girls of Smoke Fairies this time and ‘Three Of Us’ is a fantastic track, with its swooning vocals and simple but effective guitar solos. Whilst the video for that song looks to have been filmed by the sea either in East Anglia or along the south coast, it is the flat, near featureless landscapes passed through by train in a few sequences within it that the album as a whole seems to identify with. A sense of being in between one thing ending and another beginning pervades the work viz the line “There’s a version of the future hanging close above my head, but I can’t get to it” in track number nine, ‘Version Of The Future’.

It’s not often either that you hear falling in love being mentioned as something of a negative (unless maybe you’re reading some Michel Houellebecq) but, in ‘Take Me Down When You Go’, “something dies” when you do so. Not that that’s to say the tone of the work overall is negative. An almost childish curiosity about the world and what wonders one’s journey through it will hold seems to be the overarching theme of the album. The folkier elements of the duo’s sound are still very evident throughout but added to those is a heft of a darker hue, albeit one on a par with that found in a Grimm fairy tale.

This release then represents a significant step forward in the development of the talents behind it and should by rights raise the pair’s standing in the awareness of the wider music buying public in the coming months.

Simian Mobile Disco - Unpatterns

By Kenny McMurtrie

Album number four from Simian Mobile Disco and the duo have taken their feet off the pedals and decided to freewheel on this one it seems. Nary a decent hook throughout its length. Instead they’ve leant heavily towards the third word in their name and come up with a set of mid-paced background music which wouldn’t induce you to even tap your feet. So it’ll probably go down a storm live in a tent in a field when you’re off your face. Sans drugs, however, it’s all rather boring.

I know I’ve played it a few times now (back to back and everything) as I remember pressing play but it’s left no impression of substance whatsoever. Which is a shame as all previous efforts show the pair can clearly do better. Music for the backdrop to a nice quiet night at home with your significant other could of course have been the whole jumping off point for this outing in which case they’ve achieved their aim admirably.

After a break of a few days I’ve now come back to this squib to try and pad it out a bit but having apparently reached the total of times I can stream the album I think that in itself puts a seal on proceedings. I can’t work up the enthusiasm to request an extension of the streaming period and despite having played it throughout the day on May Day Monday not a single song title has lodged in my mind. To plagiarise a fellow Musos’ columnist this is screaming out for a remix.

Damon Albarn - Dr Dee

By Kenny McMurtrie

If John Adams ever writes a musical setting for the Latin mass there’s a good chance it will sound like large parts of Damon Albarn‘s Dr Dee. His efforts may be more listenable however, as Britpop this is clearly not. Nor are there any obvious African influences, given Albarn’s forays into the musical milieu of Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent years. Some sort of Olde English song cycle is maybe the closest reference point with his own vocals being more in line with The Good, The Bad & The Queen than Blur or Gorillaz.

A little online digging reveals that this is in fact the soundtrack for the opera Dr. Dee : An English Opera, from 2009. Albarn it seems is actually singing most of the male vocal parts which probably explains why some work better than others as he needs, I suppose, to adopt different personas. The Dr. in question (John Dee) was close to Elizabeth I of England so the period of time they existed in explains the stylings used in the work.

As with his Journey To The West album, Albarn is in the position of having “pop” writers cover an area of music not normally associated with their respective media organs (the NME apparently viewed a performance of the opera and quite liked it) so possibly he’s doing some good in a crossover sense. In this instance though you’d really already need to be a fan of the type of music on offer (imagine the Blackadder The Second theme tune and you’re close to the sound achieved, particularly on ‘Temptation Comes In the Afternoon’). Having him pictured on the cover outside a block of flats named after the doctor may pay off in a few unwitting purchasers but many of those will be asking “wtf?” before they’re halfway through listening to the thing.

‘The Golden Dawn’ is a beguiling start to the work being just meandering pipe organ and birdsong and track two, ‘Apple Carts’, brings to mind Robert Wyatt’s work whilst the spoken word passages in later tunes (‘Coronation’ for example) give proceedings an air of having tapped into the spirit of the late Stanley Unwin or maybe re-runs of Fingerbobs. Ultimately, however, Albarn’s voice is a negative element in the affair. Whilst on Blur’s or other of his usual kinds of albums the occasional flat vocal parts can be ignored – either because of their brevity or due to the music surrounding them being upbeat enough to compensate – on Dr. Dee there is practically nothing but the vocals and they’re mainly of the pancake variety. Listeners in need of something new that’s closer to their usual expectations from him should instead check out the Rocket Juice & The Moon album that came out in March and so far seems to have slipped under the radar.

Black Mountain - Year Zero OST

By Kenny McMurtrie

Quite what surfing has to do with resetting the calendar a la the Khmer Rouge is anyone’s guess but then equally I’d never before considered Black Mountain as being a particularly surf-oriented group so who knows. Whether the 10 songs here do amply soundtrack the film in question I can’t say, but as collections of 5 previously released songs and 5 new ones go it works pretty well. It has to be mentioned at this point though that I seem to only have 9 songs to write about. Maybe the tenth will turn up on the official releases.

Of those new songs on the Year Zero OST then ‘Phosphorescent Waves’, the album opener, starts off in similar fashion to the better examples of John Carpenter’s scores before moving on to resemble the work of Tangerine Dream – all very synth-driven and ethereal then. ‘Mary Lou’ delivers up the more riff-heavy fare I’d been expecting over around seven minutes or thereabouts. ‘Embrace Euphoria’ and ‘In Sequence’ opt for the Tangerine Dream angle again with the latter at least having a bit of humour and life towards its end. Closer ‘Breathe’ is a stoner-lite, acid flecked piece of campfire psych and none the worse off for it.

Having actually re-read the blurb attached to this it turns out Year Zero is a post-apocalyptic surf movie (the apocalypse seems to have killed off female surfers as the adrenalin junkies on show are all blokes). This isn’t Film 2012 though so I’ll leave off with that line of pursuit. However, positive association with the film or just as a collection completer are the only reasons you’d probably shell out for this.

Brendan Benson - What Kind Of World

By Kenny McMurtrie

This album is apparently self-financed so I assume from that that means no record label currently has faith in Brendan Benson’s marketability. Personally I quite liked his 2002 solo effort (Lapalco), the first Raconteurs album hit the spot and the first single (I think), ‘Spit It Out’, from 2006’s The Alternative To Love was good but to date the best thing I think he’s been involved with was Mood Elevator’s Listen Up! from over a decade ago. I’ve not therefore been losing sleep over his lack of visibility in my musical life of late.

This new release’s title track kicks proceedings off well enough in a reasonably upbeat and lightweight rock style. Indie rock I suppose. The sound you’d expect from him anyway, whatever you want to call it. Track 3 (‘Light Of Day’) picks the pace up and really chugs along nicely. One for that one day of the British summer when you can safely get the soft top down (so you should have been listening at the start of March probably). ‘Happy Most Of The Time’ has a pleasing urgency about it in the 4th place slot.

Whilst researching the first paragraph of this piece I managed to lose focus on the album playing away in the background which maybe goes someway to point out a rather ephemeral quality in the work. Either that or tracks 5 and 6 are forgettable. My attention was snagged once more though by the weighty riffing in ‘Here In The Deadlights’ and the near-anger of that song remains in ‘Met Your Match’. Cut number 10 ‘No One Else But You’ changes things a bit with a lean towards blue-eyed soul territory to pretty good effect. ‘Come On’ is a simple but effective rocker and final track ‘On the Fence’ changes pace once more to close out on a The Band-like country saloon ballad.

With any luck then Benson’s Readymade Records should have a decent sized hit on its hands here. I for one will be digging out the older albums and getting my hands on the two I know nothing of bar their titles – One Mississippi and My Old, Familiar Friend.

Lightships - Electric Cables

By Kenny McMurtrie

With Teenage Fanclub being as fond of hiatus as Thomas Pynchon there comes a time when the individual members feel the need to let off some creative steam. Norman Blake did so last year with the Jonny project and album of the same name and now it’s Gerry Love’s turn with Lightships. Expect nothing out of the ordinary though, this is just what you’d hear if, for a change, only one member of the band wrote their entire new album rather than the usual split of 4 songs each. Therefore as stop-gaps go Electric Cables is a cracker.

The album’s highlight comes in at track 5 – ‘Silver And Gold’. A fey start builds to a really nice and positive tempo along with a great Sixties garage-style fuzz on the guitar parts and sweet harmonies, giving it slightly more presence than the other songs in the package but really there’s not what you’d call a bad number amongst the ten. Which in itself presents the problem to the reviewer of elaborating. It’s all good and sounds like every Love-penned song Fanclub have ever recorded so if that in itself is not praise enough for you to go out and pick it up then you’ll never do so anyway. Very good chance of it being in my final choices for the year.

Black Dice - Mr Impossible

By Kenny McMurtrie

Sample an hour’s worth of belches and farts, talk gibberish over it and apply all possible effects available to you on the production board you’re using in whatever passes for your studio and you’ll get an approximation of the crap that passes for music on this waste of space. Who listens to such dross, let alone buys it? Somebody needs to point out what I’m missing here in terms of musical innovation over self-indulgent trash. They’ll have to do it sometime well in the future though as I don’t intend to waste any more time right now listening to what amounts to aural abuse.

Impossible is a very apt word to feature in the album’s title as I find it impossible to conceive how Black Dice have managed to get to the point of releasing five albums previous to this one. Punk it may be (possibly) but aggressive it is not. And to think for an instant that it “reconfigures the whole of popular culture” makes me wonder if there happens to be some parallel popular culture running alongside that which I’ve always taken to be the stuff worthy of that description. Either that or it means reconfiguration in the sense that shit is reconfigured food and drink. Pete Townshend should sue them for covering ‘Pinball Wizard’ so hamfistedly too.

The final track does at least take an honest approach as it has the word sludge in the title and that perfectly describes the sound produced over the course of the album’s length. One word could have been used to review this (take your pick from those above) but attempting to manage 300 is a minor matter of principle so they get a fair crack of the whip despite this being  my worst album of the year so far and in pole position by miles to retain that honour at Hogmanay.

Orbital - Wonky

By Kenny McMurtrie

It’s been quite a while since listening to an album made me lose track of the passing of time but Orbital‘s Wonky did just that, to the extent that I ended up oversleeping and being late for work. I didn’t hold it against it though so it soundtracked my workday too.

To say I’m wary of groups reforming (even if the members are related) is an understatement. Even if originally couched in terms of a hiatus, rather than a falling out with 3 members, for example, going off to do various levels of nothing then reconciling to rake in the cash from potential tours to places they never previously made it to, there’s the whiff of financial gain being the driving force about such events. Happily I don’t get that feeling at all in this instance. The recent Radio 6 live session and interview had already convinced me but the quality of the new music now revealed has set the seal on things – the Hartnolls’ creativity is undimmed, indeed positively enhanced by their joint return to active duty and the 3 year honing of the 9 new tracks since they returned to live performances in 2009.

You’d know this for an Orbital album anywhere as the distinctive yet still hard to pinpoint elements of their sound are evident in abundance right from the off. That’s not to say though that developments in their field have passed them by – ‘Satan’ has been re-worked into the bass and beats heavy ‘Beelzedub’ and dubstep and grime rear their heads at points (indeed grime leads to the album’s weakest moments, mostly the bits featuring Lady Leshurr on vocals on the title track).

‘Wonky’ aside though the duo never put a foot wrong over the course of fifty minutes and final track ‘Where Is It Going?’ easily rights any wrongs perpretrated by its predecessor. You’ll have this on repeat for weeks.

Conor Mason - Standstill

By Kenny McMurtrie

Given the insipid nature of the work by the likes of Blake, Morrison and Sheeran, the thought of having to listen to a male singer/songwriter in order to review Standstill had my teeth on edge right from the start. Like midges I started to wonder if there was any point in their existence and would the world not be a better place without them as the modern versions never seem to measure up well against those of the past.

Pleasingly though, despite initial thoughts that this would be what a Tim Wheeler solo effort would sound like, Conor Mason’s Grandaddy meets The Thrills style is a generally solid affair that could well punch its way out of the wet paper bag that those contemporaries mentioned earlier find themselves in.

‘Misunderstood’ opens proceedings on a speedy, brass-backed note that all but pounds along for the duration, bringing to mind the thought that it would be good for getting the soft top down as you speed along if we have any summer to speak of this year. On ‘Lights’ it’s the turn of the piano to provide the underpinning insistence (there’s some nice synth work too). Over the top throughout Mason’s kinda breathy voice soars and swoops in equal measure, lending the songs a bit of down-home grounding.

Americana gets a look in on track number three ‘Words’ which, in its slower passages, is quite ballad-like and sets the tone for the likes of ‘Standstill’, ’6.5AM’, ‘Sundown’, ‘Last To Leave’ and final track ‘A Picture Of Farewell’. That not one of these songs tips over into schmaltz and causes you to fast forward or even switch off completely is testament to Mason’s ability to write with genuine feeling whilst not resorting to cliched grabs for your heartstrings. Depending on his future marketing and which tracks radio prefers to play, he could be breath of fresh air necessary in what had seemed an increasingly self-satisfying area of the market.