Howler - America Give Up

By Richard Wink

A New Year comes along, and the sonic cycle spins round one more time. Howler are Rough Trade’s latest big stateside hope – Manic Pixie Indie Dream Boys for a new generation waiting for an indie rock band to change their lives.

America Give Up is a bustling bundle of burning ambition; a deliberate intention from the band to create a stir, and see a bit of the world. If you were exposed to The Strokes back in the early noughties in your teens as I was, then this is nothing new. Ditto, if Alex Turner wrote the songs that soundtracked your first pint a few years after Is This It, back when you had your first fist fight outside the kebab shop in front to the Taxi rank whilst you tried to impress the girl of your dreams; then, though you’ll appreciate Howler, you will feel this album is not much more than a nostalgic nod to your salad days.

Hell, what about the youth of today? What will they feel about this record? It’s tricky to tell, since indie rock is fast falling off many people’s musical radars. Having said that, everybody likes a plucky gang of lads who can put together a good tune – the relative recent success of Howler’s touring buddies The Vaccines is testament to the idea that simple, old fashioned blink and you’ll miss it indie rock still holds some merit.

Opener ‘Beach Sluts’, with courtesy handclaps and amber stained melodies is bright, and for want of a better word ballsy. Well, as ballsy as one can be whilst wearing skinny jeans. Rattling along, it is a sanitized interpretation of a ramshackle post-Libertines singalong. Possibly my favourite tune on the album ‘America’ is a breezy, surfy slice of irony. Musing on their fellow compatriots, it reminds me of a spaghetti version of Pulp’s ‘Common People’, with the cheeky aside “just like you” ringing more than a few bells

Any band is only as good as its frontman, and in Jordan Gatesmith Howler have a significant presence on record. His jaded growl pickles the optimistic melodies that litter the album.  Since he picked up a guitar aged fourteen, Gatesmith, now nineteen, has accomplished a fair deal in a short space of time, but everything is accelerated nowadays, so five years feels almost like an eternity. When Gatesmith says in interviews that he still dabbles with other musical projects it suggests that he’s not wholly convinced by the lifespan of Howler, but the brightest bulbs in indie rock usually fade after a few glimpses of glory. It is how you write yourself in history, and what legacy you create that dictates how curious listeners will dissect what you leave behind.

The story of Howler thus far is a simple one. A scribe from Pitchfork passed on Howler’s debut EP to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade after speaking with Travis about the Strokes. Travis liked the EP and swiftly sent a scout out to catch Howler live, the scout returned positive feedback, and Howler soon after got signed. Everything has happened bloody quickly.

Rather like the accelerated times we find ourselves in, America Give Up passes by in the blink of an eye. The tracks have a real immediacy, the bristling ‘Back Of Your Neck’ throws up so many familiar fragments that it disorientates rainbow rays of nostalgia like a flash grenade. A few embers fade rather quickly, the hilariously titled ‘Pythagorean Fearem’ in particular is a trifle vanilla.

The NME have made admiring glances at the band, but that doesn’t mean half as much as when Julian and co were on the front cover back in the good old days. Cursed by their influences, and the fact that some of those influences are still very much alive and breathing, Howler are a band that are oddly placed, because it doesn’t seem like we’re quite ready for an indie rock revival this year; which makes Howler vulnerable ducklings in an eclectic lake populated by technicolour piranhas, and other outlandish otherworldly predators. You get the feeling that’s the kind of place they’d most like to be.

by Richard Wink

Another week, another clutch of singles desperately clamouring for our attention like eager little puppies. So without further ado, let’s see what this Monday morning has to offer, shall we?

WU LYF
‘We Bros’

Only last week I was speaking to a work colleague, whilst in the midst of a bout of mild procrastination about how the mystery was all but gone in music. We know too much about the bands and artists we love, thanks to endless twittering, and promotional campaigns that carpet bomb us with a useless information overload. Thankfully bands like Wu Lyf exist, that allow us to focus on the music. ‘We Bros’ prances into my ear canals, presenting the bands clever way of sticking a thousand and one ideas into a pot and somehow producing something thrilling that begins on a post-rock planet, before crawling back down to earth, landing into a deserted playground as joyous sound graffiti paints neon patterns using borrowed melodies.

The Saturdays
‘My Heart Takes Over’

It would be pretty harsh of me to compare The Saturdays to dogs, but I’m going to anyway. The persistent girl group remind me of a quirkily named Greyhound that you see in the form book that catches your eye, because despite its record of never winning a race, the dog has been pretty consistent. Just before the race, when the dogs are parading around the track it stands out, looking the part, taking a solid dump trackside, behaving feisty in the traps. By race time, after taking the lead around the first bend, it falls away, finishing just outside the top three. ‘My Heart Takes Over’ is a tame attempt; the song starts with that classical interlude, present in so many of pops heartfelt recent moments, for example One Direction’s ‘Gotta Be You’ that is also released this week. The song’s chorus is impassioned, if a little strained. It’s utterly drab, though, there are no tears forming in the corner of my eye, or a lump in my throat, which really is the acid test of a good ballad.

Ed Sheeran
‘Lego House’

After the storming success of his first two singles, Sheeran releases ‘Lego House’, a tepid effort which provides neither the impressive song craft of ‘The A Team’ nor the spirited bravado of ‘You Need Me’. This is the moment where Sheeran makes a play for the middle of the road, reaching stadium heights with Damien Rice. This song represented the point where ‘+’ as an album revealed Sheeran to be a precocious talent whose strengths were unnecessarily buried in the sheen of over production.

Trash Talk
‘Awake’

Hardcore punk tends to fade to black rather quickly. Most of us have dallied with Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad Brains etc., had our craniums capsized in the kafuffle, and then moved on. Now, a new batch of heads is going to get messed with, thanks to Trash Talk, a band who has recently toured with another of the newest hardcore wave Cerebral Balzy. ‘Awake’ is nothing new. But it is infectious, petulant, cartoonishly angry and a fun song to run around in circles swinging your arms to.

Dirty Beaches
‘Lone Runner’

This recreates the eerie paranoia of walking down an alleyway at two o’clock in the morning in the tumbling rain; you can hear footsteps behind you, closing the distance. You dare not turn around and see what’s approaching, however a quick glimpse to your left reveals a shadow looming. ‘Lone Runner’ is atmospheric and disorientating; a thoroughly uncomfortable listen that ends with you throwing your iPod in the fireplace whilst repeated pointing and hysterically shouting in a Mexican accent “El Diablo! El Diablo!” as the malevolently smiling face of Steve Jobs forms in the flames.

The Pipettes
‘Boo Shuffle’

Ending on a happier note, The Pipettes have dedicated ‘Boo Shuffle’ to their producer Martin Rushent who worked with them on their 2010 release Earth vs. The Pipettes. Rushent produced some classic albums including The Human League’s Dare, and will be sadly missed. ‘Boo Shuffle’ is glorious retro escapism, reminding me of old episodes of Heartbeat, where young women from the sixties would gaily dance around in community halls wearing polka dot dresses.

Elliott Smith - Roman Candle

It’s coming up to seven years since Elliott Smith’s untimely death, and nobody is quite sure how to define Smith’s legacy. Perhaps this is because the two posthumous releases – From a Basement on the Hill and New Moon appeared to be unfinished reminders of Smith’s talents as a songwriter, leaving plenty of unanswered questions. It’s fair to see that during the sessions for From a Basement… Smith was a man entrenched in his own head, fighting numerous battles. His vision as a musician was severely tainted.

Maybe now is the right time to revisit Smith’s early work. I’ve already covered this album in some detail, so talking about this re-issue will focus more on Elliott Smith’s legacy than the album itself.

Inevitably when people first get into Elliott they hear of his untimely demise, the brutally honest anecdotes about Smith’s state of mind, and the inconclusive nature of his death. It adds an uncomfortable layer to the listening experience, with hurt bleakly lingering in the background. A newcomer to Sparklehorse will most likely notice a similar eeriness after Mark Linkous’s dramatic suicide earlier this year, the sound of black clouds gathering, the uncompromising shock of stark lightning bolts.

Personally speaking, I came across Elliott the wrong way round. Hearing Either/Or and XO long before I visited his early albums. Then I got heavily into Heatmiser (Mic City Sons, in particular) and Figure 8, before finally going backwards and arriving at Roman Candle. The journey through his discography was a rocky one, with his music an integral soundtrack to my own moments of misery and despair.

I remember how much the opening track haunted me, the sound of Smith’s fingers clumsily hitting the guitar strings with an intimacy I have never experienced before as a listener, Smith’s voice seemed close, much too close “I want to hurt him / I want to give him pain / I’m a Roman Candle / My head is full of flames”. The intensity of the recording is overwhelming.

Even on such an early release Smith comes across as a confident storyteller, and though his delivery is soft, he is able to paint vivid stories that document domestic dramas. The fallout on ‘Condor Ave’, the sense of loneliness and inferiority on ‘No Name #1’, the great escape tale of Mother and son on ‘No Name #4’. Such themes were to be revisited numerous times on later releases.

‘Last Call’ is the one truly great song on the album, a timeless, contemptuous classic. When I mentioned legacy earlier in the piece, a song such as this stands alone as an example of Smith’s song writing abilities. As we came to expect from an Elliott Smith song, there was nothing hidden, everything was bravely out in the open. Smith was able to mine the private for fool’s gold. It is also the most fleshed out track on the album in terms of production, sowing the seeds for his later work.

Since Kill Rock Stars acquired the rights to Roman Candle, it really is a no brainer to quickly dust the album off and put it out for a new wave of consumption. Alongside the From a Basement…. re-issue it appears the label are trying to bridge a gap, presenting the beginning and end of Elliott Smith. Larry Crane, Smith’s archivist, re-masters the album with great care, merely tidying up some of the more glaring faults and finger picked squeaks, and turning Elliott’s voice up just ever so slightly.

As we look back upon the life and career of Elliott Smith, we can charmlessly sit him next to Nick Drake in heaven, or we can lament that he was unable to become the Dylan of our generation, but it is important to acknowledge first and foremost his contribution to warts and all song writing. He was a man who was able to showcase his faults constructively.

Lady Antebellum - Need You Now

Country Music… just saying those two words causes a shudder. However recently there has been a hint of mainstream credibility creeping back into the much maligned genre. No longer are we seeing a bunch of backwoods Barbies, and generic looking chiseled jawed cowboy-types trotting out mid-tempo strum alongs about heartbreak and devouring t-bone steaks. Lady Antebellum are part of the new breed of contemporary artists that incorporate R&B and rock elements into the rigid Country songwriting template.

The trio, sugar and salt vocal duo Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley, and instrumentalist Dave Haywood have produced an album that is both appealing (two million plus sales suggest a few people like what they do) and unapologetically American. Looking at the record from the perspective of somebody situated on the better side of the pond, you struggle to work out why they’ve garnered such a following. Having said that, Taylor Swift is currently popular here with the tween crowd, Dolly Parton is a freaking idol, folks like to line dance, and sometime in the murky distant past Billy Ray Cyrus had a number one single.

The trio’s road into the music business was partly assisted by Hillary Scott’s mother Linda Davis, a relatively well known country singer who had some connections, though the road to the top wasn’t the smoothest ride since Scott herself had to battle through rejection as she failed to earn a spot on American Idol, and never really made ground in Nashville as a solo recording artist.

Lady Antebellum have scored big from two singles from this album – ‘Need You Now’ and ‘American Honey’,  the former opens with a tidy little piano refrain before Scott and Kelley duet. It’s one of those cliché ridden love songs about needing somebody that plenty of people have sung about in Popular Music History before. Some wide-ranging examples include N-Dubz, America, LeAnn Rimes, Leo Sayer, The Beatles, somebody called Agnes and the unfortunately named Smokie Norful.

See, that’s what they are aiming for: familiarity. ‘American Honey’ is the sloppy joe that Americans will eat up, slick audio candy “Nothing’s sweeter than summertime and American Honey”.  It fits in with the brighter half of Lady Antebellum, carefree good time jukebox anthems such as ‘Perfect Day’ which recounts as Justin Lee Collins would say “Good Times!” – hanging out with buddies and swimming in a lake in the case of this track. These sprightly songs contain some juicy hooks, the ‘let’s throw on some tight fitting jeans and spray on some Brut aftershave before we head out for a night on the tiles’ of ‘If I Knew Then’ is absolutely jam packed with them.

The weaker side of Lady Antebellum is evident in their sterile ballads, and disappointingly this album is littered with slow burners that lose the initial impact of regret. ‘Our Kind of Love’, ‘When You Got a Good Thing’ and ‘Stars Tonight’ are desperately safe. Whoever is mentoring the band is obviously telling them to be good Republican folk, and ignore their carnal desires. Yes, there are subtle references about Charles Kelley plying a girl with drink until she puts out, and yes, Hillary Scott digs dudes who look like Bruce Springsteen, but mostly they tow the line which has made Country Music so unattractive for anyone outside of the Southern States.

Arctic Monkeys

I’m not really too bothered about who he’s fucking, or where he lives, or even what he gets up to outside music. He can become an actor if he wants, start painting….. whatever. I’m concerned about Alex Turner, ‘the indie icon’, about this ‘genius’ tag that has prematurely been bestowed upon his slender frame.

Though success, both commercially and artistically has dictated that we should place Turner in the upper echelons of the indie hierarchy. Close to the likes of Jarvis Cocker or Morrissey. There seems to be an issue about how all the adulation can extend beyond his work on the Arctic Monkeys debut release Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, culturally it was an album that changed the whole landscape of indie music, and by indie I don’t mean real indie, I mean indie. Y’all dig?

Think about it. It was an album that came from nowhere, produced a plethora of singles that everybody could relate to, transcending generations. You had everybody from the thousands in festival crowds singing ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ arms joined in unison, to a couple of middle aged dinner ladies singing along to ‘Mardy Bum’ on the radio whilst smeared in breadcrumbs and chip fat.

Then came the expectation, the hype, the pressure. Briefly acknowledged in the EP Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? we saw Turner the songwriter admitting that becoming a rockstar is not all it’s cracked up to be, and that life on the road can be a bit boring. Favourite Worst Nightmare seemed to reflect the hectic new found lifestyle, generally more frantic the band’s debut, we witnessed something unsure emerge from Turner. Where as in these circumstances, a more extroverted personality can embrace the notion that all eyes are on me now, for Turner a reticence set in. It appeared the man became serious too soon, and muddled himself in the quagmire of maturity.

Crooning on tracks such as ‘505’ and ‘Do Me A Favour’ Turner seemed hell bent in becoming an old man in his early twenties, adopting a vintage romantic persona that men such as Richard Hawley, Nick Cave and Scott Walker have naturally grown into. But the jacket didn’t fit. It seemed even less believable when he jettisoned the Monkeys to work with Miles Kane on the ridiculously pompous The Last Shadow Puppets side project.

See Turner found himself in a quandary, his popularity intact, his star fixed firmly in space. But his legacy perhaps already ruined. Arctic Monkeys couldn’t even do what Oasis did, and release two GREAT albums consecutively, they merely released one. Lyrically Turner deserted observation and wit, and became a little more cryptic, alienating the public by mystifying the private.

Though Humbug has established the Monkeys alongside Muse, Coldplay and Kasabian as festival headliners and bona fide heavyweights, what they share with those bands is a lack of pushing the boundaries, solid but unspectacular. Trustworthy musicianship, an almost bankable guarantee of a good gig, but the element of surprise is missing. Humbug seemed almost predictable, the getting back to basics album, working with Josh Homme in the desert to merely reconnect with the essence of rock.

I don’t believe that the other three members of the Arctic Monkeys are musical visionaries. Turner doesn’t have a foil within the band; there is no Lennon or McCartney, or better still Morrissey or Marr dynamic. He can trust his band to play, but not to create, and obviously the limitations of his band mates influenced his decision to adopt a side project involving the likes of James Ford and Owen Pallett. The group dynamic is tight musically, but seemingly unlikely to produce a Kid A defining release.

Maybe it all came too soon. The lad had to quickly adjust, and his life abruptly altered from having a comfortable little to acquiring an awful lot. Turner has always downplayed his success, though you’d be foolish to believe it hasn’t affected him. You go from being a bedroom bard to the voice of a generation, the expectation paradigm shifts.

In a time, as the fine football journo John Nicholson remarked where we have a tendency to over-rate, over-praise or even over-criticize. Turner exists as a man accelerated; perhaps not a genius, not yet a legend, but somewhere in the middle.

Delphic

The new Musical Season starts in December; various names are being banded about, the next big thing is about to be chosen. Could it be Delphic?

Already they’ve appeared on Jools Holland, achieved considerable airplay for their singles ‘This Momentary’ and ‘Doubt’, and significantly they are signed to the very fashionable label Kitsuné. Their sound is of the moment – ‘elecdie’ (electro-indie).

The problem with Acolyte is that it doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary. It wouldn’t be wise to get down to your local bookies and place money on this album winning the Mercury Prize, and you really wouldn’t imagine gazing into the crystal ball and predicting Delphic will light up the hundreds and hundreds of festivals next summer. But who really cares about hype? If we ignore all of the above then Delphic are just another band from Manchester; yet Mancunian bands usually, historically speaking have a bit about them. Even The Courteeners got some goodwill from critics because their postcode started with an ‘M’. I guess we get caught up in the folklore of the city, and believe that there is still some magic in the Northern air, despite the city’s radical facelift over the last twenty years.

‘Clarion Call’ opens epically like the introduction music to the hourly Sky Sports News bulletin. The blend of blip blip synth noodles and tick tick tick eighties drum machines segues into ‘Doubt’, the angular, sterile cousin to the Klaxons, Friendly Fires and The Temper Trap et al. We’re revisiting the recent; the anthemic chorus that precedes the frantic rhythmic setup. Divinely robotic. Utterly lifeless.

The Balearic Beat of ‘Halcyon’ seems to portray what Delphic want to achieve on this album, blending the nineties Ibiza sound with angelic indie. Better late than never the album seems to suddenly step up, ecstatic and hedonistic ‘Submission’ and ‘Remain’ both divert the listener away from the soggy grey every day. But is it enough to merely distract, to recall holiday’s in the sun, and past times when you were probably too pilled up to truly appreciate what you were moving your body to?

Delphic are a timid time machine of a band, travelling back to yesterday, only cursed by an early onset of Alzheimer’s, unable to remember the divine elements of their fundamental influences.

Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP

We resume our extended nostalgia-bit with a revisit of the year 2000, courtesy of Richard Wink… we’ll be travelling forwards in time over the coming days after zipping back, so keep your mice peeled or whatnot.

The Marshall Mathers LP helped me pass my GCSEs. I remember sitting in the exam hall during a Maths exam and the lyrics to ‘Who Knew’ kept rolling through my head– “I don’t do black music, I don’t do white music / I make fight music, for high school kids/I put lives at risk when I drive like this/I put wives at risk with a knife like this”. What? You didn’t expect me to be listening to Kid A, did you?

Looking back to 2000 reminds me just how bad my music taste was back then, and it got much worse. As a metalhead I was getting bored of listening to Metallica and Pantera, I was too young to have been around to witness live my other favourites Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, I wanted rock that spoke to my generation, bands that I could call my own and in a sense I got it.

I remember watching MTV2 and seeing this crazy video with ninjas, rapping and angsty screaming. It was Linkin Park’s ‘One Step Closer’ and it opened a door to the world of Nu-Metal, the perfect soundtrack for a moody sixteen year old.  As an antidote to the popular placid records of that time, the likes of Moby’s Play, Travis’ The Man Who and Craig David’s Born to Do It, and the influx of girly garbage from the States – Britney, Christina, and Jessica all paraded themselves about, mutton dressed as lamb. Something a little bit loud and shouty, obnoxious and dare I say dangerous (for a kid from the suburbs) was actually a pleasant alternative in the stale mainstream.

Unfortunately a clothing accessory signified the arrival of a rather unsightly monstrosity; no I’m not talking about the hot pants that showcased Kylie’s pert bottom from her celebrated comeback ‘Spinning Around’. I’m referring to the red baseball cap, and the man who wore it, the flag bearer for Nu-Metal - Mr Fred Durst. The grunting man-chimp stomped around the stage urging us to keep on ‘Rollin’’. Durst represented everything that was wrong with Nu-Metal. The misplaced aggression, the objectification of women and the horrific rhymes that made Vanilla Ice seem like a skilled lyricist in comparison.

Thankfully my taste improved deep into winter, and again music on television pointed me into credible waters. No, not MTV but the appearance of ‘He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot’ on series two of Trigger Happy TV caused me to checkout Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump. A terrestrial showing of the Affleck/Damon-written sapfest Good Will Hunting inadvertently led me to devour Elliott Smith’s Figure 8.

See this was before the likes of Musosguide.com, Drowned in Sound and Pitchfork. I was still listening to John Peel on the radio for new music, but evidently a lot was going over my head. Kerrang and the NME were scanned weekly, a highly rated album usually got purchased (and not illegally downloaded!)  and this me led to some worthwhile releases such as Deftones’ White Pony, At the Drive-In’s Relationship of Command and OutKast’s Stankonia.

Read more:
2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009

Rage Against The Machine

The X Factor is arguably the best thing to happen to Pop Music since the advent of MTV. Yet for the last two years a number of spiteful people have attempted to derail the fairytale, and prevent the deserved winner of the popular singing contest of becoming number one in the charts. Simon Cowell has revived Pop Music, he’s made us care again about Pop, we invest in the dreams of the contestants, and we buy into their journey.

Names like Leon Jackson and Shayne Ward roll off the tongue, before The X Factor they were nobodies. Now they are failures… popular celebrity failures. But the one thing you can never take away from them is being number one in the charts at Christmas, joining an illustrious list of artists that includes Mr Blobby, East 17, Rolf Harris and Little Jimmy Osmond.

It all started when a few morons decided to dethrone Alexandra Burke’s glorious cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ last Christmas by attempting to get Jeff Buckley’s version of the song to number one through starting a bloody Facebook group. Fortunately Burke obliterated Buckley sales wise, and went on to have further chart success; the campaign itself was a complete failure. Yet now we have another group of idiots attempting to challenge this years X-Factor winner by campaigning for Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ to conquer the charts this Christmas.

In a sense this is a bit of a non-story, I doubt the members of RATM are that bothered about becoming Christmas number one, since they are still counting the cash from their recent whirlwind reunion tour. Besides Rage Against the Machine are also signed under the Sony umbrella, so all these fools are doing is doubling the Sony Christmas bonuses. However it has implications in the wider sense

What does it say about today’s ‘revolutionary music’ when the antithesis to The X Factor is a ropey old rap metal band that once had the audacity to release an album of piss poor covers. Not only that but campaigning for ‘Killing in The Name’, a song that challenges authority by throwing the childish strop of “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me?” Well, fuck this band I’m voting for Joe McElderry.

I’m fed up RATM being held up as a moral authority. They preached anti-establishment hatred; encouraged violence against the Police, stood up for convicted murderers and wanted to publically hang the finest British Prime Minister since Churchill – Tony Blair. It’s like campaigning for Harold Shipman to receive a posthumous Nobel peace prize for bringing to attention the wonder of euthanasia.

Christmas is a magical time, and I can’t quite believe that people would consider supporting a bunch of commies, when really we should be embracing consumerism, and attempting to stimulate our ailing economy.

Rain Machine

Since his band (TV On The Radio, if you didn’t know) is currently on hiatus for a short spell Kyp Malone has decided to venture solo under the moniker Rain Machine. The album is a sophisticated form of art folk, designed for hip smoky basement bars where the whiskey is strong enough to put hairs on your chest. What sets this album apart from most other one man and his guitar albums are the subtle changes in Malone’s vocals, his voice becomes an instrument and tells the story of the song in a more concise way than the lyrics, swiftly changing from sorrow, to anger after lust and jubilation.

The illuminating tribal marimba and scorched guitar makes ‘Give Blood’ a sassy jaunt through an art house asylum, Malone’s vocals teeter on the edge of madness. Then things dramatically settle down, ‘New Last Name’ is laid back and close in tempo to the end of the passionate eruption of ‘Hold You Holy’, a track that revels in carnal ecstasy.

Some solo projects are woefully undercooked, this one is beautifully produced, the backwater moonshine ballad ‘Driftwood Heart’ is a lesson in intimacy. ‘Smiling Black Faces’ opens with an ominous toll, the song is an insightful comment on race, covering a variety of issues from African genocide to the brutal slaying of Sean Bell at the hands of the NYPD. Maybe highlighting how we as individuals can become moved about issues we are detached from, yet turn a blind eye to what happens on our doorsteps.

Not everything works; ‘Desperate Bitch’ is a maudlin mumble of melancholic bleating, if you saw a chap busking this song you’d quicken your pace to get away. ‘Love Won’t Save You’ is equally as brooding but infinitely better, the strings are thrashed harder. The long winded ‘Winter Song’ brings the album to a close; it’s a real old fashioned jam and rather world weary.

There is a lot to admire about this album, solo projects can be over indulgent and predictably this one is. Kyp Malone has made the record he wants to hear, and whilst we must expect him for his artistic choices it is an album lacking any approachability. We are getting a conker shell, barbed and spiky; once we get inside of that shell we find decay. The emotions displayed are negative ones, but importantly they are sincere. Rain Machine reminds me a lot of John Frusciante’s solo work, in that it puts the heart on the chopping book, everything is on display.

Katsen

On first impression Katsen resemble the sort of band that might soundtrack Nathan Barley, were Chris Morris and co to make another series of the underrated sitcom. Katsen are knowingly quirky, and they make awkward sounding electro-pop a little like Hot Chip and Ratatat minus the mojo, only more entrenched in the eighties sound.

In many ways this is Dunce Cap Dance (© 2009 Richard Wink), because it sounds like it was made by people that are ‘challenged’, and that it is almost impossible to dance to. But you know what, I like it. I like it because there is a lo-fi genuine charm to the retro keyboards and synths employed, and for me the icing on top of the cake is the pleasing cover one of the crowning moments of Surfer Rosa, ‘Cactus’. If you can make a good fist of covering a Pixies song then you are onto a winner.

The duo behind Katsen, Chris Blackburn and Donna Grimaldi blend together well, neither are particularly talented vocalists but their uncomfortable cool comes over nicely, jarring straight away with the coordinated casio bleeps and Atari/Commodore riot jam of ‘Lets Build A City’.

At their most effective Katsen produce brilliance in the form of the crusading ‘Chequered Flag’, the domino scuzz beat of ‘Island Is An Island’ and the excellent Germanic robotic title track. However when it goes wrong, it goes very badly wrong. ‘I’m A Doctor’ borders on being an abysmal joke; ‘What You Want’ is just plain lazy Coin-Op dross.

This album is in many ways like a bunch of roses, primarily aesthetically pleasing yet possessing a few painful thorns.