The National

It didn’t feel like too big a deal at first, when things didn’t work out between me and the girl from California. Sure, it was a pity. She was beautiful, after all; smart and affectionate too. But best of all she was a fan of The National. When we discovered our shared love for the guys from Ohio on our first date, things could hardly have seemed any better. Sadly, however, it came to a premature end when she rather abruptly called time on things just a few weeks later. “Never mind, these things happen, plenty more fish in the sea,” my friends all told me. “Even fish who like The National.” They are a rare breed, but this was true enough – and at least in ending so early, for once it didn’t seem like something my mind was likely to linger on.

Perhaps I would have still felt this relaxed about it a few weeks later, were it not for the very same band we both adored personally intervening to kill off any chances of the latest disappointment in my love-life ebbing away quietly.

Ok, so I admit The National did not write the penultimate track on their new album, which I had been looking forward to for months, specifically to remind little old me of that girl from California. But given that just a few weeks after things finished between us I found myself listening to Matt Berninger pining over a Californian girl living in London, loving her life in the rain, I hope I could be forgiven for feeling like they really had. England is the best song on High Violet – possibly the best thing they’ve ever recorded – and after one listen to its soaring melodies and the blaring horns I was hooked. Yet with every listen repeatedly churning my personal associations with the lyrics, listening to it became an increasingly bittersweet experience. It felt like I was being taunted and teased by the very musicians who had helped inspire our brief tryst.

Thankfully that eventually wore off a little. But as a music lover, it left behind an interesting reminder of the emotional power involved in affixing our own meanings to a piece of music – and how this can often happen against our wishes.

Perhaps it will stem, as in my case, from little more than some vague links between pop lyrics and episodes from our own lives. But sometimes it doesn’t even take that much.

Micah P Hinson recently revealed to me in an interview that his wife does not allow him to listen to any Richard Hawley records when she is around, because it reminds her of an unhappy incident that happened to the couple while Hinson was supporting Hawley on tour a few years ago. The unpleasant event did not even involve Hawley himself, but in the mind of Hinson’s wife a mental bond was permanently forged between the British crooner’s music and memories of what happened that night.

But while it’s unfortunate that songs can be sometimes be soured forever by a personal association, it’s our ability to create our own interpretations of lyrics that helps make music so powerful. One only has to look at the continued debate down the years about the true subjects of Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’ and Alanis Morrisette’s ‘You Oughta Know’ – and the popularity of discussing lyrics on the Song Meanings website – to see how much we like music to have a sense of ambiguity about it.

Indeed, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder has previously criticised music videos for robbing music fans of the ability to affix their own meanings to songs. During an interview in 1993 he said: “Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression.”

Interestingly, Vedder has since revealed that the upbeat interpretation of ‘Alive’ by the fans of his band has changed the way even he views the lyrics and the meaning behind his own song: “They lifted the curse. The audience changed the meaning for me.”

In contrast, Bono finds only confusion in some U2 fans’ more optimistic view of One, saying: “The song is a bit twisted, which is why I could never figure out why people want it at their weddings. I have certainly met a hundred people who’ve had it at their weddings. I tell them, ‘Are you mad? It’s about splitting up!’”

It’s hard to imagine French philosopher Jacques Derrida was a fan of either Pearl Jam or U2. But given his theory of the freeplay of the signifier and the signified, at least he would have approved of Eddie Vedder’s free-thinking approach to the meanings behind his lyrics.

The National - High Violet

It seems strange to think now, but just a few years ago it was possible to outflank even some of the most ardently pretentious indie scenesters just by mentioning one name: The National. They would stream out hundreds of names of the most “in” little bands that you sooooo should have heard of if you call yourself a real music fan. Yet ask them if they knew of the Ohio five-piece and suddenly a blank look would invariably sweep across their face, before the quiet mutter came: “No… who are they?”

It was the release of their fourth album, Boxer, which changed all that. While still a long way from reaching mainstream chart success, the critics picked up on it with plenty of admiration. Suddenly, they too were one of those bands it was de rigeur to drop into conversation at house parties and rock clubs. But while there could hardly be a band more deserving of this than The National, in some ways it seemed strange that this growth in popularity was provoked by Boxer.

It was a record that had many fine moments: the delightfully dainty and petite ‘Fake Empire’, ‘Slow Show’ and its tender rekindling of their debut album’s penultimate track ‘29 Years’, the understated heartache of the line “Ada, I can hear the sound of your laugh through the wall…”. All the same, for those familiar with the band’s earlier work, Boxer brought a degree of disappointment and a tinge of anticlimax too.

One of the main reasons why The National had previously been so compelling was that you never knew what was coming next. One minute frontman Matt Berninger’s vocals would be all hush-hush, low-key and introverted. The next – as in ‘Available’ and ‘Slipping Husband’ on the excellent Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers – he would be screaming. And any band that could put the rollicking, coruscating assault of ‘Mr November’ on the same album as the lilting ‘Daughters of the Soho Riots’ and still produce such a perfectly cohesive record are doing something special. Unlike its forerunner, their undoubted masterpiece Alligator, Boxer felt just too one-paced; and that pace was middling. Few of its songs stood out.

The band’s performance of new song ‘Terrible Love’ across the pond on ‘Late Night With Jimmy Fallon’ offered hope this wouldn’t be the case with High Violet. On first listen though, there is a nagging worry they have made the same mistake again. Unlike the live version, the album recording of opener ‘Terrible Love’ has hidden increasingly frenetic guitar lines deep beneath a layer of hazy production. With Matt Berninger’s vocals also subdued, a song that possessed seriously angsty energy has a sense of very much repressed rage instead. Nor, worryingly, are there any out-and-out rockers following it up. Surely they haven’t gone and done it again.

Thankfully, it turns out the answer is no. Give it even just a couple more listens and High Violet begins to reveal itself to be a majestic return to form. Production that at first seemed overcooked becomes very much part of the record’s appeal. There are still no sudden contrasts in pace, no instantaneous movements from whispers to roars. This time around, however, the band’s subtle, slow-burning approach somehow works in a way that just didn’t come off for them last time. The likes of ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ and ‘Lemonworld’ might sound a little pedestrian to start with, yet every one of the tracks boast deeply textured melodies that prove to be catchy-as-you-like if allowed space to breathe.

The orchestration has a grander quality about it too – especially on the outstanding ‘England’. If you think “epic” is one of the most horrible clichés of music journalism, you had better not read too many reviews of that track. The way it builds with thumping rounds of drums and regal blares of horns to a soaring climax of the most uplifting proportions is just crying out for that descriptor. It’s good enough to be considered a fellow of ‘About Today’ and ‘Lucky You’ as one of their very best songs.

As for lyrics, Berninger has only occasionally gone for clear narrative or obvious themes in the past, generally opting instead for collections of images and motifs that, like modernist poetry, create an underlying mood without obvious coherence. This time around things are generally much more simple and direct. The repeated codas of “I don’t wanna get over you” in ‘Sorrow’ and “I don’t have the drugs to sort it out” of ‘Afraid of Everyone’ mean this album has more obvious bedroom anthem moments. Nevertheless, there are still enough curious turns of phrase to retain the charm of the oblique. It is all very serious stuff, mind; there’s certainly nothing approaching the black humour of “It’s a common fetish for a doting man to ballerina on the coffee table, cock in hand” in Alligator’s ‘Karen’. But The National always wear their melancholy well, and with plenty of sincerity.

They’re a band that produce music that is well worthy of further analysis, and there is still more that could be said to recommend High Violet. Suffice to say, however, that The National have reasserted themselves as perhaps the finest purveyors of American indie since the early days of R.E.M.

Archie Bronson Outfit - Coconut

You would never mistake a track by the Archie Bronson Outfit as a Bob Dylan number. Yet whatever the “thin, wild mercury sound” Dylan strived to create for all those years actually sounded like in his head – or on Blonde On Blonde, the record on which he felt he came closest to realising his musical imaginings in exterior reality – it’s a description that seemed equally fitting for this Wiltshire trio’s previous album, Derdang Derdang.

In tracks such as ‘Modern Lovers’ and ‘Got To Get (Your Eyes)’, it was frequently a fraught, claustrophobic affair that could leave listeners’ stomachs feeling tight and skulls tighter still. Guitar lines sparked, drum beats cracked, vocals cut through the air. It was a thrilling LP that seemed to capture the cold light of an overcast morning reflecting off smashed glass and shattered mirrors.

Four years on, the band’s third album, Coconut, still has both that exciting sense of knife-edge volatility and the bluesy roots that were evident on their debut, Fur. This time, however, it’s delivered in the form of a rather more solid, cohesive sound – and brilliantly so.

The fuzzy, psychedelic riff that opens proceedings in Magnetic Warrior, joined a few seconds in by a heavy bassline and a Caribbean beat, form a real statement of intent. Indeed, with first single Shark’s Tooth underpinned by a highly contagious military beat and ‘Hoola’ provoking involuntary shoulder-shuffles from anyone in its vicinity, this is a record that has a true groove about it.

‘Chunk’, a slightly sickly-sounding gloop of synth-beat, is unfortunately out of kilter with the rest of the album. But this is only one brief duff note, and it’s easily forgivable given the charming melancholy of ‘Bite It and Believe It’, the chilling undertones created by titling the warmest tune on the album ‘Hunt You Down’, and the driving force of ‘Harness (Bliss)’.

January 27, 2010

After a wait of almost four years since the release of their last album, Derdang Derdang, it’s good to be able to report that the Archie Bronson Outfit haven’t subjected themselves to the whimsies of stylists in the fields of either music or fashion while putting together their new LP. The beards are still there, they still shun the need for roadies by doing their own pre-set tuning, and while they may have recruited a synth-player, rest assured they haven’t gone all ’80s on us.

In fact, on the evidence of tonight’s set upstairs at the Lexington, they have instead taken the approach of adopting a much heavier sound in their new material. At times, especially during the brass-accompanied opener ‘You Have A Right To A Mountain Life/One Up On Yourself’ and the frenetic dance-of-death jig that is ‘Magnetic Warrior’, the driving bass and the thunderous drums sound as if they could feature on a Metallica album. However, Sam Windett’s typically high, frantic and thrillingly unstable-sounding vocals, atop his edgy guitar riffs, somehow keep things just about melodic enough that you still feel you want to groove to their psychedelic trysts rather than mosh.

Yet of the new songs – and only two of the 11 they play, ‘Kink ‘and ‘Got To Get (Your Eyes)’, are old ones – it sounds as if one of their few slower efforts could end up being the best of the lot. The Michael Stipe-esque vocal melody of ‘Bite It & Believe It’ proves so haunting that even days after a single three or four minute-long exposure, it still seems to be echoing around one’s inner-ear.

In short – and it’s a pleasure to be able to say this – it seems as if Coconut, due to be released on March 1, really may be something special.

Richard Hawley

From the very earliest moments of his sixth studio album, it’s clear that Richard Hawley has adopted a rather different approach to his songwriting this time around. The initial ambient hum, which only steps aside for the first gentle plucks of acoustic guitar more than a minute into ‘As The Dawn Breaks’, is markedly different to anything we’ve come to expect from Sheffield’s beloved crooner. It forms a suitably cool introduction to what could be classed as his Tangled Up In Blue, his Sea Change, his Boatman’s Call.

Ok, it’s not a break-up album, but Truelove’s Gutter does bear many of the same hallmarks found on those three profoundly intimate works in its plaintive affirmations of love. A sense of late-night melancholic reflection is present throughout; here is a portrait of a man who has, indeed, “soldiered on for so long”, sitting alone with his guitar, thinking.

However, whether Hawley quite succeeds in that most difficult of tasks – namely, expressing feelings and examining situations that are unique to him, but in such a way that they strike a chord with anyone who takes the time to listen, thereby transforming the personal into the universal – is another matter.

This is an album has clearly been lovingly recorded, bearing a beautifully nuanced texture of wistful echoes and the unusual sounds of such esoteric instruments as the megabass waterphone and the crystal baschet. Gone are the rockabilly jaunts of the likes of ‘Serious’ from Hawley’s previous album, or the kind of soaring, swelling finale that he rendered so perfectly in ‘The Ocean’ on Cole’s Corner. Instead, the range of musical styles is much tighter, while its pace and mood are also more consistently measured. The quietest moments, particularly on the blissfully minimalist ‘Don’t Get Hung Up On Your Soul’, are invariably the best.

Taking his new songs individually, it is rewarding to hear Hawley painting his world of slate roofs and washing lines in deeper, more expansive and more contemplative forms. But in running at over 50 minutes long – despite being made up of just eight tracks, due largely to ‘Don’t Cry’ and ‘Remorse Code’ both clocking in around the ten-minute mark – for all there is to admire in Truelove’s Gutter it certainly runs the risk of testing the listener’s patience.

This isn’t helped by the fact that, while Hawley’s voice is as rich as ever, the melodies, rhythms and pauses of his vocals sometimes feel too familiar. At times, he seems to settle into the kinds of lyrical patterns used in older songs a little too comfortably, with the end result that one or two tunes are somewhat predictable, particularly in the case in ‘Open Up Your Door’.

By narrowing his variation in tone and mood while simultaneously increasing the length of his songs, unfortunately it has to be said that Hawley has produced an album which when listened to in its entirety tends to drift, rather than challenge or engage. It’s a pity, because it does contain some of his most sensitive work.

Slow Club

September 24, 2009

From the first glimpse of the tops of their heads bobbing up and down right in the middle of the suddenly hushed Scala audience, it’s easy to see why Slow Club have gained such an enthusiastic following. If their debut album is impossible to dislike, then their live act has more than enough charm to convert even the smallest hint of passing interest into unabashed love by the end of the evening.

The duo have a surprisingly strong body of songs given their youth; ‘Wild Blue Milk’ didn’t even make the cut for the standard edition of their debut album, but the unamplified rendition amongst fans on the venue floor makes for an entrancing opener.

However, the warmth of Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor’s harmonised vocals and catchy melodies is only half the picture.

There’s a rare directness and purity to many of their lyrics, which are unadulterated by the meaningless rhyming couplets and laboured metaphors that are all too often the stock material of bands with plenty of enthusiasm to play music but little they want to say through it. And the kind of inventive yet timeless lines that make up ‘When We Go’ – “If we’re both not married by 24, will you pass me those knee-pads and I’ll get on the floor” – stand out all the more when the eyes of their creators are right there, shining with sincerity at what’s being sung.

Also, while few bands really understand how talk to their audiences – and still fewer to actually talk with them – Slow Club have no inhibitions on that front either. There’s an infectious sense of humour in the banter that runs between the pair as they argue about what to play next, and though Rebecca confesses that of late she has been trying to cut down on her cutsey, northern-accented ramblings between songs, the attitude of most attendees tonight must surely be ‘long may they continue’.

Called back on for a second encore, Charles admits that the reason they had not planned on playing any more songs was that they don’t have any more to play. And, when their attempt to finish things off with ‘Apples and Pairs’ falls apart at the seams, with Rebecca pointing out with a giggle half way through that Charles has begun singing her vocal parts by accident, it’s obvious he wasn’t lying. But if ever there was a way to end a gig with a shambolically underprepared, stop-start performance and yet still leave the crowd feeling even more endeared, Slow Club somehow seem to manage it.

A Beatles box-set

To say I was trembling in excitement upon the rerelease of The Beatles‘ entire catalogue of albums would be exaggerating things. But there was an undeniable sense of fun in waking up, getting out of bed, drawing a comb across my head and heading off into town on Wednesday morning with the sole, specific aim of buying one of those 13 records. There was a real sense of anticipation at the thought of eventually having that chosen CD within my grasp (I decided to limit myself to just one at first, in order that I can continue to periodically satisfy my urges for retail therapy long into the coming winter months), before getting it home, sticking it on the front room stereo, and laying out on the carpet to listen to it on some proper speakers with no distractions.

I wanted to relive the kind of old-fashioned record-buying experience that was once part and parcel of being a music fan, but which is all too unfamiliar for us modern music lovers. I decided to make this effort because the CD I would be buying wouldn’t be just any old thing; it would be a Beatles album, one of those veritable treasure troves of pop, newly remastered and re-packaged and smelling, well, not as fresh as a daisy, but as fresh as a mixture of card, paper and plastic possibly can when newly released from its polythene wrapping. Having never owned my own copy of a Beatles album before, I wanted to wring every last degree of satisfaction out the experience of finally putting that right.

Once instore, there they all were – which one to go for?

At first, I considered Revolver, if for no other reason than simply the curiosity of hearing whether a remastered ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ could possibly sound any more vibrant than the previous version, this being a song that still picks me up by my lapels and pushes me and my scrabbling limbs against a brick wall every time I hear it. (For years, whenever I heard in a club I had assumed it must be a Chemical Brothers remix of some old Beatles song, rather than something the Fab Four recorded themselves as far back ago as – can it really be true? – 1966. Listening to that track is like seeing a black-and-white yet oh-so-NOW Marlon Brando teaching the world how to act while sitting on that swing and playing with that glove in On The Waterfront; it simply doesn’t belong of it’s time.)

I also thought about buying Sergeant Pepper’s… , in order to do the obvious: sit down and look at all those little faces more familiar to history textbooks than albums covers while listening to that other great Beatles finale piece, ‘A Day In The Life’, just as so many kids did back in the day.

But, in the event, I went for the White Album. Walking home, running my fingers over the embossed text on the spotless front cover and nearly bumping into a jogger while reading the lyric sheet, I was happy with my choice. And finally, while staring at the half-cut apple on the face of the second disc while listening to the best advert British Overseas Airways Corporation could ever have dreamed for on the first, I was happier still.

However, there was of course a certain amount of self-delusion involved in all of this.

After all, I had just spent money on a 40-year-old album that was already on my iPod (courtesy of having raided the CD collection of a friend’s 60-year-old father during her New Year’s Eve house party a few years ago). And, like almost every other remaster I’ve ever heard (the rare exception being The Stooges’ Raw Power) to my ears it was never likely to sound any different from its previous incarnation. And yes, dear reader, even though for once this was an album that wasn’t already available on iTunes, I could still have saved money and energy by ordering it online and waiting for the postman to bring it to me – or even by indulging in some dirty bedroom criminality by turning to file-sharing sites.

But this was not just a Beatles event: this was probably the last time we’ll ever see a major release issued in physical form alone, and given the paucity of choice of non-Beatles music available in most HMV stores these days – that being the last survivor of the major highstreet stores that originally made their names by selling music – where the shelves are instead full of DVDs, Blu-ray discs and Playstation games (including Beatles Rock Band) it might be the last time that many people ever buy a CD in a record shop, if at all.

The compact disc does not hold the romance of vinyl, but at least the CD, and its accompanying artwork and packaging, are tangible objects. I don’t want to sound like an old fart, but… (whoopee cushion at the ready?) I can still remember going into Our Price and buying my first ever CD at the age of seven – it was the soundtrack to Wayne’s World, I’m unafraid to reveal. Will a child of this century remember, or want to remember, the first time they ever downloaded an mp3? Probably not. Does it matter? Perhaps it doesn’t. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, ‘n’ all that. Although I still buy most music in the form of whole albums, and all of those albums I buy on CD rather than by downloading, even I tend to listen to them on Spotify first, to check out if they’re worth spending money on, and then order them on play.com to save money. But this time I thought it might be wise to spend an extra pound or two by shopping in the high street – it probably won’t be long until I no longer have that option.

Some might say that wanting to own an album and its artwork in physical form rather than simply feeling pleasure at listening to music regardless of any other concerns is just another aspect of the conspiracy of consumerism, but then I wonder what Peter Saville – designer not only of those alluring Joy Division and New Order record covers but also the infamous sandpaper sleeve for The Return of the Durutti Column that would damage the albums stored alongside it – would have to say about that.

In any case, it’s fitting that the last great hurrah of the traditional physical release should be provided by The Beatles, given that they did as much as anyone to make the LP a force to be reckoned with as a work of art, even if it is only a matter of months before their work is uploaded for some digital pick ‘n’ mixing too.

In an increasingly virtual world, bringing a little bit of reality back into my life by rubbing my fingertips over that embossed lettering was a welcome reassurance.