Of Montreal - Paralytic Stalks

By Russell Warfield

At this point in Of Montreal’s career, it’s becoming just as much fun to guess what they’ll do next as it is to actually hear it. Beginning their life as a jingly-jangly ’60s pop outfit, more recent efforts have included a sort-of concept album which saw vocalist/mastermind Kevin Barnes transform into a black transsexual funk vocalist called Georgie Fruit halfway through its running time, as well as an hour long patchwork of thirty-to-sixty second ADD-riddled vignettes. 2010’s False Priest split the difference, combining the electro-funk production of Skeletal Lamping with the ready-for-radio song structures of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?. Eager to buck a trend before it’s even formed, however, Paralytic Stalks delivers itself without apology as Barnes’ weirdest, darkest and least accessible work yet.

Take the most obvious example (the clue is in the title): ‘Exorcismic Breeding Knife’. A seven minute nightmare of atonal string samples, drum fills amounting to nothing, and menacing spoken word – it’s the most abstruse thing Barnes has yet put to tape. And whilst being the album’s most outlandish moment, it nonetheless feels in-keeping by the time of its appearance. Laced throughout the whole record is a wilful darkness and rawness, with many songs shunning the colourful, zillion-tracked harmonies synonymous with the band, choosing instead to deliver songs with a stripped back, vulnerable and naked single tracked vocal.  Take the ‘Spiteful Interventions’ chorus of “I spend my waking hours haunting my own life. I made the one I love start crying tonight and it felt good”, delivered in a more deeply impassioned howl with each repetition, as the emotional intensity ratchets up across the songs’ running time, arriving finally at an violently overwrought “pheelllt GHOOOUURRD!!”.

The fact that the vocal delivery can evolve alongside the songs’ development on Paralytic Stalks is an important one. Certainly, these aren’t songs which have the verse-chorus three-minute pop structures of False Priest, but there are structures in place here, repeated refrains and recurring passages serving as landmarks and frameworks for these songs, providing a central sense of purpose to these tracks as they meander through darkness for running times of up to thirteen minutes. Unlike the seemingly randomly thrown together snapshots of Skeletal Lamping these pieces (perhaps owing to the obvious modern classical influences of the closing tracks) seem to have been conceived of as wholes, whilst retaining that thrilling ability to wander off in surprising new directions.

Plenty of people (including myself, on initial listens) will think Paralytic Stalks is the bridge too far that Barnes has always threatened to cross – a headlong dive into the abyss of narcissistic self-indulgence. There’s more than enough grounds for such a position. For instance, while Hissing Fauna displayed an invigorating inability to self-censor, Barnes’ lyricism has since morphed into a stubborn refusal to self-edit. Some of these tracks are overwhelmingly wordy, as if Barnes is incapable of expressing a thought in anything less than eight syllables longer than a line ought to be. As a result, the verses of these tracks often turn into interchangeable mush, devoid of melody.

On a different head, it’s also very difficult to imagine how some of these elongated passages of dissonance and abrasion are going to integrate into the live show. I’ve hellish visions of slack-jawed crowds being forced to stand through four-plus minutes of ambient guitar feedback and jazz flute as Barnes gives birth to himself out of a vagina on his own forehead, set to strobe lighting. But if you’re anything like me, I’ll have provoked your curiosity with my opening claim of this being Barnes’ weirdest record yet – a claim which will probably tip the balance of whether or not you listen to this album regardless of anything else I might or might not say about it. On those grounds – I’ll leave things here, offering only the advice that it’s an album which isn’t going to ‘click’ (if it ‘clicks’ at all) on an initial or cursory listen. For better of worse, it’s Of Montreal at their logical extreme: hyper-stuffed and challenging, but consistently interesting.

John Talabot - Fin

By Greg Salter

‘Debak Ine’, the opening track on John Talabot’s debut album Fin, builds slowly. It opens with samples of a jungle – birds and other creatures squawk as crickets hum and chirp, transporting you to the oppressive heat and dank greenery of a rainforest while also creating the vaguely unsettling ambience upon which the rest of the track is built. It’s a seven and a half minute opener, and it’s not until after the 4.30 mark that ‘Debak Ine’ really settles into a groove – before then, beats and melodies have come and gone and it’s only with the arrival of a (muted) 4/4 house beat that things really start to get going. Still, it’s a phenomenal opener and sets out what Talabot’s music is all about – euphoric elements from house, techno and disco are set down alongside a more introspective, and occasionally dark atmosphere across the whole of Fin. And there’s patience too – Talabot never goes for the quick, easy pay-off and the tracks on Fin follow the template on ‘Debak Ine’, building slowly, thrillingly and exquisitely as you listen.

Patience is something that Talabot probably knows a lot about – he’s been releasing tracks under this particular moniker since 2009 and has been working on Fin since 2010 (the album was initially going to be released at the end of last year). You can hear why it took him so long to deliver as it’s incredibly detailed, both carefully composed and sequenced, much like the work of other introspective electronic artists like James Blake and Nicolas Jaar. However, while they strip their songs away, leaving only the bare bones of bass, beat and voice, Talabot isn’t afraid of layering and building. As a result, Fin feels like a testament to his compositional skill as well as his perseverance – the title, he has said, comes from the moment when he realised that the process of making the record, and a particular period in his life, was coming to an end.

If Fin has come from a period of quite intense work, it’s important to note that it never sounds laboured or formulaic. The tracks sound energetic and vibrant, fluidly moving from one to the next, and often taking unexpected detours, such as into the paranoid techno and sampled screams on ‘Oro y Sangre’ – this translates as ‘Blood and Gold’, perfectly encapsulating the way Talabot often layers unsettling elements over references to balearic hedonism, like a dark cloud looming over a beach paradise. Talabot has said that he didn’t want to make an album that was just a collection of house 12s, and, as clichéd as it sounds, this is music that takes you on a journey or seeks to tell a kind of story as one 52 minute whole.

But there are still a few standouts, particularly the two tracks that feature Pional – we’ve already heaped praise on album closer ‘So Will Be Now…’ where Talabot builds on a Burial-esque vocal sample, creating something euphoric and haunting at the same time. It’s melancholic, but it keeps moving, right up until it clicks out poignantly at the end. There’s also second track ‘Destiny’, built on a more traditional, bubbling house beat and cascading vocal harmonies – it’s Talabot’s most ‘pop’ moment so far, though it shimmys with a little bit of moody uncertainty.

Fin’s closest cousin in recent years might well be Caribou’s Swim LP in that both records ebb and flow vibrantly, veering between approximations of pop songs and more abstract instrumentals. However, while Caribou’s album sounded like the work of an instrumentalist finally working out to incorporate dance elements fully into his music, Talabot sounds like he’s moving in the opposite direction, pushing at the boundaries of how a solo producer can make a record. Like Swim, Fin is also an emotionally affecting album – Talabot twists his clearly beloved influences into emotive shapes, moving your heart and your head as well as your feet. As a result, Fin feels still, even after so many listens, like a record not just to get lost in but also to emerge from, rather like Talabot has done – after the album finishes it remains difficult to shake off, surely a sign that we’ll be listening to this for some time yet.

Cloud Nothings - Attack On Memory

By Paul Faller

Discussing the title of the third Cloud Nothings record in a recent interview with Pitchfork, Dylan Baldi said that he “wanted to make it apparent that it’s an attack on the memory of what the band was.” It’s fair to say that Attack On Memory makes good on this promise, marking a significant progression from the lo-fi pop punk sound of his previous LPs.

As if to get his point across as forcefully as possible, the record begins with the two tracks that will arguably be the most alien to those who’ve previously heard anything by Cloud Nothings. ‘No Future/No Past’ kicks off the album with some uneasy sounding guitars and deliberately atonal vocals – despite its languid pace, the song feels knowingly confrontational, almost daring you to hate it. It almost succeeds too – and yet, there’s something commendable about its brazen disregard for everything you thought you knew about the band.

The record continues to challenge our preconceptions with ‘Wasted Days’, which, at nine minutes long, is the most ambitious thing Baldi has yet attempted – and to his credit it actually works. The track is a powerful, relentless and chaotic downward spiral, beginning with guitars that bristle with defiance before its extended instrumental section whips up a glorious dirge. Its key lyric is the repeated mantra of “I thought I would be more than this” – sung with snarled bitterness at first, but screamed with furious self-loathing by the song’s end. More than any other track on the album, there’s a genuine and palpable sense of anger in Baldi’s voice, and it makes ‘Wasted Days’ one of the most exhilarating moments on the record.

‘Fall In’ seems positively cheery by comparison, despite its chorus lyric declaring that there’s “nothing left for you to use.” It feels like one of the moments where Baldi touches on the ‘old’ Cloud Nothings – but even so, it’s a more self-assured, muscular version of that sound. The same can be said of the defiant, thrashed out chorus of ‘Stay Useless’, and by the time ‘Our Plan’ rolls around, it feels like this is the way the band should have sounded all along – brash and intense, yet tinged with melancholy.

Of course, the more experimental side of Attack On Memory isn’t limited to its first two tracks. ‘Separation’ is a super-tight, ultra-fast instrumental that only pauses for breath to throw some wonky-sounding guitar into the mix, while ‘No Sentiment’ sees Baldi howling his point across over an evil-sounding, minor key stomp – “We’re over it now/We were over it then.” Indeed, there’s a prevailing sense that Baldi is angry about a lot of things on this record, and ‘Cut You’ hints that the age-old theme of lost love may be just one of those subjects – “Is he gonna work out?/I need to know/I deserve to know.” Its abrupt fade-out also brings the record to a rather sudden end – that’s not to say that the record feels too short at eight tracks long, it just feels like it lacks a fitting sense of closure.

Any minor quibbles aside, listeners to Attack On Memory are faced with a stark choice – either join Baldi in his purging of the past, or go back to listening to Cloud Nothings and pretend it never happened. Whatever you think of his updated sound, you certainly can’t fault his ambition – he’s clearly chosen to challenge himself instead of just carrying on down a path that he no longer found fulfilling. For that reason alone, it’ll be worth sticking around to see what he does next.

Lana Del Rey - Born To Die

By Russell Warfield

By and large, I’ve successfully insulated myself from the Lana Del Rey whirlwind until hearing Born To Die. An indeterminate number of months ago, a friend of mine asked me if I’d heard ‘Video Games’ yet.  I gave it a cursory listen of about twenty four seconds, gave it an internal two word review of “some bollocks”, and left it at that. My first observation/concession about the actual album: ‘Video Games’ is not the “some bollocks” I originally fingered it to be. Simplistic and manipulatively melancholic on first listen, it reveals itself as a vehicle for a haunting and addictive melody – ultimately a much higher cut above the similarly omnipresent weepers from the likes of Adele.

It’s reasonably surprising to discover, then, that ‘Video Games’ is something of an anomaly on Born To Die – by far the most downbeat and stripped back number on an album otherwise laced with smoky hip-hop influences. Sure, the entire album preserves that hazy gauze of Xanexed listlessness, but more commonly does so with a stuttering and skipping low end back-boning the whole thing. It’s not a new combination of production techniques, of course – overwrought strings, crackling beats and monochrome vocal delivery being a three-pronged hallmark of the mid ’90s trip-hop trend – but it’s a sound which affords Born To Die a lyrical and musical cohesion of morbidity mixed with nonchalance.

With the autumnal and sterile arrangements acting as a backdrop, Rey is best supported to deliver her slightly detached vocal takes, describing states of decay, dangerous love and personal unfullfilment. People have accused Rey of being somewhat stiff and wooden, but this would seem to me to be missing the point. I’m more willing to give her the benefit of the doubt as being at least self aware if not outrightly satirical: the self-deprecating cynicism of songs like ‘This Is What Makes Us Girls’ and ‘Off To The Races’ coming across like the monologues of characters in Bret Easton Elis novels; wandering listlessly from one high-end Hollywood venue to another, too jaded to be disgusted.

But for her vocal affectations of detachment, it’s not as if she lacks dynamic or range. On the contrary, Rey frequently switches sharply between vocal registers; often successfully getting away with should-be naff modes delivery. Something like ‘National Anthem’, for instance, which delivers a chorus blending a colossal Radio 1 hook with half baked rap lines does a good job of not drawing unwanted attention to itself. It’s a thin line walked insufferably badly by similarly hyped artists like Jesse J (who, listening to the kitsch-urban posturing of songs like ‘Diet Mountain Dew’, is actually a closer cousin to Rey than you might imagine) but one which is largely navigated well by Rey. One of the kindest things you can say about Rey is that she never overplays her hand: sometimes leaving herself open to accusations of being dull, sure, but never naff.

As I reach the conclusion of this review, I’m aware that I might’ve hit upon the very definition of damning with faint praise: “Lana Del Rey is more tolerable than Jesse J”. But sadly, it is true that – for such an excessively hyped album (and hyped by plenty of ‘credible’ outlets) there is ultimately largely little to gush about on Born To Die; an album where ‘Video Games’ is its head and shoulders highlight, flanked by plenty of paint-by-numbers choruses, before eventually sinking into an almost entirely featureless final third. There’s plenty of stuff to like and admire on Born To Die, but it mainly lies in in abstraction and potential. The effective partnership between production and vocal, for instance, gives the album a good ‘feel’ and a strong sense of aural identity. But this is nothing, of course, without the songs to back it all up, and these songs (granting some exceptions for the clutch of hit-single candidates) often lack in execution; feeling two dimensional, half-sketched, obvious, and – to be blunt about it – irrevocably dull.

The Twilight Sad - No One Can Ever Know

By Steve McGillivray

No One Can Ever Know is the third release from Scottish band The Twilight Sad. With a reputation for ear splitting live shows, the band are generally known for dark, moody indie rock, but the release of the latest album signals a shift in sound for the band. The darkness prevails but the music is tinged with nods to ’80s synthesiser-driven pop and industrial rock. Will this evolution be too much of a departure from their previous work or will it signal a new and exciting chapter in the band’s development?

Opener ‘Alphabet’ starts off at a fairly slow pace and the synth dominates the sound, with some droning notes underneath the crisp drums. There’s more substance to the sounds going on underneath the main instrumentation, predominantly from the synthesiser. Vocally it’s as you’d expect from The Twilight Sad – in other words, it’s excellent. On first listen the standout track was ‘Dead City’. Opening with a booming drum beat and some disconcerting soundscapes, the synth and bass kick in setting a good tempo. Vocally it’s a little bit unsettling, with a sinister and menacing edge. In a word this song is stunning. It sweeps you along, but not in an uplifting manner, yet almost paradoxically it leaves you with chills. I’d say this is one of the best songs these guys have done and the rest of the album is in danger of going unheard with me hitting repeat all night.

I do manage to avoid the temptation though, and skip forward to ‘Sick’, the first single from the album. Perhaps suffering slightly from having to follow ‘Dead City’, this is nonetheless another top quality track. There’s a good beat and nice repeating guitar, with a post-rock feel to it. Again the synths and some programmed drums add new colour to the overall sound. The tempo is high again and vocally it’s very strong, being delivered with a lot of emotion and feeling. This is what sets James Graham apart form most vocalists for me. He takes you places others can’t because when he sings he means it and you can tell he’s lost in the moment and in that realisation he invites you in with him. The album keeps the highs coming. ‘Don’t Move’ is another great track, with a menacing edge. “And I’ll hurt you, more than you’ll ever know” sets the tone immediately. The synths certainly give the overall sound a different feel to previous albums, but the core of the band is the same – they’ve just added a few new tools to their box of tricks and the feeling is the band have grown into this new sound. On ‘Nil’ for example, the rawness to the vocal style is there, feeling almost traditional at times, but the organ like synth gives it a twist. The tempo isn’t always high. On songs like ‘Don’t Look At Me’ and ‘Not Sleeping’, it’s not crawling along, but it’s mid range and each song smoulders away, feeling both uplifting and dark at the same time. A fine trick that they seem able to pull off with ease.

While the previous two tracks may have slowed things down a little and allowed some reflection, the final two songs grab you and beat you senseless in the best possible way. ‘Another Bed’ opens with a big beat and a great synthesiser track. The tempo is high and vocally it’s great. Between verses the synth ramps things up and that edge, the barely hidden threat contained in the lyrics is back. “I’ll find you. Don’t worry” – it doesn’t sound like it’s a good thing if that happens. Closer ‘Kill It In The Morning’ has an urgency to it. The music manages to sound like an alarm going off, creating a sense of unease. The tempo is once more pretty high and is maintained throughout, with the song gaining in intensity as it progresses, finally stripping back to the vocal only in the final few seconds.

Summarising this album could run to several hundred words, most of them superlatives so I will try and be brief. This album is utterly compelling and fantastic from start to finish. It has high tempo, big beat songs and slow burning, intense songs. Musically the band have taken what they do best, and under Anti-producer Andrew Weatherall’s watchful eye, have added synths and an industrial edge to the music. The new sound feels like a natural progression and the band have been always been vocal in their “adapt and move forward, or die” attitude and they should be roundly applauded for that. Come the end of the year this will feature in lots of Best of 2012 lists. Come 2019, it will feature in lots of Best of the Decade lists. It’s brilliant and you should buy it immediately upon release.

Nimmo And The Gauntlets - Young Light

By Joel Stagg

Nimmo And The Gauntletts have been steadily increasing their profile over the last year or so, as part of the Strummerville foundation’s band roster, mentored by Emmy the Great, and having appeared at Secret Garden Party and the Eden project as well as frequent live appearances in Brighton and London. Now with Young Light, they finally deliver on their promise and emerge with a strikingly confident EP that’s bound to delight fans old and new and strongly situate them as one of the more exciting young guitar bands of the present moment.

They add to the expected tenets of modern indie-pop-ish guitar music with a healthy amount of saxophone and the soulful, duelling vocals of band namesakes Sarah Nimmo and Reva Gauntlett, providing more than enough to help cleanly separate them from some of the more run-of-the-mill contemporary guitar bands (hello, Viva Brother). Whilst the American music scene has provided bands like Warpaint and Vivian Girls recently, it’s hard to remember the last female-led British band that packed this much character, attitude and energy (save maybe Veronica Falls), and for this reason also, Nimmo and the Gauntletts make for a breath of fresh air.

It’s a short and sweet collection of five 3-4 minute pop songs, but the quality of the song-writing remains consistently high throughout. The album kicks off with ‘Dealing Desire’, a spritely, upbeat song of young love, passion and confusion – recurring themes throughout, but themes dealt here with genuine creativity and heartfelt emotion. “When you find your friends, well who are you, who are we?” croons Nimmo, then Gauntlett too, and then the whole band, on the song’s soaring breakdown, and the song envelopes the listener entirely in its moment.

‘Bandol Blues’ pushes the tempo up another gear, as well as exhibiting some of the bands’ best word-smart, linguistically playful lyrics. “And well I tried, to take you downstairs, but I fell down the stairs and you didn’t care” laments Nimmo, injecting some humour into a song of love, fear and death. Centre-piece of the EP ‘Chin Up’ tightly weaves together the most interesting elements of Nimmo and the Gauntletts’ music into an irresistible slice of indie-dance-pop, whatever you might want to call it, that would surely unite many-a-drunken stranger at 2am in a club into an almighty hoedown. ‘Fleur Du Lis’ is another gem, beginning with darker chords, whilst Nimmo and Gauntlett trade verses of romance and uncertainty, centred around the song’s irrepressible refrain of “I don’t want to be your friend, I don’t want to be your lover, I’m trying to pretend that we are okay”.

But Young Light elevates itself one step further with the closing track of the same name. A pulsating slow-burner that builds and builds, the song is the strongest indication of real depth and longevity from the five-piece. The eventual climactic refrain of “Well yeah it’s in my head, it’s in my heart, it’s in my soul” over pounding drums, euphoric backing refrains and sweeping violins from Josh Faull, marks the EP’s most potent and lingering moment, before it’s all bought cascading down with two final hushed lines from Nimmo leading into violins and saxophone, by this point all that remains, closing the collection on a powerful note.

Young Light marks the band out as one of the freshest and most promising new acts in the UK, with some of the catchiest uptempo guitar music of recent times cohabited by a real emotional punch and yearning, and more than enough individuality to contend with the current wave of guitar music for ear and head space. Nimmo and the Gauntletts assuredly stake their claim as a band to watch in 2012 and Young Light is definitely worth getting acquainted with.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Stage Whisper

By Solange Moffi

Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of you know who (if a well-guided and true muso you are, that is), has proved an effortless coolness magnet with the likes of Air, Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon, Tony Allen and Nigel Godrich all standing in line previously to put their stamp on the self-converted chanteuse’s cap, on 5:55 back in 2006. Three years later, she even enrolled fiddler extraordinaire, Beck, to tailor-produce her next LP, IRM. The pair seems to have enjoyed the experience so much, they brought a sequel to their collaboration with a part-studio/part-live album.

More like a blended EP-cum-Best of, Stage Whisper showcases  Gainsbourg’s improved vocals from the ridiculously  tone-and-tuneless whisper, for that matter, of her early days (see her with-Daddy duet, ‘Lemon Incest’) to the intended whine of ‘Set Yourself on Fire’ or the perfectly enacted sprechgesang  on ‘AF607105’. She even leads the dance on tracks like ‘Heaven Can Wait’, the bass-heavy ‘The Operation’ and the metal-y ‘Tricky Pony ’ – it’s enough to forgive her for giving Dylan’s epic ‘Just Like A Woman’ the nursery rhyme treatment.

As for the new tunes, they confirm her penchant for breakbeat with the opener, ‘Terrible Angels’ (the video of which sees her clone herself into a car park dancing queen), and ‘Paradisco’. Nevertheless, her timbre remains best-suited to toned-down ballads as heard on ‘Anna’, ‘White Telephone’ and the very Melody Nelson-esque ‘Out of Touch’. This said, the top drawer of these newbies has got to be the well thought-through (both lyrically and melodically), synthetically gut-grabbing and dramatic duet with Charlie Fink of Noah and The Whale, ‘Got To Let Go’, which is indeed “a deadly revolver to your head”.

All in all, the album feels like a well-staged whisper. “Encore!”

Errors - Have Some Faith In Magic

By David Lichfield

A stylistic shift is always a welcome move when a band hits the second or third wind of their career, and the already unique ambience magicians Errors may be a man down after the departure of Greg Paterson, but there’s little on the Glasgow trio’s third full-length album Have Some Faith In Magic to suggest that the band haven’t reassembled themselves effortlessly to no detriment to their craft, adding vocals to their lush and layered hook-laden soundscapes and ultimately yet another weapon to their already formidable artillery.

Whilst on the whole continuing to move away from the uptempo, cinematic danceability of debut album It’s Not Something But It Is Like Whatever and building upon the widescreen adventure of 2010’s Come Down With Me, Errors still manage to provide a few instantaneously infectious slices of euphoric synth-led pulsation amongst offerings such as the gripping, head-spinning cinerama of last Spring’s single ‘Magna Encarta’ and recent towering, pulsating download and thrilling album centrepiece ‘Earthscore’. The finest example of this is lead single ‘Pleasure Palaces’, a cacophony of euphoric and atmospheric electro laden with delicious hooks and a nod to the 1980s which in no way compromises on the utter sense of the contemporary and relevant on show.

The sense of drama and intrigue that has always coloured Errors work, from 2006’s How Clean Is You Acid House? EP through classics such as ‘Pump’ and ‘A Rumour In Africa’ is reassuringly intact here, and although comparisons to acts such as Battles and their close associates Mogwai have always been justified, Errors continue to maintain a sense of real identity which means it’s impossible to pin strong, constant comparisons with any other band upon them.

There’s always been a sense of melancholy in the melodic work of Errors, but just when you think a track is going to descend fully into the wistful, they’ll bounce back with a passage of true rhythmic grit and determination as demonstrated finely on ‘The Knock’, with its low-end analogue synths complimented fully by sparse and evocative bleeps and what eventually progresses to a defiant rhythm. Steve Lingstone, who provides vocals and is largely the spokeperson for the group, has described Errors’ current approach to the architecture of their tracks in recent interviews, speaking of avoiding passages that have already been heard in a track in favour of progressive musical journeys, and this approach certainly suits the widescreen ambition of Have Some Faith In Magic.

Although this is the first Errors album to contain real vocals, don’t expect to be quoting any of the lyrics any time soon. Nine of the ten tracks do house vocals, but these are delivered in such a chant-like, echo-laden and indecipherable manner that they are more akin to being another instrument rather that a tool for describing Errors’ world view in words. Yet again, the sense of hypnotic melancholia is expressed perfectly through instrumentation, and the album is none the worse for it.

One other territory that the album ventures into is that of chillwave, with blissfull, mid-paced electronics colouring some of the album’s more laidback tracks such as ‘Blank Media’ and ‘Cloud Chamber’, with acts such as Washed Out and M83 being a number of names that spring to mind upon experiencing them. Similarly, the glistening, stabbing synths of ‘Barton Spring’ are gorgeous and lovely, but these moments are never drippy and the drama is always that of raw emotion.  These vivid swirls of grandiose, heavily-reverberated soundscapes are still unmistakeably the work of Errors however, and its genuinely thrilling to hear a band incorporate such new worlds so seamlessly. With the loss of Paterson, the electronics may be more dominant but the album’s running order allows for more breathing space. Additionally, this makes the higher-BPM moments seem like they have truly earned their place on the schedule and allows for a diverse, confident adventure of a long-player from a band that have truly hit their stride.

Richard Youngs - Amaranthine

By Tom Bolton

If anyone’s channelling England’s dreaming, it’s Richard Youngs with his baffling, absorbing fragments that seem simultaneously alien and a fundamental part of us. The debate about Youngs always seems to get hung up on trying to describe and categorise: “Is this album more ‘avant-garde’ than the last?” or “Is he still experimental, or has he sold out?” This is definitely missing the point. His music is highly original, and seems to exist to defy and destroy categories. Nor do definitions help to understand what you’re hearing. He experiments, for sure, but the significance of his work is in its ability to help the listener value sounds and musical experiences they might otherwise dismiss.

Amaranthine is the latest instalment in a talented and entirely unpredictable career that stretches back over a series of twenty-plus albums, all remarkably different.  He’s so prolific that it’s easy to miss an instalment or three of his oeuvre, by which time he may well have passed through several distinct phases of creation.  His 2010 album, Beyond the Valley of the Ultrahits, was unexpectedly pop and used conventional song structures to great effect.  Last year’s Amplifying Host definitely did not, sounding like deconstructed folk with the individual elements separated out and fixed with a puzzled, fascinated gaze.

Clearly, it’s the sign of a quality album when you need to look the title up in a dictionary. It’s an even better sign when the title is as well chosen as Amaranthine, which turns out to mean ‘unfading’, after a mythical, dark purple-red flower that never fades. Enya seems to have had the idea first, but let’s skip over that. The album in fact does fade, improvisation fuzzing in and out like a flickering consciousness. It consists of four long tracks. The first, ‘Hopeless Warrior’ begins with tribal drumming rattling and clattering, and Youngs’ thin, high voice declaiming in a distorted, rhythmic pattern. A creaking electric guitar swaps registers, layering over the polyrhythms. It’s impossible to tell exactly what words are being sung, but they include the refrain “It’s just a hopeless warrior I am.” The song is plaintive and melancholy, and intensely awkward in a Jandek manner.

The album then segues into ‘State I’m In (California)’ which seems to mix mental with physical states. The vocals become clearer, but the drums become choppier and even more complex, sharing equal status with the singer. The rhythms are fascinating and impenetrable, and Youngs seems to be in a state of confusion himself. He sings “How can I know? / the state I’m in / don’t come easily / California”’ in a repeating, overlapping round with himself.  It’s a stunning track.

‘Everybody Needs a Sword’ contains the repeated phrase “In London I cannot see / everybody needs a sword” over low electronic throbbing and more mind-bending percussion. Youngs sounds urgent, like a street preacher with a message that nobody will understand in the same way. He sings in a mantic reverie that ‘Nobody needs a vision’, but it sounds as though his vision is just more penetrating than everyone else’s.

Finally, ‘The Power Come Out’ is a sort of ecstasy in which Youngs seems to chant “Ommmm…” as he sings revelations such “Power come out / I heard one thousand calls”. A meandering, treble guitar solo floats over the top, and the percussion whirs and chunters. At times it sounds almost blissed out, although the white guitar noise that cuts in halfway through could either be the hum of eternity or something vast and menacing approaching from a long way off. It’s immense and unfathomable, a song struggling with the contradictory nature of being. And, let’s face it, there aren’t many people around at the moment making music with that level of ambition.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Amaranthine as unlistenable, wilfully perverse music, although some undoubtedly will. It’s disconcerting, at times frustrating, but also rich and strange with the power to repay the listener with compound interest. Richard Youngs is a musician worth listening to, and that really means listening actively, with a mind receptive to the unexpected. Amaranthine is fractured and even distraught, but it’s also a deep purple, unfading thing of beauty.

The Bevis Frond - The Leaving Of London

By Kenny McMurtrie

A concept album about the BBC’s relocation of staff to Salford? Or the heralding of an exodus of those disinterested in the Olympics this coming Summer? Whatever the theme of studio album number 22 from Nick Saloman and cohorts the eight year hiatus since the Hit Squad album hasn’t degraded their talents in any way. Indeed Saloman is still hands on enough throughout the process of constructing The Bevis Frond’s works that he’s the album producer and sleeve photographer/designer. Freedoms not to be sniffed at in an increasingly controlled and passively observant society.

As noted above this is a group with plenty of back-catalogue to sift through, but while they now have the thoroughly modern means of a website available via which to do so, the sound of these 18 new tracks is as rooted in the psychedelia of the late Sixties and early Seventies, not to mention more classic rock, as ever before. Not that you should take from that the impression of tie-dyed older blokes getting wistful about the drugs they can no longer safely consume – right from the opening of ‘Johnny Kwango’ there is a clearly annoyed venting of spleen at the state of things in the UK and the wider world.

‘Barely Anthropoid’ bemoans the passivity of many who grumble but won’t even email their MP let alone make more vocal complaints. ‘You’ll Come’, one of the highlights amongst the faster tracks here, gives the likes of Dinosaur Jr (even pre-reformation) a run for their money. As for that matter does ‘Heavy Hand’. The softer pedalled songs are by no means weak however and the emotional depth of the likes of ‘Testament’ or ‘Son Of A Warm Gun’ are likely to strike a chord with many.

Dad-rock this isn’t and given that plenty of household names of a similar or older vintage are plying their trade as mere shadows of their former selves (hell many younger ones are too) it is always refreshing to be reminded that those who have failed in a sense to “make it” have nevertheless kept their heads above water and not deviated from the path they set themselves on and manage to make music worth paying attention to still.