St Etienne - Words And Music By St Etienne

By Greg Salter

Saint Etienne understand pop music. They know that all the clichés about pop music are essentially true – that it soundtracks the most important, pivotal moments in your life, that hearing a particular song or melody can immediately take you back in time to those moments so that they never really leave you, and even become a part of who you are. In a way, Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs didn’t need to make an album like Words And Music By Saint Etienne for us to know this – the band began (even before Cracknell joined full-time) by fusing post-acid house dance elements with ‘60s and ‘70s pop and ‘80s synths and have, over 20 years, created albums that sound like patchwork, subversive, unrelentingly melodic histories of popular music.

For all their decades of dedication to the cause, the band have never sounded quite so in love with pop music as they do on Words And Music By Saint Etienne. This is a wistful, heady album dedicated to the way pop music inhabits our lives, or the way our lives in habit pop music – check the map of Croydon on the sleeve doctored with song titles for road names, landmarks and stations, and Cracknell’s assertion in album opener ‘Over The Border’ that she “used Top Of The Pops as my world atlas”. The songs move without a care through genres, from ‘60s chamber pieces to pulsing modern chart pop (care of Richard X and Tim Powell) and the effect is a bit like flicking through a collection of 7s built up over years and playing one after the other or, indeed, scrolling through the cover flow on an iPod.

For much of its run time, Words And Music By Saint Etienne effortlessly toes a line between this genre-hopping, a fair amount of nostalgia and hook after hook after hook. The largely spoken word opener ‘Over The Border’ would be twee if it didn’t cleverly pinpoint the tiny details of growing up obsessed with Top Of The Pops, music magazines and buying tapes from Woolies, an experience possible from the mid ‘70s to the very early ‘00s. Similarly, ‘Heading For The Fair’ and ‘Last Days Of Disco’ ache with memories coloured and perhaps distorted by pop songs, while also managing to be fairly extraordinary pop songs in their own right. Not all the album is rooted in the past however – ‘I’ve Got Your Music’ captures the sensation of putting on a pair of headphones and escaping (“I feel love in digital stereo”) and album standout ‘Tonight’ the anticipation and sheer joy of gig-going. These are moments that could happen at anytime, songs about the continual, ever-present power of pop music, and it’s testament to the band that these songs could easily soundtrack the kind of moments they’re written about for listeners in 2012.

It bears repeating – though Words And Music By Saint Etienne does deal in nostalgia (an obsession for both musicians and music writers, it seems), it puts those feelings into brilliantly constructed pop songs that feel partly indebted to the past and its emotions, but also resolutely now. Saint Etienne don’t need to disguise a lack of hooks with atmosphere or tape hiss like the majority of younger acts – on the album’s second half, ‘Popular’ is a crisp, leftfield pop gem, in the mould of the songs Xenomania used to chuck Girls Aloud’s way a couple of years ago. And then there’s ’25 Years’, which is probably the most melodic rumination on mortality you’ll hear in a while (unless Morrissey is planning on working with Calvin Harris on his next album) – it’s full of euphoria as well as melancholy, just like the best pop songs. And on top of that, it encapsulates the way Saint Etienne are thinking about music on this album – pop songs as memories and milestones, but also possibilities and hopes, whole futures.

The Invisible - Rispah

Now Playing – twice every week, a roundtable of our writers will give their views on some of the recently-released new tracks. It’s as simple as that! If you want to tell us what you think of the song, feel free to leave a comment below.

Track: ‘Protection’ by The Invisible

Average grade: 5.8

Kenny: Five and a bit minutes worth of nothing particularly inspiring. The guitar sound at times made me thing of early U2 as it chunders along with the lyrics circling around ideas of shelter, protection and being taken under someone’s wing (when you can make them out). 4/10

Richard: The system is broken, everything is muffled and distorted, and the atmosphere is desperately morose. The Invisible have created an artistically minded subtle manipulation of the senses with ‘Protection’; a lesson in corrupted percussion, and intricate instrumentation.

‘Protection’ gets very special indeed around the two and a half minute mark, a genius blend of atmospheric goulash as everything whips around  and storms in through the ear canal. 8/10

Tom: The Invisible have good beats.  If you want intelligent, complex, polyrhythmic fun these guys deliver.  ’Protection’ is let down a bit by lyrics and a tune that don’t reach the same heights, rather predictable.  But the rhythms give this track all its atmosphere, and make it worth 5 minutes of your time. 7/10

Stef: I really liked their first album and thought there were some expertly crafted songs on there (I even interviewed them, mind you). This one, though, I find it hard to enjoy it. It all seems so muddled, so on one level that it just seems that everything blends together into a big mush. 4/10

MV + EE - Space Homestead

By Kenny McMurtrie

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

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

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

Smoke Fairies - Blood Speaks

By Kenny McMurtrie

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

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

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

Dot to Dot 2012

By Paul Faller

Website / Tickets

It’s arguable that the UK is beginning to suffer from festival fatigue – even big names like Sonisphere have fallen victim to the tough financial climate. With that in mind, city-based festivals are looking like more and more of an attractive proposition, providing the opportunity to pick from a myriad of bands for a fraction of the price of larger events, and with the added bonus that you can worry less about the weather and don’t need to sleep in a tent. Since its inaugural year in 2005, Dot to Dot has expanded from its roots in Nottingham to include dates in Bristol (since 2007) and Manchester (since 2010), establishing itself as an excellent event to catch both up-and-coming bands and more established acts – and this year looks to be no exception. The festival’s three-day stint starts in Bristol on Saturday 2nd June, then the action moves to Nottingham on Sunday 3rd June before finishing up in Manchester on Monday 4th June.

The headliners for this year’s festival are Brooklyn indie-popsters The Drums and ever-exuberant Leeds rockers Pulled Apart By Horses. Elsewhere on the bill there’s the blissful, sunny pop of Summer Camp, much-talked-about Bombay Bicycle Club collaborator Lucy Rose, resurgent American indie-folk troubadour Willy Mason, kings of lo-fi slacker-rock Wavves, and ultra-hip New York collective Friends. Or perhaps you might be more partial to Aussie psych-rockers Pond, some face-obliterating rock from Turbowolf, or the minimalist acoustic soul stylings of Willis Earl Beal. Fans of Odd Future will be excited to hear that Syd Tha Kid and Matt Martians will playing some of their first UK shows as The Internet at Dot to Dot this year, and Manchester even gets a nice bonus in the form of the trippy electro-pop of Neon Indian.

If all that wasn’t enough, you’ll find plenty of up-and comers further down the bill to turn your attention towards. There’s smouldering female-fronted rock from 2:54 (not in Bristol though, sorry), intriguing electronic indie from Clock Opera, grandiose, emotional folk from Admiral Fallow, Futureheads side-project Hyde & Beast, and the atmospheric indie rock of Deaf Club. Fans of lo-fi punk will find much to love in Cloud Nothings and The Men, while those looking for something a bit off the wall would do well to check out the brilliantly bonkers Islet or the one-man looping/beatbox machine ThePetebox. Also nestled in the middle of the lineup is Jake Bugg, who may well be this year’s biggest “catch him before he’s massive” artist – his retro, bluesy tracks have already been hyped by the likes of Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq, and he’s currently on tour with Michael Kiwanuka.

Even after that bevy of talent, there are still more acts to be announced. Some of these exciting extras have sneakily appeared on the various Facebook events for the festival, including London gloom-rockers O.Children, sublime NY electro-indie duo The Hundred In The Hands, and a DJ set from Olugbenga of Metronomy. The final line-up and details of venue splits and stage times will be up on the Dot To Dot website soon, so keep an eye out there for all the details. With tickets still going for a measly £20 (plus booking fees etc etc), Dot To Dot is shaping up to be a fine way to spend a day during the next bank holiday weekend.

Best Coast – The Only Place

Now Playing – twice every week, a roundtable of our writers will give their views on some of the recently-released new tracks. It’s as simple as that! If you want to tell us what you think of the song, feel free to leave a comment below.

Track: ‘The Only Place’ by Best Coast

Average grade: 4.9

Anna: Always happy to receive some surf pop, perfect for when driving to the beach (or riding on the train in the rain in May, thanks). As it is more polished than the previous offerings though, the weak flatness of the vocals is more pronounced and this in a way brings the infectiousness down a bit. I’m not exactly sold on the sincerity of the lyrics’ naivety either. 5.7/10

Linda: Best Coast’s previous album, though hailed as the return to surf pop by some, was never really my thing. Perhaps it is because I never really spend any time listening to that one, that this new track seems as innovating as Mitt Romney’s ideas about America.  3/10

Stuart: This is a quite cute and jangly listen that makes me wish (though just for second) that I was back in the late-’90s / early-’00s when this kind of stuff dominated the alternative charts and I could squeeze into my pair of ridiculously straight-legged pink flares. It’s fluff, but inoffensive, upbeat and clap-along happy fluff. And here’s a prediction: this summer, this track will feature on an advert for either a bank, a mobile phone network or a sanitary towel. FACT. 5/10

Harry: It’s a classic Best Coast track. A lively low-fi pop song about the west coast with a cute little melody – But that, in itself, is a problem. This shows little development or change in direction from the debut album Crazy For You. Bland, unimaginative and uninspiring lyrics about how wonderful California is coupled with a happy-go-lucky chord sequence hardly makes the “dark”, “emo” and “grown up” music Bethany Cosentino promised. Oh well. It’s a sunny Summer track for a sunny Summer’s day. 5/10

Stef: A nice jangly affair by Best Coast. However, jangly stuff has never been my thing, but it is nice enough to listen to when you go on a road trip or something, and I like the sentiment behind it (if I listened to it correctly, which might or might not be correct). 6/10

One Little Plane - Into The Trees

By Richard Wink

Kathryn Bint has a voice that you can only fall in love with – fragile, beautiful, spellbinding, perfect for earnest Department Store advertisements and the first kiss scene from a film adaptation of the latest smash hit Young-Adult Fictional Novel. Into The Trees, the enchanting singer’s second album as One Little Plane, following on from 2008’s Until, is a real gooseflesh inducing moment capturer.

Produced surprisingly understatedly by Kieran Hebden, the album is a collection of calming songs with a few curveballs thrown in to avoid the listener falling into a pleasant mid-afternoon slumber. The first couple of songs are idyllic acoustic frolics into the land of placid and predictable. ‘Nothing Has Changed’ actually at one stage goes limp, and requires a welfare check.

And so it goes on. ‘Paper Planes’ at least ups the tempo, and I suppose that is a tick in the ‘pros’ column. But, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhh we’re back in dulltown on ‘It’s Alright’ and I don’t think I can take much more. I reach for the fork on my writing desk, still stained by the Bolognese sauce from the microwave meal I devoured two hours ago and the temptation to stick it into my one remaining good eye is overwhelming (the other one was lost in a clay pigeon shooting incident back in ‘07).

Six tracks in and there is something a little bit futuristic emerging from the minimalist electronica of ‘Bloom’, aside from this and the penultimate song ‘I Know’ which is an angry little blighter there really is a distinct lack of variety and scope, and considering the creative parties involved, you really would expect a lot more.

There is a sense of knowing smugness on Into The Trees which troubles me. Bint knows she has ‘the voice’, yet there doesn’t appear to be any hint of sincere emotion apparent. Perfection can be a weakness, particularly given that creating music is about expressing…. something… anything. Hebden’s production seems to reveal a reluctance to tamper too much with what isn’t broken, i.e. let’s keep this nice and folky, and not mess with the traditional formula; and Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood who provides bass guitar on the album, buzzworthy endorsement aside, his contribution matters little.

Bluntly speaking, I dislike this album. It bored me terribly, and for all the delights of Bint’s vocal performance there is about as much insight on display here as there is on your average post-match Football phone-in.

Amon Tobin

By Nick Cowan

May 12, 2012

Ninja Tune favourite Amon Tobin delivered a second tour of ISAM, an audio-visual spectacular of his most recent album at Brixton Academy on Saturday. On stage, an ominous structure is shrouded in darkness. It’s made up of a collection of large cubes resembling a giant game of Tetris that isn’t going too well. Inside, the homunculus electronic producer/DJ Tobin pushes magic buttons and a kaleidoscope of CGI wizardry is projected onto the cubes in time with the music, rendering far off landscapes, spaceships, vivid colours and other fit-inducing scenes. The awe-struck audience searches for the appropriate response to this sensory overload, some twitch and some dance but they aren’t in the majority. Those familiar with Tobin will know that danceable beats are not offered up easily on ISAM with hip-hop and jazz beats slammed against jerky, droning noise. On top of this there’s a massive cube made of spinning machine parts to watch; most people resign themselves to a humble head nod.

The large machine morphs into a spaceship that jets off into space, bid farewell by a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ as shooting stars fill the cubes like a Window 97 screensaver. Every so often the central cube is backlit and Tobin is revealed. At one point he acknowledges the now quite high crowd and conducts ‘Wooden Toy’ in time with a giant projection of himself made out of sound waves before disappearing back behind the veil, presumably to read the paper while no one can see. Seeing music and cube work in harmony is enthralling but occasionally does feel a bit like a Nokia PR stunt. You half expected the CGI spaceship to morph into a snazzy phone showcasing all new social features that will finally make life worth living.

Later on Tobin moves away from ISAM to deliver a more conventional and danceable set and the visuals take a back seat (well, as much as a 25ft pulsing cubes of colour can take a back seat), which loosens the crowd up enough to dance some. For the encore, Tobin decides to calm things down and brings the show to a close with an ambient end. The decision seems slightly misguided given that it’s only 10:30pm and by the looks of the crowd, most will be heading on somewhere to satisfy their now expanded need for sensory input. But all in all it’s a good show and it’s great to see Tobin investing in creating unique live experiences, however you can’t help wondering how engaging the set would be without the visuals. Well, if all else fails, you can always put on ISAM and watch this.

Here We Go Magic - A Different Ship

By Matt Churchill

An incongruously industrial introduction to A Different Ship leads into an intimate folk track, singing about how it’s ‘Hard To Be Close’, with a gentle vocal positioning itself near enough to your ears to make it seem, in fact, quite easy. Building from an upbeat acoustic guitar accompaniment, the backdrop to this track gradually layers up to a plush landscape, continuing to grow in stature right to the end of the song. This broad sound then snaps us into a claustrophobic shuffle with ‘Make Up Your Mind’. Whilst the gentle build up of the album opener does take you away from the simple opening, it does not prepare you for this that would fill an intelligent dancefloor. Probably the most immediate track on Here We Go Magic‘s new album, with hushed, clipped lyrics and an enticing lilt of a chorus, it only disappoints when it ends without an ending.

It is possible that this is due to the decision to switch mood again, as it falls to the very relaxed falsetto verses of ‘Alone But Moving’ before picking up that upbeat feeling again with ‘I Believe In Action’; the former appears to be espousing the joys of solo travel, suggesting “Alone but moving/ Only place to be” with the latter decrying both loneliness and noting that “Not moving does not mean you don’t move.” Whether intentional or not, the opposing slow to fast(er) dynamic of the tracklisting does seem to be reflected in a little lyrical turmoil here too.

Whilst A Different Ship has been arguing with itself a little, to good effect of course, there are harmonies to come on ‘Made To Be Old’, with a few other voices used almost as just another layer to the complex sound that lies behind the lyrics. For fear of sounding like we’re angling for a key change, this track does highlight a tendency to steer clear of really launching a song when the opportunity arises. The music may start to build, the vocals get a bit urgent, but it doesn’t quite take off in a joyous cacophony as you feel the songs may want to. Perhaps the band is merely ascending above the obvious pleasures in favour of more interesting ideas, of which there certainly are plenty.

Moving on from that attempt at a complaint, and after the dancey one earlier on, we get to the radio-friendliest track in ‘How Do I Know’. It has what appear to be the simplest lyrics (“How do I know/ If I love you”, for instance) and a generally joyous feel, constructed by that now characteristic constantly building sound, it adds “aah aaah”s, rhythmic “woo woo”s and hand claps on the home straight. It may be that it dismantles itself a little early and a little quickly at the end, or it may just be that you don’t want it to end.

End it must though, and the album does so with the title track, which mixes effects-laden ’80s pop with stalling choruses, out of the back of which all the spare ideas and sounds seem to tumble as it draws to a brooding close. A Different Ship may occasionally steer clear of the shallow fun of the crescendo, but it successfully navigates a route through exuberant and intelligent, allowing you to enjoy the tunes and admire the craft of Here We Go Magic.

Simian Mobile Disco - Unpatterns

By Kenny McMurtrie

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

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

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