Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, from near the front of main stage: atop a sign, below a screen
August 28-29, 2010
Leeds Festival is a sheer delight. The crowd isn’t necessarily dead excited for one band in particular, more enthralled by the sheer amount of things at its disposal. … Continue Reading
hudson mohawke
July 31, 2010
I get off the bus early, mindlessly following some scenesters on the assumption they are Field Day bound. My assumption is misplaced, adding half an hour to my journey, but not misguided. Field Day annually entertains a few thousand hipsters with an enviable line up of musical innovators, vanguard pop and fairground rides. However, with the last three years blighted by sound issues, ridiculous queues and the unforgiving weather – murmurs of style over substance have been rippling through Victoria Park. … Continue Reading
Arcade Fire
July 7, 2010
Ladies and Gents, the Arcade Fire are back. Returning to London for a ’secret’ show at the Hackney Empire, the anticipation is huge. The band is using this gig to road test songs from their upcoming LP, The Suburbs, and boy oh boy, it sounds like a fantastic record.
… Continue Reading
Janelle Monae - Hoxton Bar & Kitchen
July 1, 2010
Beware: Janelle Monáe has her sights set far broader than the confines of Hoxton Bar & Kitchen.
Entering the stage to the left of two be-cloaked dancers wearing long, pointy-nosed masks recalling both Eyes Wide Shut and something more sinister, more shadowy and more Illuminati, anticipation is high and the temperature is higher on this hot summer night. And this era-less imagery in combination with Monáe’s taut, asexual monochrome dress is just one vehicle for expressing not only the characterisation at the heart of The ArchAndroid, but also her desire to be the next biggest and most undivisive star. … Continue Reading
Primavera Sound 2010
May 27-29, 2010
Primavera Sound has a secret. Ostensibly it’s one of dozens of indistinguishable European festivals, easily filed away with Sonar and Benicassim somewhere close to the Mediterranean. If you’re slightly more attentive it’s a Spanish uncle to ATP that’s booked increasingly populist headliners in recent years. Whisper it: it’s the best festival in the world. … Continue Reading
Joanna Newsom
May 12, 2010
Doe-eyed, Joanna Newsom skips out onto the stage after a very agreeable set from Roy Harper, who is ‘thankful to Joanna for getting me out of retirement’. Cherub-faced and wearing a chequered dress, she looks suspiciously like she’s not in Kansas anymore. Part of her charm, though, is that she is an artist of contradictions – she looks and sounds like a child, but she has the musical dexterity of a seasoned pro. … Continue Reading
The Slits
The Slits are on stage and the Tories are in power. We’re rocking back to 1979. Just as David Cameron is a warmer, smoother, sexier version of Margaret Thatcher, the new Slits are now less raw and raucous. They haven’t sold out, though! Johnny “Rotten” Lydon might be doing adverts for butter on TV, but the Slits exist for their music, and they’re still rocking – led by Johnny’s step-daughter Ari Up. … Continue Reading
The Big Pink
May 13, 2010
Dark, ominous and electronic is the theme of the night at London’s HMV Forum – so much that the floor is shaking like an earthquake on speed and Red Bull. … Continue Reading
Caribou - photo by Natalie Shaw
April 20, 2010
Caribou rip apart Corsica Studios tonight. Dan Snaith’s web of sound gets so fraught and tight that it explodes, leaving a formerly modest crowd fixated on a lengthy set. There’s not enough room in the sold-out venue to physically express this, so a crazedly-focused silence has to do. Snaith is joined by a drummer, bassist and keyboardist, and himself switches between keyboards, guitar and a second drum-kit, mixing old and new input.
‘Melody Day’ from Andorra whips up a fever quite differently to how I’d anticipated. Why? Because the recordings sound so perfect, so compelling, I imagined much of the live show to be drawn from samples rather than this flatly laid-out live show. But no, I’m mind-blown – it’s like all of the layers have just found each other, somewhere deep below, and happened. … Continue Reading
Caribou - Swim
Caribou – Dan Snaith and cohorts – is a band on a real high. Their previous album, ‘Andorra’, was awesomely confident, combining lo-fi sensibility and folk tunes with a live performance that mowed down everything in its path. The album version of keystone single ‘Melody Day’, was haunting and lovely. The live version was another matter, the band unleashing something seriously primal on stage. They toured with two drummers downstage, one kit featuring Dan Snaith when not playing guitar and/or keyboards and singing, and the other kit force of nature, Brad Weber. Their live presence was honed over the course of a mammoth tour, and the final gig at the 2008 Green Man Festival was a highlight of the year, Snaith and Weber ending the show standing on their kits pounding the skins as though conjuring dark forces in exchange for their souls.
Once you’ve reached a climax that cathartic, where do you take your music next? I freely admit that my heart sank a little when I pressed play on ‘Odessa’, the first track on new album ‘Swim’, and realised Dan Snaith has turned to dance for his answer.
‘Odessa’ – although who could dislike a band with a penchant for naming their songs after exotic-sound places for no apparent reason – is a divisive opener. It has a killer riff, but it lacks the irresistible energy of Caribou’s best songs. It also sounds disconcerting like the mid-90s Orbital of ‘In Sides’, an album to which time has not been kind. The video is all elliptical snowy road trip scenes, filtered through smoke, reflections and lens flare, a fitting analogy for the music which is slight but insistent, masking emotion behind a frosty vocal and crispy beats backed by vibrato flute and keyboard riffing. The vocal is the main problem here. By standardising his voice, Snaith seems to have sacrificed a crucial distinctiveness that made ‘Andorra’ so compelling, although the chorus “She can sing, she can sing…” is hard to forget.
‘Odessa’ is still, on balance, a quality track, but ‘Sun’ heads a lot further down the wrong route, to all intents and purposes a gloss on Orbital’s ‘The Girl With the Sun in Her Head’. It’s hard to justify any more trippy songs based around repeating “Sun, sun, sun, sun, sun…” It’s not a shorthand for acid-drenched good times, it’s just lazy and annoying. Then ‘Kaili’… Snaith, what have you done? Surely the whole album can’t be like this, a succession of trudging, blissed-out keyboard riffs with all the effects buttons pressed at once, and the vocals strangled by a vocoder?
Things start to look up a little with ‘Found Out’, with the vocals more up front and the beats more inventive, and the organ weirder and psychedelic. It also gets up off its arse, and generates a little momentum, building tempo and distortion, taking the listener with it rather than lying on the grass, staring at the clouds and ignoring everyone.
Then there’s ‘Bowls’, which appears to reference the Tibetan singing, rather than the lawn variety. It’s an instrumental track that sounds like a small army of crickets route-marching through a cymbal shop. It has a distinctly Buddhist atmosphere, temple bells playing counterpoint to turntable flickers and clicks. It’s really rather fantastic, light as a prayer flag but laying down a serious, unrelenting groove. This is more like it: the real Caribou hallmarks are here, music you didn’t know you needed and won’t be able to do without.
And we’re off, with what sounds like a jug tune introducing ‘Leaving House’, then tin can percussion and a mysterious, menacing falsetto vocal that seems to be telling someone that it’s time to go.
‘Hannibal’ is a delightful track, the album’s highpoint, which employs a detuned piano, a muted horn section and an infectiously bouncy bass to irresistible effect. It’s a shame Caribou can’t maintain the standard throughout, but this track alone makes the album worthwhile. Rather than feeling the need to tick tedious dance boxes, ‘Hannibal’ brings a smile to your face through unrestrained inventiveness and silliness. By the time the vocals arrive at 5.05mins, we’re ready for anything.
‘Jamelia’, the final track, isn’t a million miles from ‘Odessa’ but works better because it gives more space to Dan Snaith’s singing, while retaining capacity to surprise with it bursts of church organ, and sad melodies oscillating through a valve wireless. The whole song has the acoustics of an illicit cassette recording taking from the radio and played down the telephone.
‘Swim’ refers to the new, liquid sound that Caribou attempt to create on this album. Sacrificing the characteristic ‘Andorra’ sound is a brave, but necessary move, but through much of this album Dan Snaith has thrown too much away. ‘Swim’ is best when it still sounds like Caribou, and surprising bad when it falls into the trap of imitating others. Listen to this, for sure, but skip tracks 2-4 for a guaranteed satisfaction.
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