A mixed bag from Aphron, who seemingly can’t decide whether they want to be a sweeping, emotive pop outfit, a heads-down rock band or a limp collision of the two. Opener ‘The Obfuscation’ is aptly titled – a nicely-arranged, keyboard-laden piece, but one which plods along likeably enough without ever really amounting to much, and which keeps us guessing at what they’re trying to pull off. ‘Louder’ immediately ups the stakes, the change in pace suiting the flourishes of keyboard and baritone vocals well to produce something of interest. What ‘Louder’ does for showing off the band’s strengths, sadly ‘Severed Land’ does for their weaknesses: there’s too much emphasis on some fairly weak lyrics and the change in dynamics two thirds of the way through is abrupt, and not in a pleasant way. And for a second there, it almost – almost – has the stamp of Mick Hucknall’s pink pancakes, so that’s where we leave…

Aphron

This was a very pleasant surprise; somebody I know gave me the album with their recommendation and, as I often do, I took their recommendation with a pinch of salt and placed the CD on my slow-moving ‘things to listen to’ pile. But now with my new capacity for listening to CDs in the car, I spent a happy trip to and from work today, listening to ten lovely, warm-sounding tracks of very vaguely electronic, very vaguely indie-pop, very vaguely sad, very vaguely uplifting melody.

I like this because of its simplicity and effortlessness. The vocals remind me very much of Broadcast – clearly enunciated and odd in tone – and that band’s dark side is here too, albeit with a sweeter edge and a less dense sound. The lyrics cover the usual boy/girl/love lyrics, but in a combined honest and tangential way which adds to the charm. What at first seem like straightforward pop songs bear repeated listening with their slightly oblique lyrics, melodies and structure.

Guther

Synths go plonk and beats spit and hiss on this latest release from the Highpoint Lowlife lot. It’s actually billed as being part of the ‘indie-electronic landscape’, whatever that is, and it’s certainly easy to imagine that this is the kind of electronica that fans of Tortoise’s more recent output would get on very well with, for better or for worse. By which I mean that it shares some of the traits which have been bogging down post rock over the last few years – caught up in their own composition and finding it hard to break from the self-imposed formula that keeps most of the album entrenched firmly in its own niche, the tracks hint at a portentousness they simply don’t have.

The album’s intricately put together and admirably precise, but for all the sweeping minor chords and syrupy washes, it can be difficult to find the heart of this music. The tracks build and drop in all the right places to say ‘come, emote with me’, but it’s an evocation to something inconsequential or ephemeral for the most part. The tunes are certainly pretty in places, and the uncluttered space in which the ideas in each track find themselves is refreshing, but they tend to flirt with substance where they should be making bolder claims for themselves. ‘Square Wheels’ is notable because it ups the pace, throws in a couple of nice breaks and works around a simple but effective melody; as such, it’s immediately head and shoulders above the rest of the pieces here.

Highpoint Lowlife

Now this is more like it. Soulo approach their music with an admirable anything-goes attitude that sees them throw a stack of instruments into some microphones and recording the results. Not that there’s anything random about the record – it’s a fine balance between orchestrated electro pop and synth-fuelled downtempo goodness. More often not, this admirable scope of ideas runs into the kind of chops and breaks that Ninja Tune put out when they’re not plastering the coffee tables of Hoxton with 85bpm easy listening. ‘What Do You Say After Hello?’ is as frazzled as Homelife’s finest moments, while ‘Daddy’s Girl, Mama’s Boy’ approximates to Super Numeri rehearsing in the same room as Capitol K. ‘The Peter Principle’, meanwhile, starts off with some crumpling, distorted kicks, which fade back into a lush arrangement, like Beck taking the spanners to the Cinematic Orchestra.

Naturally, there are moments when the album doesn’t hold together as well as it might, and when they lose their focus, the record can sag into periods of indifference. When they’re sitting still on one theme, there’s a sense of restlessness, and in fact they’re much stronger when screaming excitedly through a series of shorter tracks like a sugar-fuelled child in a toy shop. It’s perhaps short of the one or two classic tracks that might propel it on to great things, but if you’re a fan of throwing a load of ideas against a wall and seeing what sticks, á la Max Tundra, this is well worth a listen.

Soulo

Sadly, not a descriptive title from a one-man kazoo outfit, but a maudlin four-piece rock outfit from Nottingham. ‘Friendly Guy’ has a stab at epic, sweeping chunks of rock, but doesn’t take it far enough beyond bog-standard quiet/loud territory to mark it out from a few thousand other bands, and the verses give a little too much emphasis to some gratingly pitying lyrical content. They’re much better when they keep things uptempo – there’s Matt Bellamy-esque intonation to James Housley’s delivery, thankfully without the wailing histrionics, and the pace is kept crisp and lively throughout. But I have to wade through thirty boxes of this sort of stuff just to get into my room, and the band really need to push themselves out on a limb and forge something individual from their strengths if they’re gonna make a name for themselves. Oh, and get a man playing a kazoo.

Man Playing Kazoo

CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG. Macaque from Finland possibly own a few Helmet records. ‘I Wanna Be Your Failure’ and ‘Whatever’ both trundle along inoffensively enough at a brisk walking pace, but without an instinctive grasp for a killer hook with which to beat you into submission, they plod from muted verse to not-quite-epic-enough-to-pull-this-sort-of-thing-off chorus. There’s a laconic vocal somewhere between Page Hamilton at his most bored and Eddie Vedder musing to himself in the shower, and the kids certainly know how to CHUG. The pace change in ‘130’ is welcome, with a promisingly all-over-the-place breakdown at the end spoilt by a final track reminiscent of constipated mid-nineties grunge outfit Moist. They’re not without talent, certainly, but it all sounds too noncommittal to get excited about. C’mon fellas, we wanna see some blood!

Macaque

It’s no secret that I have more than a passing interest in the music of Cat Power, but when a press release comes covered in references to Matador’s finest, I get the fear: it’s usually a pretty lame ‘girl with guitar sings sad songs’ comparison that detracts from both artists. Thankfully not so here: while Alina Simone might not be possessed of the kind of voice that tenses every nerve in your body, there’s an impressive, understated elegance at work in these five songs that suggests she’s cut from the same cloth as Chan Marshall. ‘Louisiana Song’ (the highlight here) treads a similar path, obliquely and vulnerable, and unfolding a story just as shyly as it gives up its musical secrets; it wouldn’t sound out of place on Myra Lee. Alina’s at her most impressive when the songs are at their quietest, her backing musicians filling in the spaces with an admirably light hand. Elsewhere, there are shades of Julie Doiron in the poised, smoky tones of ‘Prettier in the Dark’, and maybe a touch of Shannon Wright in the arrangement of ‘Siberia’. In amongst these touchstones and reference points may be the biggest challenge for Alina at the moment – carving a niche in a crowded field of some rare talent. But if songs as gorgeous as the remarkable ‘Louisiana Song’ continue to appear, she could just be onto something.

Alina Simone

This album has been a major pain in the arse. There I was, all busy writing in some mildly ridiculous manner about my favourite musical emissions of the past twelve months, happy in the knowledge that my top ten had been pondered on long enough during idle (i.e. working) hours so that I hadn’t forgotten anything. Then I finally remembered to get hold of the second album from Thee More Shallows.

Y’see, this is the only goddamned thing I’ve heard all year that I’ve liked that isn’t almost entirely instrumental/huge swathes of drones/bizarre free improvisation/enormous bouts of riffage [delete as applicable]. It’s almost normal. The gorgeous half-whispered vocals are your focus, empowered by the only lyrics I’ve been interested in outside of an Anticon record in years. The music underneath is generally understated and gorgeous, subtly using complicated rhythms and fascinating textures. The recording is absolutely sublime too – everything is warm, well-placed, and fits together beautifully. Fuckit man, this what I dream pop music would sound like all the time.

“It’s almost normal.” Actually, I should modify that: It’s almost normal. Which is maybe the best thing about TMS – they can start an album with a completely incongruous opening of mildly cheesy electronic drums and synths, and after a couple of listens you won’t even blink an eyelid. There’s the jarring realisation that they’re singing about mass graves in the midst of the album’s most touching musical moments in “Ave Grave”. There’s the second of the record’s awesome one-two punch of middle tracks “Cloisterphobia” and “2am”, which features a high ringing toy piano picking out the lead melody with a sound that woke me up with a jolt after I had slumped asleep drunk and emotional listening to the album for comfort one night, and for a good ten seconds I was convinced that I was stuck in hell, and this was the soundtrack of my eternal misery. Somehow, this traumatic event has failed to temper my enthusiasm for listening to this song whilst sober. And then the last track, “House Break”, which builds oh so imperceptably yet inevitably… and just when you’re thinking it’s about to kick in for one glorious tallyhooing farewell hurrah, TMS have the gall to undercut your expectations, and end this record how they want to – not with a bang, but with a whisper. Which is both gorgeous and utterly appropriate.

Damn these guys. As if I didn’t think highly enough of their first record, they have to go and top it with this effort. My minor quibbles about ‘A History of Sport Fishing’ – sometimes I think perhaps it’s a little overlong and occasionally unfocused – have been not so much addressed as obliterated this time around. Clocking in under 40 minutes (a good 20 less than their debut) and with a laser-sharp focus on music, lyrics and mood, I’ve found myself listening to ‘More Deep Cuts’ at least once a day since it arrived on my doorstep. I just can’t help myself: this is pretty much perfect music. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Bastards!

P.S. I hear word that they’re coming to Europe in Spring 2005. I suggest you attend, if only to prod them into playing Joy Division’s ‘Disorder’ again.

www.theemoreshallows.com

www.monotremerecords.com

There are certain song titles you cannot argue with, and ‘Punk Rock Vampires: Destroy!’ is one of them. Yep, Zombina and the Skeletones are one of those bands – y’know, the ones that dress up like SKELLINGTONS and sing about bloodsuckers and Plan 9 From Outer Space and Hammer Horror and A-bomb testing and and and… Anyway, it’s a breakneck sprint through a deserted graveyard of schlocky reference points that certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome – if you’re a fan of Little Hell, Russ Meyer or Evil Dead 2, you’ll find something to get off on here. These tunes clearly take their cue from The Cramps, but with less of the evil Elvis psychobilly melodrama and more on the handclappy pop punk side of things. In places, it’s a little lightweight, but it’s the same difference as watching Ring for the first time and being chilled to your very core, and getting a massive candy floss sugar buzz and going on the ghost train. It ain’t scary, but then it’s not supposed to be, and the whole thing is a bubbling test tube of undead shoxploitation goodness. Now, in the absence of Zombina’s first horror movie, I’m off to dig out me copy of A Date With Elvis…

Zombina and the Skeletones

I maintain that this is one of the best albums ever made. I’ve gone on about it before on diskant but now we have this reviews column I can get to do it again. Here is a blow by blow account (no pun intended)…
Not to put too fine a point on things, this album was made in the most fucked up conditions possible. It’s worth reading a biography about the Mac to get the full picture but basically John McVie and Mick Fleetwood represent true survival instincts at work to the nth degree. The Mac had been through all kinds of insane line up changes and had to contend with guitar wiz Peter Green going AWOL on a mental acid induced religous freakout. If I’d recorded Oh Well and then my band broke up I’d probably think I’d done enough to go into the painting and decorating business and forget music.
But no, they recamp to LA, get Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham on board (as well as McVie’s wife Christine who’d been in the band for a while at that point). However, Buckingham and Nicks came as an item but were on the verge of what would be a messy break up that would last years. To make matters worse McVie was a total pisshead and his marriage was falling apart. Then Fleetwood steps in and gets it on with Nicks. Set this carnage to biblical cocaine abuse and it’s a minor miracle no one died making this record.
But what a record.
Second Hand News is such a great understated opener, I don’t think anyone needs too much guesswork to get the topic matter
‘Some one has taken my place’
But already you’ve got to think, he’s writing a song about his relationship breakup and then his ex comes in to sing on it. They must have been fucking mental – or utterly tweaked off their gourds. Look at Fleetwood on the back sleeve and you’ll maybe conclude the latter actually.
The Corrs did their best to shit all over Dreams but the original is a masterpiece. Buckingham’s guitar is the SHIT. I’ve said it before, the man is so under rated. So anyway, you get Buckingham singing his troubles away on the first track and then Nicks is giving it
‘Listen to the sound of your loneliness, like a heartbeat driving you mad/of what you had and what you lost’
It’s absolutely killer and before Nicks began parodying her own voice she had the most lush singing voice imaginable. Stevie – if you’re at home reading this online, let’s do lunch sometime.
Never Going Back Again is proof of Buckingham’s guitar skills if ever any of you total mongs needed them. Instrumentally this could be John Fahey but it’s coupled to – you guessed it – more defiant relationship break up lyrical trauma. I FUCKING LOVE THIS MAN.
OK, Don’t Stop is a little plodding, mainly due to the meat n 2 veg rhythm section. Buckingham’s giving it all though
‘YESTERDAY’S GONE’
he yells. He’s right. It’s a bit of a downer though but I guess it digs a trough just to make the colossal next song seem even greater.
Yep, Go Your Own Way.
They played this on their reunion video The Dance and Buckingham was ripping it. He was earning like a million dollars a nanosecond for that tour and he still had total fire, aiming the words out at Nicks. Imagine it, one week you’re conkers deep in Stevie Nicks, the next you’re not. That is bad. But then you have to see her every day and sing onstage with her. And to make matters worse your drummer is in there in your absence. But God, this song is good. The way it’s on the back foot for the verses and then out of the gate for the choruses. The bassline is amazing. The harmonies are perfect and the big Who style chords (reduced in the mix for maximum AOR effect but present in the live versions) are rousing. Actually, I take it back, Lindsey if YOU’RE reading this, let’s do lunch.
I am listening to Rumours as I write this and I am going to flip the needle back and listen to Go Your Own Way again and when it gets to Buckingham’s solo I am going to pretend I have a guitar and I am going to jump up and down on my bed like Alan Partridge when he sings Jet. Excuse me.
(OK, Songbird I can take or leave. I like Christine’s songs but mainly the rousing ones. It’s nice and all that but when you’ve had Buckingham/Nicks spitting fire, the kind of wistful window gazing approach is a little slight).
Side two. How can it possibly get better?
What the cock is this? Side 2 starts with a southern styled dirge, foot stomps and all. Maaaaan? What’s this?
‘If you don’t love me now, you’ll never love me again. I can still hear you saying, we’ll never break the chain’
Yeah right. I wish someone would break this chain. I mean the song is OK but where’s it going?
And then…
DANG! DA-DA DANG DA-DA DUH-DUH DAH DUUUUURRRRRR!
Woooooooooooooh!
Top Gear and the Formula One Grand Prix have given the ripping coda to this track something of a Jeremy Clarkson feel but that’s not the Mac’s fault. Get it? IT BREAKS THE CHAIN. Genius. I read that James Dean Bradfield likes the Mac. He wants to take some notes. I dare you not to play air guitar to this.
You Make Loving Fun is Christine’s best tune. She has this thing I call the Sleater Kinney Trick: a shit verse that serves only to make the chorus even better. It plods along, Buckingham cops a few guitar bits here and there, you know. But then it hits the chorus and it’s a winner. And of course it is. This is FLEETWOOD MAC. Plus, McVie is laying his bass down knowing that the tune’s about his wife banging the lighting manager.
Harsh.
I Don’t Want To Know is a bit wank. I admit it. I like it in the running order but again the rhythm section is a bit of a slog. Great harmonies. Like the handclaps too.
Oh Daddy starts and it could be Palace, seriously. Then Christine kicks in again. You can probably see I like the Buckingham/Nicks stuff most. It’s interesting to note John McVie always puts the effort in on his wife’s songs though. I guess they’re winding the album down at this point though. Fair play.
This Bible of music ends with the classic Gold Dust Woman. Admittedly it should have been called White Dust Woman as Nicks set about totally destroying her septum to the point where she allegedly employed a roadie to blow coke up her arsehole instead. It’s a corker. Like a mountain there are ups and downs with Rumours. There is a summit and there is a base. And like a mountain it is always glorious.
And there’s lots of snow too.