What’s Hot On The SWSL Stereo: April 2005

(Update: The links are all fixed now - something to do with having written the post in Word first, I think. Also, apologies to Ian - I've linked to your Low and Six By Seven reviews at the bottom of the post. Responses to specific comments are in the comments box.)

Just think of it as the scrawny upstart cousin of Parallax View’s Album Review Compendium…

Low – The Great Destroyer

Most of my thoughts on this album can be found in the review of February’s gig in Wolverhampton, but lavishing a few more words on it wouldn’t be amiss.

After scattered hints of a gathering storm over recent records, that storm has finally appeared in the shape of these meditations on time, age and death (religion for once taking a back seat). The Duluth trio have succeeded in raising the volume levels without compromising their trademark poise, resonance and deftness of touch – it’s the glorious blossoming of a delicate bud. Nevertheless it’s the quietest track on the album, Alan Sparhawk’s ‘Death Of A Salesman’, that probably weighs most heavily on the memory.

Far and away the best record I’ve heard this year. Fuck the naysayers.

The Concretes – The Concretes

For the most part, Concretes songs seem so slight as to be in danger of blowing away – soporific (in a good sense) shuffles in pursuit of swooning choruses that recall 60s pop and The Velvet Underground at their most languid. Victoria Bergsman, the Swedish group’s vocalist, has a particularly distinctive style, sounding as though she hardly opens her mouth to sing.

Every now and again there are genuine surprises – skronking horns, the militaristic drumming of ‘Diana Ross’, the Spanish gypsy feel of ‘Warm Heart’.

The singles ‘Say Something New’ and especially the brilliant ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ (Bergsman makes the chorus sound like "You came home alone…") are probably the stand-out tracks, and there’s only one duff track, the irritatingly chirpy ‘Seems Fine’, which is reminiscent of Belle & Sebastian – very definitely not a good thing round these parts.

An unexpected delight.

The Delgados – Universal Audio

Crack out the Buckfast! Glaswegian miserabilists The Delgados appear to have cheered up! By the standards of their last LP Hate, which featured a song called ‘Child Killers’ and a jaunty single entitled ‘All You Need Is Hate’, Universal Audio is a positive ray of sunshine for soothing brows and gladdening hearts. Everything’s relative, of course - don’t look too closely at the lyrics, though, because as always there’s a chance you might get bitten.

The other major difference from Hate is the absence of strings, which comes to seem like a deliberate ploy, a challenge to themselves to produce similarly swelling and buoyant melodies with fewer resources. It’s a challenge they’ve risen to admirably and if at first I was slightly bewildered by the levity of some of the tracks, I soon grew to love them all the same.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Worlds Apart

… And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead are a band going through a period of transition, on record and messily. It’s a bit of a car crash of an LP, truth be told - gruesome in parts, but you can't quite take your eyes (or, in this case, ears) off it.

Their first album without bassist Neil Busch, Worlds Apart marks a dramatic shift away from the bile and fury of their early recordings, of which we are helpfully reminded by the two bonus tracks, ‘Aged Dolls’ from 1999’s Madonna and ‘Richter Scale Madness’ from their debut LP which has to be one of the most aptly titled songs ever.

Only ‘Caterwaul’ and ‘Will You Smile Again’ recall that sort of intensity, and it’s the more measured “proper” rock songs, heirs of Source Tags & Codes’ ‘Relative Ways’, that really impress - ‘The Rest Will Follow’ and ‘Let It Dive’ are particularly good in this vein.

Otherwise it’s a bizarrely uneven and unfocused record. Lyrically the title track is a po-faced and extremely embittered Sixth Form tirade and ‘The Summer Of ‘91’ a lazy bit of indie navel-gazing through rose-tinted spectacles. But it’s towards the end that things get REALLY strange. ‘To Russia My Homeland’ is, as the name might suggest, a snippet of Russian folk. ‘All White’ follows, a prime slice of vintage 70s Bowie bombast (and as such the album’s most radical departure from the template) that could potentially have been the crowning glory were it not for the fact that it lasts less than two minutes. Then ‘The Best’ kicks off with a barnstorming riff, only to subside inexplicably and without warning into pointlessness and clichéd irony.

Perhaps it’s best to look on Worlds Apart as a signpost to where the band are headed and it’ll all make more sense in hindsight once we know where they ended up. Or perhaps it’s just borne of genuine creative confusion. Either way, I’ve played it to death and I still can’t fathom it out.

Idlewild – Warnings / Promises

Like … Trail Of Dead, Idlewild have lost a bassist (Bob Fairfoull), gained two replacements (Gavin Fox and Allan Stewart) and reappeared with a record that puts more distance between them and their origins, the noisily unhinged mini-LP Captain. The gap was widened by 2002’s The Remote Part, but it’s now very much a gulf.

Warnings / Promises lacks the bite of its predecessor – there’s nothing as exhilaratingly supercharged as ‘Stay The Same’, ‘Out Of Routine’ and ‘A Modern Way Of Letting Go’. Only ‘Too Long Awake’ threatens to break out into a squall but is symbolically brought to a close by the plug being pulled, followed by one of the softest tracks (‘Not Just Sometimes But Always’) and reprised acoustically as a hidden track.

Instead, the album takes ‘American English’, ‘Live In A Hiding Place’ and ‘Tell Me Ten Words’ as its blueprint for a more restrained – mature and pedestrian, if you want – sound. If the prospect of the ubiquitous ghost of REM doesn’t set your pulse racing, then you’re advised to give it a miss. Idlewild have been tamed by prolonged exposure to the music industry.

Yes, He Who Cannot Be Named, maybe now – at last – I’m prepared to concede that they’ve “plateaued”. It’s still a very listenable record, though – just not terribly exciting.

(And what is it with Roddy Woomble and self-reflexive lyrics about words?! Does the finest named man in rock think about anything else?)

The Mars Volta – Frances The Mute

“Listenable” and “very” are not the first two words that spring to mind when contemplating The Mars Volta’s latest offering.

It seems churlish to complain about the new heights of pretentiousness Cedric Bixler, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez et al have scaled this time around. After all, you don’t buy a McDonalds meal and then complain about it being greasy and fattening. With The Mars Volta, you gets what you pays for.

But Jesus fuck is Frances The Mute pretentious. Electronic noodlings, passages of guitar wankery, mariachi horns, snatches of Spanish…

It’s like someone I ultimately want to admire, respect and like but currently find a bit obnoxious. Bearing in mind it took countless rotations for me to warm to and then adore its predecessor De-Loused In The Comatorium, it may still happen if I can make myself persevere long enough. But at present it seems like a step too far.

The Kaiser Chiefs – Employment

A gift rather than a purchase – there, that’s my excuse in nice and early.

The singles ‘I Predict A Riot’ and ‘Oh My God’ aren’t bad, and ‘Na Na Na Na Naa’ (I Should Coco era Supergrass) is infuriatingly infectious enough to take resident in your head and refuse to leave.

But mostly it’s very poor fare from five people for whom I suspect “Britpop” is very far from being the dirtiest word imaginable. The reasons for Franz Ferdinand’s continued patronage of this band escape me.

Six By Seven – 04

(For Ian – who says I don’t do requests?)

A bit of a duty buy, this one. Me and Six By Seven have a lot of history, after all.

Yet another band who’ve lost their bassist since last putting out an album (in this case Paul Douglas), Six By Seven have also been dropped by Mantra. Even for a group accustomed to setbacks, these must have come as heavy blows. How would the trio of Chris Olley, James Flower and Chris Davis respond?

04 – originally scheduled to be called Down Here On The Ground – is (duh) their fourth LP, and the first on their own Saturday Night Sunday Morning label. It starts off full of promise, too. If ‘Sometimes I Feel Like…’ is classic Six By Seven, complete with THAT drumbeat and one of the most explosive guitar breaks they’ve ever done, the pulsing beat of “Untitled” seems to hint at a subtle new direction and ‘Ready For You Now’ is keyboard-heavy, dense and hypnotic. The anger that typified The Closer You Get and The Way I Feel Today is conspicuous by its absence.

But then it all starts to go wrong, only the excellent single ‘Bochum (Light Up My Life)’ living up to the standard of the opening three tracks. By contrast, ‘Ocean’ and ‘Catch The Rain’ are dull indie-by-numbers, their lyrics clichéd, ‘There’s A Ghost’ is shrouded in too much proggy reverb and ‘Say That You Want Me’ is (its characteristic Six By Seven title and chorus aside) a disappointingly transparent pastiche of buddies Spiritualized, right down to the fuzzed narcotic garage riff, harmonica and references to Jesus Christ. Although ‘Hours’ is an intriguing Stars Of The Lid style experiment, the other electronic “interludes” are pointless doodlings and the directionless ten-minute ‘Leave Me Alone’ a magnificent example of why it can sometimes be good to have record label execs other than yourself to answer to.

So, by no means a disaster, but not the longed-for triumphant and defiant two fingers up to the music industry that spat them out either.

Links:

Vanity Project review of Low’s The Great Destroyer.

Stylus review of Low's The Great Destroyer.

University Radio Nottingham interview with The Concretes.

Stylus review of The Delgados' Universal Audio.

Stylus review of ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's Worlds Apart.

Stylus review of The Mars Volta’s Frances The Mute.

Stylus review of The Kaiser Chiefs' Employment.

Stylus review of Six By Seven's 04.

Vanity Project review of Six By Seven's 'Ocean' / 'Clouds' single.