HIPSTER SPECIAL! ‘GORILLA MANOR’ BY LOCAL NATIVES, ‘TEEN DREAM’ BY BEACH HOUSE

Usually, when a band has song titles like ‘Silver Soul’, this is a clear sign they don’t have any (soul, that is). Happily, in the case of Baltimore, Maryland dream-poppers Beach House, this doesn’t apply. Their latest album Teen House has gallons of the stuff.

 

Sweep aside the hipster paraphernalia – the neo-psychedelic cover, the aesthetics of teen kitsch, the stray croutons of ‘80s revivalism – and you’re left with a record of astonishing melodic scope and intricacy. Building on previous explorations into the realms of waywardness Beach House (2006) and Devotion (2008), Teen Dream offers a polish and focus that will surely, and perhaps unfortunately, lead to an avalanche of mainstream attention. Call it their Merriweather Post Pavillion.

 

But let’s try to focus on the songs themselves (after all, it’s not Beach House’s fault that – as wanker-extraordinaire-who-also-every-once-in-a-while-comes-up-with-a-good-cultural-observation Martin Amis says in this month’s GQ – there has never been a period of human history more emphatically obsessed with the surface world of visual appearances).

 

Because, friends, these are quite simply wonderful, wonderful tunes. Track 9, ‘Real Love’, I’m not crazy about, but otherwise this is the strongest suite of songs I’ve heard all year. Lead singer Victoria Legrand has a voice of such lightly jagged expressiveness, I find it difficult not to wheel out the inevitable Cocteau Twins comparisons. But this shouldn’t detract from her great achievement on Teen Dream. Again and again, a vocal nuance will fizz out of the speakers to prick your attention. This has a nice habit of happening towards the end of a tune when you least expect it, as in ‘Walk in the Park’ and ‘Lover of Mine’, both of which have startlingly beautiful outros.

'CONTRA' BY VAMPIRE WEEKEND: TRUMPETS, INVERSE-INVERSE SNOBBERY, AND RAINDROP NOTES

Well well well. Vampire Weekend. Pretty good aren’t they?

It’s surprising how much of the press coverage surrounding Contra has focused on the issue of class. Vampire Weekend, in case you hadn’t noticed, are middle class. You might even want to describe them as (surely not?) upper-middle class. Defending the very notion of upper-middle-class-hood against god knows what anti-posh bogey has become the standard angle on the band. ‘They’re middle-class – and proud of it!’ scream the music press, with scarcely disguised glee. ‘They’re not afraid to wear preppy clothes, just like me!’ yelp public school kids up and down the land.

Let’s be absolutely crystal clear about this: there is nothing good about being middle class. If you are unlucky enough to be part of a class system, you should not brag about it, ever. If you are (like me) middle class, be proud of yourself, be proud of your many fantastic qualities, be proud of your beautiful and variegated personality, but do not be proud that you are middle class. Be ashamed, be left wing, and do something about it.

But as I was saying, Vampire Weekend are pretty good. With a vigour and a clarity that distinguishes them from their peers, they are the natural successors to the Strokes’ brand of refined retro-minimalism, only with added rhythmic sophistication, and even a hint of mild progressiveness thrown into the mix (although, in the main they are merely pastiching … sorry, being influenced by, artists a few years down the line – Orange Juice, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel – from the Strokes’ palette of Television, Ramones, The Clash). Their eponymous debut album of 2008 slayed all comers (myself included) with its timely afro stylings, its neo-classical arrangements, and its startling proliferation of sweet, sweet melodies. ‘Oxford Comma’ was the best.

THE FLAMING LIPS – 'EMBRYONIC': GODFATHERS OF LONGSTRETH STRIKE BACK

When The Soft Bulletin by Flaming Lips, and Guerilla by Super Furry Animals came out within weeks of each other in the spring of 1999, they were instantly hailed by the (then still vaguely relevant) NME as vanguard exemplars of ‘nu-psychedelia’. It was one of those spurious hype-generating monikers for a non-scene the magazine has always specialized in, half-inching the ‘nu’ from ‘nu-metal’ and splicing it with a lazy, catch-all term for any druggy, experimental music from the late-sixties onwards. But taken together, these two albums did seem to denote some sort of fin de siècle moment. The nineties were awash with apocalyptic end of rock/art/history hypotheses, and records like Soft Bulletin, Guerilla (as well as Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump, The Beta Band’s eponymous debut, even – earlier-on – OK Computer) seemed to give expression to a sense of arrival at some kind of chaotic, climactic endpoint. Wild disparateness, technological experimentalism, surreality and eclecticism were the watchwords as Y2K loomed (is it just me, or could all of these records at a push have been appropriately titled Millenium Bug?).

Sadly, both bands have suffered a mild yet definite decline in creative standards in the years since these career-highlight albums. The Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, though brilliant in places, never quite recovered from the unconscious Cat Stevens steal on first track ‘Fight Test’. Meanwhile, the radical genre-hopping of Guerilla gave way on subsequent SFA albums (eg. Phantom Power, Love Kraft) to an automatic reliance on the kind of orthodox Brian Wilson melodicism which had up to this point always been refracted into unrecognizable, tech-filtered shapes (largely due to the input of electronics man Cian Ciaran). Both bands were unfortunate to receive enthusiastic endorsement from the doyens of Rugby Mum taste-making at BBC Radio 2, which further emphasized the trad elements at the expense of the avant-garde waywardness.

All this is quite emphatically remedied – in the Lips case at least – with their utterly brilliant new album Embryonic. The first sound on first track ‘Convinced of the Hex’ is an absurdly loud, distorted, hard-panned synth noise, which signals a return of sorts to the ‘LSD-punk’ aesthetic of the band’s pre-orchestral days, and a sharp turn away from the neo-melodic emphasis of the post-Soft Bulletin period (second tune ‘The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine’ hurls even more vitriol out of the speakers with its ear-punishing white noise intro).

'JJ NO. 2' BY JJ: TACKY POP

Beneath its surface of day-glo Wagnerian pop bombast, much 1980s music was (to borrow a salient phrase from the latest series of Mad Men) so profoundly sad. One of the more welcome results of the vogue for eighties-revivalism in recent years has been the rediscovery of this melancholic vein, at a time when a similar mood of hedonism-cum-anxiety prevails. Take M83’s Saturdays=Youth as an example. For all the obviousness of its nostalgic remit, the mining of an MBV/Cocteaus-like bleakness saved this 2008 year-highlight from coming across as a mere hollow period piece.

A similar sort of winning ‘80s mournfulness is at work on Swedish band jj’s debut album, jj no. 2 (‘no. 1’ was first single ‘my life, my swag’ b/w ‘my swag, my life’ – the band does a nice line in lower-case minimalist nomenclature). With its cannabis leaf cover, tunes called things like ‘ecstasy’ and ‘from africa to malaga’, and fashionable balearic edge, this is very much a late-night/early-morning record, but it belongs to very specific moment within that timeframe: the moment of dissipation, slowdown, evaporation of mood, when things that seemed shiny and joyous are suddenly imbued with a profound sadness and depth. Living next door to challenge / things will never be the same again is the album’s disconsolate opening lyric, setting the tone for a suite of songs which plays the happy-sad binary for all its worth.

jj have taken the possibly ingenious step of shrouding their project in a haze of mystique and anonymity, so I don’t know the name of the lead singer, but whoever she is, her delivery is insanely gorgeous; soulful and rich in the manner of Hope Sandoval rather than stage-school ostentatious in the manner of a Kate Nash or a Florence and the Machine (how many more tragic mis-readings of Joanna Newsom can the world take?). This lass knows the beauty of restraint, and her understated lines sit tight underneath atmospheric whorls of reverb, peeping above the surface every now and then to snatch a second or two of limelight before blending back into the wash of ambient sound.

'ALBUM' BY GIRLS: GAY DAD REVIVAL STARTS HERE?

There are several moments in DiG! – the 2004 film documenting the inversely proportional career paths of Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre – when you begin to think the whole thing might be an elaborate Spinal Tap-style hoax. Most improbable of all are the interviews with a range of sycophantic industry figures, which seem like ironically over-enthusiastic Chris Morris-scripted attempts to underline the total ridiculousness of BJM frontman Anton Newcombe. How, you ask yourself, has this utterly talentless drug casualty managed to convince so many respectable and intelligent people he is some sort of visionary postmodern genius? This has got to one massive leg-pull, hasn’t it?

Of course, this narrative of intellectual hood-winking has become a familiar one in modern-day culture, and in pop music especially. Every so often a band or artist will come along with just the right combination of self-aggrandising bullshit and musical accessibility/immediacy to convince enough people in the know that they are worthy of attention, even of hyperbolic praise. Unfortunately, it seems that the recent widespread acclaim extended to San Francisco band Girls and their debut effort Album is yet another installment in this latter-day tradition of mediocre, conservative indie-rock being elevated way above its station because of the quasi-mythical aura surrounding its creators [1].

Unoriginally-titled opener ‘Lust for Life’ is not a promising start for Album, with its array of hackneyed AOR-isms that Johnny Borrell would be proud of. It also introduces us to the grating, theatrical, Bob Geldofian tones of lead-vocalist Christopher Owens (a former Children of God cult member/victim – can you see why Brian Jonestown Massacre sprung to mind as a point of comparison?). But from a certain angle it’s likeable enough, in a generic C86-reviving sort of way. Things begin to get really ugly though with second track ‘Laura’, a tenth-rate Britpop travesty that recalls nothing so much as ‘Why Does it Always Rain on Me?’ by Travis. From here on in Album is a lesson in half-baked egotistical retro averageness, to put it sympathetically.

CLUTCH LAMENTS A FALLEN HERO

In the year of our Lord two thousand nine, we have seen both the inauguration of the first black American President and the 200th birthday of one of the nation’s greatest leaders.

Standing next to these (literally and figuratively) tall historical milestones, the release of an album might seem insignificant. Nevertheless, the drivers of rock, Clutch, released their latest album Strange Cousins from the West, and did not fail to include a tribute, or rather a requiem, to the President who preserved the American union and abolished its institution of slavery.

‘Abraham Lincoln’ marches up on snare, vocalist Neil Fallon’s guttural lament settling in atop a snaky guitar lead. The rhythm track imposes a triplet feel over a steady 4/4, giving it a heavy march…to battle or in a funeral procession? From the opening line of the song the active listener can feel Fallon’s bemoan as he rumbles out the image of the nation’s fallen hero being carried through the streets. The rest of the tune makes equal effort to despise Lincoln’s assassin and company, leaving them un-named “cowards and drunkards.” (although Clutch did name the assassin in a track from their self-titled album).

The overall tone of ‘Abraham Lincoln’ is dark melancholy, and captures the feeling of a war-torn nation upon her beloved leader’s demise. But it is also befitting of his whole administration, as he led the country through the bloodiest and most trying time in its history. It is ironic to imagine Abe’s first moment of respite might have been the night he stepped into Ford’s Theatre, the Civil War over and the nation still intact…

SAY GOODBYE TO POST-BRITPOP PASTICHE, HELLO TO DIRTY PROJECTORS’ BITTE ORCA AND THE FUTURE OF CIVILISATION

I don’t know what ‘bitte orca’ means, and I must say that I’m also having a similar problem in trying to work out what the hell the new Dirty Projectors’ album of the same name is all about. Just where on earth does this insane, art-pop-neo-folk-chamber-rock-minimalist-afro-r’n’b odyssey fit into the scheme of things? There’s Kasabian, and then there’s Dirty Projectors. What kind of fucked-up logic is at work in a world that presents us with such radical contrasts in artistic worth? Did the same God who made West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum make Bitte Orca?

I think not, and in actual fact it’s not really all that difficult to position this latest offering from Dave Longstreth and co, to realize that Bitte Orca is so obviously and emphatically what the world needs right now. Even if large swathes of the western population don’t know it yet (notably most of our fellow citizens here in the UK) we’re surely now coming to the end of the great nostalgic postmodernist joke that got out of hand. This was a chapter of our cultural history which began in earnest in the mid-nineties with the arrival of the devout pastiche-driven retrogressiveness of Britpop, and subsequently deepened into a bewildered and backward-looking decade-and-a-half that saw just about every stylistic movement of the late-twentieth century pillaged and travestied in superficial principle-less fashion, until every shred of futurism and vitality was squeezed out of a once noble, radical and meaningful alternative/independent scene.

We’re now at a juncture where many people who really should know better genuinely think the future of British music lies in the hands of a slickly-marketed, fashion supplement-courting Kylie Minogue knock-off. So friends, I’m afraid it’s time to for us to choose sides. Will we carry on down the path of music-as-lifestyle, of shallow ironic referencing of past cultural (non-)glories, of dumbing-down, of pop music as commercial sell-out rather than populist art? Or will we side with the Dirty Projectors’ exhilarating, intelligent, experimentalist vision of what twenty-first century music can amount to if underwritten with a bit of idealism, bravery and (dare I say it) pretentiousness?

Listen to Bitte Orca, and the decision should be immediate and conscious-bypassing. The album opens with a series of evocatively filtered late-period-Beatles guitar strums and, from here on in, its becomes evident that the DPs have finally managed to pitch the art/pop quota just right; in doing so they might just have elevated themselves to the position of standout creative role models for a newly forward-thinking musical generation. Everyone should have heard by now about the laugh-out-loud total freaking genius of lead single ‘Stillness is the Move’, that seems to suggest a perfect synthesis of post-Timbaland r’n’b pop and leftfield adventurousness, while sounding so effortlessly instantaneous and physically joyous as to literally knock the breath out of you the first time you hear it.

THE BEASTIE BOYS' CHECK YOUR HEAD AND YOUR RECORD COLLECTION

Following on from the recent re-mastered anniversary release of (the still outstanding) Paul’s Boutique, and in anticipation of their new album, possibly due out late in the year, the Beastie Boy’s have also recently dropped a re-mastered (curiously non-anniversary) version of the 1992 record Check Your Head, complete with a disc of b-sides and remixes.[1]

Check Your Head was, and remains, a pivotal moment in the Beasties’ oeuvre, pointing toward the path they would take throughout the 90’s, and returning them to mainstream consciousness after their previous commercial failure. The album appears to be simultaneously, and quite possibly contradictorily, a huge departure from their previous release and a continuation of same ethos that informed Paul’s Boutique’s creation. On first listen it provides a genuine ‘where the fuck did that come from?’ moment whilst continuing the Beasties’ modus operandi of producing albums that filter and combine their disparate influences, fashioning the music they listen to and care about into something original and, as always during their peak, enjoyable.

It’s a good idea to keep the two previous releases in mind. Licensed to Ill picked up where Run DMC left off and took it to the next stage with some genuine breakthrough moments (Slow & Low, The New Style, Paul Revere) as well as incorporating all the frat boy humour, sexism, stupidity and obvious riff samples. Three years later and Paul’s Boutique is still seen by many as a high watermark for the sampling era. Teaming up with the Dust Brothers, they made what is possibly the most sonically brilliant hip hop album of the late eighties (and there is a lot of competition[2]). It still sounds staggeringly good 20 years on.

So where is this ‘what the fuck moment’ in Check Your Head? Well, it might start out with the Jimi Hendrix sampling ‘Jimmy James’, falsely leading you to believe they will continue where they left off, but it soon becomes apparent the net has been cast much wider than that. By the time the Beasties have hit Biz Markie’s slurred singing over Ted Nugent, an unrecognisable hardcore cover of Sly Stone’s ‘Time For Livin’’ drenched in MCA’s fuzzed bass that blows everything you’ve already heard out of the water, and the talk box vocal of ‘Something’s Got To Give’, they have already touched on jazz-funk instrumentals, soul, the bosa nova rhythms of ‘Lighten‘ Up’, the alt-rock of ‘Gratitude’, and of course hip-hop (‘Pass the Mic’, ‘Jimmy James’, ‘So What’cha Want’). This is an album that followed the juvenile jokes of Licensed to Ill (see ’Girls’) and Paul’s Boutique’s layered sample buffet and intelligent wordplay with a record that references about 10 genres before ending with a spoken word number, intoned over a jazz influenced instrumental backing, that opens with the line “A butterfly floats on the breeze of a sun lit day/As I feel this reality gently fade away”. What the fuck? Where did this come from?

DAN DEACON’S BROMST AND AMERICA

For the first time in ages, as 2008 drew to a close, it seemed that pop music and world politics might just be engaged in a meaningful, hope-inducing symbiosis.  With the election of Obama, the US had enacted one of its perennial spectacular self-reinventions, apparently morphing overnight from the guise of a monomaniacal toddler hell-bent on devouring everything it can fit into its mouth, into the figure of a rational, responsible adult capable of encapsulating all the most noble aspects of humanity, FDR/MLK/Abe Lincoln-style.

This rather magical turn of events was paralleled on the musical front by a rainbow haul of epoch-defining American music, perhaps the finest example of which arrived in the form of the Fleet Foxes’ rarefied, folk-essentialist debut (with offerings from Vampire Weekend, Q-Tip, Department of Eagles, Gang Gang Dance, and TV on the Radio trailing not far behind). Here stood summarized all the humane idealism of America, all its sense of communal strength and longstanding obsession with utopian suggestion embodied in an expansive panorama of dazzling harmonic inventiveness and bullshit-free soulfulness (Motown + Brian Wilson + Joanna Newsom = one sublime time).

But then, for all its distinguished qualities, for all its epochal resonance and melodic-formalist perfection, the Fleet Foxes record is perhaps in the last instance just a tad twee and retrogressive to be an unqualified triumph, a bit too nostalgic to amount to anything more than a timely but fleeting reminder of something lost and in need of salvaging in the short-term, for existence’s sake.

Proof of such shortcomings arrives, by way of contrast, in the form of Dan Deacon’s fourth long player Bromst, a record that shares many of strengths of Fleet Foxes, but adds a requisite helping of futurist momentum into the admixture.