Mustard the Homeless, Cover's "Creep"

http://vimeo.com/8132302

Camera Obscura - "The Blizzard"

Camera Obscura have taken their soft, enjoyable folk-pop sound and applied it toward a cold season the Scottish group are all too familiar with. "The Blizzard" is an enjoyable song about making a freezing trip through a snowstorm home to their beloved Mary-Ann, someone a few may be familiar with (not to be confused with lead songstress Tracyanne) since Jim Reeves originally released the song in 1964. It's a story full of numb toes, howling winds, and coming oh-so-close to your desitination before meeting frostbitten fate a few hundred yards away.

Camera Obscura - The Blizzard

To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie - Marlone

 To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie - Marlone [Kranky Records]

Project To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie is a duo consisting of vocalist Jehna Wilhelm (also plays guitar), and Mark McGee makes all the work with electronics and manipulations with sound. These manipulations mostly form the dark, moire sounding of the team (rather dirty, dull, viscous sound) is nothing else but laborious processing, breaking and mixing of sound masses making in the result something like a waterfall of apocalyptical post-rock, folktronica and noise.

Marlone plays out like a fine black-and-white noir — a sound To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie has successfully cultivated and perfected over the course of four years. Theirs is a blend of industrial revolution and Mike Hammer fantasies, with McGee’s electronic manipulations sending out smoky melodies narrated by Wilhelm. It’s strange, sexy, and scary beckoning us to pull up a stool and throw back a shot of bourbon as the cat and mouse unfolds between criminals and cops, lovers and fighters.

“You’ve Gone Too Far” is the entrance of our damsel, the melody mimicking her calm and collected synchronized hip-swivel as the swing of the melody slowly gives way to the clanks and clatter of multiple neuroses. “Villain” drapes the dubious detective in its rich tapestry with the arrogant filth of Pulp’s “This is Hardcore.” It’s another sexy melody from the mind of McGee, who blankets Wilhelm’s sultry whisper with equally subtle waves of drone.

As with any good story, the duo slowly immerse the listener into the tale while also keeping them at a distance... you’ll fall in love with the characters and its movements, but you’ll remain disconnected from the drama to maintain perspective. Marlone is one tantalizing tease after another, a constant rush of hormones that will only make the inevitable explosions (like “I Will Hang My Cape in Your Closet”) that much more pleasing. When the imagery of noir is intertwined with the world of sex, it’s no wonder Marlone is a world of billowing cigarette smoke, conniving vixens, and dog-eared sleuths, complete with the we’ll-always-have-Paris torch song, “Bridgework,” conjuring the locked-in smells of perfume and tobacco.

Each track of Marlone develops as if a chapter, the song titles acting as directors of what's to come. Rather than trampling through noised-out big band jazz that often cleans up the messy crime dramas and twisted love affairs of irrational old Hollywood, they tap into the seedy underbelly of noir. It’s a closet full of Don Draper’s dirty secrets, not the star-crossed hellos and goodbyes of Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund — though, you’ll find yourself murmuring ‘Play it again, Sam’ as To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie continuously break your heart.

8.1/10

The Antlers Cover My Bloody Valentine

This one was from a while ago, but i still love it.

The way the Antlers reinterpreted My bloody valentine's "When you sleep" makes perfect sense. Replacing Kevin Shields’ trademark glide guitar with heavily effected slide maintains the original’s wobble without resorting to mimicry and Silberman’s hazy vocals come at dream-pop from a different angle.

Fresh, yet faithful.

The Antlers - When You Sleep (My Bloody Valentine)

The Albums of 2009 - Part Four

5. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart [Slumberland]

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - as sweetly accurate an aesthetic statement as they come. This Brooklyn group’s debut album withholds romantic chamber pop that would be perfect even if their name weren’t. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is a glaringly obvious homage of an album that wears its noise-pop tendencies on every line of its face. Possessing the sonic dexterity of Loveless with the adolescent heart wrenching of Disintegration, the album’s fuzzed-up loudness underscores the unbridled emotion with a surprisingly subtle dab of refinement.

An amalgam of all of the things that were good about late 80’s and early 90’s college radio are gathered up and siphoned back here with rediscovered clarity. The distant, but angelic vocals of their front man, Kip Berman are sonically similar to Kevin Shields, but with upbeat melodies that rise above the requiem.

Bookends “Contender” and “Gentle Sons” have a kinship in mentality that works the like the start of glorious day leading to an exhausted head upon a pillow.

The album opener, “Contender” is a near percussion-less vacuum of fuzz that eases into the record on a more somber level than the assaults that follow. “Come Saturday” and “Young Adult Friction” sport a harder rocking shell, but still bring about the hooks and occasional humor that the band extracts so well. It’s a tight combination of washed-out over-trebly guitars and keyboard synths as back-up vocalist Peggy Wang harmonizes from a distance. “I never thought I would come of age,” sings Kip on “Young Adult Friction,” about a passionate rendezvous between teens in a library. The track starts with a 4/4 percussion before a explosion of keys gives way to muted guitars and crooning vocals, building upon the track until becoming a shining example of pop goodness that has a 14-year-old’s angst but the wisdom of the heartbroken.

Mostly centering on youth and heartache (see “This Love is Fucking Right!”), the sentiment fits the crime. They feel like a young band should, with equal parts naivety and energy. “A Teenager in Love” is sure to satisfy anyone’s sweet tooth for goopy hooks. “Everything With You” is a straight-ahead pop jammer that fizzes with a melodic confidence and sincerity.

It feels like we are on the crest of a new-wave, noise-pop re-birth that’s been looming for a while. With groups like Vivian Girls, Times New Viking, and Crystal Stilts, the revival is most welcome. The Pains can easily be at the forefront of this scene because, simply put, they have the best hooks. There is something distinctly perfect about the naivety that the Pains seem to effortlessly inject into every bouncy ballad of youhtful love and living that makes their debut not only a welcome throwback but a much needed vacation from over-calculations.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart raise above their name-dropping prototype peers on the plains of authenticity and heartfelt melancholy. Most importantly, at the pulse, when stripped of all of the fuzz, comparisons and reverb... these are plainly blissful pop songs.

4. Girls – Album [True Panther]

Girls, a duo from San Francisco, have quite a back story, one to rival any Australian Idol contestant. Singer Chris Owens was born into the ‘Children of God’ cult. He escaped at 16, then lived as a drug addled teen in Texas before being picked up by a millionaire who helped him relocate to San Fran, where he met band mate Chet White (Oprah hasn’t caught onto this shit yet). An upbringing resulting in a serious disconnection from good things in life. Which is why it makes sense that much of his golden-era, Californian pop songs are about things like wanting to kiss the girl, or holding on to reasons for smiling.

Their debut, simply called Album, was recorded under the influence of copious amounts of prescriptions. Yet it's not a lo-fi, half-arsed, ‘screw it’ collection of tracks. Each song is layered, with guided guitar solos and giftedly pitched vocal harmonies reverbing around Owens' cracked, hic-cup-y vocals.

The opener “Lust For Life” hits with rush of jagged guitars, tambourine, canned handclaps and some unexpected melodica over which Owens drawls "I wish I had a father/ Maybe then I would have turned out right/ Now I'm just crazy...fucked in the head". It’s a perfect, devastatingly honest song played out in a clinically.

It's Owens' upbringing and recent break up that influences much of Album, not just in the lyrics but in the common sadness that he exudes simply by sighing into the mic. “Ghost Mouth”, with its Be My Baby-style  drum pattern, is a heartache tale of trying to get into heaven. The brilliant, almost jaunty “Laura” deals with the hurt of loss; "Now when I run into you I pretend I don't see you/ I know that you hate me". It also features some great guitar noodling, which eventually takes the song into an unexpectedly psychedelic addendum.

Musically, Album is a medley of influences, with nods to early Beach Boys (brilliant “Big Bad Mean Mother Fucker”), The Beatles, Elvis Costello and even Spiritualized.

With “Hellhole Ratrace” Owens and White sublimate a diary page into a trip/epic manifesto. Though moving, it also recycles a chord prog heard previously in “Ghostmouth.” Elsewhere, “Morning Light” repeat offends, coming across like a carbon copy of Sonic Youth’s “Mote.” It’s the kind of lovelorn, broken-hearted epic Jason Pierce would be proud of, all drip drums, layers of inharmonious guitar noise and a central, repeated motif of ...

"I don't want to cry/ My whole life through/ I wanna do some laughing too".....

It's a beautifully bruised seven minutes that leaves you exhausted.

Much credit must go to producer and bassist White, whose warm production allows the songs to slowly unravel, as on instrumental “Curls” and “Lauren Marie”, or hit their stride with immediacy as on “Big Bad” and “Lust For Life”. Given the fact that most of the record was created in bedrooms, he manages to make each song sound almost epic, through a fog of drugs and sadness.

It's testament to how good their debut is that all the hype is lost as soon as the opening bars kick. Created by two genuine outsiders and made with a refreshing lack of irony, Album is a welcome addition to my best albums of 2009.

3. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers [Domino]

Wild Beasts are certainly one of the most idiosyncratic bands to have emerged from the UK in recent years. Last years debut Limbo, Panto was ambitious, bold and at times with a bewildering approach to a myriad of musical elements that, as a whole, was largely successful, if at times manic and incoherent. A year later we have Two Dancers an album with so many densities and provocative melodies it could easily have taken 10 years to make.

Opener “The Fun Powder Plot” is a tropical number that chugs along steadily and seamlessly, as twisting melodies and scattered percussion intersperse one another; feeling cohesive and progressive. It’s an invigorating opener. “Hooting And Howling” follows, this is where Hayden Thorpe’s voice really begins to open up, but not in the falsetto to growl routine of Limbo, Panto. Here, he controls and restrains his voice to a mid. This, with the dynamic yet sensitive tribal like percussion and escalation is, as a result, pretty magical. It’s seems their producer uses a similar tactic used by Rick Rubin on Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” and turns up the volume along with escalating vocals, resulting in a grand, theatrical sound that also succeeds in raising a hairs. This ability to shift rhythms and tempos is one of their key assets.

“All The King’s Men” completes quite a rather triumphant trio of opening songs for an LP, and sees Fleming take lead vocals. This is a good example of the art of track listing, as only three songs in and you already feel like you have encountered a varied, diverse and multi-layered record.

As the album progresses those elements of tribal and tropical percussion become a staple and welcome addition. It bears resemblance to Fear Of Music era Talking Heads and to match, his voice wraps around the percussion not unlike to Byrne. This all comes to fruition on “We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues.”

That demonic growl that Thorpe has the power to unleash is very rarely exuded on this record, perhaps the closest we come is on “This Is Our Lot” or closer “Through The Iron Gate” and it shows a sign of an artist years ahead of his time in terms of comfort and control. Rarely does such a new and youthful band exude such assurance in what they are creating.

One thing that is apparent throughout the LP and much like the last one is their use of repetition. They seem to have mastered the art of repetition without losing any focus or clarity. A prime example of this is the single “Hooting And Howling”; it’s very much focused around one melody or guitar, they are essentially able to loop it over without a sense of boredom creeping in. Again, placing emphasis on their ability to balance restraint and ambition.

The pace slows for the album's latter half, lending proceedings a more reflective mood. The two-part title track has a distinctly post-rock feel, with one guitar building just off-centre before reaching a crescendo and then dropping off, the other, meanwhile, delivers twinkling broken chord. It's as epic as Wild Beasts get. It's blatant sexual references are a noticeable contrast to the literary content of the majority of their lyrics, and is quite probably deliberate.

Its rather fitting that they chose an underwater video for their first single, as the Beasts have managed to encapsulate a submerged feeling on this record. However, as opposed to the record having the feeling of flowing water or a murky sound like someone drowning, they have managed to get both into a sound that is like someone being carried along downstream whilst remaining underwater. It has flow and clarity yet it has oddities and a strange peaceful eeriness.

In my opinion, Wild Beasts have created one of this year's finest albums. As a standard bearer for the future, Two Dancers should be heard by any aspiring group of musicians intent on taking their first steps into the music industry, as its creators haven't so much as merely raised the bar of expectation, but soared previously unattainable heights themselves in the process.

2. Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light [Secretly Canadian]

Nothing about Antony Hegarty's voice sounds appealing in description. It's highly mannered, demure, tremulous, cold, withholding, adenoidal, mercurial—something alien choked from the throats of Nina Simone and Scott Walker with a pair of frilly lace gloves found in the back of a cabaret dressing room. But that same voice is what makes Antony dramatic—and, on The Crying Light, absolutely an unequivocally devastating.

There’s such a shock in hearing music so alien yet so nakedly human. Listening to music is such a personal thing, no matter what. It’s something that we have to take for granted in order to get through the day without embarrassing ourselves. And Antony’s music, if I let it, absolutely destroys me. Perhaps it’s a character defect. It could be elegant and soothing in some sense, but it’s too urgent, too gut-wrenching, too sincere to not break hearts every time it is heard. Once immersed, it’s hard not to feel privileged to be roiling in such implacable wretchedness.

Antony certainly knows what he's doing in a sly song like "Epilepsy Is Dancing," which takes a jaunty, almost madrigal-like detour after the mournful "Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground" opens with a cry for the ocean to swallow him now, so as to ease the pain.

The orchestration on The Crying Light is breathtaking The woodwinds, harpsichord, and impossibly soft-strings on “One Dove” (his lilting of “Mercy, mercy” is one of his most indelible refrains yet) are so lush and perfect as to make his words seem injected into your blood. There’s an instrumental break in late 2 mins that absolutely slays. Towards the end, Antony sings “Eyes open, shut your eyes,” things get spooky, with a creepy flutter rainforest creature noises. This song is incredible.

Other highlights, like the title track and "Another World" (among others accented greatly with eerie arrangements by Nico Muhly), share the theme of staring down the prospects of environmental oblivion or apocalypse. In "Another World," over sparse piano and atmospheric feedback, Antony sings about birds, trees, bees, the sun, the wind, the snow. They're all simple things he'll miss when he's gone—and all things made more haunted and poignant by the simple act of Antony singing about them. There is only the sense of swelling and receding, hoping and letting go. It’s transcenence.

The main evolution from I Am a Bird Now is an increased richness in the music. Antony was always an incredible singer, at his most moving when it sounds like he’s throwing out the book. Bear in mind that the conceptuality of this record is very personal, you need no context to appreciate it. These are sad songs, the presentation is one of rapture an poetry. It’s music to get absorbed by. You're not listening to just another piano troubadour; you're hearing the confessions of an artist who in time will be considered one of the most affecting composers of this young century.

1. The Antlers – Hospice [Frenchkiss]

The Antlers' Hospice is not an easy record to sit through. This album is so unbelievably powerful that it will crush you through heartbreak in under an hour without the right focus, or the right mindset.

Hospice is at once the simplest and most immense album of the year.

Its music is made of small melodies, tiny vocal ranges and repeated, winking guitar. It is basic piano, slow-rolling drums. The combination of those simple sounds works, and through their unified action, comes music that confronts, soothes and washes over you. It’s music that smacks you on the side of the head, but then embraces you and apologizes in tears for being so cruel.

The Antlers make music that marches so intently - unfocused on trends or what anyone thinks may be cool. Songwriter Peter Silberman has crafted a true concept piece populated with slow-mo feedback cyclones, melodies from nursery rhymes, loud/soft shifts, and lyrics fixated on life’s themes: love, death, and guilt. Reference points abound, from Godspeed You Black Emperor’s protracted moodiness to My Bloody Valentine’s pink-tinged guitar tones to Arcade Fire’s death-focused, life-affirming choruses. And yet Hospice sidesteps cliché, or at least overwhelms it.

Like so many true albums – where a listen through is necessary and single-tracks won’t do – Hospice tells a story of death. Not the blurred concept of death, but the detailed experience of being in an actual hospice.

The patient is Sylvia, narrated by Silberman. Whether it's fictional is irrelevant, because as Hospice progresses, the listener becomes so enraptured in the chronicle, the listening experience is akin to reading a novel, or viewing a fine film. Silberman watches Sylvia retreat into her own mind, unable to keep up with the sensations and feelings of the world, he retreats as well. As the disease eats her body, so too does it eat away at their relationship. He dies with her though in perfect health, often so overcome by helplessness that all he can do is watch in horror, unable to move his lips, unable to utter, “It’s alright. It’s going to be fine.”

Every song is a layer that peels back and reveals more and more about these two people, sometimes more than you want to know. The lyrics have a push-pull that is extraordinary in its equal balance of discomfort and beauty, both raw and restrained. Arrangements are stellar, slow-burning, ethereal sounds made by traditional instruments transformed with reverb and sustain. Silberman's vocal style is fragile and otherworldly hauntingly paired to this tale. Each song is a chapter of the troubled Sylvia's past and present, with abuse and dark impulses.

Hospice seems to have drained from Silberman straight through the speakers.

Hospice lives in a world with no doors, no vents, no communication.

The saga starts with a musical "Prologue" and liner notes providing background: "When she was younger, she had nightmares. She had scissor-pain and phantom limbs, and things that kept her nervous through that twelve year interim." The first lrical song, "Kettering," suggests intertwined as caregiver and patient. "I wish that I had known in that first minute we met, the unpayable debt that I owed you."

There are pianos here that melt into the music without any percussive motion - just sound that tip-toes in and slides out unnoticed. Silberman’s voice is even more liquid than the piano that melts beneath him. His words flow, slowly, between breaths.

And when the music picks up, it galllops to the complete other end of the spectrum – from a whisper to a cacophony. The chorus of “Sylvia,” with Silberman’s pained cry of “Sylvia! / Get your head out of the oven!” (part of a subplot juxtaposing the power of depression with the darkness of death), is forcefully beautiful. “Bear” (another song of subplot), relives the young protagonists heartbreaking tale of abortion. By structuring a upbeat tempo an catching chorus, anyone not listening inherently to the lyrics will be fooled into believing it is a joyous song.

The first several songs show a startling level of self-discipline, as they methodically build to the album's mid-point. On "Thirteen," vocals are handled by Sharon Van Etten, speaking as Sylvia: "Pull me out…can't you stop all this from happening." It is a short, ghostly poem that segues to the brilliant "Two”.

“Two” is the album's apex and turning point. Mighty acoustic strumming comes in from nowhere, the backdrop for Sylvia's actual passing. This disconnect is so disarming, gorgeously illustrating the duality of existence; the magnificence and horror of living and dying. The narrator realizes, once and for all, that it’s just too late. Silberman sings a story’s, all in a simple, repeating melody over a rusty acoustic.

“There was nothing I could do to save you / the choir’s gonna sing and this thing is gonna kill you / Something in my throat made the next words shake / and something in the wires made the light bulbs break.”

Paired with melancholy piano drops, Silberman’s words are richly visual. The light bulbs do break – they spark and shatter as the narrator falls.

On the nine minute album centerpiece “Wake,” Silberman deliberates on the comfort and terror that comes with solitude (“It was easier to lock the doors and kill the phones than to show my skin / because the hardest thing is never to repent for someone else / it’s letting people in”) over a hushed choral and piano arrangement and delicate percussion.

Anger, restlessness, fear, pride and beauty; Hospice is one of the most accomplished, complete albums made in years. And when last track “Epilogue” ends with Silberman singing, “You return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep / Your face is up against mine / and I’m too terrified to speak,” there’s no closure, no easy answer to sew up the wound.

Hospice is an utterly heartbreaking aural experience that is an absolute masterpiece.

You should           watch        one          of            these           please     

The Albums of 2009 - Part Three

10. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca [Domino]

Maybe it’s just me, but 2009 seems like the banner year for a lot of great artists and bands -who’ve been really great for a while now- to finally earn deserved consideration (see: Grizzly Bear, St. Vincent, Animal Collective.) But it seems that with people being hard to please, it takes a solid album or two before someone finally catches on (see: The National, Spoon, Wilco, etc.) Like all of the aforementioned bands and artists, Dirty Projectors’ previous album, Rise Above, is every bit as good as their latest, Bitte Orca.

Right out of the gate, “Cannibal Resource” is a throaty, meticulously driven jam. Outfitted with hand-claps along with Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian’s sweetly child-like singing, it’s very welcoming and joyous. “Temecula Sunrise"’s off-kilter exuberance, paired with Longstreth’s painstakingly complicated guitar, makes for one gripping experience. The guitar buzzes like something out of a Japanese rock show before it rips into an exhilarating piece of soulful jibe. Before you know it, everyone’s singing together: the girls in fine form with breathy delivery and high falsettos support, and Longstreth’s David Byrne-esque delivery combine for something that is amazing. Thoroughly modern, thoroughly mathy tense-and-release.

“No Intention”’s laidback start with a strangely baroque kwassa kwassa guitar teamed with more handclaps, makes for an mighty catchy intro. The albums closer, “Fluorescent Half Dome,” is amazingly composed. Everything from 80’s synths, panicky drums and the interjected vocals lend a hand to deliver another astonishing song.

On previous albums, Longstreth allowed the female singers to chime in and without a doubt; they are everything about what makes Dirty Projectors such a compelling band. But here, they are in the spotlight, for all to behold. “Stillness is the Move” is Coffman’s stomping, jamming showcase and their hottest approximation of a pop jam ever. She belts out notes in such a confident manner and with Longstreth’s noodly guitar playing, it’s a gorgeous track.

The album’s best track is “Two Doves,” and with Deradoorian’s sultry voice, there’s nothing more you can ask for. Softly landscaped with sweeping epic strings that swirl in and out of the picture, the acoustic guitar rustles in the background and she’s left alone, to give it all she has. When she sings, “Kiss me, with your mouth open,” it’s that blunt honesty that seems almost pedestrian in its aesthetic manner but with Deradoorian singing it, it just melts your heart.

There has been expert musicianship and melodic genius throughout their career. Rise Above, a reimagining of Black Flag's Damaged, foreshadowed some of the band's bravery. Ultimately Bitte Orca is definitely a pleasing follow-up. Mostly because it features a lot of the band’s best traits -those wonderful male-female vocals, the lively vibe that it actually feels like it’s being played in your living room and that quirky, off-structure and pace, vibrant musicality.

9. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – White Lunar [Mute]

The current wave of Cavemania follows in the wake of his sophomore novel The Death Of Bunny Munro. White Lunar is a cannily timed compilation of sorts, putting together the highlights of Cave and fellow Bad Seed and Dirty Three lynchpin Warren Ellis' (probably best known for his effortless ability to look violent/dangerous while playing the violin) soundtrack work with some instrumental rarities.

Cave and Ellis have been working with each other for over 15 years, spanning work on Grinderman as well as these soundtracks and the ongoing success of The Bad Seeds. Their venture into scores is relatively recent, leading Cave to carve out yet another career pat. This started with their work on John Hillcoat's Australian western/revenge drama The Proposition, for which Cave also wrote the screenplay. The highlights from this film capture the haunting mood of the story together with an essence of traditional folk.

Afterwards they were commissioned to work on Andrew Dominick's western The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, the score for which has been an undeniable highlight in their careers. Simple yet moving, it mirrors Brad Pitt's slow march towards the inevitable demise promised by the title.

These films take up a third of White Lunar's gargantuan double disc running time. Disc 1 is completed with some music from Hillcoat's next film, an eagerly awaited adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer winner The Road. It feels a natural extension of Jesse James and is no less fascinating. Disc 1 begins with a lovely, tinkling confection of vibraphone, piano and bells from Jesse James. Things proceed in a sombre, expectant mood until Cave starts to sing the odd, whispered dialogue of The Proposition.

The 2nd disc is of more interest to long time followers. Included here is work done on the documentaries The Girls of Phnom Penh (pieces are humidly atmospheric) & The English Surgeon (unsettling, but remarkably evocative) as well as some tracks dug out for the Cave/Ellis archive. Here the simplistic and effective themes continue, the music continuing to be pregnant with poignancy. As the minimal notes on the disc explain, 2 is “fractured, haunting and sometimes badly behaved”. That’s a reference to the jarring, sinister, industrial noise that shudders into life ten minutes after the ‘end’. There are loops and grooves that inspire dread, heat and cruelty. Cave and Ellis, in the suggestion of small but intense events, truly create an epic sweep.

White Lunar also includes four archive pieces, each a moody instrumental named after a lunar crater. “Magma” is the most interesting, at least since it has Ellis singing/chanting the main riff. Musically it's more akin to a minimised version of the Bad Seeds' most tender album, The Boatman's Call.

A compilation of soundtrack pieces shouldn't work on paper, but these evocative tracks stand up well after being separated from their original context. Cave and Ellis' scores unique is their twin ability to stand alone without the films, while the films largely lean upon these audible landscapes as a means of storytelling.

8. The xx – XX [Label: Young Turks/ XL Recordings]

The ability to be quiet and understated is an undervalued quality in indie-pop, and music in general, so it's refreshing that a resolutely quaint band like They spent their youth at London's Elliott School (fellow alumni: Four Tet, Burial and Hot Chip) obsessively tinkering with instruments. The xx can get signed to Rough Trade with songs that barely rise above a 4 on a 10 point scale of volume.

Not since early Low has a band been this purposefully quiet. Not since Young Marble Giants has a band made music this mechanically sparse. And hardly ever has an indie-pop band taken significant stylistic cues from the futuristic zoom-bip Timbaland and the militaristic synth production of the Neptunes.

Declarations like those above are pretty standard when it comes to The xx, and their exceptional debut, but they’re a rare case of a band that deserves all the hype. In under a year, the band of four London 20-year-olds went from bedroom pop experimenters to NME pages and beyond, thanks not to their haircuts or grandiose statements made to whoever sticks a mic in their face, but to the strength of their music.

The xx cut their teeth covering the likes of Aaliyah. XX might bring to mind indie touchstones, but at its core, fittingly, the album is all modern R&B. As the languorous swirl of “Intro” fades in, you immediately sense you're listening to something seductive. The howling synth washes and dancy chorus of “Crystalised” are ripe for a remix with an R&B songstress. “Heart Skipped a Beat” is a Timbaland beat stripped to its core with sparse synthetic hand claps and melodic guitar. “Shelter,” a song about finding shelter in a lover, a re-write of any number of soul hits?

Lyrically, you can be certain that every song is about a relationship in progress, a relationship that is over, or a relationship that one unrequitedly wants to start up again. Guitarist Romy Madley Croft and bassist Oliver Sim are the vocalists here, often trading verse for verse like they’re a couple working out their problems on wax. They reprimand each other for pushing the other away on “Crystalised,” find what they’re after on “Islands,” contemplate a break-up on “Basic Space,” and long for one another, desperately trying to connect but never quite on “Heart Skipped a Beat.” But those are a warm-up for the album’s longest track, the five-minute “Infinity,” a hazy, prosecuting track about the emotional entanglement that often comes with sexual relationships. For a pair of 20-year-olds, Croft and Sim have something of a unbelievable ability to write cutting songs about love and its scruffiness.

It’s the little moments that takeover on XX. There’s the way the lightning synths play like a whiplash to the brain balance on “Infinity.” The bass grumbles retorts to the verses on “Islands.” How the emptiness on “Basic Space” is as important as the parts that aren’t empty. How they finish each other’s sentences on “Stars.” Throughout its tracks, XX doesn’t so much as demand your devotion as it just slowly and completely takes it.

There is a light touch that gives The xx sophistication beyond their years. It probably means that their dream pop will become the ubiquitous dinner party album. But really, their panicky atmospherics are too strange for that. This is uneasy listening to soundtrack the gentle gnashing of teeth. As a good mate tweeted “As far as arvo slow jams go The xx's debut is pretty damn perfect”.

7. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion [Domino]

The first great record of 2009, and the point at which some people had stopped considering other albums for their #1 of the year. It was massively anticipated, hyped (predictably) in indie circles, and (more predictably) panned by the backlash brigade, but it is fucking as brilliant as beans. Panda Bear's increased influence has smoothed off some of AC's more abrasive edges without blunting their creativity.

AC's classic back catalogue, from the frosty Sung Tongs to the abrasive folk freak out of Strawberry Jam, works on a larger scale than the normal band, but the music is still meant for bumping in your trunk or under the colored lights of a basement venue.

Merriweather Post Pavilion just proves Avey Tare and Panda Bear are expert songwriters, turning in a mountain of production and editing. They achieve this feat, perfecting a sound they’ve been honing over 9 studio albums, and it explodes with the sky its intention.

Merriweather has the breakout appeal which none of AC’s albums could reach before, bridging a collection of standard-sized pop tunes that never sharpen or step out of line. It all coagulates into a modern force of psych pop, tribal folk, sonic electronic and whatever else.

It begins with a rumble that ripples right through to the African pop stampede, “Brothersport.” “In the Flowers” begins with strings pulsing in water, dripping in textures before the sloshing/slurping water gives way to an earthquake tribal pulse, Avey Tare’s distinct bubbly persona breaks through to deliver each smile-inducing lyric lick of imaginative nonsense (“She walked up with a flower and I cared”).

“My Girls” takes it further, building a waterfall of synths and distancing of vocals as the song leaps into its uniting verse and chorus, scattered with handclaps and domestic commentary. Maturing, the lyrics on Merriweather touch upon all the corners of domestic life. On “Summertime Clothes,” offset by cheers, an asphalt synth that breaks down into space-electro-pop, Avey Tare enjoys the tender surprises of exploring a familiar terrain (“It doesn’t really matter; I’ll go where you feel / hunt for the breeze, get a midnight meal / I point in the windows, you point out the parks / rip off your sleeves and I’ll ditch my socks”).

“Daily Routine” recognizes the mundane ins-and-outs of an everyday cycle taking care of the brat in the backseat. “Guy’s Eyes,” the urges not satisfied in the lion’s den.

Which brings us to “Lion in a Coma,” an elastic didgeridoo sets the tone for the folklore of Panda Bear’s campfire chants, sparking an irresistible urge to move when his show stopping “lion in a coma” becomes, creepily, “lying in a coma.”

Merriweather is an experience; an interactive pop album marrying every envelope AC has been pushing and opens them all at once. Merriweather Post Pavilion is heartbreaking and heart-warming, and you can either disregard what is one of the most pleasing, enjoyably rich and rewarding releases of the past decade or rally with the rest of us, and clap, sing and continue to blare it through the headphones because, as “Taste” so elegantly points out, "we are still all the things outside of us."

6. St. Vincent – Actor [4AD]

Annie Clark is a Margaret Keane painting come to life, with a voice seemingly crafted of caramelized sugar, but don’t be fooled: she bites. Rich and almost impossibly lush, Annie Clark's 2nd full length as St. Vincent, Actor, continues the vibrant precocity of Marry Me, exhibiting a boundless creativity that still manages to be surprising. But Actor goes even further than her debut in revealing a vicious inner life.

Her second album is rowdier and less well-behaved, and thus better, although the template is the same: breathy coos and lush strings intermittently blown apart by distorted guitar blasts. She's always juxtaposed the cruel and the kind, and here, the elaborate arrangements are even more complex and her voice even sweeter, with both only underlining the dark stream running through her songs.

"What do I share / What do I keep?" she muses on "The Strangers," then promises to "paint the black hole blacker." It possesses a misty and involving tone, setting the scene for later material, which plunges unpredictably into open spaces."You're a liar / You're an extra lost in the scene," she taunts on "Actor Out of Work," behind searing keyboards and twinkling chimes. The natural follow-up: "I think I love you."

Suddenly, a title like "Laughing With a Mouth of Blood" becomes a question: is it her blood or yours? "Save Me from What I Want" rings beautifully, with Clark's voice assisted with her own backing vocals. Her voice seems small and fragile, but it's her most effective instrument, and it affixes a lynchpin to the album's broad creative themes, leaving it glistening with elegance The twist is she’s actually her own worst enemy, most dangerous when she turns her guns on herself - a willowy ode to self-destruction

Even when showing her softer side on the simple, sinuous "The Party," Clark is overwhelmed, lingering over the details of an after-hours crush: "I sit transfixed by a hole in your T-shirt". The flesh behind the hole isn't mentioned, But Clark's ability to tantalize with what remains just out of view keeps us looking.

“Black Rainbow” she watches a bird fight his own reflection in a window. “What’s he gonna win when he wins?” Clark wonders. She doesn’t answer because she knows there isn’t one.

By the end, Actor has proven itself so bristlingly bold and inventive. At this rate of progress, Clark's third album should be an utter masterpiece. For nothing draws attention to the artifice of performance —nothing says 'acting'— like grand reinvention.

The Albums of 2009 - Part One

We've reached that special point in the year when the Coke advert is imminent, kids and grownups alike are jangling their plastic pig for that last 50 cent piece, and pasty music lovers all around the world are hastily compiling best of the year lists like some kind of grisly game of top trumps.


So, in the spirit of the season, and in honour of the lists that have/will soon litter the blogosphere, here's the first segment of my favourite twenty albums of the year.

20. Real Estate – Real Estate [Woodsist]

New Jersey's Real Estate make the kind of music that is perfect for summer/spring, good timing for Australia. Unfortunately, for most of our overseas counterparts, so you'll just have to pretend that you're lying on the beach while buttoning up. It's not that hard to imagine though, as Real Estate transcends its ten songs to create a full experience for the listener. Sun-soaked melodies drip into one another, as hazy reverb coats Courtney's vocals and chiming guitar riffs ring out confidently. If there ever was a record to describe a summer spent in suburbia, this is it. Everything moves a bit slower, but you don't seem to mind it.

Innovation on '60s psych pop give Real Estate, a fresh edge that has had sufficient impact on me to be counted in the year's upper echelon. "Pool Swimmers" contains a funky, reverb bass line and phased-over guitars, while "Beach Comber" incorporates an upbeat staccato drum line that i’m sure i’ve heard trotting through a Monkees hit.

19. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix [Glassnote Ent.]

If you had somehow missed French indie band Phoenix over the past decade, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix may be the prime place to start your love affair. By the time you get through the first three songs and have spent eleven odd minutes, you will be totally sold. In these three tracks alone the band puts together a blend of stylish power pop punch that other groups strive to make their entire career.

To basically describe Phoenix in a formula would call for packing the nonchalant swagger of The Strokes, injecting the dance synths of Franz Ferdinand and stirring in catchy lyrics and a pop bounce much like Hot Chip. Phoenix is a band that seems easy to peg but certain tracks like the 5 minute instrumental "Love Like A Sunset Part I" is a quick reminder that they are not a total open book, as it builds into the 2 minute vocal "Part II". These two tracks solidify this album as another nod and ‘yep’ for this reviewer.

18. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport [ATP]

Aiming for the sky is one thing. A wheels-up, vertical blast towards the surface of the sun is a whole nother matter. So when Fuck Buttons leave Earth during the first two minutes of Tarot Sport, flames whipping around some metronomic, post-rave kick drum, it’s with zero negotiation.

Another artist to have shown incredible progression from an already strong debut. After being put onto these guys by a close group of mates, who were 'frothing' on Street Horrsing, i haven't been able to stray. On their sophomore album, Hung and Power have carved some holes in the abrasive, percussive wall of sound that made Street Horrrsing at once memorable, confrontational and difficult, and they’ve patched things up with atmospheric samples.

Without pause, the duo spend Tarot Sport’s hour-long run time perfecting some new kind of shimmering, multi-hued electro that shifts, retracts and evolves into a ride inexpressibly prismatic. Opening with a headphone-swirling ambiance, “Lisbon” moves with a muted gallop until, BAM!, you’ve dropped off the cliff you didn’t know existed. The next eight minutes are spent in free-fall: chimes bounce off a massive looped, processed guitars. With “Lisbon” eventually drifting way on down, “Olympians” fulfils it’s title — swooping through, double-time, bricking endless layers of synth wash until the dam breaks, revealing a heart-aching piano. Showing Tarot Sport goes far beyond it’s noise an menace and succeeds at being a deeply emotional listen. But the album as a whole, though uneasy listening, is big, powerful, mesmerising and often overwhelming. Being honest. Its assult.

17. The Mountain Goats – The Life Of The World To Come [4AD]

‘The life of the world to come’ are the last words of the Christian prayer the Nicene Creed, just before the standard obligatory ‘Amen’" let it be done. North-Carolina outfit The Mountain Goats borrowed this phrase for their latest full-length, an album that leans upon religious allusion and spiritual identity.

Through this album Darnielle uses the sacred religious text as a stronghol on which to support the heavy themes of his 17th album. The songs themselves, some with actual Bible verse, take the names of the passages they've been inspired by, which have had/will no doubt have his rabid cult, including yours truly, Googling "Hebrews 11:40" like eager Sunday school kids.

The Life of the World to Come largely features acoustic guitar and piano jams, attaching in string arrangements. An allusion to Eden, "Genesis 3:23" revisits the old "you can't go home again" adage; instead of rising and falling on each refrain, a breezy Darnielle just mentions, "I used to live here." On "Philippians 3:20-21" they get jazzy and syncopated and ardent with fiery conviction on "Psalm 40:2" - an aggressive prayer sung through the teeth.

On several tracks, Darnielle’s vocals are barely audible, while the song itself skirts resolve. It’s further evidence that his search is ongoing, which is either utterly depressing, or a sign that we’ll have a new Mountain Goats record next year.

16. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career [4AD]

‘I wanted to control it, oh love I couldn’t hold it’ are the words that Campbell sings to kick off the Glasgow band’s 4th, My Maudlin Career. With such romantics in place and expanding on with balance of lush pop and autumn sweeping strings, it’s hard not to start the muffled bedroom singing on the 1st track.

Camera Obscura have developed a strong niche correlation to pop and its endless connections with love and emotions that is similar to that of the likes of The Beatles (Beach Boys vocals on opening of “The Sweetest Thing” anyone?). This is pop that is gifted, tender and sweet, instead of the other pop, brainwashing people into thinking ‘lady-lumps’ and ga-ga trannies are somehow normal.

On “You Told a Lie” she sings, 'No need to convince me that you were a catch' and later shares how she heard “love conquers all.” The music is a fittingly gentle ballad that features vocals in sweet, soft-spoken style allowing Campbells expressions to be fantastically conveyed. The soaring highs of “Careless Love” reach dreamy ceilings. Throughout My Maudlin Career the robust cellos, filling violins and the brash string basses pack a powerful punch.

Openly speaking, even without the strings, horns, or aching lyrics, at the centre of Camera Obscura’s strength is its writing chops. Clever, catchy, and moody, Maudlin Career is what contemporary pop music should be.

 
 
 

 
Hope you enjoyed my first post. Pop back in soon for more.
 
Mitch