not allowed to sing

court order

[notallowedtosing]

Lemuria - Brilliant Dancer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBEqbEBT5fg

Buffalo, NY indie-punk trio Lemuria recently released a new video for ‘Brilliant Dancer’ – a standout track from 2013’s ‘The Distance is so Big’. For me at least, it typifies what I like about this band, as well as what frustrates me. ‘Brilliant Dancer’ hinges on a brilliant guitar riff, a warm, undulating arpeggio following a faintly bluesy progression backed by a perfectly spaced drum beat with softly marching ghost note triplets. The effect is quietly mesmerising, elegantly lulling before the track snaps into the joyous exclamations of the chorus. Technically the track is impressive too: see the 7/4 bridge that smartly side-steps any awkward footing via a timely drum fill. The main thing that irks me about ‘Brilliant Dancer’ and Lemuria in general, is how inhibited it all feels. The vocals in particular are hopelessly timid, falling short of the passion such a lovingly constructed track merits. This restraint prevents me from loving a band like Lemuria. Instead I’m merely impressed by them.

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

The Rocco Lampones - Everybody Hates

London quartet, The Rocco Lampones are heavily indebted to ‘The Godfather’, but more so to 90’s Fat Wreck bands. Fundamentally, they aim to balance the catchy pop-punk of a band like Lagwagon, with the decidedly darker, rougher texture of a band like Strung Out. Such influences loom large over ‘Everybody Hates’. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though it does feel rather limiting on this EP. Often, The Rocco Lampones struggle to imbue these characteristics with a personal touch, and succeed only in reminding the listener of another time, and of other bands.

Aside from a few odd moments, these tracks fail to command attention with predictable structures, pithy, negligible transitions between verse and chorus and vice-versa, and a lack of memorable moments. Opener ‘King of Comedy’ kicks off with a swaggering lead riff, but quickly loses momentum, falling foul to clichéd power-chord riffing, derivative drumming, and predictable structural issues. These problems are exacerbated by the general impotence of any of the track’s potential hooks. Elsewhere, ’24 Beers’ seeks to spread alcohol-fuelled mayhem in 39 furious seconds of breakneck punk-rock, but instead comes across as rushed, ineffectual and shamefully and limply intoxicated. Although the passion the band has for their craft is evident, they fail to inspire the same excitement in the listener with a tired, threadbare re-tread of old sounds.

There is, however, enough here to suggest The Rocco Lampones are capable of more. ‘Minor Injury’ sees everything they are aiming for come together: great hooks, a light-hearted outlook (“what you call an ‘emergency’, I call a ‘minor injury’”), and raucous energy. Meanwhile, the slow-motion, siren-esque guitar solo in the outro of ‘S.O.S.’ acts as both a fitting coda and an impressive piece of musicianship in its own right. Sadly however, these moments are few and far-between. Typically, ‘Everybody Hates’ is overpopulated by enthusiastic, though extremely formulaic power-chord-focussed punk-rock you can’t help but feel has already been done, and done better, by someone else.

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

Mas Ysa - 'Years'

Last September, Mas Ysa’s debut single ‘Why?’ was released to a low but tangible buzz. Its fluent veering through ghostly folk, 1980s-pop synths and upbeat techno left listeners guessing as to which direction the journeyman might turn next. Follow-up single, ‘Years’, answers these questions resoundingly – haunted, melancholy folk – though whether he continues on this path remains to be seen, I guess. ‘Years’ wrestles with a sinking sense of fear as piano chords with the pace and timbre of a melting glacier mark a worryingly low pulse. This palpable dread proves to be a fitting backdrop for Thomas Arsenault’s achingly lonely musings. The track begins with him wondering, “Who’s there?/ No one/ No one/ I fear” – a solemn yearning for companionship curiously at odds with his rejection of a returning partner: “I don’t wanna know your hands/Not touching/ Not touching them”. Consequently, he makes the pained decision to just “quit”. It is an arresting moment in a track that has the profound ability to silence and still your surroundings while it plays. Here’s to where’s next.

‘Years’

[notallowedtosing]

The Lawrence Arms - Metropole

To suggest punk-rock is solely the reserve of the young would not only be an oversimplification, it would be wrong. Bad Religion recently started to hit their stride again with their past few albums. Propagandhi are seemingly going from strength to strength. Against Me!’s new album is their best in years. But while there are aging punk bands who continue to put out great, important records it seems there are just as many working at about “60 or so percent” in their respective twilights. NOFX, of course, spring to mind. Alkaline Trio too have experienced a massive drop-off in quality. Now, The Lawrence Arms can be added to this list. ‘Metropole’, their first album in eight years, sees them miss the mark with potentially enthralling themes (namely aging and urban portrayal) and also try and fail to build on former glories.  

Clearly, The Lawrence Arms are beginning to feel their age. On ‘Seventeener (17th and 37th)’, Brendan Kelly finds “the black in (his) beard has turned to white”. What’s more, he acknowledges the “corpse” he’ll leave behind certainly won’t be “pretty”. At times this preoccupation with age is compelling. The evolution of the thought, “I blinked and twenty years went by” on the album’s title-track, to “I was born and I died and just a moment went by” at the conclusion of ‘October Blood’, is especially moving. Unfortunately, the physical feebleness described intermittently throughout the album is also manifest in ‘Metropole’s musical impotency. The album’s biggest crime is being overpopulated by mid-tempo, dismally boring tracks. Largely, this is wheezing, hacking punk-rock at its most pitiful. The juvenile ‘Acheron River’ and the boorish ‘Drunken Tweets’ (“‘fuck you’ are my very favourite words to say”) are little more than power-chords-by-numbers. They also don’t pack the punch to overcome their simplicity. Elsewhere, this is an album of half-measures. The rolling snares, slapdash acoustic strumming and absent-mindedly nostalgic guitars of ‘Hickey Avenue’, for example, vaguely hint at a folksy influence, but they don’t commit to this diversity enough to distract from the patently uninspiring song-writing. Overwhelmingly, these tracks are mind-numbingly predictable and frustratingly pedestrian.                                                                                                   

At times The Larry Arms do attempt to deviate from humdrum punk-rock. Street-musician samples (accordion, bagpipes, piano) recorded on mobile phones offer a metropolitan take on the whimsical circus-themed backdrop to 2003’s ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’. However, the crowd’s applause preceding ‘Chilean District’ fails to build any sort of anticipation of what’s to come, while the distant horns announcing ‘Acheron River’ seem utterly incongruous. Sadly, their half-assed efforts in integrating cheap field recordings are pithily dismissible. Certainly, musical deviations of their own creation are much more compelling. The momentarily pretty juxtaposition of town and country in the title-track – in “the wilderness of these streets/these neon trees/shine down on me” – before Chris McCaughan’s vacant announcement of “the end of all things” stands out for its grim portrayal of decay in an urban setting. Perhaps ‘Metropole’s greatest success, though, is ‘The YMCA Down the Street From the Clinic’ in which lonesome, sliding blues provides an apt canvas for images of loneliness in old-age (“up against the bar/staring down their beers”) with vivid poignancy. Unfortunately, these moments are all too fleeting.

The gulf between ‘Metropole’s potential and reality is staggering. Eight years ago The Lawrence Arms were at the top of their game: ‘Oh, Calcutta!’ saw the trio at their darkest and most aggressive and it was all the better for it. The fiery passion that prevailed on that album is all but extinguished on the limping, decrepit and awfully generic ‘Metropole’. There is evidence of interesting ideas here, but they are generally executed poorly. The recurrent themes of growing old and feeling alone in an urban environment only occasionally offer powerful moments. Despite ‘You Are Here’s disclaimer that “words don’t come to (them) so easily” they still possess the capability – albeit diminished – to turn out evocative one-liners, but this is displayed rarely. All too often, however, their lyrics are tied to poorly-written, ineffectual songs. The twelve tracks that constitute ‘Metropole’ are thus excruciatingly tiresome. The clowns are no longer here to entertain; they’re to be torn up, and stuffed down the drain.

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

'Transgender Dysphoria Blues' and Social Inequalities

One of my favourite releases of 2014 so far is Against Me!’s ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’. Not only is it a rollicking piece of Springsteen-influenced punk-rock (you know, the kind The Gaslight Anthem are pitching for) but with its boldness in exposing transgender discrimination and aligning it with other social struggles it makes a crucial statement. Ok, let me back up a bit. Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace used to be Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel. In 2012 she went public with her experiences of gender dysphoria and announced her plans to transition to living as a woman. Despite almost unanimous public support, not everyone was supportive of Grace’s situation. Heartbreakingly, her own father was one of the latter. Grace says her decision to come out ended her relationship with him.

I remember when I first learnt of Grace’s struggle. I remember, for the first time, clearly seeing her band’s name as an expression of self-dissatisfaction and alienation. I remember listening to ‘New Wave’s final track, ‘Ocean’, and hearing the verse beginning, “If I could have chosen/I would’ve been born a woman/My mother once told me she would’ve named me Laura…” finally free of assumed metaphor. I remember going to class and discussing the news with a friend. Our conversation about it that morning didn’t really go beyond, “good for her”. We didn’t feel the need to say more. I also remember conversations with another friend – one I assumed was more accepting – who was against her “decision”, dismissing it as “wrong”. We’re still friends; I still hope he comes to change his mind.

Clearly, there are those who still feel this way: I wouldn’t be wasting words if there weren’t. Indeed, in online discussions about this album a frequently uttered sentiment seems to be, “hopefully someday, this message will no longer be necessary”. Recently, in England we have seen similar commentaries recited upon Olympic diver Tom Daley’s announcement that he is currently dating a man, or former Premier League footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger’s post-retirement pronouncement of his homosexuality. For now however, someone in the public eye stating a sexual preference other than heterosexual or identifying as a gender besides the one they were born with is still considered newsworthy. Evidently, for some people there is still something unusual, perhaps even wrong about such lifestyles.

It is a sad fact that in the 21st century social inequality is rife. Nearly 60 years after the onset of the civil rights movement in America, black and Latino communities continue to overwhelmingly be the target of stop-and-frisk tactics in New York City, for example. Nearly a century after the first full steps towards women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom, women typically earn 15% less than their male counterparts in the same job. As of 19th August 2013, only 15 out of roughly 190 countries allow gay marriage. A few days ago, CeCe McDonald, a Trans woman of colour was jailed in 2011 for killing a white supremacist in self-defence. He taunted her with homophobic, transphobic and racist slurs, before throwing broken glass in her face. Tragically, her case is not isolated. Tellingly, there is an International Day against Transphobia and Homophobia (17th May): its very existence illustrates the perceived need for awareness and change.

Everyone makes judgements. These judgements then provide a rationale (no matter how illogical) for our treatment – positive or negative – of someone who we don’t know on a personal level. These judgements inform how we see one another, and if there is enough belief in them they can become increasingly entrenched and widely accepted socially. They can then, in turn, perpetuate social inequalities. If we can learn to see each other as human beings, as equals, then part of the battle is won. And if these stereotypes can be socially constructed, then they can be socially deconstructed. There is hope.

‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XX - Hammock - Oblivion Hymns

25th October

I often wonder what the end of the world will be like. Will it be brought upon us as a result of our own destructive, myopic ways? I think it says a lot about humanity’s short-sightedness that ostensibly we are ostensibly more concerned about a zombie invasion than a nuclear holocaust, for example. Will it be wrought by nature, or a combination of man and nature – global warming, say? Could it be the actions of some unseen supreme being? Will it happen in the next million years? In the next millennium? The next century? Might I even be around to see it? It could come in the form of a terrifying, fiery maelstrom that scorches us from this planet, or some tremendous, fearsome aquatic surge that simply washes us away. Or, it could be like the softly-worded climax to Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘The Nine Billion Names of God’, an understated, peaceful, unfathomably beautiful ending: “overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out”.

  I hear Hammock’s exquisite ‘Oblivion Hymns’ as the soundtrack to this blissful vision of the end of all. ‘Oblivion Hymns’ sees subtly sweeping string arrangements come to the fore, pushing wistful guitar drones to a background role along with aching, yearning horns and the occasional choral arrangement. Accordingly, the tone and timbre makes it difficult to avoid awestruck reverence of the majestic beauty on display here.

  In the past few years the two members of Hammock have endured friends’ suicides and sudden deaths, chronic sickness and cataclysmic flood damage. It is perhaps unsurprising then that a sense of mortality pervades ‘Oblivion Hymns’. The children’s choir that emerges out of the ether of strings and pianos on ‘Then the Quiet Explosion’ evokes images of some cosmic funeral. The intermittent broken-glass guitar refrains on top of a burgeoning string section during ‘Holding Your Absence’ sound like the renderings of dying stars on a silver screen. At the album’s conclusion, dark, a dark, swelling drone unfurls like a slow-motion rush of DMT in ‘Hope Becomes a Loss’, before the most overt “hymn” here, ‘Tres Dominé’ – a euphoric, final comfort. 

  The tracks that constitute ‘Oblivion Hymns’ are just that – spiritual pleas, meditations from the brink of utter destruction. Amidst all this death, darkness and finality, there is a calm stoicism and, more importantly, an awestruck sense of beauty. The vast scope of what Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson accomplish here serves to soothe the listener, but also to humble them: you are an infinitesimal, yet integral part of something much larger than you and beyond comprehension. Their slow-motion strings and guitar drones paint a night-sky canvas; flourishes from other strings and guitars, or else horns or choirs shine through the darkness. Listen closely and you may just hear the stars going out.

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XIX - Inquisition - Obscure Verses for the Multiverse

25th October

The key to Inquisition’s album ‘Obscure Verses for the Multiverse’ isn’t necessarily its taut, lean structure. Nor is it is deliciously devilish ambiance. The not-so-secret weapon in the Columbian black-metallers’ arsenal is how dynamic the guitar work is. Here, Dagon uses the full dynamic range of his fretboard to weave a rich tapestry of darkly evocative riffs that maintain a visceral quality. Throughout the album Dagon shifts between sections fluently, allowing the songs to develop smoothly. However, ‘Obscure Verses for the Multiverse’ offers immediate satisfaction too. ‘Darkness Flows towards Unseen Horizons’ wastes little time in diving into a tumbling, sinister lead, while the opening gambit of ‘Master of the Cosmological Black Cauldron’ is an instantaneous, brutalising assault. Despite the apparent differences in approach, the result is largely the same: an enjoyable, hypnotic take on black metal.

 ‘Obscure Verses for the Multiverse’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XVIII - Iron Chic - The Constant One

4th October

I saw Iron Chic at The Fest this year. They killed it. Absolutely killed it. 8 Seconds was overflowing with bodies (so much so that fire marshals threatened to shut down the show for being dangerously over capacity), beer and buoyant jubilation. The front of the crowd was a sweaty, beery mass of fans shouting along to every word as if their lives depended upon it. The top of it was seldom without crowdsurfers atop of it. People were showing their appreciation by diving off of balconies into this throng. All this happened before 4pm.

When listening to ‘The Constant One’ I struggle to get this image from my head and to replace it with a new one. Perhaps, given my overwhelmingly positive experience of seeing Iron Chic live, I am hopelessly biased toward liking this record and my mind was already made up – I am going to love this, and it will be forever linked to that show. Or maybe, it is just the perfect setting for this record: beer in hand, smile on face. Every word, every chord on ‘The Constant One’ is indisputably suggestive of (drinking and) smiling your troubles away.

Bright-faced guitar passages that exist somewhere between “riff” and “solo” melodically support songs overflowing with enough PMA for everyone. On ‘Sounds Like a Pretty Brutal Murder’, frontman Jason Lubrano admits “Life can be a comedy/But I don’t really get the joke/Still I crack a smile”. The sure-footed, mid-tempo ‘(Castle) Numbskull’ sounds like a punk take on desert rock, and with its proud “wind in my face but it can’t knock me down” attitude it offers rearview-mirror escapism at its best. What’s more, ‘The Constant One’ sounds positively celebratory: Lubrano’s whooping vocals, upbeat guitar chords, triumphantly euphoric melodies. On ‘The Constant One’, Iron Chic sound psyched to be alive. You should be too.

‘Bogus Journey’

[notallowedtosing]

XVII - Hospital Sports - Hospital Sports

It would be all too facile to accuse New Zealanders Hospital Sports of ripping off their soft, hushed-voiced indie-emo forefathers. Certainly, the spirit of American Football, Mineral and Penfold is alive and well on their self-titled debut album. However, what they do, they do so very well, all the while cultivating their own identity. Album opener ‘Dinosaur’ stumbles into a free-flowing, breezy cascade of arpeggios and finger-tapped melodies before plunging headlong into a dreamy daze of fuzzed-up guitar tremolos. Meanwhile, ‘The Long Run’ sounds like the elegant backing to Billy Corgan daydreaming – minus the bombast and pomp of course. In spite of the line “in the sunshine I used to stay indoors all day/playing along to records” Hospital Sports remain rookies here: vocal melodies sometimes fall flat, occasionally song structures sound abrupt and unnecessary. But these idiosyncratic mistakes are all part of the sleepy bliss of this album; these “faults” aren’t really “faults” at all – they are minor imperfections that are part of a near-perfect whole.

‘Hospital Sports’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

You Blew It! - Keep Doing What You're Doing

You Blew It!’s second album could hardly be more aptly titled. ‘Keep Doing What You’re Doing’ doesn’t reinvent the wheel for contemporary emo, nor does it have to: You Blew It! execute their own jangly, softly-shouted style of noughties emo adroitly. The Floridians marry indie, pop-punk and Kinsella-esque Midwestern emo with admirable fluidity while musically framing lyrical phrases destined for tumblr posts and sweaty, smiling sing-a-longs. Additionally, ‘Keep Doing What You’re Doing’ exudes the positivity its title hints at. Collectively, the upbeat, major-key songs that comprise the album combine to form a 35-minute serotonin rush. Lyrically, Tanner Jones gleans positivity from interpersonal cynicism and derisive bitterness, culminating in the purgative repetition of “Maybe this time it couldn’t hurt to be happy/Maybe things aren’t quite as bad as I let myself believe”.

The progression from their 2012 effort, ‘Grow Up, Dude’ is easily traceable, as are the similarities to modern bands such as Snowing and Algernon Cadwallader. You Blew It! glide between more introspective, meditative sections and irrepressible flurries of action. Dazzling, battling guitar leads still find a home here – see ‘Regional Dialect’ and ‘You & Me & Me’ – but this feels more grounded, chord-focussed (whisper it, more mature). They clearly still have one foot in the more intimate environments they have been playing for years – on ‘House Address’, Jones sings, “I always felt fine singing in your basement”. Still, You Blew It! are at a critical juncture in their career where more people are starting to take notice and they are being opened up to a larger audience – ‘Keep Doing What You’re Doing’ was even streamed on Pitchfork advance. They are well prepared, however: tellingly, this simply sounds bigger than anything they have done before. Chalk it up to greater production values (the razor-sharp guitar leads and the beefed-up sound) or their apparent greater ambition and clarity of vision (album closer ‘Better to Best’s wide-scope, masterfully-paced structure and mature conceptualisation stemming from its aforementioned conflict resolution), but this just sounds like prior releases only with one eye on bigger leagues.

The ambition displayed on ‘Keep Doing What You’re Doing’ ties in nicely with the brightness and buoyancy that pervade the album. Despite the scatter-brained vitriol that intermittently surfaces – “You can always consider me a friend/ Just strictly in the past tense”, from the moodily swaggering ‘Award of the Year Award’ – there is a very tangible sense of cathartic optimism on ‘Keep Doing What You’re Doing’. Opener ‘Match & Tinder’ may not explode with the force its name suggests, but it does burn with an electric energy and effusive joie de vivre. You Blew It! largely keep up the positivity from here on out as their fresh-of-breath-air chord progressions combined with the starry-eyed leads form a bright sonic pallet that is difficult to resist.

All this is not to say the album is without its faults though. The ill-fitting, cringingly awkward solo vocals that usher in ‘A Different Kind of Kindling’ feel superfluous. The faintly hushed, understated ‘Strong Island’ simply doesn’t hit as hard as you might like it to. It could also be argued that the homophonic nature of tracks is a weakness (a tendency for tracks to blur, a slight lack of differentiation) rather than a strength. Still, that You Blew It! get it wrong is commendable for at least they have the courage to risk failure. And besides, if they’re persistent enough their next record might be flawless.

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XVI - Lorde - Pure Heroine

30th September

If you told me at the start of the year one of my favourite albums from 2013 would be by a 16 year-old girl from New Zealand I wouldn’t have believed you - lest we forget the atrocities teenage girls have been responsible for in recent years. Additionally, I know from experience I wouldn’t have been capable of producing an album as accomplished as ‘Pure Heroine’ at Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s age. Nor, I imagine, would most people. But Lorde is different. From ‘Pure Heroine’ it is abundantly clear we are dealing with an intelligent, well-spoken, self- and socially-aware, creative young woman. Her debut captures what it is to grow up in the modern world remarkably well, and perhaps, by extension, what are common, wider concerns today.

  ‘Pure Heroine’ deals in XX-lite IDM-pop with straightforward, “glitchy” beats, and equally simplistic lo-fi, low-volume synths. Musically, Lorde doesn’t (yet) create particularly complex backdrops for her ruminations (though the potential for more is undeniably there). Nor does she need to. The cold, mournful single-note guitar pushes in closer, ‘A World Alone’ are fittingly lonesome for its subject matter -– Ella alienated by the world she inhabits; ‘400 Lux’ bumps ‘n’ grinds to a dark bass line backing with synths yawning one moment, hysterically murmuring the next. Generally though, the musical backing on ‘Pure Heroine’ is largely unobtrusive, pushing Ella Yelich-O’Connor to centre stage – it’s a move that pays off big time.

  Album opener, ‘Tennis Courts’ invites you “down to the tennis court” to “talk it up”. And talk it up, she does. Just before this invitation she curtly observes how “art” is synonymous with “showing people how little we care”. ‘Glory and Gore’ equates its titular ingredients with “making headlines”, before astutely, darkly warning that these headlines are “roughing up our minds so we’re ready when the killing time comes”. Evoking the foolish, myopic majesty of adolescence is one thing; making your listener long for it is another. But that’s just what Lorde achieves on the album’s best cut, ‘Team’. The whole album is littered with common relatable allusions to youth, no weaker for their universality. 

  ‘Team’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XV - Oathbreaker - Eros/Anteros

19th August

Oathbreaker don’t really bring anything new to the table: elements of black and sludge metal have been known to mix well with hardcore for years. However, when they do it this well the Belgians don’t especially need to. Blackened hardcore tracks such as ‘No Rest for the Weary’ and ‘Condor Tongue’ particularly impress with their array of riffs, tempos and breakneck, yet seamless tempo changes. The much slower, ethereal funeral-procession hardcore of ‘Offer Aan de Leegte’ unnerves in much the same way that Converge’s ‘Hell to Pay’ does: devilish vocals, broken-glass guitar harmonics, deliberately unfurling structure. Indeed, Oathbreaker’s ability to instil a sense of ominous disquiet and foreboding is remarkable. This is perhaps demonstrated best on epic closer ‘Clair Obscur’ in which 6 minutes of softly sirenic vocals, ambient drones and cloud-gathering guitars break into a final coda of crashing catharsis. It is a fitting end ‘Eros/Anteros’ – not only as it closes out the album with the same day rainy-day torment that pervades most of it – but because it demonstrates Oathbreaker’s best strength: their ability to marry mournful atmospherics with something righteously, head-bangingly heavy.  

  ‘The Abyss Looks Into Me’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XIV - Gris - L'Ame Enflammee, L'Ame Constellee

8th July

In ‘A L’Ame Enflammee, L’Ame Constellee’, Canadians Gris have unleashed a formidable album. ‘A L’Ame…’ could variously be said to sound like a symphonically-driven, ‘Aenima’-era Tool, a slightly more bloody-minded Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and a heavier, more-crushing Drudkh, but such reference points would mostly be for convenience. Mood-setting is crucial to Gris’ work and ‘A L’Ame…’ is testament to their ability to effectively create an otherworldly, often abyssal atmosphere. Their capabilities in this department set them apart. Acoustic and classically-oriented passages alongside doomy black-metal widen their sonic pallet and make for a fascinating listen. The strings, synths and saws (I think) during interlude ‘Samsara’ create a sense of unease Scott Walker would be proud of, while the fifteen-minute epic ‘Les Forges’ is violently gripping and even mesmerising at times. With its 80-minute run-time, and its suffocating nature ‘A L’Ame…’ often makes for a challenging listen. However, it is also one of the most rewarding ones from the last year as well as one of the most interesting.

  ‘Igneus’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XIII - Kanye West - Yeezus

17th June

Whatever your opinion on Kanye West, I think we can all agree on one thing: he is, at the very least, entertaining. A genius? A moron? Socially aware? Ignorant? A talented musician? A hack? How about all of the above? On ‘Yeezus’, his latest musical offering, he is all these things and more. ‘Yeezus’ is so scatter-brained, so uncensored that it effectively achieves a self-portrait (“selfie”?) of a man deeply influenced by, and perhaps inextricable from modern popular culture. More so, in fact, than the more sheeny, streamlined, yet brilliant ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’. So much so, that it could be argued it captures the zeitgeist. ‘Yeezus’ is intermittently misogynistic, self-aggrandising, inane, astute, blasphemous, and even profound. Musically, the album is fittingly schizophrenic, jack-knifing from one idea, one genre, one era, even, to the next without mercy. At the heart of all this is the recovering gay fish himself: bold, brilliant, and batshit crazy.

  ‘Yeezus’ doesn’t hesitate as ‘On Sight’ immediately kicks in with a storming Justice-esque dance beat and Kanye announces his arrival: “Yeezus season approaching… A monster about to come alive again”. From here on in Kanye bombards the listener with a furious volley of popular culture references, abrupt stylistic shifts, cheap jokes, and cocksure boasts. This is a formula adapted to each of ‘Yeezus’ tracks, though it never grows stale – possibly because it is genuinely exciting (West seldom gives you a chance to catch your breath and get bored), or maybe because he has become so adept at the frenzied modern r ‘n’ b pastiche.

  From the aforementioned opener to ‘Black Skinhead’, an expression of barely-contained racial anger over a Daft Punk-produced bass stomp reminiscent of Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Beautiful People’, to the simmering, swelling fury over concentrated wealth and ostentatious materialism as a means of social engineering on ‘New Slaves’, the front half of the album is a veritable assault. In between these two, ‘I Am A God’ is Kanye’s vehicle for spitting out blasphemous contradictions between humbling himself modelling himself on his God, while still claiming “I am a God” (“hurry up with my damn croissants”). Elsewhere, ‘Blood on the Leaves’ picks up where ‘Black Skinhead’ and ‘New Slaves’ left off. The trifecta of images of a substance (“Molly”, we call it “Mandy”, Americans) coming “out of your body”, of another era with the sample of ‘Strange Fruit’, of ‘blood’ literally ‘on the leaves’ conjures racial violence from the past as well as the present.

  ‘Yeezus’ is a breathless, spontaneous mish-mash of references to popular culture, the Bible and history. ‘Yeezus’ is an all-out assault, a stream-of-racially-agitated-consciousness. ‘Yeezus’ is a pastiche of abrupt musical motifs, paranoia, fury, self-aggrandisement, and love. There are many ways to describe ‘Yeezus’, but maybe I should leave the final word to its creator: “Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That’s all it is”.

'Bound 2'

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XII - Deafheaven - Sunbather

10th June

Critical acclaim and general hype has followed San Franciscans Deafheaven ever since they released their demo back in 2010 – and with good reason too. They capitalised on this momentum the next year with their debut album, ‘Roads to Judah’. It boasted the ability to borrow liberally from black metal, post-rock, shoegaze, hardcore and screamo and still produce a coherent, emotionally devastating sound. It subsequently ended up on the end-of-year lists of many critics, amateur and professional alike. 2013’s ‘Sunbather’ has done pretty much the same, though the roads it has taken in order to arrive there are different.

The salmon/seashell-pink cover is an accurate indicator of the sonic pallet that Deafheaven are working with here. Sonically, ‘Sunbather’ is a much brighter affair than ‘Roads…’ This becomes obvious early on with profoundly pretty melodies emerging from the wall-of-sound that opener ‘Dream House’ cultivates. At the track’s staggeringly heavy/beautiful conclusion, frontman George Clarke growls a recollection of a conversation with a friend wherein death is said to be “like a dream”. His otherworldly, distant vocals of “I want to dream” fleetingly make the prospect attractive, if only for the “blissful”, dreamlike repose of it.

A yearning, a hunger for the unknown or for something different lies at the heart of ‘Sunbather’. The title track follows a narrative of Clarke observing an affluent young girl sunbathing in an ecstasy of luxury. Clarke’s tormented desire for wealth burns through the track’s thick pastel-shaded, effects-laden tremolos and blast-beats. Elsewhere, a real-time drug deal by guitarist Kerry McCoy – anxious, broke – sampled over the broken-piano melodrama of ‘Windows’, leaves the listener similarly desperate for McCoy to overcome his personal demons.

Deafheaven have never claimed to be a kvlt black-metal band, and the cover alone shows the band themselves letting it known they are all too aware of this and frankly don’t care. It is a bold statement. But the real statement here is made in the music: Deafheaven are masters at what they do and no one blends these genres with such heart-wrenching results. ‘Sunbather’ sees Deafheaven pushing their shoegaze/post-rock side to the forefront: the results are simply stunning.

‘Dream House’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

XI - Queens of the Stone Age - ..Like Clockwork

3rd June

 “We’re back and we’ve crashed the party. It’s a pretty great feeling”. These are the words of QOTSA founder, Josh Homme, speaking about his band’s spectacular return to form. They speak of an absence – it has been six years since the Queens’ last album – but also perhaps hint at the fact that on their most recent couple of albums, Queens have struggled to find their feet. Perhaps the task of recreating the success of ‘Rated R’ or ‘Songs for the Deaf’ was simply too great. Perhaps a rotating cast of contributors is too difficult to manage proficiently… No one knows. Ahem. All I know is that ‘…Like Clockwork’ is the best QOTSA album for years and they’re back, baby!

Boasting a huge cast of huge names contributing to the album (Elton John, Trent Reznor, Jon Theodore), one might worry about potential egotistical clashes resulting in stalemate. You needn’t worry. Special guest slots are mostly in cameo form, and are handled tastefully – serving to embellish the album rather than diminish it. Mark Lanegan and Alex Turner ’s backing vocals give ‘If I Had a Tail’ an added kick, while Jake Shears’ falsettos on death-march blues-rock of opener ‘Keep Your Eyes Peeled’ and on ‘Smooth Sailing’ complement Homme’s husky barroom-drawl superbly. The one slot that isn’t in cameo form is that of Dave Grohl back behind the kit. If you were a fan of ‘Songs for the Deaf’ (if you’re reading this then you probably were) you’ll remember how his powerhouse performance really elevated the whole piece, and he does a similarly impressive job here too.

But for all the marquee names on display here, the star of the show is the master of ceremonies, Josh Homme himself. Homme’s best moments in the past have often reflected his ability to pen pop songs with a little more edge than your standard FM-rock fare. ‘…Like Clockwork’ is hardly in short supply of such balls-to-the-wall bangers (‘If I Had a Tail’, ‘My God is the Sun’), but the album’s best moments are where he goes above and beyond this expectation of him. ‘I Appear Missing’ alternates between a dazed shuffle and a slow, bluesy crunch before imploding in much the same way that ‘A Song For the Dead’ did on ‘Songs for the Deaf’. ‘Vampyre of Time and Memory’, meanwhile, is the best “ballad” on the album as Homme croons on life: “does anyone ever get this right?” Homme and his Queens of the Stone Age may have made their fair share of mistakes throughout their career, but on ‘…Like Clockwork’ they get more than enough right to redeem themselves for now.

‘…Like Clockwork’

Craigy

[notallowedtosing]

Dangers - Eureka! Moments

For a while now, Los Angeles troupe Dangers have been at the cutting edge of modern hardcore. Theirs is a unique path, setting an individually distinct message to eccentric beats and often quirky riffs. Essentially, they tend to eschew clichés both musically and lyrically. More admirable, however, is their message, or rather, messages. Dangers frontman Al Brown’s lyrics marry personal and political themes, placing the individual well within (or, equally, at odds with) the world he finds himself in.

‘Eureka! Moments’, the first cut from their forthcoming EP, ‘Five O’Clock Shadows at the Edge of the Western World’, still feels like the same band who wrote ‘Anger’ and ‘Messy, Isn’t It’, only more focussed, more direct. The video for the track sees the band enter a garage, blast out the song (off-camera) in a little under 40 seconds, then leave just as unassumingly as they arrived. It is a fitting testament to the track’s message of living one’s life as they please, of living in the noble punk tradition of wanting “nothing to do with the quo that such status maintains”. Despite its short run-time, ‘Eureka! Moments’ crams a lot in: shifts between four-to-the-floor rhythms and a pulverising shuffle, metal-tinged guitar solos in miniature, pissed off power chords and chromatic slides. However, at no point does it feel forced, awkwardly abrupt, or unnecessary. Rather, it plays with the fluidity and lack of compromise its tersely delivered philosophy demands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc-xobQQcd4

Craigy