Guy Beres

I had not previously explored the work of Portishead prior to their recent second coming, so I was a bit unsure of what to expect. When I picked up their new album last week, I was genuinely surprised. Thinking about the gamut of music I have listened to over the last decade, I don’t think I have come across a sound that is quite as bleak and confining –and yet beautiful – as that produced by Portishead on this new album. While I don’t want to put folks off, I am tempted to describe this album as utter depression in musical form. 

The first track Silence has a strong and compelling groove and is probably the most up-tempo track on the album. I am sure you could dance to parts of it, but one would have to wonder at what sort of party revellers would gyrate to Beth Gibbons’ pained and cracking wailings. Her voice is truly rare; so fragile and so emotionally expressive. On this album, at least, the emotions Gibbons expresses are almost exclusively negative and oppressive, to the point where it can be honestly hard to listen to. Even still, you will want to listen to it again, because the quality of the music and the production is so accomplished.

The band does occasionally quite strongly recall some of their rainy day peers. The elongated arpeggio that concludes Hunter seems very reminiscent to me of a similar line from Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief – I would have to listen to that album again to put my finger on which track I am thinking of. The thumping beat that kicks off Nylon Smile again sounds like one of the celebrated b-sides released from Radiohead’s Kid A / Amnesiac sessions. The Rip has a bleakly stunning and anthemic transition mid track that recalls the best of bands like Sigur Ros and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, albeit with a more concertedly electronic mien. We Carry On and Machine Gun get all dark and industrial, punctuated by pulsing electronic beats. Neither track is recommended if you have a headache.

Penultimate track Magic Doors is one of the album’s standouts, an easy to empathise with lament with a middle-eastern twang. Threads picks up where the previous track left off, with the following somewhat less than uplifting chorus:

I’m worn, tired of my mind
I’m worn out, thinking of why
I’m always so unsure

I am not sure that the places that Portishead takes you are places you want to stay in very long, but I do think they are places worth visiting. Just don’t ruminate.

UPDATE: The Radiohead track I am thinking of is Sail to the Moon. Can anyone else who has heard both tracks confirm I am not losing the plot?

I have been aware of Bloc Party and the odd one of their bigger singles for a while now, but it was only late last year that I finally clambered clumsily onboard their bandwagon and got a copy of their debut, Silent Alarm. Suitably impressed, I’ve recently got my hands on a copy of their second album, A Weekend in the City, produced by Jacknife Lee. They are an interesting band, and their music seems to somehow combine cohesively a fairly broad sweep of elements from a number of other popular modern bands. Jagged guitar riffs ala Franz Ferdinand? Check. Electronic dabbling ala Radiohead on one of their more “rock” days out? Check. Rock anthems not dissimilar to that which U2 once dished out on a regular basis? Check.

Song for Clay (Disappear Here) kicks off the album in a relatively sedate fashion, at least until just over a minute in, when the anticipated guitar riffs are unleashed, backed by some fairly urgent percussion. The third single released from the album Hunting For Witches kicks off next, with another urgent rhythm, and a spidery arpeggio repeating throughout the track. Third track Waiting for the 7:18 is one of my favourite tracks on the album, nostalgia-drenched and effortlessly building up towards a fairly anthemic climax. The track does manage to capture some of the existential sentiments that one can’t help feeling as a seemingly perpetually busy Londoner.

The Prayer was a bit of an odd track to pick as the first single off the album, for mine. Although I don’t mind it, it probably wouldn’t be in the first three tracks I would release as singles from this album. It’s a bit too discombobulated and seems held back some how by the juddering verses. Uniform poses as a ballad until about halfway through the track, when the pace picks up abruptly and the band adds some backing vocals that quite memorably, recall the voice of Soundwave from the Transformers cartoon series. I still can’t decide if it is a cool effect or naff, but more inclined to think the latter. On and Where Is Home> delve into a bit more studio trickery. On, unlike the previous track, really is a ballad, and quite a pretty one at that.Kreuzberg is a pretty track that quite strongly recalls colleagues Coldplay with its softly-softly approach and icily chiming guitars, followed by anthemic single I Still Remember, which but for the occasional dubious lyric, can not be that far off being the perfect pop-rock single. Lightweight, but brilliant.

Fourth single Flux is the closest thing to dance music on the album, driven by an electronic beat, with lead-singer Kele Okereke’s vocals distorted in accordance with the stereotypical rave track textbook. The album finishes with more of a whimper than a bang, with Sunday managing to be quite pretty without being particularly memorable, and SRXT droning on a bit, before surging towards an unexpectedly anthemic climax, with the band in full hair rock mode and what sounds like a choir in the background. A strange end, to be sure.

All in all this is quite a decent album, although I am not sure it warrants the accolades of the band’s debut. There are quite a few moments of brilliance on here, but they are surrounded in a bit of a pool of okay and so-so. The band’s energy on this album is likely to impress initially, but I have a feeling my interest in the album as a whole is set to wane, excepting of course those few moments of anthemic gold.

In the grand tradition of too-clever-by-half music categorisation by media critics, I hereby label the oeuvre of The Mars Volta “hard rock sci-fi flamenco”. Their music in some respects make that of fellow rock melodramatists Muse seem subtle, and Pink Floyd’s work seem like mainstream four minute pub rock fare. Main protagonists Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López combine often non-sensical or incomprehensible lyrics with a maelstrom of instrumental riffing, with the resulting “song fragments” intertwining and interconnecting in a strangely symphonic way. Needless to say, the band is a love them or hate them proposition. My own view on them falls into the former category.

Fortunately for myself and others who like the band, they are reasonably prolific. Their albums tend to revolve around some sort of vaguely comprehensible conceptual theme, although the average listener (and perhaps even the diehard fan) may not even know what that is for any of their given albums. Their latest effort, The Bedlam in Goliath, polarises like every one of their previous releases. The album got one star out of five in the Guardian. Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen gave it a 4.3 out of 10, observing quite correctly that the Volta’s back catalogue contains “an astronomical risk/reward potential”, and making the following prescient observation:

Few bands in popular modern rock share their technical prowess, super-adventurous listening habits, or K2 conquering ambition. If they could somehow manage to channel all of it into something other than a tribute to their own excess, even we believe it would probably be totally fucking awesome.

Indeed. Fortunately, at least in my view, there are always segments in any Mars Volta album that more than justify the band’s less listenable voyages into alien masturbation territory. Their latest effort is no different in this respect. First track Aberinkula does little to welcome first time listeners to the mix, launching from the first microsecond into a barrage of Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s insectoid howling and a seemingly discombobulated barrage of noise. Gradually the track changes direction and turns down the intensity, flowing without interruption into the stunningly catchy second track Metatron. So much of the band’s most memorable pieces and movements revolve around the music coming back in from “the cold” after an extended experimental passage, into a rousing chorus and intense backing from the band.

Ilyena opens with Bixler-Zavala reading a sing-song poem in a suitable alien voice, before cutting loose into another fine barrage of fairly mainstream but always interesting pop-rock noodling. Wax Simulcra is from a similar school, although this time with the lead singer’s voice in high-pitched insect mode, laid over the top of some heavy riffing. Goliath is the album’s most simplistic rock moment, kicking off with an almighty wah-wah riff that continues throughout the song, followed by Tourniquet Man, a Pink Floydian ballad if ever there was one. The first half of this album has, in short, enough gold in it to force a smile on to anybody’s face from time to time.

The second half is somewhat more obtuse. Cavalettas is raucously quick-paced and resists attempts for the band to reel it in. Agadez ventures into the peculiarly psychological, and Askepios forms more of a link in the chain in this album than an actual song. A decidedly mixed bag makes up the rest of the album. Ourobouros has an urgent and compelling refrain, and Soothsayer introduces a taste of Mediterranean mysticism to the mix. Conjugal Burns, concluding the album, manages to be as dark and twisted as the name of the song suggests it might be, as Bixler-Zavala rants, howls and croons his way through the track. Like many Mars Volta cuts, this final one seems to contain about ten or eleven crudely yet cleverly woven track threads within it. Like so many of their tracks, some of them (and more often than not, most of them) are pretty damned awesome.

This is probably not the album to start with for someone just starting to explore this band’s work, but if you liked their previous work, you will like this one as well.

Ah, the hottest 100, self-acclaimed as the world’s largest music poll. It’s a bit of an Australian institution really. Given that I have been abroad for the past six months and haven’t really had the time to stream anything, I am a bit out of the loop with respect to what the Js have had on their playlist. To compound my isolation from the Australian airwaves, I can’t say that I’ve listened to a single minute of UK radio since I have been in London. You can chalk that one down to not having a radio and not even having a television until a couple of months ago. Considering all this, I guess I should not be too surprised if I haven’t heard 50% or more of the list for this year. Let’s just take a quick look at the top ten for starters:

1 Muse - Knights of Cydonia
2 Silverchair - Straight Lines
3 Kings Of Leon - On Call
4 John Butler Trio - Better Than
5 Faker - This Heart Attack
6 Foo Fighters - The Pretender
7 Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (live)
8 Cold War Kids - Hang Me Up To Dry
9 Soko - I’ll Kill Her
10The Panics - Don’t Fight It

I’m kind of chuffed that Muse have taken the top slot, although I am somewhat bemused that this particular track was the one that did it. Knights of Cydonia is a mini-odyssey of operatic rock goodness, but I would never have thought that it would have attracted the mainstream appeal necessary to figure in the top ten, let alone number one. Of the remainder of the top ten, Silverchair’s appearance is a good call and I am not at all surprised to see Daft Punk in there. As for the rest - I think it’s a pretty strange, soft shortlist of songs. None of the other tracks above were (at least to my knowledge) the barnstorming genre-crossing hits that tracks like Outkast’s Hey Ya and Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy were in years past.

More over the fold.

(more…)

It has probably been a couple of years since I first heard the name “Iron and Wine”, but it has only been recently that I have managed to find a suitable juncture to investigate the American folk rock artist’s work further. Iron and Wine is, of course, the stage name for Sam Beam, who has released three studio albums in the last five years. I have heard a couple of tracks from his first two albums along the way, but it is his most recent album, The Shepherd’s Dog which I have managed to lay my hands on first. Although 2008 is of course still extremely young, this is the album that has been on rotation on my iPod the most so far this year.

Beam’s silvery, whispered tones together with some neat guitar playing dominate the album to good effect. Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car kicks off the album with a burst of happy-go-lucky fun, with some strings and what sounds suspiciously like a xylophone adding to the tune’s easy rhythm. The next few tracks are somewhat more downbeat and melancholic, culminating with the catchy House By The Sea. Beam’s playful guitar combines well with what seems to be something of a fable put to music:

There is a house by the sea
Two jealous sisters, they’re waiting for me
And one is laid on the floor
And one is changing the locks on the doors 

A triplet of strong cuts then sets the tone for the rest of the album. Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog) is a fitting title track, even if it sticks out a bit like a sore thumb. The bass line is more funky than folksy, and the tune represents a fairly strong but interesting departure from the rest of the material on the album. The title track leads into Resurrection Fern, a triumph of a mid-paced singalong packed with wistful lyrics like these:

And we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire
Both our tender bellies bound in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its Resurrection Fern 

Which in turn leads into Boy With A Coin, the album’s first single and one of its more edgy tracks, with a guitar arpeggio and some rhythmic handclapping running like a thread throughout. From there on, Beam delivers a grab-bag of everything; The Devil Never Sleeps runs with the pace of a old-time locomotive in its smile-inducing attempt to do honky-tonk, and the aptly named Peace Beneath The City is easily the most sedentary track on the album. The final track, Flightless Bird, American Mouth is a masterpiece of waltzing pop nostalgia, and a perfect way to wrap things up with Beam’s best vocal performance yet:

I was a quick wet boy, diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere 

In short, this album comes with my strong recommendation. Not having delved into Iron and Wine’s earlier works, I can really comment on whether his latest album is the best place to get acquainted. Having said that, I’m fairly confident if you pick this one up that you will, like me, quickly get interested in prowling Sam Beam’s back catalogue for more rare gems like some of the songs featuring on this album.