www.list.co.uk/music SINGLES & DOWNLOADS
Is there just no stopping Robyn? What with her three albums in a year and her electro-pop victories, and her masquerade as an inferior fembot going by the name of Sky Ferreira, and – sorry, what’s that you say? Ferreira is in fact a Portuguese-American star and her hit- seeking synth-bop missile ‘One’ (Parlophone) ●●●●● is not a Swedish postmodern pop ruse? Dear God.
Speaking of our Lord Almighty, Biffy Clyro reach out to Him on ‘God and Satan’ (14thFloor) ●●●●●: a theological tug-of-love ballad with Sunday school strumming and searching maracas. It is glorious, of course, but they might want to swerve Ipswich rapper DELS, who posits becoming the anti-christ on his debut single, ‘Shapeshift’ (Big Dada) ●●●●●. DELS is a brooding, graphic MC – dropping in ‘I morphed into a car’ here and ‘I’m your quarterpounder-cheese’ there – with psychedelic beats to match.
Edinburgh’s Mayhew are more ‘away and shite’ (at least we hope that’s what they sing, in brilliantly posh intones) on their dreamy, folk- embellished ‘Tinderbox EP’ (self-release) ●●●●●, but this issue’s top folk-tinged pick comes from gilded harmonists Aberfeldy: ‘Malcolm’ (Tenement) ●●●●● is a masterclass in gentle, uplifting skiffle-pop.
Besides these divine emissions, two singles offer stand-out life-affirming properties: the scorching electro-pulse of Caribou’s ‘Sun’ (City Slang) ●●●●● is a cardinal affair indeed, but is narrowly pipped to SOTW by Icelandic indie-pop saviours Hjaltalin (pictured), whose ‘Sweet Impressions’ (Cargo) ●●●●● – sounds like angels and orchestras and Chris Rea. (Nicola Meighan)
Offer rubbing your knee and drawling in your ear about how great the Happy Mondays were and how you MUST listen to Arthur Russell,
DANCE PUNK !!! Strange Weather, Isn’t It? (Warp) ●●●●● If you’ve ever been stuck on a stranger’s couch with a tedious, partied-out thirtysomething, you may already be able to conjure the emotions inspired by dance punkers !!!’s third album. That’s if you can imagine frontman Nic
Record Reviews Music
even though you may well have and this is the third time he’s told you. Which is to say that Strange Weather . . . is a disappointing retread that succeeds only in diluting the memory of how genuinely thrilling !!! could be when they first caught your ear. Nic, you’re repeating yourself. And you’re drooling on my shoulder. (Sean Welsh) VIRTUOSO GUITAR JAMES BLACKSHAW All Is Falling (Young God) ●●●●●
This latest from London’s guitar virtuoso sees our 12-string acoustic hero go electric. But while the gorgeous resonance of Blackshaw’s acoustic tone is missed, the toothier tone of the electric 12-string suits this material well. There’s a courtly Renaissance quality to his latest melodies, suggesting the influence of lutist and recent collaborator Jozef van Wissem. Blackshaw’s
orchestral arrangements have been a little fussy in the past, but here the elegent string patterns have been roughed up with a touch of fuzz and some well-timed percussive thumps. The closing drone piece is beautifully immersive, a warm shimmer of controlled feedback, saxophone and violin. (Stewart Smith)
WORLD MR PROTECTOR Pétrole (Predestination) ●●●●●
Recently featured on Predestination Records latest Premeditation compilation, French Trio
Mr Protector bring us their debut album Pétrole. Spanning three languages — English and German alongside their native tongue – Pétrole is loud, abrasive and fantastically unhinged, but there is an obvious method to the madness. With a sound
appearing to draw pretty generously from common touchstones such as Refused, Shellac and The Melvins, the album is a hyperactive concoction of bowel-churning riffs, unpredictable, rapid-fire drumming, and varying degrees of frantic screaming. The occasional flashes of melody are equally alluring, especially for anyone still wincing their way through the discord. (Ryan Drever)
INDIE ABERFELDY Somewhere to Jump from (Tenement Records) ●●●●●
At last, at long last, the ’Feldy are back. Edinburgh’s favourite MOR-pop sons (and daughters, although the band’s female membership has been changeable of late) have returned with their third album since 2006’s Do Whatever Turns You On. It’s been long-awaited by a coterie of the city’s music fans, although probably longer by the band, who have doubtless been saving up to record and release it since their Rough Trade deal ended. Among many
effortlessly lovely highs (singer-songwriter Riley Briggs should earn millions composing for teen country stars in LA) are the sad ballad ‘In Denial’, the unexpected synth-pop of ‘Lisa- Marie’ and the bearer of the album’s stand-out chorus ‘Claire’, although ‘Talk Me Round’ typifies the fact that the production is occasionally not quite
as sublime as earlier efforts. (David Pollock) WORLD D.O MISIANI AND SHIRATI JAZZ The King of History: Classic 1970s Benga Beats from Kenya (Sterns Music) ●●●●●
This is the kind of mesmerising music that has you moving before you know it: undulating guitar rhythms flow like a brook over pebbles while sweet vocals chant stories over rubbery bass and the steady tickety-click of percussion. Daniel Owini Misiani
(nicknamed ‘the grandfather of benga’) and the group Shirati Jazz created captivating sounds for all time, writing stories of love and politics that got Misiani imprisoned at one point. As a Kenyan Luo, if he was alive today he might be bringing these sensational riffs to Obama in the White House. (Jan Fairley)
VISUAL ALBUM ANIMAL COLLECTIVE ODDSAC (Plexi) ●●●●●
Fair enough, the frenzied blur of kaleidoscopic digital fuzz, the morphing rainbow lights; that, we could probably have seen coming. Like their music, the first ‘visual album’ from Baltimore’s warped-poppers, Animal Collective was always going to be coming out of left-field. But those possessed marshmallows? And the forest zombies? That, we probably weren’t expecting.
The 53-minute film (a collaboration with director Danny Perez, and featuring an original
score) is an unsettling, occasionally stunning, dark and discordant rush of dreamlike stills with virtually no plot. Musically, there are two or three passages that could stand alone as acid-soaked, or even tender, blissed-out singles, and visually, it’s a David Lynch meets Chris Cunningham experiment in ways to enhance your enjoyment of their music. Needless to say, non- fans or those who like a clear story arc will be doing a lot of head- scratching. But if you can handle a bit of head-messing, and are prepared to digest the whole album in one psychedelic swallow, it’s a treat. (Claire Sawers)
EPIC MATH-POP THE BALLAD OF MABLE WONG . . . Is Worth Two In The A Tree (Self Released) ●●●●●
Glasgow’s TBOMW make epic instrumental music condensed to a microcosmic level. Each song finds them working carefully through hyper-melodic permutations on a theme, the instruments constantly spinning around each other like a whirring orrery through elegant arrangements. Frenzied guitar
arpeggios spin around under sparse, spooky glockenspiel, and giant riffs burst like cosmic debris through the precision noodling. All this is accomplished with a deftness of touch that belies the consummate musicianship that underpins the whole album. And with titles like ‘Obamaramalama’, it’s clear that TBOMW don’t take themselves too seriously, leaving it instead to the reviewer to abuse your eyes with words like ‘permutations’ and ‘consummate musicianship’. (Sean Welsh)
19–26 Aug 2010 THE LIST 117