Music RECORDS
SINGLES & DOWNLOADS
What fresh hell is this? Eardrum-abusing punky indie duo The Ting Tings, as mixed by chart- dance hitmaker Calvin Harris? A ●●●●● and a big sloppy raspberry too to ‘Hands’ (Columbia), which is very soon to be a dancefloor anthem at a cheesy provincial discothèque near you.
On a more positive note, it’s a strong showing
from the locals, who fill the bulk of the singles bag this fortnight. Glasgow-side, delicate, gently-flickering ballad ‘The Moth and the Moon’ (Lo-Five) ●●●●● marks a long-awaited return for solo folkie Jo Mango after several years on the road with Vashti Bunyan, while Mitchell Museum’s ‘Tiger Heartbeat’ (Electra French) ●●●●● is an utterly infectious dollop of goofy, fuzzy alt-rock, Flaming Lips-style. Fun and frothy indie with one eye on the pop charts is the sound of this latest from Come on Gang! with their zippy free download number ‘Fortune Favours the Brave’ (White Label, download from comeongang.co.uk) ●●●●● and Cancel the Astronauts, whose ‘Funny For a Girl’ EP (Riley) ●●●●● bubbles with speedy four-to-the-floor beats and bright, primary- coloured synth-lines.
It’s back west for Single of the Fortnight, which goes to the flip-side of the maiden split- release from a new Glasgow indie label run by members of ‘dirty surf’ quintet She’S HiT, RE:PEATER Records. She’S HiT’s own ‘RE:PEATER’ ●●●●● (see what they did there?) is a blast of raw, trashy post-punk in honest thrall to The Fall. It’s great, but dastardly Maryhill rhythm’n’bluesmen Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gate Lock Pickers’ (pictured) ‘Can’t Stop’ ●●●●● is even better – all tumbling drums, twangy chords and plonking piano from the ex-Uncle John and Whitelock boys. They call it ‘doom-wop’, and who are we to argue? (Malcolm Jack)
compact disc (or MP3, even) as artistic medium and theatrical device: the record’s unbroken succession of stark piano ballads, minimalist torch-songs and measured philharmonic- pop guides us to, and from, Swanlights’ drone- woozy title track and centrepiece. The effect is spellbinding. (Nicola Meighan) INDIE ROCK WEEZER Hurley (Epitaph) ●●●●●
Weezer have been underachieving for most of their career, reaching a nadir with last year’s risible Raditude. A recent switch from Geffen to an indie label has injected a modicum of energy into Hurley, but it’s still a long way from the band’s dizzy heights. Opener ‘Memories’
and ‘Trainwrecks’ do a decent job of combining typically confessional Rivers Cuomo lyrics with driving riffage and rhythms, but there is a recycled and uninspired nature to much else here. And if there are more embarrassing rock songs than ‘Where is My Sex?’ and ‘Smart Girls’ written this year, I’d be very surprised. (Doug Johnstone)
DUBSTEP MAGNETIC MAN Magnetic Man (Colombia) ●●●●●
minute sonic rollercoaster which romps from bombastic futuristic pop to fragile guitar and back again. Something of a maverick genius. (Doug Johnstone) BAROQUE POP ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS Swanlights (Rough Trade) ●●●●●
As with Antony Hegarty’s three prior albums, Swanlights forages the natural world, yet bears unearthly fruit. It is typically impelled
66 THE LIST 7–21 Oct 2010
by his dramatic vocals: they scale astral heights; plunge aquatic depths and entwine themselves around Bjork on the hair-raising, pared-back duet, ‘Fletta’. Often touching on love
and death – via female messiahs and flying horses – Swanlights is testament to the
Newsflash: dubstep is still hot right now. Hence, we presume, this album from Magnetic Man – aka Benga, Skream and Artwork – a dubstep supergroup, if you will.
Evidently aimed at the upper echelons of the hit parade (why else would they rope in John Legend?) Magnetic Man’s debut is
frequently under siege from 90s rave-evoking vocal tracks (the highlight is helium- guzzling hyper-single ‘I Need Air’): even the marvellous Katy B is strangely under- whelming here. The album is
redeemed, however, by awesome, bass- plummeting, nightmarish instrumentals: searing and brutally epic ‘Anthemic’; bounding, scattershot ‘Ping Pong’ and the delirious, utterly fathomless ‘Mad’. (Nicola Meighan) SOUNDTRACK TO BOOK VARIOUS ARTISTS More Miles Than Money (Ace) ●●●●●
Calling one CD ‘Tequila Slammers’, the other ‘Distilled Moonshine’, Garth Cartwright coolly sums up the gutsy music in these 38 tracks to complement his tremendous book More Miles Than Money (Serpent’s Tail).
Some is the music of those he met on his Kerouac-inspired journey following offbeat tracks to bars and festivals, Indian reserves and nursing homes. The rest is what he heard along the way, a thrilling alternative soundtrack to that of mainstream USA. From Bessie Smith and Sonny Boy Williamson, Marlena Shaw to Hound Dog Taylor, this is a cracking mix of original voices and crazy rhythms with everyone’s story in the cover booklet. (Jan Fairley)
INDIE ROCK THE WALKMEN Lisbon (Bella Union) ●●●●●
This sixth LP from New York-based scattershot indie troubadours The Walkmen is something of a consolidation exercise, taking the disparate sounds that influenced their back catalogue and combining them into something which never quite matches the
ragged and touching glory of 2008’s You & Me. On ‘Woe is Me’ and ‘Blue as Your Blood’, singer Hamilton Leithauser’s misery remains eloquently intact, but it’s the flashes of musical innovation, like ‘Stranded’s beautiful, swaying horns or the understated balladry on ‘While I Shovel the Snow’ that really stand out from the indie jangle. (Doug Johnstone) JAZZ ROBERT MITCHELL’S PANACEA The Cusp (Edition Records) ●●●●●
Pianist Robert Mitchell follows 2008’s trio album The Greater Good with this, from his bigger Panacea group. If the trio reflected more overt jazz directions, the focus here falls more on song than instrumental music, with Deborah Jordan’s singing to the fore. Nevertheless, the instrumentation is actually the most intriguing element.The core trio of piano, bass and drums is augmented by violin, cello and percussion, creating an intriguing jazz-classical fusion of sonorities around Jordan’s soft-focus soul voice (and HKB Finn’s spoken word contribution). Mitchell is composer and lyricist of all songs, on the theme of healing suggested by the Greek goddess of healing as the group’s name. (Kenny Mathieson)
JAZZ TIM KLIPHUIS Acoustic Voyage (Tim Kliphuis) ●●●●● Dutch violinist Tim
Kliphuis is best known as a highly skilled exponent of the Hot Club swing style associated with Grappelli and Reinhardt, but this album attempts to focus instead on world acoustic music, including the unusual amalgamation of a Scottish jig with African Soukous on ‘Couscous
and Butter’.
His collaborators here are all Scottish (or live here), guitarist Nigel Clark, pianist David Newton, bassist Roy Percy and percussionist Sandro Ciancio. The global tour takes in shades of Latin, Cuban, South American and African music, as well as material from closer to home, including compositions by both Grappelli and Reinhardt, a version of the 60s pop hit ‘Don’t Sleep In The Subway’ and the folk tune ‘The Cuckoo’s Nest’, all dispatched in engagingly light- fingered, virtuoso fashion. (Kenny Mathieson)
WORLD GRUPO LOKITO Esengo Ya Ko Bina (Cavendish Music) ●●●●●
Esengo Ya Ko Bina, (‘the Joy of Dancing’ in Lingala) is a heady, feel- good mix of Congolese and Cuban music. A band of African and Latin musicians led by singer José Hendrix Ndelo and salsa pianist Sara McGuinness, Lokito create a glorious sound. More sensual than hard salsa, their serenading guitars swing over layers of rhythms while sweet voices tell of love lost or of fighting for change back home, as with ‘Espoir’. Essential beat- the-early-winter-blues material. (Jan Fairley)