list.co.uk/music Records | MUSIC
GENRE MORRISSEY World Peace is None of Your Business (Harvest) ●●●●● FOLK-ROCK OWL JOHN Owl John (Atlantic Records) ●●●●●
To say the five years since Morrissey’s last studio album have been turbulent for him would be grotesque understatement. Beset by a shedful of woes – lack of record deal; near-constant illness; cancelled tours; a swathe of now-trademark controversial statements – his personal brand has transformed into that of a man with zero fucks left to give. More worryingly, recent songs have been satisfactory at best, mediocre at worst. It’s understandable that fans would be wary of new output.
World Peace is None of Your Business is a palpable punch in the jaw for doubters. The album takes up where 2009’s Years of Refusal left off, but with increased bombast, refocused verve. It swings from content love song to disjointed misery: ‘Kiss Me a Lot’ – the happy, desperate plea of a man finally in love – is juxtaposed perfectly by following track ‘Smiler with Knife’, a schizophrenic summation of the album. Watch your back. Love = death.
Nothing is as it seems. Seemingly upbeat tunes mask dark stories – see
‘Staircase at the University’, whose disturbing imagery materialises out of the blue. ‘I’m Not a Man’ flirts with gender stereotypes, before revealing itself to be a mini ‘Meat is Murder’ in disguise. Meticulously crafted stories are brought to life: a staccato gunfire guitar or a haunting shriek of feedback are the soundtrack to his missives. ‘Istanbul’ – the tale of a father searching for his long-lost son in a foreign land – thrusts his renowned poeticals to centrestage. All the while, his faithful band provide a smooth foundation on which to build a layered but unobtrusive sound:
Forget whisky and genealogy website subscriptions. Some would argue that Scotland’s most successful transatlantic export consists of rollicking indie-folk tunes, a few beards and just enough heavily accented curse words to make the Americans blush. Certainly, Frightened Rabbit’s recent history ensures that a new album of solo material by frontman Scott Hutchinson will set young hearts aflutter from Melrose to Minneapolis. Good news, then, that this doesn’t fall into the dull, vanity-driven category of frontman side-projects, but rather into the interesting chunk that show a band member revelling in a different set-up and flexing some less-used creative muscles. While plenty of Frabbity elements are present and correct – a folky warmth to the guitars permeating through the distortion, a bloody-minded and cathartic bluntness to the lyrics, and of course Hutchinson’s voice itself – there’s far more variety in the sound of this record than in the band’s most recent. Evocative opener ‘Cold Creeps’ is rain-soaked and grim, the more interesting for the fact that almost the first two minutes of it are instrumental.
Owl John is ragged and raw, and less overtly melodic than much of the full-band material, favouring atmosphere and instrumentation over hooks and narrative. The sinister themes of ‘Hate Music’, a grizzled, bluesy stomper, are sustained right through to the end, with Hutchinson screaming on penultimate track ‘Don’t Take Off the Gloves’ ‘there’s poison in the tap water’.
this is the Morrissey show. That’s not to say there aren’t duds. Opener ‘World Peace is None of Your Business’ is tired, pseudo-political and better off as filler, plus ‘The Bullfighter Dies’ veers horrifying close to novelty track. But if Morrissey ever wanted to sound like classic solo Moz, he’s managed it here. Final track ‘Oboe Concerto’ is ‘Everyday is Like Sunday’ near-perfection, all moody, crescendo intro, dramatically rolled ‘r’s and hypnotic outro, an unsurprising end to a surprising, vital album. (Kirstyn Smith)
While rawness is part of both Owl John and Frightened Rabbit’s appeal, and the relative spontaneity of this record does much to enliven it, if there’s a criticism it’s that it feels a little half-formed, even unfinished in places, as impassioned lyrics tail off and songs end abruptly. Nevertheless, it’s better than many could turn out in much longer, and here’s hoping that the spreading of Owl John’s wings puts a bit of bounce into Frightened Rabbit’s next outing. (Laura Ennor)
POP LANA DEL REY Ultraviolence (Interscope/Polydor) ●●●●● INSTRUMENTAL HIP HOP / ELECTRONIC S-TYPE Rosario EP (LuckyMe) ●●●●●
It’s not hard to source opinions on Lana Del Ray. Seemingly anti-meh personified, the critical convulsions following the global crush on ‘Video Games’, where opinions on the authenticity or otherwise of the artist (and even her lips) were mandatory, threatened to eclipse the music itself – which is a shame, as it’s great.
Her second album proper, Ultraviolence, continues the sad Hollywood slo-mo of Born To Die, but ditches the electronics and hip hop influence in favour of reverb-drenched guitars, crushed drums and even-more-ghostly vocals in conjuring the gothic noir.
The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach’s perfectly pitched production brings with it a blues influence that takes us a zone further into the dirge of Lynchian noir, and it relies less on trademark lush strings to conjure the mid-century glamour, instead taking us to an alternative underbelly of after-dark West Coast where guitar solos and real drums live.
Should doubts remain, period references pepper the lyrics: ‘The sun also rises’
in ‘Money Power Glory’; the title track quoting ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)’, the none-more-eerie Gerry Goffin- and Carole King-penned 1964 hit; and a cover of ‘The Other Woman’, a 1959 song popularised by Nina Simone. The strung-out lounge never gets too baked to stay in the room, though, and
there’s plenty of modern-day edge to keep things in the foreground.
Witness ‘I get high on hydroponic weed’ in hipster- baiting ‘Brooklyn Baby’, and ‘Mimicking me is a fucking bore’ in standout ‘Fucked My Way Up to the Top’. While others may continue their attempt to unpick a non-existent riddle to progress beyond a level of understanding they feel dissatisfied with, the rest of us can enjoy the show.
Ultraviolence is a coherent piece of work that proves what many hope to disprove: Lana Del Rey is the real deal. (Hamish Brown)
The cover for Scottish hip hop producer S-Type’s new EP Rosario shows the back of a boxer primed for battle, but stepping in the ring with this music is a little more hyper-realistic than that. In fact, it has more in common with a seventh- round bout of Tekken. S-Type, aka Bobby Perman, is another talented artist (now 28, he’s been releasing music since he was 15, on the Surface Pressure label he set up with brother, Tommy) in what is becoming a strong lineage of Scottish producers of instrumental hip hop and electronica. With other notable names like Hudson Mohawke and Rustie gaining momentum (both are key players in the LuckyMe family, and their kaleidoscopic, arcade game-inspired beats loom large over Rosario), S-Type steps up to the plate with much to live up to.
Thankfully, Perman’s latest is a rush of blood to the head of high energy, jumped-up beats that would make even the most soporific of listeners burst with adrenaline. The EP is bookended by accomplished vocal turns from already established rappers YC the Cynic and Roc Marciano, which illustrate that these beats really can hang with the best of them. If anything, this leaves the meat of the EP – three instrumental tracks – lacking, as each screams out for someone to lay some rhymes on top. Indeed, his label, LuckyMe, suggests that this slick production could already be ripe for someone as skilled as a Kendrick Lamar. The synthesised brass that punctuates ‘Franco’ certainly evokes the closing track from Lamar’s excellent 2012 album good kid m.A.A.d city, ‘Compton’. It is no surprise to learn that that particular track was produced by Just Blaze, pinpointed by S-Type himself as an influence.
That minor negative serves only to highlight the potential that these tracks show for whenever S-Type begins to regularly produce for big name, talented hip hop lyricists. For now, the surging and plummeting emotional intensities of ‘Lost Girls’ allows you to forget this and be lost in a mesmerising digital landscape. (Tony Inglis) 10 Jul–21 Aug 2014 THE LIST 89