list.co.uk/music Records | MUSIC

INDIE POP BELLE AND SEBASTIAN Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance (Matador) ●●●●● ELECTRONIC POP DAN DEACON Glass Riffer (Domino) ●●●●●

In an interview last summer with The Herald, Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch recalled a meeting with Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant that seems to have had a profound effect on the band’s fresh direction. While the gist of their chat was Tennant’s belief that B&S needed to do a bit more with their live shows, the six-piece appear to have gone an extra yard and appropriated some of the PSB sound. While there has undoubtedly been a gradual distancing from their uber-indie roots, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance is the most unashamedly pop offering Belle and Sebastian have produced. There are nods to Tennant and Lowe that are more than passing on the likes of ‘The Party Line’ and ‘Enter Sylvia Plath’ (the most un-Bell Jar-like sounding song ever put on record) while ‘The Everlasting Muse’ lays the new philosophy on the line: ‘Be popular, play pop and you will win my love’.

It all goes way too far with the CBeebies-esque intro to ‘Play for Today’, and ‘Perfect Couples’, with its funky-jazziness, is a little too Matt Bianco for comfort. ‘Ever Had a Little Faith?’ gets things back on track, but when the verse almost strays into ‘The State I Am In’, it might leave the seasoned B&S-watcher with a nostalgic ache.

In the wake of ensemble-made works Bromst (2009) and America (2012), this is Dan Deacon’s second album for Domino and his ninth in total. As a return to 2007’s self-produced solo affair, Spiderman of the Rings, it would be convenient to imagine Glass Riffer as him coming full-circle back to his days of blowing up Baltimore warehouse parties But that would be too linear a way of viewing the career of this Long

Island-born musician, contemporary classical composer, founder member of Baltimore’s Wham City art / performance collective and all-round electronic renaissance man, whose creative muse pulls him in all kinds of directions. Which might be scoring a film for Francis Ford Coppola (2011’s Twixt), collaborating on a comedy series for Adult Swim, touring with Arcade Fire, or playing New York’s Carnegie Hall for a John Cage tribute night. Glass Riffer represents more of a candied condensing of Deacon at his most

eager to please: eight tracks of hi-watt electro-punk positivity, bubble-gum noise- as-euphoria, Woody Woodpecker pitch-shifted vocal loops, pseudo-breakcore beats and song craft at once studiously composed and leaving plenty of space for spontaneity.

‘Feel the Lightning’ is a Passion Pit-style mid-tempo work of woozy

While the overall tempo is seriously upped, the subject matter remains downcast. Murdoch has dubbed opener ‘Nobody’s Empire’ as his most wonderment, sung ostensibly as a duet with a female voice; this voice, through some ingenious feat of signal-processing, makes a burly, balding dude sound

personal song to date, covering a debilitating illness (he has suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome since his late teens) while ‘Allie’ features a youngster fretting about the state of the world.

The attempt to explore new territory is an admirable pursuit, but here it doesn’t quite sit right. There’s plenty of fun to be had, but the songs that stick in your head are not the ones you’ll want there. (Brian Donaldson) B&S play the SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Fri 22 May, with the Scottish Festival Orchestra.

sweetly feminine, and transpires to be Deacon’s own. ‘Learning to Relax’ straps a stock pop chord sequence to a rocket-powered beat, blasting through clouds of dreamy synth. Closing the collection are two

seven-minutes-plus instrumentals nodding to Deacon’s more freeform output: the twirling, twinkling mania of ‘Take it to the Max’ and the queasy ‘Steely Blues’. If you don’t find something of Dan Deacon’s in here to love, then truly it was never meant to be. (Malcolm Jack)

POP CHARLI XCX Sucker (Asylum) ●●●●● MOROSE POP D. GWALIA The Iodine Trade (Elizabeth Volt Records) ●●●●●

‘Fuck you, sucker!’ These are practically the first words out of Charli XCX’s mouth on her debut album. Nice to make your acquaintance too: does X stand for exasperating? Because Sucker has a modicum of attitude but fails to capture the unfettered don’t-give-a-shitness of ‘I Love It’, the song which Charlotte Emma Aitchison (to use her polite name) wrote for Swedish duo, Icona Pop. You may also know Charli from other ‘featuring’ hits such as Iggy Azalea’s ‘Fancy’. Like Bruno Mars before her, is writer / performer Aitchison going to give all her best songs to other artists? Sucker certainly suggests it. Take that opening electro-pop tirade. A blaring title track full of generic sound and manicured fury signifying nothing more than a soundtrack to punching pillows. Compare the yah-boo attitude of P!nk’s ‘So What’ or the plate-smashing catharsis of Kelis’ ‘Caught Out There’ for a more potent pop taste of a woman scorned.

Charli’s would-be snotty rebellion feels as contrived as Ke$ha’s walk-of-shame partying or Meghan Trainor’s occupation of the cutesy, retro bubblegum corner. This is arguably just a hazard of the tween market that her sugar-rush music and put-on pouty delivery appears to be aimed at, but one wonders what would happen if she really curled her lip rather than rolled over for the rave pop massive?

Because there is a dash of sarcasm and ambivalence in her lyrics which suggests a desire to communicate something of the real world of relationships to young girls who are otherwise being fed the princess myth. Musically she has some fun with plastic (Bertrand) punk riffs and the occasional hooky new wave chorus; unlike those sleepy coffee table R&B types regularly punted as ‘fresh’ new talent.

D. Gwalia has cut a shadowy figure around the unsung sidelines of Edinburgh’s myriad of low-key music scenes. Originally from Wales before taking a peripatetic path to Oxford, Gwalia’s cracked folk and strung-out gothica was first heard on 2010 debut, In Puget Sound. This follow-up digital-only release charts even starker terrain, conjuring up the ghosts of post-Pink Floyd Syd Barrett at his most insular, with all whimsy lost. This is most evident on the opening ‘A Day Out’, in which a sparse but insistent

electric guitar pattern is eked out behind a Mogadon-doped choirboy vocal. Second track ‘Vamp’ is Bauhaus’ ‘Dark Entries’ rewritten for the troubadour age. A martial drumbeat adds to the mood of ‘Annihilation Pair’ before ushering in the muffled spoken-word narration of the album’s title track, which sounds like free-associating ransom note confessionals transmitted through a broken walkie-talkie. The austere music box backing to the similarly styled ‘Alan’s Machine’

sounds even more menacing, while a sepulchral piano guides ‘Illuminations’, a collaboration with composer James Young, author and former keyboardist with ex-Velvet Underground chanteuse Nico during her late-period Manchester years.

All of which conjures up the wayward spirit of the Virgin Prunes, Gavin Friday’s wild-child collective of grotesque misfits. Here, however, Gwalia sounds abandoned, left foraging in the dirt of a Ballardian nothing-scape in between

D. G W A L I A

All she really needs to pull it off are some more distinctive songs. Until then, give me Girls Aloud’s ‘No Good Advice’ any day. (Fiona Shepherd) Charli XCX plays QMU, Glasgow, Fri 27 Mar; charlixcxmusic.com T H E I O D I N E T R A D E

spitting out spiteful little whispers in corners while busking to no one after dark.

A buzzing fly is swatted at the start of the deathly cookbook incantation of ‘400°F’, and ‘Darling Where’s My Nuclear War?’ is possessed with both the acoustic guitar melody and sense of ennui of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’. Finally, ‘Sleeping in Abandoned Cars’ is a wordless nine-minute electronic chirrup through the aftermath of a blast where seeking shelter is not an option. (Neil Cooper)

5 Feb–2 Apr 2015 THE LIST 73