Category: Pop music

FKA Twigs – LP1: Round 72, Nick’s choice

FKA_twigs_LP1Recipient of much acclaim and even more discussion this year, FKA Twigs might be part of this supposedly modern mutant r’n’b thing that seems to be happening (possibly started by The Weeknd and pursued by How To Dress Well, in as much as these ‘things’ ever start anywhere identifiable), or she might be something else entirely. Let’s settle on something else entirely. If I’m reminded of other music (and I am, a little, although not that much) then it includes Julia Holter, Grimes, 4AD, and Radiohead’s post-electronic work rather than Whitney Houston or Beyonce or Maxwell. Which isn’t to say that one can’t detect similarities to those artists here; they’re just not the only, or even the main, reference points. Which is a clumsy and roundabout way of saying that FKA Twigs (from Gloucestershire, 26, former backing dancer for Ed Sheeran and Kylie Minogue) lives in that space between genres which so much post-broadband music inhabits.

FKA Twigs’ music also lives in another, more specific space; the space that surrounds sex between human adults. LP1 is… I’m hesitant to use the word ‘explicit’, but the eroticism and lust on display here are way beyond being implicit: “when I trust you we can do it with the lights on”; “I can fuck you better than her”; “my thighs are apart for when you’re ready to breathe in”. While not every song is quite this upfront and overtly sexual, there’s a strong tone and atmosphere that pervades the whole record. The fact that the final song is pretty explicitly about masturbation leaves little doubt that you’ve misinterpreted the mood.

This isn’t just titillation for the aural equivalent of the male gaze, though; although hearing female voices sing explicitly about sex and love from and for their own perspectives (rather than for a male audience) isn’t as rare as one might think (or as we’re lead to believe, possibly) (just this year we’ve heard St Vincent sing about masturbation, Karen O release an album called Crush Songs, and Tanya Tagaq release an extraordinarily sensual and political album dedicated to the missing and murdered aboriginal women of Canada), the sexuality on display here may well make men feel uncomfortable rather than aroused, and the emotions that accompany the actions described feel very much as if they’re coming from a female perspective rather than pandering to a male one. It’s intimate and private rather than exhibitionist, and every erotic action has an emotional fulcrum and fallout, even if not a motivation.

Likewise the musical content, although defiantly modern and sumptuous, is low-key and subtle, in terms of both melodies and beats; these are pop songs, but they’re not bangerz, and although there might be nods to multiple stripes of modern dance music there aren’t any crass drops in evidence, imbuing LP1 with both sophistication and intrigue.

Rob listened: I’ve been around the houses with LP1. I went through a phase of putting it on as  background music, and in that role I found it very easy to reach for. I like the palette and the restraint. It’s nice. A nice sound. I tried to listen to it more closely a couple of times but it slipped out of my grasp. I found it an easy record to walk away from. Listening to it with with Tom and Nick, both of whom have already spent a reasonable amount of time with it, I found it similarly evasive. I’d go so far as to say it seemed indistinct. After the meeting I decided I was fed up of it. We have enough woozy postmodern ambient dance scapes to last the rest of the decade don’t we. Isn’t LP1 just another to chuck on the pile?

Now, listening once more on headphones, it sounds utterly fabulous. Rich in detail, deeply resonant and cut through with dark undertows. Plus, and here’s the thing, the songs are first rate, each one hiding at least one moment that forces you to close your eyes and nod whilst an icicle is forced gently through your heart.

I’d planned to write about how I’d decided I can do without FKA Twigs in my life. I’ve changed my mind.

Tom listened: I have bought precious few records this year, mainly through lack of inspiration, so I was pleased when, a couple of weeks ago I picked up FKA Twigs and had something, at least, to play at our albums of the year meeting.

On first listen I thought I had discovered a massive flaw in my thinking…I hated the lyrical content of the first few tracks of LP1 to such an extent that even before the fourth track, Hours, had finished I was already wondering whether the record shop would allow me to return a record that had already been played. Great! I chance my arm on a record after months of abstainance and it turns out to be a dud. So much for album of the year!

But, but , but…a few more plays and it really does begin to sound like album of the year material. Sure, the lyrical content is still about a cringeworthily (I know that’s not a word) explicit as I can bear – that’s not going to change with exposure, is it! – but I barely notice it now, because the songs are just so damn good. The record is so crisp, the songwriting so innovative, the album so hard to pin down in terms of genre. Best of all, for me, is its unpredictability. Crescendos are missed, vocals drop out, songs slow down, speed up. It should be a mess but it works brilliantly. So the apparent flaws I felt were insurmountable at first have been well and truly neutered and I had been gearing up to producing LP1 at our last meeting of the year, looking forwards to announcing to all and sundry that my album of the year was yet another solo female singer-songwriter…when Nick goes and ruins it all prematurely. I guess now I’ll have to go out and buy something else. Here’s to hoping lightning really does strike twice!

Against Me! – ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’: Round 72 – Rob’s choice

Transgender Dysphoria BluesThere’s been some discussion here recently about hipsters, vampires, locusts and dilettantes. Accusations have been flung, recriminations have been slung. Mostly at me. Mostly by me.

Some of my favourite parts of the stories we uncover during our Record Club ramblings are to do with the routes we take to find particular artists and records. Some we hear first, one way or another. Some we read about and pursue, some flicker of interest having been ignited. Some come recommended. Some we lunge towards for unspecified, perhaps unknown reasons. When we get there, some of us trouble ourselves about how and why we arrived. Conditioning tells us to value those records and artists found through some pseudo-organic process, following connections, ignoring external influence – as if that were possible – and somehow tracing a path of truth to the music that beats within our souls.

When we are led to stuff we sometimes feel like we cheated, which is stupid, or like we’re acting the hipster, arriving late at someone else’s party and trying to act like you we were there from the start, despite clearly not knowing any of the rules. I’m a hipster for Against Me! who, despite having been around for 17 years, have only just registered with me. I’m not sure it’s possible to be a hipster arriviste when referencing an album that reached number 23 on the Billboard Chart. However, this is Against Me!’s sixth album, and I’d basically never heard of them before. And here’s the thing…

The reasons I wanted to listen to this record were the positive reviews and because I read about singer Laura Jane Grace transitioning to become a woman. One of the reasons I kept remembering that I meant to get around to listening to the record was the striking illustration of a disembodied breast on the cover. Sticks in the mind, the more you see it.

Those all seem like things I should apologise for.

[Here we go, more sclerotic inner conflict from Rob the self-flaggelating dilettante – just shut up and get on with it you hang-dog wazzock.]

Bear with me.

It does seem a little, shall-we-say, crass, callous, rubbernecked, to investigate a record partly because you read that the singer used to be a man and is now a woman and neither were Genesis P Orridge. Maybe, maybe not. All I can say is that this element of the Against Me! story stuck in my mind, and yes, seems to have generated a profile boost – or is that just me as well? – and ultimately, I check the album out.

Throughout ’Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ Laura Jane Grace takes our curiosity and forces it much deeper down our throats than we thought it might go. You may arrive in part wondering what a transgender woman looks and sounds like when fronting a punk band, but you’ll soon be confronting what a transgender woman feels like when trying to live her life. The record is, as might be expected, specifically concerned with Grace’s experience as a transexual.

Musically it’s direct, rattling rock and roll, played straight and with gusto. There are few artful touches, no flavour of the avant-garde. Against Me! are frequently described as ‘punk’ but in sound they’re nowhere near very much music I would stick that label to. This is tub-thumping, stage-strutting rock music bristling with air-punch hooks and holler-along melodies, and it does that thing with fizzing energy and thrilling gusto. Every so often a rock record will come along and remind you just how amped good, sharp rock records can make you feel.

Meanwhile, if punk is an attitude, and if that attitude is about outsider-ship, being yourself and expressing that directly and unapologetically, then Laura Jane Grace is about as punk as they come. This is the band’s sixth long-player and since the fifth she’s been transitioning to become a woman. The best, most bracing, most air-punching thing about the whole album is that rather than make a downbeat record about how tough that absolutely certainly must be, she’s written a bunch of songs that, despite their often bluntly dark and despairing lyrics, are delivered with such attack, such righteous defiance, that they leave you thinking about nothing other than how fucking amazing she sounds and acts. And why the hell not?

It’s bracing, direct and straight-talking. It’s perhaps a shame to reflect on how remarkable that is, but before we bemoan any lack of directness in other songwriters, remember just how difficult it is to be this concise, this expressive, this communicative. There are lots of lines strewn across the record’s 29 minutes which come over as unpolished and raw. Why not? If you have something to say, a feeling which you know how to communicate, laying a gauze of poetic artistry over it is obscurantism.

More than anything, ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ feels like a full, unadulterated dose of someone else’s reality, one which you really couldn’t imagine clearly for yourself. And in this age of communication overload, communication this direct still feels like quite an achievement.

Nick listened: Very glad Rob brought this along because, like him, I’d read quite a bit about it earlier in the year, having not really heard of Against Me! except in the most vague way before, and was intrigued to hear it.

Strip away the nature of Laura Jane Grace’s story and the extraordinary directness of the way she tells it and expresses the emotions she’s been through via these songs, and I’d have no interest in Against Me! at all; there are, I suspect, a thousand punkrock bands across the UK and the US doing not dissimilar stuff in terms of riffs and rhythms and shouty choruses (I’ve know of plenty just in and around Exeter over the years), and I have pretty much zero interest in any of it aesthetically. So yes, there’s a sense of voyeurism or tokenism involved in paying attention to and appreciating this record, which borders on being uncomfortable. Furthermore, as someone unfamiliar with how the mechanics of this genre work on an intimate level, I have no idea whatsoever if these particular riffs, rhythms, and shouty choruses are amongst the best that punkrock has to offer, or if they’re entirely mediocre.

But concerns like that are pretty much irrelevant, because the subject matter renders this album, for one listen and concurrent read-through of the lyric sheet at least, a fascinating, moving, and enlightening experience. I don’t know that I’d want to listen to Transgender Dysphoria Blues again for purely ‘musical reasons’ (whatever that means), but musical reasons are seldom the only reasons for listening to music anyway.

Tom listened: I feel a little bit guilty about what I am going to write here because, if I’m totally honest, all I can recall about TDB is the way I felt about it when it was playing rather than what it actually sounded like. But I remember thinking, in much the same way as Nick, that without the lyrics, this record is pretty unremarkable (hope I am not misinterpreting you here Nick – if so, I humbly apologise). The energy is admirable, the riffs are tight, the songs have hooks and melodies sure, but they seemed too predictable to draw the listener in and, in direct contrast to LP1, there seemed to be very few twists and turns…moments where I thought, ‘Christ, didn’t see that one coming’. That, in itself, is not necessarily a pre-requisite of a good record but I couldn’t help feeling that Against Me seemed to have spent a disproportionate amount on the lyrics, leaving the music to work itself out as something of an afterthought.

I didn’t really notice the lyrics…!

Bill Callahan – Apocalypse: Round 71 – Tom’s Selection

downloadAlthough, rather like Rob and unlike Nick and (to a lesser extent) Graham, I haven’t ended up going out and buying all that many records that have been played at record club, there have been many ‘double ups’ that I could have brought to the ‘Recycled Record’ theme evening. On reflection, I think one of the main reasons I haven’t bought that much that has been played by the others is because my focus has been in acquiring music that I could take to record club. Until Nick set this theme, any purchases of pre-played material would have been a wasted choice in my mind so, for example, the last time I bought a record I had XTC’s wonderful Black Sea in my hand but it went back on the rack when I came across Sparks’ Kimono My House…simply because I thought the latter album might be something to take along to a future meeting…and it has always been a record I had been intrigued to hear. So, assuming I used Rob’s criteria of only playing something I had bought since it had been played at record club, I had a similar paltry choice.

No matter, I have no problem playing Apocalypse at all. For me, Apocalypse is the best Bill Callahan (ie of the records he has released under his own name) album and one of the very best albums I have in my collection. But then, I am like a moth to a flame when it comes to Bill’s catalogue, whether it’s Bill in his early lo-fi, sardonic and disturbing Smog mode, or the paired back folk and country late period Smog stuff or, indeed, the lush, evocative and exquisitely weary records he has released as Bill Callahan.

When Nick played Apocalypse to us at the ‘bring something you haven’t played before’ evening (coincidentally, immediately prior to Zaireeka) I immediately fell in love with its laid back linearity and conversational style. And, curiously, I see it very much as a companion piece to Joni’s Hejira. Neither album gets anywhere near a chorus, they both wend their way across a lush American musical landscape, drawing you on in a deceptively simplistic way, the songs on both sounding like short stories set to music, the music on both enabling the listener to live within the songs, to experience the landscapes they describe so effectively. And, of course, both albums are lyrical perfection…my favourite line on Apocalypse is on the opener, Drover, where Bill concedes, ‘I consoled myself with rudimentary thoughts’; in fact it could be my favourite Callahan line, no damn it, it could well be my favourite line in all recorded music.

So despite Apolcalypse being something that three quarters of us know well and despite it being such an obvious Tom choice, I make no apologies for bringing it at all as, for my money, it’s one of the very best of the 250 or so albums we have shared with each other thus far…

…and it gives Rob a chance to get up to date with his homework!

Rob listened, both times: favourite line in all recorded music? But what of “I suppose a rock’s out of the question?”?

As this record closed, ‘One Fine Morning’ became the first track to have been played 3 times at DRC, and, even more remarkably, it’s been brought by three different people. This was my favourite track of 2011 and ‘Apocalypse’ was close to my favourite album. As Tom has helpfully pointed out, I didn’t write about it first time around. I’m not sure why, but I can recall finding it a difficult record to get a grip of first time around. As I recall our first impressions were of unconventional instrumentations and odd syncopations. The album finally came into focus later that year during and right across a happy holiday which turned into a sad one. I hesitate to place it in the Callahan canon. I love the economy and poetry of ‘Sometimes I Wish…’ which this doesn’t reach. I love the heartbreaking void at the heart of ‘Kicking A Couple Around’, which this record has, but hides. I love the modern myth-making of ‘Rock Bottom Riser’ and the dark hilarity of ‘Dongs of Sevotion’ and hell, almost everything else he’s ever done. To be able to find so much variety in a catalogue so superficially samey is a wonderful, resonant pleasure, one Callahan has delivered more than anyone with the excpetion of his mucker Will Oldham.

The Flaming Lips – Zaireeka: Round 71, Nick’s choice

Zaireeka_coverI didn’t have anything specifically in mind when I announced this theme, just a vague thought that it would be interesting to revisit some of the things we’ve experienced together over the last three and a half years and see what we thought. My initial instinct was to assemble a list of all the albums I’ve bought because Tom, Rob, or Graham have played them at me, and play one of them – I made a list and there were several (certainly more than Rob!), but none of them screamed “play me! play me!”; they were nice-to-haves rather than game-changers. I suspect, in my mid-30s, with a couple of thousand albums on my shelves, that coming across genuine game-changers is something I’m pretty much past.

But then Rob emailed around the list of everything we’d ever played to each other, and one particular album jumped out at me instantly. Tom said as much the next time I saw him; he thought I’d chosen this theme as an excuse to play it again, which would have been entirely justified, it just wasn’t the case.

Rob initially played Zaireeka to us at Tom’s house back in round five, blindsiding me as I’d mentioned it to him in the car journey there (and failed to notice the three stereos in the back seat that he was bringing to facilitate the experience). Amazingly that makes it one of the first records we played together, but it feels like a very recently memory. This is probably because the experience of listening to Zaireeka is so strange, so vivid, so phantasmagorical, that it sticks in the memory.

The drum experiments, the ululating vocals, the dogs barking, the crazy narratives about pilots and pets and spies and psychedelic commutes, and, of course, the whole, exacting, interactive method of consumption: I think I’m OK in saying that Zaireeka is the most bona fide experimental, avant-garde, out there record I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. It is bizarre and wonderful, and I was delighted that I’d inadvertently given us the chance to revisit it again.

Tom experienced Zaireeka again: Expectations are a funny thing. I remember Zaireeka having such a profound effect on me the one and only time I had heard it before that, to some extent, I couldn’t wait to hear it again. I recall it totally eclipsing the efforts of Kurt Vile and Bill Callahan (our other offerings on that evening), feeling that nothing would ever be the same again as Rob unplugged the multitudinous stereos required to listen to the thing.

Of course, over time I have re-calibrated and no longer hear the apparent post-Zaireeka thinness of the sound that a conventional stereo system offers. So I was looking forwards to hearing Zaireeka (it was obvious from some way off that this would be Nick’s record for the evening)  but a little worried that it would be back to square one. However, for me, the effect of Zaireeka second time around was greatly reduced, due mainly, I suppose, to the fact that I knew what was coming. So I listened to the songs this time around, as opposed to the sounds. And, whereas last time around I didn’t really even notice them, this time I was reminded just how little Wayne Coyne’s songwriting does for me. I have six Flaming Lips albums (but have only bought one of them) and, of the six, the only one that has ever clicked at all was In A Priest Driven Ambulance…which is a long way away from their late 90s output in terms of aesthetic. So… Zaireeka is still an amazing thing to experience but, as an album of songs, falls some way short of the brilliance of the concept.

Rob listened: It’s still like nothing else. Like Tom, I also found myself listening past the disorienting sound space and the sheer technical achievement and starting to get to the songs. Unlike Tom, I found them more beguiling and pleasurable this time around, particularly ‘Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair’. Nothing can replicate that first experience, but for me, this added a little more, rather than took away. I’d be happy to have it as an annual ritual.

Joni Mitchell – ‘Hejira’: Round 71 – Rob’s choice

Joni Mitchell - HejiraWe’ve played somewhere North of 200 records since 2 February 2011 when Tom, Nick and I sat down to listen to Bark Psychosis, McCarthy and Skip Spence. Nick’s challenge for this evening’s meeting was to bring back to the group something which one of the other players had already presented. It could be something you wanted to hear again, something you thought we might have more to say about, something you wanted to reexamine from a different angle or, more likely, something you thought we had unjustly talked all over the first time around.

I like to be thorough, so I made a list.

Much as I have genuinely loved hearing old favourites again, or making proper acquaintance with records that had passed me by first time, the biggest effect DRC has had on me has been to introduce me to a huge amount of music I had either avoided to simply not heard before. I’ve been intrigued and pleased to hear absolutely everything everyone has brought, no matter what my preconceptions, except for Marillion who are fucking shit.

So, as I scrolled down the list, I marked out the records I might choose.

I could have chosen something I might have presented to the Club had I not been beaten to it by one of the others, like ‘Hidden’ or ‘Venus Luxure No 1 Baby’ or ‘She Hangs Brightly’ or ‘The Drift’ or ‘Strange Free World’ or ‘Post’ or ‘Silent Shout’ or ‘…Well?’ or ‘Clear Spot’ or ‘Psychocandy’ or ‘Spiderland’ or ‘The Smiths’ or ‘Icky Mettle’ or ‘Knock Knock’ or ‘Third’ or ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’.

I could have brought along something I already had that I thought deserved a second listen and re-examination, for good or for bad, like ‘Let England Shake’ or ‘Richard D James’ or ‘Strange Mercy’ or ‘Spirit of Eden’.

I could have used this as a spur to go out and buy something I really, really liked on first hearing and wanted to get to know a lot better, like ‘Double Nickels On The Dime’ or ‘Oar’ or ‘Another Green World’ or ‘The Modern Dance’ or ‘Drive By’ or ‘New Boots and Panties’ or ‘Super Roots 7’ or ‘Dusty in Memphis’ or ‘New History of Warfare’

I could have bought something I have subsequently hammered on Spotify and given back more substantially to the artist who made it, like ‘Grace and Danger’ (except he’s dead) or ‘Young Man in America’ or ‘The Idler Wheel’ or ‘John Wizards’.

Instead, I decided to choose one of the records I’d first heard at a meeting and then subsequently made the effort to go out and buy.

I went through the master list.

I made a sub-list.

There was one record on it.

This one.

I’m not really sure how this came to be. I’ve loved, admired, been intrigued by and wanted more of dozens and dozens of the records I’ve first heard at DRC. How come I only ever went out and bought one? I guess Spotify explains that to a very large extent, but not completely.

Perhaps what’s happening is an extension of the way we used to listen to and share records with our friends? Given the chance I would always buy something the others didn’t already have covered. They would do the same and, in doing so, we would increase the total span of records available to the community. Why double up on Spacemen 3 when one of us could be taking care of Husker Du? If that long-dormant instinct has been kicked into life by DRC, then that’s pretty cool. Certainly DRC is by far the closest I’ve come to sharing my record owning, buying and listening life with a bunch of others since I left University.

Even this record I picked up almost by chance. Every couple of months or so I have what’s left of my hair chopped back by a local barber who has an MBE but not, tellingly, for his hairdressing. This usually happens early on a Saturday morning and by the time I hit the market town streets there are weekend stalls setting up, one of which has two boxes of vinyl for sale, curated, I’ve always assumed, from house clearances and the like. They’re worth a browse nowadays although pre-DRC I would have scoffed at them, more than likely. As it is, I’m now more than willing to take a cheap punt on something I would have dismissed as 70s AOR or leftfield 80s pop before Tom, Nick and Graham opened my ears. Last Summer I spent £12 on 11 records almost all of which I would have previously overlooked and at least half of which are brilliant. See here: (http://instagram.com/p/Wop2QBSfOh/?modal=true).

I picked up ‘Hejira’ on one of these mornings. I’ve listened to it a whole lot since then and going back to it again this last week has been a great pleasure. I don’t have anything of weight to add to Tom’s beautifully judged write-up from Round 47 other than to say that I’m working through most of the reactions he describes and have been ever since I got this sleek, elliptical and wonderful record, across the street from the barber shop.

It’s not the DRC choice I’d take to a desert island. It’s not the biggest revelation. It’s probably not even in my top 20 of previous choices, but I like it a great deal and it’s absolutely as good a representation as any of the way DRC has had a really big impact on my life.

Tom listened again: Funnily enough this Summer has been one where I have listened to Joni Mitchell and pretty much nothing else. Occasionally dipping back to Blue (which still leaves me cold – a little too reedy and willowy for my tastes) but immersing myself completely in the complex, deep waters of Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, it’s ironic that Hejira is the only Joni album I don’t think I’ve revisited at all. Not because it isn’t magnificent but because I already know it well, whereas C&S and HoSL have languished in my collection collecting dust for nigh on 20 years waiting for the dullard in me to listen hard enough to see the genius they so blatantly are.

Hejira is a VERY different beast to both those records but is just as good and I left the evening feeling a little guilty that I had neglected it so during this Summer’s Jonifest.

Low – Things We Lost In The Fire: Round 70 – Tom’s Selection

220px-Low_-_Things_We_Lost_in_the_FireRather like my ‘Guilty Displeasures’ theme way back in our 14th round, as far as I am concerned, the random choice idea didn’t really come off. In the former, we sat around listening to records that we didn’t really like …where’s the fun in that?…whereas the Random Round’s rationale – to unearth those forgoten records that get easily passed over when we come to make our choices but that turn out to be gems all along – was circumvented by the fact that the selection was truly random (despite my friends’ suspicions)  and, hence, threw up a series of surprisingly predictable Record-Club-like selections. The near misses – Ornette Coleman, Eleventh Dream Day – whilst being, perhaps, not as pleasurable/captivating/other (more applicable) adjective to listen to as what was actually brought, might have moved us further away from the standard Record Club fare we would normally offer up. Both Caribou and Elastica were fine listens (as is Things We Lost In The Fire in many respects) but that was not really the point! Nevermind…maybe we’ll have to try again some time.

Things We Lost In The Fire, Low’s fifth album, is the album that followed Secret Name (which Rob had brought to a previous meeting) and whilst it contains a few great songs, it has never quite held my attention as much as an album like it (full of well written and exquisitely performed songs, generally slowed to a funereal pace and sung in hushed tones and peerless harmonies) should. I have never quite figured out why this should be so as it ticks so many boxes for me…but I do know that I can’t ever get over the drop in quality when the perfect opener, Sunflowers, transitions into the tedious dirge of Whitetail. And I think its the juxtaposition between the very very good that punctuates the album at regular intervals, and the mundane or mediocre that crops up every so often, that limits my enjoyment of the record.

So, unlike The Wrens’ Meadowlands, where the sound of the record is the jarring factor for me (and there is no way back from this, to my mind), on TWLITF it’s frustrating just how close to having a bona-fide classic Low were. Why they had to release TWLITF as the three sided 55 minute long record when some judicious culling could have resulted in the double wammy of reducing chaff whilst making the album a more manageable listening experience, God only knows…all I know is that of all the records I have brought to record club, this one represents the choice I have been least excited about playing to the others. Bloody stupid theme if you ask me – whose idea was it again?

Nick listened: I guess if I’d thought about it, the ‘random’ function on an iPod often throws up seemingly unrandom selections and juxtapositions. I suppose this is because, as random as it is, it’s still picking from a collection curated by an individual, with, presumably, some kinds of consistent tastes or aesthetics running through their library in one way or another. So perhaps we shouldn’t be that surprised by what the supposedly ‘random’ selections brought up?

I own this – or, more accurately, Em brought this into our joint record collection when we moved in together. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it. We own a couple of other albums by them, but the Christmas one is the only one that ever gets played. Generally around Christmas. I really appreciate what Low do, and I enjoyed listening to this, but I’ve never felt passionate about them in any way. I would gladly listen to it again; loved the Albini sound with their intrinsic slow delicacy.

Way, way better than The Wrens.

Rob listened: I guess I’m as close as DRC has to an official Low representative. I’m like one of those kids at a model United Nations, only sitting behind a table with another kid in black and a girl slowly hitting a snare drum. Very, very slowly.

I understand the way this them worked and the sort of responses it has generated. I know that’s the point. I’m struggling hard to let this one go. See, the comments above, all valid, are letting a stunningly beautiful record go slipping by as if it were nothing, a vaguely pleasant offering. ‘Things We Lost In The Fire’ is a thing of great wonder. If the world were forced to attentively listen to it once a day, the world would be a better place. I have spent parts of my life listening attentively to it and my life has become a better place as a result. I listened attentively to it this evening, when I could, and those bits were the best bits of the four hours we spent together.

I can’t really imagine what a bad Low record would sound like, and as such I have to be realistic about my partiality. However, any album which can finish with a run of three as strong as ‘Like A Forest’, ‘Closer’ and ‘In Metal’ deserves to be hoisted onto a pedestal and worshipped.

Donald Fagen – The Nightfly – Round 70 – Not Graham’s Choice but forced in to it by Tom’s selection system

Tom’s theme was an ingenious selection donaldfagen-thenightfly system,  making us bring something from a specific location on the shelves. However in my case that meant I could work L-R on some shelves, up/down on some piles and back to front on on some boxes. Anyway dispensing with the other options that had been played already at DRC, my L6 ticket left me with the above.

Well, what irony, as I can only elaborate slightly more than on this classic review of an album, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWqKiqTfXuA  but not much more I’m afraid. In Round 68 I responded to Tom’s Steely Dan offering with the following in the comments section.

“No, no, no, I won’t submit to liking Steely Dan! I’ve been troubled enough by Donald Fagen’s ‘The Nightfly’ during the last year and I’m not putting myself through that again. In 1982 I was 16 and must have been a bit of a hipster because I thought ‘The Nightfly’ was brilliant, sophisticated, clever etc…. Anyway, ffwd to 2013, when I purchased a CD of the same and this caused me probably the biggest trauma of the year and that’s going some for 2013. Like Aja, it sounded too clean, too smug, too lift musak. There, I feel better now, guess tastes change.”

All I can add to that unconscious review a few weeks ago was that this was an early example of a fully digital recording. Maybe when I was 16 the clean sound impressed me, today it just sounds like all emotion and life has been sucked out of the tracks. I suppose “New Frontier” is a track that can be tolerated, but nothing more. Anyway, I no longer own aforesaid CD as I have donated it to someone who might be prepared to give it an ear, even if he has noticed yet. Plus I’ve turned a corner and now have a significant number of CD’s in almost alphabetical order in a cupboard. Truly, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcXblWojdM

Rob listened: But it sort of passed me by. So i’m listening to it again now on my laptop whilst also unavoidably hearing the news of the world collapsing around our ears as we plunge towards a new Cold War of the sort Donald Fagen may or may not have been papping on about herein.

Anyhow, I think the first song sounds like ‘Stuck With You’ by Huey Lewis and the News. Hey! Another news link! Coo this record really is packed with allusion and foreshadow.

Gotta be honest, that first song is still going on and i’m about done with the time I set aside to write about this. I note that it’s called ‘I.G.Y.’ which presumably stands for ‘I Got Your (Huey Lewis and the News right here (Fagen grabs crotch and looks angry))’ making it a rare early example of a song title with parenthesised parentheses.

Second song now firmly underway. Still can’t really hear it. Am drawn to reflect on the cover which, it pleases me to note, apparently depicts Mr Fagen attempting to sing the record directly onto a platter of vinyl. This, presumably, not an early first.

It’s kind of zazzing away now and I’m thinking the collapse of civilisation in the Northern Hemisphere might actually be more interesting to listen to. There’s a fine line betwen smooth and bland and yet another one between sophisticated and featureless. I think it’s fair to say that this record is one side of that line and another side of that other line. I reckon if I were to listen to it over and over and over again and then over and over and over again that it would really worm its way into my head and I would start to feel like it was the sound of the whole wide world squeezed into one sleek and silkily easy to swallow pill. I’m pretty sure that’s what would happen. Rest-assured, once i’ve reached the required number of spins, I’ll report back.

Hey, it’s still going on. Seems like it takes quite a while, this thing. How long is it again? [*checks wikipedia*] Thirty eight minutes? Okay. Wow. Thirty eight whole minutes eh? And I’m how far through it by now? Three songs? Okay.

Sigh.

Nick listened: I don’t remember finding this offensive at all, or all that bland or alienating etc etc. But at the same time, I don’t remember ANYTHING about it at all.

Tom listened: About a year ago, Graham enthusiastically thrust The Nightfly into my paw making all sorts of claims for its greatness. I eagerly stuck it on the car stereo and found it generally bland with more than a few moments of cringe inducing over production. I enthusiastically returned said item to Mr Pollock hoping to never hear it again.

Twelve months on, post Aja epiphany and, hey presto, The Nightfly is selected in the great DRC random music generator theme night. A year on, Graham now hates it. I have begun to fall under the spell of Becker and Fagen having recently also purchased Steely Dan’s first two albums and I find myself voting to listen to The Nightfly as opposed to Graham’s alternative choices (!?) which he is practically begging us to choose instead. All a bit arse about tit!

So we listened to it, and I didn’t really like it….

Then I found The Nightfly languishing on my CD shelf the day after. Silly old Graham, he is getting forgetful! But during my extended loan, I have listened to The Nightfly a few more times and its all beginning to make a little more sense. It’s much harder work than  Aja, Can’t Buy a Thrill or Countdown to Ecstasy, it seems less consistent in terms of quality, but I can now see why so much fuss is made of it even if I am still undecided as to whether its reputation is justified or not.

Oh, and don’t worry Graham…it will be winging its way back to you soon!

Graham responded: Sorry no room on CD shelf. As Ed missed out, maybe he should be next recipient? We’ll find someone who likes it eventually!

Caribou – The Milk Of Human Kindness: Round 70, Nick’s choice

caribouC26. I was convinced that Tom was trying to pull a fast one on me when my ‘random’ selection of letter and number lead me to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, a record he adores and I cannot stand. His stated goal was “to make us bring something we’d never ordinarily choose” to record club. Surely this was too much of a coincidence? And his methodology for picking my letter and number was a little weird…

But if he was involved in a confidence trick, he was hoist by his own petard; among Trout Mask Replica’s many sins are its extraordinary length, and at 79 minutes it’s too long to play at record club. (Were it 35 minutes long I might have more patience with it.) So, as per Tom’s rules, I moved along to the next eligible record. Which was Caribou’s The Milk Of Human Kindness.

(If it seems crazy that I’m still on ‘Ca’ at 26 discs into the letter C, than Cadence Weapon, Cake, Calexico, Califone, Bill Callahan, Isobel Campbell and, significantly, Can, are the reason.)

Sadly for Tom’s intentions, though, Caribou is exactly the kind of artist I would normally play at record club, although, to be honest, I’d never really considered bringing this record along, even though it’s something that got spun seemingly all the time when Emma and I first moved in together in 2007. Less frenetic than Up In Flames, less song-based than Andorra, …Milk… is still clearly the product of a laptop, an imagination, and a deep love of musical history, but it’s far happier to float in its own grooves and enjoy its own prettiness than most of Dan Snaith’s other work. I love it the way I’d love a chair or a coffee table; not with a deep emotional passion, but with a warm sense of comfort and aesthetic pleasure. It sits in the room engagingly but without being demanding, although you can easily immerse yourself in the complexities of what it’s doing if you so wish. I think of it as the record that made our first flat together start to feel like our home, and I associate it with our first cat, Bob, who sadly and suddenly died last week, because he was another key presence in gluing our domestic life together.

Musically, there’s some of the woozy, distracted, pseudo-60s psychedelic pop that had antecedents on Up In Flames and would come to fruition on Andorra, but there’s also a hefty slice of krautrock-ish repetition, and almost minimalism at points (well, in comparison to the maximalism of Up In Flames. I don’t know where Snaith gets his drum samples (if they are samples), but he uses the same kind of tumbling, rattling, jazzy fills here that he has throughout his career. I don’t know how much of his music is assembled from samples and how much is played live – certainly when he performs live Caribou is a band, and things are reproduced by musicians onstage – but whatever the mix is, he has a unifying gestalt running through all the work he’s released under this name.

A great record? I don’t know; a record I really like and have played an awful lot over the last nine years, that’s for sure.

Interestingly, the evening before we met it occurred to me that I own a legitimate second C26, too; I keep digipaks and other unusually-packaged CDs in a separate run of discs, and the C26 from that part of the collection was Ornette Coleman’s The Shape Of Jazz To Come. I intended to bring this with me and give everyone an option of which to play, vaguely hoping that we’d plump for Ornette’s notoriously difficult free jazz opus. Sadly, though, I managed to pick up John Coltrane’s still jazz but much less free Giant Steps, which sits next to it and has almost identical packaging. So we played Caribou.

Rob listened: Liked this a lot, which left me wondering about the problem I have with Caribou. Every time I hear them/him I enjoy it, but I’m never drawn back. I listened to ‘Swim’ a couple of times when it came out, before Nick brought ‘Andorra’ to a previous meet. I liked it well enough but found it an easy record to walk away from, as in literally to leave the room during. I never really got a grip of it. Then Tom and I found ourselves walking across a darkening field at the End of the Road festival and hearing Snaith’s touring incarnation of Caribou strike up ‘Sun’ on the stage we were passing. It sounded great, but we carried on to the bar and never headed back. I thought ‘Andorra’ was strikingly inventive when Nick played it for us. I’ve never gone back and listened to it again. ‘The Milk of Human Kindness’ struck me as even better, crammed with life and detail and touch and verve. I hope I will go back and spend some more time with it but on past performance I can’t promise. I’ll save you the long essay speculating on why we leave lying some records that we find really appealing. I don’t know the answer.

Tom listened: I thought this was absolutely tremendous – better than I remember Andorra being on a first listen and much more realised and cohesive than my sole Dan Snaith record – Manitoba’s Up in Flames. Whilst I totally get what Rob is driving at (and that is precisely what has put me off exploring Caribou’s output more fully) I feel that The Milk Of Human Kindness would probably be the best place for me see whether Caribou is very exquisite, beautifully constructed and arranged window dressing or something deeper and more substantial.

Elastica – ‘Elastica’: Round 70 – Rob’s ‘choice’

Elastica - ElasticaNothing helps a record gain a little extra frisson, perhaps some extra purchase in the long run, more than the sense that there’s some deep-seated reason that you should dislike it, but you just can’t help yourself.

As I recall, I was heavily prepared to find against Elastica. The press at the time did a pretty good job of painting Justine Frischmann as a hanger-on with pretensions. When they weren’t doing that, in what in retrospect was a shocking display of route-one sexism, they were focusing on the band’s magpie tendencies. Where had they nicked this riff from, and whither this drum part? They were classic talentless bandwagon jumpers, surely?

By about the third time I heard ‘Stutter’, none of that mattered. Freewheeling spiky punk pop, wantonly brief and sharp enough to slip between your ribs and cut deep where it hurts. Also, and this may help some, sometimes assumed to be about the drunken impotence of one of the great totems of the scene we were all supposed to be looking up to. It’s a giddy, cocky rush of pure joyful adrenaline described memorably by Spin magazine as “deliver[ing] four brilliant pop songs”. After this, they could be forgiven almost anything. That they followed with the insistent insouciance of ‘Line Up’ and the bopping swagger of ‘Connection’ seemed almost miraculous.

All of which generated enough excitement that even a straight-laced kiddo like me could giddily look past things that would have turned me off alchemists of lesser stripe. An album full of singles, B-sides and stuff we’ve heard before? No problem, I’m happy to have it all in one place. Band being sued by Wire and The Stranglers? Ah well. Who cares when the songs are this damned good?

This point is worth dwelling on before dismissing.

Firstly, fair enough. If you were, or indeed are, Colin Newman or Jean Jacques Burnel and you heard a new band blatantly lifting ‘Three Girl Rhumba’ or ‘No More Heroes’ then you might well dash off a stiff rejoinder of a legal nature. And you would be well within your rights.

Otherwise, forget it. Lifting, appropriating and adapting other works is the essence of pop art and pop music, and Elastica did it with such élan that all we could do was fight to surpress our grins.

QED: ‘Vaseline’, an 80 second track which pares Blondie’s ‘Sunday Girl’ down to its essence and then smacks you in the face with it, twice. It’s a fabulous piece of work. 6 years later Soulwax and Richard X chums were making merry with mash-ups and nowadays it’s impossible to imagine pop without the joyful liberating of old songs in the service of the new. Elastica led the way.

Also, and here I’ll rest, those reference points are exquisite, especially at a time when were were otherwise being encouraged to revere Lennon at his most bloated or anything with a Union Jack slapped unironically across its rickenbacker. If a hundred people went back to discover ‘Pink Flag’ as a result of ‘Connection’ then good job Elastica, say I. If I had to choose between bands reappropriating Wire and bands trying to be Status Quo, I know which way I’d be heading. In fact, I did have to, and I did.

Listening back now, what comes through with full force is the bristling life and energy of this debut album. By contemporary standards it’s nowhere near as arch and contrived, as knowing and detached, as you might expect or remember. It’s a killer, front to back, armed to the teeth with glinting choruses, razor-sharp guitar angles and enough attitude and disregard for safety to make you fear for what it might do next.

Here’s another way it stands in marked contrast both to its contemporaries of the time and to those who have followed. Elastica understood the power of brevity. Their songs do what they have it in them to do, with bags of energy, and then they STOP. Take ‘Annie’, a belter packed with pogo power and head-banging brio. It zings along for 1min 14seconds and then, its business done, it just ends. Where most other bands would be searching for a bridge to take them back to a point where they could run through the whole thing again. Elastica pull the plug and leave an electric aftertaste crackling around the room.

On its release in 1995 ‘Elastica’ became the fastest selling debut album since ‘Definitely Maybe’ and kept that rather niche honour for a further ten years, a demonstration of just how connected the worlds of pop, art and spectacle were with what people were actually anticipating and buying. Almost twenty years later it still stands up tall.

To my mind there were two truly great britpop records, and this is one of them. And tough luck, Albarn and Anderson. Your ‘hanger on’ made the list comfortably ahead of either of you.

Nick listened: Em brought this into our record collection when we moved in together, too. Great songs, great attitude, great production. Yes, it’s ‘derivative’, but I can’t name much music which isn’t. I can, however, name a lot which isn’t as good as this.

Tom listened: I have never considered Elastica as contenders and, as a result, I was pleasantly surprised by their debut which was punchy and sharp. But whilst I can see why Rob would suggest this to be one of the top two Britpop albums (I’m guessing Different Class would be the other one), for me, the best albums by Blur, Supergrass and (if they are can be ‘genrefied’ as Britpop) Super Furry Animals all seemed to have a certain something (playfulness perhaps, identity maybe) that Elastica seemed – on a first listen – to lack. Enjoyable enough though!

Eleventh Dream Day – ‘Live To Tell’: Round 70 – Rob’s choice that never was

eddlttTom’s rules were simple. Pick a letter, pick a number. I ended up with E8 and so began at the beginning of the E’s, counted records until I reached the eighth and then pulled out the first album I came to.

I spend time thinking about my choices for Devon Record Club. There are rules to follow, often themes to be adhered to and I have my own internal standards and checklists that need to be respected. I think carefully about whether my records will surprise, delight or horrify the other attendees. I prepare and curate my choices and one of the unintended effects is that the one person who rarely gets a surprise from them is me. One of the reasons I like the occasional ‘Year of Release’ theme is that it restricts choice and sends me to records I might otherwise overlook.

Before I pulled out my randomly selected album, this felt like the ultimate extension of that. A choice over which we have no choice. Exciting! Well, maybe. One of the things it’s made me think about is what makes a good record to listen to and talk about. That’s because as I counted along the Es, I passed Earth, Echo and the Bunnymen, Eggs, 808 State (misfiled perhaps?) and landed in the middle of Elastica. Their debut album was the seventh record I counted, and thus had ticked by. A shame I thought. It’s a perfect record for generating debate and disagreement and one of the fuels of our meetings is the power of pontification. It’s also a really terrific listen. But I missed it by one, thanks purely to the accident of me filing it before the EPs I own by the same band.

And next up was this, the only record I own by Eleventh Dream Day. One the one hand: perfect. A record I’ve had for 20 years and probably listened to less than 20 times. A new discovery for me as well as the group. Except, I’ve passed it over when scanning the Es over the years for a reason. It’s a decent record, but one surrounded by more immediately interesting, rewarding, ear, eye and finger grabbing choices. It could be a wallflower, hanging in the back waiting for a chance to shine, or it could be just an average record.

Eleventh Dream Day, from Chicago, are, as they say, stalwarts. They formed in 1983 and have been releasing records ever since. ‘Live to Tell’ is their fifth from a list that, to date, numbers twelve. They’ve had generally positive reviews, but after a couple of records on Atlantic, of which this was the second, their shot at breaking through had passed. Clearly they weren’t in it for fame and fortune and have carried on making music together ever since. Inevitably I have to note that perhaps they are most notable as the other project of Doug McCombs, bass player of Tortoise.

‘Live To Tell’ is a pretty good album, full of rousing, alternative rock tunes which bustle through at a fair clip. They’re scuzzy, straightforward and have a little cowpunk stomp about them which is both endearing and energizing. Critics seems to share the view that they are influenced by Neil Young. I don’t get that from the songwriting or the playing, but almost every song has a pause whilst the band step back to make space for a slashing guitar solo. And that’s about that. I like it well enough and I’ve enjoyed listening to it ahead of the meeting. I just can’t imagine it’s going to turn any heads this evening, in much the same way I can’t quite imagine meeting someone who declared “Eleventh Dream Day” when asked to name their favourite band. That’s not an insult, by the way, although I fully accept that it sounds exactly like one.

So, it goes back onto the shelves alongside (spiritually, but not physically) other records, by Razorcuts and Surgery and Rein Sanction and That Dog and Tsunami and Scrawl, that I’ve picked up for unknown reasons and which have languished ever since. Maybe those ones will sound revelatory if they pop out of Tom’s random record generator. We’ll have to wait and see.

Update: I miscounted and the evening before the meeting, with this piece already in the can, I realised that the 12″ of ‘Bring On The Dancing Horses’ had been lurking next to ‘Crocodiles’ all the time. Which meant my REAL E8 was something different after all.

Nick didn’t listen: …

Tom listened to one track: And thought it sounded pretty good. But hasn’t explored any further…