Adult Contemporary Essentials 29.11.09

Cymbals Eat Guitars

Why There Are Mountains

Memphis Industries

Only one question you need to ask about yourself before dipping in here – do you like the kind of sloppy, loose, indie that spends no time at all explaining itself? The genre was defined by Pavement, and picked up more recently by Modest Mouse, and has always had a core, small audience – people who hate, absolutely hate, the idea of polish and single-minded songs. Why There Are Mountains can be abrasive on first listen, as the ideas come ten to the pound, like some 90s indie band retro-find.

However, there are times, when you’ve dipped in, when you can’t imagine pulling away – when Cold Spring starts, you’re there for the duration. The imagination and pure joy expressed in the massed instrumentation and lo fi recording are wonderful. Similarly, with Wind Phoenix, it is hard to avoid the feeling that a band that could really play this with polish would ineffably spoil the experience – the amateurish delivery adds immeasurably to the charm – when it comes in all excited and buzzing, you believe every word, hang on every guitar thrash and go with the song’s many mood changes. There’s nothing really ‘good’ about anything on this album except the fact that it exists, and is full of great songs.

ACE rating 8/10

Benjy Ferree

Come Back To The Five And Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee

Domino

On the intellectually-stimulating Ferree’s second album, he takes inspiration from Bobby Driscoll, the child star who portrayed Peter Pan in the 1953 Disney film, who was then fired as puberty and a bad case of acne hit. Bobby Dee struggled to find work and fell into a life-long

battle with drugs until ultimately dying homeless and broke in a Manhattan tenement at the age of 31. With police unable to identify his body, the one-time Academy Award winner ended up in an unmarked mass grave on New York’s Hart Island. “Heavy weighs the burden of Brother Dee,” Ferree sings on the album’s opening track, Tired Of Being Good. Musically, Ferree mixes rock and roll and Americana like a hopped up Ryan Adams, or a more soaring Richard Swift. With country, passionate blues pounding, Marc Bolan, Freddie Mercury and the balladry of Nick Cave all in there, Come Back To The Five And Dime is a riot of styles and inspiration. Denying genres is paying off for Ferree.

ACE rating 8/10

Stereophonics

Keep Calm And Carry On

Mercury

Stereophonics’ sprint from any hint of alternative or indie has coincided with their increasing popularity, so it is perhaps no surprise that their seventh album, Keep Calm And Carry On, sounds like a ‘Robbie Williams does 80s rock’ pastiche. There is a good song on here that might stand next to their best work from the first two (three at a push) albums: 100MPH. Elsewhere, drum machines, McFly-style poppiness and sterile emoting are the order of the day, carrying on from the insipid sixth album, Pull The Pin. While fans of the band are claiming this is a return to form, it is not the form that made the band. Instead, it is simply better vanilla than the cheap vanilla of its predecessor, and it is hard to avoid the feeling of contractual obligation being the driving force behind this recording, rather than any intense desire to have these songs see the light of day. It is hard to see Keep Calm garnering new fans for the band, but the existing fans keep them coming back with more.

ACE rating 6/10

Adult Contemporary Essentials rating

9-10 Essential purchase

7-8 Good, definite buy if you've liked this artist in the past

5-6 OK only, don't say I didn't warn you

3-4 Poor, even for this artist

1-2 Awful

These United States video

Fantastic to receive a note from a new friend (any friend of TUS is a friend of mine) whose videos of These United States show just how cool this band is live... The Important Thing, and First Sight recorded live in Iowa City, 2009...

(And, go here for lossless audio, which is lovely... Here )

Adult Contemporary Essentials 22.11.09

JBM

Not Even In July

JBM

Let’s face it – even the hardest critic of hippy folk would find a lot to like in Fleet Foxes. Well, those same parts make up most of what makes Not Even In July special. Jesse Marchant, an actor turned singer-songwriter, who goes under his initials, sings in a sweet, gentle voice over relaxed lovely melody. A Canadian by birth, Not Even In July was recorded in a church studio, whose atmospherics add a gorgeous ambience to the lazily swelling dynamics and the echoes. Like fellow Canadians Great Lake Swimmers, Marchant’s music has an intimacy that reminds the listener of early Neil Young, Jackson Browne or Rickie Lee Jones. With material covering subjects such as the perfect July On The Sound, written for a dying friend, Marchant is a match for our own Stephen Fretwell – a band is used to fill out the songs without ruining their delicacy and elegance. As a first album, this is an immense small effort.

ACE rating 9/10

The Swell Season

Strict Joy

Anti-

Think about the word ‘fine’. Fine is when it doesn’t rain, but it’s not a lovely day, when the food you just ate was passable, but not great, when the watercolours in the gallery are competent but not going to attract a bid. Fine is for background music, not something that could become

the object of your affection. Well, The Swell Season are fine. That hasn’t stopped them being lauded for their fine music, but it does mean that Strict Joy is only for those who like their food unchallenging and digestible. The Swell Season are at their core a duo, Glen Hansard, from Irish band The Frames, and Marketa Irglova, a Czech classical musician and singer. There’s half a sense of security when the first track kicks in, Low Rising – except it doesn’t go anywhere, like a Hallmark sentiment rather than a meaningful emotion. And then the album carries on for a bit and then it stops. There are lots of people around who rather liked The Frames, and who do like The Swell Season. That’s fine.

ACE rating 6/10

REM

Live At The Olympia

Warner Bros

REM have been on the wrong end of a lot of criticism about their more recent new material, and a sense that there was more contractual obligation than anything more passionate in there. This release restores your faith in the band, as it offers up a series of recordings from shows in Dublin in 2007, featuring songs that would end up on Accelerate and a lot of pre-Warners album songs. Although the experiments for Accelerate are a good fan

treasure trove, it is the live versions of the older songs (Reconstruction, Life’s Rich Pageant, Murmur) that add so much interest – there is spitting flame running through some of these tracks, so intense is the delivery. Given their head more than 20 years later, these songs and these versions prove that REM are still one of the best indie bands on the planet – this album captures effortlessly everything that made REM great. It is an essential REM album for any fan, and a perfect introduction for anyone who’s not yet become one.

ACE rating 8/10

Adult Contemporary Essentials rating

9-10 Essential purchase

7-8 Good, definite buy if you've liked this artist in the past

5-6 OK only, don't say I didn't warn you

3-4 Poor, even for this artist

1-2 Awful

Adult Contemporary Essentials 02.11.09

Weezer

Raditude

Interscope

Weezer seemed so set for legendary status – their oh-so-knowing wit, melody and crunching rock were the perfect pop punk mixture, and they even managed in their earliest days

to amass an indie cred. They progressively frittered all of those things away in more recent years with a collection of so-so records that would only be simple retreads of their earlier, better work. Raditude continues that slide, with a collection of songs that would sound about right from McFly. The music, unfortunately, aims at teen angst, and sounds plain weird from a bunch of middle aged men. The ti

ght Weezer sound underpins every song, but there is nothing in Raditude that isn’t bettered by the superior OK Go. Raditude does manage to achieve cringe, though, in Love Is The Answer, which is as awful a song as you will ever hear. Raditude is best avoided. Listen instead to the Blue album, Pinkerton or the Green album and remember them the way they used to be.

ACE rating 4/10

Molina and Johnson

Molina and Johnson

Secretly Canadian

Jason Molina is a cult indie folk/ blues singer known for his bands Magnolia Electric Co, and Songs Ohia; Will Johnson is the remarkable front man for Centro-matic and South San Gabriel, as well as a solo artist (and currently part of the Monsters of Folk). This collaboration has been a long time in the making, and has been well worth the wait.

The two singers complement each other perfectly – Johnson’s grittier voice blending with Molina’s higher plaintive vocals (and on one amazing piece, Sarah Jaffe duets with Johnson on a track that should be in the next Coen Brothers film). The album feels like a Will Johnson album with additional beauty, added harmony, elevated poetry, which makes it just about perfect. This album defines what is best about Americana – the openness, the sense of space, relaxed reverie, land

scape and travel. When Johnson says ‘our record was made in the late February sun’, that feels just so right.

ACE rating 9/10

Foo Fighters

Greatest Hits

RCA

Whisper it, but Foo Fighters are really a singles band – when they’re great, they’re a phenomenal rock band, but the albums can come across as main show plus filler. That’s not true here, of course, in a Greatest Hits collection that does a p

retty good job of pulling out the obvious singles (the ones with the great videos). It does declare its interest – it’s a Greatest Hits as opposed to a Best Of – right up front on the cover. The Deluxe edition combines a DVD with the videos (and a few tracks which rightly should have been on the single CD version, such as DOA). As such, it isn’t a record for real fans, despite the three new tracks. What it is is a fantastic introduction to a remarkable band for a casual Foos listener. The assault presented by this band’s most listenable songs will turn any rock fan’s head. And, with the Foo Fighters, there is no real worry about your indie cred going out of the window – they have retained their cool way longer than most bands have a right to.

ACE rating 8/10

Adult Contemporary Essentials rating

9-10 Essential purchase

7-8 Good, definite buy if you've liked this artist in the past

5-6 OK only, don't say I didn't warn you

3-4 Poor, even for this artist

1-2 Awful