Friday 28 May 2010

Adult Contemporary Essentials 23.05.10

Phosphorescent
Here's To Taking It Easy
Dead Oceans
Phosphorescent is based around main man Matthew Houck, and on this fifth studio album they enter a rather lovely indie folk space. Emulating Great Lake Swimmers if fronted by Iron and Wine's Sam Beam, this is laid back, harmonic and gentle - music that could have been recorded at any time in the past 40 years.
Houck's voice has a wonderful plaintive quality - strong and vulnerable at the same time. A song like We'll Be Here Soon is gorgeous, laid out like a landscape - any fan of Fleet Foxes would find a lot to love in here. Occasionally the band head into Neil Young/ The Band space (The Mermaid Parade), although it is a reflective Neil Young rather than the rock-heavy one. The band's previous album, Pride (the Willie Nelson covers album aside), was a record that took time to grow but when it did it had its hooks in everywhere. Here's To Taking It Easy is a lovely build on Pride.

ACE rating 8/10


Surfer Blood
Astrocoast
Kanine
Surfer Blood are a band from West Palm Beach, Florida, and follows the new movement in bands that hark back to a 70s sound. Here, they embrace 70s summer pop to produce a sound like Weezer mixed with Girls. The quartet also, in deriving their Weezer references, manage to sound like some Nick Hayward 80s bands. Ultimately, mixing in the trendy Afrobeat (Yeasayer, Vampire Weekend) and eclectic sounds (a bit of dosie-do here, a bit of New Romantic there, produces an uneven record - the kind of record that you'd like to like, but that fails to achieve anything memorable once the last song has gone. The band seem to have hooked into a nice wave of hype, which may do them no favours in the long run, as the music just isn't completely there yet.

ACE rating 7/10


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

Thursday 13 May 2010

Adult Contemporary Essentials 09.05.10

Broken Social Scene
Forgiveness Rock Record
City Slang
Broken Social Scene are an idea as much as they are a band - a collective band with no single direction and a lot of musicians, Forgiveness Rock Record sees them trim down the number to a more cohesive level, although there is never any doubt that the album is a stitched together affair. Coming at indie from the ecstatic, loosely melodic side, Broken Social Scene do provide the odd goosebump moment in their music, and occasionally a song breaks through the general drift around the various contributors' songs - here it is The Sweetest Kill, and Forced To Love: one, a lovely ballad, the other a very good indie song. It is still hard to recommend BSS to anyone who isn't already in their club. Forgiveness Rock Record is tight relative to their other work, but it is still a collection of ideas.

ACE rating 7/10


The Black Keys
Brothers
Universal
The Black Keys have undergone so much experimentation since breaking through that it was inevitable that they would get to this point. Drummer Patrick Carney's side projects and label suggested a massively interesting musical brain, while guitarist Dan Auerbach's solo work took a sidestep from the thick bluesy funky rock that the pair broke through with.
That wonderful sludgy funk is still apparent on their sixth studio album, Brothers, as it becomes apparent that the soul rock of 70s America feeds the pair a delicious backdrop. Brothers, as a title, is meant to suggest that the pair still feel like a pair, despite their meanderings. What there is a lot less of is blues, although this sounds like the Attack and Release album if it had kept going at its departures from the 'sound'. There is falsetto, Booker T-like organ, Cream-like rock, and a whole lot of soul. The pair have one of the best modern musical legacies in the 5 albums to date, and Brothers proves it is built to last.

ACE rating 9/10


Darwin Deez
Darwin Deez
Lucky Numbers
Proof, if it were needed, that the UK is still prone to giving hype time to bands that manage only to show an interesting look and a hook. The shame here is that frontman, Darwin Deez, does have an interesting voice, and the band is capable of some Vampire Weekend-like spiky rhythms, and the occasional hook (singles Radar Detector and Constellations) that position them as a more electronic Julian Casablancas. The challenge is that there are dozens of great bands or artists in the same space: Kelley Stoltz, Devin Davis, Billy Harvey… (Who? Exactly…) This is a great record, taken in isolation - Deez is a better vocalist than Casablancas, and there is a good loose-limbed energy everywhere; the casiotone synths also seem perfect for what they're doing, the wittiness of the lyrics contributes. The shame would be if this debut were taken for more than what it is - a very interesting first go 'round - and expectations were changed because of that.

ACE rating 7/10

Sunday 9 May 2010

Adult Contemporary Essentials 02.05.10

Jesca Hoop
Kismet Acoustic EP
Last Laugh
With the really rather special album Hunting My Dress bringing Jesca Hoop fame as this year's best quirky female singer-songwriter, time perhaps seemed right to release an EP of acoustic covers of her own songs, largely drawn from her debut album, Kismet.
Everything's there - the wonderful better-than-Bjork voice, the interesting arrangements… And yet, it is hard to not wonder what's missing, and that thing is the excitement from the Tom Waits-like orchestration that the studio brought to Hunting My Dress. While the EP is lovely, and is a great way to gain additional perspective on the two albums, this is for those who've already fallen in love with those records, not someone who is checking her out.

ACE rating 7/10


Aqualung
Magnetic North
FullFill
Aqualung (well, Matt Hales, who is Aqualung) has done very well since breaking through on the back of a VW advert with Strange and Beautiful. Since then, he has had an occasional track (Easier To Lie, Brighter Than Sunshine) break through and find its way to TC series like Brothers and Sisters or Greys Anatomy. The music is smack-bang in the middle of bands such as Coldplay, Snow Patrol, or Travis, and like those bands, you're really not supposed to find it offensive - if you find it compelling, that's a bonus. Magnetic North continues the tradition on recent Aqualung albums of nice-nice and a track or two that could work on an iPod playlist, or a mixtape CD if you're trying to come across as sensitive. Probably best as singles, unless you really don't like it spicy.

ACE rating 6/10


Jesse Malin and the St Marks Social
Love It To Life
SideOneDummy
Jesse Malin came out from Ryan Adams' wing as a squeakier Bruce Springsteen, forging a more interesting space for himself while Adams went off to forage in country and singer-songwriter territory. Here he follows the wonderful (and under-noticed) Glitter In The Gutter with a more straightahead return to his older wannabe. Love It To Life (the second album of his to be so-titled - the first is a 2007 live album) sounds more like the mid-80s Springsteen knock-offs (like John Cafferty), and ventures no further than the white lines on the same road throughout. Energetic enough, but lacking anything resembling an idea or a change of gear, this is Malin-on-repeat.

ACE rating 7/10

Adult Contemporary Essentials 25.04.10

The Tallest Man On Earth
The Wild Hunt
Dead oceans
Sweden’s Kristian Matsson will endure many many comparisons to Bob Dylan, for his adenoidal impassioned folk (think Blowin' In the Wind era), but the artist whom he should properly be compared to is Steve Forbert, for his voice is closest to that underrated star, and his music more melodic than the protest standards for which Dylan became famous. Like many Swedes writing in English, the actually lyrics have their flaws, but that doesn't stop the headlong rush through word associations sounding right on the money. This is a fantastic follow up to the great debut album, adding in great additional instruments to great effect. If there is a criticism, it is that the pace rarely varies, and that there really isn't much here that couldn't be a straight lift from another musician. Once you're past that, it's all good.

ACE rating 7/10


The New Pornographers
Together
Matador
Once, The New Pornographers were a vital, essential new rock band, full of Neko Case energy and AC Newman drive. Then, as people started to listen, the band (always known as a 'supergroup' simply because it corralled three singers and songwriters) started to sound like the sum of some parts, and more like less than the sum of those parts. Together (perhaps ironically?) allows Case to do Case songs, Newman to do his, and, for some reason allows Dan Bejar to do his. The outcome is that this is both a retread of what worked for them in the past (Your Hands (Together)) and some material that shouldn't have ever been allowed out of the studio (Silver Jenny Dollar, If You Can't See My Mirrors). For a band that has been nothing but disappointing on recent outings, Together provides all the reason needed to stop hoping that they were an aberration.

ACE rating 5/10


Josh Ritter
So Runs The World Away
Pytheas
Josh Ritter's warm, gentle voice and ability to write songs that seem instantly memorable brought him to the attention of many, in that space above folk where the occasional artist achieves success. He makes the kind of music that Ryan Adams occasionally manages, or that Stephen Fretwell drifts into unwillingly. There was a time when he was called The New Springsteen, but So Runs The World Away puts him smack dead centre for The New Paul Simon, with its Still Crazy After All These Years feel. One listen to The Curse will be all you need to make you buy this album - its gently unfolding epic story beautifully told. The fact is that Josh Ritter is now an essential artist, one with a place on the shelf of every adult who likes considerate, intelligent music. This is his best album.

ACE rating 6/10