Taming the Beast

Two Dancers
Wild Beasts
2009
3.5 stars

From the first sustained, synthesised note of Two Dancers, it's made clear that this British four-piece have taken a giant leap forward from their 2008 debut. A giant leap musically, definitely, but perhaps also a giant leap in their attitude toward what they do. Limbo, Panto was a good album, and showcased four talented musicians, but rested more heavily on the shock value of Hayden Thorpe's trans-gender-cabaret vocals than the actual quality of its songs. Two Dancers is different — Thorpe's vocals are still jarring in their warbling high-register, but second-teir singer Tom Flemming's gruff Interpol-esque voice takes more of a front-of-house role, and the taut, angular guitar lines of old have grown into epic, melancholy — almost loungy at times — swooning soundscapes, worthy of Coldplay or Doves. This Is Our Lot is the clear standout on this album; a big-hearted pop anthem full of acoustic swells and interesting time-signatures — a guaranteed hit. All of this shows that this is a band willing to outgrow their indie roots, something which will hold them in good stead for the inevitable turning of the tide of trends. Once Thorpe finds a cage to fit his fierce falsetto, these guys will be a band appreciated by those well away from the musical fringes.

Published in mX, Thursday September 17, 2009.

Pre-Something

Post-Nothing
Japandroids
Polyvinyl, 2009
4.5 stars

It might not sound like it, but this record, with its loud, full sound, is in fact the work of just two guys. They’re not the first ‘band’ to feature a two-person guitar/drums line-up; the White Stripes proved the formula at the start of the decade, and recently No Age have followed the trend, albeit with a decidedly less-polished approach. But Japandroids (a terrible band name, it must be said) still manage to wring their own unique sound from a minimalist setup often seen as a bit of a novelty. Post-Nothing is eight tracks of testosterone-fueled angst-pop, all crashing drums and angular, noisy guitars. These guys aren’t so much singing from the heart as somewhere just south of the belt buckle – most of the lyrics revolve around girls and getting pissed, the album’s catchiest moment the repeated chant “... must get to France so we can French-kiss some French girls” in the second-half of Wet Hair. But despite the cleverly-constructed don’t-give-a-shit veneer their lyrics and band name suggest, and under the layers of distortion and frat-boy chanting, these guys are a genuinely clever pop outfit, and Post-Nothing is as catchy as anything released in 2009.

Published in mX, Thursday September 3, 2009.

Gurgling Sand

Nowhere Forever
Love Of Diagrams
Unstable Ape, 2009
3.5 stars

Love Of Diagrams have always had a knack for making the complicated sound simple. Their sound has been a mathy, ordered-mess of guitar patterns, repeated vocal chants and tight, taut drumming, but with Nowhere Forever they’ve succumbed to the late-noughties shoegaze bent and ramped-up the fuzz. The album’s title is a more-than-obvious (perhaps too obvious to be intentional) reference to Ride’s wonderful 1990 excursion into noisy pop Nowhere, and they’ve done the reference justice – the squalling guitars on Forever sound like gurgling sand, and blended with washy, muted walls of noise and some seriously catchy pop tunes these guys have nailed it. The beauty of this record however, is that they’ve managed it without losing any of the qualities that have endeared them to so many, both here and abroad. Tracks like Lookout and A Part Of You are up there with the nicest – I’d even go as far as to say ‘sweetest’ – they’ve ever laid down. Whether this is true shoegaze is up for debate, bit I personally think we’re going to need to come up with another name for it, because these guys aren’t wasting time looking at their feet.

Published in mX, Thursday August 20, 2009.

Daydreaming

Yes To Fear, Yes To Desire
Panoptique Electrical
Sensory Projects, 2009
4 stars

This is really beautiful. Panoptique Electrical, a Melbourne group led by Jason Sweeney (also of Mist & Sea), have created a 57-minute instrumental mood swing with this album; a wistful, world-wise soundtrack, ready to wrap itself around the listener whatever activity they find themselves engaged in at the time. Fans of Sigur Ros should hunt down a copy of this album yesterday – the slow, haunting chords of tracks such as Some Rooms Become Us are reminiscent of those found on the Icelandic lads’ wonderful ( ), with the sea-shanty vibe of fellow countrymen múm’s Summer Make Good. It’s a simple formula really; piano notes stretched-out over washy, lingering strings and elongated samples to form a series of meditative, melancholy instrumentals - it’s been done before, but rarely this well. The vibe of the album is not intentionally depressing, nor uplifting, but it is definitely one that will calm a listener’s nerves and amplify any pesky, meandering thoughts.

Published in mX, Thursday August 13, 2009.

Scrub Serenade

Kes Band II
Kes Band
Mistletone, 2009
4 stars

For the last few years Karl Scullin has been one of the most productive men in town, popping his head out of the Melbourne underground scene every so often to put out some great experimental solo work, contribute snakey basslines to Mum Smokes and, recently, find a poppier incarnation under the ‘Kes Band’ moniker. I’ve been a fan for a while now, but there’s always been one hitch; I share a home with a nice young lady who just so happens to have a problem with Karl’s slightly-off vocals, and I have therefore only been able to listen to his records outside of headphones when said nice young lady isn’t home. Well, the headphones are back in the drawer, because Kes’ latest release is an all-instrumental affair. It’s a slow-burning collection of bush-bashing post-rock and ethereal wind-driven waltzes, with the ebb-and-flow of recent Do Make Say Think albums but the ramshackle, eucalyptus haze of Kes’ excellent 2007 LP The Grey Goose Wing. Individual tracks are not as immediately catchy as those on Kes Band I, but the aim here, if I’m not mistaken, is for more of an overall experience, as suggested by the album’s Arts Centre launch.

Published in mX, Thursday August 6, 2009.

Times Change, Things Stay The Same

The Guilty Office
The Bats
Mistletone, 2009
4 stars

For a band to stay (for the most part) together for a quarter of a century is no mean feat, but for a band to do so and not try and re-invent themselves or move with the times is something else. The Bats, perhaps the best thing to come out of the ashes of seminal NZ post-punk band The Clean, have carved out such a career to date, and show no signs or stopping with The Guilty Office. The rustic, jangly pop songs on The Guilty Office are reminiscent of the band’s finest work on Daddy’s Highway and The Law of Things. String creepers climb up a web of steady, spritely guitar lines and restrained percussion, with Robert Scott’s simple, steady vocals bringing the whole thing to bloom. The songs are catchy – none moreso than Two Lines and the uptempo Steppin’ Out – but effortlessly catchy – these guys really know what they’re doing, and are doing it better than any of their current imitators. The album’s melancholy title track is probably the most striking cut, with a continual chorus of muted guitar lines forming a kind of gently-lapping pool for Scott’s words to bob around in. All up, the album is classic Bats, and a perfect entry point for the as-yet uninitiated. Instead of trying to keep up with modern musical trends (ahem, U2), The Bats have stuck to their guns and found the same trends coming full circle, trying to catch up with them.

Published in mX, Thursday July 30, 2009.

Enough Wondering

I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
Julie Doiron
Label, 2008
4 stars

I’m a newcomer to the musical stylings of Ms Julie Doiron, but from my limited exposure - her excellent recent collaboration with Mount Eerie and this record - I like what I hear. Perhaps it’s the awkwardly-spelled surname, but I don’t understand why an artist like Doiron, with a decade-and-a-bit’s worth of solo material, isn’t more widely known – especially when she’s capable of producing gems like the ones found on I Can Wonder. This record has bits of everything; cute acoustic sing-alongs (Nice To Come Home), fuzzy dirge-rockers (Heavy Snow and Consolation Prize) and melancholy pop classics (Lovers of the World is on heavy rotation on my stereo at home); all strung together like a row of hand-made, mis-matched paper lanterns. Reverb-soaked lullaby Blue, the album’s blissed-out highlight, stays in your head well after the final watery guitar note fades out and, in my opinion, would have made for a far more satisfying closing track than the cute Glad To Be Alive. Still, the overall package is a bright, intimate and smart album that showcases one of Canada’s unsung musical champions.

Artwork: A
As un-fussed and, for that reason, beautiful as the album itself. Spot-on.

Published in mX,Thursday July 23, 2009.

Home-grown

Farm
Dinosaur Jr
Jagjaguwar, 2009
4 stars

You’d be a fool to expect any major sonic sidesteps from a band this far into their career; thankfully - and respectfully - Dinosaur Jr are not Radiohead or The Beatles. That said, Farm sees the slacker-rock stalwarts doing what they do best and doing it as well as they ever have – melodic, sometimes-melancholic rock, heavy on the fuzz and light on ornamentation (aside from the occasional guitar flourish). The only major surprise is that it’s this good. And long too - with a playing time somewhere around the hour mark it’s like a meditation on late-‘80s garage noise-rock; you might need to kick yourself to remind yourself that you are in fact sitting in an office cubicle or on a city-bound tram, and not on a shitty old couch in a childhood mate’s suburban garage. There are numerous highlights, but none better than the epic I Don’t Wanna Go There, with lead drawler J Mascis doing his best Eddie Vedder impersonation over some fantastic, noisy power-chords and a couple of (for want of a better word) ‘scorching’ guitar solos; it all sounds bloody amazing. Musically, J, Lou and Murph are ageing well – they sound more focused and content than ever. And they should be. Why re-invent the wheel if you’re happy where you’re sitting.

Artwork: C+
This kind of illustration doesn't do much for me personally, but that aside, the text layout of this thing is what really gets me. It just looks a bit rushed; a bit under-cooked.

Published in mX, Thursday July 2, 2009.

Young At Heart

The Eternal
Sonic Youth
Matador, 2009
3.5 stars

It might just be the fact that the band’s members are all in or nearing their fifties, but for some reason a ‘00s Sonic Youth record just doesn’t have the same feel as an ‘80s or ‘90s one. That said, was this record released by an unknown group, age withheld, it’d no doubt be receiving positive feedback anyway. The sound is unmistakeably Sonic Youth: more rocking than recent efforts, but with all the inventive, messed-up guitar effects and- you know what, I’m not going to try and explain what Sonic Youth sound like. If you know the band, you know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t, well, you’re not the target audience anyway so no biggie. Though lo-fi and awkward, The Eternal’s cleanliness is a good example of ‘00s production. The band apparently used Twitter to let fans in on the recording progress too – but, having a fifteen-year-old daughter, Kim and Thurston are probably all over modern-day social networking. All in all, The Eternal is probably a better record than most of the group’s two-dozen-odd other albums – the last few at the very least - but something is undeniably different. Whether it’s something in us as listeners, or them as ageing punk/no-wave pioneers, is hard to say.

Artwork: B+
They've nailed the whoole "whatever" '90s grunge/lo-fi look with this. No whole-album 'concept' here, thanks. No siree. Just a painting they like on the cover (by the late American folk guitarist John Fahey), and a bunch of paintings and photos they like on the inside and back. Suitably absent, and beautifully under-polished.

Published in mX, Thursday June 11, 2009.

Classic Pop

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix
V2, 2009
4.5 stars

As all albums worth their salt seem to do these days, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix made its way around the internet months before its official release. Whether that’s a bad thing is hard to say, but the fact that some of my somewhat musically-highbrow friends (you know who you are) are still singing “dancing, in La Rhone” – a misinterpretation of the words to Fences (“fences, in a row”) – to this day, speaks volumes for both the broad appeal and longevity of this album. Put simply, this album is catchy as hell, and is destined to rack up plays on commercial and independent radio alike. The French hipsters band have taken the tight, poppy tunefulness of 2006’s equally-good It’s Never Been Like That and cranked-up the synth, enlisting the mixing skills of French house duo Cassius’ Philippe Zdar. The way these guys use the repetition of a single note or chord is brilliant, creating a kind of sonic canvas for them to layer up, bend or break completely. Right off the bat, the bouncy Lisztomania and keyboard-driven 1901 are probably the most-likeable tunes on a disc that’s full of them, but if there’s one complaint for this album, it’s that it’s too short – at 37 minutes it makes a strong case for the ‘loop all’ button.

Artwork: C+
A bit too cutesy for my liking. Possibly a little bit too much pink? They've really taken the 'bubblegum Mozart' thing and run with it.

Published in mX, Thursday May 28, 2009.