Reatarded

Matador Singles '08
Jay Reatard
Matador, 2008
4 stars

The incredibly inventively-titled Matador Singles '08 compiles a bunch of 7" singles that this prolific Memphis punk-rocker put out earlier this year. At the time most of these sold out quick-smart, so this compilation is a great way for those of us who don't fetishize vinyl to score the lot of them at once. Reatard is a genuine talent - with his debut LP Blood Visions he showed a real knack for combining raw garage aesthetic and pop smarts, and with this collection of songs he shows that his pool of ideas is faring well. As well as his own terrific singles (opening track See Saw is a standout) he covers Deerhunter's Fluorescent Grey - a nice pairing, as Reatard and Deerhunter brainchild (and fellow Blogger) Bradford Cox seem to share an inability to not make and continually release great music. Reatard (actual name Jay Lindsey) plans to record his new album in January next year, and if this is anything to go by it's going to be a ripper.

Artwork: B+
Dudes (I think they're the other band-members) piss-farting around with a bunch of Jay Reatard singles. That in itself is punk - those things are worth a fucking mint!

Published in mX, Thursday November 27, 2008.

The Review That Is

The Week That Was
The Week That Was
Memphis Industries, 2008
3.5 stars

So far the disbanding of Field Music has produced two impressive offshoots - School of Language and now The Week That Was - and that's only two-thirds of the original line-up accounted for. Field Music had a knack for crafting impeccably tidy, impossibly clever tunes, the main credit for which clearly goes to the two Brewis brothers Peter and David. While David’s School of Language debut was like a third Field Music album, Peter’s The Week That Was, a concept-album of sorts, takes that band’s intricate, artful and almost mechanical approach to pop music and pushes it toward ... musical theatre. While Field Music’s songs would often change direction three or four times in three or four minutes, they always seemed to make it out of their musical maze in the same shape in which they went in. This time around that’s not the case. Combined with that unmistakeable Sunderland accent, the schizophrenic Yesterday’s Paper might as well be the score to Paddington Bear: The Musical. And listening to tracks such as the kinetic The Airport and album standout The Good Life you’d swear Brewis must plot his music on big sheets of graph paper, it’s that mathematically complicated. But even if The Week That Was isn’t everyone’s cup of earl grey, it definitely bodes well for the future of the Field Music team, both together and independently.

Artwork: C
A photo of a bunch of neat looking Brits staring at a TV with some Helvetica Neue over the top. Groundbreaking. It's neat (the inside photo pinpointing all of the contributors is quite nice) but, I don't know. Maybe a little too neat for my liking.

Published in mX, Thursday November 20, 2008.

The Search Continues

Surfing
Megapuss
Vapor, 2008
4 stars

In the lead up to Surfing's release, industry chatter has mainly revolved around the shot of bandmates Devendra Banhart and Greg Rogove's tackle that graces the duo's debut album liner notes. It's fair enough - not every day do a couple of well-respected musicians 'put themselves out there' in such blatant fashion - but in a way it's also a shame, because Surfing's music is just as worthy of our attention. With contributions from Strokes' Fab Moretti and other long-time Banhart comrades, it's a seriously catchy set of '60s-inspired stoner-pop songs. It's summery as all hell (Surfing is the perfect title), but with a bit of a gritty edge - kind of like eating a sandy rainbow Paddle Pop at the beach. Opener Crop Circle Jerk '94 is the kind of jangly beach-pop that Jack Johnson and Ben Harper would sell their acoustic guitars to claim as their own. And the washy, comatose strings of the album's title track evoke old pro surfing videos, with surfers dipping in and out of perfect tubes (yeah, I'm not really up with current surfing lingo), finally belting out the end as the wave falls apart behind them. It's good. It would be a shame if this album became known better as an elaborate dick joke than the solid pop album that it is.

Artwork: F
I'm really sorry, but I really didn't want to see that. It's not that I'm a prude or a square or anything - and overall it's actually a really well designed and produced package - but the front-on shot of the boys' droopy appendages just put me off my lunch.

Published in mX, Thursday November 20, 2008.

Not Exactly Alarming

Car Alarm
The Sea and Cake
Popfrenzy/Thrill Jockey, 2008
4 stars

Car Alarm is like a straight continuation of last year’s excellent Everybody. The band put it together over three months after returning from Australia earlier this year – anyone that saw their mid-day Sunday set at Golden Plains will attest to just how tight these guys are live, and on record they’re no different. Over the course of eight albums the band haven’t changed their sound as much as honed it in; if anything Sam Prekop’s vocals have become more and more breathy, and hints of electronica have slowly pushed their way higher in the mix with Prekop and Archer Prewitt’s tangling guitars. Anyway, it all makes for a(nother) great spring/summer backyard barbecue record – if the music’s this good, “more of the same” isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Artwork: B
It's pink! This is the brightest, most playful – and most youthful-looking – Sea and Cake album cover since their self-titled debut. I like it!

Published in mX, Thursday November 13, 2008.

Another Deerhunter review

Microcastle
/ Weird Era Cont.
Deerhunter
4AD / Kranky, 2008
5 stars

It’s been a bitter-sweet year for Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox. In May, Microcastle leaked on the internet - a full five months before its official release. Then, about a month ago, as he was preparing for the album’s physical release, Cox accidentally leaked the album’s ‘secret’ second disc Weird Era Cont., as well as an unfinished Atlas Sound (his solo side-project) album slated for release in 2009. Oops. Well, whether you’re hearing it for the first time now, or you listened to it too much in May and are only re-discovering it now (like yours truly), there’s no denying that Microcastle is a cut above. Not just a fine indie-pop album with experimental rock, shoegaze, ambient and doo-wop elements - it’s actually two of them. The upbeat, three-in-one rocker Nothing Ever Happened is the most obvious ‘single’, but surrounding it are so many other great tracks (Agoraphobia is a gorgeous – if somewhat disturbing - guitar lullaby, and closer Twilight at Carbon Lake is like an Everly Brothers song drowned in reverb) that you’re best off playing the whole lot in order. And that’s just the first disc. These guys could have easily held onto Weird Era Cont. for a few months and released it as an album in its own right – and a bloody good one at that - but Cox and co have that much output that you imagine they’ll probably have another album ready by then anyway. This will be very, very hard to top for album of the year.

Artwork: A
This album, and its artwork, is so hard to fault that it kind of pisses me off.

Published in mX, Thursday November 13, 2008.

Well And Truly Overtaken

Love Is Overtaking Me
Arthur Russell
Audika, 2008
4.5 stars

By the time the credits rolled on Matt Wolf's wonderful documentary Wild Combination, my appetite was well and truly whet for this album. There's two particular bits from the film that I can't get out of my head. One features Arthur sitting on a stool with his cello playing a song called Eli (part of which features in this promo for the film), and the other is him sitting wearing a parka playing a song on acoustic guitar. Both clips are equally haunting, but the second is particularly stunning, as until seeing this I had only really known Russell as an avant-garde cellist and disco pioneer, and not as a traditional folk guitarist in any sense. Well, to assume that Russell didn't attempt - and excel at - pretty much any and every style of music is a mistake. Enter Love Is Overtaking Me, a collection of Arthur's more traditional folk, soft-rock and pop songs. In a way, it showcases a stranger side of the man than we're used to, because the songs are so ... Accessible. The album starts with Close My Eyes, a gently strummed folk song about corn and cornfields (two of Arthur's favourite subjects) on which Arthur's vocals take on an almost Cat Stevens-like sound. Goodbye Old Paint follows it up, starting off with woodwinds and middle-eastern-sounding vibes and later becoming a plodding ode to an 'old pony'. But just when you think there's a bit of an American back-country theme emerging, along comes Maybe She, a more traditional-sounding song about an awkward relationship with a girl (the nature of which we can only assume is actually platonic) and - my personal favourite - the terrific upbeat alt-country rocker Time Away. We're used to Arthur Russell albums having a '70s underground disco vibe, but later on this album the mood is more '70s pool hall - I can totally imagine lonely truckers sipping whiskey to the horn-driven I Couldn't Say It To Your Face and the wonderful What It's Like with it's talking guitars and spoken-word intro. Eli, the track from Wild Combination that I mentioned earlier, pops up too, one of only a couple of tracks on the entire album to feature Russell's trademark cello. Other highlights include I Forget And I Can't Tell (Ballad Of The Lights Pt.1) and Habit Of You, with lyrics that bring to mind the cute, funny and simple songs of Calling Out Of Context. But perhaps the most affecting song on the album is This Time Dad, You're Wrong. We met Arthur's dad in Wild Combination, a thoroughly normal man who, it seems, had only grasped his son's immense talents after his passing. While it's hard to know know exactly what Russell is singing about, it's also hard to deny the song's eerie poignancy. Russell's star continues to rise, thanks to Audika and an ever-growing an endlessly dedicated fan base. It's just a shamed that he's not around to see it.

Artwork: A
It's our man, in a cowboy hat, standing in a corn field. Perfect. I mean, what else can I say - Audika have handled each and every Russell release they've put out with utmost care and respect, and this is no different. Hats off.

For Real

Where You Go I Go Too
Lindstrøm
Smalltown Supersound, 2008
4 stars

When I was a kid my cousin and I would often listen to my old man’s cassette of the musical version of War Of The Worlds, but that was more for a laugh than anything else. Who would have expected that in the second half of 2008 we’d be listening to the same kind of stuff, let alone actually taking it seriously. ‘Cosmic disco’ is Hans-Peter Lindstrøm’s style – yes, ‘cosmic disco’ - and on this album he pumps it out with the reckless abandon of someone who doesn’t know what’s ‘cool’ and, clearly, doesn’t care. The phrase “so bad it’s good” was written for stuff like this: three epic space disco tracks, clocking in at 28, 10 and 15 minutes respectively, that will (possibly in order) make you laugh, cry, dance like a fool and disappear into a black hole, never to be seen again. Now, where’s that cassette player …

Artwork: B
I actually think this album's cover is one of the reasons people have taken to so seriously - it's just a nice, plain photo of Hans-Peter smiling. But listening to the album I can imagine a really bad Photoshop job, with some nebula, a couple of black holes and some kind of kitsch-looking rainbow-coloured space ship navigating its way through a field of glowing asteroids. Clearly there's a reason why I'm not designing album covers for disco pioneers.

Published in mX, Thursday November 6, 2008.