REVIEW: Jonquil - Point of Go

*Originally published for the Oxford Music Blog (23/3/12)

The closing of one chapter often allows a fresh start for the next. Jonquil are thus in the perfect position, having seen a flurry of line-up changes in recent years with three members leaving to form Trophy Wife and a new member joining the ranks. But have these new dynamics breathed the “new lease of life” that frontman Hugo Manuel had so hoped for? Certainly, but perhaps not to everyone’s taste.
Point of Go is a more light and upfront affair than Jonquil’s previous releases. With the blossoms of spring upon us, this is quite a welcoming sound; the insanely happy bubblegum tones of ‘Point of Go Pt.2’ and the 90s-inspired piano jolts on ‘Getaway’ are charming; the boo-doo-wap harmonies and fiesta drums on ‘Mexico’ have a hunger for warmer climes. Yet there is something irksome about the melodies on the album and it is difficult to pin-point why.
The LP’s first single, ‘It’s My Part’, is carried by cow bell rhythms that syncopate with an animated Foals-esque guitar and Manuel’s narcissistic lyrics, “It’s my part, and I will play it how I want”. It is a catchy song, but not the strongest choice for the album’s lead single. ‘Real Cold’ is similar in its immediacy, with bass, guitar and drums stealing the limelight from the vocals in unison and allowing mature brass instruments to embellish the melody.

‘Run’ sees a simple continuation of the many elementary pop structures that consume the record, save for its bold, reggae-inspired chorus and ‘Swells’ is a throw-away track. But with the album’s many blunders, however, comes its promises. It is the reserved tracks that ironically shed the most joy.‘Psammead’ is a pretty instrumental, laced with a forlorn piano that trails behind a desert guitar riff. It plays for just over 60 seconds, but it stays with you long after the album’s close. The progressive, ‘History Of Headaches’ projects uncanny Chad Valley (Manuel’s side project) harmonies, with Kid-A era keys and thrashing tom toms and resonates just as much as ‘Psammead.’

But it is the buyout vocals, ethereal guitars and glitch synths in, ‘This Innocent’, that really demonstrate the band’s potential, even if the song harks to Jonquil’s by-gone, edgier sound.

It is this nostalgic feeling that swamps your listening: there is something missing in their reincarnation. Their darker sound has virtually disappeared and the line-up adjustments seem to have curbed their openness to experimentation. For some listeners, this breezier sound will be an unwelcome change, but for others it is the start of an exciting new chapter.

6/10

REVIEW: Hella Better Dancer - 'Living Room' EP

 

*Originally published for For Folk's Sake's 'New Bands Panel' (20/3/12)


It would be an understatement to say that Hella Better Dancer's new EP, Living Room, is quite good. As the title suggests, here lie four calm and unobtrusive gems, restful in the comfort of what appears to be a very lo-fi/bedsit recording. Each track is so completely charming, provoking and infectious that you simply have to stop what you are doing and listen.

Living Room constantly swells and grows, offering sparse nooks and tinny acoustics akin to Big Deal in opener, ‘Brother’, before moving to wistful harmonies, multi-layers and a Spanish-inflected vibrato guitar at its close (‘B2’).

Dusky vocals scream teenage lust on ‘After School’, with boxed hip-hop beats and an improvisational tremolo guitar. Though, like ‘Brother’, it is maddeningly short.

Stand-out track, ‘Last Song’, is oddly evocative of Parachutes-era Coldplay, with its tender, aquatic guitar chords. The looped melody, ‘daytime is too bright’, is contagious; spinning over crackling drums, hand-clapped rhythms and melancholic accordion notes.

These deeper textures are what will really get the band noticed, but it would also be a sorry affair if they were to negate their generally unassuming and fuzzy sound. Whatever lies ahead of them, Living Room is extraordinary and I hope that others will find it equally captivating.

LIVE: Laura Marling - The Sage, Gateshead (5/3/12)

*Originally published for The Courier (7/3/12)

Going to The Sage makes one feel cultured; its two meandering amphitheatres are reminiscent of the Guggenheims’ architecture and it offers some of the most elegant views of the Tyne by night. Moreover, to see England’s foremost folk maiden, Laura Marling, perform here is a real treat. Tonight she is no maiden though, but a woman who has grown in confidence and bears the stories of someone twice her age.

Set-opener, ‘I Was Just A Card’, immediately boasts Marling’s ability to sway effortlessly between vocal keys; holding the polite and breathless crowd in utter awe. Her band, lingering upstage, gently support her melodies with burgeoning horns, jazzy snare shuffles and warm strums. It’s not until ‘Salinas’ that the Marling/band combination becomes truly comfortable, where the grassy banjo, celestial harmonies and yearning cello strings move to the rhythm of Marling’s earnest vocals.

Delving deeper into her back catalogue, Marling pulled out old crowd favourite, ‘Ghosts.’ The acoustics glistened in the wooden theatre, with crisp piano notes and a full band harmony bouncing around the audience. The girl who never once lifted her angelic head in her early performances now throws it up to the beam of the spotlight, as if to face her personal and religious dichotomies full on. Agnosticism is a recurrent theme in her debut album, and now she stands, feet a foot or so apart, ready to show the world that she’s worked herself out.

The most mesmerising moments are when the band allows Marling’s solo performances of ‘Goodbye England’ and rarities, ‘Pray For Me’ and ‘Flicker and Fail’. ‘Goodbye England’s’ guitar melody is delicately picked by Marling, full of its gorgeous glottal stops, her head tilted to the side as if recalling the romance of that winter’s day.

Where ‘Sophia’ never quite reaches its peak, ‘Rambling Man’ and ‘I Speak Because I Can’ compensate by sounding astonishing live. The former sees instruments chatter and roll beneath Marling & co’s earthy harmonies and the latter radiates every last morsel of energy; Marling lists off her regrets, never missing a note, nor a feeling, nor an opportunity to completely envelop you in her world. A truly unforgettable performance overall.

REVIEW: Peter Broderick - 'http://www.itstartshear.com'

*Originally published for the Oxford Music Blog (7/3/12)

‘The website that is an album, an album that is a website. It’s kind of like liner notes that are alive.’ This is Peter Broderick's experiment. From the album’s URL title, it wouldn’t be out of the question to sense some pretension. But pretentious it is not. In fact, what lies in this cyber-space is a collection of very personal and honest songs, each accompanied by visuals and simple explanations of their compositions. Broderick urges you to criticise or praise or say anything about the tracks, so here are my thoughts.

Anthropomorphism is an immediate and recurring theme, evidenced in album opener, ‘I Am Piano’, and the following track, ‘A Tribute To Our Letter Writing Days.’ The stark, monotonous notes of the piano in the former are lifted by a family of intricate violin lines, elementary marimba notes and Broderick’s balmy vocals. His liner notes offer an alternative definition of piano: ‘soft; subdued’, and it becomes apparent that he is introducing this aspect of his personality. The composition sounds like a movie soundtrack, with the layered instruments quietly carrying a protagonist on a journey of discovery.
The latter track also flows with autobiographical content, in which Broderick personifies the lovelorn letters between himself and an ex-lover, “Read me, read me over and over.” Call-and-response singing, rattling acoustics, and a gentle melodica give the song both a grassy Americana and French feel – perhaps representing the foreign distances between the two singers –but, interpretation aside, it is a wonderfully humble love song.

These songs of innocence are completely counteracted by ‘Asleep’ at the album’s core. Explicitly stated as a tribute to the death of a friend in a kayaking accident, ‘Asleep’ escapes the self-concerned nature of the aforementioned tracks. Broderick requested that people from all over the world send him recordings of themselves reciting the song’s lyrics, as if, he explains, “this great loss could be felt by everyone everywhere.” A trickling guitar and fog drone evoke distressing imagery, lilting below an array of voices that interlock in collective mourning. Swarms of choral harmonies enter, clashing and marrying with one another, expressing confusion, lament and anger in the face of death. It’s devastatingly moving.

The oddest moment on the record comes in the form of ‘It Starts Hear’. The track is built around a clicking beat made by a tapped guitar pick-up, with a plodding bass line, staccato strings, and Broderick talking in robotic, abstract verse. The chorus strangely spells out, 'http://www.itstartshear.com', and it is nothing but humorously reminiscent of a cheesy jingle for a provincial radio station.

Broderick pays homage to art for art’s sake in, ‘With The Notes On Fire.’ Fittingly, the track’s notes and melodies are exactly that; they have an urgency, with fingers running over guitar strings, vibraphone notes jumping across Broderick’s hails and bongo drums rolling unstoppable rhythms. It is glorious and completely uplifting, just like the hands that pick up the dejected spirit in, ‘Blue.’

Originally a song written by Broderick’s father, ‘Blue’ is the most delicate track on the record and yet it is the one that speaks the loudest. Its lyrics are simple and universal in appeal: “You better realise then what’s hurting you. Or it will keep you blue, so blue,”; its gently-picked folk guitar immediately arresting and the slight delay on the vocals warmly consoling.

Peter Broderick has penned a subtle and gorgeous record that retains the grounded feel of a handwritten letter, yet he has somehow achieved this through a digital medium. A striking effort overall and an open gaze into the future of our listening habits.


8/10

REVIEW: Die Hard - 'Die Hard'

*Originally published for the Oxford Music Blog(10/2/12)

In a world of ever-merging musical genres, the inevitable results are the fusing of sounds that do and do not work together. Moreover, a band/artist’s identity may become blurred or enhanced in consequence of garnering such different sounds. Unfortunately for music writers, Glasgow’s Die Hard do not fit nicely into any of these boxes. Their experimental debut LP is at once remarkable as it is perplexing, comforting as it is disturbing. The band’s identity and their musical magnetism comes and goes.

‘In The Garden’ and ‘Here Goes The Rage’ strongly illustrate this dichotomy. An exciting, high-pitched whir akin to a surfer-rock tannerin opens the former track, before disfigured strings and dark European synths converge in bizarre fashion. The devilish, pitch-bent repetitions of “in the garden” evoke Biblical imagery that is soon intercepted by gratuitous, pornographic wails. It isn’t exactly a pleasant listen, but it is unique. A complete u-turn follows with, ‘Here Goes The Rage.’ Crisp, tinny acoustics and dazzling floods of “here goes the rage again” circle around Celtic whistles. It is extremely catchy and very reminiscent of early Biffy, yet at the same time comparisons are rife with Baltimore experimentalists, Animal Collective.

Soon enough, tracks arise that are not so appealing to the ear. The slowed-down, unpredictable trip-hop rhythms and aggravating, industrial bleeps on ‘Mmmm’ make for an interesting composition (an aptly-titled track too, with nasal groans trailing throughout). But aside from this creative musical playfulness, is the track actually any good? I’m not so sure.

It is frustrating that while the LP has its enticing moments, with ‘Here Goes The Rage’ and the attractive psychedelia of ‘Nailed To The Cross’, it never quite satiates. The mutated sounds that harvest the record’s gloominess are zapped by marching drum rolls on ‘980c’, but the track’s nascent strings remain bound. The smooth chillwave foundations of ‘See You Later Defibrillator’ are alluring, but never break into the beats you so crave.

The centre-piece of the album, ‘Shiver Through’, is the strongest track. It is a crafted dream with languorous interplay of female and male vocals paralysed by lust and tumbling guitars. Yet lust is, and you are, deserted by the track’s indistinct ending. Even if it is meant to be some kind of extended metaphor for sexual dissatisfaction, it is a vexing, but also an astonishing listen.

At the very last point on the album, Die Hard barrage you with hope. ‘We Said You Might Be Dead’ is a homage to every single choral-group based song ever written. It is as vast as Sub-Saharan plains with its unified, fiery tribal hums, and it is as promising as a Scottish army ready for battle with its stirring, Bagpipe drones. Synths ripple, warped vocals roar and tambourines build. Then it stops.

Die Hard’s eponymous LP will divide listeners as much as it will continue to divide me. The band’s intermittent identity will also continue to baffle. Perhaps it is intentional, but are they forgiven for the give-and-take nature of their music? Yes, because their potential is enormous.

7/10

REVIEW: Django Django - 'Default'

*Originally published for NSR (8/2/12)

Django Django's press release promises this of their sound: ‘rollicking sing-alongs’ that gallop into ‘disco sunsets like whisky-addled and leather-saddled bandits on the stolen backs of prairie wild mustangs.’ Although this imagery isn’t quite conjured by their new single, ‘Default’, the track is certainly as frantic and adventurous as the plot of a much-loved Spaghetti Western.

After a three-year hibernation, Django Django demand attention on ‘Default’ with clunky, rockabilly guitars and tambourine rhythms that wedge jaws ajar. Vinny Neff’s sparkling vocals also sear onto the brain and flicker throughout the single’s snappy duration.

It’s strange, because the raw guitar sounds, hand-clap drums and melodious vocals that lie at the heart of the track underpin Django Django as an indie band, but they are far from one. Ballooning synths, samples and malfunctioning cyber glitches are just a handful of the sounds that simmer beneath Neff’s echoes of ‘Default’. For description’s sake, the track’s sound is close to the likes of disco-pop masters, Hot Chip, yet Django Django are also nothing like them. Similarly, they have much to owe to Brian Wilson & co with infatuating crystal-clear harmonies, although their sound remains wholly original.

After criminally cocooning for so long, the adventurous four-piece have finally taken flight into 2012 with a perfectly-crafted pop song. All is forgiven.

   

REVIEW: OMB's Albums of 2011: Fleet Foxes - 'Helplessness Blues'

*Originally published for the Oxford Music Blog (23/12/11)

Pecknold and co. returned this year with a more ambitious follow up to their critically-acclaimed debut. Billowing flutes and Middle-Eastern tinged violins are but a few of the experimental nuances that have expanded Fleet Foxes' signature sound of open-tuned guitars and glowing harmonies. Tracks such as the toe-tapping, variably structured, ‘Helplessness Blues’ explore the album’s complex motif of maturity, while gentle, jazzy snare snaps in, ‘Bedouin Dress’ offer escapism to the tranquil, Yeats-inspired, “Innisfree.” Certainly, the most brave move on the album (and by the band to date) exists in, ‘The Shrine/An Argument’, with bizarre, dissonant trumpets that succinctly reflect the brashness of a passionate feud. A colourful and triumphant return.