Music Banter

Charity records are, by and large, arse. They’re written in a hurry, and are full of over-wrought musical clichés and tortuous, more-virtuous-than-though lyrics which are designed to try and wring out the maximum amount of cash for whatever worthy concern it is.

The other problem, of course, is the ridiculous circling of egos that you get on records like this, with each star performer trying to out-do the other. Witness this rather embarrassing argument between the Darkness and Bono on the re-recording of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ two years ago. I’m a big U2 fan, much to my own puzzlement sometimes, but that really leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

The music is often terrible, too; a blanded-out, hastily-produced piece of anonymous pop dreck is usually your lot when a charity single is crafted. Here’s a recent example; We Are the World, an already dull track, stripped of all soul and grace by the inevitable sickening celebrity-fest for Haiti.

Of course, I’m not suggesting for a second that the cause involved is anything other than wholly worthy. As if you didn’t need reminding of how terrible the whole situation is, here’s a very moving article from Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne, who has family connections to Haiti.

So we should all give money, and help out in any way we can.

That caveat aside, here’s that actual rarity- a charity record that manages to be fantastic! Shane Magowan, Nick Cave, Bobby Gillespie Chrissy Hynde and others do a storming version of ‘I put a Spell on You’ which is both visceral and moving. It’s great, really primal stuff. Oh, and that’s Jonny Depp playing guitar at the end. He’s pretty good.

The whole thing is in aid of Concern, a Charity who are currently active in Haiti. You should listen to this song. And then go give them some money.

Robert Smith is a hero to some. He’s a man who has steadfastly ploughed the same miserabilist, dry-ice wreathed path for almost three decades, staying true to his dark muse and writing songs which show his shifts from high to low with scarcely a thought to such notions as fashion or commercial success. Trends have come and go, and through it all he’s been the same.

Plus, he’s done it all with a haircut and make-up combo that makes him look like the bastard offspring of Heath Ledger’s Joker, and Edward Scissorhands.

Of course, these days, you might be able to add the Pilsbury Dough Boy to that list of parentage, but of course I’m not the malicious kind. We’re none of us as young as we used to be.

The Edward Scissorhands thing in mind, though, it’s almost inevitable that eventually Robert Smith was going to find himself doing something for Tim Burton. The two of them exist in the same foggy-drenched, dark-hued artistic universe, and certainly, large portions of Burton’s fanbase will also have a Cure album or two sitting around in their record collection somewhere. Artistically, it’s the kind of thing that makes sense, and probably from a commercial standpoint too.

So Robert Smith’s done a song for Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland,’ a version of the song ‘Very Good Advice’ which featured in Disney’s original 1951 version. The original is a sad piece of whimsy that makes my fiancé cry whenever she hears it.

Robert Smith’s version… Isn’t.

It’s absolutely terrible, a seemingly random assortment of vaguely spooky keyboard noises competing for attention like a deranged piece of Scooby-Doo music. Then Robert Smith comes in and does his ‘tortured adolescent’ bit, twisting the tune around and it’s- ok. But then, my god, there’s this ridiculously out-of-tune organ solo that just sounds like it’s being played on a swanny whistle. I think he’s trying to go for a sort of bad-trip nightmare sounds, but it ends up sounding like he’s got The Clangers in the studio with him. Maybe it works in context within the film, but as a stand-alone experience this is awful. It just sounds like he’s cobbled a track together as quickly as he possibly can and mailed it to Burton going ‘will this do?’

Robert, please. You wrote ‘Love Cats’ and ‘A Forest.’ You can do better than this.

It’s a funny old music landscape out there these days. It seems that everyone and his dog are making music on their own. This is a consequence, of course, of laptop culture- it’s not that hard for anyone to get hold of the technology they need to record their own music to a relatively high standard. This has been a bit punk rock in some ways- there’s been this great explosion of people doing their own thing out there, with technology you can pick up more or less for free.

Once you’ve crafted your masterpiece, it’s easy to find a home for it on the web. That’s why this blog inevitably links to Myspace pages- whilst they have their limitations, it’s a remarkable forum for bands or individuals with no funds and no backing to simply stick up their work online. Of course, they’re more often than not totally ignored, but it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it?

Here’s something that I suspect could have only ever been a one-man band: Los Angeles resident Pat Grossi, who records under the name Active Child.

It’s deeply unusual- like synth gospel played by Vangelis, layers of falsetto vocal and drums that sound like OMD or Ultravox might have gone ‘no, these sound just a bit too ’80s for us.’ It could only have been the creation of one person’s musical tastes and influences.

I know, sounds awful, doesn’t it? Strangely, it’s not. It sounds moving and sweeping. If there’s a comparison to be made with another contemporary artist, it would be Memory Tapes. Both use synths and ’80s- sounding effects in their music, and love reverb like nothing else. The difference between the two, however, is that whilst Memory Tapes makes you want to remember how the best summer of your life felt long ago, Active Child wants you to weep alone in the darkness at what is, what could have been, and what never was.

‘Body Heat (Oh So Far Away) is a beautiful, haunting piece of music, a glacial hymn to a missed lover. Grossi’s vocals recall someone like David McAlmont, if only he had a sense of restraint. This music does- something that seems to be a carry-over from the time Grossi spent in the Philadelphia Boys’ choir as a child. He’s not treating his vocals as a lead instrument, it’s one of many, often literally as there are multiple vocal tracks on each song.

‘She was a Vision’ is fantastic, too- “I came home to an empty house/surrendered my thoughts and then I burst out…it’s strange how we disappear” he sings, over a drum beat that sounds exactly like Ultravox’s ‘Vienna.’ Still, we’ll forgive him this, I think, as the music’s so good.

He’s also come up with the most bizarrely creepy song title ever, with ‘I’m in your church at night.’ What is he doing there? moping by the pews, subtly re-arranging the listed readings so they spell out his lover’s name? The atmosphere this music evokes would be a perfect soundtrack to whatever you wanted to do, if indeed you were indeed alone in a church at midnight.

And there you have it- Active Child is the sum of his influences, and something uniquely new. He’s a thoroughly modern project, and great late-night listening.

I’ve said I love Shoegaze a lot on here, and here’s the latest artist seemingly tailor-made to appeal to a demographic of me.

Incidentally, this is one of my favourite things- the moment you hear something, or see something, which you know will appeal directly to someone you know and love, and you want to share it with them. The last time that happened, it was when I saw ‘Mega-Shark versus Giant Octopus’ and knew it was designed for my old housemate to love.

Anyway, I digress. So this is Wild Nothing, a one-man band from Virginia. The 21 year-old Jack Tatum has heard the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, and every other Shoegaze band ever, and my god he loves them. He probably sleeps under a Pains of Being Pure at Heart duvet, and kisses his Liz Frazer doll goodnight when he goes to sleep at night. If I was a guessing man, I’d say he has an older sibling with a hell of a record collection.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising the man. I’m simply noting he’s treading a fairly well-worn path.

This isn’t wildly original music, but it is very good. His vocals are drenched in layers of echo, and his guitars do that shimmering, gliding thing that Kevin Shields invented and used to such great effect. It’s pretty cool, and shows great promise- Tatum is, after all, just twenty-one, and likely to develop, perhaps take his influences in a new direction. At the moment he sounds a bit like Je Suis Animal.

There’ll probably be more attention paid to his cover- a fairly straight version of Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting.’ His voice isn’t as good as Kate Bush, but then again, whose is? As it is, it’s fairly good. it’s nice to hear that song, and he does it well.

I prefer ‘Drifter,’ a brilliantly crafted piece of echoing guitar jangle which is the most Cocteau-ish of the songs on his myspace. It sounds blissfull, effortless, and it makes me feel nostalgic and excited at once.

‘Live In Dreams’ is also pretty cool- it’s a vaguely Smiths-y jangle with pretty flutes keeping the ambience properly shoegazey.

If I have a problem with this at all, I find myself wanting something a little different from Tatum, something that speaks more of the future. I think that’ll come with time. He’s one to watch, and in five years, maybe he’ll have done something remarkable.

ArdentJohn are a five-piece outfit who have been kicking around in Scotland for the last few years, and have made a bit of a name for themselves locally, without ever really exploding into national consciousness. I guess these days, you’d call them folk rock. Back in the day, of course, we’d call them ‘a bit like Travis.’

Their first release, ‘Legoland Towns / The Power Of Panic’ came out in 2006, and at the time it got some good reviews in the local press, but then, well, not much. The band just plodded on. And that’s kind of what you’d expect, listening to their music. There’s nothing inherently sweeping or dramatic about them. They’re just- ambling along, quite nicely, but without anything particularly going on.

If I was to describe this album in one word, I guess that I would pick ‘tasteful.’ That’s not a bad thing, not at all. Tasteful curtains, tasteful ties, tasteful wallpaper, tasteful floral tributes on the grave of a recently deceased member of parliment who died cycling through London traffic (please, Cameron, just fall off that bike of yours and under a white van, that’ll connect you with the working classes you smug thumb-faced git!)- all of these are good things.

Tasteful music, though? Not sure I’m on board with that. Music should at the very least aspire to grab your attention.

Quiet music? Fair enough. Peaceful music? ok. Ambient music, even? I’m down with that- I spent a lot of my teenage years dropping off to Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports,’ and it’s wonderful in its place. The problem here, however, is that Ardentjohn have somehow managed to make background music, whilst still ostensibly wanting you to actually listen to them.

It’s fairly reminiscent of a bunch of different things- ‘Colours of the day’ sounds like something American Music Club would have put together, ‘Follow Me’ sounds a bit like Tom Macrae, and the whole thing, as I’ve already said, sounds like Travis. It also sounds a bit like Sabai, a band I was in a while back in Edinburgh who did similar things with a violin and electric guitar. Oh, the glory! Oh, the rivalry! It could have been us! Well, no it couldn’t, but I digress.

The problem is that there isn’t anything to grip you about this band’s music. To use American Music Club as a comparison, whilst the background music is similarly understated, what makes it work is the immediacy of Mark Eitzel’s voice. In a similar way, one of my favourite lost bands, The Unbelievable Truth, highlighted their singer Andy Yorke’s pure voice (slightly better than his more famous brother, I always thought, though I’m aware that’s a minority opinion) through the space in their music. That’s lacking here, to me.

Ardentjohn’s singer, Keiron Mason, is good enough in his quiet way- his voice has a certain quiet yearning quality to it, but it doesn’t really grab you. It’s competent enough to not be gauche like, say, Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian, but there’s nothing distinctive about it. It just sounds- nice. Warm.

Ok.

I don’t want ok. That just isn’t enough for me.

Now don’t get me wrong, Ardentjohn are sometimes pretty good. ‘Where All Paths Lead’ is a good song, as is ‘Home.’ ‘One Step Behind’ is pretty cool, too- it aims for Belle and Sebastian and kind of hits Maximo Park. Still, there’s nothing urgent about them- you can’t quite bring yourself to care that much, or to feel any particular emotions when listening to their music. Maybe a bit warm and cozy?

Not much more than that.

I LOVE Post-Rock. I LOVE Godspeed You Black Emperor! I love Cellos, I love apocalyptic violins and drums and guitars which sound like they’re being recorded in a Cathedral. I love the noise, I love the slow build-up of tension in a fifteen-minute feedback epic, I love the absurd, over-the-top drama, passion and sheer excitement of this music.

All this in mind, you might be forgiven for thinking that I’m not exactlygoing to be entirely objective when reviewing this latest piece of music- A Silver Mount Zion’s ‘Kollaps Tradixionales.’

Oh, but you’re wrong. I’m cold and objective. Like ice. I clinically examine all the music I listen to and dissect it with an objectivity which is both breathtaking and chilling in its coldness.

Oh, hang on, no, that’s a lie, isn’t it?

I had all kinds of excitable emotions when putting this album on. It was going to rock my world, it was going to transport me, I was going to hear the future of music, it was going to be brilliant.

And it was… ok.

It’s a Silver Mount Zion doing what they do- orchestral stuff, mournful dirges played out on the violin to a backdrop of distorted, angry guitar whilst drums clatter and rumble in the background. And it’s what they’ve done before.

There is a little progression- the songs are a little more riff-like than in the past at times. This is most notable on the second track, ‘I built myself a Metal Bird,’ which sounds a lot like Sonic Youth’s ‘Tunic’ would have if they’d had a string quartet in tow. That’s a pretty cool thing to sound like, by the way. I don’t want to sound like I don’t like this record, as I can already feel it growing on me on the third listen. There’s something refreshingly primal about their sound- the way it seems to have been conceived with no real thought about how things are supposed to work.

So what’s my problem?

There’s a lot of answers to that, but I suspect it boils down to two things. First, familiarity. Much like the aforementioned Sonic Youth, there’s a point at which a music which sounds unique and spectacular starts to get a bit, well, samey. We’ve heard this whole end-of-the-world-music-with-strings thing before, and it’s no longer a gimmick. Can its charm survive if it was simply the norm, as conservative and expected as guitar bass drums and vocals? After all, if Post-rock is to be what its title implies, that’s what’ll happen. Certainly, there’s a lot of bands out there happy to do this- to take the musical blueprint that Efrim Menuck and his various cohorts have laid down. Listen to Gifts from Enola, the Evtaporia report, Explosions in the Sky, Lipsync for a Lullaby and a thousand other bands and you’ll see what I mean. With those bands it feels ok- they’ve got their own take on things, and somehow for lesser lights your expectations aren’t as grand. They’re meant to look like reflections of the originators, as that’s what they are.

For these lot, though, the bar’s a little higher. They came up with this shit. They began it. They epitomize it. You don’t listen to them to be reminded of a band who blew your mind, you want it blown in other ways.

Another minor gripe is Ephraim’s voice, too- it’s kind of a three-way cross between Húsker Du’s Grant Hart, Win Butler from Arcade Fire, and that shouty guy out of Modest Mouse. Not exactly melodic. It’s over this record more than the others, and for me it actually kind of spoils the opening 15-minute epic, ‘There is a Light.’ It’s a shame, because I find myself wondering about the possibilities of this music. I imagine how this band would sound with a vocalist like Thom Yorke, Wayne Coyne, or even a darker, deeper voice like Nick Cave. Actually, if he teamed up with Warren Ellis’ Dirty Three, that’d be amazing, but I digress.

The point is that on this record, they seem to have fallen into that all-too-familiar trap which means that independent and ‘alternative’ (whatever the hell that debased term means any more) means singing out of tune, being deliberately abrasive. It’s a shame, because to my mind that one musical decision takes the gloss off something which could otherwise have been absolutely transcendent.

So, a good album, but not a great one. And perhaps one whose flaws signpost the way forward.

I’ve always quite liked the White Stripes. Not loved, you understand- their music’s ok, but it doesn’t quite grab me in the way other stuff does. However, I’ve always appreciated the spirit in which Jack and Meg White went about their business. There’s a sheer joy to them, and an exuberance in their music and their attitude to music, which others don’t have. Jack White’s also stuck by Meg through her difficulties. That’s kind of admirable, on both his part and hers- it takes guts to admit to something like that, deal with it and get back into the spotlight.

They’ve also been revealed, in this story, as people of principle, willing to make a fuss when their music is appropriated by others to sell stuff they don’t agree with. This happens all the time, of course- that familiar song in an ad which suspiciously doesn’t feature the lead vocal is probably a re-recording, which means that the ad company, basically doesn’t have to pay the band as much, and doesn’t have to get their permission. This has actually happened to the White Stripes before, when they didn’t to my memory make a big deal out of it. Of course, sometimes a band is happy enough to whore themselves out, but I guess if you’re Rick Witter from Shed Seven, dignity and integrity are things you left behind long ago.

This misappropriation has happened previously in politics- thanks to Ronald Reagan, everyone thinks that ‘Born in the USA’ is actually pro-american, for example. More recently, the Foo Fighters had a bit of a tizzy with George W Bush when his re-election campaign team used ‘Times Like These’ without their permission.

As with these previous examples, this situation doesn’t seem to be about the money. I think if anyone’s ok, financially, it’s going to be Jack White, unless of course he spent all the money on giant red-and-white lollipops or something. This seems to be about the principle that a military organisation should not be using their music to suggest that getting in planes and learning how to kill people with them. Fair play.

As for myself, I would also like to point out that the Military-Industrial complex trying to associate themselves with a ramshackle band who are deliberately archaic, tend to use old equipment and send two people to do the job of four.

I’m not entirely sure they thought things through.

Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time a US Military organisation has done that, would it?

This, the fifth album from Bristol’s finest (sorry, Portishead) is eclectic as ever- a diverse array of different vocalists, and a magpie approach to musical styles and sounds. Only right and proper, too- this did take seven years to make, after all.

It does hang together as a whole, however- there seems to have been a decision to make things a little faster, and perhaps a tad more danceable than a lot of Massive Attack’s more recent work. This is by no means the rule, however- you certainly can’t accuse this bunch of being repetitive.

That said, there are certain moments when you find yourself noticing familiar signatures in the music. Here and there are basslines that you feel you’ve heard before, a swirl of guitar feedback which casts your mind back to the dark, stoned paranoia of Mezzanine. These are just that, though- signatures, the kind of fingerprints which a sign of identity. Even Horace Andy’s voice is used a little like this- it’s a familiar note which helps to tie this album together as a work which, although it has its own identiy, has a strong place alongside Massive Attack’s existing body of work.

Worth waiting seven years for? Well, this isn’t exactly the second coming, if you take my meaning. The thing is, this doesn’t really come with any expectations like that. It’s simply Massive Attack working at the pace to which they are accustomed. It’s also way, way better than 100th Window, the disappointing successor to Mezzanine.

If it takes them till 2017 to get the next one done, I’m fine with that.

Here’s a track-by-track run-down of the album.

Babel- descending bass line sounds like Joy Division’s ‘New Dawn Fades’ combined with some kind of jazz-rock, Drum and bass thing. Faster than most of Massive attack’s stuff. Pretty good but not grabbing.

Splitting the Atom- a sort of strange haunted echo of a northern soul song, vague echoes of something like ‘Ghost Town’ updated for credit crunch times. Mushroom’s ‘the bankers have bailed/the mighty retreat’ and his menacing whisper reminds me of his work on ‘Inertia Creeps.’

Girl I Love You- sounds like it could have fitted on Mezzanine, all edgy guitars hovering on the edge of the track, and driving basslines that create tension in the stomach, whilst Horace Andy proclaims a kind of desparate love over the top- when he sings ‘if you love me that much you will stick around’ sounds desparate, frantic. To my mind, the rhythm track on this isn’t up to the beats on Mezzanine, but that’s really a nitpick. the brass section freak out towards the end is pretty cool, too- it takes the chaos and turmoil of something like Radiohead’s ‘National Anthem’ and makes it a little more manageable, segueing it into a shimmering synth crescendo which fades out.

Psyche- dizzy and urgent, cycling figures of acoustic guitar is the perfect, twitchy backing track for Martina Topley-Bird to croon her strangely serenely crooned lyrics of chaos. ‘dissolving who we are… we’re on a foreign shore.’

Flat of the Blade- sounds like Warp Techno, Guy Garvey sings ‘I’m not good in a crowd…things I’ve seen will chase me to the grave’ over an eerie chorus of hummed harmonies, rattling beats that sound like rusty cemetery gates. It’s reminiscent of some of Thom Yorke’s solo work on The Eraser, probably because it shares many of his reference points. As elsewhere, a brass section is employed on this track, with the express intention of sounding like the inside of a crazy person’s head.

Paradise Circus- a standout track on the album. Handclaps and what sounds like marimba provide the background for Hope Sandoval’s indolent, breathy vocal: ‘the devil makes us sin/but we like it when we’re spinning in his grip.’ It’s the closest the album has come yet to a moment of calm, and it’s more like sort of stoned, debauched exhaustion- one can almost picture Sandoval lying on twisted and stained sheets at the centre of some scene of depravity, surveying the madness around her. Not that I am picturing that, you understand.

Rush Minute- another track that could have fit on Mezzanine, 3D rapping anxiously about ‘Borstal Blues’ and ‘Broken Homes’ over some Eastern-sounding drones, pulsing bass, and beats which recall the first Bloc Party album. Massive Attack can do this in their sleep, but it’s still a good track.

Saturday Come Slow- a track that just starts with Damon Albarn and an acoustic guitar builds up to a big crescendo, ominous swirls of noise like thunder, but somehow Damon’s cry of ‘Do You Love Me?’ is somehow a little too direct. The least effective track on the album, mainly because Damon sounds a bit too whingey.

Atlas Air- stomping four-to-the-floor beat, and a mad kind of church-organ wurlitzer solo, before a massive wall of fuzz guitars and a disco beat kick in- it’s like a panic attack at a Northern Soul night. You kind of see what they were aiming for with the faster beats- a sense of movement. It’s kind of reminiscent of Garbage’s slick air of danceable menace. The final technofied coda sounds a bit too much like the kind of music that people are always dancing to in films like the Matrix, just before a fight breaks out. Still, if I was standing about in a club wearing a long black leather coat, it’d probably make me dance.

I mentioned the Ten Tracks Project in a previous post, and said I should really say more about this. It’s a fantastic initiative, one of those interesting new ways for a fucked music industry to somehow connect and reinvigorate a music-buying audience.

Here’s what they do: they’ve convinced record companies to offer us monthly bundles of ten tracks for a quid. That’s ten pence a song. Not bad, eh?

Everyone knows the situation the music industry’s in- thanks to the internet, last.fm, spotify, myspace, youtube and a million other legal-and-otherwise portals, no-one’s buying music. Interestingly, a lot of really good music is still being made. I have to say, I feel that my local music scene is getting better and better, and friends of mine across the UK are saying exactly the same thing.

It’s also true that more and more bands are keeping their musical projects in the realm of hobby, not career. That’s often a pragmatic decision, more than anything else. After all, how is anyone going to make any money doing this?

Here’s one way; make the music you offer, cheaper. And that’s what they’ve done here.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but the truth is that the cost of production has gone down. People aren’t buying physical copies of albums any more, because they feel like a rip-off. No-one who knows anything about the way the internet works thinks that £12.99 or whatever a CD costs these days (see, I don’t even KNOW!) is a fair price. As a result, no-one buys anything at all.

Well, this is a way forward. It’s something of a win-win situation- the record companies get to package new artists they want to push along with bigger and more established names, we get to hear new music which we may or may not like, and we get a lot of it for a decent price. The artists benefit, too- we’d only be downloading their tracks for free, otherwise, if we heard them at all. It also fills an interesting loop that something Spotify misses- it’s easier to find new music this way, as that’s what a record company wants to push your way. I’m fine with that- I can live with the fact that a record company wants its artists to be heard. I want to hear them too, as long as it’s not a rip-off, and they’re not being forced down my throat through advertising.

The end result is, I’ve just downloaded 15 tracks for less than the price of a pint. Record companies have put new music in front of an enthusiastic listener without paying out for adverts in the NME, bribing and schmoozing their way onto some radio playlist or other, or anything else.

I’ll listen to these tracks. If I like the bands, I might buy more of them. If I don’t, well, they already got some cash from me. Now, what am I? Nothing, really. Just one person. But when this grows, well, the sky’s the limit, isn’t it?

Here’s the first album I was really waiting for in 2010- Midlake’s ‘The Courage of Others.’

I fell in love with Midlake a year or two back when I heard ‘Roscoe’ on Mark Radcliffe’s show- it’s a wonderful piece of folk-rock, exhibiting both grace and charm, and an unexpected, meandering way with melody that kind of takes you by surprise and sweeps you off your feet. The album it came from, ‘The Trial of Van Occupanther’ was like that all the way through, and contained all sorts of wonderful lyrics about how good it would be to live in 1891, or to lose all you had and start again. There was a quiet, whispering pastoral spirit at work in the songs, and it spoke of a desire to retreat from the modern world of ‘hundreds of chemicals’ to the hilltops and the village, which ‘used to be all one really needs.’ It’s exactly the sort of thing I love, and it’s one of my favourite albums of the last few years.

The pre-publicity around this album was that they were referencing british folk-rock bands of the ’70s like Fairport Convention. Span and Pentangle, and I fucking love those bands. Give me a Cardigan, a violin reel and a lyric lifted from a fifteenth-century madrigal about elves and I am there, dude. I was kind of salivating about this one.

And on first listen, does it live up to my expectations? Well, kind of.

It’s sweet, sweeping, big, and is stretching out, trying to find that epic sense of space that the best albums have, and the influence of those referenced bands is certainly there. In ‘Winter Dies,’ for instance, there is a long instrumental section where you can hear the band stretch out, and they’ve clearly decided to show us what they can do as musicians.

The next song, ‘Small Mountain,’ calls forth images of Led Zeppelin’s more floral moments with its arpegiatted guitar and flute intro, and is charming and mellow. When the song kicks in, however, it doesn’t quite hold your impact. This pattern is repeated a lot throughout the album- a charming introduction gives way to a slightly underwhelming song. There are some exceptions- ‘Core of Nature’ is a highlight for me, so far, with it’s talk of a retreat into ‘woods which I walk through alone’ it harks back to the themes and musical ideas of previous album. It’s songs like this one which show that perhaps their next album will be a better version of this idea- if I’m being optimistic about this record, I would say that perhaps they are reaching for something which
they fell short of this time, but will maybe be able to reach next time.

There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic ‘Rulers, Ruling All Things’ is fantastic, just slightly missing the mark but still lovely in its glitter Tim Smith’s refrain of ‘I only want to be left to my own ways’ set above a huge, echoing cavern of flute music and twinkling sounds. It’s nice, but- you just wish the melody was a little stronger.

That’s the story of the album. Somehow, there isn’t quite the same immediacy in this collection of songs that ‘Van Occupanther’ had- the songs aren’t quite as strong (you feel that a lot of them started off as jams, rather than musical ideas the singer brought to the band) and just a little too often they tend to favour atmosphere over impact. It’s pleasant enough, but it feels just a little less focussed than the last record.

I can see this will be brilliant when summer rolls round- I’ll sit out under a tree with my mp3 player and listen to this with a book and perhaps a bottle of real ale, and I will glory in my folkishness. I’ll also have probably backed off my original high expectations and would write an entirely different review of this album. For now, though, I think I’ll view this as a qualified success, and something of a missed opportunity. For all my criticisms, it’s still my favourite new album of the year so far.