Meursault - William Henry Miller Pt. 1 & 2 (****)
Meursault have had a good 2009: they’ve grown without losing lustre and garnered wide critical praise (including a place in our Scottish albums of the decade). These 7” codas to their annus mirabilis combine tracks from Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues with re-jigged versions of both William Henry Millers. The Dirt and the Roots backs Pt. 1’s new, richer approach to the original torn ballad, while the second couples A Few Kind Words’ lo-fi electronic pulse with an alternative take on Pt. 2’s atmospheric slow-burn eulogy, here retextured with phantasmal glitches. The decision to re-record rather than re-package will already put these on numerous Christmas lists to Santa; the quality of the results should add them to many more.
Out Now
While not every musician mellows with age – Nick Cave will be a horny corpse long before he’s labelled ‘mature’ – advancing years frequently rehabilitate rogues or help ridiculous goofballs find their romantic streak. From a teenage Peter Pan singing songs about crack, via a slightly older Jessica Simpson-goading hipster, and on to Minor Love’s minor charms, a little seriousness is a welcome addition to Adam Green’s career six albums in. Lowering his arched eyebrows and swapping irony-thick Vegas-style crooning for lo-fi mumbling, he even flirts with decipherable lyrics, the jumbled word-soup of past releases now yielding to the occasional narrative nugget (though it’s a thin line – “when I took off my winter clothes my body looked like forty or fifty crows” is either beautiful poetry or grade-A nonsense). It might not match its wackier predecessors, but Minor Love is an interesting milestone in Green’s increasingly intriguing oeuvre.
Out Now
The Seventeenth Century - Notes Extended Player (***) The Seventeenth Century are a baroque folk pop collective threading strings and things through dramatic songsmithery. As such, they’re far from groundbreaking, slotting neatly alongside My Latest Novel, Broken Records and dozens of others in what is soon likely to overtake bagpipes and reels as the premier Scottish Music Stereotype. Lead track Notes is an underwhelming introduction, offering little new to an oversubscribed field, but luckily it’s the weakest of this EP’s tracks. The opening fanfare of Roses in the Park yields to cannoning vocals and a stirring, communal conclusion, while Young Francis’s military snare heralds bittersweet brass and a subtle crescendo, suggesting that while the Seventeenth Century aren’t scene vanguards, they’re a welcome addition to an existing one.
Out Now
No comments:
Post a Comment