reviews: Model Village, Father Murphy, Lacrosse

                                              

Model Village - You Chose These Woes (***)

Miniature model building and penning bright and tuneful alt-pop: two pastimes in which a delicate touch is a valuable asset. On their second album, Cambridge’s Model Village show a knack for the complex art of keeping things simple, with straightforward melodies that merrily dance their way into the memory banks and measured arrangements that ensure the songwriting its breathing space.

With a trio of accomplished vocalists taking turns at lead, Fleetwood Mac circa Rumours are an acknowledged influence – and certainly, there’s a hint of Don’t Stop to Jaguar’s opening chords. But despite some nice AOR touches (for instance, the guitar solo that tails 19, or the soaring chorus of closing ballad No Personal Touch), You Chose These Woes sits closer in style to indie acts like Edinburgh’s Aberfeldy or Melbourne’s The Lucksmiths, with the outlying gothic folk of Oh My Sisters indicating the full variety of which they’re apparently capable.

Out now

                                              

Father Murphy - Pain Is On Our Side Now (***)

Tackled individually, the four movements that make up Father Murphy’s latest EP are formidably severe: an atonal collection of clanging semi-rhythms, draining drones and ghastly wails; elements found throughout the Italian trio’s enigmatic oeuvre but here taken to extremes.

Yet these tracks are split across two single-sided 10”s for a reason, and once paired up and played simultaneously, the pieces slide into place like a Cenobite puzzle box, revealing new dynamics. The first coupling, for instance, sutures the hellish braying of side one to the chopped gabbles and screams of side two, each infernal component amplifying the other’s effect. The conceptual cleaving may render Pain is On Our Side Now a fans-only curio, but members of said sect will be suitably bewitched.

Out now

                                              

Lacrosse - Are You Thinking of Me Every Minute of Every Day? (**)

It’s been almost five years since Stockholm sextet Lacrosse last released an album, yet Are You Thinking of Me… demonstrates a Peter Pan-like refusal (or perhaps inability) to grow up. Their brand of earnest indie-pop remains overbearingly cutesy – in the same ballpark as acts like I’m From Barcelona, but extra-sugared – with any significant deviations from 2009’s Bandages for the Heart mostly for the worse.

The best tracks are the most straightforward: the slow-swell build of If Summer Ends favourably recalls fellow Swedes Shout Out Louds; I Told You So (Didn’t I?) instils its happy-go-lucky pop with just the right dose of peppiness; and Don’t Be Scared has a nicely uplifting, we’re-all-in-this-together vibe courtesy of unified boy/girl vocals and a rousing, string-backed refrain. But elsewhere things get saccharine (see: the break-up wibbling of The Key), while tracks like 50% of Your Love try something different but sound uncomfortable, diminishing Lacrosse’s chirpy charms.

Out now

reviews: Dear Reader, Paper Beat Scissors, Patterns

                                              

Dear Reader - We Followed Every Sound (***)

Revisiting recent concept album Rivonia with the help of the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg orchestra, We Followed Every Sound highlights much of what made its parent LP – a kind of South African Let England Shake in which Dear Reader’s Cherilyn MacNeil surveyed her hometown of Johannesburg through a lens both personal and political – so ambitious and rewarding. But beyond applying symphonic depth to Rivonia’s already handsome instrumentation, the appeal of these live recordings is somewhat limited.

The gig itself may well have been a night to remember, but replayed at home We Followed... lacks its studio-recorded forebear’s thematic coherence and precise structure, with the inclusion of (lesser) material from earlier Dear Reader albums arguably diluting the effect. Nonetheless, look past the muddy raison d’etre and the album’s elegant musicianship sells it, with the Film Orchestra’s flourishes enhancing the material’s latent drama. In all, a pleasant postscript, if not quite a stand-alone success.

Out now

                                              

Paper Beat Scissors - Paper Beat Scissors (***)

Released back in March 2012 in his adopted home of Canada, Burnley-born songwriter Tim Crabtree belatedly brings his debut album as Paper Beat Scissors to the UK. It introduces a performer of not insignificant talent, with an expressive vocal style as comfortable at whisper level as it is raised, raspy and raw, and a solid line in pensive balladry to set it to. Musically, too, there’s plenty to admire, with Crabtree and his esteemed Canuck collaborators (including members of The Luyas and Bell Orchestre) squarely hitting their marks with a collectedly delicate touch.

The trouble is, there’s no shortage of acts trading in precisely the same stock, and Paper Beat Scissors lacks the spark necessary to turn its chilly pleasantness into something with more pronounced powers of attraction. Nevertheless, enough tracks come close (see: the eyes-closed tremors of Folds; the horn-infused crawl of Once) that interest in its 2014 follow-up is suitably piqued.

Out now

                                              

Patterns - Waking Lines (***)

From the opening echoes of This Haze onwards, Waking Lines sounds impressively lush and layered – not bad when you consider Patterns eschewed studio time to record it themselves at home. As well as demonstrating their sonic resourcefulness and nuanced grasp of dream-pop dynamics – all swirling vocals, twinkling guitars, atmospheric samples and so forth – the Manchester quartet’s debut evidences clear songwriting talents, with an anthemic edge giving definition to tracks like Blood.


But if ‘pattern’ is another way of saying ‘repeated decoration,' then the Manchester quartet live up to their name a little too well. With a relatively narrow selection of tricks at their disposal, a sense of déjà vu enters somewhere in the second half – a hazy sameness that initially augments the pretty, diaphanous dreaminess, but which over repeated listens diminishes the album’s magnetism. Not quite scaling the heavens then, but for a first stab they’ve come admirably close.

Out now

GFT programme note: Dallas Buyers Club

Ron Woodroof first appeared in the pages of the Dallas Morning News in May 1989. ‘The closet in Ron Woodroof’s bedroom looks like a miniature pharmaceutical warehouse’ wrote reporter Sherry Jacobson as a way of introduction, listing ‘pint bottles of hydrogen peroxide, packets of dextran sulphate and small containers of a drug called Procaine PVP’ as amongst the room’s contents. ‘From his tiny Oak Lawn apartment, Mr Woodroof is operating one of the largest distribution centers for experimental AIDS treatments in the United States... “I am my own physician,” said Mr. Woodroof, 39, a former electrical contractor who founded the club in March 1988, shortly after his AIDS was diagnosed. Currently, he is taking three experimental treatments that he believes have reduced his suffering and extended his life.’[1] A quarter of a decade on, Jacobson’s opening paragraphs double as a partial précis for director Jean-Marc Valée’s screen adaptation of Woodroof’s story.

Later in 1989, Jacobson filed a follow-up report, in which Woodroof starkly expressed the high stakes driving his illegal activities. Diagnosed with AIDS at a time when research was still nascent, official treatment options limited, and approval for new medications granted at a pace too slow to offer much concrete hope, importing untested drugs from outside the US was, he argued, the least risky option available to him.  ‘I do not want to break any laws’ he is quoted as saying. ‘But doing nothing will only result in my death.’[2] This back-against-the-wall, do-or-die attitude was echoed in a subsequent Dallas Life Magazine cover story entitled ‘Buying Time’, published in 1992. ‘It is not a matter of whether or not you want to take these risks’ Woodroof told reporter Bill Minutaglio, ‘it's a matter that you have to take these risks.’[3]

From these quotations alone, the cinematic potential of Woodroof’s desperate times/desperate measures tale is evident. As Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack’s script acknowledges, Woodroof did not invent the concept of ‘buyers clubs’ – underground distribution networks that enabled people with AIDS to buy pharmaceutical drugs that the Food and Drug Administration were unwilling to approve – but the boldness with which the former electrician challenged the federal government’s authority ensured Woodroof stood out. In the second line of ‘Buying Time’, Minutaglio describes Woodroof as a ‘foul-mouthed outlaw as wiry as an ocotillo’,[4] comparing the smuggler’s frame to a spindly cactus-like plant native to the southwestern states. It’s an evocative image that already resembles a casting call or pitch.

There has been, however, a certain amount of criticism and controversy regarding the structure that Borten and Wallack chose to impose on the bare facts of Woodroof’s life. The flexibility with which the screenwriters approached the subject is indicated by the fact that, Woodroof aside, every person in the film is fictional. Some are composite characters – for instance, Doctors Eve and Sevard, standing in for all physicians. Others are tokenistic inventions calibrated to serve specific plot functions – most notably Rayon, the HIV-positive transgender woman with whom Ron becomes business partners, whose narrative role is effectively to facilitate and underscore the main character’s redemptive journey from homophobia to compassion, understanding and respect. Borten wrote the script’s first iteration in the early 1990s, based on three days-worth of first-hand interviews, but it took twenty years of stalled productions and re-writes to bring it to the screen. Perhaps this explains the schematic, streamlined efficiency of the eventual film’s narrative arc, with the script’s mechanics particularly apparent in the opening scenes.

The first has Ron concealed in a shadowy rodeo stall, entangled in a drug-fuelled threesome with two women. A few yards away, partially glimpsed through the slats of the stall gate, a young cowboy tries futilely to hang on to a bucking bull, hitting the ground hard when he is eventually thrown. As rodeo clowns drag the prone rider to safety, Ron climaxes – though the harsh ringing sound that envelops the soundtrack indicates that the experience is less than pleasurable. This is then followed by a scene in which Ron uses a homophobic slur to describe the recently deceased Rock Hudson, whilst accepting chancy wagers on the next bout of bull riding. As an introduction, it serves multiple ends: it implies a connection between illicit sexual activity and danger; it explicitly aligns the audience’s visual and auditory experience with Ron’s perspective; it presents bigotry and risk-taking as two defining personality traits; and, perhaps most forcefully (and, to some, problematically), it defines Ron in emphatically heterosexual and stereotypically macho terms. 

The way these scenes portray Woodroof’s character also helps to establish the story as statistically exceptional, with Dallas Buyers Club mediating the history of buyers clubs in general through the actions and experiences of a straight protagonist. Some have consequently expressed disappointment at the film’s narrow focus – yet to expect one modest character study to shoulder the representational burden of an entire period seems an unreasonable request, which is why Dallas Buyers Club is able to qualify as an engaging and thoughtful piece of cinema even as it clumsily elides or misrepresents elements of its historical basis. Its insights into both Woodroof and the buyers club phenomenon are far from the last word, with a raft of corrective testimonies and accounts having recently proliferated online in response to the film’s release, forcing a parallax perspective on the script’s representational claims. But positioned in a cinematic landscape in which narratives that openly address the lives of people with AIDS from anything other than a tragic victim angle remain exceedingly rare, a bold, crowd-pleasing take such as this seems welcome.

Christopher Buckle

Journalist and researcher

February 2014

[1] Sherry Jacobson (1989), ‘Club dispenses experimental AIDS drug’, Dallas Morning News, May 17th 1989, accessed at http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/movies/headlines/20131101-club-dispenses-experimental-aids-drugs.ece

[2] Jacobson (1989), ‘Man taking unapproved AIDS drug FDA is challenged over Compound Q’, Dallas Morning News, October 5th, 1989, accessed at http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/movies/headlines/20131101-man-taking-unapproved-aids-drug-fda-is-challenged-over-compound-q.ece

[3] Bill Minutaglio (1992), ‘Buying Time’, Dallas Life Magazine, August 9th, 1992, accessed at http://buyersclubdallas.com/

[4] Ibid

live review: The Wave Pictures / Eugene Tombs / The Yawns @ Mono, 30th January

For reasons unknown, The Yawns have a battle on their hands eliciting a response from Mono’s mostly seated denizens tonight, with even polite applause peculiarly unforthcoming. Not that the band seem fazed, with frontman Sean Armstrong insouciantly strolling the empty floor while the rest of the Glasgow five-piece proffer lightly tousled melodies that, it’s fair to say, merit greater enthusiasm.

With the room starting to fill, Eugene Tombs have an easier time of it – and certainly, a dose of wonky clarinet in the opening instrumental proves an effective attention-grabber. The rest of the set is comparatively conventional but equally exciting, with a combination of Shadows-like reverb guitar and cosmic psychedelia that at times recalls XTC-side project The Dukes of Stratosphear.

This is The Wave Pictures’ fifth visit to Mono in the space of a year, including a three-night residency last April. Still, with their most recent album topping 90-minutes, there’s no shortage of strong material to disburse Glasgow’s way, and tonight makes clear just why they’re welcomed back so regularly. Dave Tattersall’s versatile guitar playing is a particularly distinct draw, whether he’s delivering bluesy riffs, engaging in agile soloing or gently picking out the sparkling refrain of Red Cloud Road (a highlight of the set).

Vocally, too, Tattersall is customarily engaging, both in the content of his lyrics and their delivery: raw and personal on New Skin, witty and playful on Spaghetti. The easy camaraderie onstage translates to a cheery atmosphere off, and when they wrap up proceedings with a woozy run through Tiny Craters in the Sand, it’s a safe bet that a few in attendance are already counting down the days to the band’s inevitable return.

january playlist!

1. Boris - Hope
2. The Cars - Good Times Roll
3. The Rogers Sisters - Why Won't You
4. Archers of Loaf - Fashion Bleeds
5. Parquet Courts - Yonder is Closer to the Heart
6. Girls Vs. Boys - Basstation
7. Queens of the Stone Age - Sat By the Ocean
8. Mclusky - No New Wave No Fun
9. Presidents of the United States of America - Lump
10. Los Campesinos - Avocado, Baby
11. Lene Lovich - I Think We're Alone Now
12. Orange Juice - Falling and Laughing
13. The Fall - Spoilt Victorian Child
14. Big Audio Dynamite - E = MC2
15. Magazine - Upside Down
16. Altered Images - Dead Pop Stars
17. The Stone Roses - She Bangs the Drums
18. Pixies - Here Comes Your Man
19. Sleater Kinney - You're No Rock n Roll Fun
20. Girl One and the Grease Guns - Driving Without Headlights
21. Kate Bush - Cloudburstin'
22. Casual Sex - Stroh 80
23. Belle and Sebastian - She's Losing It
24. Teenage Fanclub - Sparky's Dream
25. Tenpole Tudor - Wunderbar
26. DAF - Kebabtraume
27. Chvrches - We Sink
28. St Etienne - He's On the Phone
29. OMD - If You Leave
30. Madonna - Borderline
31. Cyndi Lauper - Goonies R Good Enough
32. M83 - Reunion
33. Arcade Fire - Normal Person
34. Pulp - After You
35. TV on the Radio - Mercy
36. Super Furry Animals - Something 4 the Weekend
37. David Bowie - Shake It
38. The Cure - Just Like Heaven
39. Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
40. Sparks - Amateur Hour
41. Michael Jackson - Black or White
42. J Geils Band - Centrefold
43. Prince - When Doves Cry
44. Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
45. Dire Straits - Walk of Life
46. Blondie - Call Me
47. The Flirtations - Nothin' But a Heartache
48. Freda Payne - Band of Gold
49. The Isley Brothers - Twist and Shout
50. Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston - It Takes Twi
51. Spin Doctors - Two Princes
52. Weezer - Buddy Holly
53. Beastie Boys - Intergalactic
54. Huey Lewis and the News - The Power of Love
55. The Penguins - Earth Angel

album reviews: Super Adventure Club, Robert Pollard, There Will Be Fireworks

                                                 

Super Adventure Club - Straight from the Dick (****)

On their previous album, Super Adventure Club recommended avoiding zombies; now, alas, they’ve become one, with Straight from the Dick arriving posthumously following the trio’s decision to separate earlier in the year. But like a late reel hand grab from the grave, their third album delivers one final (and wholly enjoyable) shock to the system, ensuring that, should the hiatus prove definite, their twisted noise will be sorely missed. 

Opener Hablo Espanol establishes the record’s manic tone, with contorted riffs and barked lines about incendiary breeks establishing SAC’s canny combo of daft lyrics, intricate guitar work and unpredictable rhythms. Few bands embrace their silly side to such a delirious degree; fewer still retain the glint of danger that makes highlights like Dog with Two Dicks so invigorating, making SAC’s demise unfortunate indeed. But there’s enough mirth and mayhem here to feed all relevant appetites, ensuring they bow out on a suitably adventurous high.

Out now

                                               

Robert Pollard - Blazing Gentlemen (****)

Even by his own effusive standards, 2013 has been a busy year for Robert Pollard. Incredibly, Blazing Gentlemen is the Ohioan’s sixth full-length since April (for those keeping a tally, that’s one Guided by Voices album, two from Circus Devils, one as Teenage Guitar, and now two under his own name), yet there’s more to admire here than sheer prolificacy.

In fact, Blazing Gentlemen is notably consistent and crisp, with the economical pop of Storm Center Level Seven, the stuttering guitars of Lips of Joy and the tempo-switching strut of My Museum Needs an Elevator all helping make it one of the most satisfying entries in his solo discography thus far. The only significant criticism is one of context: as his output proliferates, keeping up becomes a challenge only the most devotional can commit to, likely robbing Blazing Gentlemen of the attention it deserves. In all other respects, however, chalk this one up as a hit.

Out now

                                               

There Will Be Fireworks - The Dark, Dark Bright (****)

Considering how intimately familiar There Will Be Fireworks are with the power of grand crescendos and bristling upsurges, the near silence that followed 2009's self-titled debut has been something of an uncharacteristic anti-climax: almost five years with nowt but a stopgap EP to keep hopes alive that they’d make good on their early promise. The Dark, Dark Bright belatedly achieves just that.

Even before a note is played, the archaic syntax in the title of opener And Our Hearts Did Beat indicates they haven’t lost their high-drama impulses – a suspicion confirmed upon pressing play and receiving a poetic sample, gently strummed acoustic guitar, Nicky McManus’s impassioned vocals and a closing flurry of orchestral noise. If Our Hearts… indicates continuing strengths, River is the first of several to showcase new ones, its maelstrom of fiery howls and icy guitars setting a benchmark intensity for all that follows. Their occasional reversion to tried-and-tested formulas notwithstanding, this is a well-crafted return from a band once feared fizzled out but now burning brighter than ever.

Out now

new poster

The Skinny album of the month: Mogwai - 'Rave Tapes'

If Mogwai were a movie, they’d probably be a horror movie. A sense of dread has long stalked the band’s discography, from The Exorcist-referencing artwork of CODY to the werewolves, vampires and skeletons that lurk amidst their irreverent song titles.

Last year the connection tightened with their inspired score for zombie drama Les Revenants – a subtle collection pregnant with menace and melancholia. Now, the band’s on-going appreciation of John Carpenter manifests itself in prominent use of unsettling synths, making Rave Tapes one of their most haunting albums yet.

The creeping electronics of Remurdered sound particularly indebted to the aforementioned horror auteur (with secondary shades of label-mates/friends Errors), while the relentless sci-fi pulse underpinning Deesh adds a sinister edge to the track’s crescendo. Elsewhere, Mogwai’s familiar strengths are present and correct, with Master Card boasting big, choppy guitars and Blues Hour building into heavenly walls of noise before masterfully dropping the decibels (a trademark dynamic yet to lose its visceral impact).

From the brooding, ragged glory of Simon Ferocious to the sad calm suggested by The Lord is Out of Control’s electrostatic percussion and processed vocals, Rave Tapes is filled with expert contrasts, making this a pulse-quickening return from a band that’s still evolving, and still amazing.

Out 20th January

DVD review: The Great Beauty

                                                

In The Great Beauty’s sublimely grand overture, a smiling tourist snaps the Roman skyline then suddenly falls, as if overwhelmed by the splendour of the city before him. A similar awe accompanies a first viewing of director Paolo Sorrentino’s sixth feature, brimming as it is with luxuriant detail and technical bravado. These assets serve a picaresque narrative that delves into Rome in all its contrasts: the young and the ancient, the glamorous and the vulgar, the pious and the profane.

At its centre is Jep Gambardella: a sad-eyed, sharp-witted man-about-town, living la dolce vita among the intelligentsia and glitterati of Rome’s hollow high society. Charmingly played by Sorrentino regular Toni Servillo, Jep walks a tightrope between elation and ennui, the opulent pleasures of each night before giving way to the self-doubts and uncertainties of every morning after. Encounters with saints, sinners and a vanishing giraffe ensue, and the cumulative effect is dazzling.

The Skinny's albums of 2013 #2: Monkey Minds in the Devil's Time

                     

Across a year of austerity budgets, fracking controversies and seemingly endless state surveillance revelations, the anger and frustration that structures Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time has rarely been far from thoughts or headlines. With his sails filled by a zeitgeist wind of change, Steve Mason’s follow-up to 2010’s Boys Outside saw the ex-Beta Band frontman bare and sharpen his iconoclastic edge, calling out complacency and corruption and encouraging others to do the same – which, in a popular music landscape largely allergic to explicit political engagement, ensured he spent 2013 proudly standing out from the crowd. Whether turning festival stages into politician-bashing soapboxes or using promotional interviews to expound his thesis of social change via open dialogue, Mason tackled head-on a subject all-too-often viewed askance or bathed in metaphor – in itself, enough to mark Monkey Minds… as one of the year’s key releases. That all this heartfelt polemic came attached to some of the most rousing, refined and inspired music of his career – integrating influences from hip hop to gospel to dub – didn’t hurt either.  

Calling to congratulate Mason on his high placing in our albums of the year poll, he takes the opportunity to recapitulate the record’s impetus and message, whilst reflecting on its reception. When we previously spoke in March, ahead of the album’s release, Mason had noted that political concept albums are “fraught with problems”, remarking that “many have gone down that route before and failed” – he must therefore be pleased, we suggest, at the nimble way in which Monkey Minds… has bucked the trend? “Yeah, absolutely” he replies, speaking from his tour bus on route to his final live dates of the year. “For me personally, making a record after Boys Outside was quite intimidating because I thought that was one of the best records I’d ever made. And once I realised what I wanted to do – that is, make a political concept album – that became a worry in itself, because people have massive preconceptions about any kind of music and politics connection. So for it to be so well received by people who like what I do, from radio stations like 6 Music and independent record shops and obviously magazines like The Skinny has been really heart-warming to be honest. And it’s meant that people have been asking me about my politics, so it’s involved a huge amount of dialogue – which was really the intention of the record anyway: to start a conversation about where we are and what we’re facing.”

While the album’s overtly political elements are first to sear themselves in the listener’s consciousness, there’s more to Monkey Minds… than dissent and agitation, with the visceral, ire-infused likes of Fire (introduced live as “about being invited to Tony Blair’s house and strapping him to a chair and setting fire to him”) and Fight Them Back (a charged call for action against social oppression) only constituting a slither of its full range of emotional registers. Amidst the fomentation lies a softer impulse – optimism, conveyed through moments like From Hate We Hope’s spoken word interlude (“I remember looking at myself and thinking how amazing it is to be human, you know?”) and closer Come to Me’s tentative hopefulness, which ends the album with the words “it’ll be alright”. Such contrasts provide Monkey Minds… its three-dimensionality; not a flat protest placard, but a profoundly human morass of introspection and conflicting passions. “I think the whole thing, from it coming out till now, feels very positive” continues Mason on the subject of the album’s reception. “People have understood it’s not some empty call for a pie in the sky revolution or something like that. They seem to understand that it’s genuine.”

To Mason’s mind, conviction is key. “I always make sure I have 100% belief in everything I put out” he says, identifying the Beta Band’s maligned debut the sole exception. “That’s really, really important of an artist like me, because people expect it. Once artists like me – and I don’t mean just me, there are other artists doing similar things – but once we stop making music, I dread to think what will be left. All you’re going to be left with is people coming out of music colleges and stage schools and all that, and it’s not really art any more, it’s all made by committee. I find most of what I hear now very derivative and full of fake emotion – it just doesn’t feel real to me in any way. So I believe that it’s incredibly important for someone like me to put every single drop of energy and belief into every record that I put out.” With Monkey Minds… as evidence, we’re inclined to agree.

[written for the December issue of The Skinny]

(incidentally, the Skinny's top 25 as a whole looked like this:

1. Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus

2. Steve Mason - Monkey Minds in the Devil's Time

3. Factory Floor - Factory Floor

4. The National - Trouble Will Find Me

5. Chvrches - The Bones of What You Believe

6. Hookworms - Pearl Mystic

7. Frightened Rabbit - Pedestrian Verse

8. Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

9. Future of the Left - How to Stop Your Brain in an Accident

10. Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels

11. John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts

12. Jon Hopkins - Immunity

13. Foals - Holy Fire

14. Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork

15. Autre Ne Veut - Anxiety

16. My Bloody Valentine - m b v

17. Daniel Avery - Drone Logic

18. Darkside - Psychic

19. Yo La Tengo - Fade

20. Low - The Invisible Way

21. David Bowie - The Next Day

22. Tim Hecker - Virgins

23. Savages - Silence Yourself

24. Laurel Halo - Chance of Rain

25. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away

... and i'll post my own list sometime soon, probably...

The Skinny's albums of 2013 #4: Trouble Will Find Me

                   

When his wife Joy Davidson died after three years of marriage, C.S. Lewis recorded his grief in a series of journals, published pseudonymously in the early 1960s. In the fourth and final diary dedicated to the subject, Lewis wrote on the immensity of his theme and the depths of its reach. “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow” he reflected. “Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state, but a process.”

The quote came to mind in May 2013, when The National set up their instruments in New York’s MoMA PS1 gallery and proceeded to play the same song – High Violet’s Sorrow – for six hours straight. Over and over and over they struck up the same beat, the same chords, the same sadness, as if picking a scab or etching a deeper and deeper trench. More than 100 times, vocalist Matt Berninger repeated his weary mantra: “Sorrow found me when I was young / sorrow waited, sorrow won.”

A fortnight later, Trouble Will Find Me was released. You don’t have to dig deep to hear echoes of that same stinging emotion, with Berninger intoning “I didn’t ask for this pain / it just came over me” on Pink Rabbits; declaring “I do not know what is wrong with me / the sour is in the cut” on Graceless; threatening “If you lose me, I’m gonna die” on Heavenfaced; and so forth. It seems that, whatever the intentions of the Sorrow-full marathon, scouring the slate wasn’t among them, with familiar themes revisited across the album: regret, self-doubt and melancholia, but also hope, tenderness and lust.

But then The National have always been a band of subtle revelations, with each new release a refinement of the last rather than a sudden shift in gears. Their sixth album sticks to this tradition: it softens its immediate predecessor’s more brazenly anthemic urges, but retains – perfects, even – the core qualities that have brought them to this point. The results are understated but profoundly impactful – see, for instance, the shimmering guitar that climaxes I Should Live In Salt’s penitent pleas, or the way Berninger’s baritone is buffeted by Bryan Devendorf’s pitter-patter drums in Demons’s one line chorus. Despite confessions of awkwardness and discomfort in the lyrics, Trouble… is the sound of a band with confidence in spades, and the courage to keep picking at the things that hurt to see what’s underneath.

[originally written for The Skinny]

Last month's skinny...

Yeah, yeah, old news... But anyway, if you happen to have a gander through the December issue of The Skinny, here's the bits written by yours truly...

- Albums of the year #4: The National - 'Trouble Will Find Me'
- Albums of the year #2: Steve Mason - 'Monkey Minds in the Devil's Time' (interview with Steve Mason)
- Films of the year write-up: Frances Ha and Zero Dark Thirty (read here!)
- Suede / Teleman @ Barrowlands live review (read here!)
- Adrian Crowley & James Yorkston - 'My Yoke Is Heavy: The Songs of Daniel Johnston' album review (read here!)
- Robert Pollard - 'Blazing Gentlemen' album review
- There Will Be Firewords - 'The Dark, Dark Bright' album review
- Super Adventure Club - 'Straight from the Dick' album review
- Dirty Dozen Xmas: Kid Canaveral (read here!)
- 'Gaslight' DVD review (read here!)