Music RECORDS
SINGLES & DOWNLOADS
Oh hello. You join The List in the middle of some hot cheek-to-cheek shimmying on a New York dancefloor . . . What’s that? We’re actually sitting in a minuscule one-bed flat reviewing the latest singles and downloads?
All right, yes, there’s no Big Apple and no sexy face action this fortnight, BUT Arthur’s Landing’s sumptuous version of ‘Love Dancing (Is It All Over My Face)’ (Strut) ●●●●● had us fooled for a whole six minutes there.
Continuing with the sublime electronics, ‘Another Girl’ (LuckyMe) ●●●●● by Jacques Greene is well worth a listen, as is Naum Gabo’s ‘Songs From a Great City EP’ (Optimo Music) ●●●●● which features covers of Simple Minds and Fingerprintz tracks. Sometime visual artist Martin Creed brings us back down to earth with an almighty bump next though; his ‘Thinking/Not Thinking’ (Telephone) ●●●●● being one-and-a-half minutes of pointless riff scrapings. Meanwhile Neon Trees are doing their best to kill rock music off completely with the abhorrent ‘Animal’ (Mercury/Def Jam) ●●●●● and Alexis Jordan is pounding feminism to a bloody pulp with this wholly bad ‘Good Girl’ (Columbia) ●●●●● tripe.
Thankfully Penguins Kill Polar Bears and
Verse Metrics fare infinitely better, as both ‘Vessels & Veins’ (Mercury/Def Jam) ●●●●● and ‘VM1’ (White) ●●●●● boast fully wow- some majestic guitar music. And even Lupe Fiasco does well with ‘The Show Goes On’ (Atlantic) ●●●●●, a Modest Mouse-sampling R&B sing-along – yes really.
But three acts streak ahead by a clear mile to contest Single of the Fortnight this issue. Cults’ gorgeously glockenspiel-tinged ‘Go Outside’ (In the Name of/Columbia) ●●●●● is a clear contender, as is Lykke Li’s ‘I Follow Rivers’ (LL Recordings/Atlantic) ●●●●● but they’re pipped to the post, and only just, by Katie Stelmanis aka Austra whose ‘Beat and the Pulse’ (Domino) ●●●●● is a stirring slice of dark evocative pop. (Camilla Pia)
64 THE LIST 17 Feb–3 Mar 2011
INDIE POP FRANKIE & THE HEARTSTRINGS Hunger (Popsex/Wichita Recordings) ●●●●● ALT-ROCK YUCK Yuck (Fat Possum/Pharmacy) ●●●●●
This Sunderland quintet are a phenomenal live force; seemingly not content to let crowds get away with anything less than sweat-soaked, arms-aloft, screech your heart out singing. This infectious energy is captured perfectly on their long-awaited, Edwyn Collins- produced first offering, its ten tracks of fizzing indie pop almost daring you not to bounce along. Hunger is far from simple bombast though, lyrically it’s charmingly literary and hopelessly romantic too; telling tales of love new, lost and unrequited as visceral riffs and drums rattle around cleverly constructed melodies. An absolute delight of a debut. (Camilla Pia) METAL DEVILDRIVER Beast (Roadrunner Records) ●●●●●
With two of their members graduating from Cajun Dance Party, Yuck have a sound that’s more mature, yet still noisy and enthusiastic. In the breezy guitar pop bluster of ‘Get Away’ and ‘Georgia’ there are heavy shades of Sonic Youth, grinding reverberations of Dinosaur Jr in ‘Operation’ and waves of West Coast Teenage Fanclub charm shot through ‘Shook Down’ and ‘Sunday’. Don’t let the fact this bunch are possibly the least original of 2011’s most hotly tipped artists put you off – in their perfect facsimile of the stateside sound of 88, the (mostly) English quintet have rediscovered a rich and eminently lovable vein of sound. (David Pollock) ■ Yuck play Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Tue 22 Feb.
ELECTRONICA CONQUERING ANIMAL SOUND Kammerspiel (Gizeh / Mini50) ●●●●●
DevilDriver make what could be called ‘rusty chainsaw’ music. It grinds and grunts at a frenzied pace and when it’s on a bit of downtime, it’s still pretty lethal. Beast may be a cringeworthy title, but it is a pretty apt one, with the sublime mêlée of ‘Dead To Rights’ and ‘Coldblooded’ doused in ripsnorting metal aplomb. Like a dusty mountainside however, these paths have been trodden before – see the superior Lamb of God for divine ‘chainsaw’ inspiration – but there are enough gratifying moments here to see past the raw gristle. (Chris Cope)
This gorgeous debut from Glasgow duo Conquering Animal Sound is draped in eerie, astral electronica, iridescent guitar ripples and heavenly, disembodied vocals.
Evoking the pastoral machine music of Mice Parade and Múm, and fusing it with DIY pop and measured, gentle, mantra-like lyricism, Kammerspiel is understated yet intense: it becomes increasingly compelling as the album progresses. The celestial drone
and metronomic patter of ‘Tracer’ is spellbinding – Anneke Kampman’s unearthly intones are most effective when laced with glittering strings and percussion – as is the harmonium balladry of ‘Neanderthal’, whose indie-harmonics echo the Breeders and Belly. A victorious debut. (Nicola Meighan) INDIE POP LUXURY CAR When I Was Good (Biphonic Records) ●●●●●
Biphonic Records is known predominantly for introducing us to some of the most inventive Scottish pop around – namely works by Swimmer One and Seafieldroad. Makes sense then that John Robertson, aka Luxury Car, should join forces with the label for his latest release; a unique, scrambling electronics- driven effort. When I was Good is striking from the off; as Robertson croons ‘I was hit by a car, hit me hard, I went far. . .’ (quite the opening line) and then ‘I was stabbed in the heart and it stopped, they had to restart. . .’ Worst luck ever, eh? Thankfully there’s another six tracks of twinkly brilliance on hand to steady our nerves. (Camilla Pia) ALT-POP LYKKE LI Wounded Rhymes (Atlantic) ●●●●●
For her hotly-anticipated second LP, Swedish pop icon Lykke Li (with producer Bjorn of Peter, Bjorn and John fame) has excavated and allied various classic templates from the 60s
and the 80s to create a break-up album of nostalgic yet fairly visionary alt-pop. ‘Love out of Lust’
combines 60s surf-rock with the spacey new wave of The Dream Academy; ‘Get Some’ fuses post-punk tub- thumping with sunny Bananarama harmonies; ‘Youth Knows No Pain’ is all day-glo Wurlitzer psychedelia; and ‘Unrequited Love’ recalls a down-time Shangri-Las. It’s less sickly than her 2008 debut, Youth Novels, and all the more palatable for it. (Nicola Meighan)
INDIE FOLK THE LOW ANTHEM Smart Flesh (Bella Union) ●●●●●
Following 2008’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, reviewers in their droves compared The Low Anthem with Tom Waits and labelmates Fleet Foxes. Yet, writing off the quartet as a cheap copy would be to do them a disservice. Mixed by Saddle Creek warlock Mike Mogis, there is a warm, earthy tone throughout. Upbeat numbers such as ‘Boeing 737’ show the raucous side of Ben Knox Miller’s changeable voice but Smart Flesh shines in its quieter moments. From the haunting piano of ‘Ghost Woman Blues’ to the ethereal man- harmonies of ‘Love and Alter’, Miller’s lyrics are loaded with imagery, maintaining a level of poignant intimacy. (Lauren Mayberry) ■ The Low Anthem play Oran Mor, Glasgow, Thu 7 Apr.
FOLK MICHAEL CHAPMAN Trainsong: Guitar Compositions 1967–2010 (Tompkins Square) ●●●●● Maverick guitarist and singer-songwriter