Music RECORDS
ART-ROCK THE KILLS Blood Pressures (DOMINO) ●●●●● More well known these days for their dalliances with Jack White (musical) and Kate Moss (marital), Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince make a long-awaited return to The Kills after a three-year break. Throughout Blood Pressures there are frequent nods to the stripped down, art rock that made them so compelling early on in their career – the gutsy ‘Damned If You Do’, for example, the sultry swagger of ‘Future Starts Slow’ and the distorted dark riffs of ‘You Don’t Own the Road’. But it’s when they combine their trademark bluesy attack with a new-found approach to heavy sonic layering that The Kills’ fourth offering really comes into its own. ‘Satellite’ – all drilling guitars, monstrous bass and haunting, soulful harmonies – is one of the best songs they’ve ever penned, as is ‘DNA’, with its slow-building creepy tension, but ‘Last Goodbye’ is perhaps the biggest surprise of all – Mosshart leading a sorrow-filled, string-tinged waltz. ‘It’s the last goodbye, I swear,’ she laments. ‘I can’t survive on a half-hearted love that will never be whole’. Genuinely stirring stuff. (Camilla Pia)
GARAGE/ROCK LORD ROCHESTER Hey! (Twenty Stone Blatt) ●●●●● What sounds and smells like a 1960s garage band but isn’t? Lord Rochester, that’s what. Resurrected from some fantasy about aristocratic ruin and the ghosts of the D-Men, Lord Rochester fizz and fuzz their way through 13 beat numbers.
SOUNDTRACKS TINDERSTICKS Claire Denis Scores 1996–2009 (Constellation) ●●●●● This five-disc box set containing six film scores is testament to the remarkable collaboration between French filmmaker Claire Denis, arguably the most intellectually fertile auteur working today, and Tindersticks bandleader, Stuart A Staples.
From the Dylan-esque mischief From the sonorous heartbreak of
of ‘Deathbed’ to the Rolling Stones riffs of ‘Two Great Guitarists’, Hey! is only ever a hairbreadth away from parody. ‘Garage’ is, however, an accumulative pleasure and by the time ‘Seasick’ rocks the boat, it’s difficult not to be drawn in. A share of the profits from this release (put out by Falkirk-based label, Twenty Stone Blatt) will go to the Kai Davidson Trust, a charity organisation that supports Scottish musicians. (Paul Dale)
1996’s Nenette et Boni to the unsettling atmospherics of 2009’s White Material, these scores are as much exercises in generic abandon as they are an attempt to access the psyche. Thus the score to body-horror Trouble Every Day pulsates with menace, 2002’s Vendredi Soir flows towards escape, L’Intrus deposits clarity for an outsider status and 35 Rhums uses ethnic rhythms to find a home where the heart is. Beautiful, essential. (Paul Dale)
PSYCH-ROCK MOON DUO Mazes (Souterrain Transmissions) ●●●●●
It transpires that psychedelic rock and romance make for intoxicating bedfellows. This mesmeric debut full-length album from Wooden Shjips axe-master Ripley Johnson and his inamorata, Sanae Yamada, is heady with cosmic grooves and shredding pop that refries The Stooges, The Velvet Underground and the Shjips. So yes, their union works a treat.
There’s still a brooding minimalism in the LP’s driving chords and rhythms, but compared with Moon Duo’s earlier (and darker) EPs – 2009’s ‘Killing Time’ and 2010’s ‘Escape’, not to mention their mind-melding Christmas re-hash of ‘O Tannenbaum’ – Mazes is rather more akin to balmy psych on a summer’s day. (Nicola Meighan)
82 THE LIST 31 Mar–28 Apr 2011
POST-ROCK EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Bella Union) ●●●●● It’s been over a decade since this Texan post-rock foursome formed through an advert – ‘Wanted: sad triumphant rock band’ – and, on this fifth album, they stick to that definition while subtly expanding their sound. It’s evolution not revolution as ‘Be Comfortable, Creature’ and ‘Human Qualities’ slowly build layered guitars to a skull-crushing finale in a way only Explosions and nearest contemporaries Mogwai can do. But, like their Scottish counterparts, Explosions are diversifying both into soundtracky vibes and more direct rock’n’roll, the latter demonstrated by the visceral bludgeon of closer ‘Trembling Hands’. Sad and triumphant indeed. (Doug Johnstone)
INDIE-ROCK GLASVEGAS EUPHORIC///HEARTBREAK\\\ (Columbia) ●●●●● GARAGE-ROCK VIVIAN GIRLS Share the Joy (Polyvinyl) ●●●●●
Funny that Glasvegas have used ‘Euphoric’ in the title of this, their second album. The sound they make is the opposite of euphoria, but did anyone expect otherwise?
Euphoric///Heartbreak\\\ is a Glaswegian dirge, muddled in layers of synth and languid tempos, and while the impressive ‘The World Is Yours’ and ‘Euphoria, Take My Hand’ deviate from the template – being indebted to strong rhythms and refrains suited to the most melodious of wirelesses – the rest of the album struggles to raise itself above the predictable dour melancholy.
James Allan used to sing ‘Daddy’s Gone’ achingly. Maybe now a bit of the Glasvegas spark has gone too. (Chris Cope)
This third long-player from Brooklyn’s trash-pop girl-group revivalists Vivian Girls bounds with all the reference points we’ve come to expect from the garage-rock trio: nostalgic melodies, cordial harmonies and heavenly dissonance. But it’s wilfully clearer and more defined than their DIY, punk-addled self-titled debut, and its 2009 follow-up, Everything Goes Wrong. It’s also a bit less lovable for it.
Still, there is much to enjoy, from the ethereal epic grunge of ‘The Other Girls’ to the burnished pop uprising of ‘Dance (If You Wanna)’. The introduction of organ throughout, meanwhile, is a welcome psychedelic addition to Vivian Girls’ bliss-rock artillery. (Nicola Meighan)