Music RECORDS
FOLK-POP GARDENS & VILLA Gardens & Villa (Secretly Canadian) ●●●●●
Citing well-worn influences like Gary Numan, Blur, The Kinks and Spoon, Santa Barbara five-piece Gardens & Villa offer up an agreeable salve of electro-pop, chamber rock and psychedelic folk on their debut album. Recorded with vintage singer-songwriter/producer Richard Swift, this
long-player sees the remodelled punk rockers forsake anarchy for ambience and hardcore for pop haze – with variable results.
The album is robustly bookended by the sinewy, evocative dream- rock of opener ‘Black Hills’ and the flickering electro-folk balladry of hand-clapping swansong ‘Neon Dove’, but in between, the album falls heavy on pedestrian retro-pop (‘Space Time’; ‘Thorn Castles’) and lacklustre psych-pop (‘Chemtrails’; ‘Sunday Morning’). It’s all fairly pleasant if unremarkable, with the stellar exception of
‘Star Fire Power’ – an incandescent synth-pop centrepiece whose shimmering beats, soaring vocalisms and disco cadences suggest that Gardens & Villa up the ante when they raise the tempo. They should do it more often. (Nicola Meighan)
ROCK-POP VIVA BROTHER Famous First Words (Geffen) ●●●●●
‘If you don’t give yourself the option of fucking up, then you can’t fuck up,’ boldly announces Viva Brother frontman Lee Newell. And yet, time and again, their ‘gritpop’ (oh dear) debut album offers chance after chance for the band to make a hash of proceedings.
Kicking off with ‘New Year’s Day’, a number which sounds like it’s been lurking too long at the very bottom of the No Way Sis reject pile, the Slough band have teleported themselves into mid-90s Manchester. While this is the bland tipping point of their Famous First Words, later tracks chug along aimlessly, pausing only to doff caps to just about everyone who ever graced and shamed the Britpop era. Dull and pointless. (Brian Donaldson)
SYMPHONIC POP WOLF GANG Suego Faults (Atlantic) ●●●●● It’s hard not to root for young auteur Max McElligott, and not just because he grew up in Strathkinness, Fife, when his dad was professor of Modern History at the University of St. Andrews. He sounds like a genetic splicing of David Byrne and Mika (which could be heaven, hell or some combination of the above, depending on who you talk to) and the production of the ever-excellent Dave Fridmann lends songs like ‘The King and All of His Men’ and ‘Dancing With the Devil’ a certain emphatic, anthemic power-pop quality. The lightness of most of these tracks and their themes suggest an artist who’s still maturing, but the depth and Kate Bush-like vocal patterns of the standout title track hint at big possibilities. (David Pollock)
INDIE-ROCK UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA s/t (True Panther Sounds) ●●●●● POST-PUNK THE HORRORS Skying (XL) ●●●●●
A hazy, low-rent or ‘vintage’ sound is often more a deliberate stylistic approach these days than the result of necessity. With this in mind, UMO’s self-titled debut sounds like it’s trying far too hard. Every song is rooted in strong, powerful grooves, which form the thick skeleton for the stoned 60s psych trips that cover its bones. However, one listen to tracks like ‘Little Blue House’ and ‘Thought Ballune’ and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re listening to some ‘from the vaults’ radio hour.
Any real originality and excitement is all but wiped out in the quest for antiquated sounds, which is a shame considering that creepily infectious opener ‘Ffunny Ffrends’ stands out as a stoned summer anthem. (Ryan Drever)
68 THE LIST 21 Jul–4 Aug 2011
Did someone replace the light bulbs in The Horrors’ recording studio? Have they started taking multi-vitamins? Something uplifting has happened to what was previously Britain’s blackest band. And, unfortunately, it’s blunted their edge. The first few tracks of Skying are a disappointingly limp mix of baggy grooves, brass orchestration and chorus lines that Coldplay would consider, and then reject. Three and a half tracks because, midway through ‘Endless Blue’ they start playing their instruments properly – wigging out with a momentum that carries through to the psychedelic highlight, ‘Still Life’. Still, the Horrors should be making dark, fiercely unique music, not this ubiquitous pop nonsense. Trends come and go, but black never goes out of fashion. (Jonny Ensall)
INDIE-POP THE LADYBUG TRANSISTOR Clutching Stems (Merge) ●●●●●✘
The LT have been making rich, hi- sheen indie-pop for 15-years – longer than Belle & Sebastian. But the Brooklynites – a rotating cast led by Gary Olson – have had barely a morsel of their Scottish contemporaries’ success. Their seventh LP – and first since
the tragic asthma attack death of drummer San Fadyl in 2007 – is typical of both their strengths and lingering foibles. There’s lush instrumentation to make the heart glow, but they struggle to conjure those idiosyncratically bewitching moments – gorgeous as the Johnny Marr-style 12-string guitar jangle of ‘Light on the Narrow Gauge’ might be – necessary to sweep you off your feet. (Malcolm Jack)
SOUL/FUNK NIKI KING & THE ELEMENTS It’s All Good (Soul Route Records) ●●●●● When Edinburgh jazz vocalist Niki King moved to New York last year, it was inevitable that the city would lend its magic to her creative impulses. So, with new 10-piece New York band, The Elements – featuring musicians who’ve worked with Prince, Ray Charles and The Skatalites – she wrote a soul-funk album. There’s a delightfully badass element to It’s All Good. Electric ‘After Rain’ and opener ‘Do You Love Me’ recall legendary divas Betty Davis and Marva Whitney, while hauntingly delicate ‘Pieces of My Heart’, wouldn’t sound out of place on a Dionne Warwick record. Further proof that with pipes and songwriting talents such as these, she’s an outstanding female Scottish vocalist. (Rachel Devine)