Music RECORDS
LO-FI ROCK CHARLES DOUGLAS Not Your Kind of Music: The Basement Tapes 1995-1999 (Broken Horse) ●●●●●
There’s a strong chance that you’ve never heard of Charles Douglas, a lo-fi rock’n’roll pop visionary in the vanishing 90s mould of Robert Pollard and Daniel Johnston. Pursuing an innate belief that he could match his hero Prince in both songwriting chops and the possibilities of mega-stardom, Douglas was briefly signed to a major label, yet mental health problems, plus a ruinous excess of whatever could be smoked or snorted saw Douglas recording an avalanche of songs (he claims to have recorded five albums in one year alone) in his parents’ basement, which he had to either release himself or see put out by a tiny indie label, to a dearth of attention.
Over two discs and 67 songs, this reissue of four of these subterranean missives is an addictive, goofy, charming and exhausting listen. Douglas’ insistent melodies are mostly bubblegum in the richest sense, while the rawness of the eight-track recordings keeps the songs free of fat. The accompanying booklet contains Douglas’ desperately honest
and self-deprecating autobiography of the period, with detailed geneses of every song. There were a hell of a lot of basement tapes being made around this time from stoners who loved Steely Dan as much as they did Jandek, but Charles Douglas deserves a closer look. (George Michael Taylor)
DREAM-POP LAETITIA SADIER Silencio (Drag City) ●●●●●
Craving a new fix of artsy post- punk with loungey 60s pop tones and French/English vocals, in the wake of Stereolab’s hiatus since 2009? Try the French frontwoman Laetitia Sadier’s Silencio – a solo album that, unlike her rich and revealing 2010 lo-fi debut The Trip, feels like a return of the mother band rather than an endeavour to try anything especially different. ‘Fragment Pour le Future de l’Homme’ wires motorik funk to Stereolab-signature wibbly-wobbly synths. ‘Next Time You See Me’, the album’s highlight, blends slacker-rock guitars and dreamy melodies, before whispered poems collapse into each other on ‘Invitation au Silence’ – a finale that will leave an aftertaste sophisticated to some, pretentious to others. (Malcolm Jack)
STONER ROCK OM Advaitic Songs (Drag City) ●●●●●
Having dipped their meditative toes into countless tantric states in their last two LPs, God is Good and Pilgrimage – Om dive head first off the edge of Mount Sinai with their most recent opus, their most ambitious and rewarding trip to date. With less focus on the distortion
found on their Sleep-lite releases from years gone past, Advaitic Songs is by far their boldest step beyond their previous stoner rock tag – by favouring total rumination and eastern ambiance over simplified, metal repetition. Armed with five arrangements bridging Arabic prayers, a cello- led string section, pipes, piano and a far cleaner bass and drum stomp, Om’s search for sonic enlightenment has matured fully. (Nick Herd)
WELSH POP HUW M Gathering Dusk (Gwymon) ●●●●●
ALT COUNTRY BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY Now Here’s My Plan’ (Domino) ●●●●● ELECTRO-POP MICACHU AND THE SHAPES Never (Rough Trade) ●●●●●
SOUL LIANNE LA HAVAS Is Your Love Big Enough? (Warner Brothers) ●●●●●
If you, like me, hold the view that Super Furry Animals’ Welsh-language album is their finest work, then you’ll probably be predisposed to love Huw M’s near exhaustingly delightful Gathering Dusk, a mildly psych- sizzled alt-folk charmer, sung mostly in the Pontypridd singer-songwriter’s throaty and naturally mellifluous native tongue. Comparisons with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and Euros Childs’ solo work are necessary, though ‘a Welsh Sufjan Stevens’ sums him up more appropriately, particularly when French horn, cello and female harmonies are layered on magnificently. An English-sung closer tells of drowsy lovers; it won’t so much melt your heart as evaporate it. What’s Huw on about the rest of the time? No idea. But it’s delightful. (Malcolm Jack) Will Oldham is now into his third decade performing under the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy alias, an artistic doppelganger to escape scrutiny for the increasingly bared and fragile songs released throughout the nineties under the Palace moniker. It began with the grim enlightenment of 1999’s ‘I See a Darkness’, sparse shanties of piano and electric guitar, soon developing into the maximal country rock that backs Oldham’s pooling candlewax croon today. This EP features six hymned and glorified rearrangements of earlier BPB material, the most striking of which is an oddly rollicking version of the title track of that same 1999 debut, the original’s drunken narrator lifted up off the floor and danced around the bar-room. (George Michael Taylor)
Never is probably not a word Mica Levi (aka Micachu) uses. Never mix clashing sounds, including what may be a hoover. Pah. Never blend 90s hip hop and classical music (see last year’s Chopped and Screwed, her collaboration with the London Sinfonietta). Never be put off by age restrictions (Mica’s artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre – the youngest so far). Oddly fitting, then, that the follow up to 2009’s Jewellery bears that word as its title.
Opener ‘Easy’ and ‘Low Dogg’ showcase her penchant for inventive vocal hooks, proving ‘experimental’ doesn’t always mean nae melody. Never is a strong release, proving the definition of pop is what you make it. (Lauren Mayberry)
Even amid such a crowded marketplace as that of a solo female soul singer making her way in a post-Winehouse world, young Londoner Lianne La Havas stands out. Her debut album isn’t all remarkable, more a clutch of impressive individual songs bound together by a few run-of-the-mill ballads and the like, but her best work firmly captures the attention. The 60s beat-pop grind of the
title track or the Willy Mason duet ‘No Room For Doubt’, a ghostly echo of a late-60s Bacharach lounge classic, are both great songs, but the rich, shivering Gallic croon of ‘Au Cinema’ is the pick of this promising debut collection and a wonderful song in its own right. (David Pollock) To win this album, see page 74.
70 THE LIST 19 Jul–2 Aug 2012