list.co.uk/music Records | MUSIC
INDIE-POP VERONICA FALLS Waiting For Something To Happen (Bella Union) ●●●●●
On their second album, like their first, London-based quartet VF don’t feel that invoking a retro style – the 80s shambly indie of The Shop Assistants, Pastels et al (the Scotland connection goes deep – Roxanne Clifford and Patrick Doyle were in Glasgow bands The Royal We and Sexy Kids) – gets in the way of a good tune. If you feel it does, maybe best avoid.
But don’t judge too quickly –-
there’s enough doomy shadow cast by their songs to distance them from their feyer peers à la Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Allo Darlin’. You’ve got to appreciate the simple ear-candy of their breezy harmonies: ‘Teenage’ is among the finest indie- pop singles of the decade yet, much as it might belong to another decade entirely. (Malcolm Jack) ■ Veronica Falls play the CCA, Glasgow, Tue 26 Feb.
DREAM-POP DUCKTAILS The Flower Lane (Domino) ●●●●●
Where some band members use a side-project to veer off at a radical tangent, Ducktails – aka Real Estate guitarist Matthew Mondanile – increasingly operates in ways complementary to group pursuits. His fourth album doesn’t fly far from the nest – at times it almost resembles an appendage to Real Estate’s exquisite Days – but it’s a fine and varied standalone concern too. The lo-fi, chillwavey sketchiness of Mondanile’s earlier stuff is but a hazy memory, as this once solo bedroom mess-about becomes a considered collaborative studio endeavour, with contributions from Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) and Madeline Follin (Cults). The woozy jangle of ‘The Ivy Covered House’ and the title track are close cousins to Real Estate’s stoned reverie – though, if The Flower Lane shares one trait with Days more than any, it’s the way it owns your stereo without apology. (Malcolm Jack)
GOTH SHOEGAZE ESBEN AND THE WITCH Wash the Sins Not Only the Face (Matador) ●●●●● SYNTHPOP BLUE HAWAII Untogether (Arbutus) ●●●●●
Like The Horrors with the darkness turned up to 11, Brighton trio Esben & the Witch make music which sounds like it was beamed directly in from a provincial student union in the late 80s or early 90s. It sounds bloody great in small doses, with Rachel Davies’ haunting vocal threaded through a cascading, reverb-heavy wash of guitars and electronic effects played by herself, Daniel Copeman and Thomas Fisher. In a full album’s sitting, though,
it begins to fog the senses without the delicacy or humour of close analogues like My Bloody Valentine or Mogwai. Yet this is a worthy follow-up to 2011’s Violet Cries, with fraught, sinister ballads ‘Yellow Moon’, and harrowing, furrow-browed closer ‘Smashed to Pieces in the Still of the Night’ setting the most satisfying tone. (David Pollock) ■ Esben and the Witch play the Art School, Glasgow, Fri 8 Feb.
Blue Hawaii’s ethereal through-the- looking-glass world evokes a similar sense of place to the early work of Arbutus labelmate and fellow Montreal resident Grimes, but with a more subtle reliance on poppier tropes. If this beguiling début lacks a certain immediacy then, it makes up for it with its elegiac charm – the somnambulant synths and layered vocals channel the Cocteau Twins while the hollowed-out beats have a lonely, portentous elegance – giving the record a womb-like feeling of warm, inviting solitude. The album’s narrative is fluid, loosely tethered by the pulsating early centrepiece and first single ‘In Two’ and its other half ‘In Two (Pt II)’ both of which possess this trembling and beautifully understated trill of dancefloor euphoria while still retaining a haunting sense of intimacy, reflecting that curious joy of dancing when no one is around. (Mark Keane)
CHAMBER FOLK RICK REDBEARD No Selfish Heart (Chemikal Underground) ●●●●●
And the man Rick Anthony, hitherto deified for conducting The Phantom Band like a stars-and-brimstone preacher, retreated to rural Aberdeen; cultivated an elegiac Redbeard; amalgamated a Scots tongue with half-memories and Southern Gothic ambience: made something akin to a masterpiece.
There is not a violin note, guitar line or tambourine-pulse out-of- place on this outstanding debut solo album – from falsetto psalm ‘We All Float’, through the gorgeous, spartan trad-ballad ‘Kelvin Grove’, to hirsute, stripped serenade ‘Now We’re Dancing’. Anthony’s peat-crackling baritone considers love, loss, carnal obsession – most acutely on bruised devotional ‘Any Way I Can’, which rings out like a sublime, if painful, salvation. Let us give thanks for the bard with the beard of red and the unselfish heart. (Nicola Meighan)
TROUBADOUR FOLK ALASDAIR ROBERTS & FRIENDS A Wonder Working Stone (Drag City) ●●●●● Those who (wrongly) have Ali Roberts down as a dour purveyor of funereal dirges may be surprised to hear the Trossachs troubadour's country- dance romp, ‘The Bluebell Polka’, with a Welsh rap courtesy of fiddler Rafe Fitzpatrick. Yet it's characteristic of the confidence and imagination with which he now approaches his music and the traditions on which it draws. This album boldly embodies [Scottish poet] Hamish Henderson’s concept of ‘the carrying stream’, a living tradition in which old customs are kept alive through reinvention. Inventive arrangements work such curiosities as shrunken goats’ feet and ‘Celtic’ shamanising around Roberts’ knotty fingerpicking, while Shane Connolly’s ritualistic drums and Ben Reynolds' stinging electric guitar bring muscle and flash. (Stewart Smith)
APPALACHIAN FOLK THE BLACK TWIG PICKERS Rough Carpenters (Thrill Jockey) ●●●●●
Rough Carpenters, the latest transmission from Appalachian coterie The Black Twig Pickers, is aptly named. Well-crafted, but not too finely finished, it has an appealing homemade quality, as if recorded in a funky old barn while the moonshine is passed around. This is old-timey music from the members’ Virginia and Kentucky homesteads, filtered through the American primitive aesthetic of John Fahey and the ecstatic avant-garde vision of the Millennial free-folk scene.
Fiddler Mike Gangloff and banjo player Nathan Bowles are also members of drone mavens Pelt, and their sensitivity to texture and tone informs the Pickers’ scratchin’, whoopin’ and pluckin’. these tracks possess a rare energy and magic, where the imperfections in pitch and rhythm only add to the otherworldly atmosphere. (Stewart Smith)
JAZZ GUITAR/VOICE DUET HAFTER MEDBOE AND ANNEKE KAMPMAN Places and Spaces (Fabrikant) ●●●●●
At first, Conquering Animal Sound singer Anneke Kampman’s first sojourn into off-piste collaboration sounds like the straightest thing she’s done. Here she is, singing proper words and everything alongside seasoned jazz guitarist Medboe and his band. Listen harder, and there’s a spectral
oddity to Kampman’s coos and Medboe’s dexterous picking that lulls one into a false sense of security before exploding into little light-and- shade storms. Recalling Trish Keenan in Broadcast or Alison Statton’s post Young Marble Giants trio, Weekend, Medboe keeps the melody intact while Kampman’s rich, glacial voice swoops without fear, punching out words with calculated off-kilter precision that makes for a scarifying pastoral delight in this refreshingly strange alliance. (Neil Cooper)
24 Jan–21 Feb 2013 THE LIST 77