MUSIC | Records
ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
ALT-POP ADAM STAFFORD Imaginary Walls Collapse (Song, by Toad) ●●●●● There’s only one Adam Stafford. He has myriad guises, of course – Scottish BAFTA-winning filmmaker (The Shutdown with Alan Bissett); DIY label boss (Wise Blood Industries); music video director (The Twilight Sad’s ‘Seven Years of Letters’); frontman of ace
Y’All Is Fantasy Island. Not to mention a Falkirk cult-pop star with a penchant for beatboxing, ingenious art-rock, David Byrnian live shows, and setting movies to musical vignettes. Stafford’s second LP resumes where 2011's terrific Build a Harbour
Immediately left off – all axe-fuelled sonic (mis)shapes and vivid narratives. But Imaginary is tooled up in all sorts of deviant ways: it’s more propelled by electronics, human harmony and dissonance from 'Vanishing Tanks’ euphoric guitar-pop to the mechano-groove of ‘Carshalton Girls’. Stafford asserts his statement of intent via the album’s Ginsberg-inspired title, which alludes to breaking down psychological barriers you’ve constructed around yourself. It’s industrial in form (clanging early Depeche Mode) and source
(Stafford cites Falkirk as influence) and has a typically intense lyricism. Initially, this invokes the subversive, fetishistic grind of The Normal, but it soon becomes apparent any constraints and humiliations are less S&M-bound and more trussed up in contemporary society: the ties of work, debt, shame. Mini-epiphany ‘Please’, is a gorgeous gospel-folk chorale and, perhaps, a paean to struggle. ‘Crawling on all fours, it won’t make you a star, it won’t make you alive,’ Stafford sings beautifully – and you only hope that these words were as cathartic to write as they are to hear. (Nicola Meighan)
ELECTRONIC WASHED OUT Paracosm (Weird World) ●●●●●
The title of this album, a term meaning a detailed imaginary world, perfectly encapsulates what Ernest Weatherly Greene is all about. As one of the vanguard figures of a new wave of electronic artists creating expansive and immersive solo symphonies, Greene is apparently creating his paracosm with writers like Tolkien, CS Lewis and outsider artist Henry Darger in mind, rendering the record an adventure. It's a journey into evocative aural signatures which were largely composed by Greene alone (engineer Ben H Allen helped in part) in his home state of Georgia. The title track is a prime example of the loveliness at hand here, a soft,
shoegazing lullaby founded on the sound of a harp, a slide guitar and Greene’s cooing, spectral voice buried within the mix. It comes late into the album, though, and prior to that we’ve been built up by the delicate, Broadway-musical flutter of strings and birdsong on ‘Entrance’ and the cheerfully relaxed croon of ‘It All Feels Right’ – like a mid-period Beatles track flung into the future or a less whacked-out Flaming Lips. These early songs form a suite, with the similarly jolly ‘Don’t Give Up’ bouncing in on a more typically contemporary tide of synths, while the hymnal synthesised sound of ‘Weightless,’ the sonorous dream-pop of ‘Great Escape’ and the whooshing shoegaze rush of ‘Falling Back’ all play poignantly with the listener’s own imagination. As a follow-up to his successful and much-beloved in hipster circles 2011 debut album Within and Without, which followed his first two excellent EPs Life of Leisure and High Times back in 2009, Paracosm is surely a triumph. It's a record which maintains a light and accessible pop veneer while staying firmly true to Greene’s own vision. And it's an album that doesn’t pin itself down and exists as whatever you want it to be, which is surely the whole point. (David Pollock)
INDIE-POP COMPILATION VARIOUS ARTISTS Scared to Get Happy (Cherry Red) ●●●●● ELECTRO SOUL ALUNAGEORGE Body Music (Island Records) ●●●●●
It’s all too fitting that this bumper five CD 1980s indie-pop compendium takes its name from an Orange Juice lyric. Edwyn Collins’ arch-janglers, after all, arguably invented the anti-macho, anti-rockist aesthetic that would go on to become a genre before Madchester and Britpop triumphalism shoved such literate sensibilities aside. It’s odd, then, that while Collins’ Sound of Young Scotland contemporaries Josef K, Aztec Camera and Fire Engines are here, Orange Juice aren’t. Neither are The Pastels, who picked up Postcard Records DIY mantle and went on to influence the spirit of every generation of independently- minded bands in their wake. Pastels peers such as the BMX Bandits, The Shop Assistants, Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes and The Boy Hairdressers, as well as a nascent Primal Scream, all show up. Scared to Get Happy isn’t, however, attempting to replicate C86, the NME
cassette compilation for which readers gathered up six weeks’ worth of vouchers then waited 28 days for delivery before hearing a collection which defined an era of so-called ‘shambling’ bands. Nor is it a recreation of Pillows and Prayers, Cherry Red’s own defining compilation of the label’s early 1980s roster which was sold for just 99p. Artists from both albums appear here, but this is a broader church which, despite the plethora of Scottish acts on show, including Strawberry Switchblade, The Wake, TV 21, Scars, The Bluebells, Del Amitri, Friends Again and others, embraces a disparate array of under-achievers,
Tipped as an act likely to make a big impression in 2013 by the likes of The Guardian, NME and BBC, AlunaGeorge appear to have a lot riding on debut album Body Music. Although in fairness, the duo have already enjoyed some mainstream chart success with single ‘Attracting Flies’. Mixing elements of R&B, bass, house and garage with infectious hooks and a catchy chorus, it is the perfect showcase for Aluna Francis and George Reid’s brand of street-savvy pop soul, and one of several highlights on a debut album that seems likely to deliver future hits.
It does seems something of a departure from the pair’s musical origins: Reid
once played in a math rock band while Francis was a member of an edgy, electronic collective. However, after meeting on MySpace and sharing a passion for acts as diverse as Flying Lotus, Destiny’s Child and James Taylor, they began to collaborate. A cleverly produced video for their first ever release, the addictive ‘You Know
You Like It’ (recently featured on a Tesco clothing advert) went viral, grabbing the attention of both the wider public and major record labels. Both singles, along with the likes of ‘Bad Idea,’ ‘Superstar,’ ‘Diver’ and ‘Just a Touch’ from Body Music aim to deliver an immediate rush of pop pleasure to the listener, while ‘Outlines,’ ‘Your Drums,’ ‘Best Believing’ and the album’s title track have a more contemplative, experimental feel, showing another side to the duo’s
one-offs and future pop stars. The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pulp and The Stone Roses fall into the latter bracket, though its tantalisingly wonderful one-offs like the heroic romance of the Wild Swans’ 'The Revolutionary Spirit' and Fantastic Something’s sublime 'If She Doesn’t Smile (It’ll Rain)' that matter just as much. As the collection’s 134 tracks move through the decade without a Fairlight in sight, even with the omissions, here is a parallel pop universe preserved in all its lo-fi glory. (Neil Cooper)
sound.
While the lyrical content may
rarely stray from the topic of falling in and out of love, and George’s sugary sweet, almost child-like vocal could perhaps be considered of the Marmite variety, it’s hard to fault Reid’s inventive, imaginative production on an album that seems certain to gain the band a larger audience. (Colin Chapman)
Stream music at soundcloud. com/alunageorge, and see YouTube for a new video for 'You Know You Like It'.
82 THE LIST 11 Jul–22 Aug 2013