MUSIC | Records EXPERIMENTAL/POST-PUNK NO AGE An Object (Sub Pop) ●●●●●
INDIE SWIM DEEP Where the Heaven Are We (RCA/Victor) ●●●●●
Where punk snarled and tore-down, it’s more optimistic and artier little brother post-punk experimented and reshaped. It's a process that continues even today in recesses of some less-recognised music. You’ll find few better modern embodiments of the spirit of 1978-1984 than No Age, a Californian twosome who follow up their highly-rated third album, 2010’s Everything in Between, with the every-bit-as-good An Object. It’s another record that prides itself on never taking the path of least resistance towards a racket built for both body and mind, but importantly values end product as highly as it does process.
You’ll find few ideas at work here that three decades or so ago didn’t preoccupy No Age’s post-punk progenitors: Wire’s toying with strange detail and the conventions of song form, say, or Sonic Youth’s No Wave adventures in noise and dissonance. But where guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt excel is in pulling together a unique suite of irregular sounds – percussion using contact mics in place of a standard drum kit, amplifiers filled with handfuls of loose change, that kind of thing – and making sure that there'll be short, sharp tunes somewhere amid all the nerdy sonic architecture.
If the NME remained the great kingmaker it once represented, such a so-very- now band as Swim Deep might be mugging from the cover of every music mag on the shelf right now (and maybe this one too, who knows). Think glistening synth-pop retrofitted to a catch-all approximation of late 80s/early 90s indie, (which is to say, so very then) and you have Swim Deep in a nutshell. But the NME and indie rock alike are relatively marginalised forces these days (chicken or the egg?), and much like their not-dissimilar-sounding fellow over-hyped Brum pals Peace, this floppy-haired Birmingham quartet can’t help but feel like a wearisome throwback to times probably better left remembered than relived. Swim Deep are four late-teen/early twentysomething lads with a cocksure swagger (default NME darlings pose) on a perfectly noble quest to get girls dancing while their boyfriends sway locked arms-over-shoulders to the kind of massive choruses that don’t get really written much in guitar music these days. But none of it can disguise the fact that they don’t so much swim deep into musical invention as merely skim its surface. ‘Don’t just dream in your sleep, it’s just lazy,’ sings Austin Williams on the
‘I Won’t Be Your Generator’ could be The Strokes with Sonic Youth guitars. ‘C’Mon, Stimmung’ is a speedy blast of Ramones-esque pogoing with vocals that sound like they’re being screamed down a metal pipe, and a guitar solo that feels a lot like a dental drill shattering tooth enamel. chorus of Where the Heaven Are We’s best song, bleary-eyed anthem ‘Honey’; it's all a bit rich coming from a frontman whose idea of industriousness is aping Tim Burgess blissed-out drawl at every turn (‘Red Lips I Know’ and ‘Stray’ might as well be early Charlatans B-sides). The likes of ‘Francisco’ and ‘King
Like all the best post-punk albums, An Object is never predictable. This is particularly proven by the sudden outbreak of fluttering cellos in ‘An Impression’ and the entirety of the album's penultimate track ‘A Ceiling Dreams of a Floor’. This two-and-a-half minute shoegaze daydream, adorned by its obsessive meddling with method is generally defined by strange, industrial-strength harshness. No Age can also totally blindside you with fleeting moments of simple beauty. (Malcolm Jack)
City’ meanwhile could have been dreamed-up around a conference table by major label execs on the hunt for the next indie-lite Radio 1 A-list breakout number: all chugging bass lines, gleaming synth melodies and woo-ooh-ing wordless vocal hooks. Which all sits a little strangely
next to the likes of ‘Soul Trippin’, a stoner saunter pairing up shuffling baggie Soup Dragons-style with shimmering Stone Roses guitars. What the world is waiting for? The world will just have to keep on waiting. (Malcolm Jack)
POP/KRAUTROCK LOMOND CAMPBELL Only a City Apart (Chemikal Underground) ●●●●● MODERN CLASSICAL/ ELECTRONIC POP ZOLA JESUS & JG THIRLWELL FT MIVOS QUARTET Versions (Sacred Bones Records) ●●●●●
The debut EP from FOUND collective member Lomond Campbell is an interesting beast. It’s an impressively coherent record with a sweeping cinematic arc, yet it alternates between several different musical moods with relative ease. Campbell specialises in a kind of cult-movie soundtrack electronica; here it sounds, at times, like anything from krautrock to indie pop and post-rock. The brooding electronica of opening track ‘Push to Make’ – a sunny, summery march of fuzz and scattergun melody – gives way to the distinctive Scots-lilt and indie twang of ‘Another Chancer’, with Campbell’s sweetly laidback vocal the standout element. Indeed, it’s the vocals that make the record really soar at times, adding texture and heart to proceedings.
The EP maintains a hypnotic tempo and otherworldly ambience throughout,
punctuated by moments of pure pop. ‘Yesterday’s You & Me’, with guest vocals from The Pictish Trail, is a fabulous 1980s-style pop song with a stirring vocal denouement. Meanwhile, the eerie, faraway refrain of ‘How to Appear Attentive’ disappears into the distance in a near two-minute shimmering interlude. ‘It’s Too Late to Be Right’ is another display of Campbell’s talents as a vocalist with a great sense of timing and occasion. At the end of it all is the playful, mysterious, moody, eight-minute long ‘Hit the Kiss Button’, which crashes out in a brilliant throb of feedback, buzzing drones and low-end pulses. The first music to come out of the FOUND stable since
An album of new reworkings from Zola Jesus’ previous records (2010’s Stridulum II and 2011’s Connatus) plus one original track, Versions was born out of a one- off live event. That night in 2012, Wisconsin-born Nika Roza Danilova teamed up with defiantly genreless experimental composer and producer JG Thirlwell, AKA Foetus, and the strings of the Mivos Quartet for a very special gig at the Guggenheim in New York. The collaboration went so well that the three parties are releasing this album together and planning further live dates.
In these new versions, Zola Jesus’ typical idiosyncratic goth-industrial electro
is radically transformed into equally dramatic string-based arrangements, topped with Danilova’s powerful voice. At times on those earlier albums, it felt like that voice had only one setting – an unvarying Florence Welch-style bellow that quickly became tedious – but here, without that wall of plugged-in noise, she explores far more nuanced and tender territory, without losing any of the power when it matters. Opener ‘Avalanche (Slow)’ fulfils its titular promise: a slow and stately, almost filmic reworking of the original ‘Avalanche’. It’s a perfect, portentous beginning, full of grandeur and cascading strings, its refrain of ‘and it all falls down’ repeated by Danilova with breathtaking vulnerability. Next track ‘Fall Back’ is the only new number here but also a winner, its apparently more uplifting nature belied by tense staccato strings. Across the nine tracks, Thirlwell makes the very most of
the collective’s acclaimed 2011 album factorycraft, Campbell is releasing ‘Only a City Apart’ as a limited edition coloured vinyl. It’s a tasty appetiser ahead of his forthcoming collaborative full album with River of Slime, due to come out on Chemikal Underground later this year. (Rachel Devine) ■ See Exposure, page 86. The EP will be given away for free at a secret house concert, Edinburgh, Sat 20 Jul. To reserve a space email 42music42@ musician.org
the string quartet’s range – his richly layered arrangements adding new dimensions and often, seemingly, both violence and elegance at the same time. There’s little to match the first two songs later on, however, and we have something of a return to the over-zealous vocals of past releases. That said, Danilova’s voice is well matched to the more orchestral sound, and Versions is well worth investigating, even by those for whom Zola Jesus hasn’t previously hit the mark. (Laura Ennor)
84 THE LIST 11 Jul–22 Aug 2013