list.co.uk/music FOLK POP RANDOLPH’S LEAP Real Anymore (Olive Grove) ●●●●●
Album reviews | MUSIC ELECTRO-POP MARNIE Crystal World (Les Disques du Crepuscule) ●●●●●
There’s a sense, with Randolph’s Leap, that lead singer Adam Ross is constantly trying to see how far he can push the envelope of twee lyrical playfulness before it makes you tear your hair out. On this new seven-track mini-album, there’s at least one line per song that’s designed to make you either wince or giggle at the archly engineered wordplay. The opening line of the album (from lo-fi voice-and-guitar number ‘Conversation’) sets out this stall early: ‘You’re as subtle and discreet / as an elephant in heat’.
From there, we get multi-rhymes (‘Let’s go out and trade in machinery / and glossy magazinery for scenery and greenery’, from the horn-adorned title track, ‘Real Anymore’), groanworthy puns (‘It’s not an exact seance’, from country waltz, ‘Psychic’) and cheerfully forced rhymes (‘Who would’ve thought a man of my stature / Could be so in love with nah-ture’, from the bouncily upbeat, er, ‘Nature’). Even the token serious song, aptly named ‘Winceworthy’, can’t resist distinctly pronouncing every syllable of ‘porcelain’ to rhyme with ‘force a grin’.
It’s cheerful, sugary and, yes, highly twee stuff – Ross’ vocals take centre stage, but he ransacks the entire folk-pop toybox to back him up, with handclaps, gang vocals and Stylophone solos all getting a look-in. Closing track ‘Indie King’ (its signature lyric rhymes ‘quandary’ with ‘Michel Gondry’) adds programmed drum loops and synth bleeps in there as well, but it’s a carefully crafted stab at ‘hipness’ – the lyrics of the song tackle the charges of twee head on, stating that
Helen Marnie has a hard job ahead of her, carrying off those press shots on her own where the stylish pan-sexual majesty of her sometime band Ladytron’s pictures continued to be an otherworldly sight to behold. We’re sure she’ll manage, but just so the link isn’t severed completely, this ice-cool selection of shimmering nouveau synth-pop has undoubtedly been bolstered by the presence of Ladytron’s guiding hand Daniel Hunt in the producer’s booth.
Funded via PledgeMusic, recorded in Iceland in 2012 with help from Bang Gang’s Bardi Johannsson and finally released after some delays, it’s a highly confident package with a real sense of its own identity, although it’s probably best enjoyed as a whole without trying to dig out individually arresting radio hits. At once there’s a warmth and a reserved distance to Marnie’s voice, as if she were a French chanteuse singing in an echoing, empty club, and it’s probably this quality which invites comparisons with Stereolab and in particular the vocal style of Laetitia Sadier on ‘The Wind Breezes On’ and the lengthy, glistening ‘Submariner’. Yet the electro-revivalist milieu from which Ladytron first sprang remains the overriding musical feature here, and tracks like the opening trio ‘The Hunter’, ‘We Are the Sea’ and ‘Hearts on Fire’ call to mind the bubblegum sophistication of latterday Human League, albeit without that group’s harmonic Susan’n’ Joanne dynamic. The album mellows as it progresses, and those imagined
‘nothing pleases everyone / so let’s go out and have some fun’. Ross then chucks in a ‘lalala’ group chorus, a built-in dance break and a reference to Juno, proving he’s a man who likes to have his hand-decorated, crochet-patterned cupcake and eat it too. (Niki Boyle) ■ Randolph’s Leap play Doune the Rabbit Hole, Cardross, Fri 23 Aug, and The Glad Cafe, Glasgow, Fri 6 Sep. French influences become more pronounced, not to mention a previously-unheard but welcome quality to Marnie’s voice. Born, raised and now once more based in Glasgow, she allows a certain Caledonian buzz to enter her voice on the frosty ballads ‘Laura’ and ‘Gold’, possibly the most affecting tracks here. They suggest that maybe her future isn’t on the dancefloor, but in the same kind of crystalline future-folk style which Alison Goldfrapp has made such a virtue of. (David Pollock)
MINIMAL SYNTH-PUNK FACTORY FLOOR Factory Floor (DFA) ●●●●● CHAMBER POP JULIA HOLTER Loud City Song (Domino) ●●●●●
Fun fact: this long-awaited debut album by North London dancefloor experimentalists Factory Floor was mixed using the same desk that Dave Stewart used for the Eurythmics’ early hits. Cue anyone who fancies reviewing the record while only giving it the most cursory of listens coining the ‘new Eurythmics’ chat any day now, which would be worryingly far from the truth. Yet there’s something in that statement in terms of where it places them on the spectrum between avant garde gallery band and compulsive purveyors of sounds you’ll never tire of hearing.
Now signed to DFA after loitering around Optimo Music and Blast First Petite,
the trio have created a record which lovers of James Murphy and Twitch & Wilkes can’t afford to be without. It feels fully formed and like a trial run for future sonic experiments all at once, which suits a band who have adapted their style enough to record with members of both Throbbing Gristle and New Order. For the most part it’s a space filled with surging, minimal rhythms, Nik Void’s vocal disembodied and emotionless in the background, but still oddly sexual. In the twisting, Kraftwerk-recalling ‘Here Again’ (Void bursts into song like an old-school Chicago house sample played in the next room), the strident, oscillating electro of ‘Fall Back’ and cowbell-rattling minimalist Detroit techno by way of ‘Hot on the Heels of Love’ mantra of ‘Two Different Ways’, she doesn’t sound far removed from Cosey Fanni Tutti. Every song is sparse but has its own
LA chamber-pop diviner Julia Holter has long reflected urban landscape, society and architecture in her music, so Loud City Song is a particularly resonant, fitting title for her third LP (and first on Domino). Loud City Song sees Californian sound artist Holter refine and advance her singular knack for filtering high concept and avant garde ideas through mesmeric, beautifully arranged classic(al) pop – from spectral, universal opener ‘World’ (‘all the cities of the world’), through jazz- imbibed, gorgeous lead single ‘In The Green Wild’, to the brassy claustrophobia of ‘Horns Surrounding Me’, a song agitated by experimental pulsing-pop that evokes Kate Bush or even a dream-sequence Pat Benatar. As with her second album, Ekstasis – whose stunning salutation, ‘Marienbad’ drew inspiration from a 1961 French New Wave film (Last Year At Marienbad) – Loud City Song is a suite of independent yet allied vignettes informed by vintage celluloid, in this case American romantic musical Gigi (1958). This source is underscored by the album’s two-chambered heart, ‘Maxim’s I’ and ‘Maxim’s II’ – a nod to the Paris café of the same name that features in the movie. Recent single ‘Maxim’s I’ is particularly joyous, with its epic-synth echoes of Godley and Creme or Jon and Vangelis. These coupled titles progress Holter’s penchant for connecting, referencing and evolving her works, as first evinced on ‘Goddess Eyes’, which featured on her 2011 debut, Tragedy, then reappeared in myriad forms (‘Goddess Eyes I’ / ‘Goddess Eyes II’) on its follow-up, Ekstasis – and
texture, from the austere micro- funk of ‘Work Out’ to unlikely dancefloor instructional ‘Breathe In’ (Void commands: ‘breathe in, breathe out / step in, step out… my life made for good times’) and short voyages ‘One’, ‘Two’ and ‘Three’, which admittedly pad out what’s otherwise a 7-track record. The trio create the next link in a loose chain which includes LCD Soundsystem, Throbbing Gristle and AfrikaBambaataa, and it doesn’t sound like this album has exhausted their potential. (David Pollock)
reinforce her notion of creating ‘separate songs, and songs of songs’. Despite these motifs of connection, and society, and urban life, there’s another theme that echoes throughout Holter’s work, and particularly throughout Loud City Song – and it is that of being alone. The sublime, searching reverie of ‘Hello Stranger’ reminds us of this alienation; reminds us that even amid the biggest buildings in the busiest cities, silence, and loneliness, can be deafening. (Nicola Meighan) 22 Aug–19 Sep 2013 THE LIST 67