MUSIC | Records
ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
POP REISSUE JAZZATEERS Jazzateers (Creeping Bent) ●●●●● When the decidedly non- jazz Jazzateers reformed to play a double bill with Vic Godard at the Glasgow International (yes) Jazz Festival this year, it shed some light on one of the great missing links of the original ‘Sound of Young Scotland’ based around their manager
Alan Horne’s label, Postcard Records. This re-release of the band’s eponymous 1983 album (which originally appeared on Rough Trade) is even more overdue. The line-up that appears here features guitarist Ian Burgoyne,
bassist Keith Band and drummer Colin Auld, who founded the band in 1980 with vocalist Alison Gourlay, before future Bourgie Bourgie crooner Paul Quinn took over. The main singer here, however, in the band’s third incarnation, is Grahame Skinner, who would go on to front glossy white soul combo Hipsway.
Contrary to their jangular roots, from the opening sounds of a match striking, this incarnation of Jazzateers is hanging tough. The sneering, snot-nosed opener ‘Nothing at All’ sounds pretty much like a template of The Strokes, and the CBGBisms continue on ‘Looking for a Girl,’ before a few moments of pure Postcard archness creep in on ‘Show Me the Door’ by way of the country twang of ‘Heartbeat’ and the not-quite-Chic of ‘Once More with Feeling’. Not that there’s anything that sounds remotely naive here. There’s rock’n’roll swagger and sass aplenty on ‘Texan’ by way of the Bowie-esque ‘First Blood’ and the rockabilly-styled ‘Baby That’s a No No’. The only truly contrary moment comes on the closing, slicked-back drawl of ‘Something to Prove’ because, as everything before it proves, Jazzateers had already done that in spades. (Neil Cooper)
FOLK/POP MONOGANON F A M I L Y (Lost Map) ●●●●●
‘What’s going on in here?’ asks Monoganon frontman John B McKenna in the opening line of their second album, F A M I L Y, as well he might. This introspective, complex collection of psych-folk psalms and alt-pop mantras dedicated to love, loss and awakening seeks answers rather than offering them, and it’s all the more poignant, and precious, for that. Inspired by the death of a close relation, Glasgow- via-Malmö singer-songwriter McKenna ponders the meaning of relationships and our proximity to those around us as he explores and draws out the meaning of F A M I L Y – hence the title’s deliberate spaces: like silences, like the unknown. Monoganon’ s 2011 debut LP, Songs To Swim To (Winning Sperm Party) was a
thing of abundant prog-pop wonder, and this follow-up, recorded in Glasgow’s CCA, sounds rather more lo-fi and perhaps less immediate, but it is no less curious or affecting. The album’s arrangements are warm, sympathetic and gripping, in no small part thanks to the rest of the band, namely bassist Susan Bear (also of thrift-pop heartbreakers Tuff Love), drummer Colin Kearney (of legendary math-rock shape-shifters Eska) and guitarist Andrew Cowan. Indeed, the four-piece’s intuitive, relaxed playing speaks of a lively family dynamic in itself, from the bucolic, woozy pop of recent single ‘Wasted Teens’, through the searing scuzz-rock of ‘Best Pals’ and the Grandaddy-esque distorted wig-out of ‘All You Need To Know Is Now’, to the classic songwriting of, say, Ed Harcourt (‘Easterhouse’) or Radiohead (spectral lullaby ‘Ivory and Tusk’).
If there’s a gripe, it’s that the vocals can be lost in the mix, especially when compared with the vivid sonic palette of Songs To Swim To. This may be intentional, of course – designed, perhaps, to evoke ghosts and half-memories – but McKenna’s voice deserves to be better heard. Nonetheless, this is a haunting album that rewards multiple visitations. (Nicola Meighan) ■ Monoganon play the Pleasance, Edinburgh, Thu 17 Oct, and launch the album at the CCA, Glasgow, Sat 9 Nov.
PYSCHEDELIC SLUDGE ROCK BARDO POND Peace on Venus (Fire Records) ●●●●● EXPERIMENTAL HIP HOP HECTOR BIZERK Nobody Seen Nothing (hectorbizerk.com) ●●●●●
Where a lot of bands coyly beat about the bush as to how much drugs may or may not have influenced their music, since forming in 1991, veteran stoner space rockers Bardo Pond have pretty much written hallucinogenic substances into their raison d’être, with albums titled after magic mushrooms (Amanita) and psychoactive toads (Bufo Alvarius, Amen 29:15) and side-projects called things like 500mg, Hash Jar Tempo and LSD Pond. Not exactly a Saturday-morning telly kind of band, then. If you’ve never necked a shitload of strong acid before skipping freely across the cosmos from the comfort of your couch, only to awaken a couple of days later naked in the middle of a forest, try listening to the Philadelphians’ ninth album on repeat for several hours – probably a decent sonic approximation of the experience – and save yourself the ignominy. At just five tracks in length, Peace on Venus may at first glance leave you feeling like you’ve been a bit short-changed. But note that the briefest song, ‘Taste’, still lasts almost five minutes, and that the longest two – kaleidoscopic closers ‘Chance’ and ‘Before The Moon’ – are just under 11 minutes apiece, as vocalist Isobel Sollenberger’s wraith-like wail and trippy flute lines tussle at great length with Michael and John Gibbons’ squalls of freeform guitar noise, while Jason Kourkonis’ drumming and Clint Takeda’s basslines slowly move everything along with the earth-tremblingly staggering gait of a drunken giant.
There was much to love about Hector Bizerk’s thrilling 2012 debut Drums. Rap. Yes. There was that brilliant title for starters: a manifesto, call-to-arms and razor- sharp description of the Glasgow hip hop duo’s experimental art. And there was their upending of rap stereotypes (favouring local dialect, self-awareness and kitchen-sink verse over guns and bling) and gender norms (MC Louie sings to the beat of Audrey Tait’s drum). Their striking, minimalist aesthetic made them equally popular at big-league hip hop shows (supporting Jurassic 5) and at subterranean-pop happenings like Music Language.
Th is similarly striking follow-up sees the duo augmented by Jen Muir on
synths and vocals and Fraser Sneddon on bass, which gives fascinating colour and range to Louie’s socially aware, self-censuring narratives and Tait’s critical rhythms. It’s a forceful collection of astute street poetry and inventive party anthems that explores (and critiques) the ways in which we only see what we choose to see in the world around us. Variously invoking the Roots, the Police, Pharoahe Monch, Mos Def and Gil
Scott-Heron – Glasgow-style – Nobody Seen Nothing embraces reggae, blues, funk and punk, not to mention fanfare-bending tropical-pop (on the glorious, quickening ‘Welcome to Nowhere’) and the boozy, depth-charged grooves of ‘Seldom a Word We Don’t Say Too Often’, whose kamikaze chorus reels in macho denigration (‘All men are arseholes, and I’m no different / It’s not my fault
If – to borrow a certain iconic catchphrase from Bardo Pond’s psychedelic forebears Spacemen 3 – ‘taking drugs to make music to take drugs to’ sounds like a creative cop out, it’s really not. This quintet have made a fine art of sounding gloriously messed up these last 22 years and counting. Try the astounding ‘Fir’ for proof – between megaton distortion and gaseous hisses of feedback, it’s as if the Gibbons brothers are trying to recreate the sound of the big bang with guitars. (Malcolm Jack)
I’m just a man’). Despite the fortified line-up, Hector Bizerk’s fundamental ethos remains: an economy of music, words and arrangements that afford space and time for the music and words to hit home. And this statement of intent is made forensically clear upfront, thanks to the minimalist raps and beats of ‘Fingerprints on the Drumkit’. It’s one of many highlights on an LP fuelled by humour, existentialism, self- deprecation, Beethoven, Buckfast and regret. Yes. (Nicola Meighan)
84 THE LIST 17 Oct–14 Nov 2013