MUSIC | Records
ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
FOLK/POETRY ALASDAIR ROBERTS & ROBIN ROBERTSON Hirta Songs (Stone Tapes) ●●●●● On Hirta Songs Alasdair Roberts and poet Robin Robertson set sail for the remote Hebridean archipelago of St Kilda. Evacuated in 1930, St Kilda was left to the vast colonies of seabirds who nest among its vertiginous sea stacks.
These songs and poems explore the geography, history and mythology of the islands, imagining life at the edge of the world.
The St Kildans’ diet was based around seabirds, and the opening songs depict the lengths the islanders would go to in their ‘harvestry of wild birds’. ‘A Fall of Sleet’ describes the islanders rowing to the gannet colony of Boreray, where the birds appear ‘like blowing ash’. The melody, based on the Gaelic song ‘Latha Inbhir Lòchaidh’, evokes a sense of tough men persevering against the elements, while a swooping fiddle captures their wonder at the birds ‘rising up and falling free’.
Elsewhere, the pair explore the island’s mythology. ‘The Plain of Spells’ lists the wild plants of the island known for their medicinal and magical properties. ‘The Drum Time’ imagines the islanders, temporarily stranded on Boreray, exhuming the ‘war pipes’, drum and fiddle of their ‘pagan’ music from the ‘long and low grave’ dug for them by a puritanical Kirk.
The song structures are less baroque and the arrangements
sparser than those of Roberts’ other 2013 album, A Wonder Working Stone, yet Hirta Songs is just as rich, summoning old, weird Scotland via Gaelic melodies and Robertson’s lyricism. Special mention goes to Corrina Hewat, whose beautiful harp provides reflective interludes to the songs and poems. (Stewart Smith)
POST-ROCK THERE WILL BE FIREWORKS The Dark, Dark Bright (Comets and Cartwheels) ●●●●●
Differing career paths forced geographical separation on There Will Be Fireworks’ Glasgow band members after the release of their critically acclaimed self-titled debut, but the resulting four-year gap has fortunately, and indelibly, influenced the follow-up. The Dark, Dark Bright is an emotive collection of songs about time and place, home and growing up too fast that somehow exceeds the very high standard set by the band’s debut.
The post-rock dynamics of their first album have been softened; the measured racket reduced – they still erupt occasionally but with a melancholic fury channelled into dynamic beauty. A spoken word intro with swells of orchestration leads into breathless noise on ‘River’, before fading into the gentle folk of ‘Roots’ – there are many influences poured into these songs, but all have a sadness burning at their core, a frustrated desire to slow the march of time and capture a wilting idea of home. Glasgow is central as vocalist Nicky McManus laments the loss of his dear green place while wandering Kelvingrove alone late at night and picturing his bloodied bones floating in the Clyde.
An eerie ambience underpins many of the songs, but for all its disquieting tones a sense of defiant optimism still pervades the more buoyant indie-pop tracks like ‘Youngblood’ or ‘South Street’. The quieter folk moments are more densely textured than ever, and layers of sound on tracks like ‘Lay Me Down’ are mesmeric, particularly those stamped with the elegant arrangements of the Cairn String Quartet.
Every sound appears to have been painstakingly placed, which makes for a thoroughly captivating listen. It’s a collection of chilly songs ablaze with the warmth of home; a melting pot of hope, frustration and memory. The Dark, Dark Bright is a rare type of album, as introspective as it is visceral – a stirring and thoughtful piece of work that confirms There Will Be Fireworks’ position as one of Scotland’s best bands. (Chris Tapley)
ROCK STEPHEN MALKMUS AND THE JICKS Wig Out at Jagbags (Domino) ●●●●● CHORAL/ELECTRONIC MARRAM/VARIOUS ARTISTS Sun Choir / Boats (Transgressive North) ●●●●●
With his nice haircut and clean clothes, Stephen Malkmus doesn’t immediately strike you as a rude boy of rock. Yet there he was a couple of years back, appealing to fans for a word that could replace ‘blowjob’ in the single ‘Senator’ to make the song radio-friendly (‘corn-dog’ ended up being the victorious noun). These two albums, along with an accompanying film narrated by Irvine Welsh, are the celebratory fruit of seven years’ work by up to 1000 individuals, including Jarvis Cocker, Max Tundra, Owen Pallett and Dan Deacon, on a project called Everything Is New.
Arguably far more objectionable is his claim in ‘Lariat’ that the 1980s (musically) Proceeds from the project, curated by the Edinburgh-based arts community
was ‘the best decade ever’. It certainly wasn’t the finest era in the career of Lou Reed, the man who was still alive when this record was made but who haunts many of its songs, from Malkmus’ occasionally bored-sounding vocal delivery to a more up-on-its-toes screw-you attitude that infiltrates tracks such as ‘Houston Hades’. There, Malkmus (who may be better known to some as the lead singer/ guitarist of indie rockers, Pavement, and one of the founders of Silver Jews, alongside David Berman) talks of towns that ‘look so impressive from a distance’ or in the brief ‘Rumble at the Rainbo’ when ‘this one’s for you granddad’ is bellowed as though The Young Ones’ Vyvyan Basterd had stormed the Jicks’ Ardennes studio in an adolescent fury. Perhaps the Zappa-like closer, ‘Surreal Teenagers’, is a generational counterbalance. The best bits arrive, fittingly, when the band (who Malkmus first began recording
with in 2000, during a Pavement hiatus) do get a chance to sound looser and funkier, particularly on ‘Chartjunk’ and ‘Independence Street’, or when Malkmus gets into a loungier frame of mind in ‘J Smoov’.
Transgressive North, will go to the charity Scottish Love in Action which houses and educates children of the ‘untouchable’ dalit caste in southeast India, and it is these very kids, in the guise of the Light of Love Children’s Choir, who are the stars of the whole venture.
Edinburgh-based outfit Marram have placed recordings of the children singing and chanting at the heart of Sun Choir to create an album of almost holistic electronica. Their hypnotic voices are sampled and woven into shimmering jazzy mantra ‘Amma’, become part of the hippy glitch fabric of ‘We Fly A Kite’ and lend a continuity to diverse sounds such as the aqueous prog of ‘The Butterfly, The Moon’ and the multi-layered maximalism of ‘Valuables’.
The companion Boats compilation features an array of international acts making
further use of the samples to produce more than two hours of mostly ambient soundscapes, from the woozy coffee table soul of White Hinterland’s ‘Like A Dove’ to the soothing chillout of Califone’s ‘These Mountains Are God’s Teeth’. A rent-a-sample reverie descends at points, only to be interrupted by the lean
Not quite sure what his frame of mind must have been to write a song entitled ‘Cinnamon & Lesbians’, but wilfully cheeky might cover it. And he’s in a defiantly playful mood on ‘Scattegories’, rhyming ‘Mott the Hoople’s’ with ‘got no scruples’. Ultimately, Malkmus doesn’t want to upset anyone: his aim is to jovially worm his way into your affections. A little sprinkling of true grit next time might do the trick. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Stephen Malkmus plays Òran Mór, Glasgow, Tue 14 Jan. retro-futuristic funk of ‘Weight in Song’ by American rapper Doseone or the forceful hard rock of Physical Forms’ ‘Sound Lie’. Elsewhere, the kids’ voices are creatively sampled and looped as a juddering, rhythmic pulse through Lucky Dragons’ ‘Between Suns’, and utilised more stridently by Ramona Falls and particularly Son Lux to colour the electro exotica of ‘My Father’s Children’. (Fiona Shepherd) ■ Album launch and film screening, Dominion Cinema, Edinburgh, Mon 20 Jan 2014.
96 THE LIST 12 Dec 2013–23 Jan 2014