MUSIC | Records
ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
ROCK LAND OF TALK Life After Youth (Saddle Creek) ●●●●● Life After Youth is unlike any previous release from Montreal band Land of Talk, emanating a sense of unexpected calm. The anticipated intensity of the instrumentation and of frontwoman and chief songwriter Liz Powell’s vocals have been toned down but, crucially, without
losing the fire or energy found in tracks such as ‘Speak to Me Bones’ from their 2006 EP Applause Cheer Boo Hiss.
‘This Time’ epitomises that shift in its more restrained approach, but retains the kind of memorable, dynamic chorus for which the band is known. This may be down to the change in Powell’s approach from a more guitar-based sound to something that incorporates synth and electronic loops to a greater extent. The experimental characteristics of tracks like ‘Spiritual Intimidation’ and tender first single ‘Inner Lover’ demonstrate the success of this tonal adjustment.
Elsewhere, there are clear elements of familiarity, notably in the twinkling guitar lines of ‘In Florida’ and the crunchy repetition of closing track ‘Macabre’. Powell’s vocals continue to be as assured and captivating as ever, especially on ‘Heartcore’ and ‘World Made’.
When a band takes a seven-year hiatus, there’s a lingering fear
‘hiatus’ may be code for ‘permanent break’, a legitimate concern when things went quiet in the wake of 2010 album Cloak and Cipher. In truth, Powell was facing a period of personal hardship which impacted on her creativity. Thankfully, this was temporary and after reuniting with original drummer Bucky Wheaton, she once again found her voice, producing a restorative record that traces the uncertainty, grief and disorientation of that period with profound clarity. (Arusa Qureshi) ■ Out Fri 19 May.
FOLK YORKSTON / THORNE / KHAN Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars (Domino) ●●●●●
When you hit upon an idea as good as this one, why not keep at it until you feel it’s been expended? The idea, in this case, being the strange convergence of three very different musicians whose styles inexplicably fuse in a manner which is beyond genre but very easy on the ear. Fife’s alternative folk songwriter James Yorkston, Isle of Wight-based jazz bassist Jon Thorne and Indian sarangi player Suhail Yusuf Khan first collaborated on last year’s Everything Sacred, and their highly capable team-up has produced another fine record a little more than 12 months later.
As the title of the album suggests, there seems to be a certain boldness this time, which leads to dexterous fusions of sound and intercontinental style. The opening ‘Chori, Chori’ is a propulsive mantra given voice by Khan, even as Yorkston’s guitar keeps pace with moody lines which could have come from the guitar of Richard Thompson. On ‘Samant Saarang / Just a Bloke’, the dynamic is turned on its head, the musical style distinctly of the east as Khan’s keening sarangi lines and rhythmic vocal percussion underpin Thorne’s absent-minded vocal musing that he’s ‘just a bloke . . . with a load on his mind . . . wanderin’ up the hill.’
There’s a redolence of the 1960s folk revival throughout Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars, with the sense of the traditional opening its mind to a hint of the psychedelic. Yorkston’s gorgeously weary vocal on ‘Bales’ echoes Nick Drake
and there’s a certain protest- singing acoustic energy to ‘False True Piya’. Many of the songs here, in whole or in part, come from the folk tradition, with Yorkston and Khan’s duet on ‘The Recruited Collier’ detaching the song from a sense of inherent anglocentricity, while ‘Halleluwah’ appears to be either a very loose cover of, or strongly influenced by, Can’s kosmiche classic. Such rich diversity sounds neither forced nor fake. (David Pollock) ■ Out Fri 7 Apr.
POSTMODERN INDIE FATHER JOHN MISTY Pure Comedy (Bella Union) ●●●●● LO-FI DIY THE LADYWELL LOUT After the Float Rush (Self-released) ●●●●●
Those who consider themselves ripe for some preachin’ will be doing backflips of devotional rapture come the arrival of this third album by sometime Fleet Foxes drummer Joshua Tillman. Under his Father John Misty alias, his Pure Comedy has been touted as a record which speaks vividly of its times, doing so in mighty great brush strokes of frustrated, hopeful, perplexed, euphoric lyricism and sparse, country-tinged rock which feels frayed around the edges.
This is protest music which doesn’t so much protest as write a lengthy thinkpiece for Medium on everything that’s wrong with the world and sits back to wait for the likes. But those words are wonderful with the tenderness of the music perfectly complementing the committed thoughtfulness. The title track sets out a powerful stall, a wearily amused takedown of the male power structure, particularly the kind that finds leverage in religion or money: ‘fashioning new gods so they can go on being godless animals’. Against a warm bank of horns, ‘Total Entertainment Forever’ shrugs
exasperatedly at the narcotic effects of the media, and ‘Things That Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution’ eulogises his own youthful fervour as he feels ‘the nightlife and the protests’ slip away. Tillman’s music is a silk glove for the clenched fist beneath it, a collective swoon of piano, acoustic guitar and subdued string arrangements. ‘A Bigger Paper Bag’ may have been written from a Presidential perspective
They say write about what you know. Doog Cameron, who records lo-fi documentary electronica from his bedroom base ‘in the depths of Central Belt Scotland’, appears to abide by that mantra as he attests that he’s been ‘spending most my life living in a jakey paradise’. In which case, he is to be pitied for the sights he has seen, sympathised with for the travail he has endured and congratulated for coming out the other side with this cathartic concept album on the hitherto untapped reservoir of psychodrama and street hassle which pervades the tradition of the smalltown Scottish gala day. After the Float Rush is his appreciation / exorcism of the local parade’s
annual Buckfast bacchanalia with its hopeless floats, feeble fairground, fried food and token bouncy castle conspiring to generate a relative sense of occasion. At times, it can be hard to discern Cameron’s muttered narration over the hand-stitched patchwork of Korg synthesisers, echoey distortion and lo-fi field samples of crowd noise, amplified announcements, accordions, flute bands and skittering drum’n’bass beats. The abiding effect is of a dream / nightmare sequence in a less stylised version of Trainspotting. His random perambulations with a dictaphone certainly reflect the chaotic
bustle while, over a bleak, bluesy acoustic guitar, he delivers ‘Ham Oan Piece’, an Arab Strap-like commentary on how virtually any communal celebration in Scotland becomes an excuse for a piss-up and the ensuing drunken
(‘I’ve got the world by the balls / am I supposed to behave?’) and ‘Two Wildly Different Perspectives on Both Sides’ offers stark and non-judgmental commentary about human division. It’s an album which reveals itself, through the stunning triangulation of love, courage and apocalypse of ‘In Twenty Years or So’, both monolithic in its wisdom and traumatised by the reverberating turmoil of its own sense of shaken certainty. (David Pollock) ■ Out Fri 7 Apr.
liaisons. Some of the shriller exchanges are captured on the eerie ‘Goan Go Away After the Float Rush’, later accompanied by a symphony of sirens as the situation deteriorates further. It’s not quite the sound of crying children on Lou Reed’s notoriously grim Berlin but many listeners will identify with this horror and with the baleful soused chorus of ‘Simply Depressed Again’, rendered to the tune of Tina Turner’s ‘The Best’. (Fiona Shepherd) ■ Out Mon 10 Apr.
90 THE LIST 1 Apr–31 May 2017