1 Future Of The Left - How To Stop Your Brain In An Accident
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
They were always bound to make an STN album of the year one day, but in the rest of the land FOTL seem to have become so much more famous for Andy Falkous' extra-curricularisms - that piracy blog, that Pitchfork retort, his interviews and between-song comments generally - that it increasingly seemed their music is going unrewarded. Their fourth album appears to have noticed and summarily turned up the dials, ramped up the abrasion and transformed into a jackhammer. The usual motifs are all there - the scalpel-sharp gritted teeth humour, the collective musical drill to the senses - but with Jimmy Watkins now thoroughly inducted into the newly rejigged line-up - Julia Ruzicka's rolling basslines have found a way of ramping up the approaching menace even further - the acidic guitars are meatier and spikier than they have been for a while, rolling with the punches, coiling before unloading the tension with a post-hardcore zeal. If Falco's lyrics are still the real USP his vocals are becoming more adaptable to fit, channelling his demons into something that wouldn't qualify for restraint in most. And while most songs head direct for the cerebral cortex, the always present temptation/risk to extend beyond the self-imposed boundaries into whatever comes to hand is more prevalent without sacrificing the overall image. There's an eccentrically satirical four and a half minutes of barely hinged laser precision vituperation voiced in an approximation of RP. There's a sub-two minute Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues-like assault with a kazoo chorus. There's a couple of songs that are virtually slow-paced. There are, of course, lines that don't appear anywhere else in rock's lexicon, simultaneously funny (Falco cites Half Man Half Biscuit as a key influence) and brutal, sarcastic and relatable, as suits the target. As social satire bludgeons with post-Albini guitars set to maim they've always been out there on their own; now they've reset their goals, reset their targets and fired themselves into the sun.
Showing posts with label albums of 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label albums of 2013. Show all posts
Friday, December 27, 2013
Thursday, December 26, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 2
2 Los Campesinos! - No Blues
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The only way was up. Having put Hello Sadness' protracted breakup pains behind him - and how pointedly against that period the notably capitalised NO BLUES title seems - Gareth and the rest haven't yet put death and exes behind him/them, and with his hyperliterate self-examination existentialism it's increasingly a band in his image whatever's going on behind him, but this seems a trimmer album in more ways than a renumbering of personnel. The dynamic shifts have moved slightly sideways, prominent keyboards returning, wild riffs toned down in favour of charges and textures. The melodies are simultaneously more confident and less easy to grasp hold of, the choruses stand out more but are less willing to grab and throw the listener into the centre of the chanting circle (despite an actual cheerleading troupe's employment on Avocado, Baby) Similarly Gareth still yelps and pleads his words but having come through what might be the worst his surface confidence is restored for the first time since he was a post-grad ATP kid. The revenge fantasy imagery and football references aren't there for the sake of it but to link and express greater truths and feelings, still with tongue comfortably in cheek. If every LC! album is a new diary year this is the mid-20s post-breakdown point at which it's realised there's still plenty of time to grab hold of your destiny despite yourself. Moreover, this is the first time they've properly sustained a grower, new references, emotional shifts and ornate musical patterns and hooks emerging all the time, being about developing momentum rather than exuberance. Many still want them to be the band they were in 2008 but this is if not cutting off their earlier selves then putting in a dotted line that differentiates what now seem two clear eras. They're now wry dramatists who consider the many deaths while sounding like being alive.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The only way was up. Having put Hello Sadness' protracted breakup pains behind him - and how pointedly against that period the notably capitalised NO BLUES title seems - Gareth and the rest haven't yet put death and exes behind him/them, and with his hyperliterate self-examination existentialism it's increasingly a band in his image whatever's going on behind him, but this seems a trimmer album in more ways than a renumbering of personnel. The dynamic shifts have moved slightly sideways, prominent keyboards returning, wild riffs toned down in favour of charges and textures. The melodies are simultaneously more confident and less easy to grasp hold of, the choruses stand out more but are less willing to grab and throw the listener into the centre of the chanting circle (despite an actual cheerleading troupe's employment on Avocado, Baby) Similarly Gareth still yelps and pleads his words but having come through what might be the worst his surface confidence is restored for the first time since he was a post-grad ATP kid. The revenge fantasy imagery and football references aren't there for the sake of it but to link and express greater truths and feelings, still with tongue comfortably in cheek. If every LC! album is a new diary year this is the mid-20s post-breakdown point at which it's realised there's still plenty of time to grab hold of your destiny despite yourself. Moreover, this is the first time they've properly sustained a grower, new references, emotional shifts and ornate musical patterns and hooks emerging all the time, being about developing momentum rather than exuberance. Many still want them to be the band they were in 2008 but this is if not cutting off their earlier selves then putting in a dotted line that differentiates what now seem two clear eras. They're now wry dramatists who consider the many deaths while sounding like being alive.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 4-3
4 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
After the extended midlife freakout of Grinderman and Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Cave and his slowly reformatting Bad Seeds took time to look at where they personally are in relation to what they'd just done. What that means is their most subtle record in some time, with Mick Harvey long gone Warren Ellis' relationship with atmospherics and spaciousness takes more of the centre stage. Against the vaunting bleakness Cave for his own part has largely dialled back from fire eyed bellowing to a a considerate timbre as befits the elliptical, liturgially minded spectator, undercutting emotions and voyeuristic descriptions and ideas with the knowledge that this increasingly belongs to other people. And then he went and did this.
3 Bill Callahan - Dream River
[iTunes] [Amazon]
The best thing Callahan has released since he retired the Smog soubriquet, it's also the thing he's done under his own name that sounds most like Smog. That is to say, music that loops and circles around his ever more Scotch-warmed honeyed voice and its metaphor heavy, narrative suggestive story-songs rather than, as late, finds its groove and sticks there. Resonant allusions - flight, spring, wind and water - recur, guitar, flute and hand percussion are used to colour in the lyrical landscapes, a Lambchop-type country-soul feel is evoked and everything and everyone seems more content and meditative with and around their situation, observing nature take its course. For one he's enjoying living, even romance. If this is Callahan at his most content, he's somehow found a way not to let it dull down his style.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
After the extended midlife freakout of Grinderman and Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Cave and his slowly reformatting Bad Seeds took time to look at where they personally are in relation to what they'd just done. What that means is their most subtle record in some time, with Mick Harvey long gone Warren Ellis' relationship with atmospherics and spaciousness takes more of the centre stage. Against the vaunting bleakness Cave for his own part has largely dialled back from fire eyed bellowing to a a considerate timbre as befits the elliptical, liturgially minded spectator, undercutting emotions and voyeuristic descriptions and ideas with the knowledge that this increasingly belongs to other people. And then he went and did this.
3 Bill Callahan - Dream River
[iTunes] [Amazon]
The best thing Callahan has released since he retired the Smog soubriquet, it's also the thing he's done under his own name that sounds most like Smog. That is to say, music that loops and circles around his ever more Scotch-warmed honeyed voice and its metaphor heavy, narrative suggestive story-songs rather than, as late, finds its groove and sticks there. Resonant allusions - flight, spring, wind and water - recur, guitar, flute and hand percussion are used to colour in the lyrical landscapes, a Lambchop-type country-soul feel is evoked and everything and everyone seems more content and meditative with and around their situation, observing nature take its course. For one he's enjoying living, even romance. If this is Callahan at his most content, he's somehow found a way not to let it dull down his style.
Monday, December 23, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 6-5
6 Sky Larkin - Motto
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
If Sky Larkin, now three albums and three lineups down, have sometimes seemed a little like the band that got left behind, this is the album where they reared up and kicked out. Raised on nervous tension and nervous energy alike, the addition of a second guitar beefed up the punch and spiked tautness of their sound while bringing out the best of the pair that were there all along, Nestor Matthews kicking seven shades out of his kit while Katie Harkin's lyrics play with phonetic sounds and meanings while retaining a personal truth and standpoint at their core, unafraid to bring out the dark, sung like she still feels the emotional strain. They feel that much bigger for the experiences, charging for their lives.
5 Joanna Gruesome - Weird Sister
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Every year this list includes an album like this perhaps surprisingly high up - a record that's not groundbreakingly original or interestingly developed but roars with the passion of youth, the "sort of band you'd want to be in" gambit. Weird Sister, a record that straps rocket boosters to fuzzbomb janglepop, is just such an album. It's because they've got the knack of building a dreamy lo-fi melody - and there are strong melodies, hooks, choruses, all that - and then letting a distorted, spiky riff slash it apart from the centre outwards while Alanna McArdle (un)comfortably handles both dispassionate sweetness and feral screaming. It's not big, though it can be clever, but right here and now it seems impossibly exciting.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
If Sky Larkin, now three albums and three lineups down, have sometimes seemed a little like the band that got left behind, this is the album where they reared up and kicked out. Raised on nervous tension and nervous energy alike, the addition of a second guitar beefed up the punch and spiked tautness of their sound while bringing out the best of the pair that were there all along, Nestor Matthews kicking seven shades out of his kit while Katie Harkin's lyrics play with phonetic sounds and meanings while retaining a personal truth and standpoint at their core, unafraid to bring out the dark, sung like she still feels the emotional strain. They feel that much bigger for the experiences, charging for their lives.
5 Joanna Gruesome - Weird Sister
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Every year this list includes an album like this perhaps surprisingly high up - a record that's not groundbreakingly original or interestingly developed but roars with the passion of youth, the "sort of band you'd want to be in" gambit. Weird Sister, a record that straps rocket boosters to fuzzbomb janglepop, is just such an album. It's because they've got the knack of building a dreamy lo-fi melody - and there are strong melodies, hooks, choruses, all that - and then letting a distorted, spiky riff slash it apart from the centre outwards while Alanna McArdle (un)comfortably handles both dispassionate sweetness and feral screaming. It's not big, though it can be clever, but right here and now it seems impossibly exciting.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 8-7
8 Haiku Salut - Tricolore
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
"Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other", the Derbyshire multi-instrumentalist trio call this sound, which does this bit out of a job. You might also add a twisted about version of post-rock's use of slow build, repetition and instrumental flourishes, deployed here so seemingly clashing parts - a fingerpicked acoustic, an accordion, an 8-bit electronic sample - gradually coalesce into form fitted shape, complex layers developing layers ande depth that can be as much floating and euphoric as pinpricks in existing melodic structure. Often incapable of sitting still, the loops and flourishes serve to both develop its baroque nature and then pull it apart. It's an album that knows its touchstones, whether Yann Tiersen, Haruki Murakami or Wes Anderson, but really sounds like nobody else.
7 Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The hi-life records may have been put away but Vampire Weekend's third album is just as studded with borrowed moves: R&B and gospel, pastoral synths and torch song languidness. This is their real world album, still any number of too-clever-by-half allusions but deployed not as self-aware signifiers but as collateral in the process of maturing. Death and its eventual inevitability without prior achievement is a semi-regular visitor. The studio becomes another instrument, as befits a band who now know how to use space and when to actually flood the aural spectrum, and if Rostam Batmanglij still too readily goes for the harpsichord setting it's less novelty, more scene-setting. This is VW's New York post-grad album, what happens when the socialites have to set up home for themselves.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
"Baroque-Pop-Folktronic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other", the Derbyshire multi-instrumentalist trio call this sound, which does this bit out of a job. You might also add a twisted about version of post-rock's use of slow build, repetition and instrumental flourishes, deployed here so seemingly clashing parts - a fingerpicked acoustic, an accordion, an 8-bit electronic sample - gradually coalesce into form fitted shape, complex layers developing layers ande depth that can be as much floating and euphoric as pinpricks in existing melodic structure. Often incapable of sitting still, the loops and flourishes serve to both develop its baroque nature and then pull it apart. It's an album that knows its touchstones, whether Yann Tiersen, Haruki Murakami or Wes Anderson, but really sounds like nobody else.
7 Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The hi-life records may have been put away but Vampire Weekend's third album is just as studded with borrowed moves: R&B and gospel, pastoral synths and torch song languidness. This is their real world album, still any number of too-clever-by-half allusions but deployed not as self-aware signifiers but as collateral in the process of maturing. Death and its eventual inevitability without prior achievement is a semi-regular visitor. The studio becomes another instrument, as befits a band who now know how to use space and when to actually flood the aural spectrum, and if Rostam Batmanglij still too readily goes for the harpsichord setting it's less novelty, more scene-setting. This is VW's New York post-grad album, what happens when the socialites have to set up home for themselves.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 10-9
10 Public Service Broadcasting - Inform - Educate - Entertain
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
From Steinski to the Books vocal sampling has been reworked and repurposed to greater ends, but it's surprising nobody really thought of taking it in PSB's chosen direction before. Even without the public information films, newsreel stock and documentary film voiceovers it'd be a fascinating expedition, based on post-rock's eddying drones and slow build surges while taking in charging kosmiche and Neu!-flavoured Krautrock, bubbling layers of synth and beats, Eno-esque repetition, hauntology's fear of the dark and the odd run of bluegrass banjo. If the underlying sentiments are unashamedly nostalgic, evoking the spirit of invention and the adventurers of the age, the outcome skews danceable rhythms into fluid shapes and is ultimately, mightily euphoric.
9 Jetplane Landing - Don't Try
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
In a year short on great post-hardcore records, some old stagers returned with a blitzkrieg. Picking up from the records before the last album Backlash Cop, itself now six years old, might seem a retrogressive move and Andrew Ferris' return to his native Derry may inform at least a couple of tracks but time isn't mellowing either the knife-fight power of the riffage that twists in on itself before racing towards the cliff or the speed, determination and linguistic athleticism of Ferris' delivery. There's a few pop melodies that don't seem commercial, huge crashing buzzsaw guitar hooks, chantalong bits and the angriest track is about lost Beat poet Gregory Corso. Standard JPL, then, but so much more than standardisation really.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
From Steinski to the Books vocal sampling has been reworked and repurposed to greater ends, but it's surprising nobody really thought of taking it in PSB's chosen direction before. Even without the public information films, newsreel stock and documentary film voiceovers it'd be a fascinating expedition, based on post-rock's eddying drones and slow build surges while taking in charging kosmiche and Neu!-flavoured Krautrock, bubbling layers of synth and beats, Eno-esque repetition, hauntology's fear of the dark and the odd run of bluegrass banjo. If the underlying sentiments are unashamedly nostalgic, evoking the spirit of invention and the adventurers of the age, the outcome skews danceable rhythms into fluid shapes and is ultimately, mightily euphoric.
9 Jetplane Landing - Don't Try
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
In a year short on great post-hardcore records, some old stagers returned with a blitzkrieg. Picking up from the records before the last album Backlash Cop, itself now six years old, might seem a retrogressive move and Andrew Ferris' return to his native Derry may inform at least a couple of tracks but time isn't mellowing either the knife-fight power of the riffage that twists in on itself before racing towards the cliff or the speed, determination and linguistic athleticism of Ferris' delivery. There's a few pop melodies that don't seem commercial, huge crashing buzzsaw guitar hooks, chantalong bits and the angriest track is about lost Beat poet Gregory Corso. Standard JPL, then, but so much more than standardisation really.
Friday, December 20, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 12-11
12 Nadine Shah - Love Your Dum And Mad
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Not to take away from Shah's own vision, but after Beth Jeans Houghton last year Ben Hillier seems to have sorted the art of producing singular female singer-songwriters who inhabit their own slow-burning headspace (both Geordies, too) Shah's soaringly emotive, velvety jazz-trained vocals bring a power to songs of darkness and betrayal that inhabit a place where escape is possible but lessons still have to be learned on what it is to fall out of love/favour/care. While never feelingl sorry for itself or coasting on wallowing, that atmosphere and the brooding backing with odd little touches heightens Shah's confessional, fearless feel.
11 Laura Marling - Once I Was An Eagle
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The four-song suite that opens the album finds Marling in flux, attempting to resolve how emotional instability can ever triumph, finding strength in adversity. Her most unashamed Joni/Bob-like sounding record yet, it's an occasionally uncomfortably lengthy recce through the rubble of a past of personal relationships, trading what wasn't even before now a fulsome sound for a more directly close-miked confessional aura, an intensity bordering on deliberately trained catharsis that acknowledges naivety but in denial, trusting in love even when she knows she shouldn't, developing into vengeance before insecurity rears its head. In further understanding herself, Marling's command of her lyrically driven id is making her more and more accomplished.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Not to take away from Shah's own vision, but after Beth Jeans Houghton last year Ben Hillier seems to have sorted the art of producing singular female singer-songwriters who inhabit their own slow-burning headspace (both Geordies, too) Shah's soaringly emotive, velvety jazz-trained vocals bring a power to songs of darkness and betrayal that inhabit a place where escape is possible but lessons still have to be learned on what it is to fall out of love/favour/care. While never feelingl sorry for itself or coasting on wallowing, that atmosphere and the brooding backing with odd little touches heightens Shah's confessional, fearless feel.
11 Laura Marling - Once I Was An Eagle
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The four-song suite that opens the album finds Marling in flux, attempting to resolve how emotional instability can ever triumph, finding strength in adversity. Her most unashamed Joni/Bob-like sounding record yet, it's an occasionally uncomfortably lengthy recce through the rubble of a past of personal relationships, trading what wasn't even before now a fulsome sound for a more directly close-miked confessional aura, an intensity bordering on deliberately trained catharsis that acknowledges naivety but in denial, trusting in love even when she knows she shouldn't, developing into vengeance before insecurity rears its head. In further understanding herself, Marling's command of her lyrically driven id is making her more and more accomplished.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 14-13
14 Daughter - If You Leave
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Cathartically heavy, gloomy atmospherically inclined female fronted bands seem two-a-penny these days; what Elena Tonra (and her two bandmates) have is a desperation and desolation really as two sides of the same coin. Tonra's adaptable vocals, leaning between angelically underplayed and stratospheric appealling to the fates and occasionally cracking under the strain, practically show off the emotional bruising. Beneath her guitars ripple across the icy atmosphere, the rushes of post-rock meeting shards of treated, broken riff before next time dropping into rhythmic folky fingerpicking. The listener might just feel emptied out themselves by the end, such is the detail implicit in the self-loathing that follows long dark nights of the romantic soul.
13 The Superman Revenge Squad Band - There Is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passage Of Time
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Most don't realise it yet, but Ben Parker might be Britain's most acute sadsack of a lyricist. Delivery hanging on for dear life to the tune, Parker cuts a self-reflexive figure feeling lost amid the rush of modern life, hanging on to past pop culture, worked through metaphor and self-deprecation like life aids. Reworking some of his previous solo recordings and a few new songs with a full band, including his brother and Nosferatu D2 drumming octoped Adam, an oddly shaped broader palette that manages to be awkward and lush simultaneously brings out the longing and determination behind these extraordinarily rendered tales of bittersweet break-ups and personal disenfranchisement.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Cathartically heavy, gloomy atmospherically inclined female fronted bands seem two-a-penny these days; what Elena Tonra (and her two bandmates) have is a desperation and desolation really as two sides of the same coin. Tonra's adaptable vocals, leaning between angelically underplayed and stratospheric appealling to the fates and occasionally cracking under the strain, practically show off the emotional bruising. Beneath her guitars ripple across the icy atmosphere, the rushes of post-rock meeting shards of treated, broken riff before next time dropping into rhythmic folky fingerpicking. The listener might just feel emptied out themselves by the end, such is the detail implicit in the self-loathing that follows long dark nights of the romantic soul.
13 The Superman Revenge Squad Band - There Is Nothing More Frightening Than The Passage Of Time
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Most don't realise it yet, but Ben Parker might be Britain's most acute sadsack of a lyricist. Delivery hanging on for dear life to the tune, Parker cuts a self-reflexive figure feeling lost amid the rush of modern life, hanging on to past pop culture, worked through metaphor and self-deprecation like life aids. Reworking some of his previous solo recordings and a few new songs with a full band, including his brother and Nosferatu D2 drumming octoped Adam, an oddly shaped broader palette that manages to be awkward and lush simultaneously brings out the longing and determination behind these extraordinarily rendered tales of bittersweet break-ups and personal disenfranchisement.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 17-15
17 Summer Camp - Summer Camp
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Having put Condale-ish things aside, Elizabeth and Jeremy decided it was time to check where they were ultimately up to. Much as it's still centred on the Instagram synths and slightly askew melodic sense we're already used to, the sound branches out into well trodden paths - pulsing electro, retro disco, R&B and hip-hop production tricks, James Murphy half-inching - and seem more personal in their dealings with what love means and hope for something better while still sounding like this area the duo have already set up for themselves, one of easy warmth and Sankey's soaring vocals. It's an unashamed modern pop record, but not as straightforward as that.
16 Julia Holter - Loud City Song
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The scale and opacity of a song-cycle for the novella/film Gigi - not that not knowing about it precludes liking the record - might overcome lesser talents, but by placing her ambitions high Holter lands in a place that's coated with visualisations of high society opulence being led astray, subsumed in so much slow motion orchestration and soluble electroncs it feels like it has its own gravitational field. Some songs are more pastoral mini-symphonies than songs in the pop music idiom, others cleave to nothing but their own jumpiness, an individualist (if post-Kate Bush via Talk Talk) take on widescreen dramatics within its own internal narrative.
15 Savages - Silence Yourself
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
See, everyone, this is *also* what post-punk was. The Siouxsie & The Banshees comparison could be easily thrown about, what with Jehnny Beth's stentorian presence over the kind of stereoscopic guitar sound that was John McGeogh's domain, but to transcend such influences requires a level of self-belief and tightness disguised as looseness to complement the dead-eye focus. They sound like a band rushing to keep up with each other, which is what all the best all-out post-punk bands did - if we're talking easy influences there's easily as much Wire and Peter Hook in there - mastering palpably taut tension and spectacular release. And then it ends with an uneasy jazz piece.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Having put Condale-ish things aside, Elizabeth and Jeremy decided it was time to check where they were ultimately up to. Much as it's still centred on the Instagram synths and slightly askew melodic sense we're already used to, the sound branches out into well trodden paths - pulsing electro, retro disco, R&B and hip-hop production tricks, James Murphy half-inching - and seem more personal in their dealings with what love means and hope for something better while still sounding like this area the duo have already set up for themselves, one of easy warmth and Sankey's soaring vocals. It's an unashamed modern pop record, but not as straightforward as that.
16 Julia Holter - Loud City Song
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The scale and opacity of a song-cycle for the novella/film Gigi - not that not knowing about it precludes liking the record - might overcome lesser talents, but by placing her ambitions high Holter lands in a place that's coated with visualisations of high society opulence being led astray, subsumed in so much slow motion orchestration and soluble electroncs it feels like it has its own gravitational field. Some songs are more pastoral mini-symphonies than songs in the pop music idiom, others cleave to nothing but their own jumpiness, an individualist (if post-Kate Bush via Talk Talk) take on widescreen dramatics within its own internal narrative.
15 Savages - Silence Yourself
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
See, everyone, this is *also* what post-punk was. The Siouxsie & The Banshees comparison could be easily thrown about, what with Jehnny Beth's stentorian presence over the kind of stereoscopic guitar sound that was John McGeogh's domain, but to transcend such influences requires a level of self-belief and tightness disguised as looseness to complement the dead-eye focus. They sound like a band rushing to keep up with each other, which is what all the best all-out post-punk bands did - if we're talking easy influences there's easily as much Wire and Peter Hook in there - mastering palpably taut tension and spectacular release. And then it ends with an uneasy jazz piece.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 20-18
20 Low - The Invisible Way
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Low haven't been slowcore as such for a while now, but their raw delicacy still requires taking the time and effort to lose yourself in. This tenth album, for its occasional nods at gospel and the Velvets, is still full of empty space and carefully arranged instrumentation around the room's edges but it's the most intricately layered and beauteous work they've produced for a good while. It invokes a stillness in time and the winds within its textures, while Alan and Mimi harmonise beautifully, making both their phrasing and the shades underneath mean that much more as they spin stories of personal heartbreak, redemption and a kind of eventual joyousness.
19 Islet - Released By The Movement
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The perpetual motion machine that is live Islet hasn't always suited being placed in perpetuity onto tape, so this time they decided to record as-live in various bedrooms. As always there's something straining to escape between the arrythmic marches, synth drones and the vocal exchange of cryptic oaths, introducing discordant quasi-tropicalia overheatedness to blindingly technicolour psychedelia and letting them fight it out to the death. It's a complete single work, floating ambient mood passages between the popping motorik frenzies and invention of space-indie. Tripping over itself with ideas, woozy with both possibilities and a metaphorical version of the bends, it needs to lie down in a darkened room.
18 Kiran Leonard - Bowler Hat Soup
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Clearly some kind of savant, the sixteen tracks on the then 17 year old uber-multi-instrumentalist's first properly released album hop joyfully between genres like a Todd Rundgren for the bedroom pop set. His type of troubled singer-songwriters are Harry Nilsson and Tom Waits rather than Barrett or Walker, but Van Dyke Parks is a more common through road of an influence for someone equally comfortable with music hall Kinksisms, baroquely orchestrated cracked balladry, fuzzy power-pop that falls into its own black hole and piano-led prog-pop ambitions, often employing the richest of developing croons, you feel post-folkish tags don't so much fail to constrain him as tell so little of the tale.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Low haven't been slowcore as such for a while now, but their raw delicacy still requires taking the time and effort to lose yourself in. This tenth album, for its occasional nods at gospel and the Velvets, is still full of empty space and carefully arranged instrumentation around the room's edges but it's the most intricately layered and beauteous work they've produced for a good while. It invokes a stillness in time and the winds within its textures, while Alan and Mimi harmonise beautifully, making both their phrasing and the shades underneath mean that much more as they spin stories of personal heartbreak, redemption and a kind of eventual joyousness.
19 Islet - Released By The Movement
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
The perpetual motion machine that is live Islet hasn't always suited being placed in perpetuity onto tape, so this time they decided to record as-live in various bedrooms. As always there's something straining to escape between the arrythmic marches, synth drones and the vocal exchange of cryptic oaths, introducing discordant quasi-tropicalia overheatedness to blindingly technicolour psychedelia and letting them fight it out to the death. It's a complete single work, floating ambient mood passages between the popping motorik frenzies and invention of space-indie. Tripping over itself with ideas, woozy with both possibilities and a metaphorical version of the bends, it needs to lie down in a darkened room.
18 Kiran Leonard - Bowler Hat Soup
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Clearly some kind of savant, the sixteen tracks on the then 17 year old uber-multi-instrumentalist's first properly released album hop joyfully between genres like a Todd Rundgren for the bedroom pop set. His type of troubled singer-songwriters are Harry Nilsson and Tom Waits rather than Barrett or Walker, but Van Dyke Parks is a more common through road of an influence for someone equally comfortable with music hall Kinksisms, baroquely orchestrated cracked balladry, fuzzy power-pop that falls into its own black hole and piano-led prog-pop ambitions, often employing the richest of developing croons, you feel post-folkish tags don't so much fail to constrain him as tell so little of the tale.
Monday, December 16, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: 25-21
25 Widowspeak - Almanac
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Having emerged as spaghetti western dreamers their second album headed further into the misty woods, forgoeing the twang in favour of wood crafted floating American gothic, finding a decaying heart in the pastoral, aided by Molly Hamilton's vocal similarities to the Hope Sandoval/Margo Timmins archetype. But that's not all, as inscrutable uncoling guitars of a Warpaint bent merge with charging rhythms and the odd heroic solo. It can handle a cinematic grandeur, but it can also sound like FM classic rock getting lost in the haunted forest well after dark. More relatable and romantic than before, the fog of emotions suits them well.
24 The River Cry - The River Cry
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
If she'll forgive me for opening like this, who knew the bassist out of JJ72 had this in her? Having retreated to the Irish coast, Hilary Woods took to the piano and in her own time crafted a record of haunting lushness, looking out to sea and seeing lands lost and hope where once there was actuality. The reverb laden minimal instrumentation gives an extra spacious feel to the desolation, a trembling filmic reach that evokes coastal place and autumnal time just as well as the similarly piano-led PJ Harvey's White Chalk, marinaded in long dried tears and the sweat cost chasing lost causes.
23 Trips And Falls - The Inevitable Consequences Of Your Stupid Behavior
[iTunes] [Spotify] [direct]
The third UK-released album by the Montreal collective is just as jagged around the edges and tricky to pin down to simplistic terms as the first two, but there's been a paradigm shift from ornateness into the ramshackle. Songs turn from tentative to charging in a heartbeat, overlays folkified vocal stylings as likely with circling, itchy electrics as hushed acoustics, occasionally straining for the anthemic only to plunge an icy dagger through its own Psychedelic Furs in a blender ambitions. Amid all of this it still retains a heartfelt core, tying its jumping bean ambitions and its attendant noise and collapsing structures together with frayed heartstrings.
22 His Clancyness - Vicious
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Having progressed through the ornate bite of A Classic Education and the drifting quasi-chillwave of his early solo material, Jonathan Clancy morphed into something akin to the psychedelia revival-of-sorts, still with hints of drifting, dreaming dreampop but rooted in something fuzzier and earthier, starting in lo-fi bedroom pop range but firing off in all directions, semi-acoustic fragility one minute, retro synth patterns the next, glossy technicolour or rough edged, making sure it always maintains a similar grounding wherever the quixotic arrangement impulses pull and push. Never taking the simple route, always questioning what and where its narrative point is, there's potential to grow within its questing confidence.
21 Spectral Park - Spectral Park
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
If this was the year neo-psychedelia started swallowing itself whole, at least it's given people like Luke Donovan full reign to try and reshape their peculiar overflow of ideas and crates of offbeat samples into pop songs. In his case the influence is in the mono joy of confusion stemming from the Zombies and early Pink Floyd, recorded in just short of full fidelity as hooks, scraps of melodies and bits of something intangible fall on top of each other to create actively teetering monuments of exotica-flavoured fantasias, bubblegum melodies for choruses attempting to sit atop a mania on the edge of motion sickness.
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Having emerged as spaghetti western dreamers their second album headed further into the misty woods, forgoeing the twang in favour of wood crafted floating American gothic, finding a decaying heart in the pastoral, aided by Molly Hamilton's vocal similarities to the Hope Sandoval/Margo Timmins archetype. But that's not all, as inscrutable uncoling guitars of a Warpaint bent merge with charging rhythms and the odd heroic solo. It can handle a cinematic grandeur, but it can also sound like FM classic rock getting lost in the haunted forest well after dark. More relatable and romantic than before, the fog of emotions suits them well.
24 The River Cry - The River Cry
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
If she'll forgive me for opening like this, who knew the bassist out of JJ72 had this in her? Having retreated to the Irish coast, Hilary Woods took to the piano and in her own time crafted a record of haunting lushness, looking out to sea and seeing lands lost and hope where once there was actuality. The reverb laden minimal instrumentation gives an extra spacious feel to the desolation, a trembling filmic reach that evokes coastal place and autumnal time just as well as the similarly piano-led PJ Harvey's White Chalk, marinaded in long dried tears and the sweat cost chasing lost causes.
23 Trips And Falls - The Inevitable Consequences Of Your Stupid Behavior
[iTunes] [Spotify] [direct]
The third UK-released album by the Montreal collective is just as jagged around the edges and tricky to pin down to simplistic terms as the first two, but there's been a paradigm shift from ornateness into the ramshackle. Songs turn from tentative to charging in a heartbeat, overlays folkified vocal stylings as likely with circling, itchy electrics as hushed acoustics, occasionally straining for the anthemic only to plunge an icy dagger through its own Psychedelic Furs in a blender ambitions. Amid all of this it still retains a heartfelt core, tying its jumping bean ambitions and its attendant noise and collapsing structures together with frayed heartstrings.
22 His Clancyness - Vicious
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
Having progressed through the ornate bite of A Classic Education and the drifting quasi-chillwave of his early solo material, Jonathan Clancy morphed into something akin to the psychedelia revival-of-sorts, still with hints of drifting, dreaming dreampop but rooted in something fuzzier and earthier, starting in lo-fi bedroom pop range but firing off in all directions, semi-acoustic fragility one minute, retro synth patterns the next, glossy technicolour or rough edged, making sure it always maintains a similar grounding wherever the quixotic arrangement impulses pull and push. Never taking the simple route, always questioning what and where its narrative point is, there's potential to grow within its questing confidence.
21 Spectral Park - Spectral Park
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
If this was the year neo-psychedelia started swallowing itself whole, at least it's given people like Luke Donovan full reign to try and reshape their peculiar overflow of ideas and crates of offbeat samples into pop songs. In his case the influence is in the mono joy of confusion stemming from the Zombies and early Pink Floyd, recorded in just short of full fidelity as hooks, scraps of melodies and bits of something intangible fall on top of each other to create actively teetering monuments of exotica-flavoured fantasias, bubblegum melodies for choruses attempting to sit atop a mania on the edge of motion sickness.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
STN Top 50 Albums Of 2013: the bottom half
50 Buke & Gase - General Dome
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: General Dome
49 Alessi's Ark - The Still Life
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: The Rain
48 The Electric Soft Parade - Idiots
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Brother, You Must Walk Your Path Alone
47 The Wave Pictures - City Forgiveness
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Lisbon
46 Just Handshakes - Say It
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Bandcamp]
RIYL: London Bound
45 Woodpigeon - Thumbtacks And Glue
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Red Rover, Red Rover
44 Georgia Ruth - Week Of Pines
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Week Of Pines
43 Local Natives - Hummingbird
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Heavy Feet
42 Totem Terrors - Repeat Play Torrent Rar
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Bandcamp]
RIYL: Weather Controller
41 Ice, Sea, Dead People - If It’s Broken, Break It More
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: You Could Be A Model
40 Andrew Paul Regan - Dinas Powys
[Bandcamp]
RIYL: Time Crisis, 1982
39 Laura J Martin - Dazzle Days
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Red Flag
38 Mat Riviere - Not Even Doom Music
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Bandcamp]
RIYL: Wool
37 Euros Childs - Situation Comedy
[direct download] [Amazon]
RIYL: Tête à Tête
36 The Crimea - Square Moon
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Last Plane Out Of Saigon
35 Cloud - Comfort Songs
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Cars & It's Autumn
34 Ghostpoet - Some Say I So I Say Light
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Them Waters
33 Shopping - Consumer Complaints
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: In Other Words
32 Mazzy Star - Seasons Of Your Day
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: In The Kingdom
31 Cloud Boat - Book Of Hours
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Wanderlust
30 Everything Everything - Arc
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Cough Cough
29 My Bloody Valentine - m b v
[direct purchase] [Amazon]
RIYL: In Another Way
28 Arcade Fire - Reflektor
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Reflektor
27 Sweet Baboo - Ships
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: If I Died
26 Rick Redbeard - No Selfish Heart
[iTunes] [Amazon]
RIYL: Now We're Dancing
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: General Dome
49 Alessi's Ark - The Still Life
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: The Rain
48 The Electric Soft Parade - Idiots
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Brother, You Must Walk Your Path Alone
47 The Wave Pictures - City Forgiveness
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Lisbon
46 Just Handshakes - Say It
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Bandcamp]
RIYL: London Bound
45 Woodpigeon - Thumbtacks And Glue
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Red Rover, Red Rover
44 Georgia Ruth - Week Of Pines
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Week Of Pines
43 Local Natives - Hummingbird
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Heavy Feet
42 Totem Terrors - Repeat Play Torrent Rar
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Bandcamp]
RIYL: Weather Controller
41 Ice, Sea, Dead People - If It’s Broken, Break It More
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: You Could Be A Model
40 Andrew Paul Regan - Dinas Powys
[Bandcamp]
RIYL: Time Crisis, 1982
39 Laura J Martin - Dazzle Days
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Red Flag
38 Mat Riviere - Not Even Doom Music
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Bandcamp]
RIYL: Wool
37 Euros Childs - Situation Comedy
[direct download] [Amazon]
RIYL: Tête à Tête
36 The Crimea - Square Moon
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Last Plane Out Of Saigon
35 Cloud - Comfort Songs
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Cars & It's Autumn
34 Ghostpoet - Some Say I So I Say Light
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Them Waters
33 Shopping - Consumer Complaints
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: In Other Words
32 Mazzy Star - Seasons Of Your Day
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: In The Kingdom
31 Cloud Boat - Book Of Hours
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Wanderlust
30 Everything Everything - Arc
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Cough Cough
29 My Bloody Valentine - m b v
[direct purchase] [Amazon]
RIYL: In Another Way
28 Arcade Fire - Reflektor
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: Reflektor
27 Sweet Baboo - Ships
[iTunes] [Spotify] [Amazon]
RIYL: If I Died
26 Rick Redbeard - No Selfish Heart
[iTunes] [Amazon]
RIYL: Now We're Dancing
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