Reindeer Armies

And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:04:00 +0100

Phosphorescent at Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich (Sunday 5th June 2011)

“They tumble and fight, and they’re beautiful.”

The four of them stand staggered in front of me, watching the band that’s describing them so perfectly.

It’s my last night at university before I return home. I’m watching Phosphorescent with my closest friends. The people who held on. The people who allowed me to hold on.

It hasn’t been an easy journey. We’ve had our differences. We’ve fought and fallen out. But the fire that surrounded us ultimately served to cement our friendship. That one line from the song ‘Wolves’ encapsulates everything I found at university. Everything it means to me.

Intimacy. Struggle. Awe.

And I’m listening to the music, wondering at the symmetry of it all. Life really does move in circles. This has happened before.

I discovered Phosphorescent - the music of Mathew Houck - in my first year at university: winter, returning from a late-afternoon lecture, sun set, sky dark, room cold, homesick, and I’d play the magnificent album Pride louder than I probably should have done in retrospect. Not to dissipate my melancholia, but to blast it. To envelope myself in it, in the hope that it would burn itself out quicker.

Stopping a burning oil well with an explosion. Starving it of oxygen.

And it worked every time. I blanketed the album on my life, and it would map together so perfectly that my anxiety would become more manageable. More cinematic. More stylised. I’d become a finite character I could analyse. I was able to take my troubles with a pinch of salt.

Houck has the heart of a country singer. And it’s just as torn and beat up as the hearts belonging to the greats of the genre. But he’s re-imagined the sound and revivified it, and he plays it with the energy and insight of a young man living in modern times. His music isn’t dusty homage; it simply borrows the best, most visceral subjects and motifs of country music, and whittles them into something more seductive.

So, with the help of Pride, I was able to move on. I become sure of myself and less dependant on Phosphorescent’s melancholy majesty.

But yesterday I wandered into Norwich Arts Centre on a whim – a place I rarely wander into – and the first thing I saw was a poster telling me that I should see a Phosphorescent show the next evening.

Now I find myself standing in a converted church on my last night, and Mathew Houck has returned with a new album. Not returned, he’s been around. But I need assurance once more, and he’s got a map I can borrow. My friends’ silhouettes quiver in the corner of my mind, and I hope I don’t forget this.

“They tumble and fight, and they’re beautiful.”

Don't dream of yesterday.

Tue, 17 May 2011 12:21:00 +0100

The music of Noah And The Whale was the official soundtrack to my time at university. Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down came out shortly before my carefree first year, during which I listened to little else. The following year, The First Days Of Spring was released, which kept me company in the winter months during a bout of chronic fatigue. I have now finished my third and final year of university, and I’ve already succumbed to the ‘graduation blues’. Once again, Noah And The Whale’s music presents an uncannily accurate reflection of my own situation. Something’s out of place. Something’s leaving. Something’s dying.

This isn’t the Noah And The Whale I know. And I don’t mean that like some sort of “Judas”-shouting folk puritan. Last Night On Earth is not an evolution. It’s not a step forward, it’s a regression. The album begins with ‘Life Is Life’ - an apparent statement of revolution; the band evidently want to separate themselves from the anguish of The First Days Of Spring and the “Nu Folk” that they have been associated with for so long.

But it falls short of revolution - of innovation - and instead lands on pastiche. On mimicry.

‘Life Is Life’ is just too familiar, both conceptually and sonically. The synth and drum-machine Noah And The Whale have inexplicably adopted make the song sound like a mash-up of Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’ and The Knife’s ‘Heartbeats’. And the lyrics are unable to save it. The song’s first line - the line that will establish the tone of the entire album - is wincingly unimaginative, “he used to be somebody and now he’s someone else”. Unfortunately, the lyrics rarely rise above this standard for the rest of the song (and album), and it culminates in a thinly disguised message to “be yourself”, “your life is your life, you’ve got to live like it’s your life”.

This song - this album - has been made before.

What I love about Noah And The Whale’s first two albums is the band’s ambition. In both, they bit off slightly more than they could chew. Their influences were still apparent but they had no trouble channelling them into something new. Something brave. Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down, like all good debut albums, tries to tackle the Big Three of life issues: Growing Up, Love and Death. And it’s visibly immature. But it’s honest. And incredibly profound. I still can’t listen to ‘Hold My Hand As I’m Lowered’ because I find it too haunting.

And then The First Days Of Spring landed. It was magnificent: ridiculously epic, brutally revealing and musically ambitious. It was what all albums strive to be - innovative. The lyrics were, at times, clichéd, but what break-up song isn’t? Fink’s sincerity shone through, and the result was nothing less than a faintly beating heart in a CD case.

When I first heard the single ‘L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.’, I was taken aback with its banality, but I didn’t despair because I thought it would be an anomaly, much like ‘5 Years Time’ was. And when I played the album for the first time, I thought ‘Life Is Life’ was just another misstep. Those two songs had to be the only ones. Come on, Noah And The Whale, don’t let me down. Work your magic. Give me some innovation. Give me some insight. Give me some philosophy. But they never did. The album kept going at its steady, uninspiring pace. Catchy, but empty.

So, it’s only Track 2 (‘Tonight’s The Kind Of Night’), and they’ve already thrown it all away.

‘Tonight’s The Kind Of Night’ is a poor imitation of ‘Born To Run’. And it’s not just the song’s content - its riff is also suspiciously similar. But it lacks the passion of Springsteen’s masterpiece. Springsteen had hunger; he wrote songs about leaving town because he had to. Getting out of his bleak situation was his only option. And when Noah And The Whale unabashedly wear his influence on their sleeves, it comes across as dishonest. The song’s lacklustre lyrics provoke cringes at times, “tonight’s the kind of night where everything could change.” It lacks subtlety. Fink’s characters don’t have the depth of Springsteen’s; they’re like reflections in a lake that’s just been disturbed by a stone. And the instrumentation - gospel choir combined with synthesisers - doesn’t work.

Tracks 3 and 4 sound like Tom Petty covers. Noah And The Whale have obviously been studying Petty’s ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’. ‘L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.’ is an exact replica. And it can’t be a coincidence, as Noah And The Whale proved themselves fans when they recorded a cover of Petty’s ‘Last DJ’ for BBC 6 Music a few years ago.

Less than halfway into Last Night On Earth, and the album seems to be a crude cross between Springsteen’s Born To Run and Petty’s Full Moon Fever. All fears are cemented when, in the next track (‘Give It All Back’), Fink actually name-drops “Bruce and the band”. It has become a farce. Hundreds of caricatures of Rock ‘n’ Roll icons spill onto the stage, all vying for attention. Giant papier-mâché heads resembling Dire Straits bundle in from the wings and roll towards the Mardi Gras effigies of Springsteen and Petty. They form a group and start bobbing along in unison, chanting, “I’d turn back time and be with my friends” over and over and over and over and over and…

By track 6 (‘Just Me Before We Met’), I’ve stopped caring. I’m bored. I’m bored of characters that like smoking cigarettes and lean on things. I’m bored of characters that look at photographs and think about the past. I’m bored of the past. Noah And The Whale are obsessed with it. Which is strange, as this album seems to be their attempt at breaking from The First Days Of Spring with an affirmation of life. Instead, what they actually end up creating is a cage of nostalgia that is unpleasant to sit inside. It’s too cramped. The mantra of the album may be that “life goes on”, but if you listen closely, they’re preaching the opposite. There is no affirmation. There is only glorification of the past.

There’s a part in ‘5 Years Time’ where Fink sings, “I no longer feel I have to be James Dean”, but he seems to have gone back on his word.

The only memorable lyric appears in the ninth track, ‘The Line’. The song itself isn’t remarkable, but as it draws to a close, and Charlie Fink’s distinctive, wizened voice mournfully repeats the line, “she says I live my life like a diamond, bright and hard like a diamond”, the music seems genuine for the first time. Something is conjured. The mood shifts, and you’re left deflated and pensive. The words stick out like a fragment written during the recording of The First Days Of Spring. This is what Noah And The Whale used to be able to achieve with every song; they have managed to articulate a feeling in such a way as to lose almost nothing in translation. The listener is struck with the most profound empathy.

Track 10 (‘Old Joy’) also contains flashes of Noah And The Whale’s old brilliance, but they’ve made the mistake of over-producing it. If it were more understated - if it didn’t have the bizarre combination of synthesiser and gospel choir - it could be an exceptional song. It’s reminiscent of ‘Hold My Hand As I’m Lowered’.

Bizarrely, the song, and the album, inexplicably end with the words, “don’t dream of yesterday”, but this is precisely what Last Night On Earth is doing. Dreaming of yesterday. If Noah And The Whale mean the album to be some sort of clever Proustian flashback, and all the lyrical and musical references are supposed to be ironic in some way, or it’s all supposed to be an homage, it doesn’t work. It isn’t made clear enough and it isn’t done with enough delicacy.

Last Night On Earth ultimately falls down due to a lack of honesty. Adopting synthesisers and a drum-machine isn’t innovative, it’s expected. Bands seem to be deciding more and more that, in order to break new ground, they must venture into electronica. Noah And The Whale don’t know how to orchestrate their sound anymore. It sounds forced. It seems rushed and clumsy. The sound they’ve achieved with this album is achieved every minute of every day, all around the world, by fifteen year-olds with cheap keyboards.

A great song, or album, or any piece of art for that matter, is one which manages to transcend its moment - if only for an instant - and steal a glance at the future. This doesn’t mean that the past should never be used and reconstituted, after all, it has been argued that there are no new ideas. Difficulties only begin to surface when the past is not used as a means to innovate but as an excuse to avoid innovation. This is Last Night On Earth’s problem: it is so steeped in the past, it inevitably drowns in it. It isn’t enough to make Springsteen references without approaching his philosophy from a new angle. Titus Andronicus (who I wrote about last year) manage to dip into the philosophy of Bruce and the E Street Band while at the same time recycling it to fit a new context and their own specific ideas about coming of age. Sadly, Noah And The Whale’s reference is nothing more than repetition. They aren’t looking forward. They aren’t striving. They aren’t channelling their influences into something new. Instead, their influences bind them to the past, meaning their fate is worse than stagnation; Last Night On Earth is a ghost. It’s unnatural. The band are blind to the current zeitgeist and to any forecast of the next. They only offer nostalgia, and nostalgia isn’t enough.

We were born to be free range.

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Hop Farm was the most hotly anticipated music festival of the summer. I even decided to choose it instead of a tenth year at Reading Festival. But, strangely, it didn’t have any of the usual pop or rock bands performing. There were no Dizzee Rascals and no U2s. Not even any Biffy Clyros or Feeders; just a few talented, young folk musicians, many of whom are still relatively unknown to the mainstream media. Hop Farm is essentially a folk festival, and it labels itself as an alternative to the bigger, overgrown summer music festivals. Even the godfather of folk himself, Bob Dylan, made a rare appearance.

But it wasn’t just this folk element that made Hop Farm so appealing - it was the fact that the majority of the line up was specifically British folk, and boasted all of the front-runners of this fledgling movement, such as Laura Marling, Johnny Flynn, Mumford And Sons, Tunng and Stornoway.

British folk music – the genre that harks back to traditional, medieval British culture and song – has made a triumphant, unmistakeable comeback. And it’s quite different from the American folk championed by legends like Dylan. Instead of singing about The Dust Bowl and freight trains, these bands are referencing the English countryside and English life, such as Marling’s ‘Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)’.

They have also decided to step away from the conventional, four-piece rock instrumentation of drums, guitar, bass and vocals, and traditional British folk instruments that were previously rarely seen in popular rock music have returned to prominence. The mandolin, fiddle, flute and double bass are all, once again, taking centre stage. And there has been a renewed interest in the power of voice and harmony – a fundamental characteristic of any folk music. Mumford And Sons – one of the more successful and better known bands of the revival – recently released their debut album ‘Sigh No More’, which not only uses traditional instruments in abundance, but also experiments with voice, masterfully creating complex, ambitious walls of vocal harmonies.

Britain has seen a resurgence in this same kind of Anglo-folk music before, with musicians in the 60’s such as Donovan, Richard Thompson and Nick Drake, but for a while it slipped into obscurity. One possible reason for this new, second folk revival (a genre many are clumsily calling Nu-Folk), is our propensity to search the past for inspiration. Our musical trends are surprisingly cyclical, and we seem to have a constant desire to recreate and renew ideas from other eras in history. A few years ago saw a musical return to the 80’s, with Franz Ferdinand, The Futureheads and Kaiser Chiefs bursting onto the scene with choppy guitars, synthesizers and abrasive vocals. But now, with the likes of, not only the Hop Farm line up, but also bands such as Noah And The Whale and Emmy The Great, we are back in the folk-obsessed 60’s. Surprisingly, even the Seattle-based band Fleet Foxes play a very British-influenced folk.

With this renewed interest in British folk, we have finally been offered something more natural, more human and more profound than the oversimplified, sterilised pop created by such recent phenomena as The X Factor. Listen to Stornoway’s banjo-led ‘We Are The Battery Human’ for example, and you will instantly find yourself transported to a simpler time – a time without TV screens, global warming and 24-hour CCTV surveillance. Suddenly, you’re “free range”, sitting somewhere in the English countryside with a few close friends and a glass of ale in your hand. The evening sun is slowly sinking behind the hills as the bonfire steadily crackles on, and the smell of wood smoke gently nudges you and reminds you that things might just be ok after all.

Rastas never die.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:58:00 +0100

Amsterdam wasn’t how I imagined it.

It was more plastic than I thought it would be. More luminous. Swiftly conquered and slowly forgotten. And as I sat in that pizzeria, the salty yellow margarita melting in front of me, I thought about all the places I would rather have been.

Home in Reading. By the river in Henley. Back in Africa.

We’d been travelling by train all day. Hungry, homesick and in need of a shower, my mind drifted in and out of what Ollie was telling me from across the the table. I stared at the hoards of British tourists streaming past the window. I sincerely hoped the rest of my gap year wasn’t like this.

My phone buzzed with a text. Probably home. Probably wondering if we arrived safely. I dug it out of my pocket. It was home, but not the message full of questions I thought it would be. Only four words stood on that screen. And they felt like a punch in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe.

“Lucky Dube is dead.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry as I was at that moment. The drunks and the skinheads kept shouting and stumbling past the window, and I thought I was going to be sick.

I grew up in Kenya. My family moved there when I was 4, and we stayed until I was 9. People always ask me if I remember it, but it’s actually all I can remember from my early childhood - my memories begin there. It was just so different. The complete opposite of the grey, wet English town I was born in. My senses were attacked. It was an explosion of colour. The heat, the taste, the smell.

The sound.

Reggae.

Reggae blasting out from every window of every building and ever car. I’d never heard it before. And in those five years of living there, I barely listened to anything else. I grew up on a steady diet of Gregory Isaacs, Bob Marley and Kanda Bongo Man, but the music I listened to and heard more than any other was Lucky Dube.

Quite simply, he provided the soundtrack to my childhood. It was constant; there was barely any silence in those days. Whether it drifted out of the house’s open windows as we played in the garden, filled the inside of the boiling car as we drove for seven hours to the coast, or twinkled in the background of ‘Simba Saloon’ as we ate lunch.

I’ve always associated it with sunshine, family and contentment. Even now, years later, when its cold and wet outside, I turn to Lucky’s 1996 compilation album, Serious Reggae Business to cheer me up. And, I kid you not, every single time I’ve put it on when there was bad weather, the sun has come out. Seriously. Most would call it coincidence, but I genuinely believe that Lucky’s music has a divine power to part storm-clouds. His music is just so incredibly happy. So hopeful.

Like many reggae singers, as well as having ordinary songs about life and love, he was also an activist who wrote brilliant songs that tackled more serious issues. My favourites of his when I was a kid were ’Different Colours/One People’ and ‘Slave’. One is an anti-racism song, and one is a song preaching the dangers of alcoholism.

But this just made it all the more painful when he died. On 18th October 2007, he was shot dead by carjackers in Johannesburg. It was strange. Not just because he seemed immortal in my eyes, but because, on that day, he became one of his own characters. His point had been horribly proven: no one is exempt from the overwhelming injustice in the world, and more steps need to be taken to combat it.

Just before he died, I had the privilege of seeing him play in a small club in Elephant and Castle. It was magic. He didn’t stop dancing or smiling the entire show, madly swinging his dreadlocks from side to side as he hopped up and down with closed eyes. And the audience - a mishmash of different colours, creeds, shapes and sizes - couldn’t stop dancing or smiling either. The feeling in that room was one of ineffable joy, like we had all just banded together and managed to solve the world’s problems, and had been transported to Zion as a reward for our heroic efforts.

There are only a handful of people in this world who seem completely and utterly incorruptible, who show no faults and who strive for greatness - in themselves and in others - every moment of every day. Lucky Dube was one of them. And, now that he’s gone, I don’t think there are many left.

So thank you, Lucky. Thanks for ‘Slave’, ‘Remember Me’, ‘Back To My Roots’ and ’The Other Side’. Thanks for my childhood. Goodbye Lucky.

Thanks for the sunshine.

The light I never knowed.

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:43:00 +0100

Hop Farm Festival, Kent (2^nd & 3^rdJuly 2010)

Hop Farm Festival was the best festival I’ve ever been to. But, in light of it, I never want to go to another music festival ever again.

You see, I’m not sure the whole “music festival” thing works. It’s kind of paradoxical. Especially when Van Morrison is headlining the Friday.

It was the first day of Hop Farm. The sun had finally started to set after one of the hottest days I can remember. I was surprised I had managed to stay solidified in the pizza oven that this festival was being held in. But the evening brought with it a cool breeze, and we waited patiently for Van to come on. I was burnt, dehydrated and the backs of my knees were killing me from standing, but I didn’t care because Van Morrison was going to walk on stage at any moment. Van “Moondance” Morrison - the music I had been weaned on as a kid.

But, when the time came, it was heartbreaking. I don’t think I’ve ever been that disappointed with a concert. And it wasn’t because Van was extremely grumpy and didn’t smile or say a single word to us the entire set - I was well prepared for that. I honestly didn’t mind. In fact, his legendary temper was the thing I was looking forward to most.

And his set was near perfect. Sure, there was the occasional twenty minute flute solo, but he also treated us to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, ‘Moondance’, ‘Have I Told You Lately?’ and ‘Into The Mystic’.

What completely ruined the whole thing for me was the hundreds of teenagers that were wasted on cider, screaming and trying to build human pyramids all around me. They simply didn’t care about the music.

Why were they there?

Why did they spend over a hundred pounds to come and get drunk in a field?

That performance at Hop Farm could be the only time I ever see Van Morrison, and a large portion of it was drowned out by some half-naked, ecstacy-crazed girl covered in body paint, trying to impress five androgynous fifteen-year-old boys.

Luckily, there didn’t happen to be any of them close to me while I was watching Bob Dylan on the Saturday or I might have done something drastic.

A similar thing happened to me at Rock Werchter Festival a couple of years ago when I was watching Radiohead. The people around me were just standing there, insulting the band throughout their set. These things just wouldn’t happen at an actual Radiohead or Morrison gig.

But having said this, there are obviously exceptions. I think it all depends on the nature of the music. I’ll admit that two of the best gigs I’ve witnessed have been at festivals. Manu Chao at Exit Festival and Rage Against The Machine at Reading Festival.

But the reason these gigs were so good is because Manu Chao and Rage essentially play party music. Music to dance to. Music to drink to. Music that puts so much emphasis and importance on rhythm, that it doesn’t really matter if you can’t hear the words. Music that requires a sunset or a thunderstorm and hundreds of people dancing all around you as the stars come out. Radiohead and Van Morrison, on the other hand, play music to be watched and absorbed, whether it’s the abstract lyrics or the virtuosic saxophone solos.

And Bob Dylan on the Saturday of Hop Farm could have also been a disaster if I had once again been surrounded by goons. And his music means so much to me that it would have killed me. As it turned out, his set was astonishing, and I suspect it was astonishing precisely because he was playing at a festival instead of touring a new album. He played hit after hit after hit. Including one of my favourites, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’. But this was just luck. If he’d been in a slightly different mood, or I had been next to someone who hated him, it might have been a similar experience as watching Van the day before. But he seemed as though he was having a great time, striking poses, playing his Telecaster for a few songs and smiling throughout.

I also saw a superb set by my favourite band at the moment, Stornoway. But the reason I enjoyed it so much was because it wasn’t on the unforgiving main stage. It was in a tent.

Tents are like little venues of their own. They’re dark, atmospheric and small, and, chances are, all of the people in the tent are there because they know and like the band. Watching Stornoway in that tent was like watching them in a small London club or on a university campus. The sun wasn’t frying my neck, no one was building human pyramids, the sound wasn’t getting carried away by the wind, and they were able to have lights and smoke machines in the middle of the day.

I think the thing is, music festivals are just too much of a gamble when it comes to watching your heroes - if they’re on the main stage, which they probably will be. Sure, it could all work out perfectly, with the perfect setting, the perfect audience and the perfect weather, but too much could go wrong. If Van ever comes to town again, I think I’ll catch him at the Royal Albert Hall.

The sweet sensation.

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at The HMV Forum, London (Friday 23^rd April 2010)

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club became my favourite band eight years ago, when my uncle took me to see them at The Forum. I was 13, and it was my second ever rock concert.

So tonight, as I stand outside the same venue once again and think back to the fateful night that’s forever tattooed to the back of my mind, they have a lot to live up to.

***

The house lights cut out. The stage went dark, save for four gold lamps that shone into the audience’s eyes. An intro song started to play on the venue’s speakers. Buddy Guy’s haunting ‘Baby Please Don’t Leave Me’. The backlighting and smoke machines combined to gradually form a solid gold mist that flooded the empty stage. And then, born out of the fog like some kind of hellish creature, three leather-clad silhouettes appeared. Without wasting an instant, they exploded into ‘War Machine’, the fiercest and downright dirtiest track from their latest album, Beat The Devil’s Tattoo.

It was as if they had ripped off a section of the Earth’s crust and plugged their instruments into the planet’s molten core to harness its raw energy. From that moment on, they relentlessly charged ahead like apocalyptic horsemen, blasting out their unique blend of souped-up, bluesy rock ‘n’ roll.

And considering that they’ve just replaced Nick Jago on drums, they were astonishingly tight and precise. Leah Shapiro looked like a life-long member of the motorcycle club, sitting at the back of the stage, thundering the drum kit with all her might. It was as if she was mining each song with dynamite, searching for – and finding – the maximum potential of her band-mates. Like a slave driver, pushing the band to its limit, even if it meant collapsing from exhaustion.

Possibly the highest, and most surprising, point of the show, was the decision to play ‘Annabel Lee’ – a bonus track from the new album. It was a risky choice having a slow and moody intermission in such a ferocious set. But it worked. Beautifully. Being an Edgar Allen Poe poem, it managed to maintain, if not heighten, the mythical, Faustian atmosphere of the concert.

Finally, to the fans’ delight, Black Rebel launched into ‘Spread Your Love’ to finish the show. They played it with such force, such enthusiasm, it sounded as though they were performing it for the first time.

And when they had eventually, reluctantly ground to a halt, Robert Been unslung his guitar and half-heartedly – as if the song had already done most of the work – smashed his guitar on the stage, before discarding its carcass into the mass of clawing shadows below.

The encore. And I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – a song I thought I’d never hear Black Rebel Motorcycle Club play. At first I couldn’t recognise it. Something seemed familiar but I wasn’t quite sure what. I racked my brains trying to work it out. Then it hit me. It was ‘Open Invitation’, the superb hidden track from their 2005 masterpiece, Howl, but it was a revamped version, dropping harmonium in favour of bass and electric guitar. And as they played it, the golden fog seeped back onto stage from the shadows and a cage of bright green lasers materialised, trapping the band, restraining them, locking them away for the night and making sure they didn’t do any more damage.

The next morning, I woke up to find I was ill. And, not surprisingly, I found that BRMC had posted a statement on Facebook, saying their next show had been cancelled due to “illness in the band”.

I wouldn’t find it strange if everyone inside that building, that night, is bed-ridden for the next few weeks. It’s definitely going to take a while for me to recover.

Don't ever leave me alone.

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:23:00 +0100

“I think it was in a way the feeling that it might be our last so let’s just show ‘em what we can do, let’s show each other what we can do and let’s try and have a good time doing it.” – Paul.

For Christmas last year, my dad bought me Abbey Road - the last album that The Beatles ever recorded.

I’d always loved The Beatles, but a while ago I realised, to my horror, the only CD’s I owned by them were Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1, Love, Anthology, and Live at The BBC.

A bit of a strange mix.

When my dad found this out, he decided to get us an album each as presents that year. My mum got Rubber Soul, my brother got The White Album,

and I got Abbey Road.

Now, firstly, I should admit that the album, as a whole, didn’t bowl me over. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it and realised how special it was, but the problem was: I’d heard all the main hits before. Out of the seventeen tracks on the CD, there were eight that I wasn’t familiar with. And six of those I found unremarkable on first listening.

But there was one - one hidden amongst those seventeen - that completely and utterly blew my mind.

‘Oh! Darling’.

I couldn’t believe I’d never heard it before. It was phenomenal.

Not only did it swiftly become my favourite Beatles song, but ‘Oh! Darling’ even managed to muscle its way into my Top Ten Songs Of All Time. It completely disregarded the fact that the rest of the songs in the Top Ten were long-standing veterans, proudly standing in line, comparing their many medals. Instead, it arrogantly marched up to them, slotted itself firmly between ‘Three Little Birds’ and ‘Bring It On Home To Me’, and then proceeded to act as if it had been there the entire time.

But I was far from outraged.

(Although, ’No Surprises’ still hasn’t really settled in to number 11.)

Do you have a song that you consistently turn to in times of trouble? When you just can’t go on, when you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, is there a song that can unfailingly part the storm-clouds? ‘Oh! Darling’ became that song for me. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I’d never been given Abbey Road. What would I have done all those mornings when I just couldn’t get out of bed?

Not that it’s lyrically inspiring or musically ambitious in any way. It’s far from complex, especially when you put it against some of the other songs The Beatles have written, such as ‘A Day In The Life’, ‘Blackbird’ or ‘Across The Universe’. Its basic structure is just a standard rock & roll chord progression, and the lyrics never really venture much beyond the words, “Oh Darling, please believe me, I’ll never do you no harm.”

But to my mind, it’s the perfect example of when something, although maybe incredibly uncomplicated, gels together seamlessly. It evokes that charmingly naive atmosphere of movie-love that can only be achieved with a certain kind of masterful simplicity.

Every little facet of the song is a lesson in pop songwriting and performing. The minimalist screech of the electric guitar. Ringo’s brilliant over-the-top drum fills. The plodding bass line. The angelic backing-vocal harmonies.

And I think it’s the best vocal track Paul McCartney ever recorded. Which is strange because John Lennon called it, “a great one of Paul’s that he didn’t sing too well. I always thought I could have done it better—it was more my style than his.” How can you say that when faced with that range? That power? That grizzled scream that makes him sound well beyond his years? Apparently Paul put a massive amount of time and practice into the recording. He said “at first my voice was too clear. I wanted it to sound as though I’d been performing it on stage all week.” And that’s exactly how it sounds. Experienced. Explosive. Like he’s trapped, on a little stage inside your speakers, singing it live.

Every time I listen to ‘Oh! Darling’, not only are my spirits lifted and worries erased, but I’m reminded of what The Beatles can do. Sometimes, with the relentless onslaught of new music pouring in from every crack in the wall, it’s easy to forget. Especially when combined with a phenomenon such as The Beatles™ Rock Band™. But when you finish reading this, put the song on, and once again realise why they are widely regarded as the greatest band to have ever walked the Earth.

Unexpectedly we watched.

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:14:00 +0100

“Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight,

Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight

And for each and every underdog, soldier in the night;

And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

There are two songs I can think of, which have captured something so powerful that they make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. One is Bob Dylan’s ‘Chimes Of Freedom’. The other is Bruce Springsteen’s live 1988 cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Chimes Of Freedom’.

They’re so special to me, I even stop myself from listening to them too often. I ration them carefully in order to preserve their magic. Like a kid who has a first-issue comic book and only gets it out every once in a while to marvel at it, just in case it somehow disintegrates or bursts into flame.

It might sound strange, but I’m scared I’ll frighten them away.

The reason I’ve chosen to write about Springsteen’s cover rather than the original is that, although some would argue the original version, by definition, is the better of the two, I think it’s less interesting. Or rather, less surprising. Obviously, it’s one of Dylan’s many masterpieces. It’s hard-hitting, poetic and ahead of its time. The words are so clear, so sharp and so idealistic, that it’s hard to bear listening to the entire song if you’ve ever done anything bad in your life. And its bare-bones production and Dylan’s expertly timed delivery serve to highlight and nurture these powerful lyrics.

What Springsteen manages to do, is take the bare bones, throw a leather jacket on them, strap them into a 1960 Chevrolet Corvette and send them roaring into the night.

Unlike a lot of cover songs, it doesn’t lose any of the original spirit. Springsteen just uses it as a foundation to build on. The Byrds’s 1965 cover is the complete opposite. It’s true that Springsteen does appear to use this one as the framework for his own arrangement, but on its own, The Byrds’s version pales in comparison to the other two, and comes across as just another pop song that will be swiftly forgotten (although, they did manage a brilliant Dylan cover with ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ on the same album). It isn’t a fresh perspective. It fails at transcending the weight of the original and carving out a place for itself as something new. Something bold.

My point is - Springsteen does this. He achieves a perfect synthesis: Dylan’s unique songwriting meets the legendary E Street sound.

It starts quietly, a lone synth cutting through the cheers of the audience, Roy Bittan masterfully managing to epitomise the essence of the entire song with a few twinkly chord changes. And then, when the crowd’s attention has been fully and unequivocally caught, Bruce’s voice hurtles in from out of nowhere, smashing through the tension as he belts out the opening lines. Somehow, his words contain an equal amount of raw power and measured softness. This strange combination gives what he’s saying a huge amount of authority. A huge amount of weight - like a general rallying his troops to battle.

And you want to follow him. You would follow him. But you’re rooted to your seat, in awe.

For a whole verse, he speaks to you personally, the synth steadily twinkling away beside him. And then the stage explodes in the second verse with the energy of the E Street Band. Max Weinberg hammering the snare like it’s a war drum. Steve Van Zandt lending his guitar to the synth’s jingle-jangley wall of sound.

Before you know it, it’s the last verse. How long have you been sitting there, transfixed?

The band stop playing and you’re back at the beginning of the song, Bruce addressing you personally again. His voice accompanied only by “Little” Steven’s guitar. And the audience can’t help but start clapping along - perhaps involuntarily - trying to communicate to the band that, now, thanks to them, their lives will never be the same again.

And by the time Bruce is roaring the last four lines, you’re one of them. The damage is done – you’re not just a normal person listening to a song anymore, you’re a soldier, a legend, a hero crusading against all injustice in the world, and you have an ineffable feeling that everything is perfect in your life and nothing will ever go wrong again.

“Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed,

For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse,

And for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe;

And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Baby, we were born to die.

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:22:00 +0100

I haven’t been this excited about a band for a very long time.

The best part is, it was all a surreal accident.

It’s three weeks ago. 3 am. I’m hunched over my MacBook, staring at a blank page. Shoulders aching, beads of sweat sliding down my temples. Eyes dryer than my throat after the five coffees I’ve forced down it in the last two hours.

My degree demands that I write an essay on one of Shakespeare’s plays. So I decide to choose Titus Andronicus. I choose it partly because I’ve heard that it’s one of the most gruesome plays ever written, but mostly because it was the only play that I’d managed to read that semester.

But there’s a problem. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.

Where do I start?

I’ve been in this same position at my desk for several days now.

I feel the tears slowly start to build up. It’s only a matter of time before I start weeping uncontrollably all over my computer and break it as a result. In a last, desperate effort to get things off the ground, I pathetically type ‘Titus Andronicus’ into Google. I’m not sure what I’m hoping for – maybe Google have invented some kind of way to send documents through time and my finished essay will somehow appear in front of me. Obviously, this doesn’t happen, but something almost equally magical does: the first thing to appear is the Myspace address of a small indie band from New Jersey.

Oh yeah, I vaguely remember something about a band being called that. All right, ok, might as well put it on in the background, I’ll need all the help I can get. Open Spotify. Search Titus Andronicus. The Airing Of Grievances. Interesting. HANG ON. They have a song called ‘Albert Camus’ on that album. My girlfriend is writing her coursework on Albert Camus…MY coursework has a song about HER coursework…spooky…

After staring wide-eyed and terrified at my screen for a couple of minutes, I decide to click the play button.

I had been defibrillated.

Not only did I start and finish the essay that very night, I went out and bought Titus’s second album the Very. Next. Day.

I even ended up referencing them IN my essay. Seriously.

During the course of that night, I must have listened to The Airing Of Grievances (the band’s first album) 10 or 15 times. I couldn’t get enough. It was so endearingly abrasive – the slap in the face that I had desperately needed. But it was more than that too. The guitars may have been unrelenting and unspectacular, and the vocals may have been obnoxious and juvenile, but I just couldn’t get over the band’s earnestness. And their confidence shot out of my speakers like needles. It was exhilarating. By the time the album had reached its end, they had bled themselves dry.

Titus Andronicus have to be the most honest band I’ve ever heard. Their strength is that, although the guitar solos are quite infantile at times and the shrieked vocals are often jarring and discordant, there’s no doubt that they mean every single note they play with all their hearts. What’s more, they clearly have an ear for Spector-esque pop melody. True, they might not quite have the skill or equipment to execute it with any amount of slickness (it often sounds like it’s been recorded on a dictaphone), but this inevitably lends to their inescapable charm.

And they can be gentle and beautiful too. Yes, that’s right, they have it all. Both albums have a stand-out, gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking song - The Airing of Grievances’s ‘No Future’, and The Monitor’s ’To Old Friends and New’ are the respective albums’s eyes of the storm, providing soothing relief from the environing chaos. This contradiction, coupled with the meticulous songwriting, morph Titus Andronicus into a force to be reckoned with. The vocals may only vary from shrieks to whines, but on closer inspection the words being hurled at you are bars of gold, and you start to enjoy being pummelled by them. Existential angst and nihilism riddle Patrick Stickles’s lyrics, which are as poetic as they are intelligent, yet somehow they still manage to remain uplifting.

Titus Andronicus just point-blank refuse to do things anybody else’s way.

Their sheer ambition and arrogance is staggering. They have no respect for conventional song length, frequently churning out seven-minute epics. The Airing Of Grievances quotes and name-drops Shakespeare, Camus and Hunter S. Thompson, and its follow-up, The Monitor, not only unapologetically begins and ends with Springsteen references, but it’s a concept album about the American Civil War. A concept album. I think it even uses the war as a conceit for someone growing up in New Jersey. And I’m almost certain that it doesn’t work. But that’s why I love it. And that’s why I love them.

They’re the best at what they do. Which is, frankly, not giving a damn.

P.S. I’ve also recently got my hands on a copy of The Innocents Abroad – an 8 track 12” (limited to 300 copies) of a concert they played in London. With flawless covers of ‘Roadrunner’ and ‘Wipeout’, and a cool hand-stamped sleeve, it’s well worth looking out for.

Animal house.

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:26:00 +0100

It’s safe to say my life changed when I heard the first 11 chords of this song. Well, 12 if you count the slide-up/hammer-on thing at the beginning.

The Kingsmen’s version of Richard Berry’s ‘Louie Louie’ is the messiest, most unpolished song I have ever heard. It sounds like a rehearsal. A bad rehearsal. A rehearsal in a garage with broken instruments after everyone’s had way too much to drink. The drummer sounds like he’s playing with his head, and it easily has the dirtiest bass sound I’ve ever heard, but the most outrageous aspect of the song is that you can barely understand a word of it. I’d actually go as far as to say you can only understand the chorus. Vaguely. The singer even comes in too early at one point.

For me, this is rock ‘n’ roll in it’s purest, most dizzying form.

The Kingsmen’s version of Louie Louie was the subject of an FBI investigation and it was voted number 55 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. But this isn’t why I love it.

Although it does make me love it that little bit more.

I think the thing that makes this song stand out so much is its passion. The Kingsmen are playing with such overwhelming passion, you begin to believe that there’s no tomorrow. And who needs skill when you’ve got passion?

The guitar solo. Is it the greatest ever guitar solo of all-time? No, definitely not. Far from it. It’s probably the most technically simple, rushed, confused piece of guitar work in music history. You might be reading this and thinking “wow, that’s a bit of an exaggeration”, but I don’t think it is. Put it on. Go on, right now. Listen to it, or listen to it again, and I bet you’ll agree. Ok, maybe you won’t but you will agree it’s terrible. But that’s precisely why it’s my favourite ever guitar solo and that’s why I think it’s perfect. It’s like the guitarist is actually having a seizure from the amount of fun he’s having, and he’s just blindly punching at the strings. It’s the kind of guitar solo my brother used to play when he first got his Squire Strat and was imitating early Green Day in his room. What makes the solo even cooler - and elevates it to a thing of almost divine beauty (ok, that is exaggerating) - is how it’s introduced by the manic shriek of “Ok, let’s give it to ‘em right now!” (The only other introduction of a guitar solo I can think of that’s maybe as cool is Eddie Vedder’s “Make me cry” from Pearl Jam’s elusive gem, ‘Yellow Ledbetter’. Which I might have to write about on Reindeer Armies some day.)

And finally, when the frenzied psychedelia of the electric guitar hesitantly subsides, the singer comes in too early. But no one seems to care. They didn’t even bother with another take.

For me, this little slip up epitomises the whole feeling of the song. It’s about freedom. It’s about cathartic joy. It’s about rock ‘n’ roll. I think the fansite (yes, it has a fansite) louielouie.net got it right when they said, “Louie Louie represents a feeling, a groove, a state of being that can’t always be completely verbalized.”

I don’t just like this song, I have absorbed its essence. I actually think it was Louie Louie that first instilled in me that relentless, rock ‘n’ roll lust for life. It might have even been the birth of my love for electric guitars. Every time I hear it, it instantly changes my mood and awakens that wild part of me that’s been lying dormant for too long. I don’t think there’s anything left to say. Just listen to it and live it.

So, in the infinite knowledge of the song’s last words,

“Let’s go!”

P.S. Iggy Pop also does a cool version.

Burning for the ancient heavenly connection.

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:21:00 +0100

It only seems right to start this music blog by writing a piece about my all-time favourite album. Howl.

It’s the band’s third album. Before it, they released a debut self-titled album (which might also appear on Reindeer Armies one day) and its follow-up, Take Them On, On Your Own.

It was 2005. It was summer and I think it was a Saturday. I was in town and I had nothing to do. So I did what I always used to do when I was in this situation. I walked over to Fopp (my favourite record shop which has since closed down) and spent three hours wandering around - looking at everything (and I mean everything) the shop had to offer. Just when I was about to leave, I spotted what I thought was the greatest album cover I had ever seen. It was sitting in the ‘new releases’ section by the door. It stood out. Superbly simple with its Wild West font, eye-wateringly menacing in black and white. And what an amazing name for an album. (I later found out it’s an homage to Allen Ginsberg, and the Beat Generation of the 1950’s, of which I’m also a fan). I was drawn to it. It had been a long time since I’d listened to the motorcycle club, and I didn’t know anything about this album, but I bought it. If it sounded as perfect as it looked, it was going to be momentous.

It did.

I should probably say that I already had a soft spot for BRMC. The first gig I ever went to was a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gig in London that my uncle took me to. He had previously taken my brother to see Stiff Little Fingers so he owed me one. Not really knowing much about music in those days (I was quite young - 14, I think), I picked the band with the best sounding name. I might have heard one or two of their singles; I certainly wasn’t expecting an epiphany or anything. The concert blew me away. It was a tiny venue. Smoke machines, backlit silhouettes, leather jackets, walls of distorted guitars. Raw energy. That was just after their second album. They were still a fast-paced, furious rock ‘n’ roll band back then. I bought both their records and listened to them endlessly. Especially the first. But I was constantly discovering new music and, after a while, I forgot about BRMC.

So it’s Saturday (maybe), I’ve gone home, put my headphones on and I start to listen. It was honestly as if lightening struck me. This wasn’t the motorcycle club I knew. The first song (‘Shuffle Your Feet’) had an a cappella gospel intro, followed by bluesy acoustic guitars, stamping and hand-clapping. It sounded as if it was recorded in the early 60’s. There was even harmonica. And only brief flashes of electric guitar - an instrument that Black Rebel had previously completely relied upon for their sound. The once angry, anarchic BRMC, obsessed with psychedelic distortion, had turned americana. This was as shocking for me (and I’m sure for most other fans of the band) as Dylan going electric was to people in 1966. Only this was the exact opposite.

It was the first album I listened to from start to finish, without skipping a track.

And from the opening song, it just got better and better. ‘Shuffle Your Feet”s messy, playful recording with people laughing and talking in the background, is followed by a contradiction: the title track ‘Howl’ - a sharp, haunting epic, that opens with the surprising choice of electric organ and timpani drums.

The album is a beautifully strange mixture of blues, country and gospel. It’s as if the band have climbed onto a freight train with only their acoustic guitars and the leather jackets on their backs, and you’re with them, speeding across an ancient America in the dead of night.

In this one album, you can hear the complete musical history of early twentieth century America: Robert Johnson, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke and, of course, Bob Dylan.

The standout track for me is ‘Promise’ - a lyrically brilliant, piano-led, mournful song that references my favourite W.B. Yeats poem. For me, this is BRMC at their best; meticulous instrumentation, heartbreaking harmonies and a satisfyingly grand ending, complete with brass band.

I could probably write a dissertation on this album, but that would be crazy, and besides, you need to listen to it yourself. So I’ll stop. BRMC have since released the excellent album, Baby 81 - A synthesis of the first three records, blending dirty rock ‘n’ roll with a softer, more soulful sound.

Howl.

A refreshingly original album from a simply brilliant band.

P.S. If you like the sound of Howl, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club released The Howl Sessions shortly after - an equally brilliant EP made up of unreleased tracks from the album. It’s home to one of my favourite BRMC songs ever, ‘Mercy’.