This week’s column is a bumper edition that features my experiences of this year’s Record Store Day, plus new albums from Damon Albarn, The Diaphanoids, Halo Blind and Embrace. As well as those, there are new sounds from Richard Fearless, Eels, Merrymouth, Pixies, Two Skies, Manic Street Preachers, The Vickers, The Wands and The Black Keys. All that plus a short celebration of Blur‘s ‘Parklife’ turning 20 and a new edition of The RW/FF Compilation, featuring lots of great new music.
After taking part in this event for the last five years, this year’s Record Store Day was slightly different. Since I want upcoming album releases a lot more than any of the RSD exclusives, I decided that the day was just going to be business as usual for me. It would have been nice to pick up a copy of the Paul Weller single, but due to having to do my day job in the morning, I was unable to queue up outside the shop at the crack of dawn even if I wanted to. So instead I popped over to Raves From The Grave in Frome, the same place where I first took part in the event back in 2010, when Blur‘s ‘Fool’s Day’ 7″ attracted me there. The legendary Billy Bragg performed outside of the shop to a massive crowd, who packed out the narrow streetway of shops and sang along to a short set of Bragg classics. Afterwards Billy signed records and greeted fans inside the shop, as buyers continued to browse through the shelves. After getting my copies of ‘Brewing Up’ and ‘Talking Poetry With The Taxman’ signed, it was time for me to do some shopping. Read my full article on that day HERE.
If you missed it a couple of weeks ago, the latest edition of The RW/FF Compilation showcases some of the music that has featured on the RW/FF site throughout March and April. Just imagine if the ‘Now!’ albums featured the best recent music instead of a load of lowest-common-denominator shite… they would sound like this! The next volume of the regular compilation will be coming over the next few days… In the meantime, listen!!!!
It’s been 11 years since the last Blur album, 20 years since ‘Parklife’ and 25 years since the illustrious musical career of Damon Albarn began. So it’s unusual that it’s taken so long for his first full solo LP to emerge. Again, he gives us something slightly different. When Damon first revealed he was making a solo album in 2011, he initially claimed that it revolved around a concept of “empty club music”, and later in 2013 revealed that it had a “folk-soul” sound. With the album complete and hitting the shops this week, it proves itself to be an introspective delight, with each song rooted in Albarn’s real-life experiences: “lyrically it took me a long time. I wanted it to be about my life, in a way, and I went right back to… it sort of starts in 1976.”
The instrumentation throughout is often minimal and beautifully organic, with subtle and cleverly placed touches of electronics that emphasise a human vs machine theme. The opening title track is the prime example of this concept, its slow pulse and soft piano playing a forlorn accompaniment to lyrics concerned with the barriers and social setbacks caused by technology, as well as the fear that over engagement with our digital devices may eventually erode our sense of humanity. Musically it follows on from Blur’s ‘Under The Westway’, sparkling with a soulful, melancholic quality that Albarn has made his own. On the deliciously laid back ‘Lonely Press Play’, we find looped rattles of percussion all hanging together in an elegantly loose arrangement. On the surface it could initially sound like some sort of testament to the healing power of music, but it is in fact a musing on (as Damon recently explained) “how much we gravitate with our thumb and our index finger to that little triangle pointing to the right” and how it has “become part of the human condition.” Definitely more in the direction of the Gorillaz material, the pretty and mechanical segue ‘Parakeet’ leads us to ‘The Selfish Giant’, where ominous chords open up into something sadder. The bleak tick of sparse electro percussion and a classic Albarn melody perfectly coordinate with themes of separation as tender, downcast tones reach straight for the heart.
The sound created by York-based Halo Blind is what happens when five skilled musicians with backgrounds in various groups, backing bands and session recordings bind together to form a solid unit. Imagine my surprise when I found out that this new up and coming band features bassist Stuart Fletcher, who used to be in The Seahorses. Small world. The band’s blend of rock, indie and prog more often than not provides a pleasing listening experience.
With the intriguing ‘Better’, the band’s second LP opens with dramatic, urgent piano notes before interesting rhythms and plaintively atmospheric vocals enter the picture along with the dark chime of guitars, the mood grows heavier throughout until they let it rip in the climactic final minutes. It’s probably fair to say they’ve learned a few tricks from Radiohead, but they are of course, not the first band to be influenced by other musicians. This influence is accentuated by the vocals of Andy Knights and without the strength of the songwriting and arrangements, people would have dismissed them as soundalikes. Why deny yourself the pleasure of this fine music just because the singer’s voice happens to sound like someone else? The songs elevate the band’s music into a place of its own, and the mixture of flavours ensures that Halo Blind’s existence is necessary. As well as bringing plenty of their own style, they do things that Radiohead aren’t able to do anymore, and they’re not afraid to bring out the guitars. But if ‘OK Computer’ was the sound of pre millennial tension, then this is very much the sound of 21st century unrest.
Some people are never going to give Embrace a good review, no matter how good their records are. Because they’re dismissed as a bunch of crap post-Britpop balladeers, they are seen as rather uncool by certain sections of the music world. I bet some critics are sharpening their knives as we speak, and actually looking forward to giving Embrace’s sixth album a kicking. They’ve made up their minds about it before the first track has even started. I approach this review from a completely different angle.
I’m also not very keen on a lot of the band’s work, but I do in fact highly rate their first two albums, particularly the magnificent 1998 debut ‘The Good Will Out’. They showed so much promise back then, and looked like they were going to be the next big thing. The follow up ‘Drawn From Memory’ was a flawed but underrated record that didn’t do as well commercially or critically, not helped by a strange choice of singles. The third album from 2001 had it’s moments, but their time had already passed. They returned a few years later in the mid 2000’s, but this time as an outfit aiming themselves directly for the U2/Coldplay audience. Although they shifted quite a few units, their fourth and fifth albums consisted of bland and insignificant sounding examples of dullardry. After taking seven years off, the announcement of their return had got me hoping for a return to the brilliant form of their early days. So I WANT this album to be good.
My hopes have been deflated. The suggestion that the self titled ‘Embrace’ is some sort of reinvigorated new beginning or return to form is revealed to be an untruth after the slightly promising electronic flavoured opener ‘Protection’ ends and the unimaginative New Order pastiche ‘In The End’ begins. The irritating, autotuned ‘Refugees’ is dire, but ‘I Run’ improves on things vastly, and approaches the sort of heartfelt drama they used to do so well. ‘At Once’ is also a beautiful and uplifting moment that comes close to reprising the old magic. But these two flashes of brilliance are alone in their quality. In reality, I suppose none of it is hideously bad or unbearable to listen to. It’s just like a grey, featureless canvas. And there are two pretty good songs that remind you how great Embrace once were. But for listeners hoping for that return to form, prepare for a disappointment. Read my full 4/10 review HERE.
Drone is a newly formed London-based label founded by Richard Fearless of the legendary Death In Vegas. Described as “an outlet for dancefloor distortion and other musical explorations”, Drone promises to “release oscillations in many forms.” I have the feeling that there’s certainly not going to be any guest vocals from Liam Gallagher and Paul Weller on these tracks… Hailed as “music made for very dark, smoke filled rooms with absurd lazers”, the deep, hypnotic pulse of ‘Higher Electronic States’ pushes analogue funk and acid house flavours firmly into the 21st century, becoming more dense and uncontrollable as it builds over the course of 7 astounding minutes. Of the video, Fearless says: “I wanted to do a video that was more related to my more conceptual based abstract photography I’m doing at the moment. With the record I wanted to make a track I could end my sets with and I didn’t want to do a video that competed against it, but instead to do a non narrative film to simply drive Higher Electronic States.” The song is released on May 19, and comes backed with a remix by D’Marc Cantu.
A psychedelic three piece from Sheffield, Two Skies released their latest EP ‘Red’, a few weeks ago on March 24. ‘(In Flight) Hyperventilation’ has a dark vibrancy about it, serving up a cosmic avalanche of delicious guitars, reverberating bass and spaced-out vocals. A press release describes their music as a “drugged-out, morning-after concoction of psychedelic freak outs” that are “influenced by late night jam sessions and David Lynch films…” The ‘Red’ EP has proved a hit with God Is In The TV‘s Simon Godley, who wrote: “Everything about this is big. Not just satisfied with having one, the name of the band is Two Skies. And their huge sound fills just about every inch of both.” The band have dates lined up for the next few months, including a support slot with the magnificent Ultrasound.
This song was originally released as a single in May 2013. Which means that this “new” Track Of The Day isn’t technically that new. However, it does appear as the opener from ‘Ghosts’, which is the recent debut album from Italian psych-pop combo The Vickers. The lysergic swoop of ‘She’s Lost’ mixes bright melody, ticking rhythms and effectively simple bass notes into a 60s flavoured haze, occasionally offering little glimpses of garage rock too. The impressive 12 track ‘Ghosts’ was released at the end of March and can be heard at their BandCamp page HERE.
The LP is described as “A kaleidoscopic collection of songs, a twisty and colourful journey through the lights and shades of the modern life. Lose yourself within the words and the echoes, take a walk on the spatial guitars and keyboards, follow the whirling bass lines…”
Packed with a thick, no-nonsense groove and quirky synth lines straight out of an 80’s discotheque, ‘Fever’ is the relentlessly infectious new single from The Black Keys, and the first track to be unveiled from their eighth studio album ‘Turn Blue’. The LP lands on May 12, and Clashmusic.com have hailed it as “their best yet” in a review they recently published HERE. The video for ‘Fever’ was directed by Theo Wenner (son of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner), and features the band’s Dan Auerbach as a sleazy, sweaty televised preacher and Patrick Carney as his sidekick.
