For some reason the festival had an extra day this year and started on Thursday already. Not the most convenient thing - but what can you do? There was also a fair share of bad weather announced which made me pack the rubber boots along with all sorts of other junk to take on the camp site where we stayed in our traditional favourite spot and managed to put up the tent before any rain happened.
The rain would come later but - unlike in other years it was reasonably moderate in both its intensity and duration. Which - along with everybody being well equipped with boots and raincoats as well as the critical parts of the festival grounds having been covered with plastic tiles - meant that luckily the bad weather wasn’t all that critical and didn’t affect things too much.
Finn and Norman Palm
Starting things off in the pretty Spiegelzelt were finn (who apparently stepped in for Noah and the Whale on short notice). We just saw the very end of their gig, so I can’t really say much. Afterwards Norman Palm played. Not too exciting, but doing well for a guy with his guitar.
We skipped a few lessons then and went back to the tent to get to know the neighbours as well as eat a little. As usual that dragged on a little but we made it in time to see the two remaining gigs on the main stage.
Foals
Foals reminded me of the Bravery in their sound. The same kind of poppy blandness and perhaps a bit less cheesy. All right to watch but not exactly my cup of tea.
The Flaming Lips
To top off the first night, what may be considered the festival’s highlight happened. Certainly The Flaming Lips playing there would have been reason enough to visit in its own. Particularly for those of us who loved their music for ages and hadn’t seen one of their not particularly frequent gigs before. I was really looking forward to that.
Even before they started playing the band left an impression. They seemed to bring along their own staff for the equipment which did their work in bright orange street construction workers’ overalls and in addition to that the band members actually took part in setting up and checking the equipment brought up on stage. The band also seemed to be responsible for bringing along giant disco mirror balls to decorate the stage, a screen to put behind it and a bunch of people dressed as Teletubbies to decorate the sides of the stage in silliness.
The gig started with what seems to be the typical move of Wayne Coyne being in a huge transparent rubber ball and rolling on top of the audience a little as a warm-up. Additional confetti and balloons were added later (as well as over and over again throughout the gig) which made the whole thing look fantastic and photogenic.
However, my impression was that the sound wasn’t very good with the vocals being too quiet and a lot of the magic in the songs which is familiar from the albums not making it across to us from the stage. While that improved a little through their gig, I kept having the impression that the band never quite ‘connected’ with the audience. - Which in the end left us with a nice performance but not one restoring a sense of childlike wonder or being quite as life changing as people usually say Flaming Lips gigs are.
And that was that. The festival’s first day passed in what seemed no time at all.
More on Haldern Pop 2008: Friday, Saturday, Sum Up. All Haldern Pop posts.
]]>And thus, I’d have to settle on Coolest album: Tokyo Police Club – A Lesson in Crime; Best Musical Moment: Arcade Fire playing Neon Bible and Wake Up for Les Concerts à Emporter; End-of-year addiction: Sigur Rós’ live recording of Von on their Heim CD or Heima video.
Let me know which great bands I missed out on and ‘see’ you next year…
]]>Battles
For a few weeks Battles’ album Mirrored was lauded throughout the music press. Highly lauded even as being great and new and revolutionary and otherwise fantastic. I couldn’t quite agree with that. Instead, I thought their music is quite interesting in its mix of real instruments with the way they are used quite mechanically to sound somewhat electronically weird. But ultimately the music was too mechanic for me. Too un-musical if you wish. Perhaps this music is a challenge to play and perhaps it even extends the frontiers in some direction. But it’s just not that enjoyable or interesting to hear. It’s music that’s great to read and write about, and it’s music you can conceptually appreciate when listening to it. But it’s just not that great to listen to.
The Clientele
I quite enjoyed the random depression (and the name) of the Clientele’s Strange Geometry and was curious about their new album God Save the Clientele when hearing that it has been released. That led me to conclude that it’s a bit too nice and lovely, a bit cheesy even.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s history is a bit difficult. Their first, eponymous, album was fantastic but they lost their edge slightly with Take them on on your own and with Howl, ending up a bit on the boring side. And while still not matching their first album, the new album Baby 81 picks up speed and strength again. Perhaps they’re getting back on track.
Tokyo Police Club
It’s a bit of a tragedy! I can’t really remember who first pointed me towards Tokyo Police Club. Then I ended up really liking their album A Lesson in Crime. And finally – tragically – didn’t catch more than a glimpse of them although they were playing at the Hurricane Festival a few hundred metres from myself because most of their gig clashed with Arcade Fire’s. (I got myself a T-Shirt at least as theirs was one of the very few that I didn’t consider to be completely horrific.)
And, well, there’s not much to argue with a band who all eight songs in eighteen minutes an album. Short, energetic, low-fi. I like it. And it may even end up being my favourite album of the year.
Wir Sind Helden
Even though Wir sind Helden’s music is a bit too 1980s for my taste I managed to wind up a fair bit of enthusiasm for them as they were still great and managed to make cool music. In German even, giving rise to the massive lyrics translation page I have for them which is the page with the best reader contributions on this site. Unfortunately things went a bit downhill as I wasn’t overly impressed by their Von Hier an Blind album which still managed to contain a few great songs nonehtheless.
Now their third album, Soundso, was released and I found it a bit disappointing. Not just because its name is so-so at best (and reminded me of the so-so name that Kings of Leon gave their Because of the Times album). But mainly because I found the music lacking. Sure, Wir sind Helden are rightly lauded for their clever lyrics and the word play in them. But at the end of the day I’m in there for the music. And Soundso’s just seems less musical. More attention is given to the lyrics and even less than before to the music. Which is a shame.
Shout Out Louds
As I was ordering Haldern tickets anyway, I had the perfect excuse to order the Shout Out Louds’ new Our Ill Wills album along with them as the band now is with their label – and they will be playing at the festival this year, which I am looking forward to. While the album may be considered hard to decipher, the music remains very friendly and acessible. A bit slower and more solid/heavy than in the previous album perhaps and with rather dreamy moments towards the end (Ill Wills, Meat is Murder). I quite like the Blue Headlights.
The Lovekevins
And while we’re in Sweden, I should mention The Lovekevins again. Their album Vs. The Snow has one of the cooler names and those upside down owls are just cute. But, more relevantly I really enjoyed their gig when they played down the road a while back. Unfortunately the recorded songs fail to create the same magic as their live playing did, with the music sounding more mechanic or electronic and missing out on the nicer moments.
To quote from their web site i wish i was a panda bear
// quiet life, perfect hair
. Yay!
White Stripes
The White Stripes published an album once more. And from the somewhat overdone Get Behind Me Satan which only contains a few gems, they found their way back to their ‘roots’. Well not quite, as listening to to the new Icky Thumb and their initial The White Stripes albums in succession will show you. While the sounds are closer to their early simple guitar + drums setup again, the music is more professional (in both the good and bad senses of the word) now. It’s more directed and still contains plenty of ‘new’ sounds which in parts I find overdone and potentially annoying. Tricky to say how good this is as an album, as songs are quite different sounding. From the more White-Stripes classical Little Cream Soda to the somewhat squeaky (but quite cool) St Andrew to the too-brassy Conquest.
Death Proof Soundtrack
Compilations can be both nice and boring. Mr Tarantino has a bit of a knack for making his films’ sountracks nice and catchy in a retro way. The Pulp Fiction soundtrack was brilliant ages ago, the Jackie Brown one has fans (though I don’t necessarily count myself among them) and the Kill Bill 1 soundtrack was fantastic as well. It looks like he pulled it once more with the Death Proof soundtrack. The film already indicated that it will make good listening and it does. The closing track Chick Habit is quite sweet and the Riot in a Thunder Alley preceding it has a percussion laden middle piece which may just have been nicked by the Arctic Monkeys for the beginning of A Certain Romance (yeah it’s probably just a coincidence, I guess).
If anything, my problem with the soundtrack is that this Tarantino soundtrack scheme starts getting old. While my musical knowledge doesn’t cover these decades, the soundtrack seems so Tarantino that it’s almost predictable. I also start being annoyed by the short tracks with spoken bits from the film. Just spoils the music I think. Particularly as I don’t think they picked particularly great pieces of dialogue for this one.
Get While the Getting’s Good
New German label Aufgeladen und Bereit published a Sampler of Scottish music called Get While the Getting’s good. Perhaps not the most remarkable thing ever but nonetheless quite enjoyable to listen to.
[cf. Sven’s theory on Scandinavisation of music: Scotland is the UK’s Scandinavia and Canada America’s. Somehow The Scandinavias are better at music than average…]
Joyside
Joyside are the band seen in the film Beijing Bubbles. They make old fashioned punky music. It’s fun, it’s not shockingly new, creative or foreign. Rather a bit of retro goodness.
Interpol
As I mentioned before, after seeing them live in summer, I have a mixed relationship to Interpol. They managed to register as cool at some stage and Turn on the Bright Lights was a fine and energetic, if slightly repetitive, album. But since then, they didn’t really strike a chord with me. Their new album Our Love To Admire, doesn’t strike a chord either and I even find it a bit tedious and when setting my ears to evil-critical I hear some Meatloaf DNA in the music.
Spoon
Spoon’s new album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was a joy to receive. And it’s a joy to listen to as well. The odd thing is that I always find it hard to be highly enthusiastic about Spoon’s music but that I still think that their albums are rather good. It’s just that their music isn’t that enthusiastic either.
Be warned that You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb is quite addictive. Possibly even more so in the less polished ‘Garage Reverb’ version that’s on the Get Nice! album which was a included in the download.
Art Brut
Art Brut’s new album It’s a Bit complicated is, well, a bit complicated for a number of reasons. Even for an Art Brut lover like myself. The first problem with the album is what a superficial look at it gives you. While the cover art for their first album Bang Bang Rock & Roll was wonderful in both graphics and the text, this album’s cover art looks like they are trying to win a trophy for worst cover art of the year… says the mathematician who might even see a certain irony in geometry tools together with the statement that ‘it’s a bit complicated’.
And then we have the music. The album contains some gems like St. Pauli (Punk Rock ist nicht tot […] I learned my German from a seven inch record
) or Nag Nag Nag (a record collection reduced to a mix-tape
) which we could so far only hear at their live shows but in total I was left with the impression that the album isn’t as inspired as its predecessor was. While each song may have its funny twist and moment, that seems to be mostly limited to the lyrics rather than extending to the music. Luckily their shows are still great. Must go again.
Caribou
After enjoying Caribou’s The Milk of Human Kindness, I was keen to listen to his new album Andorra which caused typographic joy and conundrums on first sight. Unfortunately the album didn’t really appeal to me. It seems to lack the clear flow which The Milk of Human Kindness had. Ultimately I only found the eternal (9 minute) closing track Niobe fascinating and the album was a bit of a listen and forget affair otherwise.
Friska Viljor
Friska Viljor played at Haldern this year while we were swimming. But the guys I caught a ride with went on and on about how great they are on our trip back home and played their CD Bravo! there. More nice Swedish music I say. Possibly a bit too happy but generally nice.
Architecture in Helsinki
Architecture in Helsinki were one of the great discoveries of 2006 for me. And their music has been appreciated ever since, all the way to finally seeing them play at Haldern in summer which was brilliant. Their new album Places Like This came out shortly afterwards and made everybody go boum-boum-boum-bu-da-bum-bum-da-boum-boum-boum afterwards in the spirit of Heart It Races.
My impression is that the album is more clever than In Case We Die was, toying with more fancy rhythms and weird sounds rather than just sticking to the general oddity of their previous sounds. The album is also less laid back and has more aggressive beats. While that may actually be a good development and a step forward theoretically, I found that even after quasi-constant listening to Places Like This I keep thinking that In Case We Die was the more enjoyable album. Let
The Cribs
Apart from putting songs of theirs on the the odd compilation CD, I never really mentioned The Cribs here. While not exactly high-brow, I thought their initial albums The Cribs and The New Fellas were quite refreshing and fun. Each of them contains a number of great tracks, many of which clock in at well under three minutes. Powerful magic.
And while their typical sound has made it to their new CD with the elaborate name Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever, some of the power or the magic was left on the the way there. They seem to have been tamed or smoothly mixed to oblivion or something.
Hot Hot Heat
A fairly similar judgement can be passed on Hot Hot Heat’s album Happiness Ltd. Again, their previous albums [err OK I never wrote about Elevator, it seems, but its fun as well] and likewise their shows are great, but most of that greatness just seems to have been sucked out of the new album.
The difference is probably most blatantly obvious in 5 Times out of a 100 which had been published on their 2002 Knock Knock Knock EP already. The odd thing is that the 2002 version starts quietly and lasts almost 4 minutes, while the 2007 version is much louder aggressively produced and finishes after just three minutes. So by all informal metrics I keep the new version should be better because it’s shorter and more to the point. But – oddly – the new, quicker, version doesn’t leave the impression that it’s mainly more powerful, it almost seems lifeless and just made for the speed and power while leaving the actual song behind. While the old recording could perhaps done with a bit more speed, it manages to keep a tension along its duration which has just been lost in acceleration now.
Múm
Múm’s new album Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy sounds less ‘floating’ than Summer Make Good, say, but it has plenty of interesting sounds and instrumental oddities in it. It seems a bit more solid and pushing than the previous albums which – from my point of view – is a slight change of direction for the band, but it may prove to be an interesting one. I’m a bit addicted to Guilty Rocks and at the beginning of the song I keep thinking that it could be by Spoon.
In a way I found that seeing the band play live recently helped ‘understand’ their music a bit. So far I had imagined things to be far more electronic rather than full of odd instruments.
Seabear
Lovely, perhaps a bit too lovely and – as we learned later on – quite certainly not as good as they are live is what comes to mind when listening to Seabear’s album The Ghost That Carried Us Away.
Be sure to listen to their Singing Arc EP which is available on their home page to enjoy Seabear’s more mysterious sides when they don’t happen to play live in your neighbourhood.
The Hives
The Hives’ new Black and White album is a bit dull. While the band are great in principle and while they are bound to deliver fun shows, I think their whole game has become a bit too institutionalised and boring. Past their prime…
Mando Diao
Pretty much the same is true for Mando Diao’s new album Never Seen the Light of Day. They so were my band of the year 2003 and I still think that they are brilliant. But with their popularity rising their new music became less and less interesting and compelling. I’m sure you can still enjoy listening to them live if you’re able to ignore all the teenagers, but that’s mainly because they’re great at playing and have a number of great ‘old’ songs already. The new ones just don’t stick with me. A bit of a shame, if you asked me.
The Pigeon Detectives
I may be too old for it but I found The Pigeon Detectives’ album Wait for Me quite fun and enjoyable. Could be that all the energy of some other bands was just channeled to them. In fact, a few songs just seem to have a good deal of inspiration or DNA from bands like Hot Hot Heat in them and I suppose they have a bunch of songs there which we might hear when going out as well.
Jens Friebe
It has been pointed out to me that I shouldn’t like the music of German singer-songwriter Jens Friebe because, well, in total it’s a bit too cheesy to be Sven-compatible. And that assessment is right. But sometimes there’s just a song which pulls the trigger for you and gets you hooked. In this case it’s the album’s eponymous track Das mit dem Auto ist egal, Hauptsache Dir ist nichts passiert (Never mind the car, the most important thing is that you are fine).
The title on its own, of course, reeks like ZDF Vorabendprogramm. It’s hard to adequately all the prejudices these two expressions transport in a few words. Just imagine the conservative branch of public broadcasting, the ones who have ads for cleaning your dentures, and the TV series they broadcast in the late afternoons. Invariably these will involve some sort of rich suburbia where people are lawyers, doctors or had ‘noble’ ancestors. And in the good world of these series parents can express the love for their children by assuring them to not worry about the car they just crashed. Oh the drama!
Anyway, the whole feeling of that society and TV is communicated rather well (durch den Rest der besseren Gegend
) in the song an quite reminds me of watching television with my granny when I was young. Lovely. This general feeling can be found in many places on the album, for example in the track Frau Baron which uses the amusing line in dem Raum neben dem Raum neben dem Raum mit dem Spinett
.
So it’s all quite amusing. But not really, truly good. It’s a bit tacky and at times it even seems wholeheartedly and disappointingly unironic.
[And who could resist cover art in Garamond capitals? Even if it looks like Garamond 3 rather than the prettier Stempel or Adobe variants.]
Stereo Total
Stereo Total are music turned in to weirdness, or le trash pop Franco-Allemeand, or whatever. When I got my first Stereo Total CD (Jukebox Alarm) as a present around ten years ago, I listened to it and put it on my shelf without the intention of listening it again. Somehow it did anyway half a year later and then actually started liking it or ‘got’ it or so. Since, the band who freely sing in German, French and English (but are said to also have a solid fan-base in Japan) have become more lenient and consumable but they still remain on the weird-ish side.
Their new album, Paris-Berlin, just fits in the line established by their previous albums. Shamelessly mixing styles from the minimalist electronic (Relax Baby Be Cool) to the poppy (Ta Voix Au Téléphone) and topics from weird (Chewinggum) to the kinky (Ich Bin Der Stricherjunge) to the rock’n’roll romantic (Küsse aus der Hölle der Musik). Which in total probably means that there are loads of possibilities to hate the band. And still they are quite great, it’s odd.
You may just want to download the Trésors Cachés CD of rare tracks from their site to get into the spirit. [If it were without the unnecessary table, I’d be tempted to say that it’s a good model for a band website: A lot of information, updated from time to time, even with a feed for updates, with free samples. And strangely they don’t even need Flash to pull that off.]
Radiohead
It’s odd with Radiohead. They were superfantastisch in the late 1990s. And they kept going on and on, changing their style to the – at times painfully – abstract and then returning to more accessible music. They keep going on with that and somehow succeed. I am tempted to argue that few songs which came out of Radiohead are actually bad. Which is quite an achievement. Yet, with their more abstract albums, it’s sometimes hard to really like the songs.
And the same is true for their new album In Rainbows. While I can appreciate it locally with all the cleverness that they managed to cram into songs, I fail to develop any global enthusiasm for it.
Perhaps I should develop a drug habit. Recommendations?
Other
There are even more songs, albums and bands. Which I’ll go into even less detail for. Babyshambles’ new album Shotter’s Nation seems quite boring and might just be the last chapter in the whole Libertines aftermath. Which, believe it or not, I consider to be one of the greater tragedies in recent pop history, if not the greatest. The Bravery were of the nice but not brilliant kind to begin with and they firmly stuck in that track with The Sun and the Moon. The same is true for Band of Horses’ Cease to Begin. But they were firmly on the poppy (as in bad-poppy) side – and the Zune marketing side – to begin with, so I only had a very faint hope for them anyway.
To end on a high note, let me mention Ella Fitzgerald’s Live in Montreux ‘77 album. Definitely among the better €7 I spent on vinyl…
]]>
Playing the album, I had the inner sleeve on my desk and found that even possibly impolite exclamations just seem less rude and somewhat important when written in Helvetica. So here you go:
]]>
Basically the psychology department planned to have their summer party a fortnight ago and I was supposed to DJ there once more together with some other people. With the people there and the open air backyard, barbecue and all that probably wouldn’t have been all rock’n’roll but good fun nonetheless. But – thanks to the weeks of cold temperatures and strong rain we have been having – the party was cancelled. And it was rescheduled to be today. As the weather hasn’t changed much in the past two weeks, however, the party was once more cancelled. And thus there was neither a barbecue nor DJing for me. A shame.
But this afternoon the biologists called who were having a party as well. Their DJ couldn’t make it and as they somehow knew the psychologists cancelled their party they somehow decided to try getting their DJs. Which put me back to DJing. Indoors, just down the road, very convenient.
But things started on the wrong foot. Of course it’s just en par for small places that you’ll have to work with imperfect equipment. Probably the worst mixer I ever used as its level metres seemed to only be able displaying the output signal but couldn’t (or couldn’t in an obvious way with the visible buttons) be made display the levels while queueing. And of course there were cheap CD players. Which means slow skipping to the correct song and an absence of a button to switch their display to the essential ‘time left’ mode. Cool thing was, though, that the people at the bar seemed to be aware of the problem and put the remote control which included a button to switch the display right on the players. Good thinking.
The next problem was my computer which I carried along in addition to the CDs, so I could access my iTunes library with its convenient search and ratings as well. I even restarted it for the occasion and attached the external drive with the music via FireWire to not run into some USB unsmoothness. But the friggin’ machine just didn’t operate smoothly at all! iTunes was stalling all over. And a few times in really inconvenient/embarrassing situations, like when it was supposed to start playing a song. Ugh! That much for having a stable and reliable system on the computer – I think the stalls are related to my mysterious Spotlight problems which just ruin things for me (Can’t checkin with server named com.apple.metadata.mdserver, error 0x10000004
is a constant companion of my console.log) and almost certainly using a test rather than a release version of the OS might have been a better idea.
The next obstacle was the music. I had been warned before that people will like Ska, and that they’ll ask for it. And I had warned people before that I know exactly nothing but a few Ska P songs about Ska and that they’ll need to help me out on that. So they brought some songs as poorly tagged MP3s and the adding of which to the library of course resulted in in more iTunes stalling (and me having to inadvertently play a Flaming Lips song between Ska P and La Vela Puerca, which strangely didn’t irritate people at all). Let’s just say I was a bit unrelaxed at that stage.
But people were warming up dancing and when I switched to more guitar/‘indie’ music a bit later on they kept the high spirits for quite a while and things went rather well for two hours or so. Add drinks to that (fun fruit-rum cocktail things cooled with dry ice…) and some interesting (along with a few not-so-interesting) requests and we started to have some real fun. Until not that many people were left and dancing and things slowed down accordingly (with me sneakily putting on Sampler Ⅲ to let things fade out) –letting me be back home not much past four.
While I don’t think that the guests and myself were totally aligned taste-wise, we got along reasonably well. Which is much more than I expected after the first half hour.
]]>
and another one:
If you are into that kind of running-gag thing, consider yourself ‘tagged’
I found bands with ‘Q’ hard and don’t even particularly like the one I had to choose.
]]>CocoRosie – The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn
Dan pointed me to CocoRosie and it took me a while to get the hang of their previous album Noah’s Ark which could shine with its odd combination of low-fi singing and strange electronic bits particulaly in K-Hole, Beautiful Boyz and Noah’s Ark. And while I remain a bit sceptic about the whole ‘folk’ and ‘ethnic’ hype that journalists distill from their press kits, their new album doesn’t disappoint.
The sound in The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn is a bit richer than that of Noah’s Ark (maybe a bit overproduced for my taste) and has a light hip-hop sound to it (or whatever too much bass in the beats and people speaking is called). Luckily that’s not enough to make me feel uncomfortable.
The album’s fourth chapter, Japan (Life is like a rollercoaster / it does flip and roll you over
), is somewhat childlike, despite its lyrics much fun and contains a weirdo opera piece. And my favourite so far is – naturally – chapter 7, Werewolf which is followed by Animals mentioning everthing from a solar eclipse to baby dinosaurs…
A final, positive, note should be made on behalf of their record company, Touch and Go Records who shipped the LP with a code that let me download MP3 versions of the songs for my iPod from their site. Just as things should work…
!!! – Myth Takes
!!!, a band with a name so ungooglable that they have to write chk-chk-chk along with it everywhere to make it more accessible. Their music mixes instruments with a hint of electronics which I started liking a while ago. In a way their current album Myth takes may be the album going where I would have liked The Rapture’s Pieces of the People we Love to go. Enjoy the disco-ish Heart of Hearts and the full eight minutes of Roll over Beethoven.
And if you ever needed an excuse to get a record player, this album may be it. It’s cover and sleeve art is such a finely detailed drawing that I doubt printing it in small CD size does it any justice.
Patrick Wolf – The Magic Position
Patrick Wolf released his third album, The Magic Position. In his case this means a third hair colour: After blond for the fantastic Lycanthropy and dark for his sophomore effort Wind in the Wires
we now arrived at a red that is brought into a somewhat childish context by the album’s cover art. As the image suggests, the album comes along more brightly and with a good helping of pop – in the album’s title track, say. A bit too much pop, people – including myself – might say.
While the album hasn’t lost the charme of Patrick’s style and mixing of electronic weirdness with proper instruments, I found it – particularly the first half – too far on the light and shiny side and thus lacking some of the power the previous albums had in songs like Tristan, Paris or even The Childcatcher. I guess we’ll have to wait a year to see whether this lightness is his new way or was just an escapade. Currently he seems to mix both happily. I’ll take bets for the new hair colour until then.
Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
Kings of Leon released their third album as well. I really liked their first album Youth and Young Manhood and their second album Aha Shake Heartbreak had a few good songs as well, so what about their current album Because of the Times?
I’m not sure to be honest. To begin I thought the album’s name was about the lamest you could have. And, while looking nice, the cover art just didn’t fit in for that kind of album. And the music is partially on the dull side as well. But it still contains a number of songs I enjoyed like McFearless or particularly Fans. A bit overdone perhaps, but good enough.
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Arcade Fire’s second full album Neon Bible definitely was one of the most eagerly awaited new albums for me in the past months. Their previous CDs were fantastic, seeing them live was outrageously good, so hopes and fears for the new album were high.
And while Neon Bible may not be as much of a revelation as its predecessor was, it is a solidly good album. The songs are good. But they have become quite boastful and pressing rather than keeping the understatement found on Funeral. My inner conspiracy-theorist is tempted to blame things like mixing and marketing for that, and I am curious to see how those songs work out when played live.
Neon Bible and Intervention are my favourite songs on the album so far and I am rather irritated by them putting No Cars Go from their first EP on the CD as well. Perhaps it’s just because it comes from a different context, but I keep thinking it doesn’t fit in.
When getting the CD, I knocked myself out and spent a few extra Euros on getting the ‘deluxe’ (or whatever they call it) edition. I can now recommend not doing that. The box it comes is too thick for what’s in there, so everthing makes a shaky noise when moving it and the CD uses even more space in the shelf. The extra flipbooks provide amusement for a minute at best and the cheap printing they used has one of the worst printing stinks I have experiecned (and usually I like that smell). In addition I find that the booklet is not printed nicely (a slight off-white shade for text just looks crap when rastered rather than using a special colour and even if that was intended by whoever did it, printing lyrics in justified text can safely be labelled stupid - or smart and reader hostile, which to me as a reader is the same).
The Rollercoaster Project – Drone 1
This is an odd one that nobody expected – least of all myself. Reader Mike of Dreamboat Records sent me Drone 1 by The Rollercoaster Project who makes what I’d label as ‘strange electronic music’.
The CD’s eponymous song is based on the same small rhythmical pattern being repeated over and over again at different pitches. And there’s also a remix version of that song. The third song on there, Algorar, has a touch of Sigur Rós to it but sounds more mechanical than them.
Technically the CD is interesting as well – not only does it come with an all black CD in nice packaging, the electronic bits of the music also prove to be a big challenge for compression algorithms. If you ever needed to convince someone that today’s iTunes quality can definitely case audible losses, this is the CD you want. Which of course means you don’t want to buy the CD at iTMS but rather as a CD or at Bleep. [Update: See below for Mike’s special offer to you.]
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Some Loud Thunder
To make the beginning of the year worthwhile my other big obsession, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah released their second album Some Loud Thunder in January. Of course I dug in for the full width of their offerings via Insound – which once again thanks to low American prices and Dollar was reasonably priced despite needing overseas shipping. As a bonus for pre-ordering there was even access to MP3s of the album a week or so before it was released – and thus a fortnight before it made it about the big ocean.
The album is all right. I think they overdid it by making the album’s opening and title track sound poorly recorded. It’s hard to see the point of faking bad recording quality. Of course I’m thrilled that the album contains the wonderful Satan Said Dance and other songs like Mama, Won’t You Keep Those Castles In The Air & Burning? directly follow the spirit of their first album. I’m not a big fan of the circuseque Encountering a Crippled Elephant and I note that in some songs like Yankee go Home there’s actually chance to understand the lyrics by listening to the music.
While I don’t think it’s the next big thing, I’m starting to like the last track ‘Five Easy Pieces’ which just cries to be used in the closing scene of a film.
Peter Bjorn and John – Writer’s Block
Peter Bjorn and John’s (no they don’t write Björn for some reason) Writer’s Block may very well end up being the most agreeable album of the year. I haven’t met anybody who doesn’t like it so far. And it certainly is enjoyable and relaxed. I hope we are not going to to grow sick of it by the time Young Folks has been played in all clubs and dozens of commercials. The wrong way round thing in the cover art keeps amusing me.
Malajube – Trompe L’Oeuil
Malajube are another great Canadian band (just what exactly do they do in Canada to achieve that?) Happy, screamy, jumpy, yet not aggressive and in French (or Québecois, I presume). I have been enjoying this CD a lot and it looks like Malajube are playing at Haldern this year…
Also Ran
And that’s not all. There have been many other albums out which I heard but don’t have the patience to write on or didn’t even bother to buy and just was a collateral listener to. Examples for those would be The View which saw a good deal of hyping but which seemed – to be polite – average to me. I guess it might sell well nonetheless. And just as I could appreciate but didn’t manage to be a big fan of Bloc Party’s first album, their new album A Weekend in the City ‘suffers’ the same fate. It’s all right, but it doesn’t do much for me. But hey, they have a lengthy song called Kreuzberg on there and my flatmate really likes them, so this is not going to pass me completely.
Similarly Maxïmo Park remain in their sphere of lacklustre pretence with Our Earthly Pleasures. I’m also starting to develop more and more of a dislike for their singer’s voice. Bright Eyes’ Cassagada can be listened to without problems – all charming but not that exciting or new. And the Klaxons who seem to be the dernier cri over in the UK are also all right, but not that compelling to me. Just like !!! they might be a good replacement for The Rapture’s album, though (all right, enough bitching about that one I guess).
Lovers of Swedish music may want to pick up the compliation Labrador 100 by the Labrador label – who are publishing The Legends for example. Everbody quite liked the song Fists Up by The Blow which made it onto one of our kitchen samplers, but the CD turned out to be a bit on the dull side. Little Barrie stay right on track by keeping their charming 1960s style and not being overly exciting at it. Jamie T apparently saw some serious hype a while ago, which went right past me and while it’s not exactly my cup of tea, there may be more than just ‘dull Mike Skinner wannabe’ to the music – in particular less hip hop – he seems to be playing at Haldern this year, so I may lend another ear to him. The Fratellis came to people’s attention by making their way into an iPod commercial (and their song Flathead used there is quite similar in style to Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl which shared the same luck) but the music is too upbeat, poppy and dull for me. Not too bad but not as great as their first album, is The Rakes’ Ten New Messages which may just be a bit too clever for its own good and lack the bits that made Capture/Release rock. Finally, the German band Klez.e who sound, well, quite German. Not outrageously good but not too shabby either. Oh my indifference!
Worth recommending to anybody who likes Low or Múm is Explosions in the Sky’s new album All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. Starting to sound a bit dull to me – Arctic Monkeys with their new album Favourite Worst Nightmare, whose title reminds me of The Hives and the writing on whose cover I loathe. Of Montreal’s new album Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer? is quite interesting as well and Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead Even Before The Ship Even Sank seems promising as well. Those will take a few extra listens, though.
A final shout goes to Rob Hoeke. I really started liking his song Drinking on my Bed and when digging through old files recently I found an ancient MP3 with just that song again in a recording that’s much nicer than the one you can get on iTMS.
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Tonight I DJed at a party organised by the students of the psychology department. I already did the same at two of their parties this summer and now got another go at their christmas party. This one was in a tiny club in town rather than in the department’s garden, so it was better for DJing and partying. The guy I DJed with actually organised everything. And what’s really odd is that he’s really nice and friendly and all but I strongly disagree with his taste in music (and that’s polite Sven speaking). I just so can’t relate to it, that I’m always surprised that he’s just a normal person when talking to him.
In a way having this mix of DJs is quite interesting. As – certainly – the audience was split into people liking his style and people liking mine (and those drunk or indifferent enough to like both). That way at least half of the people enjoy the music at any time (and the others possibly hate it) and everybody gets to enjoy the music at some stage.
Surprisingly (to me anyway) there was a good crowd – and this being a psychology party, most of them were girls – and the club was full, so things were fun. And people were keen to dance as well. They even danced to Love Is All although I’m pretty sure that very few people actually heard that before.
Each of us played two sets, my first set – starting things off early at 9:30 – obviously wasn’t too exciting. Both because I had to settle in (and get used to the quirks of the equipment - no level metres on the mixer, broken lights on the record players, a CD player which required you to use the remote to switch it to ‘time left’ mode, a computer line cable that was broken on one channel) and because few people were there. But I quite like that. It lets me play slightly unknown stuff, fulfill those special wishes of my friends and not be intimidated by people leaving the dancefloor just because I played something halfway obscure.
Still, people were dancing at the end of that, so that was great. The second set I played – from 1 to 3 or so – was really fun. I just went straight for all the popular recent indie stuff (Strokes, Raconteurs, Libertine and so on) at first, throwing in a few less known tracks, then went on a trip to the past (Pixies!, Rolling Stones, New Model Army) and finished with a turn to German bands (Robocop Kraus – a nice bridge because they’re singing in English – , Sterne, Tocotronic, Mediengruppe Telekommander and Wir Sind Helden to finish).
I could obviously add more rants, like how I actually used three media (LP, CD, computer) this time, how I enjoyed being able to put my 7″es to good use and how I ended up having records with me which seemed such good choices when I packed but obviously weren’t suitable once I was there (nobody but me seems to like or even know Patrick Wolf – and while I still think it’d be brilliant to play the beginning of the Mogwai Government Commisions record with John Peel saying Ladies and Gentlemen, Mogwai,
most people will neither appreciate the band nor the announcement. Und so weiter und so weiter.)
So – great night, and a full six hours left for sleeping, waking up, showering, breakfast and getting to the department to listen to a talk. Uh-oh!
]]>Tapes ‘n Tapes – The Loon
People over in the US started being all enthusiastic about Tapes ‘n Tapes in spring. And from the samples I gathered from the web I thought their music was all right, but not all that exciting. In August their album finally made it over here and I have been bitten by the Insistor (download, video) bug since. That song is just so outstanding that I had to hear it about a gazillion times. And I’m sure the neighbours could enjoy it several times as well. Because it’s even better in loud. (Surprisingly the CD seems to be mastered at a refreshingly low level, so it’s extra loud in terms of amplifier settings.)
OK, that song’s just perfect, great lyrics (I wondered a bit about lost == lust? fought == fucked? when reading them and what kind of slang does ‘be your badger’ come from?), subtle sounds and even a sense of humour with that lisping thing can be found in there. I like it. And don’t be terse and don’t be shy // Just hug my lips and say good lies…
Unfortunately, Insistor is followed by Crazy Eights a song which I find rather dull and boring. Insistor may also be misleading about the rest of the album which doesn’t follow its high energy and fast pace in general. Still the album is well worth listening to.
Mando Diao – Ode to Ochrasy
Mando Diao were my favourite band of 2003. And since they have become deservedly famous. Following their fantastic intial album Bring ‘em in and solid sophomore effort Hurricane Bar, there’s now their third album Ode to Ochrasy. And it’s the first album of them that I am quite indifferent about.
Which doesn’t mean it’s all bad. But it’s mostly more of the stuff they’ve done before. And in that more of the less exciting stuff they’ve done before. That’s a shame. I’d rather have them give me seven songs of new greatness instead of these fourteen songs of repetition and mediocrity. There’s danceable goodness like the single Long Before Rock’n’Roll, there’s mild boredom in Amsterdam and there’s the vaguely old-fashioned and different Good Morning, Herr Horst.
Love Is All
More Swedish goodness is coming from Love Is All. My first impression was that they sound like a stained version of Architecture in Helsinki (whom I never got around to lauding here it seems), but that wouldn’t quite do the music justice as those ‘stains’ also bring more power with them. I’m impressed.
You should really listen to their Album Nine Times That Same Song (the quickest and cheapest way to currently get this in Germany is ordering via amazon from a seller in the U.S. – which is quite absurd) which is less repetitive than its title suggests. You’ll be rewarded with their charming singer, squeaking instruments and the need to go out. So if you don’t hate it, it may be a bit addictive. Particularly Busy Doing Nothing, Felt Tip, Ageing had never been his Friend and Turn the TV off – i.e. at least half of the CD.
And if you’re in for a treat, you could also try their single Busy Doing Nothing with a cover version of a song called Motorboat on it that the original artist even wrote a ‘thanks’ style introduction to.
The Thermals – The Body, the Blood, the Machine
The Thermals remain one of my favourite bands. Their very special sound of not excessively fast, a little laid back but still powerful music with their singer’s unique voice just does it for me.
Their new album The Body, the Blood, the Machine starts off with a mild organ sound to the powerful Here’s Your Future which sets the pace for 36 minutes of songs which express a certain, err, scepticism about an overly evangelical society. While I agree with that sentiment, I am generally a bit afraid of albums focusing on such issues as the content may get in the way of the music. But my impression is that The Thermals mastered that hazard. The album may be a bit more carefully produced than its predecessors and thus be a bit lacking in terms of that extra ‘kick’ but I don’t think that’s due to the lyrics.
Attention Escapists!!!
— We were born to sin…
The Pipettes – We are the Pipettes
A refreshing bit of summer music is brought to us by The Pipettes. And they seem to have gone from nowhere to rather successful in a very short time span. Musically they mock the sound of cheerful 1950s all-girl groups and touch that up by using slightly less pleasing lyrics. Which isn’t exactly my type of thing, but is still fun to listen to.
If you think that this is cruel, you should see what my friends do…
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CSS
I read about Brazilian band Cansei de ser sexy somewhere on the web and they might just start developing a bit of a hype around them. I’m not really sure that I like their music too much. It’s a bit trash-poppy with cheesy 1980s beeps and more modern and destructive singing to it. But it’s not that bad either. It also seems to be an appropriate thing to listen to while doing some CSS work…
Let’s make love and listen to death from above
Other
Things I noted in passing: Sugarplum Fairy, the ‘little brothers of Mando Diao’ band seem to have a new album as well; while a bit more cheesy than their older brothers, what I heard of it wasn’t as bad as I had expected; but that may just be my expectations. Then, the press seem to have been fed with Lo-Fi-Fnk’s album Boylife which sounds like some teenagers playing with their keyboards trying to mock ‘summer hits’ and slapping hip-hop cover art on it. Even more people seem to be writing about and even listening to the Scissor Sisters; I completely don’t get that and think their music is quite crap (and that’s before getting into the whole image thing they put on) – my 1980s allergy still in good working order, I suppose. German band Madsen have their sophomore album out which seems to confirm the less charitable opinions I held about the band. What I’ve heard of The Rapture’s new album Pieces of the People we Love is a bit disappointing as well – more on the boring and less on the interesting side.
To finish, let me waste your time by expressing that I really like Sub Pop LPs because of the nice stars and stripes on their labels.
With the window being open all evening until I go to bed, a number of insects find their way into my room. Of course they are attracted by my desk lamp and the MacBook’s screen. When packing the MacBook up this morning I saw this at the left hand side behind the MacBook:
If you look closely, you’ll see four dead insects and the MacBook’s power cord. The latter isn’t my point here though. Now I wonder whether it’s a coincidence that all those insects died very close to the MacBook’s hottest spot. Does the heat attract dying animals? Or does it kill them? I have no idea but I’ll keep an eye on the machine.
Tonight I did some more DJing for the psychologists. Nothing too exciting and not too late into the night, but still fun. I took the computer with me to give me the security of my iTunes library this time. (And iTunes failed me in an amazing way by not finding the songs in the copy of my music library which I had specifically made and tested on an external hard drive before, so I had to import everything again and couldn’t easily benefit from my ratings and playlists.) I guess that’s not really cool but it’s better than carrying all those CDs around which I might need. I briefly contemplated trying some proper mixing software, but the ones I looked at were so ugly, broken or complicated to use that I decided using the computer for at most every other track will be good enough.
What’s a bit sad is that people just prefer old music too much. To get people dancing I needed to play stuff from the mid-nineties or so. The good stuff, but still old. That was a bit sad, even with a mostly older audience around. Once people were more drunk and had started dancing another guy played… and played stuff I really don’t like. People still danced to that. Bad taste? Sufficient alcohol consumption? Most likely both.
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