Maximo Park’s “Quicken the Heart”

Rarely has there been so much controversy about an album in the RSL writer’s team that I am a member of, than about this one. Long-standing friendships have ended, bitter words have been thrown, violence has ensued, lawyers have been called… well, a few of us have sent some sarcastic emails to each other at least. I must give credit for his wit to one other writer on the team, who is otherwise a big fan of the band, for renaming them “Minimo Park” after hearing this album.



How can I defend MAXimo Park from ‘vicious’ attacks like this? Well, in all seriousness, “Quicken the Heart,” Maximo Park’s third album, is possibly the best new music I have heard in the last six months. New is perhaps a strange word to use, because “Quicken the Heart” harkens back to a lot of older music, particularly from the 80s. It’s an album that is heavy with vintage synths and clean guitar hooks. The pacing of the songs too, has something about it that makes you feel like you’re watching a band who aren’t aware that they could play harder with a drum machine, and so achieve every ounce of energy they produce by simply throwing themselves at their instruments. Having seen them live (and they will be back at Paradise on 20th Sept, so you can too!), I can imagine them doing just that as they play these tracks.



This band has a star performer though, who lifts them from just good melodies and interesting hooks, to something really remarkable. Singer Paul Smith writes songs of love and romance that seem vintage like the rest of the band. I would hold Smith’s lyrical abilities up against anyone writing today though. He then sings these fantastic, emotive lines with a voice that sounds so desperately strained that even those with a heart of stone begin to wilt under the pressure. There is so much sadness in this music, but so much celebration of life too: of affairs loved but now over (“Tanned”), of brief, beautiful moments held between lovers (“Questing, not Coasting”), and of the excitement of fledgling relationships (“I Haven’t Seen Her in Ages”).

This is probably not the best album this band has produced, but, like a new summer romance, I can see nothing but the beauty of my current love.

Jarvis Cocker's "Further Complications"

One good way to think about Jarvis Cocker’s new solo album, ‘Further Complications,’ is as rather like the music of another truly classic songwriter, who you might not think shares much in common with Cocker. I speak of the ruler of sinister himself… Nick Cave.

Both men have such intelligent and subtle lyrical constructions that you wonder if they write poems to which they set music, or the other way around. Both men are capable of dark humor and cynicism, but also seem to give us moments that are touchingly familiar. Both have longstanding involvement with seminal bands (Pulp and the Bad Seeds respectively) that have produced lots of great music over the last couple of decades. Both, perhaps most pointedly for the purposes of a review of this album, have solo/side projects in which they show the angrier, dirtier side of their sound.



Nick Cave released this first album with side project ‘Grinderman’ in 2008, and played some of the heaviest sounding music he’s ever done on it. To move, more or less consciously, from the 90s disco core of Pulp to something rather like Grinderman, Cocker called on an absolute master of the industrial and vicious. Producer Steve Albini has worked with PJ Harvey and Fugasi, Nirvana and The Breeders among (many) others, and each time has found the most live and furious sound those artists have ever produced. On this album, tracks like “Fuckingsong” were recorded live in Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, and give the album an edgy and muddy feel which is really a great new direction for Cocker.

In the album’s title track Cocker sings: “I was not born in wartime/ I was not born in pain or poverty/ I need an addiction, I need a affliction/ to cultivate my personality.” It’s a witty lyric, but it’s also a bitter sentiment that could have sat well on the ‘Grinderman’ set-list. Who would have thought that the writer of pop classics like ‘Common People’ and ‘Lipgloss’ would put down music like this. It’s good for us that his did – ‘Further Complications’ is close to the best work Cocker has ever had a hand in.

Doves and Wild Light are coming!

The greatest shows are not the ones where you get to see the best bands you can pull to a particular venue on a particular night. They are the shows where everything seems to fit together and you’re really there to see one big performance with multiple bands playing the acts. Coming up on June 7th is a show that just might work out like that: Manchester UK’s Doves play the House of Blues that night, and they will be supported by New Hampshire’s Wild Light.

Wild Light are a band which I might want to call local because they’re great, and I’d like to feel that they are ‘mine,’ sitting here in Boston. Even if that’s a stretch, the band did win a Boston Music Award last year, before their debut album even came out. They have also toured with Tapes ‘N Tapes in the past, and have just got back from a stint with The Killers.



Doves really are mine, because, as I’ve said before, Doves come from my long-lost hometown in Northern England. This gig, to support their new, fourth, album “Kingdom of Rust,” is Doves first in Boston for several years, and you’d be a fool to miss it, because they are one of the better live acts in England right now.



Best of all, these two bands compliment each other really well, both playing cleverly holistic melodies on bass and guitar, which make them sound musically warm and inviting. Go and see them both, not for either one, but for a whole night of moving music.

Back to Back Ryan's Smashing Life Shows coming up!

This coming week is a big one for the Boston music scene. New England's most popular music blog, Ryan's Smashing Life, is sponsoring TWO shows in a row at Berklee's Cafe 939 on Boylston Street, which are open to all.



Check out RSL for reviews of the bands and sample tracks for both Friday May 29th and Saturday May 30th.



Don't come along to show your support for the scene - these show won't need your charity (they may even sell out!). Come along instead because you want to see a couple of nights of really great music for just $10 a piece. Highlight of both shows for me will likely be acoustic virtuoso Tom Thumb (who I've written about before) on Friday 29th, but there will be lots of other great stuff to see as well.

I hope to see you down there.

Manchester Orchestra at Middle East Downstairs

The bands on the bill Thursday night at Middle East have to fight hard to be heard. They struggle not with technical problems, but with a city transfixed by the Celtic’s triple overtime playoff fight. Bands come and go as the majority of the audience give them only glancing attention, between shouts and cries at three point shots in final seconds, and desperate fouls.

Andy Hull of headliner act Manchester Orchestra knows how to handle this problem: don’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. As crowds huddle around the one old TV in the place, a bearded and hooded Hull pushes past to see the final moments of the game. Only once it’s all over does he turn and move past the boundary to the backstage to prepare to play.



When he appears on stage, he is also smart enough to open with the line “Fuck the Bulls.” It doesn’t seem that he needed to win the crowd over with this comment though - They are all with him from the first. Several times his singing is just about drowned out by the audience’s voice as it follows him. The band seem comfortable with this. Perhaps, fresh from their Letterman performance the day before, they are ready for the big-time audiences that are coming to them. We only hope they will keep their feet on the ground enough to write more songs like the vicious “Pride,” and not be swallowed whole by the PR and labels and producers who are surely poised to jump on them.



But things look good for the band in that department – they aren’t taking themselves too seriously, playing a cover of The Proclaimer’s cult classic “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” at one point, between their own rock epics. Manchester Orchestra are a band with a load of potential and a great live show. Check them out, on tour with Audrye Sessions.

Doves - Kingdom of Rust

The other day I came across the review of Doves’ new album, “Kingdom of Rust,” in an unlikely place: Rolling Stone. You might think it quite surprising that I was looking inside a Rolling Stone in the first place, but even more surprising was the fact that Rolling Stone were bothered to write even a short piece about Doves, a band from the UK that hardly cause a ripple over here. Soon I understood though – it was an opportunity to open with the following byline: “UK trio create epic tunes about (what else?) boring UK.”

What can I say about this kind of thoughtful journalism, but try and write a little about the Doves album that reaches past the merely trite…



I have to work hard not to be swept away by “Kingdom of Rust.” Doves make me melancholy. Their music is moving, but I must confess there is something more particular about my sadness in this case. Doves are from my long-lost hometown of Manchester (UK!), so I’m not claiming journalistic objectivity this time around, but then again, I don’t think I’m completely off the mark when I say that “Kingdom of Rust” is a really warm, engaging album. Doves’ bass driven song construction, mixed with Jimi Goodwin's vocals, create tracks that are much less elaborate then their hometown counterparts Elbow, but remain capable of being similarly ‘epic’ – here, at least, the Rolling Stone piece has some value.

Tracks like “10.03” are an achievement the band should be really proud of, building to a frenzy you might not expect from their commonly seen malaise. “Compulsion” too, shows that Doves have some swagger in them too, along with all the poetry.



Doves are definitely a band worth checking out, if you can stomach all the ‘boring UK’ associations.

TONIGHT! The first RSL music showscase of the year.

Please join all of us at Ryan's Smashing Life tonight at Great Scott in Allston, for our first showcase of the year. We are featuring four great bands for a princely sum of $8.



Show your support for independent music! See you down there.

PJ Harvey and John Parish's "A woman a man walked by"

Let me give some context for what I’m about to say about PJ Harvey and John Parish’s new album, “A Woman a Man Walked by”…

I am a PJ Harvey obsessive. Her last CD, ‘White Chalk’ easily made the top of my best albums list for 2007. It was the kind of record which made me want to go and spend a couple of thousand dollars on a piano (which I can’t play) and spend the next year trying to write even a single line a haunting as those she had put down. The list of great work from PJ Harvey doesn’t end there. Who can forget albums like “Is this desire?,” with its vicious industrial scrawl, or the exquisite “Songs from the City, Songs from the Sea.” Just in case I haven’t made my point, perhaps I can introduce my cats: tabby female “Polly Jean” and long haired ginger female “Harvey.” Yes, when I fixate…



So it’s a sad day when I come to “A Woman a Man Walked by” and have to admit that it has some serious problems. There are some dubious lyrical choices. The lyrics to “April” seem surprisingly prosaic, for example. “Pig Will Not” ends with Harvey shouting “I will not” again and again, and makes you wonder if she really has anything to say this time around.



There are still some great, moving, tracks, like “Passionless, Pointless” and “Leaving California,” but the overall album is very uneven. I’m a little more bitter at this because the single, “Black Hearted Love” is deceptively like an excellent track from “Songs from the City…,” so it raised my hopes that this might be the best new release of the year from an established act. That accolade still goes to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs right now (perhaps until Maximo Park next month?). Meanwhile I’m sad to say Harvey needs to rethink things a little, if she’s to produce the great new music I know she is still capable of.

Shameless Self-Promotion - "The Spire" by my band, Wring.

I simple can't resist telling you about a big development in my own musical life this week, after months of writing about other people's CDs. My band, Wring, has just released our first EP, "The Spire." You can get the EP, FREE, through our website, www.wringband.com.

"The Spire" is a little over fifteen minutes of music that I've been working on with my friend Art Baron for more than a year. I've also had help from good friends, and I want to acknowledge their great work: Thank you Stephanie Tyburski, Kevin Herlin, and Josh Olivier Mason. I also want to thank Jill for all her work on the website build and photography. Thanks too go to Colin Sapp for mastering the EP.

I'll leave the reviews to you, while I get started on the next one...

Tom Thumb and Leonard Mynx at TTs, Monday!

It’s a Sunday, and I know how you feel. But tomorrow doesn’t need to be just the beginning of another grey week working in the city, because you can take my advice and head out to TT the Bear’s Place for a night of really great (not to mention cheap) entertainment from none other than Tom Thumb (who produced one of RSL's top albums of 2008!), along with a rising star who has traveled all the way from Oregon just for you: Leonard Mynx.



Tom Thumb should need no introduction at this point – he’s simply one of the best to come from Boston in the last couple of years, and his folk tracks are a mix of euphoric and poignant at one and the same time.



Mynx has a little darker tone, brooding on tracks like “Valley of Sickness and Death” and “Mary.” He sings elegant and beautiful music which can carry you with densely woven lines like “In the grave yard, below the Ferris wheel/ The stranger takes his pose/ Out across the barren field/ Mary gave a rose to a ghost.”

This show will definitely be worth your time tomorrow night – don’t miss out on either of these great folk artists.