Buzzcocks at the Paradise, 17th May.

Let me put it plainly: the Buzzcocks invented UK Punk.

You will excuse me then, if I am a little tongue-tied trying to talk about this band.

Perhaps I can contain myself by beginning with the obvious: Coming out of Manchester UK in the mid ‘70s, the Buzzcocks booked the Sex Pistols’ first show in the North, now immortalized at the start of 24hr Party People. Their furiously blasted music pretty much invented the pacing of the punk track.

Not so politically motivated as The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks most famous tracks, like “Ever Fallen in Love?” and "What do I get?" are love-songs. It may seem like a strange way to present a love-song I suppose, but theirs is the energy of teenage love, and sex. As we all know (more or less recently!) that passion is an unstoppable force.



It is 35 years later of course. Perhaps they can’t manage that pace – that vigor. I saw them at Axis a couple of year ago, and I remember having those kinds of doubts before the show. Surely they would be a decrepit version of past greatness – fragile now, and to be treated with reverence, but not quite respect…

That night they came out and played six songs, at about 150bpm, back-to-back, without a pause for breath. You would be wrong to count them out.

This could be quite simply the most important show you’ll see this year. Don’t miss a chance to see some history, and to dance your arse off.

Titus Andronicus’s “The Monitor”

I don’t want to overstate this, but there is something a little self-destructive about Titus Andronicus’s “The Monitor.”

The album is not short of great tracks. It’s not lacking in a voice all it’s own either, as the band lead us into a really beguiling world of working-class lives writ-large. Many of the songs on “The Monitor” move very subtly between contradictions. There is, for example, a lot of clever word-play that smacks of real thinkers behind the scenes. Most of the songs though, seem born of a bleary-eyed state of keg-stands, basement parties, and cigarettes chain-smoked veraciously, so you wonder how they can get their heads straight enough to pull the tracks together.

The answer is that it’s a persona of course (One give-away: No-one can be that obsessed with New Jersey!). But Titus are nurturing their characters all the time and it is a fascinating world that they are propagating: Working-class kids without much hope, but with each other; Americans through and through, appropriating all the right-wing shit, and letting the rest of us have some pride in the country. This surely is why the songs on “The Monitor” are dressed in Lincoln speeches.



Then again, I could be wrong. Like the massive reverb swells that overwhelmed Titus’s first album, “The Airing of Grievances,” “The Monitor” is in many ways obscure – even obscured. The obfuscation often becomes frustrating. The band didn’t need to hide their great tunes behind cloudy effects the first time around, and I would dare to say they don’t need the gimmicks of political rhetoric to block our access to their own statements about living their lives in these times. That’s the self-destructive thing I worry about with this band. Perhaps their stories, which deserve to be told, will be lost in all the confusion.

Los Campesinos's "Romance Is Boring."

There have been lots of
albums out recently from established acts trying to balance pushing forward with their sound but also retaining the quality of their past releases,

 

    with varying 
       degrees        of 
success. 

None of them have managed to keep this tricky middle ground with more skill than Los Campesinos. “Romance is Boring” is an album of (at least) two sides, and both of them are compelling.



I have written about this band before. When I did, I was wowed by the cheery energy and humor of their youth. They were witty and intelligent, the elements of a gang of seven friends playing together on stage and off.

I could see in them a connection to a new drive to put the intelligence back into British indie music, along with other excellent bands like Maximo Park and Lightspeed Champion. They were, in short, the kind of band that moved past the bombast of muscular rock, to give us all the energy and add to it the intellect that gives songs depth and long-lasting appeal.

The Los Campesinos of “Romance is Boring” are a band with all the droll gags and word play, but something novel too, which makes them addictive on a whole new level. The best examples are in songs like “Who Fell Asleep In” and “The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future.” Both show singer Gareth to be a mature and serious vocalist, with a deft touch over his words. Emotionally charged lyrics about troubled relationships and desperate friends are a turn you wouldn’t normally expect from this band, or this vocalist, but Gareth sings them with huge conviction. They really are all grown up, at least in the ways it counts.



What remains young about Los Campesinos is their veracious desire to throw themselves into music. It’s an admirable trait that I hope they never grow out of. They are playing at the Paradise on 24th April, and I will be there, laughing with them at times, and silent when they move me.

Lightspeed Champion's "Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You."

Lightspeed Champion (the name for Dev Hynes’s current musical persona), produced one of the best albums of 2008. Will he repeat that feat with his second release? It’s really hard to say. Let me back up a little and explain…

When Dev was last in Boston in 2008, playing at Great Scott, he told me that he was quite literally living on the road, and had no home anywhere in the interim – when he went back to London, he was forced to sleep on friends’ sofas. I understand he’s now put down some roots, back here in the country of his birth (he’s originally from Houston, TX). Now though, he lives in New York, where he recorded “Life is Sweet!”



Despite all this distance from the London music scene that he came out of though, this album, like the last, is about as English a project as I can imagine. I don’t mean that it’s better or worse than music from elsewhere, but that there is something almost uniquely eccentric about Dev’s sound, which seems to scream Southern English indie.

You can never really be sure if the strange juxtapositions of instrumentation that flit in and out of these songs are serious or tongue-in-cheek. The video for “Marlene” is a good example of the generally bizarre direction that Dev takes with songs.



What’s most remarkable about this background though, is that the songs that end up on “Life is Sweet!” while they have clearly come from a very ‘creative’ and experimental place, are still basically very catchy and addictive tunes. Songs like “Middle of the Dark” and “Sweetheart” are built from really complicated mixes of instruments, but they are completely digestible. This means that you can enjoy listening to Dev’s music quickly, but keep hearing more and more in it as you spend time listening. You have to admit that that’s a pretty good proposition for any new music purchase.

Judging this music though, is difficult. There is very little to compare it to, for one thing. All it makes me think of is Dev himself: charming, funny, poignant, and precocious in turns, but on a planet all his own.

BRMC's "Beat the Devil's Tattoo"

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s first big single, “Whatever happened to my Rock and Roll?,” back in 2001, asked a question I didn’t care to think about at the time. BRMC’s whole ethos shouted (just as their singing did) that we needed a return to 'real,' bawdy, bold, ROCK music.

Having lived through Oasis’s heyday in Manchester, when big anthemic rock music was all you were allowed to hear, BRMC’s complaint seemed out of place, even counter-intuitive. Better to ask about the missing indie, post-punk, industrial, or in fact almost any other genre, than to call for more tough-guy bombast.

Watching them at Glastonbury festival that year, they looked the part too – the part of black leather-clad, macho, rockers. But then I started to hear something really unexpected from them. More than just posturing, the band built but moody, dark melodies driven principally by really inventive bass parts. They won me over slowly, always serious about what they were doing, and often bold in the moves they made (particularly in exploring their own musical roots on 2005’s “Howl”).

Now they bring us “Beat the Devil's Tattoo,” their fifth major release. “Beat the Devil's Tattoo” is certainly a rock album, true to form. It has lots of what BRMC do best: massive overdriven bass; rolling, primal drum lines, sinister vocals washing under masses of reverb. Some great material comes out of this mix, and new drummer Leah Shapiro fits very well into BRMC’s long established sound.

It might have been nice if Shapiro had destabilized BRMC a little more in fact - listening to “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” makes you feel at times like they could have pushed further to do something more new for them, like “Howl.” The band's sound has already been solidly defined, and this album doesn't do much to revise that. This album is not the best work the band have done over the last 11 years then, but it tells me again that they were right and I was wrong – there is still a place for out and out rock music, which takes itself seriously and plays in and out of darkness.

Massive Attack's Heligoland

Let me dispense with the usual build up and say something about this album that you’ve probably guessed already, given the history of this band: Massive Attack’s Heligoland is a very good album. It’s typically sinister and serious, built from a mix of industrial beats, sparse synths and driving bass, and the often very beautiful work of guest vocalists like Damon Albarn and Martina Topley-Bird. Fans of Massive Attack will likely not be disappointed with this, their first release in seven years.



Now we’ve got that out of the way, I want to write about why this album is very good, and not excellent. I’m not just trying to knit-pick here. I think the reasons for the limitations of Heligoland make a very interesting statement about the challenges that face as seminal a band as Massive Attack. Let me also let you know that I love this band with a passion, so I’m hardly set against them.

That being said, there are some shaky moments on this album, which show that Massive Attack are not invincible. While tracks like “Babel” and “Girl I Love You” are really compelling, The Guy Garvey guest track, “Flat of the Blade,” reveals that, even when all the ingredients are there (i.e. incredible vocalist, master beat producers, etc.), things don’t always gel when you try to force beautiful melody onto a cold, sterile backing track.

Beyond this, there is the pressure that Massive Attack now face from some other bands, who might just steal their thunder. On one side there are their peers (and friends) from the Bristol-based invention of Trip-Hop of the 90s, Portishead. Last year Portishead brought out “Third.” It drew lots of criticism at the time (although it was on Ryan's Smashing Life's shortlist for album of the year) for being too austere and unapproachable. I disagreed, but that seemed to be the consensus. Still, listening to “Heligoland” now, you wonder if any of it couldn’t have come from a previous release from some years ago. It makes me feel that, even if the Portishead release was hard to follow, it was more fresh and new than Massive Attack’s new work (Listen to RSL's recent video post of Portishead’s “Chase the Tear,” and see if you agree with me).

Then there is the pressure from newer bands. The album’s opening track, “Pray for Rain,” features Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio. This is a great song, and hearing it here, at the start of the album, seems like a signal that there are bands like TOTR snapping at Massive Attack’s heels. Might Massive Attack be passing the baton to the next generation of musicians here? Isn’t TOTR’s “Dear Science” a more radical album, in a genre built on radical experimentation?

I’d still say go and buy Heligoland, and I hope you enjoy it. Massive Attack are a classic band, but perhaps this album shows, overall, that every band has their day (or decade), but none can have all of them.

Choosing an album of the last decade.

So this is an absurd exercise, but why? Because it’s too short, of course, but also because we don’t really know what we’re asking. When I canvassed votes for an album of the decade among friends, several (who shall remain nameless) pointed out that Britney Spears could be in the running by some measures…

So let me try and clarify my terms, so that the task is a bit more reasonable. I wonder if I can get away with: “I’d like to write about the albums that, by my own warped standards, I felt presented the best creative work of the decade?” Clearly that’s not enough. Slipping and sliding around, balanced precariously on top of a mountain of a hundred thousand albums from the last ten years, I need to find some qualitative measure that will help me to find my way back down onto solid ground.

And now I come to reflect on it, it does seem that there are two aspects of music that I respect, and respond to, more than all others.

The first is intimacy. However cheesy it may sound, I want an album to feel first and foremost like it binds me very, very closely to the emotional state of the musician who records it. When I look at it this way, my choice for album of the decade is pretty clear. PJ Harvey has a mass of great work behind her, but 2007’s “White Chalk” is such a simple, elegant, moving album that it burrows deep beneath your skin and doesn’t let go.



Played largely on upright piano, with minimal studio bell and whistles, “White Chalk” is the kind of album that sounds like it came from a different time, but when you try to work out when exactly, you are left scratching your head. It’s not like any other album of that year at least. The narratives which Harvey writes in these songs are very much her own, but once you have listened to this album, carefully and without distraction, you will think each of them yours and yours alone.

The second thing I want out of any great album is euphoria. A great album manages to sound vast and overwhelming and like it will whisk you away from… well, from your own small life. You enter into the world of a soundtrack from a fantastic, epic movie that was never made. [Yes, I can see these two demands of great music are hardly comparable!] My runner-up then, for album of the decade… The biggest, most beautiful, and most incredibly well constructed album I’ve heard in the last ten years is Elbow’s “Cast of Thousands” (2003).



Years before Elbow’s explosion into one of the biggest bands in Britain over the course of 2009, it seems they decided to write an album as grand – almost as operatic – as if they already saw the crown within their grasp. Tenth track ‘Grace under pressure’ ends with the sound of their audience at the Glastonbury festival singing with them, and listening to it makes me feel like Elbow is not a band, but an army. They are (as they themselves tell us) thousands strong, each able to express, for a moment, their joy at the world. There is nothing more I could ask from them than that.

These then, stand as my votes. I feel sure they are not yours. I hope I’ve at least made my rationale for these choices a little clearer. Please protest. Stake your claim, and do it for reasons that are all your own.

Newly Discovered Old Music – The Test Icicles.

So I’m not as cool as I like to pretend. Plenty of great music gets past me. I’m left to the slightly embarrassing task of trying to catch up with others who really were there when it happened. This year the biggest missed opportunity which revealed itself was 2005s “For Screening Purposes Only,” by the Test Icicles.

This band from London would have gone completely under my radar if it wasn’t that singer Dev left the group and went on to become Lightspeed Champion, releasing one of RSL’s best albums of 2008.

Having become completely obsessed with Lightspeed, I was looking around for more by Dev, and the Test Icicles appeared dimly on the horizon. This is no longer easy stuff to get hold of, but my best-kept source for digging out hidden musical gems (my mother) doggedly tracked it down in a second-hand store in Manchester (UK).



So now the hunt is over, what do the Test Icicles sound like? Coming from Lightspeed to this, I don’t think I have ever heard a more jarring change of direction in any musician’s career. Where Lightspeed is slight and subtle and crafted to perfection, “For Screening Purposes Only” is a heavy, blasting album that feels like it could tear your head off. It’s vicious and cutting, and you wonder how Dev could sing another note after just first track ‘Your biggest mistake’ comes to an end.



Though it is absolutely not what I was looking for at the time, The Test Icicles can’t be ignored. They are a really explosive band that you’ll keep playing even when it hurts to hear any more. If you ever come across their CD, and feel you need a sonic battering that feels like an actual battering, remember that they come highly recommended.

Manic Street Preachers Grow Old Gracefully

In the 1990s British music scene there were hardly any bands faster and more furious than The Manic Street Preachers. Leading the charge of Welsh guitar bands in the period, the Manics were also among the most radical of them, both musically and politically.

Then of course, there was James Dean Bradfield’s voice: searing; hugely powerful; completely idiosyncratic.

Most of all their story – enduring the (presumed) death of guitarist Richey Edwards, and still managing to produce very successful, sweeping musical anthems in the aftermath – was a narrative as moving as that of New Order’s birth out of Joy Division. We wanted them to win, out of such adversity, and they did.

The Manics, then...


...and now


This year’s new release from the band though, “Journal for Plague Lovers,” really retains only one of these three elements, which had commanded our interest. The album is still marked by Bradfield’s almost operatic singing. The Manics have become something I think they would have been horrified by a decade ago though: tame.

There are a lot of similarities with this story of gentle decline and that of Supergrass’s, another 90s act whose first album, ‘I should coco,’ had an energy that even admittedly engaging later work could never match. Supergrass had a great voice to lead it too, and an incredible force that has now dissipated.

At fault I think is over-production that evens out both bands’ music to the point where it is just too clear and digestible, and has had the jagged thrall of energy that I feel sure they could still muster hammered out of it. After all, it seems unfair to assume age is the issue alone. There are plenty of older bands that keep up the pace (even much older – I saw the Buzzcocks a little while ago storm through a set at the old Axis). This over-polished production is remarkable, because no less a studio master than Steve Albini was responsible for it.

I suppose The Manics shouldn’t be expected to produce endless, increasingly worn-out parodies of their initial work. What we have from The Manics this time around though is a pale version of their early stuff, and it doesn’t offer a new kind of sound to replace what’s missing of the old one.

“Journal for Plague Lovers” is not a terrible album – it’s ‘solid,’ even ‘dependable.’ A band that has produced such powerful work in the past though, can hardly be satisfied with that.

Lou Barlow's "Goodnight Unknown"

Lou Barlow has released his new album, “Goodnight Unknown,” only a matter of weeks after “Farm,” Dinosaur Jr’s latest effort, on which he played bass. You have to wonder, given this proximity, how the two projects fit together, and I’m happy to report the answer is ‘not well at all.’ While I have already written about the incredibly complacency of those involved in phoning it in on “Farm,” it appears Lou has used the funds from that debacle to produce, in “Goodnight,” his most interesting work in some years.



There is a short film about the making of the album available here. I’ve tried not to let this documentary color my perspectives on the project. I think I’ve failed. Listening to Lou narrate images of his life working on “Goodnight” – setting-up and then re-configuring his home ‘studio;’ recording the sounds of child’s toys to make ambient sounds; working 9-5 on the album and then returning emoh to play with his 4yr-old daughter – I am left feeling jealous of the resources being a member of Dinosaur Jr has offered him to work, and intimidated by the snatches of music that have been born of it. When I turn back to the album itself, the final product is not quite so overwhelming an experience as his hard work on the film might suggest, but it’s not far off.

Why am I not as head-over-heels in love as I was about “The Freed Man” or “Bakesale?” Lou seems to move frustratingly on and off the target at some points on this album, as if he didn’t know himself what sometimes makes him truly one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard. Above all for me, those other albums set the standard for intimacy in music in two ways: they are musically more slight and simple than almost anything else ever recorded, and lyrically they are as open and candid as you might hope to confess on your deathbed.



Not to all tastes, this kind of songwriting (and not even to Lou’s at times it seems), but when it’s done well it’s a consummate enactment of connection between songwriter and listener. And there are moments of this king of bond on “Goodnight,” which is quite an achievement for someone writing their 20th or perhaps 30th album. “One Note Tone” is a song that could stand pretty well with ‘classics’ of his own genre like “Mystery Man,” “Two Years Two Days” or “Poledo.” “Too Much Freedom” is also poignant like tunes of old.

All in all, how much can we ask of Lou – That he matches or betters his best at every turn? Hardly likely, and hardly fair. He has written an album in which he digs once more into his own deep life, and we can enjoy hearing the sometimes stumbling results.

ART BRUT, tonight at Middle East Downstairs!

Going to a show in this day and age should not be a maudlin affair where we all commune over our sorry lives, our deep angst at the world and our lost loves – it should be FUN! This Friday night at Middle East Downstairs you can join a real musical party, when London’s Art Brut headline a night of breakneck punk with plenty of humor in the mix.



The last time Art Brut came to Middle East, singer Eddie Argos was nearly thrown out of the show, mistaken by security for a drunken fan who was dancing on the bar, chanting, with an ecstatic audience, that “MODERN ART… MAKES ME… WANT TO ROCK OUT!” It was a great night of entertainment, and now Art Brut return with a new album, “Art Brut vs. Satan,” and a hilarious new single to head it up, called, appropriately enough for them, “Alcoholics Unanimous.” How can you resist a title like that!



Art Brut are supported by some interesting up-and-comers from California. “Princeton” are a four-piece who mix shoegazing with airy-pop to create tunes which lighten our spirits. They are touring to support their brand new debut album, “Cocoon of Love,” and are well worth getting there early for. The opening act, Tab the Band, have been creating some buzz lately on the local scene (not to mention some nationally too, getting a Rolling Stone review into the bargain!). They should get things going for us very well indeed. See you down there.

Tom Thumb's "We never die"

Tom Thumb was already a favorite at RSL when I joined the crew a year ago. I had some catching up to do. On the night I first met Ryan, he led me over to Great Scott’s to see Andy Arch (the solo name behind the Tom Thumb project) play songs from his 2008 “The Taxidermist” album. It didn’t take much to be convinced. After that show, I listened to his new CD, “We never die,” with some trepidation – could he perform the acrobatics of building a whole second album to similar effect?

“We never die” comes stutteringly to life with a lone mandolin. It is a very human sound, unpolished to the point where it belies Arch’s mastery of his instrument(s). I’m pleased to say that this slight introduction to opening track “Olivia” sets the tone for a very intimate journey that is at least as moving and euphoric in turns as anything on “The Taxidermist.”

Arch’s lyrics are intricate, leaping from compacted image to image, sometimes amusing, often touching, and never prosaic. Though there is poignancy, my overriding emotional response is simply to revel in Arch’s complex play between the celebratory and sad.

All this joyous music builds, like any really great album, to a delicate crescendo in “Acid Rain.” Playing this song, among several from the last album, at a show in Boston some months ago, this was immediately a stand out. Here on the CD it makes clear that Arch knows not just how to write a lyric, or just how to write a song, but the dying art of how to write an album. “Acid Rain” caps off a project that seals Tom Thumb’s place as the best solo artist to come out of Boston in some years.

You are lucky this week, because not only can you pick up this great new Tom Thumb album (http://tomthumbmusic.com/), but you can also see the start of his fall tour begin, this Friday at the whitehaus in Jamaica Plain. If you live outside Boston, make sure you catch him at one of the following shows across America:

10.10.09 - Biddeford, ME @ the hfs annex

10.11.09 - Keene, NH @ Toadstool Bookshop

10.13.09 - Jamestown, NY @ Labyrinth Press Co.

10.16.09 - Brooklyn, NY@ Sycamore

10.20.09 - Penland, NC @ Penland School of Crafts Coffeehouse

10.21.09 - Chapel Hill, NC @ Caffe Driade

10.23.09 - Atlanta, GA @ Star Bar

10.24.09 - Athens, GA @ 2nd Annual Southern Celebration of Life

10.28.09 - Indianapolis, IN

10.29.09 - Urbana, IL

10.30.09 - Chicago, IL

10.31.09 - Lincoln, NE @ Clawfoot House

11.2.09 - Denver, CO

11.5.09 - Boulder, CO

11.7.09 - Las Vegas, NV @ the Cloud Hidden House

11.10.09 - San Luis Obispo, CA @ the Clubhouse

11.28.09 - Port Townsend, WA @ the Boiler Room

12.5.09 - Madison, WI @ the project lounge

12.6.09 - Chicago, IL @ the Orphanage

12.10.09 - Rochester, NY @ Boulder Coffee Co

12.14.09 - Portsmouth, NH @ the Red Door

RIP Dinosaur Jr (Please).

Dinosaur Jr changed my life. Sometime over the summer of 1993, my first girlfriend gave me a vinyl copy of “You’re living all over me.” I am at a loss for words, or space in this post, to explain all the implications of this album on my mind, or on where my life went from that moment. This may sound rather melodramatic, but it really is hard to over-estimate the effect of the band on me over the years.

But all things must pass. Dinosaur’s new album “Farm” marks, after over twenty years, the death of the band. Only the bands you are truly close to can really let you down, and really raise your ire. That is true in this case. I have to confess that listening to “Farm” makes me feel angry. It is so complacent. It so completely misunderstands what made the band fantastic for many, many years, as if the deep connection I thought I had made with what J, Lou and Murph were doing was hollow.

Its guitar tone is certainly loud, but somehow it’s clean and regular in a way the early Jr seemed dead-set against. The solos are casual and tuneless, an exercise in posturing instead of a representation of angst or pain. The lyrics have a ‘by numbers’ feel to them which would make J Mascis of old roll in his metaphorical grave. Where they got everything right with “Dinosaur,” “Bug,” and “You’re living all over me,” and produced a lot of great material on the many albums that followed, “Farm” is the antithesis of that immensely powerful, immensely beautiful sound.

In a few weeks you will have to chance to make your own mind up, because Dinosaur Jr are coming to Boston on tour. Will I be there? After listening to “Farm” over the last few weeks, it’s going to be a truly difficult decision. I suppose it should really be about letting go – of my youthful exuberance, and of the notion that Jr could be endlessly inspiring. That would be a lot easier though, if they would let me go too, and stop flogging their crumpled image to me, as if I were still besotted.

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.