Album Review: The Go-Betweens – Oceans Apart

The Go-Betweens’ third album after regrouping, released in 2005 turned out to be their last. Song for song it’s probably their strongest. Robert Forster was on particularly good form here, opener Here Comes A City has a great jerky, snappy rhythm to it, all choppy guitar and clever lyrics (“why do people who read Dostoevsky look like… Dostoevsky). It's almost like Talking Heads, when Forster goes "hey, hey, hey" before the guitar solo he sounds just like David Byrne. There’s a change of pace for Finding You, a Grant McLennan mid-paced track featuring mandolin, very reminiscent of REM (when they were good).

Both Forster and McLennan are on good form here. McLennan’s are usually more commercial sounding and here it’s no different, any of his songs would sound good in more mainstream surroundings, especially the uptempo acoustic Boundary Rider.

But it’s Forster’s tracks which represent the edgier side of the Go-Betweens. Darlinghurst Nights is the emotional heart of the album, featuring a great descending acoustic guitar riff, full of yearning, matching the subject matter, concerning itself mainly with memories, and a nice Dylan reference in the bridge (“one more coffee then I must go”). He even tries his hand at a semi-reggae piece, Lavender, which shouldn’t work but actually does, helped in the main by the guitars and some cool-sounding lyrics “she’s got a pair of black boots that kick stones she’s got black moods she calls her own”). It’s a straightforward enough song about a girl who “wears lavender, it’s her scent” but it avoids cliché.

Final track, Mountains Near Dellray, sounds enormous, like it’s being performed on the aforementioned mountains, drifting across the valley. In fact Mark Wallis’ production is a little overwrought, as all the tracks boom out of the speakers, both the uptempo ones and the more delicate ones. A subtler production would have been preferable.

Ideal listening circumstances: Driving on a sunny day, late morning in spring, on your way to an event you are dreading and looking forward to in equal measures.

Album Review: Stuart A Staples – Lucky Dog Recordings 03-04

A solo album from Stuart Staples is a curious beast. Or should I say, Stuart ‘A’ Staples. It sounds like Tindersticks with some bits taken out, which is precisely what it is, as he is helped out here by various members of Tindersticks. So not a major departure then, upon release in 2005.

It’s not till the second track (the first is a rather slight instrumental) Marseilles Sunshine, where we hear the lugubrious vocals of Staples. It’s a yearning plea of a song, probably one of the most fully realised here featuring a great bit of guitar in the bridge from Neil Fraser and glockenspiel from David Boulter.

Friday Night is a reasonably sparse track, with light percussion and mainly organ, giving Staples’ vocals great room to breathe and own the song. It’s a great vocal performance, he sings with real sensitivity here.

Many of the other tracks are mere sketches, a lilting refrain repeated ad nauseum (Shame On You, Dark Days) and don’t quite work. It’s hard not to get the feeling that something is missing.

Towards the end there are some more fleshed-out songs, which are very much in the vein of Tindersticks. People Fall Down sounds wonderfully downtrodden. Again the arrangements are not particularly busy, giving space to the vocals. There’s some atmospheric saxophone towards the end, not an instrument I’m particularly fond of, but it works perfectly here.

She Don’t Have To Be Good To Me sounds like the sun has broken through the clouds, clearing the rain away using a nice horn section midway through. It’s relaxed and sounds like a dry run for his follow solo album, Leaving Songs. Final track I’ve Come a Long Way draws a nice full stop at the end of the album, aided by more horns.

It’s an interesting curio, not Stuart Staples strongest bunch of songs, though he sings them very well for the most part.

Ideal circumstances to listen: As ever with Tindersticks-related material, walking along a cobble-stoned alleyway on a rainy, grimy night in late autumn (October/November). Perhaps in a small town in France.

Album Review: Elliott Smith – Roman Candle

Elliott Smith released his debut in 1994, a short album running to just half an hour in duration. It’s largely his breathy vocals and acoustic guitar, with some electric guitar overdubs. The odd backing vocal here and there. No percussion. So it should be awful. Further more only 5 of the 9 songs have titles, the others being No Name #1, #2, #3 and #4.

It sounds very intimate, with every breath of his vocals and every movement of his fingers clearly audible, perhaps due to the 4-track production. The title track sets the tone for the album, with it’s insistent guitars and slightly menacing refrain (“I want to hurt him, I want to give him pain”). Condor Avenue is in a similar vein, and sounds like the raw materials for his later, more well-known material.

No Name #1 and No Name #2 have a more relaxed feel, #2 throwing in some harmonica. What separates this from the usual run-of-the-mill singer-songwriter fare is some unexpected chord changes which crop up all over the album, notably in No Name #3.

It’s a little samey when listened to right through, though final track Kiwi Maddog 20/20, an instrumental, is a welcome departure, with surf-style guitar. The rest of it can be bracketed with Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate etc.

I understand this album has been recently remastered and re-released, which I presume means cleaned up to make it ‘sound better’. Shame. Part of the charm is the little glitches here and there on the album. And I am fond of hearing fingers sliding over guitar strings.

Ideal circumstances to listen: Cliché it may be, but a darkened room in January at about 2am with the ice running down the window… and down your veins.

Album Review: Dakota Suite – This River Only Brings Poison

I’ve started typing a review of this 2003 album several times, and then scrapping it. It’s an album I’m finding very difficult to write coherently about. Which is not to say I don’t like it. It’s probably Dakota Suite’s most complete work, certainly in the conventional ‘rock’ music setting anyway.

Mainman Chris Hooson travelled to San Francisco for a portion of this album, recording with Bruce Kaphan (pedal steel) and Tim Mooney (drums) of American Music Club ‘fame’. There is prominent pedal steel on several of these tracks. The album opens with The Lepers Companion, which features the aforementioned instrument over a slow tempo and Hooson’s languid vocals, setting the template for what is to follow. Boats in a Sunken Ocean is driven by horns and features some prettily strummed guitar.

Most of the instrumentation on the album is quite subtle. Guitars are plucked rather than played, with touches of piano, steel guitar here and there as adornments, as opposed to fighting for dominance. Let’s Share Wounds is one of the busier songs, with electric guitar and harmonium, and there are couple of great duets featuring the vocals of Laura Donohue (Sand Fools The Shoreline, How Safe We Must Seem). The second of these is particularly strong, acoustic guitar overlaid with Kaphan’s soaring steel guitar.

The album is also notable for some palate-cleansing instrumentals (Finished River, Verdriet, Matching Eyes and Hands) usually featuring piano, and occasional strings, harmonium etc.

The Ferris Wheels of Winter is one of the longer tracks at seven and a half minutes. It sounds like sunset, with piano and guitar ‘hammer-ons’ to the fore, before glorious mariachi-style horns come in for the chorus. It continues in this vein till just before the end where we get a great coda of David Buxton and Hooson’s intertwining guitarpicking.

It’s the perfect album for a lazy summer afternoon.

Ideal circumstances to listen: Around 3.30pm on a warm yet overcast Monday afternoon in August, when you’re supposed to be somewhere else but in fact you’re having a peaceful afternoon at home.

Album Review: Mark Eitzel – Music for Courage and Confidence

The dreaded cover album. Cover albums are often a recipe for dodgy music. Theoretically a cover album sees established artists paying tribute to their influences. In reality, it sees them performing pale imitations of much-loved songs in the main. The ones which tend to work the best are where the songs are not particularly well-known, therefore they don’t have a legacy to tarnish and often by covering them it brings them to a wider audience. The likes of Mark Kozelek takes a different approach, ditching the original melody (as he does with his ACDC covers) and recasting the songs as his own.

As a sort of like-minded artist, it was fair enough to expect a decent cover album from Mark Eitzel in 2002. Unfortunately this isn’t it. For long-time fans of Mark Eitzel, this might have been an opportunity to hear him tackle some dark obscurities. Typically he takes a different tack, by covering songs by mostly mainstream artists, from Bill Withers to Kris Kristofferson.

Although for many of these tracks he takes the Mark Kozelek approach, ie composing a melody and shoehorning the song into it, it has to be said that in the main this doesn’t work for him. Many of the tracks (Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, I Only Have Eyes For You, More,More,More) feature electronica which would probably work quite well on its own, but tends to clash with these tracks, leaving them sounding quite odd really.

On other tracks he plays it straight. Ain’t No Sunshine is a largely faithful rendition of the Bill Withers track, but it doesn’t depart much from the original, leaving it merely sounding like a depressed version of the song. Help Me Make It Through The Night fares worse, with a mechanised beat plodding its way through the song. To be fair Eitzel doesn’t do a bad job of singing the song, though he ruins it with a spoken dedication at the end of the track which sounds a bit cringey really. And his choice of Move On Up is just totally bizarre, he’s the last person you would expect to do a karaoke version of this horn-driven soul song.

The most successful songs are the vaguely countryish ballads (Snowbird, Gentle On My Mind, Rehearsals for Retirement) which suit his voice a lot better. In truth, these don’t hold a candle to anything else in his catalogue. I’ll Be Seeing You, is a kind of farewell, Eitzel dropping his register to sound like modern day Leonard Cohen, and works pretty well.

Much as it pains me to say so, this is an experiment which is best forgotten.

EP Review: Smog – ‘Neath the Puke Tree

Smog released this EP in 2000, consisting of a couple of new songs and some re-recorded ones. The country-tinged I Was A Stranger, originally on the excellent Red Apple Falls album, is revisited here in a slightly more relaxed version, and with Bill Callahan’s vocals sounding more like a late 60s vintage Leonard Cohen, ie deep and vulnerable. Your Sweet Entrance is more familiar territory for Smog, as in it’s terribly sparse and not particularly appealing on the surface, yet it worms its way into your head with a nicely off-kilter guitar riff.

Jar of Sand is distinguished by what sounds like an actual jar of sand swishing back and forth in the background underneath another sparse track, Bill Callahan singing about a “tidepool just deep enough to drown in”. The Leonard Cohen voice is back for the somewhat dark Orion Obscured by Stars, while final track Coacheecayoo is a little brighter, Callahan singing stuff and nonsense over a loping finger picking pattern.

This one is tricky enough to find, probably for Callahan-obsessives only (interesting notion: being obsessive about an obsessive).

Album Review: The National – Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers

The National’s second album, 2003’s Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers was where the band really started off in earnest, as their self-titled debut was pretty unremarkable. Within seconds of the first track, Cardinal Song, you’re transported immediately into brooding, melancholic territory with Matt Berninger’s voice centre stage over slowly unfolding music, as Berninger lays down his ‘rules of engagement’: (“never tell the one you want that you do”). It drifts along pleasantly for 3 or 4 minutes, with hints of Red House Painters and American Music Club until the notes of a piano take the song to a different place entirely and a beautiful violin part takes over, darkening the song wonderfully. It's a brave and uncompromising start to an ambitious album.

The pace picks up with Slipping Husband, with a simple descending guitar part where Berninger sings with heavy regret, calling to mind the likes of Feargal McKee (Whipping Boy), yet with a ‘head full of attitude’ as lines like “dear we better get a drink in you before you start to bore us” illustrate. The music is superb, the band play with just the right pace.

90-Mile Water Wall is gentler, with an acoustic guitar and fiddle. Berninger is particularly prominent on this album in comparison to later albums, his voice really owns many of these songs. There are some really great lyrics here: “how could your hair have the nerve to dance around like that”. The first half of this album is as strong a set of songs as on any album by any band. It Never Happened has a similar feel, regret being the primary emotion as Berninger sings “we look younger than we feel and older than we are.”

Things get a bit heavier and dirtier with Murder Me Rachael, underpinned by a great violin part and distorted guitars and some great, if a little creepy lyrics (“I loved her to ribbons”, “tomorrow won’t be pretty”). The song builds and builds to a climax with Berninger screaming his vocals towards the end. Thirsty is quieter, though no less urgent. Again there’s a fairly simple, descending melody but on this, like many of the other songs it’s the little touches that make the songs: a little violin here, some guitar there and more great lyrics. “Take these girly arms,” Berninger sings, “and ever keep me”, very resonant lines in my view.

The heaviest song is Available, which belts along with driving guitar and heavy drums. It's not like anything else in the National's song catalogue, melodically it’s like Joy Division with added distortion, the verses are underpinned with some filthy guitars in the background. It’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, the melody, lyrics and music combine fantastically. There’s a kind of pause in the middle, where the song is almost catching its breath with Berninger spitting out in disgust the line “you… just… made yourself available.” The song then kicks back into gear with even more frenzy than before, until Berninger loses it completely, screaming “WHY DID YOU DRESS ME DOWN, DRESS ME DOWN?” before eschewing lyrics altogether and just screaming blue murder. It’s an utterly brilliant moment, and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up every time.

The rest of the album isn’t quite as strong, but it would be almost impossible to keep a run of brilliant songs like those. Suffice to say that for the first seven songs alone, this an album to put up there with The Smiths, American Music Club et al. Of course, they are a different band now. Berninger has evolved as a lyricist and singer, and their songs have become subtler, yet I am saddened by the fact they don’t play these songs any more.