So Good At Being In Trouble - Unknown Mortal Orchestra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbt8oJTUlXw

Their second album, 'II', came out on the 5th February, its brilliant.

Bear's Den

A band I’m really liking at the moment. This folky sound has a bit more to it than a number of its predecessors over the last couple of years. Nice and catchy, but not too catchy, there’s a bit of Bon Iver to the guitars, and a bit of Frightened Rabbit to the vocals. Lovely

 

They’ve got two songs of the same name as Bastille, and they sound vaguely like them, but they’re miles better than Bastille, and the lead singer doesn’t look like Jedward.

Biffy Clyro- Opposites

 

So, the double album. Opposites. A bold move by most people’s standards, but the progression of Biffy Clyro in the last few years makes this step, on the whole, seem totally natural.

 

On the first one or two listens of this album, Biffy seem to me like that old friend that you begrudgingly wonder if we met now, would we still get on? Which is a worrying sign. Luckily, this is short-lived. After a few more listens the answer to that is a resounding yes, yes we would.

 

The only slight gripe I’ll get out the way before anything is the production of the album, which can be a good or a bad thing. For the more casual listener, the production makes some of the tracks sound like catchy radio pop songs (which is not necessarily a bad thing). But, if you remember what is was like before Warner, when a change in guitar every few songs was as far as it went, it can get on the nerves a little bit to start with. To me, at some points (Biblical, the very beginning of Different People), the clean over-production and over-use of ‘baby’ and ‘tonight’ make things at times teeter towards cheesy, something you wouldn’t dream of accusing this band of five years ago. However, the weighty guitars and prediction of how it will all sound live quickly wipes away those doubts once you get your teeth sunk into it. And you know, with the enormous amount of success combined with the aging and maturity of them, you can’t expect it to be all thrashed out in a day or two like Vertigo of Bliss was back in ’03. 

 

As it progresses, you begin to understand the reason for all these extra things (two more members (Mike and Gambler previously of Oceansize), bag-pipes, kazoos, tap-dancers you name it), and why actually they just add to everything. Firstly, beginning with disc 1 The Sand at the Core of our Bones, once the cheesy 1-minute opening is out of the way, they don’t step off the pedal for pretty much the duration. After single Black Chandelier, which we all know about, come two what-could-be title tracks; Sounds Like Balloons resonates the two albums names powerfully in what seems to jump out as a set closer (well, main set, my loyalties still lie with Now the Action is on Fire), followed by the gentle Opposite, which sums up the mood of the first disc (Baby I’m leaving here/you need to be with somebody else). And yes, more ‘baby’s. The Joke’s On Us, previewed first a year and a half ago now at Milton Keynes, is everything I hoped it would be: velocious, powerful and energetic.  

 

Biblical, an obvious single but not necessarily for the right reasons, is that track that summarises my experience of Opposites so far. Slightly bemused at first, a bit annoyed, then delighted. Somehow, don’t ask me why, in the time from first listening and now this has become one of my favourites of the album. Yes it is a bit poppy, and yes it’s not ‘Biffy-like’, but you know what, they decide themselves what’s ‘Biffy-like’, and moving the goalposts is what made them such a loved band in the first place.

 

The rest of Sand at the Core… nestles in nicely with the rest of the album, though a couple don’t seem to be absolute belters just yet. A Girl and his Cat and The Thaw amble along, with pleasing enough choruses that deserve repeat listens. Little Hospitals, perhaps the highlight of this side, thrashes along in a fashion not unlike earlier b-side Once An Empire, and builds up to devilish roar of When you leave I doubt I’ll remember you! Ever the optimists.

 

Disc 2 The Land at the End of our Toes doesn’t completely contradict musically the theme of the previous disc as you might expect, but rather follows the same formula to great effect. It is this disc, however, where the new experimentation of the album truly comes into its own. But it doesn’t seem fair to call it experimentation, because it just fits so well, I couldn’t imagine it being done any other way now.

 

A slightly more optimistic Stingin’ Belle, Modern Magic Formula and Victory Over the Sun, which we’ve heard either live or single versions of, are realised brilliantly. I loved Modern Magic Formula since first hearing it at Swindon last year, and the finished product is probably my favourite of either disc. Wedged in between them is Spanish Radio, a really bold Zelda’s gerudo valley meets Scottish Folk meets Rodrigo y Gabriela type vibe (strange, but that’s how I hear it).

 

Pocket, which surfaced as a terrible recording of I’m Probably in your Pocket about five years ago now, is everything we waited for. A heartfelt and catchy tune, this is even more rewarding seeing as it was assumed (or I certainly assumed), we would never here it in a completed state. Well thank God we have, because it works.

 

As we come to the end, Trumpet or Tap, Woo Woo and Accident Without Emergency are all fun (and lyrically more optimistic) representations of what this band have become. Anyone who was expecting Only Revolutions part 2 has been blissfully mistaken, as the musical expertise and experimentation on this album have far exceeded expectation. Stabbing guitar riffs along side trumpets, tap dancers and synths bring out Simon Neil’s voice perfectly, who would’ve thought it? After these, the whole thing ends with a fitting Picture a Knife Fight, which again drowns you in its chorus, and the final instrumental. Time to start it all again.

 

So in summary, they’ve created an accessible double album. And whilst it’s not the drastic contrasting concept album that the title might suggest, it’s just a bloody great collection of tracks. Remember, if you find yourself wondering why on earth you’re singing along to a clean radio edit of something on radio 1 in the daytime. Don’t worry, it’s Biffy, you’re allowed.

 

After so much hype and expectation from old and new fans alike, this I’m certain is Biffys bold statement in becoming a justifiable festival headline act. And looking at the back-catalogue from the last twelve years, beginning back in 2002 with Blackened Sky (which, by the way, is still a phenomenal album), don’t they deserve it. 

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JS

Hail To The Thief

3 years ago, my brother told me how jealous he was of the position I was in. I was about to listen to Hail To The Thief for the first time. I can’t blame him. I listened to it every day for the next 6 months.

Apart from their insignificant debut album, every Radiohead album that followed is sublime and each in it’s own way. However, and as is certainly the case with Hail To The Thief, it may take you a while to realise it. Some appreciate this album as a return to ‘rock’ and ‘guitar music’ (I mention these terms lightly as it’s hard to label anything Radiohead have done into any particular style or genre) after both Kid A and Amnesiac established a well-appraised, obscure electronic new sound for the band. For me, it’s a mixture of the two that makes this album such a masterpiece. With anthems such as 2 + 2 = 5 and There There grabbing the highlights for most people, and probably rightly so, it’s the equally exceptional ambiguous tracks such as The Gloaming and Sit Down. Stand Up that get me. Thom’s voice sooths you calmly, yet at times, haunts around and above you as if he has taken control of you, but you love it and can’t get enough (a bit like rum). The rest of the band, deliver sounds throughout the 56 minutes and 35 seconds that make you to wander to a place not even Wayne Coyne on acid has been to, yet you remain frozen to the spot as you recognize, probably after about the twentieth listen, the completeness and delicacy of this perfect album.

What I have briefly described may not make a lot of sense if you do not share the same passion for this album, but the best I can say is that the days of dancing and meandering around the room, singing and pretending I’m on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury as Thom Yorke are not over, and they never will be.

JP

Blonde On Blonde

Were you aware that 1965-7 is responsible for 6 out of the top 10 Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 500 albums of all time? Lets, for the sake of fluidity, ignore any potentially disparaging comments or views with regard to the legitimacy of this supplement, and contemplate the possibility that this was a truly special time of cultural rejuvenation, and that The Sixties might well be epitomized by the music it produced. The year 1966 saw the release of a few significant albums in musical history, not least The Beatles Revolver, Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence, along with The Jimi Hendrix Experience releasing Hey Joe as their first single in the UK. The world was under Beatles fever - John Lennon infamously proclaiming the band more popular than Jesus, sparking an uproarious protest and record burning in America’s Bible Belt, but nowhere near enough dissention to prevent their album later on that year reaching Number 1 in the UK and the US for over six weeks. Amidst Beatle-mania and the swinging Sixties, another musical figurehead from across the pond ignited his own colossal upset among fans. Having shocked America’s folk community with his electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, a controversy which is impressively represented in a memorable scene from Todd Haynes’ 2007 film I’m Not There, Bob Dylan went on a world tour the following year with his band The Hawks (later The Band), after writing and recording the album Blonde On Blonde.

Dylan’s decision to ‘go electric’ was met by many with disappointment and upset at the time, a conviction forever immortalised by the boos and heckles of Manchester’s Free Trade Hall audience. “Judas” shouts an audience member  - he’s sold out to electric pop music, he’s betrayed the folk-acoustic symbol he had became known to represent so magnificently the previous year! “I don’t believe you… you’re a liar!” Dylan retorts before blasting Manchester away with a thunderous rendition of Like A Rolling Stone. “I had a perspective on the booing… you gotta realise you can kill someone with kindness too” he said years later. I have digressed, but for a reason – mainly because although Blonde On Blonde is my favorite album, absolutely nothing on earth can take away from the glorious build up of albums which came before (Another Side Of Bob Dylan, Bring It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited,) many songs from which made up the rest of that spectacular 1966 set-list – Ballad Of A Thin Man, It Ain’t Me Babe, and Mr Tambourine Man to name a few. But in contrast to the raw electric boom of songs like Maggie’s Farm, the other half of the set list, with it’s acoustic vibe, reminiscent of Dylan’s earlier days of folk, in particular (granted it was from his latest album) the live version of Visions of Johanna used by Martin Scorsese in No Direction Home – which rings most true, relevant and deepest for me personally - it was watching this performance that started my love affair with Blonde On Blonde.   

Let me start, if I haven’t already, by saying that that Blonde On Blonde’s closest competitor is Blood On The Tracks. Let me say secondly that Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 is one of my least favorite Dylan songs. Just as Maggie’s Farm is obnoxious, overdriven and unprocessed, Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 is for me it’s acoustic-ensemble counterpart; more a statement in themselves than something of musical merit. That being said I’m currently tapping my foot to Maggie’s Farm!. Nonetheless, Blonde On Blonde’s inaugural song is the only thing wrong with what is otherwise quite simply pure euphonic poetry in motion. I see the album’s essence as a dialectic compromise between what it was Dylan had to separate on stage in ’66 - acoustic and electric. But the electricity coursing through his veins that year seeps into this album, not through high-spirited guitar and rolling Hammond organ, but a Nashville guitar sound, unusually complementing Dylan’s sometimes melancholic, sometimes eerily piercing harmonica, and his strained, almost off-key vocals, synthesized by hauntingly intense and deeply arresting, intoxicating and cryptic lyrics. Instead of a rasping, blunt and folky acoustic sound, the album subtly uses a sparse and bluesy rhythm section functioning in the background with simple bass lines, accentuating Dylan’s enigmatic words like pearls on a murky seabed.

            This aura gives the album a melancholic, somewhat depressing, even mournful persona, to which I’m very much attracted. That’s not to say that it’s not in part upbeat. Temporary Like Achilles’ whimsical piano does much to balance the musical till of sorrowfulness; Stuck Inside of Memphis With The Memphis Blues Again has it’s enticing drum beat and swift rhythm guitar, while Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine and Absolutely Sweet Marie incorporate an almost military-style drum beat (think floral marching band meets heartbroken nitrous oxide Huggy Monster.) But it does on the whole remain a piece of art oozing sadness, with the beautifully imagistic Visions Of Johanna - the album’s absolute centerpiece, the painfully unfeigned and sensitive Just Like A Woman, culminating in Sad Eyed Lady Of The Low Lands which paradoxically transpired to be a song to his then wife of three months. 

I can’t help but feel that this is a tightly woven album exuding an earnestness and earthiness, but in a sophisticated way – glued together, I think, by Dylan’s tone of voice – a dry, imploring zeal marking his vocal timbre seems to fit his agenda. One could write a thesis on the lyrical contents of Visions Of Johanna alone, I never grow tired of listening to it, constantly find new meanings to it, and can always rely on it to sum up the thoughts or feelings I’ve experienced in ways I cannot. Interestingly, Dylan remarked that Blonde On Blonde was "the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind... that thin, that wild-mercury sound." I’m so glad he said that because, although it’s hardly the zenith of his career (indeed, who could pin point that?), there’s a contentedness in the music itself, which reflects Dylan’s comment, as well as my suggestion that it’s a strange sort of hybrid, or at least some sort of offshoot of the genres and styles he was considering at the time, resulting, if only for me, in a timeless, boundless, genre-less sound into which I’m always able to escape.

May I finish by suggesting that the next time you’re doing the washing up you just put this on at volume and contemplate the simple points I’ve just made – especially Visions Of Johanna – get back to me on whether you can relate, if only to a singular line of universal truth, authored by the genius that is Bob Dylan. 

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JW.



All time favourites

 

This 1959 blues classic is not only the first in any Jazz collection, but a staple in any list of classic albums all across the board. Its instant accessibility and main stream admiration make it a true Jazz-lovers nightmare, but a casual listener’s delight. Cited by countless musicians of all genres as an overwhelming influence, Miles’ savvy sax is to blues what bread is to butter.

 

 

Famously, the whole of Kind of Blue came from a series of jamming sessions in 1958 between Miles and his band, of which no rehearsal and only a basic outline of what was expected was given. The result, a free-flowing yet remarkably tight knit sound, is astonishing. It is this improvisation that gives the album a life of its own; what could have been just a few days of friends rustling some ideas together, has become a landmark for the genre. Having survived several decades of changing format, it now flows perfectly through a computer or iPod just as it did a turnstile or cassette in the 60s and 70s (I presume. I, obviously, wouldn’t know). 

 

 

Avoiding the clichéd use of the word ‘journey’, I would describe Kind of Blue more of a session of jams than a collection of 5 songs (6 in the re-mastered edition, with an alternative take of Flamenco Sketches), which is unsurprising considering how it came about. Because of this, picking a stand-out track doesn't seem feasible. However, if I had to, it would be the almost ten minute opener. So What seems to summarise the whole of blues itself as it flirts along so easily, never faltering or dropping rhythm. On this, as on every second of the album, the backing band accompanies Miles with subtle sophistication, which constantly begs the question: who is that on the piano and how can I listen to everything he’s ever done? The answer: Bill Evans, and the internet.

 

For me, Kind of Blue is so good simply because it fits every mood, and seems to go together with everything. I listen to it at least three times a week in the library, as while it rewards a listener who gives it full attention, it can also be enjoyed as a background instrumental, perfect for listening whilst doing work. But, when he goes off on one during the last three minutes of Freddie Freeloader, don’t expect to actually get anything done.

 

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JS