I’ve begged, borrowed, stolen and downright plagiarized reviews from NME, Mojo, Pitchfork, Wikipedia and several blog sites. My apologies for my thievery, but also I would like to doff my cap to the excellently written pieces.
So here is my listing, in no particular order, and also download links for the albums themselves. I hasten to add that I would like you all to (eventually) buy the albums with your hard earned, so as usual the links will work for one week only. There are no second chances, so tough if you miss them. Yes, I get the irony of providing the music for free in the first place, but I hope the downloads persuade you to purchase the album or others by the same artist. *climbs down from soapbox.
MUSIC BONANZA - PART ONE
Editors - Andrew Bird - Annuals - Kings Of Leon - Bright Eyes
- The Maccabees - 1990s - Ryan Adams - New Young Pony Club
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AN END HAS A START - Editors
Somehow, despite shifting post-punk in platinum-selling quantities to both Europe and the U.S., Birmingham's Editors have kept a low profile throughout indie's revivalist witch hunt. While the mere mention of the Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, or the Bravery incites your average post-punk/New Wave purists to grab their torches and pitchforks, Editors' widespread fame and genre piggybacking is often met with a sigh and shrugged shoulders, an odd moment of tolerance and civility amidst the Lord of the Flies behavioral patterns that are exhibited towards their contemporaries.
Frontman Tom Smith still channels Ian Curtis' dour spirit pretty shamelessly, but on songs like "Bones" or the title track he manages the occasional hook to raise up the crumbling wall of sound erected by his bandmates. Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of Curtis melancholy, and I like this record, but I just wish they'd sound as rich on record as they do live.
On "The Weight of the World", perhaps the album's histrionic pinnacle, Smith resorts to the sort of sweet nothings found in a prom's closing song: "There are tears in my eyes/ Love replaces fear/ Every little piece in your life/ Will add up to one/ Every little piece in your life/ Will mean something to someone."
An End contains its share of bright spots. However, that "weight" Smith is feeling probably stems from a sudden need to bolster the band's sound proportionately with their massive fame, a move that a group like the Arcade Fire could pull off on a follow-up album, but Editors just fail to achieve. Rather than set the world alight this record grows on you. I just wish it was recorded live so you could experience the deep, rich, velvety sound of their gigs. One for the fans... but then again, I am one.
Download: Editors - AN END HAS A START
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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ARMCHAIR APOCRYPHA - Andrew Bird
Armchair Apocrypha is Andrew Bird's first studio album since the critically acclaimed The Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005). The album features more electric guitars, a change from the more acoustic-oriented Eggs, though the songs are similar in character if slightly more straightforward.
"Simple X" is a track started by collaborator Dosh, who supplied the drum track on the final version, with Bird adding lyrics. The track "Imitosis" is an expansion of the song "I" (also called "Capital I" live) on his 2003 album Weather Systems. The song "Dark Matter" is also a rehash of the song "Sweetbreads", which can be found on the live EPs Fingerlings 1 & Fingerlings 2. .
Download: Andrew Bird - ARMCHAIR APOCRYPHA
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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BE HE ME by Annuals
Adam Baker is the architect of this attempt at the recorded equivalent of a building by Gaudi, and the North Carolinian's not but 20 years old. Wow. Refreshingly unconcerned with perpetuating cool, Annuals' attack is fundamentally escapist: Baker seems to prefer living inside his ever-aburst music, and listeners will be lured by the world it creates. However it may not be for everyone; it's also been described as abstract, plain inaccessible and weird.
Stick with it though, because Be He Me is a crowd, packed with songs that whorl and dimple, digressively executing competent-to-astonishing arrangements in a manner that would seem spazzy if they weren't so polished. "Carry Around" invokes what Beck was supposed to be perfecting by now. The disco-waltz "Complete or Completing" submerges into a Steely Dan tide, then locks into a chant-groove that is triumphantly resumed on album closer "Sway", which dips the last few years of indie-rock's most-soiled dishes into a Ladysmith Black Mambazo rinse. 'Later with Jools Holland' anyone? "Brother" is the album's riotous, massive standout, but almost everything's impressive: The purposeful shuffle of "Mama", the blurping bits of "Ida, My". The album's tragic flaw is that, despite the candyland ampedness and the toffee-like thickness of the best tracks, Be He Me doesn't offer the listener's active, rational mind much to chew on. At the beginning of "Carry Around", Baker warns us that he's got "magic crying out my ass"; let's hope he invests in a filter for magic dust and not in a buttplug.
Download: Annuals - BE HE ME
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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BECAUSE OF THE TIMES – Kings Of Leon
"I don't care what nobody says", croaks Caleb Followill gently over the opening chords of 'Knocked Up', "we're gonna have a baby". Meandering in at over seven minutes long and with nothing that could realistically be mistaken for a chorus, it's a dark, downbeat introduction to the band's third album. Indeed, it could almost have been taken from Springsteen's bleaker-than-bleak 'Nebraska', and like many others on the album, it works perfectly.
Take 'Charmer', for example - driven by Jared's plodding, Kim Deal-esque bassline, it's a howling, primal, downright unsettling listen, that'll have the terminally short of patience reaching to reload 'Molly's Chambers', and sharpish. Same goes for 'McFearless'. Cut from the same oily, sulphate-stained cloth, it's a million miles away from the Creedence Clearwater Regurgitated sound many would have expected them to return to after the experimentation of 'Aha...', and it demands perseverance before it pays off. Radical New Direction is a bit strong, but it's clear that KOL, along with long-time producer Ethan Johns, have been striving to add a new dimension to a band previously accused of having all the depth of a puddle.
Not that everyone's favourite doyens of prostate-endangering denim have gone all po-faced on us. After all, being in Kings Of Leon is a fucking riot, as shown by the shuffly-veering-on-violent funk of 'My Party', in which Caleb - rather hilariously for a man who appears to weigh no more than the average paperweight - threatens to "Flip you upside down and mop this place". And on the rather fantastic 'Fans' - a semi-acoustic anthem-in-waiting that is perhaps the closest this record gets to old-school KOL - he's even forced to admit that London's "Rainy days, they ain't so bad when you're the King/The King they want to be".
Yet these dalliances are brief, as this is an album all about growing up and moving on - Jared's almost old enough to buy his own drinks these days, after all. And so you get a triumvirate of truly special moments, from 'True Love Way''s epic, stadia-filling self-reflection, to 'The Runner''s ghostly Overlook Hotel-esque waltz, in which Caleb concedes that "I talk to Jesus every day", to the sublime, slow-burning 'Arizona', which brings things to a suitably huge close. Boasting all the wide open space of U2's 'The Joshua Tree' without any of the overblown pomp to spoil it, it's without doubt the best thing the band have ever recorded. It's good to have them back.
Download: Kings Of Leon – BECAUSE OF THE TIMES
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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CASSADAGA - Bright Eyes
At 27, Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst already has enough career behind him to establish a trajectory. As his lyrical themes broaden, his music is following suit. Cassadaga, taking its name from a spiritualist camp in Florida where Oberst spent some time, is a logical continuation of his evolution from haunted lo-fi auteur to country-folk traditionalist, and with it comes the slickest production of any Bright Eyes album to date. Oberst, while retaining the feverish quaver that's become his calling card, finds more mannered ways to express emotion here than sliding in and out of key. The arrangements are unapologetically grand, laden with strings, blaring guitar, and mournful pedal steel. Even the record's packaging seems to declare it an event-- the "spectral decoder" included with the disc translates the artwork's squiggly gray lines into all sorts of pictures and text.
The ambitious arrangements strike just the right balance on some songs: The orchestral work on old-fashioned ballad "Make a Plan to Love Me" never overburdens the song's pliant lilt, while the marching strings in the last verse of "Hot Knives", and the organs that eventually sweep in on the barren "No One Would Riot for Less", provide an acute sense of drama. However it's not all good news. Elsewhere, Oberst's arrangements overreach: "Four Winds", with its squealing guitars and fiddles, sounds like a honky-tonk version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. It's still worth a punt though, and I for one enjoy listening to it's crooning melodies and brazen arrangements on a lazy Sunday afternoon whilst trying to inject some snippets of brilliance into this blog page.
Download: Bright Eyes - CASSADAGA
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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COLOUR IT IN – The Maccabees
Much like recent records by Bloc Party or The Rakes, this is an early-twenties crisis album - articulating that particular sense of ennui and struggle for identity that hits between the last day of school and the first proper paycheck. It's about dancing and drinking and getting your heart broken for the first time, and looking back to childhood with a bittersweet wistfulness. 'Lego' opens with the lines "Mum said no/To Disneyland" and complains how hard it is to build castles with chewed-up Lego bricks, while 'Precious Time' references pre-PlayStation kids' racing game Scalextric. All this nostalgia is either heart-warmingly familiar and sweetly affecting or insufferably twee, depending on your point of view, but Orlando Weeks' eye for detail is matched only by his honesty and the size of his heart - 'About Your Dress' details a nightmare first date, in which he is almost sick on the unfortunate object of his affections, while 'O.A.V.I.P' is a tender tribute to his ailing grandmother.
Still, even if you do find the lyrics a little grating, fact is, the music's just plain great. It may now be practically a legal requirement for all slightly off-kilter British art-rock bands to rope in former Smiths producer Stephen Street, but here he transforms the coiled-spring guitars and staccato vocals of the band's self-released debut single 'X-Ray', filling them with a genuine sense of tension. He also teases out sly choruses and buries nifty detail such as the harmonica at the start of 'Latchmere' under crisp, post-punk drum rumbling, making each listen a minor revelation.
It's not all furrowed-brow guitars and sincere lyrics, though - closing track 'Toothpaste Kisses' is a sweet 1930s-sounding ballad played on a thousand tiny mandolins, while Hawaiian guitars waft gently and crickets rub their knees together in the background to keep time. Mould-breakers, hopeless romantics, unlikeliest of riot-starters? We should all just be glad that albums like this are being made while the sun's shining outside and we're alive to enjoy them. Long may The Maccabees keep on swimming against the wave machine's tide.
Download: The Maccabees – COLOUR IT IN
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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COOKIES - 1990s
1990s are an indie rock three-piece band from Glasgow. They were signed to Rough Trade when they were spotted at only their sixth gig - a first for Rough Trade. Lead singer Jackie (nee John) McKeown and bassist, Jamie McMorrow, were the founding members of Scottish Indie band The Yummy Fur. The line-up of the Yummy Fur over the years changed on numerous occasions. At one point, both Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos and drummer Paul Thomson were members of the group. The 1990s drummer, Michael McGaughrin, was also in Glasgow band V-Twin before the 1990s were formed. 1990s have supported Babyshambles and Franz Ferdinand, as well as releasing their debut single, "You Made Me Like It/Arcade Precinct" on limited edition vinyl. 1990s went on tour in October 2006 with The Long Blondes, and with CSS in November. According to the band, they play music "like a blonde gets out of a car".
Download: 1990s - COOKIES
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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EASY TIGER – Ryan Adams
Resisting his recent habit of dividing different sounds amongst different albums, Adams runs the gamut on Easy Tiger, giving his Grateful Dead fascination just as much room to breathe as his pop skills and country roots (although this LP leans toward the latter just a little). Unlike some previous efforts, the production isn't flashy at all. The vocals are way up in the front of the mix and they sound crystal clear. The studio versions of the songs are reasonably faithful to the live versions he's been playing on tour, but with less wanky guitar parts and more thoughtful lyrics. Songwriting is the name of the game, and it takes center stage here. No failed flamenco experiments abound, and Adams comes off as focused and feisty. It sounds a bit like what Cold Roses would have been like, if he had written it at the age of 40 instead of 30. He's tapped into his gigantic vault of unreleased material and resurrected a whole song as well as a bridge from one of Suicide Handbook's better ballads.
Easy Tiger looks like it might be the only Ryan Adams record released this year, and by disarming the army of critics who swear that he needs an editor, Adams songwriting prowess will come under the spotlight and win back some hearts.
Download: Ryan Adams – EASY TIGER
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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FANTASTIC PLAYROOM – New Young Pony Club
Regardless of what you think of the new rave youthquake, you have to agree that cramming a range of bands under one musical umbrella - even if it has a big smiley face on it - diminishes the impact of their individual sound.
And of all the so-called new ravers, New Young Pony Club don't need any glow-schtick to bathe them in luminescence. Their celestial synths, heavenly hooks and spike-heeled attitude should give them all the attention they need.
The heavy based electro-robotics of their breakthrough single ‘'Ice Cream'’ are as arresting now as they were on first release a year and a prominent TV ad campaign ago. Does the rest of the album live up to the majesty of the aforementioned? You bet your sweet little disco-punk sensibility it can. ''Get Lucky'' works the frosted Ice Cream formula - an aloof, pouting verse, leading to an ecstatically climactic chorus. ''The Bomb'' takes on some B52-styled harmonies with a cocky, 21st century twist. ''Jerk Me'' snarls a masochistic lyric against neon-lit Numan-esque synths, while '‘Talking Talking'' whispers and slinks its way into secret ambient places.
Where the amphetamine rush of rave replaces the need for other kinds of bodily pleasures, Fantastic Playroom is all about creeping, seductive builds, delayed gratification, playful, provocative lyrics and explosive pay-offs. Tahita Bulmer's vocals, falling somewhere between dominatrix and breathy temptress, couple with the cold electro-sounds in something close to perfection.
Sitting prettily with your CSS, LCD Soundsystem and Le Tigre albums and making lyrical reference to Talking Heads, Fantastic Playroom teases, but ultimately delivers the promise of lasting pleasure.
Download: New Young Pony Club – FANTASTIC PLAYROOM
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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