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As some kind of weird fiesta, Fox Classics showed Everybody Loves Raymond all through Australia Day. There are two things wrong with this, of course. One, it is American. Two, it is f**k!
Tears For Fears, Everybody Loves A Happy Ending is their first album since the 1980's. And it shows. It's as if the last fourteen years have never happened. Because, basically, the album could have been lifted out of a 1989 radio studio.
That's not good.
With the exception of the title track, Call Me Mellow and Who Killed Tangerine, which are all excellent songs and manage to elevate the album to credit, the album is full of excedingly well produced pop saccharine. The longer it goes, the sappier it gets.
Mojo
Hot on the heels of Gary Jules' evocative Number 1 version of Mad World comes a new offering from the original Tears For Fears duo, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. Their last album together, 1989's The Seeds Of Love, was filled with overwrought stadium pop that won over mainstream America, but lost them a critical edge. This one has lingering 80's elements, with some pompous lyrics, laborious arrangements and long drawn-out vowel sounds, yet it is also fresher and less strenuous than before. There's none of the electro-dance roots that first made them compelling, alas, but we do have jet-propelled harmonies and warm Memphis-styled horns on tracks like Call Me Mellow and Secret World. Despite a little Beatles Revolver-era pastiche, an intense soulfulness comes through.
AGB Rating - Credit
They're from Canada, Montreal to be precise, but right off the bat I'd say The Dears are most heavily influenced by The Smiths and Blur. That's no great insight, though, because any fool can spot it. And in fact, any (and every) fool has. In review after review those two influences are cited.
In short, if you like Britpop, then chances are, you'll like this.
As it turns out, I rather like it, too. I don't love it, or anything. I just like it. There's the odd excellent song, Who Are You, Defenders Of The Universe (that's one song) and The Death Of All The Romance, for instance. But too often, just as it looks as though a song is about to take off, it pulls itself back so as to remain remorselessly "on message". The message being Britpop.
That's not a bad thing of itself, mind you. It's just that on No Cities Left the determination to stick to the script means you are continually left with moments in songs that promise much, but suddenly don't deliver. They seem less than fully fleshed out. "Let down" would be too harsh a phrase, but it would indicate the essence.
In the main, though, I'm not about to bag it because it sounds like something else. Because, let's face it, going down that path means were just about fucked with popular music.
I'll leave that to someone else.
So that's what you're up against: the peculiar sort of dramatic, flower-throwing, cheekily campy pop record British people were making between the day Morrissey went solo and the day Oasis hit U.S. radio, only without loads of references to London neighborhoods whose symbolism you can't parse-- suave crooning, rainy-day pop strumming, cabaret orchestration, melodic guitar solos, lyrics like "Somewhere someone says they've got it all/ But that's not even what we want/ Not even close." Made by Canadians. In the twenty-first century. Passably well.
If that's the sort of thing you'd like to listen to, you're welcome in my apartment any time. But we will not talk about the Dears. We will listen to Pulp and watch old Smiths videos and throw flowers at one another. Like common people.
AGB Rating - Credit
I'm sitting here listening to Tago Mago, trying to pick a riff that's winding through Oh Yeah. I just can't put my finger on it and it's driving me nuts. No doubt it will come to me in time, but right now, no bloody go! I best think about something else entirely. Bananas or summer fashions or Shottky diodes, that usually works. When it comes back to me, I'll get back to you.
In the meantime.
Can are the Gott-Fathers of Krautrock. Percolating out of Cologne circa 1968, they are as good an instrumental band ** that ever went round in rock music. Anywhere. Not just in Germany.
** Original singer Malcolm Mooney was a frenetic performer typical of the more out-there front-men of the day. Think no further than Syd Barrett or Roky Erickson. True to that form, Mooney suffered a nervous breakdown in 1970. Rather than replace him with like-for-like, Can pulled in Munich busker Damo Suzuki who provided a whole new "mood" dynamic. This moved the band away from the standard -- Well, as far as that era's freakers were standard -- late sixties alt-rock and allowed Can to develop what is now sometimes derided as Krautrock or Prog-Rock. Instead of what it should be called; super f**kin' brilliant guitar, drums and electronic music. In Can's case, anyway.
They are everything Pink Floyd tried to be between Syd Barrett's Saucer Full Of Secrets and Meddle. Can easily outstripped pedestrian psych-outs such as Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother. Before, that is, Floyd went in a different direction with DSOTM. If you need those initials explained, you've some serious homework to do.
Traffic liked to stretch things out. So when turning Dear Mr Fantasy, Feeling Alright or Shanghai Noodle Factory into full-on rock-out jam sessions, they could have comfortably looked to Can for guidance.
It's also possible Sly Stone and Funkadelic, in their more ambitious moments, would have milked Can for inspiration.
To be fair to those four bands, who were all excellent in their own right, there's no doubt Can looked to them for pointers in return. These things work both ways.
And, of course, as is so often the case, there's The Velvets. Though their influence is more obvious on Monster Movie.
Just re-released by Spoon Records, Tago Mago (along with Monster Movie, Ego Bamyasi and Soundtracks) is a must-have album for anyone interested in what skilled craftsmanship can inject into rock music when in the right hands.
Go and get it.
Mojo
The electrified primordial ooze of Tago Mago display's Can's psych-free and disciplined sides at their most ritually balanced. It's both oppressive and liberating, and on such into-infinity tracks as Oh Yeah and Halleluhwah, shows just how levitating Jaki Liebezeit's hyper-repetetive drumming could be.
AGB Rating - High Distinction
Never been much of a Nick Cave fan. Always found him too "calculating". Intentionally cool, if you like. And a rank, if cunning, name dropper who often picks references that are bound to excite the pundits. Greil Marcus's Stagger Lee, for instance. Or Elvis Presley's "His Hand In Mine".
But it must be said; Abattoir Blues / Lyre Of Orpheus is one fine album. Or is that two? I wish people would release albums with one name, not these stupid double affairs. Not sure I see the point.
Anyhoo, I prefer the moodier Lyre Of Orpheus. Well, today anyway. The poppier, more upbeat Abattoir Blues goes very nicely indeed. Especially songs like "Nature Boy" and "Let The Bells Ring".
Uncut
For too long coasting on his reputation and accepting garlands for sub-standard, self-parodying work, Cave roared back to deliver not one, but two albums of fiery genius. The first crashed in with the visceral "Get Ready For Love" and never went off the boil, while the ballad based second was equally clever and caustic.
AGB Rating - http://aftergrogblog.blogs.com/agb/2004/11/album_ratings.html
I've always been a bigger fan of Bob Dylan's electric music than his earlier folk material. That's probably for two reasons. One, I was raised on a diet of lush popular arrangements which, over time, morphed into a love of drums, guitar and bass rock & roll. And two, by the time I got around to listening, the revolution as Bob sung it was no longer in the air.
Dylan's earlier accoustic folk never really "spoke" to me. That doesn't mean I think it's tosh, mind you, just that it came around well before I did and spoke to a whole other generation. A generation way more interested in that airy revolution.
Based on Bootleg 6, though, the guy could perform. With just a guitar and a microphone (excluding the Baez assists), Bob had this Philharmonic Hall audience eating out of the palm of his hand.
The added bonus for us "younger" Dylan fans, reared on years of Surly Bob (I've seen him live three times and never heard him speak), is that he's bantering with the audience. Maybe it's just schtick, but he's funny and he's enjoying it.
A terrific chronicle (Ho Ho) of where it all kicked of for one of the most significant figures in popular music.
Live 1964, recorded on Halloween night at New York's Philharmonic Hall, is Bob Dylan's first all-acoustic live record, and is most noteworthy for its gooey formative circumstances: This is pre-Dylan Dylan, an impeccably recorded portrait of the guitar-toting folk singer, the giggling, sheepish heir to Woody Guthrie's dusty proletariat throne, a Dylan who had yet to wail electric at Newport, convert to Christianity, or write and star in Masked and Anonymous. Charming and curiously personable, Dylan seems deliriously comfortable on stage, engaging an appreciative audience (no hollers of "Judas!"), even enlisting their help with the first verse of "I Don't Believe You", asking, after a bungled opening, "Does anyone know the first verse of this song?" Featuring only longtime-cohort Joan Baez (who appears on four tracks) and his own harmonica and guitar, Live 1964 is a spare, earnest portrayal of neo-Dylan-in-training, a man who, having long mastered one form, is just a few years away from revolutionizing another.
AGB Rating - Distinction
This time round, with their lush arrangements and 60's pop sensibilities Lambchop echo Burt Bacharach and Serge Gainsbourg. The music could provide a soundtrack for any Melville film. Perhaps Kurt Wagner sees himself as a modern music version of Alain Delon. Twitching his hat and chaining Gitanes. Or Gauloise.
While that has it's undoubted attractions, though, what with all the tenaciously lo-fi cool, I find myself needing an hit of Gian Maria Volonté. Some of that wild-haired menace that offset Delon in The Red Circle. And, which here, would every now and then crank it up a gear.
Trimming it down to one CD wouldn't go amiss, either. Maybe the production team couldn't make up their minds what to cut.
There is one obvious thing wrong, though. Aw Cmon and No You Cmon are supposedly two albums, yet the two CD cases are sold only in one box-set.
The weirdness doesn't stop there, either. The Aw Cmon CD is labelled No You Cmon and vice-versa; the No You Cmon CD is labelled Aw Cmon.
And just in case you not confused enough already, the Aw Cmon case is backed with the No You Cmon track-list and the No You Cmon case is backed with the Aw Cmon listing.
But wait! There's more! The Aw Cmon wrap contains the No You Cmon track-list. Conversely, and not a little perversely, the No You Cmon wrap contains the Aw Cmon list.
In the end I found myself navigating through the songs by matching the song lengths on the back of the outer box to the timer on my CD player.
Once you know what's going on, I suppose it's no matter. But, still, it's a stupid idea.
Mojo
Many of the songs - in contrast to Is A Woman's beautifully rambling epics - are short, some (in the case of the fine, two-minute Four Pounds In Two Days) feeling cut off in their prime, others a little undeveloped. A few of the instrumentals seem little more than a good riff that's perfectly content with being just that, a backdrop for the band members to showcase their skills (the Mowtowny Being Tyler, or Sunrise, where everyone from strings to steel gets to take a bow). One or two have an incidental music quality, less individual pieces than a slice lifted off a movie soundtrack (in the case of the nice and cheesy Jan 24, '70s porn). [TT: That last, not in my opinion]
The vocal songs are interesting. The Gusher's mix of bossa nova, heavy rock and smoky Parisian murmuring recalls a latter-day Serge Gainsbourg. On Low Ambition, There is Still A Time and Steve McQueen, the lavish string arrangements, late-night melodies and Wagner's deep, muttering, falsetto-free voice bring to mind Tindersticks. There's a garage rock song, a neo-J.J.Cale and a couple of tracks that would have sounded at home on their last CD. All very nice, but Aw Cmon and No You Cmon (the record company insists they're individual, separate albums, though they're as similar to each other in content as in title and are only sold as a pair) still feel less like albums than a celebration of being Lambchop. Something, whan it comes down to it, worth celebrating.
AGB Rating - Credit
This will probably mean even less sense than usual to non-Australian readers, but The Libertines eponymous second album often reminds me of Sydney's Sunnyboys; those quintessential Aussie suburban guitar thumpers. Given Pete Doherty's drug issues and Julian Oxley's state o' mind, you could probably draw some parallels fuck-up-wise, too.
Other choice guitary influences you could chuck in would be The Jam, The Pixies and The Stones.
But after an extremely promising opening rip into Can't Stand Me Now and plenty of great hooks spattered throughout, and for all their undoubted good intentions, The Libertines can't ever seem to make up it's mind exactly what it's supposed to be doing. In fact, it's screaming out for a meaty remix and some judicious culling.
Some of these songs are excellent, in an unfinished but inspired way. But many of the album's tracks evidence a band that's bursting at the seams with talent, only to stumble on unfocused, scattershot song-writing. The greatest single flaw with their arrangements, as with Up the Bracket, comes from their rhythm section; in addition to being ill-produced and low in the mix, it's skilled but bereft of drive, of real gumption. It sounds adeptly executed and is often relatively intricate; but given the band's skill, both the bass- and drum-work seem like something The Libertines could pull off in their sleep.
AGB Rating - Credit
Grim, gloomy, dark, whiny, moany and not much fun at all. You'd like to think after ten years off the scene, the American Music Club might have served up something better than Love Songs For Patriots.
But they didn't. Not my cup of tea at all.
Overall Love Songs for Patriots is primarily a record made for and on behalf of the fans that kept the flame alive over the last 10 years. For the uninitiated, it’s a tough listening proposition that’s better postponed for a copy of the recent (and rather good) best of/rarities compilation, American Music Club 1984-1995, or (if you can find it anywhere) the masterful California. Not a classic comeback then, but not a total never should-have-happened-event either.
AGB Rating - Pass
I love The Sun.
Well, you've heard it all before. Nothing new here. Throw in some U2, some REM, the Cure, the Smiths, echoes of Duran Duran, a hint of Franz Ferdinand, probably some big hair, and you've got The Killers' Hot Fuss. In spite of all that, though, the album goes OK. Just OK, mind you, not great or anything.
While I'm not as vitriolic about the album as Pitchfork guy, I wonder how long it will be before I despise them.
So, it's plain that The Killers have made a record more concerned with artifice than artistry. If the intent is to place their album's principal teases on the next Now That's What I Call Music compilation, then bravo. But why does it try to squeak by as another deft pop reversion when it actually seems to be a revisionist cash dance? For the kids, I presume. But Hot Fuss is not hardcore; it's hard evidence that it's tough to focus on making great rock when you're preoccupied with cultivating an image.
AGB Rating - Pass
"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today."
-- Admiral Beattie
The Battle of Jutland in 1916 (Skagerrakschlacht to the Square-Heads) saw the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet win an expensive victory over the German High Seas Fleet.
The Grand Fleet ended up in control of the battle"field", yet lost numerous ships. Including the two ... err ... the one on the left. That's the ironically named Invincible.
Wary of the German ships' powerful gunnery and resilient armour, an over-cautious British Admiral Jellicoe allowed German Admiral Scheer to break off the engagement and scuttle (ho ho) back into Willhelmshaven, and safety.
As is the way of these things, both sides claimed victory. The Germans lost far fewer men and ships. However, the Royal Navy still ruled the waves. The Brits were then able to blockade Germany for the rest of World War I. Considering The Great War To End All Wars Until The Next One was all about making the other mob run out of bullets first, this was not an insignificant outcome. Attrition being what it was.
The High Seas Fleet never again posed a threat and remained couped up in Willhelmshaven for the rest of the war. A situation that didn't exactly please Germany's bellicose sailors who occasionally got busy with a paint-brush.
"Dear Fatherland, you may rest assured
Your fleet's in harbour, safely moored."-- Graffiti in Willhelmshaven
That all sounds rather pithy when translated into English. But this is how it really looked.
"Liebes Fatherland, können Sie versichert sein
Ihrer Flotte im Hafen, sicher festgemacht"
Which makes me think those cabbage eating matelots need to brush up on their rhymes.
In the main I like my music upbeat and lively, so purely on personal preference it was tempting to dock Goodbye one rating level for being so bloody grey and lo-fi. But it's so well put together, and so well played, that would just be stupid. Anyway, the more I listen to it, the more I like it.
Uncut's Rob Hughes sums it up just about right.
Goodbye is as unflinching as anything by Randy Newman and as heart-ripping as primetime Go-Betweens. A sumptuous pop confection with a hard centre.
So does Splendid's Steve English.
There's a quiet going on. Alt-rock's current flirtation with "new acoustica" -- highlighted by, but not limited to, the hushed, tender sissy-rock peddled by sad-bastard acts like Travis and Embrace -- was the only logical direction for the genre to move in after a decade of bratty mallpunk and big-shorted goon-metal made making lots of noise decidedly unhip. Vulnerability is the new macho, and fragile boys who tear up at a good sunset are suddenly in vogue. Being sensitive doesn't necessarily mean being a wuss, though, as underscored by Goodbye. Although it was crafted using a similar toolkit -- acoustic guitars, glittering keys, an embarrassment of sumptuous melodies -- the Denver foursome's fifth slab (third for Bella Union) of slow-rolling baroque pop is light years removed from the processed grandeur of world-beating bedwetters Coldplay. Half of the album's lush acoustic-pop numbers bristle with dark beauty and subtle menace, while others are riotous parodies of same that spiral off into all kinds of crazy directions.
AGB Rating - Distinction
A Ghost Is Born is all over the place. There are some good songs, mind you. But they're spattered amongst some very mediocre alt-noodling tripe.
Then there's the fifteen minute wank-out of industrial noise that is Less Than You Think. Well, I'm afraid that's not music. No matter what some dandruff flecked hipster tries to tell you.
Come to think of it, if you exclude my favourite album, Summerteeth, Wilco have a very patchy body of work, indeed. But that's just me; I'm sure they'll continue to garner critical acclaim. No matter how undue that acclaim is.
At the time of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's non-traditional 2001 "release," I was in the midst of a two-year exile away from the home city I share with the band. While the rock-crit throngs lined up to praise the album's experimentalism, screw-the-Record-Company-Man martyrdom and accidental 9/11 relevance, it merely seemed to me like a postcard photograph that perfectly sums up all the things you love about a city, a sonic map of Chicago's every contour. Putting YHF on the stereo was all it took to cue up a mental slideshow of the city's palette: "Reservations" the gray tones of a frozen-over Lake Michigan, "Heavy Metal Drummer" the humid orange of a Grant Park festival, and "Radio Cure" the brown shade of El-track alleys.
It's very possible, then, that the underwhelming feeling projected by A Ghost Is Born is linked to my address being restored to a Chicago zip code, where I have the city's essence accessible right outside my courtyard gate. Early returns on the album veer wildly from rapturous proclamations that this record solidifies the band's genius to cred-snipers who see it as a crippling failure. To me, it sounds like neither extreme, but rather like a band in need of a break, a band that's been reading their press, a band straying too far from their strengths, and a band that's still too good to let any of these things completely obscure their talents.
AGB Rating - Credit
"Jet are boring as bat-shit."
-- Ben Michael
It's not often I can say this, but right from the very first time I heard Ghost Transmissions I absolutely loved it. And why wouldn't I?!? Melbourne, Creedence, Australian Rules footy, Kraut rock, Steve McQueen, The Band, Once Upon A Time In America, The Stooges, Two-Lane Blacktop, Cool Hand Luke, Julian Cope, The Right Stuff, Skip Spence, Crazy Horse, The Velvets, Television, Mogwai, Bill Hicks, Hector The Cat -- HECTOR THE FUCKING CAT!
Now, that may sound like the world's worst ever name-drop, and it's fair to say not all those influences appear on the album, but if that's what these guys are into, then they're into exactly the same things I'm into. That's got to count for something, at least.
The albums hangs on the eleven-plus minute guitar rock-out that is Black Sun Ensemble, but that's far from all there is to it, the rest is superb, too.
Really though, there's rock-all I can add to Patrick Donovan's review in The Age except to say; BUY IT!
A psychedelic flower-punk band from Ramsay Street? Yes, and they have street cred, writes Patrick Donovan.
Neighbours has been a breeding ground for plenty of pop stars over the years - think Kylie, Delta, Jason, Craig McLachlan and even Guy Pearce, who's set to launch a music career. It makes business sense. With an estimated audience of 40 million viewers, even if you sing like a cicada with pneumonia, you will have an established fan base keen to buy your CDs.
However, the long-running soapie has also produced one of Australia's most breathtakingly original bands in the Sand Pebbles. Founding members Ben Michael and Chris Hollow, who met at a party to celebrate the 2000th episode of the show, and drummer Piet Collins all write scripts for Neighbours.
Murray Ono, who, when in the navy, met and jammed with former Waco cult leader David Koresh, selected music for The Secret Life of Us. Singer Andrew Tanner writes for radio company MCM.
AGB Rating - High Distinction
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Sharron
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Professor Rosseforp
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Tony Tea
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