What does it sound like?:

There will be someone for whom these reissues are vital additions to their collections. That they have always been missing the mono mix of Meet The Residents, the Santa Dog ep or those always thought lost outtakes. I am not that person, though I have known who the Residents were, and even had purchased copies of Eskimo and Third Reich and Roll for myself. So, I am not able to either comment on the mono/stereo distinctions or the place of the outtakes in Residents lore (and boy is there lore).

The outtakes Meet The Residents is their first official release, though there are eps and tapes from before. Let’s approach the out-takes first. From what little can be gleaned of their biography, the group were possibly artists or maybe just people who by virtue of ending up in San Francisco in 1966 were at a uniquely powerful cultural epicentre and thus becoming musicians was a natural idea. If you imagine the ‘learn a guitar’ section from 2112 re-enacted by four-year olds ransacking the music cupboard in an early seventies infants school then you are in the zone for these out-takes. They are, if you » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Just before the end-of-year polls cap it all why don’t we try and rescue a few notable releases from the ‘mentioned in dispatches’ pile. So, kicking up a little bit of a storm, here’s the second album from Zeitgeist-botherers Wolf Alice for your consideration.

The WA sound does not exactly emerge like a strange fish from some uncharted musical ocean. I lost track of bands that came to mind in listening to this album but here’s a go: Curve, Throwing Muses, All About Eve, The Mission, Cocteau Twins, Kitchens of Distinction, This Mortal Coil, even a touch of Spacemen 3 and revivalists like Ballet School (second album from them would be very welcome).

First track Heavenward (a completely nineties title) sets out the stall with soaring vocals, chiming guitars and a straight-ahead driving (Driving That Fast indeed) 4/4 rhythm. Yuk Foo adds a bit more crunch to the guitars, more yelp to the vocals. By Beautifully Unconventional we have a bit more attitude and lyrical content, it’s a track that will ‘speak’ to anyone at Sixth Form College. Don’t Delete the Kisses – most keyboardy so far. Fifth track Planet Hunter (which returns to » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Five good reasons why I am entirely the wrong person to review this 10-disc blow out:

It’s remastered. You know honestly my ears and Spotify streaming just aren’t acute enough to work out what has been gained or lost this time around. So anyone else who can comment on this – well go ahead. I don’t know anything about their catalogue and have never seen them live. So not a clue whether this is their best, worst or somewhere in the middle. No shortage of people willing to tell me, not least daughter. Metal. Not my period. Rock yes, heavy rock yes. But apart from Sabbath and Motorhead and a touch (little touch) of Priest metal is really not my thing. I remain untouched by the charms of Maiden (who I am at least aware of), Kiss, Van Helen, and the many others. Extras. See I really don’t do extras. Never played a directors commentary on a DVD. Not that interested in live versions, demos, rough mixes, out-takes. I can just about hack an alternate ending or a good blooper real, but that’s not going to get me through 9CD’s of this kind of » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Writing about electronic music. A bit like dancing about architecture. With your rock/pop/country/rap you’ve got song structures, vocal styles, lyrics, band dynamics and lots of juicy analogue stuff to get into. Where to start with an album like Bicep? There’s no lyrics, and only one vocal on the very last track (it gets significantly less interesting the more their tracks aspire to songs). Let’s start with what we can quantify. There are two of them, and they come from a label/blogging/DJing background though have been making music since 2011. Bicep by Bicep offers twelve tracks of 4-6 mins in length. I found a track of their on my Spotify Discover playlist and delved further.

It’s my electronic album of the year (so far). Firstly, it keeps it simple. Each track is built up quite deliberately of layers of drums, bass and keyboards. There’s never too much going on to pick out each individual element. Sometimes a very sampled vocal note floats around, and there’s always a strong melodic presence. Tempo is very consistent and there’s no huge drops or builds. All of that might be hiding away in remixes, but on the album things » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

It’s always hard to judge if an album that brings together distinguished members of favourite bands together is a diverting side project, or the start of something substantial. I would tip the dial of Invitation towards the latter, while not ruling out this being a one-time only deal to enjoy now . Peter Buck provides the guitars, Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney the vocals, and new-to-me-though-not-to-many-Afterworders Bill Reiflin from King Crimson, with Kurt Bloch and Scott McCaughey. It’s a post-Bill Berry R.E.M. Friends and family affair.

Lead album track and lead single Despierta is excellent – crunchy guitars, rumbling bass and drums and a monster chorus. It sets a template that foregoes in almost all cases the classic R.E.M. Jangle sound for loud/soft references from the 90s that take in Pixies, Breeders, Throwing Muses and further back to Television. The first half of the album sustains a high quality of songwriting: Faded Afternoon and The Arrival are both terrific. Surprise here is mainly round the textures and edges – there’s one Buck refrain that echoes Spirit of Radio, and in two tracks the college rock mould is decisively broken. Come Back Shelley taps into Ziggy » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Let’s start with Teenage Fanclub. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart stand in relationship to that moment in the early eighties when new wave went pop, as the Fannies do to the jangly Rickenbacker-toters of the late sixties and early seventies. If seeing Echo and The Bunnymen and The Psychedelic Furs on Top of the Pops floated your boat, at that precise point when ‘added a sytnh’ and got a big name producer, then you will be right at home here. In a piece of serendipity I was listening to this straight after wishing that The Comsat Angels’ Jive albums (a perfect example of the new wave goes pop moment in all its conflicted mess) were still available, as ‘Stay Tonight’ is from my memory of it from thirty years ago exactly what we are talking about here.

The musical mix is propulsive drums, jangly guitars and a synth cutting through with a sweet melody line. For eight tracks the tempo is upbeat, and the choruses are so perfect they seem not so much to have been composed as unearthed from the unheard soundtrack to the Ferris Bueller sequel. On a track such » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

The most frequently heard words on this album are ‘I’ and ‘You’ followed by ‘We’. Out In The Storm is a relationship/breakup/staying together/oh god what do I really want? album that’s lyrically straight out of singer-songwriter central. If you’re not up for some Me Time then this is not for you. The album opens with a confident blast of power guitar and the words ‘Everyone will hear me complain/Everyone will feel my pain’ . It ends in a downbeat acoustic number in which she fears she is fading away. In between we hear a lot about whether she should drive to Brooklyn, go to Berlin or just stay in bed.

It feels very twenty-something. There’s nothing about mortgages, children or jobs – just the emotional manipulations, arguments, drunken nights and regrets of a decaying relationship. It’s about the fighting that takes place in words, intentions and misunderstandings.

Lyrically the album never lets up from this theme. Musically it has a number of modes: the confident fuzzy power-pop that characterises the opener and standout track Hear You where she locates a killer chorus that several other songs could benefit from. Then there’s the slower » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

I posted in the “late to’ thread that I’d managed to escape the charms of Nine Inch Nails. But as both their new EPs are on emusic I’m now in.

Add Violence has five tracks – four of which perhaps are what I might expect from the combination of ‘industrial’ and ‘recent soundtracks to Gone Girl’ might lead everyone to expect. A basic palette of clattering drums, dirty guitar and growling vocals is set out in track one Less Than, which features an epic chorus My Corrosion-era Eldritch would have snapped up. A similar setup is in place for track four, minus the chorus. On the second track this get mixed up a bit. Take away the somewhat windswept vocal about going ‘into the arms of a woman’ and what’s happening is some kind of stuttery Four Tet groove. Track three deconstructs things still further, as a georgeous wobbly keyboard riff is set against wordless vocal sounds until the song decides to evolve as a doomy ballad.

All of this, enjoyable enough, is as an overture to the remarkable final track The Background World. It starts with bubbling synths and a gentle propulsiveness » Continue Reading.