Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Bon Iver - For Emma [4AD single]

Bon Iver - For Emma (single)
Despite the ubiquity of ‘Skinny Love’ earlier in the year, ‘For Emma’ – the half-title track of Bon Iver’s debut album – is actually the first official single to be released by the band. Not only does it provide fitting accompaniment to their first proper headline tour this side of the Atlantic, but such was the consistent brilliance of For Emma, Forever Ago, it is actually quite refreshing to take one of its many standout songs on its own and really give it a listen.

Despite the pervading misery of the messy break-up lyrics, it is actually one of Justin Vernon’s more positive songs, musically speaking. The trademark aching vocal is set against rhythmic acoustic guitar, with the opening horn section as warm and comforting as a Hovis advert. In contrast to the gentle melancholy of the music, the somewhat difficult to decipher lyrics are filled with tension and resentment directed towards the eponymous ex: “Go find yourself another lover…to string along”, sings Vernon, before launching into perhaps his most memorable chorus. Another delightful instrumental positively blooming with brass and slide guitar and the fleeting moment of a song disappears from whence it came.

The B-side comes in the form of ‘Wisconsin’, perhaps a paen to the secluded cabin in which the album was written. A more subdued, hymn-like affair, Vernon’s striking vocal is left to hang above the minimal atmospheric backing. In fact, it sounds more like it was recorded under water than its origins in the snowy wilderness. Recorded as part of the For Emma, Forever Ago sessions, it is no surprise that the song gives off the same air of gloomy despair as the rest of the band’s work: “That was Wisconsin, that was yesterday / Now I have nothing that I can keep / Cos any place I go I take another place with me”. It is undoubtedly a song that could feature on any album of worth, including For Emma, Forever Ago.

Just as the appearance of ‘Skinny Love’ and Vernon’s show-stealing Later… solo performance announced the arrival of Bon Iver’s falsetto Americana earlier in this most British of summers, so ‘For Emma’ serves as a timely reminder that there are a couple more seasons left for their music to soundtrack. One of the standout tracks on a memorable album, few finer songs will be heard this year.

*****

First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.

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Monday, September 22, 2008

Video of the Month #7: James Yuill - This Sweet Love [dir. Alex Emslie]

Moshi Moshi signed anti-folk man James Yuill releases his second single for the label on 6th October. 'This Sweet Love' is a gorgeous 3 and a half minutes of acoustic-electronica reminiscent of the Trembling Blue Stars and is taken from forthcoming debut album Turning Down Water For Air, out 2 weeks after the single. The equally lovely video involves a range of people doing something that they "love" and features the best use of a black censor strip since the FCC tried to censor life in Family Guy.

Check it out right here:


This Sweet Love - James Yuill from Alex Emslie on Vimeo.


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Saturday, September 20, 2008

Calexico - Carried to Dust [City Slang album]

Calexico - Carried to Dust

For some it was on Hot Rail (2000) that John Convertino and Joey Burns’ Tex-Mex Americana vision reached its peak. Their, well, “Cal-exican” sound felt at once warm and familiar to fans of alt-country and Americana (and before that the likes of Love) but at the same time completely unique, with mariachi story-telling on tracks like ‘Ballad of Cable Hogue’ and ‘Service and Repair’ alongside brass-laden instrumentals fitting together as perfectly as nachos and guacamole. For many others it was 2003’s well-regarded follow up Feast of Wire, but either way, there have undoubtedly been patches of near-greatness for the Tucson duo and their many contributing friends throughout their 12 years. The decision to move in a more mainstream, brass-less, instrumental-less direction on 2006’s Garden Ruin, though, didn’t really reach the heights that might have been expected of it. So (if bands like Calexico actually worry about such things) sixth album Carried To Dust could be something of a pivotal release: returning to their desert roots (as the album’s title may imply) or carrying on down the shiny path to a potentially wider audience.

With that in mind, the opening ‘Victor Jara’s Hands’ seems like a statement of intent, containing each of the elements that first set the band apart from their contemporaries, from jubilant brass, to Spanish vocals, to the Latin American subject matter. It’s a bubbly start and has all the hallmarks of a live favourite, but for some reason there’s something that, at least at first, just doesn’t sit quite right about this re-introduction to the sounds of the dusty West – it ’s almost as if the band might be trying too hard to re-capture former glories. The hushed ‘Two Silver Trees’ is definitely heading in the right direction thanks to a dream-like chorus, but it still doesn’t quite excite as much as it could.

It takes until the gorgeous waltz ‘The News About William’, that builds from rattling drums and delicate strings to the closing soaring vocals, that Carried To Dust really settles into its groove. And from here it is some groove. The brief instrumental ‘Sarabande in Pencil Form’ is a strangely settling segue into ‘Writer’s Minor Holiday’ and ‘Man Made Lake’, songs that certainly confirm the growing suspicion: Calexico are back on form. In a big way. The road-trip rhythms, backing “ooohs” and “aaahs” and lyrics about “my Irish whiskey glass” of the former track, conjure up lofty literary allusions of a hard-drinking Kerouac or Bukowski, while the screeching guitars and dramatic tones of the latter picks up where ‘The News About William’ left off, showcasing the more impressive end of Joey Burns’ range compared with the whispered gruffness elsewhere.

Thankfully, the standard far from drops after this auspicious couplet and there are more and more signposts to the fact that this is Calexico on top of their game. The Latin sounds of the bouncy duet ‘Inspiracion’ provide a convenient time to practice your conversational Spanish, and this along with the likes of ‘House of Valparaiso’ (featuring old friend Iron &Wine’s Sam Beam) and the instrumental ‘El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)’ recalls the finer mariachi moments of Calexico’s back catalogue. For the latter this is literally the case, it being a re-imagining of the Feast of Wire track ‘The Trigger’, but the initial concerns about the opening track being an attempt to recapture something lost are proven totally unfounded with each passing song. And in contrast to the it is perhaps the aching ballad ‘The Slowness’, steeped in pedal steel and lovely boy-girl harmonies is perhaps the most enrapturing moment, providing the soft centre to the album.

At 15 tracks Carried To Dust is a relatively long album (though not particularly by Calexican standards), but such is the consistency and vibrancy of almost every one of them that it seems to fly by, right up to the three suitably delightful compositions that wrap it up: a third and equally satisfying instrumental, ‘Falling From Sleeves’, the broody ‘Red Blooms’, and another triumphant collaboration, ‘Contention City’ with Tortoise’s Doug McCombs. Along with the other four fifths of the record, these tracks are filled with a whole range of textures – layers that get deeper and richer with every listen. To return to the original suggestion, it seems that rather than revert back entirely to their roots or continue down the road on which Garden Ruin seemed to be headed, Calexico have taken an entirely preferable route. For throughout the album the band perfectly bridge the gap between their unique Tex-Mex heritage and a more rounded sound.

If you were being overly critical you could say it is perhaps a little “lite” in a few places and lacks some of the menace of earlier works, but Calexico’s sixth long player is a real triumph, and at least as good as Feast of Wire, Hot Rail or anything they have put their name to thus far. The best thing is, the way it all clicks in to gear here makes for great excitement about Convertino and Burns’ future work – something you probably couldn’t have said if they had made a Garden Ruin Part 2. As it is, with Carried to Dust Calexico have hit the pinata squarely on the nose, and we are the lucky ones left to reap the candy they have left scattered beneath.

****

First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.




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Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Conor Oberst - Souled Out!!! [Wichita Single]

So 13 years since his last solo album (released when he was still just 15), Conor Oberst has decided to freshen things up a little, give Bright Eyes a bit of a breather and go back to basics with his fourth solo effort overall, Conor Oberst. Maybe he just felt he needed some Conor time. Whatever the reasons behind the return to singledom, thankfully (or not, depending on your point of view) very little seems to have altered musically in this new eponymous direction, with much of Conor Oberst – not least single ‘Souled Out!!!’ – continuing in a the same more polished vein as 2007’s Cassadaga and before that ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’.

On the evidence of ‘Souled Out!!!’ it does seem that being freed of the Bright Eyes moniker has left Oberst in a particularly relaxed frame of mind. Virtually everything about this free spirited single, from the carefree pun of the exclamatory title, to the regular background chatter and descent into laughter mid-verse, has a throwaway air to it. Fairly non-sensical lyrics about things like flying “to the moon in a soda can” fill the verses, while the euphoric chorus announces that “You won’t be getting in” because – there’s that pun again – it’s all “souled out in heaven”. Despite this un happy conclusion, Conor et al certainly sound like they are having fun and it all adds up to a breezy country rock sing-along that is by no means Oberst’s finest hour, but remains a perfectly agreeable listen.

There is actually something surprisingly Oasis-like about ‘Souled Out!!!’, with both the simple scale of the opening guitar solo and the chorus backing vocals sounding rather Noel-esque (not to mention the soul-related pun). If the Gallaghers had been more into the Stones than the Beatles and just spent the summer listening to Exile on Main Street, they might have come up with something bit like this. Taking on board this comparison, the ultra cynical might even think that, taken in isolation, this song bears all the hallmarks of a 3 and a half minute, written for radio single, and that his forays with the Mystic Valley Band may even be Oberst’s way of cashing in without damaging the Bright Eyes brand. This would be way too harsh on man who has already enjoyed the top two singles on the Billboard chart, though, and one who has been turning out albums full of alt-country gems for over 15 years. Especially when you take into account that Conor Oberst is another such record.


In reality, ‘Souled Out!!!’ is just a slightly more radio-friendly than usual taster of another very good album from Conor Oberst. Whether you think the man’s “souled out” or not, you can call it what you want: Conor Oberst, Bright Eyes, it’s all pretty much business as usual.

(For fans of US pop culture it’s worth noting that, as well as download, the single is available as a 7” featuring an etching by Grace McSorely comic creator Kaite Murphy.)


***

First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.

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