Video of the month #4: Mystery Jets - Young Love

Mystery Jets keep getting better and better. This Laura Marling featuring, Erol Alkan produced, track is not only a great song, but has a corking (if slightly nauseating) video to accompany it. With both Christmas and Valentine's Day related songs released in recent months, I am really looking forward to the next themed single - Mother's Day? Easter? Who cares - it's bound to be great!

Cass Mccombs - That's That [Domino single]

Cass McCombs’ last offering (following his debut A) PREfection is one of those lost gems of records I had almost forgotten about, and it is with a mixture of reminiscence and intrigue that new material from the enigmatic Californian is greeted. Despite some six years of mutterings of big things, he has as yet failed to make the waves for which he initially seemed destined, critically as well as commercially. Three years have now passed since PREfection’s release and the first taster from new Dropping The Writ album finally arrives in the form of blog favourite ‘That’s That’.

The song is a story about a runaway girl, suggested rather than told through minimalist brushstrokes. McCombs is a songwriter whose often obtuse, but generally poetic, lyrics beg as much attention as the music itself. ‘That’s That’ is no different and includes some perfectly aching poignancy with the refrain “playthings are laid to waste, thrown out to make better space”. Elsewhere the understated words delicately tell of mundanity and desperation: “So I got a job cleaning toilets at a nightclub in Baltimore”.

Musically things seem to have shifted a little in the three years since PREfection, and this first pointer from Dropping the Writ could loosely be described as 80s-sounding Americana, though it is quite singular in sound. McCombs has spent much of his musical life travelling from place to place and this record feels just as nomadic. It is rambling yet purposeful, held together and driven on by the rhythm of the stand out bassline, as regular as an engine turning over. The voice delivering the lines, too, is suitably yearning and fragile and the air of resignation of McCombs delivery of the gorgeous line “I guess that’s that, almost shorter than a dream and definitely of less note” perfectly distils the essence of the song.

‘That’s That’ is further proof of McCombs songwriting prowess, which, combining simplicity with opaqueness, is open to endless deconstruction. If this is anything to go by, then Dropping the Writ will demand some serious listening time.

****

First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.

The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams [Universal album]

That Erland Øye does come up with some inventive monikers for his musical endeavours. First there was his Kings of Convenience, then album titles Quiet is the New Loud and Riot on an Empty Street, and now his latest venture - The Whitest Boy Alive. In fact, it comes as something of a disappointment that the debut album from the Norwegian four-piece is simply entitled Dreams. He was obviously half asleep when he came up with that one… (ahem).

It is difficult, at first at least, not to judge TWBA’s work in the context of Øye’s other band, especially when his instantly recognisable lilting Scandinavian tones seep from the speakers like an old friend. The subject matter, too, remains consistent and the quotidian stories of a lonely boy’s loves and losses that defined Kings of Convenience are still very much in evidence. However, whereas the songs recorded with Eirik Glambek were generally of the gentle acoustic lullaby variety, this is, at the very least, a more grown-up sounding record.

The ten songs are all very much plugged in, but remain suitably laid-back and for the most part are left sparse and roomy. It is telling that TWBA started off as an ‘electronic’ project, because what is left is essentially an album of jazzy electronica without the electronica. The vast expanses within the songs on ‘Dreams’ are filled with meandering bass lines and guitar parts that verge from the easy listening to at times the downright funky (such as the snare-filled ‘Fireworks). The tracks are certainly not in a rush to go anywhere and at times this means they can drag on a little with extended instrumentals that go round in circles. Sometimes this works beautifully, like on the husky ‘Borders’ for example, but at one’s most cynical, the line “Giving me a reason to stay constantly ignored” in ‘Don’t Give Up’ can be a little close to home.

All in all, ‘Dreams’ is a very well put together album that works delightfully as a sedentary soundtrack to whatever else you might be doing at the time. The elongated musical structure also allows the quirky, witty lyrics to breathe, develop and grab more of the attention than you might expect and this often proves a highlight. There is little wrong with the album, but it is so laid-back it is difficult to see who (apart from fans of Kings of Convenience and Øye’s other enterprises) going to want to really get stuck into it and give it the repeat listens that it probably needs to be truly appreciated.

Oh, and listen out for the backing vocals that turn up half way through ‘Don’t Give Up’ that sound just like Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords has lent a helping hand in the studio.

***

First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.

Video Of The Month #3 Vampire Weekend - A Punk [dir Hammer & Tongs]

Not only are Vampire Weekend officially 'the next big thing', they have also - with the help of Hammer & Tongs - made a hilarious Monkees-for-the-21st Century video to new single 'A Punk'. Hope you like drums...

Kap Bambino - Zero Life, Night Vision [Alt>Delete album]

Having soundtracked the infancy of ‘New Rave’ back in the dayglo summer of 2006, Alt Delete unleashes a salvo of electro-punk in the form of the debut long player from Bordeaux’s Kap Bambino. Big things often come in small packages and this duo, comprising Orion Bouvier (bleeps, blips and noise) and Caroline Martial (wailing banshee), manage to make one hell of a racket. The two do their darnedest to replicate on record their apparently incendiary live performances and the result is both pulsating and aggressive.

In this instance the ‘punk’ of their electro-punk comes not from guitars but from the same DIY ethos of early ‘New Rave’ and from the short bursts of furious energy that make up this album. Like the soundtrack to a dystopian world, ‘Zero Life, Night Vision’ is more (or less, depending on which way you look at it) than a collection of ‘songs’, in fact resembling a continual aural assault made up of 12 intense blitzkrieg attacks. Titles like ‘Kaoskillers’ and ‘More Machine’ hint at the band’s future-shock sound, which has a blueprint loosely thus: Bouvier’s bleepy synth sounds over fuzzy noise, with vocodered shrieking vocals courtesy of Martial.

With the origins of ‘New Rave’ buried under Mercury Prizes and Top Shop fashion it is refreshing to hear a band actually indulging in proper ‘old rave’ sounds and ‘Zero Life, Night Vision’ works from a formula that is instantly exciting thanks to its exhilarating aggression. After repeated listens, though, it can seem just that: formulaic.

First published in Notion magazine.