examinationofwhaaat

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I've admittedly been lazy with my writing over the last month but, in my defence, I have been working on a BIG project aside from my work.

I WILL be back on here soon with, among other bits and pieces, a list of my favourite 50 albums of 2014.

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Black Metal by Dean Blunt

Dean Blunt’s presence, musically and publicly, has never been transparent. His work, in its oscillating anatomy, isn’t particularly accessible, and his behaviour, in the media and public eye, has always been somewhat puzzling and distracting.

Last year’s The Redeemer saw Blunt begin to edge towards clarity in an album seemingly inspired by heartbreak. This might have helped to reign in his focus and talent as a songwriter. It was, in my opinion at least, his best release as Dean Blunt.

Black Metal, like its predecessor, is intermittently murky but predominantly expressive and vivid.

The album opener ‘Lush’ combines jangling guitar with warming string accompaniments before baritone vocals, which sit somewhere between singing and talking, provide effective overlapping melody to the strings. Dean’s vocals remain charmingly sloppy and low-key on this record, but they’re much sharper and cleaner than we have heard in previous material.

Blunt begins to expose his soul in expressions of disdain, heartache, frustrations and troubled apathy, before continually drifting and obscuring his feelings. Although it would appear that he is genuinely attempting to explore his emotions, he does tend to drift from darker introspection at times when further exploration would be increasingly effective.

Surprisingly straightforward and unambiguous, the first half of this record builds its own momentum and his its own certain sound and ambient splendor. At its halfway point, and in typical Dean Blunt fashion, the momentum is disrupted and you’re suddenly faced with two mountainous drifters in the form of Forever and ‘X’. These bleak, meandering tracks are powerful in the sense that they mark an ominous surge in the album’s slightly hostile resentment and anguish, but they are admittedly difficult to penetrate compared to the previous songs. The rest of the record is more experimental, but the attractive and direct clarity in which Blunt’s ability as a songwriter is illuminated, is thankfully retained.

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Coming to the UK off the back of his most recent release The Manipulator, Ty Segall was returning to Manchester without the burden of having too much to prove.

Following a quick and heavy handed soundcheck with a band made up of Mikal Cronin and Ty’s usual backers, the bassist, revealing a hairy belly in his Texan cowboy hat and boots, introduced his bandmates with a playfully crass speech which was met with a combination of laughter and abuse.

After a relatively amusing and longwinded introduction, Ty and co stepped up and smashed straight into title track ‘Manipulator’. Lo-fi punk and garage can sometimes wander and fade into an indeterminable haze if the sound isn’t right, but the fuzz/clarity balance was more or less spot on from the start.

A ruffled and improvised Ty took energy from an equally, if not more erratic and shaggy haired audience who responded raucously to the new material. As the band took command of their untamed and increasingly boozed up crowd, the invisible barrier between the two broke down and young fans, savouring the brief moment for about a millisecond each, began to jubilantly fling themselves from the stage into the arms of exulting strangers.

The frothing pit became a scene of friendly and exuberant thrashing in celebration of Ty’s newest and perhaps most refined and matured material. One poor guy, possessed by his unhinged adoration for the music as well as a healthy amount of drink, apparently took it too far after being forcibly removed by security for repeatedly smashing himself against the stage floor. All, including the drummer who later regrettably questioned his disappearance, sorely missed his presence.

In a crowd that was made up of longer-term and more recently adopted Ty Segall fans, it was the Ty Segall Band and Melted material that was received with the wildest and most explosive appreciation and familiarity. A heavier version of Caesar momentarily brought relative stillness to the crowd, unifying them in a huge sing along, before a great solo liquefied ears and resumed normal service pit-wise. Ty, Mikal and co. continued to serve up well-known head exploding riffs in the shape of ‘I Bought My Eyes’, ‘Tell Me What’s Inside Your Heart’, ‘My Sunshine’, ‘Girlfriend’ and personal favourite ‘Finger’. The vibrant energy in the room was maintained throughout the encore and beyond, with the whole band leaving the stage in the midst of a wall of passionate noise. They were as relentless as their audience, and for that alone they deserved the huge response they received.

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Sorry I haven't posted in a little while, have been in and out of hospital with a hand injury so it hasn't been too easy to type. Promise the regular features will resume next week.

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Metal Swing by The Range

At the start of the year, in my top 50 albums of 2013 piece, I stuck The Range's album Nonfiction in at a pretty complimentary number 23. Although I stand by its placement in the top 30, I would admit that the track Metal Swing is a huge reason as to why I rate it so highly. 

Starting and finishing with a simple repeating piano melody, this is a song that relentlessly builds and builds and builds. Initially humming with a reserved whirring, the introduction of the vocals allow the track's development in tempo, mood and volume. Combined with the growing momentum and bubbling of bass, the spoken lyrics promise some kind of explosive climax...

"Why this guy threatening Saying he's gonna send for me like he aint letting in See this guy's getting brave But, like most of these parks I come with the metal swing..."

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What Am I Going to Do with Everything I Know (Album) by The Weather Station

Condensed into just 17 minutes, this record is a six-track love story, illustrating Tamara Lindeman's passage from loneliness to love, and eventually potential marriage.

Considering the emotionally loaded nature of this record's lyrical focus, it all sounds remarkably placid, considered and distant. But this is in no way a negative for me, there's something incredibly powerful, almost alarming, about the impassive exploration of the sudden and unexpected presence of love in the midst of emotional isolation.

Without revealing the intricate and specific details of the story (I still consider this to be a recommendation blog and wouldn't want to reveal too much), the marriage proposal at the climax (soz) is portrayed not so much with jubilation, but with a matter of fact sense of reality. Lindeman is looking back on a particularly unpredictable and crucially important period of her life with the serene confidence of a person who has now found balance and stability.

With a voice, in its ranging fragility and quivering power, reminiscent of Joni Mitchell's, Tamara Lindeman and co. have put together an uncommonly subtle and tender record. Such is the poignant delicacy and faintness of the album, if you allow yourself to drift away from the music, even slightly, the reticent climax will slip by you without you even realising.

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Last week the news broke that Parquet Courts, under the name Parkay Quarts (Porky Cats isn't a thing), are to release a third album. With it being described as a bit of a filler album released to keep their fans happy, it's going to be called Content Nausea and it's out 11th November. 

This new record has been mostly the work of Andrew Savage and Austin Brown with the other members taking a step back, which perhaps explains the premeditated (and previously observed on the Tally All... EP) name change.

As a fan of the band I'm obviously excited to have something new to listen to, but why should you be excited? Well for one, it apparently features a cover of Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walking, which will at least be interesting. And two, the song they've dropped with this initial press release sounds great. 

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I Am The Resurrection by The Stone Roses

Admittedly a bit pissed now, but what a track this is.

Manchester has birthed so much culturally, especially musically, that so many cities of its size could only ever dream of. There are so many artists that could collectively symbolise Manchester and what it means to world musically... Joy Division, Happy Mondays, New Order, The Smiths... But The Stone Roses are the band I'd choose above all others to truly represent the city and its people. 

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Digable Planets

On a close-down shift at work earlier this week, I decided to reacquaint myself with Digable Planets' brilliant debut album Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space). I might have been asked by my boss to turn it off three quarters of the way through, but for me, it was total reaffirmation of what I already knew: that Digable Planets were, at least for a period of time, the under-appreciated master-gurus of hip hop.

Obviously nobody can really say what hip hop should or shouldn't be, but in my eyes, Reachin' is the absolute apex of sound within the genre. Seductive jazzy grooves, beautifully fluid vocal interplay and lyrics that, without at all sounding pretentious or forced, can switch between abstract spiritual universalism and peaceful but cutting liberal social commentary in tracks like La Femme Fetal. As Doodlebug proclaims in Where I'm From, the "lyrics are so fat you might gain weight", but it's not the lyrics, or in fact any one element, that stands out with Digable Planets. It's all about music and mood.

The group's appreciation and love for music in the writing process is so clear from the results of this record. You're listening to uniquely textured and rich production full of obscure soul and funk samples, absorbing sound effects and multi-instrumental layerings. But it's all forged so delicately and with so much style and class that it never even comes close to sounding excessive. Over the years I've found myself coming back for more and more with this album. It will never get old and it will never quite fully quench my thirst, not because it doesn't fully satisfy, but because it's pure musical pleasure that seems to attract me with an abiding magnetism.

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# The Lord's Favorite by Iceage

Before the release of their new album (Plowing Into the Field of Love), I had never really 'got' the buzz surrounding Iceage. Upon a few initial listens back in 2012 or whenever it was, something about their brand of noise-rock went over my head a bit and, in truth, put me off delving into the rest of their stuff.

But when I heard that they'd modified and refined their sound on their latest album I shook off my stubborn laziness and gave it a proper listen. In short, it's a fantastically considered, even beautiful venture into raw and impassive murky misery and grisliness. Not only do I think that they have matured and developed tremendously as individual musicians and a band, it's even got me thinking that I've been overlooking some of their finest, albeit unpolished qualities in their earlier work. The album is one of my favourites of the year so far and this track is a great example of how Iceage have continued to enrich and elevate their sound. 

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Hawk House

For some reason, hip hop is the only genre of music in which I really allow myself to feel much pride in liking British artists and the British scene, as opposed to stuff from outside of the UK. Maybe it's because of the more mainstream dominance of US hip hop artists, I don't know. Whatever the reason, I am instinctively glad that my favourite current hip hop group are from the UK. Hawk House released their first mixtape A Little More Elbow Room last year and followed it up in June with their first album A Handshake to the Brain.

Their sound is reminiscent of the neo-soul/hip hop blend that used to perpetuate the US scene; artists like The Roots, Jill Scott, Badu and Tribe come to mind. Whilst their style does at times echo artists of that period, lyrically and production-wise they are engrossingly creative, independent and experimental. Their vocal synergy is beautifully smooth and they're more than comfortable addressing socially relevant issues in real inner city life in Britain, something that quite often can be lacking in UK hip hop. Their latest release is just as creative and smooth, and although I maybe still currently prefer A Little More Elbow Room, I'm more than sure that it's more than good enough to earn them the title of current up-and-coming rulers of the UK scene. A really really talented group, there's just something wonderfully natural about their sound altogether. Vibrant, authentic, imaginative and exciting.

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The start of another weekly feature on this blog. Each week I'm going to post one of my favourite songs.

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#1 The Man In Me by Bob Dylan

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I recently re-watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time in six or so years (I was still in secondary school) and finally understood why it's such a masterpiece. The whole thing is superior, visually and audibly at least, to almost anything I've ever watched. One scene and one piece of music (Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs & Orchestra) in particular struck me as unbelievably stirring, in fact it genuinely disturbed me a little bit...

This has to be one of the eeriest and most ominous scenes of all time, thanks not just to the piece of music, but also to the portentous presence of the monolith. Watch the scene below, or even better just watch the whole film in a dark room.

If you're a Parquet Courts fan and you get the pun in the title, apologies if it makes you cringe as much as it does me...

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This was at first going to be a general appreciation piece, but I thought I'd try to explain my appreciation of the band's material with a particular focus on one aspect of their work; their lyrics.

I'm focusing on their lyrics because it's not too often you get groups that so successfully manage to blend humour and satire with their own personal brand of articulate creativity (that is without them sounding like massive wankers). 

For the rest of this piece I'm going to pick out a little selection of lyrics from a few songs so that you can see some of the different sides to Parquet Courts and maybe understand a little better why they're my favourite current band.

(Just click on the song title if you want to hear the track)

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Master Of My Craft (click for song)

"People die I don't care, you should see the wall of ambivalence I'm building I got no love for the living. Thread count - high, commissions - high, hourly rates - high A minute of your time? Forget about it."

The lyrics in this track create a satirical portrait of a self-important but successful individual. This guy is ambivalent to all others around him. He's smarter, better looking, more interesting and more important than all of us put together. We can all probably think of someone (or a few people) who resemble this caricature somewhat, in fact I feel like they parody this type of person so well that, should they hear the song, they wouldn't understand where the joke is. In so many of their songs, Parquet Courts drench their lyrics in a biting cynicism that attacks the world and people around them, but it's also with the deadpan delivery of Austin Brown, especially here in the drawling "forget about it" line, where that cynicism (and this character) really comes to life. 

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Stoned and Starving (click for song)

"I was debating Swedish Fish, Roasted peanuts or licorice. I was so stoned and starving.

I was holding some wadded bills, I was reading that smoking kills. I was so stoned and starving."

At maybe the other end of the Parquet Courts spectrum, Stoned and Starving has one sole and simple focus throughout; they're stoned and they're starving. For mundane realism to really work well and be effective in a song, I think that you have to feel like it sounds real without really being able to explain why it sounds real beyond the fact that it just is (if that makes any sense at all). Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that, at least for me, Parquet Courts get it spot on. It's humdrum routine and it's hardly worth mentioning at all, but it's a slice of reality, and as with any Parquet Courts track, it's the way that it's framed musically that brings it to life. The incredibly catchy, punchy and repetitive two chord hook and chorus reflect the simplicity of the lyrics and give the song a really powerfully tight and closed feel, whilst the later descent into a lethargic jam subtly reminds us of the song's lyrical context.

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Instant Dissassembly (click for song)

"Don't beseech me for the answers you seek Oh, I kept explaining that I was too tired To continue to speak"

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"Mamacita, take from me what I stole Oh, I get a look from you that slips me To a blank page in my soul Like the left open window ignored It cuts to my core when I see you cry" //

"Mamacita, turn me loose as I flee Oh, it seems that you've got a spotlight Cast on the dark side of me I feel a pain so acute like I'm being impaled And I can't breathe, can't breathe, it's hard to inhale" (line repeats) -

I've written a bit more than I initially expected, so despite this track probably being one of my favourite songs, I'm going to try and rein myself in a little here. To be honest I'm not really sure what this song is about, but the beauty of song lyrics is that they're completely open to interpretation. To me, this presents a different side to Parquet Courts - not cynical, not funny, not apathetic, but a lot more emotionally exposed. I'll let you analyse the lyrics yourself, but I really like that this track is so suggestive of some kind of emotional and romantic remorse without actually presenting a too clearly tangible scenario - whatever the song's about, what comes through above all else is the protagonist's tiredness. The murky ambiguity that I love about this track's lyrics is also reflected in the music. There's something about the combination of the dull strum of chords and the more bouncy lead that creates a confusing clash of optimism and a draining emotional numbness. Just a fucking great song. That final refrain could go on for another twenty minutes and I'd be happy.

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I can't really be arsed writing too much more here because it's starting to feel like an essay, so I'm just going to finish by saying that this is another favourite for me lyrics-wise. Enjoy.

You've Got Me Wondering Now (click for song)

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